Two leaders of the Jewish Agency office here, Joseph Linton, its political secretary, and Harry Sachar, the political advisor, are leaving for Palestine by plane to confer with the still unarrested members of the Agency, it was announced tonight.
British press reaction to the arrest of the Jewish leaders and occupation of the Jewish Agency premises in Palestine varied today from complete agreement with the government’s action to bitter attacks on what one newspaper termed a blow against Jews the world over.
The liberal Manchester Guardian demanded that the government publish the purported evidence that the Jewish Agency, which, it emphasized, had an official status under the Palestine Mandate, is really a danger to peace in Palestine. Its editorial declares that the government’s action is a most untactful way of securing United States aid in Palestine, to say nothing of the American loan. “The Labor Government of all governments,” it said, should have learned that a “national movement cannot be checked by the arrest of a few leaders who almost certainly were not the real instigators of disorder.”
The Times editorial said that there would be general support in Britain of the Palestine Government’s measures, although there will be an equally widespread regret that the situation in that country has deteriorated so tragically since the Anglo-American inquiry committee’s report. The newspaper asserted that this deterioration lends a new urgency to the Anglo-American consultations, and calls for restraint on all sides pending further clarification of events in Palestine.
The Communist Daily Worker editorial stresses that the events in Palestine are a blow which will be felt not only by the Zionists, but the entire Jewish community the world over. “The danger of large-scale bloodshed can only be averted if, pending a discussion of the whole matter by the U.N., the responsible leaders of the Jewish community are released,” the Worker added.
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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.
