Against a background of continued Arab violence that over the week-end and today claimed the lives of seven Jews and five Arabs, the Jewish National Assembly, representative body for Palestine Jewry, met in extraordinary session today to plan a course of action.
Attending the session were representatives of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the Chief Rabbinate, the municipality of Tel Aviv and Jewish colonies.
The session was opened by Isaac Ben Zvi, president of the Jewish National Council.
As the conference opened, it was reported from Jaffa that two Jewish nurses were ambushed by Arabs as they left the Government Hospital. One was killed and the other gravely wounded.
Following a eulogy of the fallen Jews and British soldiers, Mr. Ben Zvi listed the measures that have thus far been taken to strengthen the Jewish community’s position during the disturbances.
Among them he cited official recognition of the armed Jewish special policemen for colonies, who total now 1,920, and a third of whose expenses are being met by the Government. He also mentioned the beginning of the Tel Aviv port project, undertaken when the general strike made access to the Jaffa harbor impossible, and the road construction undertaken by the Government to make communications safer.
Emphasizing the great danger in suspension of immigration, the speaker urged British and world Jewry to defend the Jewish position in Palestine and to remind Great Britain of her promises and obligations.
He declared the Jews would not retreat and would not be frightened by violence, concluding that the way was still open to an understanding between the Jews and the Arabs.
Moshe Shertok, of the political department of the Jewish Agency, summarized the four months of the disturbances. Also emphasizing the danger to Jewry of a threatened suspension of immigration, Mr. Shertok appealed to the entire Jewish community to combat the measures which are being sought by the Arabs.
He said the Agency had resisted all pressure to agree to voluntary suspension and would continue to resist to the utmost enforced suspension by the Government.
“Our work,” he continued, “has always been based on a joint British-Jewish interest, but insofar as Great Britain adopts policies against our most vital interests, those policies will be fought in our way before the Royal Commission. As it is a conflict we cannot avoid, because the Royal Commission was nominated to assist the Government in carrying out a policy established long before the disturbances, our defense in that war is the most serious ever, therefore a strong united front is required.”
Meanwhile, disorders continued in widely separated parts of the Holy Land.
One passenger was killed and five others, including a British soldier, were wounded when a Jaffa-Lydda train passing Tel Aviv was riddled by bullets. Unverified reports in the evening papers said the killing occurred when a bomb intended for Tel Aviv exploded prematurely.
Three Arabs, two of them women, were killed during clashes between Arab bands and British troops. A laborer was killed when he crossed the line of fire during a skirmish near Tiberias. The women were killed when they crossed the line of fire during an attack on a convoy southbound from Jerusalem.
Arabs demonstrated at the funeral of the laborer and burned a Jewish-owned automobile.
A British policeman killed an Arab as he was about to throw a bomb into the Shechunat Brenner quarter of Tel Aviv.
The Jewish community of the old city of Jerusalem protested to High Commissioner Sir Arthur Grenfell Wauchope against last night’s shooting into the Misgav Ladach Hospital. Bullets entered the sickrooms.
Jewish women of Safed, protesting the killing by Arabs of a rabbi and his three children, cabled Queen Mary and Colonial Secretary William Ormsby-Gore, asking defense against the outrages to children.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
