In a forceful address delivered before an excited mass of three thousand persons assembled last night in the Rialto Cinema here Lord Erleigh, son of the Marquess of Reading, charged that the new White Paper on Palestine contains an “insidious line of attack” upon the Jewish people.
Lord Erleigh, who was counsel for the Jews before the Shaw Inquiry Commission to Palestine, said, “The White Paper implies that the Palestine immigrants are tainted by Bolshevism, but it was only eighteen months ago that the High Commissioner himself bore testimony to the fact that the proportion of communists among the Jews is a negligible factor in Palestinian administration.” Lord Erleigh pointed out that the British government’s obligations under the Mandate were not only to watch the Jews doing the work of regeneration, but to aid. “The White Paper takes away from the Jews the privilege of entering the country for an unlimited period of time, and limits the display
of Jewish capacities to an infinitesimal number of their people,” said Lord Erleigh. He expressed doubt as to whether the impossibility of settling more people on the land was the Jew’s fault, since the Jews did not all arrive at one time, but came gradually.
SHOULD HAVE FORESEEN A WAY
“The government should have foreseen a way to carry out the Mandate by adopting a policy of gradual preparation for the increase in the number of settlers, and free development of the land. The Jews would then not have been confronted by such stolid and squalid obstructionism as is contained in the White Paper.”
Lord Erleigh said, “After seeing for myself the work that is being done in Palestine I became converted from apathy to active sympathy with the Zionist cause.” When asked whether the government was tired of the Mandate he replied, “It is not the government’s business to be tired of international obligations and a trusteeship given by the League of Nations.” Concluding, he said, “The benefits of Jewish reconstruction and welfare work in Palestine are liberally shared by the Arabs.”
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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.
