A project for the raising of an international loan with the assistance of the British government or of the League of Nations to further Jewish colonization in Palestine was outlined this morning before the Zionist Congress at the opening of its third day of sessions by Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff, editor of the Jewish Labor Union monthly published in Tel Aviv, Palestine.
Dr. Arlosoroff’s suggestion of international loan was incorporated in his report on the economic situation in Palestine. He emphasized that during the last decade world Jewry had spent $90,000,000 in Palestine in bringing 90,000 immigrants into the country, or an average of $1,000 per person.
Pointing out that at least 20,000 people must be colonized annually, a projection involving $20,000,000, Dr. Arlosoroff stressed the fact that the Keren Hayesod, the Jewish Agency’s chief financial instrument, and the Jewish National Fund, the principal Zionist land-purchasing agency, are not sufficient because they can bring in only a maximum of $5,000,000 and hence an international loan is imerative.
Dr. Arlosoroff’s report also suggested further reductions in Zionist expenditures and the transfer of the Zionist educational system in Palestine to the local Jewish community.
After giving details of the international loan scheme, Dr. Arlosoroff declared that negotiations for the loan were already under way.
PLAN BACKED BY WARBURG, BRANDEIS
Continuing his report, he sketched a plan for the creation of an investment trust which would open Palestine for international finance and investments on convenient terms. This plan has already been worked out and has the backing of the group headed by Felix M. Warburg as well as that headed by Justice Louis D. Brandeis, Dr. Arlosoroff informed the Congress.
He further described two additional plans for strengthening Jewish finances in Palestine. First he proposed the creation of an agricultural credit institute which would issue negotiable mortgages guaranteed by the Palestine government as is now done in Cyprus with the assistance of the British government. His second plan was the socalled Soskin plan which proposes the British Colonial Development Act as a source of loans from the British government, to which the Jewish National Fund is entitled, the act providing for loans for land development.
DEBATE OPENS
Dr. Arlosoroff was the last official speaker on the agenda and the general debate opened immediately after he had concluded his address. Vladimir Jabotinsky, leader of the Zionist Revisionists, did not speak. The first to take the floor in the general debate, which will continue all through today and tonight and tomorrow until sundown, was David Ben Gurion, president of the Jewish Labor Federation of Palestine. When he appeared on the tribune he was greeted with a tremendous wave of applause.
Bitterly attacking the Mandatory Power as well as Primier MacDonald’s letter to Dr. Chaim Weizmann interpreting the Passfield White Paper as a dead letter in Palestine “Where it did not bring even a single ray of light for the Jews”, David Ben Gurion, president of the Jewish Labor Federation of Palestine, opened the general debate at the Zionist Congress today.
Mr. Ben Gurion, who represents the Laborites, who are the strongest united party at the Congress and have nearly a third of all the delegates, condemned the recently enacted Protection of Cultivators (Amendment Ordinance), charging that it is aimed directly at the Jews. The Palestine government systematically boycotts the Jews in labor on public works, even in Jewish zones where they are entitled to work, Mr. Ben Gurion declared.
Referring to the question of the Arabs, the Palestine Labor leader said “we don’t want to serve as the tool of imperialism. We want a direct understanding with the Arabs in line with Zionist policy and with the support of European democracy. The Jewish-Arab problem should be solved not by a Jewish State nor by a bi-national state and neither by having Palestine as a cultural center, but by permitting Jewish immigration into Palestine on the basis of the country’s absorptive capacity.
“The solution to the Jewish-Arab question is that one race should not dominate over the other, that the justified Arab demands should be fulfilled on condition that no other limitation for Jewish immigration be made except the possibility of the land to absorb newcomers”. Mr. Ben Gurion also severely attacked the Revisionists, the opposition to the Weizmann regime.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
