Churchill Appeals to U.S. to Help Realization of Anglo-american Report on Palestine

An appeal to the United States to aid Britain in carrying out the recommendations of the Anglo-American inquiry committee was voiced here today by Winston Churchill at a ceremony at which he was presented with the freedom of the City of Westminster.

“Are we not entitled to ask our friends whose judgment is the same as ours to give us a helping hand?” Churchill said. He emphasized that it would not serve the interests of the democratic world if Britain were to leave Palestine. “Some voices,” he declared, “bid us quit Palestine and India, but what would be the consequences? What other arrangements can be made to safeguard the millions of people there from the cruel fate which laid Europe in the dust?”

Moshe Shertok, head of the political department of the Jewish Agency, today told a conference of the United Palestine Appeal here that there cannot be any question of Jewish acceptance of the inquiry committee’s report as a whole. However, he emphasized that the committee’s unanimous verdict about the necessity of a mass-exodus of Jews from Europe, with Palestine being the only country where most of them can go, can be considered an implied condemnation of the British White Paper policy and a vindication of the Zionist stand.

Expressing the hope that Prime Minister Attlee’s statement on the report is not the last word of the British Government, Shertok said: “The question is whether there is a will to admit the 100,000 Jews from Europe to Palestine. If there is such a will, then a way will be found. If the will is lacking, then the prospect is grim, and Jews must brace themselves for a severe ordeal.” He also pointed out that the demand for abandonment of the idea of a Jewish State “is tantamount to expecting Zionism to give up its soul.”