Digest of World Press Opinion

Reporting that the Jewish community of Harbin has submitted an official protest to the Manchukuo government against the anti-Semitic campaign carried on by Czarist Russians in Harbin, Israel’s Messenger, a Shanghai publication, states:

Our attempts to move the Manchukuo government to suppress the anti-Semitic press campaign in Harbin by a coterie of White Russians have not yet been successful, although we have not given up the hope. For some unaccountable reason, the latter are allowed to pursue their nefarious deeds unmolested by the Harbin police and given a free rein to do as they please. East is being made to feel what West is like when it comes to racial hatred and prejudice.

“The Nashput,” the organ of the Fascists, is striving hard to foment pogroms and incite the public against the Jews. In its issue of October 20, 1934, it had the brazen audacity to slander Harbin Jewry by fabricating a statement, according to which a service was held in the synagogue in memory of the murderer of King Alexander I. of Serbia, rendering him posthumous honor.

It was also stated by the same incorrigible sheet that at the end of the ceremony a meeting was held when greetings were exchanged on the death “of the fiercest enemy of the Judeans” (King Alexander) and eulogies were sung in honor of the “martyr,” Mason Kalman, who suffered for the cause of the Jewish people. The diatribe closed with discreditable references to the Jews.

The foregoing is enough to make one’s blood boil with indignation, and no wonder Harbin Jewry had felt impelled to protest solemny against this vile slander with indignation, perpetrated by an enemy who is trying to sully their honor and reputation.

SOUTH AFRICAN PAPER ON PALESTINE VISAS

The Zionist Record of South Africa makes the following comment on the ratio between the number of certificates granted by the Palestine Administration for the current six-months period and the number requested by the Jewish Agency:

Actually the government has cut down the Jewish Agency’s estimate by one-half. That estimate, moreover, was very carefully and conservatively made … and has already become too low in view of the extraordinary influx of Jewish capital and enterprise during the ensuing period.

For reasons vitally affecting both the political prospects and the inner structure of the Jewish National Home the Jewish people must continue to press for full recognition of its immigration demands, as well as for the expansion of the area of settlement so as to embrace not only every part of Palestine west of the Jordan, but also of Transjordan, a land as large as Palestine, almost completely undeveloped, divided from Eretz Israel not by natural but only by political barriers, and offering a wide additional field for settlement and development.

CONFIDENCE OF STATE IN GOV. LEHMAN

The inauguration of Governor Herbert H. Lehman into his second term of office evokes the following comment from the New York Times:

The Governor has a friendly Legislature on his hands, instead of a hostile one, but in a way that will only add to his responsibilities. Fortunately, the people of the State have indicated in a most emphatic way that they have full confidence in his ability and leadership. They have come to recognize in him one of those modest but self-reliant and stout-hearted men whom Emerson must have had in mind when he defined courage as consisting in “equality to the problem before us.”