Emergency Council Demands Zionist Representation at San Francisco Conference

Declaring that "the very issues for which the war is being fought lie at stake," the American Zionist Emergency Council today demanded Jewish representation at the forthcoming United Nations Conference in San Francisco on April 25 "in regard to all matters affecting Palestine and the future there of the Jewish people."

In a formal statement issued here the Council asserted that Prime Minister Churchill’s statement postponing a decision on Palestine until the end of the war "makes it even more imperative that authorized spokesman for the Jewish National Home be accorded the same right and opportunity to be heard as accorded all other countries. It pointed but that Arab nations in neighboring countries will be represented as such, and that Jewish Palestine should be entitled to participate in decisions which will affect its entire future.

"The ghosts of 5,000,000 Jewish deal already haunt the forthcoming Conference in San Francisco," the statement declared. "We ask the world how great must this ghastly company grew before the voice of those still living will be heard?" The council added that an intolerable situation will be created next month when under the British White paper all Jewish immigration into Palestine ceases "at a time when hundreds of thousands of Jewish victims of Nazism are appealing for the right to rebuild their shattered lives among their own people in Palestine."

The statement emphasized that although 39 nations have been invited to the conference, among them nations "which had to be coerced not to betray the democracies," the Jewish people alone, first victims and adversaries of Nazism, are ignored. It also pointed out that the subject of mandates will be discussed at the Conference, and asked, "How in the name of common decency and justice can and justice can the Jews, whose very existence as a people is bound up with mandated Palestine, not be represented?"