Editorials

Temple Rodeph Sholom, New York City

The Prague Zionist Congress passed resolutions at once timid and courageous. With respect to Trans-Jordan, the Congress pussy-footed; with respect to the French Report, the commercial policy of the Palestine government, its customs regulations, its immigration restrictions, and other shortcomings of the Mandatory Power and its representatives, the Congress seemed commendably forthright. Likewise in its criticism of economic omissions of Jewish institutions in Palestine, the Congress did not mince words. The policy of “non-acceptance” which began at Basel in 1931 was continued at Prague, and indicates that the Zionist leadership will not cringe before interference by Britain or others with Palestine’s upbuilding.

The decision of the Congress with respect to the Jewish Agency is also praiseworthy. Unanimously the Congress declared that unless the non-Zionists voluntarily reduced their representation on the Agency Executive Board, the Zionists would not renew the agreement upon which the Agency is based. This outcome vindicates the judgment of those who for years questioned and opposed the empty gesture of a union, as between peers, of the Zionist cohorts and the handful of “Non-Zionist” generals without even a corporal’s guard of followers. “Non-Zionists” should join the Zionist organization, if only for the duration of Hitlerism, and banish the folly of a duplicate or super-government in Zionist affairs.

Bound up with the fate of the Agency was the question of Dr. Weizmann’s leadership. His silence on the 1925 Russian diversion, the confusion and defeatism of his policies for a decade, hampered Palestine’s development, ensnarled the World Zionist Organization with respect to the Mandatory, and bewildered the Zionist masses. His recent addresses in America demonstrated that he had learned and forgotten nothing. Not even the Laborite’s inclination toward Dr. Weizmann was sufficiently strong to prompt them to espouse his return to the headship, and the tumult and shouting of his American advocates at Chicago and elsewhere died away into vacuity. Dr. Sokolow will continue to lend dignity and harmony to Zionist forces.

But the personnel of the new Executive leaves much to be desired. It does not represent a united front in these crucial days, and at least three major units in the movement are unrepresented. The elimination of Heschel Farbstein and Emanuel Neumann is to be deplored. Neumann’s two years on the Executive stamped him as one of the rising notables of Zionism, and it is regrettable that those who have been “gunning” for him because of his cooperation with the Szold-Brodie group, have temporarily attained their objective. The inclusion of Louis Lipsky on the new Executive is no cause for rejoicing in American Zionism. Zionism gains little from this substitution of a man whose administration, after a career of chaos, ended in wreckage more than three years ago.

The failure of the Congress to include in the new Executive a representative of the Szold-Brodie group, espousing industrial investment and middle-class immigration, cannot halt the progress of their policies. The Yishub itself has approved the work of the American Economic Committee for Palestine by designating as its headquarters for information regarding agriculture and industry the Palestine offices of the group. The Laborites will err grievously if they encourage a struggle between labor and capital before Palestine has adequate capital. Permission of small industrial ists and tourists who have found employment to enter with less capital than heretofore required is an important item. But any financial agreement for profit by Palestinians with the Nazi terrorists deserves the utmost condemnation. In short, the “rump” Executive which is ### taking power begins under hea### handicaps. The solid merit of th### Szold-Brodie economic program is certain to give it authority, and an instrument is sure to be created whereby Trans-Jordan can be opened up to Jewish enterprise. But if Labor presses its numerical advantage and bedevils the situation, Palestine’s development will be impeded, and the Jewish Homeland for all Jews, the victims of Nazidom included, will be the chief sufferer.

THE JEWISH STRATEGY

In the search for a slogan against the Nazis of Germany, a slogan which shall transcend even world Jewish feeling and enlist on the Jewish side of the defensive-offensive campaign against Hitler Germany all friends of humanity, more than perfunctory attention should be given to the phrase which Rabbi Stephen S. Wise employed this week in his address at the World Jewish Conference at Geneva: “What the world needs today is not a Germanized humanity, but a humanized Germany.”

So long as the non-Jewish world accepts the theory that the Nazi policy and the Nazi practice constitute a threat only to Jews, the non-Jewish world will continue to be more or less indifferent. The Nazi policy and the Nazi practice must be seen as a threat to Jews and Christians who are not of the Nazi persuasion. The present government of Austria is dominantly a Christian, a Clerical, government. Nazi venom, Nazi brutality against Austria are modified not by the Christianity of Austria, but by the balance of power which Mussolini wields. Nazi intentions against Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Poland have nothing to do with the Jewish question.

The Nazis have given us, within Germany, a prevision of their method of “Divide and rule.” With the help of the Nationalists and the Centrists they had the Communists outlawed. Then came the turn of the Socialists, the Nazi opposition being weakened step by step with the help of the divided forces of that opposition. Then came the turn of the Centrists, the Nationalists, or what have you?

It is true that the Nazi policy is strongly anti-Jewish. But it is not only anti-Jewish. It is against every aspiration that is not Nazi. If the Nazis can succeed in breaking the Jews of Germany, as they seem likely to succeed in doing, and in setting against the Jews of other nations the non-Jews of those nations, they will have succeeded in breaking the first line of resistance against their drive on other nations, on other races, on other peoples. Only the Catholics seem aware of what may follow the anti-Jewish drive. And whether the Jews of the world accept for wider dissemination the phrase of Rabbi Wise, their strategy in enlisting non-Jewish allies should be governed by the fact that the Nazis constitute a danger to the internal peace of nations and to the peaceful relations between the nations of the world.

On the very day that H. G. Wells, in “The Shape of Things to Come,” predicts that the next World War will start with the killing of a Polish Jew by a Nazi, the cables bring news of the slaying of a Polish farmhand by a Danzig Nazi. It is a bit fantastic to see the world, or Poland, going to war over a Jew. After all, no Jew can become an Archduke these days, even if the Nazis insist that there is Jewish blood in the Hapsburg dynasty.