The Labor Party conference today adopted by an overwhelming majority, only a handful voting against, a resolution offered by the Poale-Zion organization supporting the policy of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
The convention referred to the executive committee for sympathetic consideration a resolution demanding that “the Government grant rights of temporary asylum to all refugees from political and racial oppression and that the Government in cooperation with the governments of other democratic countries, should plan a permanent settlement of refugees.”
Prof. Harold J. Laski received the largest vote for membership in the executive committee. Emanuel Shinwell, Labor Member of Parliament, was also elected to the executive.
Partial text of the Palestine resolution follows: “After the war the world will be confronted by a mass migration of Jews on an unprecedented scale from eastern and central Europe.
“This conference declares that in order to remove the root cause of Jewish suffering and to ensure the existence and free development of the Jewish people international assistance should be given for the continued growth of the Jewish national home by immigration and settlement. The Jewish people should be able to make the most of the economic capacity of the country (Palestine) to absorb them.
“This conference reaffirms its traditional support of the reestablishment of the Jewish national home in Palestine and the conference stresses the special obligation incumbent upon the British Government under the Balfour Declaration and the mandate and reiterates the conviction that this policy provides the basis for increasing cooperation between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine.
“This conference therefore reaffirms the resolution on Palestine adopted by the Southport conference (last year) which stated that the White Paper, by imposing a minority status on the Jews,’…violated the solemn pledges contained in the Balfour Declaration and the mandate…and supports the stand taken by the Parliamentary Labor Party in the debate of March 6,1940…This conference requests the Parliamentary Labor Party to continue this policy…
“The conference further declares that no real peace settlement is possible without repairing the wrongs done to the Jewish people. The new order after the war must ensure for the Jews, along with other minorities, effective safeguards for their civil, political and economic equality…and this conference declares that the Jewish people should be adequately represented when the peace conference comes to consider the problems affecting them.”
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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.
