Meeting under the shadow cast by the latest developments in Palestine, the Joint Palestine Appeal of Great Britain voiced its determination to continue the work of upbuilding Palestine despite all obstacles. The conference set itself a goal of $6,000,000 for 1947.
Addressing the conference, Dr. Fahum Goldmann, member of the Jewish Agency executive, declared that Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin’s statement in Commons last week marked the end of an era of British protection of Jewish work in Palestine. He insisted that no British lives should be lost in keeping Jews out of Palestine or in facilitating Jewish immigration to the country.
Richard Crossman, Labor M.P. and former member of the Anglo-American Inquiry Committee on Palestine, charged that Britain’s policy of delay and indecision was responsible for terrorism in Palestine. Disputing Bevin’s assertion that the Jews were merely a religion, he declared that the Jewish nation in Palestine was an established fact, adding that the inquiry commission had studied the problem for 120 days, and he “wished that some politicians would study it only 120 minutes.”
Prof. Selig Brodetsky, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, asserted that “if there is one people in the world which should have learned that repression always fails, it is the British people.” He warned each instance of martial law in Palestine has been followed by a growth of the terrorist movement. Among the other speakers at the JPA conference was James McDonald, former American member of the inquiry committee.
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