Jewish National Council Warns Yesterday’s General Strike “is Only Beginning of Struggle”

The Jewish National Council today issued a manifesto to the Jews of Palestine thanking them for yesterday’s “disciplined expression of protest” against Britain’s immigration policy, through the general strike and the mass-meetings which passed without any incidents.

The manifesto warns, however, that “this is only the beginning of the struggle” and that all Jews in Palestine must be prepared for every sacrifice required of them to achieve free immigration, for the establishment of Palestine as a Jewish State, and against converting the Palestine Jewish community into a permanent minority.

After a careful investigation of the incident at Kfar Giladi, where a unit of the Transjordan Frontier Force wounded seven Jews, the Council today issued a statement challenging the accuracy of the police communique which stated that two shots had been fired by the Jews before they were attacked.

The statement said that the Jews involved, who numbered about 30 settlers from a neighboring colony, fired no shots. It charged that two of the wounded were shot in the back, and three others after they had already fallen to the ground. The command to fire, it discloses, was given by an Arab lieutenant and was immediately countermanded by the British major in command, who rushed to the scene after hearing the shots. The TJFF unit consisted of about 200 men.

Another incident in which the TJFF was involved was revealed today with the disclosure that several of its soldiers had robbed a Jewish couple named Rosenbaum of nine pounds, when they encountered the two hiking near the settlement of Daphne.

A mysterious fire today destroyed several thousand fruit trees on the border of the colony of Hanita. The engineer of the settlement’s water works was the first to spot the fire and mounted his horse to give the alarm in Hanita, but he was halted by a group of soldiers, whose identity was not revealed.