Lehman Flays Bevin; American Jewish Conference Calls for U.S. Action on Palestine

Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin’s slashing attack on President Truman and his statements concerning the Palestine negotiations were scored today by Jewish leaders and groups of all shades of opinion.

Former Governor Herbert H. Lehman deplored the “unwarranted assault upon the integrity of the President of the United States” and Bevin’s “misunderstanding of American bipartisan support of Jewish aspirations in Palestine.” From his own personal knowledge, Mr. Lehman said, he can “assert categorically that President Truman’s statement of Oct. 4, in which for the second time he urged the immediate entry of displaced persons into Palestine, did not in any way interfere with the solution of the Palestine problem.”

Changing that “the words spoken by Mr. Bevin are not those of a statesman, they are petulant, uninformed, disingenuous,” Mr. Lehman stressed that “the need of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe for homes there (Palestine) is so great and urgent that nothing will halt the systematic effort of building a future for them.” Mr. Lehman added: “These Jews will be sustained in the knowledge that it is the friendly, humans voice of President Truman and not the violent distemper of Mr. Bevin that represents the attitude of the American people.”

The former Governor accused Britain of repudiating the terms of the Palestine Mandate “through the issuance of the White Paper in 1939, just at a time when in many countries Jews suffering under the bestialities of Hitler urgently needed a safe haven.” He emphasized that “the terms of the Mandate were specifically approved by the United States, which subsequently reserved to itself as one of the victorious powers, the right to have a voice in the ultimate disposition of Palestine.”

ASKS AMERICA TO BE SPOKESMAN FOR JEWS AT U.N. DISCUSSIONS

Asserting that “debate and recriminations over responsibility for the seeming impasse” on the Palestine question “should not obscure Mr. Bevin’s crafty purpose,” the American Jewish Conference today called on the United States to act now to prevent destruction of the Jewish National Home. It asserted that after “President

BEVIN HAS ACCEPTED THE ARAB VIEWPOINT, DR. SNEH SAYS

Dr. Moshe Sneh, a member of the Jewish Agency executive, who arrived in the U.S. this week, in a statement here said that “even in his last speech Mr. Bevin accepted, without any scruples, the Arab viewpoint that the Jewish minority must remain under the benevolent protection of the Arab majority. President Truman in his well-known letter to King Ibn Saud rejected this Arab viewpoint, and the differences between the British Government and the United States on this question are much deeper than Mr. Bevin chose to indicate in his tactless address in the House of Commons.”

Dr. Sneh emphasized that “Palestine Jewry is strong enough to prevent any present or future, attempt at a political solution which would deprive the Jewish people or its Homeland.” It is impossible, he declared, to solve the Palestine problem in opposition to the vital interests of Palestine Jewry which constitutes today 50-75 percent of the country’s strength in agriculture, commerce, industry and in all other branches of civilized life. “Nor is our defense potential smaller than our economic and cultural strength,” he added. He predicted that “at least one million Jews from Europe and Middle Eastern lands will, in an uninterrupted stream and at an increased tempo, continue to come to Palestine regardless of any decision, solution or procedure which would not take into consideration the urgent needs of the Jewish People.”

Judge Morris Rothenberg, president of the Jewish National Fund of America, describing Bevin’s attack on Truman as “ludicrous” and “tactless” pointed out that ‘President Truman’s humane attitude was in sharp contrast to the callousness of Mr. Bevin towards the wretched survivors of the Hitler terror. Mr. Bevin, who will undoubtedly go down as the most inept Secretary for Foreign Affairs in British history, is the last man who is entitled to complain about the failure of the negotiations. The hollow pretense of his Arab-Jewish Conference was glaringly evident from the beginning. What has happened in connection with Palestine since Mr. Bevin took hold of the problem demonstrates not only his incapacity to deal with it but also Mr. Bevin’s clear determination to delay a solution of the problem in order to serve British imperialist interests.”