Macdonald Statement on Palestine Policy Reassuring, Says Emanuel Neumann

The statement made in the House of Commons by Prime Minister MacDonald supported by the former British Prime Ministers Baldwin and Lloyd George, again pledging the British Government to the enforcement of the provisions of the Palestine Mandate calling for the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish National Home is reassuring, declared Emanuel Neumann, president of the Jewish National Fund of America.

“The accord between the Government and the opposition parties in regard to the Palestine policy is not at all surprising in view of the fact that the Jewish National Home policy, inaugurated during the World War by a Coalition Government, was successively endorsed by Conservatives, Liberals, and Laborites alike both in and out of power,” said Mr. Newmann. “What the Jews of the world regardless of party affiliation, do expect now is the formulation of a complete program which will indeed put into effect the provisions of the Palestine Mandate that will leave no doubt in the minds of anyone as to the course which is to be followed by the creation of such conditions as will facilitate the establishment of a Jewish National Home, the formula first employed in the Balfour Declaration, which has since become an irrevocable international obligation,” Mr. Neumann stated.

The president of the Jewish National Fund also took exception to the assertion made in the Shaw Commission report in regard to the land question.

“The Shaw Commission must have acted in great haste, when it formulated its recommendation regarding the land question. At this late date it recommends ‘a scientific inquiry’ with a view of ascertaining the prospects of improving methods of land cultivation. Has the Shaw Commission not heard of the scientific survey made by a group of American experts headed by Dr. Elwood Mead of the United States Reclamation Bureau only a short while ago? Have the members of the Shaw Commission not acquainted themselves with the contents of the report of the Joint Palestine Survey Commission, an impartial and exhaustive study of the very question? It seems hardly probable. Had they been acquainted with the facts, the members of the Shaw Commission could not have asserted, as they did, that the purchase of land by Jewish settlers in Palestine had really worked any great and unusual hardship on the native Arab population.”