The Palestine land ordinance is still the subject of editorial comment in the newspapers here.
The Sunday Times emphasizes the British Government’s determination to carry out the ordinance restricting Jewish land purchase, stating that if the League Council condemns the ordinance the Government might have to ask for an amendment of the Palestine Mandate. “In the Government’s view,” the Times states, “there cannot be further delay in dealing with what is a very serious social, political and racial problem.”
Writing in Reynolds News, H.N. Brailsford condemns the regulations, declaring “all that is left of Palestine now is a ghetto” and charging that the British action was “flatly illegal and in contradiction, both in letter and spirit, with the terms of the mandate.”
In a letter to the Times, Moshe Shertok, head of the Jewish Agency’s political department, asserts that the new restrictions are political character and designed to crystallize the Jewish national home in the same way as the immigration clauses of the White Paper meant to crystallize it numerically. With regard to statements that further land sales to Jews threaten a “disastrous swelling of the Arab landless,” Shertok points out that the Government ignored the Agency’s repeated requests for data justifying such statements.
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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.
