News Brief

not been denied. We would be the last ones to deny any people its legitimate aspirations. They have been thrice vindicated. Already three national homes have been established since the war. Palestine was intended to be by those who issued the Declaration and the Mandate, the National Home of the Jewish people. We stand by that. We make no concessions and yield no point on that.

REJECT NEW POLICY

“We may not realize, we may not achieve our aim tomorrow or the next day, but the Jewish people has a peculiar genius for losing every battle but the last one. And we reject—we reject the new doctrine which has been enunciated in the Shaw report and since repeated in two White Papers; namely, that the British Government in Palestine is to keep a balance of power between the two peoples; to remain impartial (I am quoting) ‘a neutral, impartial attitude in the inevitable conflict between two peoples who have the same rights in Palestine.’ That, we maintain, is a distortion and falsification of the Declaration and the Mandate. To remain a ‘neutral’ when you have undertaken ‘to facilitate close Jewish settlement’ on the soil; to remain ‘a neutral’ when you have undertaken ‘to encourage Jewish immigration;’ to remain ‘a neutral’ when you have solemnly assumed the sacred trust of the upbuilding of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, is to betray both the Declaration and the Mandate. And it is this maintenance of an attitude of neutrality that has led to all the tragedies in Palestine since 1920, because, don’t you see, in the attempt of the British Government to remain ‘neutral’ between the two peoples in Palestine, the objective can be attained in only two ways, through protest or through massacres. The Jews have protested and the Arabs have massacred. The Jews protested and gained nothing. The Arabs massacred and have successfully received more and more concessions. In Palestine they say, ‘Le’Yehudim havtochoth; L’Aravim hanochoth’ (to the Jews, promises; to the Arabs, concessions). And as long as this policy continues there will be no stability, there will be no security, there will be no tranquility.

DENIES EXPROPRIATION BY JEWS

“Lastly, and I am through, we repudiate this contention which has come to the fore only since the last twelve months, since the riots, that the incoming Jews have expropriated, expatriated, impoverished the great, rich Arab population of Palestine which heretofore was prosperous, cultured and civilized. We ruined the country! How much those statements of the Colonial Office remind you of the ramblings of the Hitlerites in Germany and of every anti-Semite all over the world! What is it that they say of the Jews in any country? Why, the Jew exploits, the Jew lives off other people and makes it impossible for other people to earn a living. They make the age-old anti-Semitic charges under new cloaks.

“Our conscience is clear. Our record is open to the gaze of the world. We are not going to build a national, new life upon the backs of any people. We are going to build our national life for the benefit and not for the curse of anyone. For every dunam of land we bought in Palestine, we paid handsomely. Not an Arab has been evicted. Those Arabs who have been moved or transferred from rural settlements to urban life were adequately compensated. Many of them settled on land elsewhere. Much of the land of the new settlements that have been built in recent years was redeemed from swamps, waste lands, lands from which every other who attempted to cultivate it was driven away by pestilence and malaria. Our chalutzim went to these malaria-ridden swamps and drained them, and built upon these malarial pestilential swamps beautiful communities.

“We have brought into Palestine, my friends, civilization, the sacred art of peace. From a Mediterranean poverty-stricken, backward, oriental province we are making of Palestine a practical, healthy, modern commonwealth. The Arabs who live in Palestine feel already the economic stimulus that has come with the incursion of the new Jewish settlement. Our record is clear and therefore our determination is undaunted. Our answer to Lord Passfield, Mr. MacDonald, to all the secretaries and underlings of the Colonial Office, our answer is today as it was yesterday, as it will be tomorrow until our holy ideal is realized, ‘we carry on.’

“We thank Mr. Ussishkin for coming to our midst at this critical time to help us to carry on.”