Dr. Wise States Reasons for Resigning from Zionist Committees

Declaring that the policy of the present Zionist leadership “spells not compromise but surrender” and assailing what he termed an “absolutist regime” in Zionist affairs, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and Rabbi of the Free Synagogue, outlined his reasons for resigning from the Administrative and Executive Committees of the Zionist Organization of America, in a statement issued today following the acceptance of his resignation by the Administrative Committee.

“My reasons for withdrawing from active participation in and responsibility for the direction of the Zionist Organization of America,” Dr. Wise declared in his statement, “were more than adumbrated in my address before the Cleveland in my address before the Cleveland conference, October 1927. Two considerations prompted me to postpone the act of resignation.

“1. The imminence of the United Palestine Appeal, the honorary chairmanship of which I accepted. To it I have given, as I am still prepared to give, largely of time and substance, though at the time of its inauguration in Cleveland I took it for granted that the campaign period would, as in previous years, be ended by the Passover season.

“2. The second consideration that moved me to defer action was the fact that Dr. Weizmann was abroad. Although there is no personal issue involved with Dr. Weizmann or any one else within or without Zionist ranks, it ws obvious that the issue should be clearly drawn between the Weizmann conception in the conduct of Zionist affairs and my own.

“My resignation from the Administrative and Executive Committees of the Zionist Organization of America is, and is meant to be, an act of vigorous and unmistakable dissent from the dominant methods of Zionist leadership and work. It is designed to be an unequivocal protest against the present regime in Zionist affairs which I hold to be menacing to the Zionist cause,–the upbuilding of Palestine as the National Jewish Homeland, — and gravely hurtful to the Jewish morale.

“At Basle, while a delegate to the Fifteenth Zionist Congress and the chairman of its Political Committee, I undertook to provide a method for remedying, in part at least, the injury done to the Zionist program by the failure of Britain as the mandatory power for Palestine, of the League of Nations, to perform the solemnly given pledge to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of the Jewish National Home. My plan, though perhaps not presented to the Congress with the meticulous etiquette of European parliamentary usage, provided for the naming by the Congress of a commission of five, to be led by Dr. Weizmann, and to consist of representatives of America, England, Eastern Europe and Palestine, with a view to re-exploration together with the British Foreign Office, of the bases of the national Jewish resettlement of Palestine. Such failure of facilitation, — one of the primary causes of the unhappy state of affairs in Palestine,– many of us believe to be due not to the ill will of the British government but to Zionist failure to press home the needs and rightful demands of the Jewish people. That proposal was not publicly accepted or rejected, but vetoed by magisterial flat, which meant and means, despite the seeming freedom of vote of retainers in Jerusalem, London and New York, an absolutist regime in Zionist affairs. I would not assent to an absolutist regime in Zionist affairs though led by a figure of such moral and spiritual stature as that of Justice Brandeis. How much less can I be expected to place my Zionist judgment and conscience in the keeping of the present Zionist regime!.

“My position in relation to the major problems of the Zionist movement is so completely and irreconcilably opposed to that of the present regime that I could not have remained a member of the Executive and Administrative Committees of the Zionist Organization of America, without imposing embarrassment upon its heads. And, what is weightier indeed, I should have been false to my own conviction as to the spirit and methods which alone should prevail in the upbuilding by Jews of Palestine.

“My convictions herein are shared by a multitude of Jews at home and abroad, and I am satisfied to be their representative without regard to the consequences of the displeasure which is to be visited upon me– until a better day dawn for the rebuilding of Palestine. This is neither the time nor the place for a detailed statement of the little less than tragic shortcomings of the present Zionist regime. Its lack of a firm and courageous insistence on Jewish rights in Palestine is but a part of a general policy in and out of Palestine, which to the integrity of Zionist aims and Zionist endeavors, spells not compromise but surrender. I have not withdrawn nor do I purpose to withdraw from Zionist work but I do decline to accept further responsibility for the methods of an administration and the spirit of a leadership so woefully inadequate to the greatness of Zionist needs and of the Zionist ideal.”