Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, in an article in the current issue of Life magazine, replies to King Ibn Saud of Saudi-Arabia who, in a previous issue of the same publication, published a statement opposing a Jewish Palestine.
Reproducing the full text of the treaty signed between Emir Feisal and Dr. Chaim Weizmann in 1919, which provided for “the closest possible collaboration in the development of the Arab State and Palestine” and stipulated that “all necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale,” Dr. Wise points out that “it is from the present realities that the future of Palestine will be shaped and no comment on King Ibn Saud’s views would be valid without taking them into account.”
Dr. Wise also emphasizes that “in no Arab country, and least of all in any under the domination of Ibn Saud, has there been a general progress in the condition of the Arab masses remotely comparable with that which the Zionist work has brought to the masses of Palestine.” He concludes with the hope that Ibn Saud’s name may still be found “among those who will give furtherance and sanction to the resettlement of Jews in Palestine and the re-creation of the Jewish National Home therein,” since Saudi Arabia can only profit from Jewish efforts in the Near East.
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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.
