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?ionist Youths “occupy” British Consulate in New York; Hold Memorial for Executed Jews

April 20, 1947
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A group of about 50 Brith Trumpeldor members occupied” the office of the British Consulate here today for more than an hour and held memorial services for Dov Gruner and the other Jewish youths who were executed this week in Palestine.

Speeches were delivered in the presence of the staff of the consulate, in English and in Hebrew, denouncing the executions, and Kaddish was recited in the presence of the policemen stationed in the consulate. No arrests were made. The Revisionist youths left the building singing Hatikvah and the Star Spangled Banner, ?heered by a crowd of several hundred onlookers.

The crew members of the refugee vessel Ben Hecht, which brought several hundred visaless immigrants to Palestine last month, were welcomed this morning at City Fall by Acting Mayor Vincent Impellitteri. The seamen, who were imprisoned by the British for three weeks before being deported to the United States, stated that they were anxious to sail again with new transports of refugees.

DR. SILVER CONDEMNS EXECUTION OF JEWISH YOUTHS IN PALESTINE

Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, president of the Zionist Organization of America, today charged that “the British Government in executing four Jewish youths in Palestine has now again demonstrated that it does not want peace in that country.” He further charged that “the timing of the execution was deliberately aimed at keeping Palestine in continuous turmoil as a pretext to justify its repressive military regime in the eyes of the United Nations. By its acts the British military in Palestine is provoking further bloodshed for the very purpose of creating justification for continuetion of its illegal, repressive military rule.”

The Zionist president also sharply assailed the killing of seven Jews by the British in Palestine within the last few days–“three for exercising their internationally guaranteed right to enter the Jewish National Homeland, and four for having been driven to acts of desperation by the illegal British policy which seeks to destroy that international right.”

The Labor Zionist Organization of America issued a statement declaring that “the injury of twenty refugees and the slaying of two on the Theodor Herzl is a crime which cannot be dismissed as a mere incident in the usual techniques of respelling immigrants to Palestine. Using machineguns against helpless civilians is a new device deliberately calculated to drive the Palestine Jewish community to acts of despair.”

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