With a report before it from the Jewish Agency for Palestine asking Great Britain to make the Jewish national home immune from further attack by actively encouraging Jewish immigration, the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations will begin tomorrow the examination of representatives of the British administration in the Holy Land.
In a letter to the Palestine High Commissioner accompanying the annual memorandum of the Agency to the twenty-ninth session of the commission, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the Agency, declared that encouragement of immigration “is urgently called for by the conditions of dire economic distress and political persecution to which large sections of the Jewish people are now being subjected.”
He held adoption of the policy “fully justified by the remarkable development of which Palestine has shown itself capable in recent years as a result of increased Jewish efforts.”
The letter reiterated that the Jewish Agency would not cooperate in the establishment of a Palestine legislative council, adding that its attitude in opposing the council “has been endorsed with complete unanimity by Jewish public opinion in Palestine and throughout the world, and has met with a considerable measure of understanding and sympathy in authoritative non-Jewish circles.”
Dr. Weizmann made the following recommendations:
1- A “substantial grant” of immigration certificates on the basis of normal increase in employment and the special allocation for German Jewish refugees.
2- Relaxation of regulations governing admittance of relatives of Palestinians.
3- Increase in opportunities of absorption of Jewish immigrants.
4- Legalization of the status of Jewish immigrants who have entered illegally.
5- Abandonment of proposed laws restricting sale of Arabs’ lands.
6- Introduction of intensive methods of land cultivation and revision of land laws to halt fictitious claims and trespassing.
7- Revision of the tariff system to combat dumping by raising duties on specific goods and introduction of a double tariff system of minimum and maximum duties — the lower duties to apply to countries buying Palestinian goods.
8- Increased Government allocations for Jewish medical and health services.
9- Increasing the number of Jews in public works — now eight per cent — to one-third of the total employees.
Only one paragraph of the letter — the conclusion — touched on recent disorders in Palestine. The letter, dated April 30, said anti-Jewish riots broke out in Jaffa April 19 as a result of a false rumor that Jews had killed Arabs in the streets.
Describing how Arabs “murderously assaulted” Jews, Dr. Weizmann told how the disorders spread throughout the country, taking eighteen Jewish lives and resulting in damage to Jewish property. The Arab leaders, he said, took advantage of the situation to proclaim a strike for stoppage of Jewish immigration, prohibition of land sale to Jews and establishment of a national government.
“This is not the first time the attempt has been made by use of violence to force the hands of the Mandatory Government into abandoning the policy of the Jewish national home and to deter the Jewish people from proceeding with its work of settlement in Palestine. The Jewish people has demonstrated on similar occasions in the past that no such attacks can shake its determination to rebuild its national home in Palestine.”
The memorandum itself comprised a fifty-page review of “remarkable economic developments” taking place in Palestine. It reported that “the absorption of the newcomers into the life of the country has proceeded steadily and with success.”
Declaring that the outbreak of the Ethiopian war produced a temporary financial crisis in Palestine, the memorandum said it was short-lived and development is now proceeding normally. Jewish immigration, capital and initiative were credited for Palestine’s rapid expansion.
The memorandum reviewed population growth, immigration, colonization, agriculture and the various organizations active in Palestine.
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