Dr. Nahum Goldmann, chairman of the Jewish Agency, today charged that Assistant Secretary of State Henry A. Byroade “may have gravely prejudiced efforts to rescue Jews from troubled areas by counseling Israel to put a ceiling on its immigration. ” The Jewish Agency, responsible for the resettlement of more than 800,000 Jews in Israel since the establishment of the State, Dr. Goldmann said, “will not be deterred by ungracious and harsh advice resulting from dubious political expediency.”
Dr. Goldmann’s statement, unanimously endorsed by the executive of the Jewish Agency, in session this morning, was in reply to an utterance by Mr. Byroade last Saturday in an address to the American Council for Judaism, an anti-Zionist organization. Dr. Goldmann especially took exception to Mr. Byroade’s statement that “if and when the Soviets decide” to permit Jews to emigrate to Israel “it will be because of their desire to set the area aflame by fostering new and greater trouble in the Middle East.”
Describing Mr. Byroade’s statement as “shocking and unprecedented in the policy of this country and Government which has always held high the right to asylum,” Dr. Goldmann stated that “the spokesman of the State Department, by attempting to appease the unappeasable Arabs, has written off in advance the lives of the Jews we still hope to rescue from behind the Iron Curtain.”
Dr. Goldmann’s statement reads:
A series of statements by Assistant Secretary of State Henry A. Byroade, issued with the imprimatur of his superiors, has aroused grave misgivings among friends of Israel. We, of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, are primarily concerned with statements which Mr. Byroade made last week on the subject of immigration to Palestine. Mr. Byroade advised the Israel Government to put a ceiling on immigration into Israel as a means of allaying legendary Arab fears of alleged Israel expansion. He claimed that the Jews have already been removed from all trouble areas except the Soviet region. With regard to the possible emigration of Jews from the Soviet areas, Mr. Byroade said that “if and when the Soviets decide to do so, it will be because of their desire to set the area aflame by fostering new and greater trouble in the Middle East.”
CHIDES BYROADE’S VIEWS ON POSSIBLE EMIGRATION OF JEWS FROM SOVIETS
Mr. Byroade deliberately ignores apposite realities. There still are sizeable trouble areas outside the Soviet zone whose Jews live precariously on simmering volcanos. Suffice it to mention the Arab lands and some of the other Muslim countries. Large numbers of these Jews have no greater desire than to leave for Israel. We are still hoping that arrangements might be made for their speedy emigration.
Mr. Byroade’s statement about possible future emigration of Jews from the Soviet zone is shocking and unprecedented in U. S. policy which has always held high the right to asylum. It comes with particular ill grace at a time when reports from Rumania and Czechoslovakia reveal a new tide of anti-Jewish persecutions; the sentencing by military courts, in camera, of Rumanian-Jewish leadership, and the sentencing of non-Jews in Prague on charges that they had conspired with “imperialist Jewish-Zionist organizations.”
It is certainly the policy of the United States Government to assist all refugees from behind the Iron Curtain. Is this policy to stop at the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean? We recall that in the days of the British Mandate, when the Jewish Agency for Palestine fought for the right to bring into Palestine Jewish survivors of Nazism in Rumania, Hungary and Poland, a British Foreign Secretary charged that these hapless fugitives from two types of totalitarianisms were “Communist agents.”
Mr. Byroade’s statement about possible future emigration from behind the Iron Curtain seems to be cut of the same pattern, and in one respect it is even more lamentable because he is already prejudging future developments. It is all good and well for Mr. Byroade to state that if the Soviets ever permitted their Jews to leave, “the magnitude of the problem would be such that the whole free world–not just Israel–would have to concern itself with the resettlement of Jewish immigrants from behind the Iron Curtain.”
CALLS BYROADE’S ADVICE “UNGRACIOUS”; EXPLAINS JEWISH AGENCY STATUS
We, of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, who shouldered the primary responsibility for rescuing Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe and of vacating the DP camps, recall that many pre-war and war-time opportunities to rescue Jews from Nazi clutches were stalemated because too few countries were ready to admit them. Jewish Palestine’s inordinate effort to provide rescue and shelter for these Jews, despite restrictions by the Mandatory Government, helped to reduce somewhat the unparalleled Nazi decimation of European Jewry. Fortunately, Israel is ready to admit any future refugees and Mr. Byroade has no right to urge her to ring down the curtain on them. His advice was both ungracious and harsh.
The platform from which Mr. Byroade delivered his address was that of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. Other speeches, and resolutions adopted by the Council, gave currency to innumerable misstatements about the Jewish Agency for Palestine. A resolution passed by that meeting charged that the Jewish Agency “is an agent of the Israel Government properly registered as such with the Government of the United States.” This is a deliberate, willful and malicious distortion of the truth. The Jewish Agency in this country is registered as a branch of the Jewish Agency for Palestine in Jerusalem, a non-governmental humanitarian organization. Nowhere does that registration state or imply that the Jewish Agency for Palestine is–nor is it in fact–an agent of, or spokesman for, the Israel Government.
The Jewish Agency’s status was recognized in Article IV of the British Palestine Mandate which stated that “an appropriate Jewish agency shall be recognized as a public body to assist and take part in the development of the country…It shall take steps in consultations with His Britannic Majesty’s Government to secure the cooperation of all Jews who are willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish national home.”
Since the establishment of Israel, Article IV of the Mandate, which set forth the relationship of the British mandatory and the Jewish Agency for Palestine has been replaced by the Israel Parliament’s Bill on Status under which the Jewish Agency for Palestine “shall continue to work in the State of Israel for the development and the colonization of the country, for the absorption of immigrants from the Diaspora and for the coordination of the activities in Israel of Jewish institutions and associations operating in these fields.”
The Jewish Agency has worked and will always work toward this end, with the continued support of American Jewry whose efforts have brought about the unparalled resettlement in Israel of hundreds of thousands of victims of totalitarianism. We are confident that this great undertaking will continue to enjoy the wholehearted endorsement of Americans of all faiths.
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