Dr. Stephen Wise, Criticizing Zionist Organization of America, Says It Hasn’t Separate Existence or

The Zionist Organization of America has been nothing more than a sounding board for the voice of London, has had no separate existence, no program of its own and its motto, rightly or wrongly, has been “amen,” declares Dr. Stephen S. Wise in replying to a question, among others submitted to him by the “Hazman,” a Hebrew paper in Tel Aviv, of whether the Zionist Organization of America is strong enough to make itself felt in the coming months.

Continuing, Dr. Wise says that the Zionist Organization of America “assented with a minimum of reservation to the Agency plans” and “it must now more or less gracefully accept the penalties of self-obliteration. There is still a deep and wide-spread Zionist feeling in America, but it has been woefully hurt in the last few years. Whether it can be made to live again will depend upon the firmness of the Zionist position. If the Agency becomes in Palestine the counterpart of the Joint Distribution Committee in Eastern Europe, the Zionist movement will speedily become a thing of memory.”

Answering the “Hazman’s” question as to his opinion of the present situation in Palestine and whether it is critical in Palestine and in America, Dr. Wise said that he does not believe “that the situation has for a moment been critical in Palestine” and “it was not critical even at its worst.” Neither does he believe that it will become critical. As for America that “depends very largely upon the spirit that will be revealed by the Zionist Executive and the Jewish Agency. If the Agency is to follow the lead of Dr. Magnes and assent to the doctrine that the Yishuv can be pogromized into virtually unchallenging acquiescence in the fiat of the Mufti and his followers, not the Arabs, then indeed are we in a critical situation, and it may become true that the Yishuv will, as a result of the crisis in the Galuth, be undone.”

Dr. Wise has hope that Dr. Weizmann “will rise to the height of the occasion” and “be firmer than he has been in the past in dealing with the British Colonial Office.” He believes that “it is for Dr. Weizmann now, representing the World Zionist Organization, not to be driven into the non-Zionist group, which in America has shown woeful symptoms of a recrudesence of anti-Zionism at its worst, but to insist with redeeming firmness that the Balfour Declaration is not to be whittled down, that the Mandate has reference to the creation of a Jewish National Home without equivocation or attenuation of any kind.”

Speaking of what should be the action of the Zionist Executive and what might be expected of the Jewish Agency, Dr. Wise declares that “the Agency must follow the lead of its Zionist membership” and “must do what Dr. Weizmann and the Zionist members of the Agency Council will insist that it shall do.”

With reference to the union of the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency campaigns Dr. Wise feels that while circumstances make it inevitable “none the less it is lamentable. The Agency signified the union of all forces for work in Palestine, after years and years of alleviation and amelioration in Eastern Europe, and now at the very creation of the Agency, its first great public act in America is bound up with the old effort of the Joint Distribution Committee, needful it is alas, but unhappily brought into seeming parity with the infinitely higher purpose of the Jewish Agency. But here again what the outcome is to be will depend largely upon the strength of Dr. Weizmann.”

Answering the “Hazman’s” last question as to whether he is hopeful for the immediate future Dr. Wise replied that he is “not certain that the Agency or the Zionist Executive can immediately save the present situation in Palestine, but I know that neither alone nor both together can permanently destroy the ground on which the Zionist hope rests. The answer to every Zionist question will ultimately come, not from London, New York or Warsaw, but from Eretz Israel, and from them who are its builders and remakers.”