The statement on Palestine made yesterday by British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin before the annual convention of the British Labor Party in which he said that people in America insist on the admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine “because they do not want too many of them in New York,” is widely commented upon in today’s New York press.
The New York Times points out in an editorial that “it is to the Labor Party, and not to the House of Commons, that the Foreign Secretary announced that the Government does not intend to send any more troops to Palestine–already very like an armed camp.”
The New York Sun says that while much of what Bevin had to say on issues other than Palestine will gain endorsement in the United States, he is less likely to win support of his “blunt remarks” on Palestine. “But even if some of the things he said were unpalatable or wholly unjustified, fair-minded persons must agree that it is asking a lot to expect the British alone to shoulder the heavy financial and moral responsibility for putting the recommendations of the Anglo-American inquiry committee into effect,” the paper declares.
The New York Post in its editorial says: “The fraud, deceit, trickery that has characterized British policy in Palestine almost since the Balfour Declaration was proclaimed, got a rare, publicly-enunciated fillip from the Foreign Secretary. He trotted out his latest evil weapon, anti-Semitism, and made a bid for the support of the racists. ‘The agitation in the U.S. for 100,000 Jews to be put into Palestine–and I do not want the Americans to misunderstand me–is because they do not want too many of them in Jew York.’ We don’t ‘misunderstand’ the Foreign Secretary any longer. At last he has spoken so that all can clearly understand him.”
The newspaper PM, commenting on the statement, says that London has left the Zionists only two alternatives. “One of them is to insist that the British get out of Palestine–where they are hated both by the Jews and the Arabs–and hand over the mandate to the United Nations. The other course is to imitate the Irish and fight.”
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