The “unconscionable arrest” of members of the Jewish Agency and thousands of other Jews in Palestine was branded as “tantamount to the inauguration of war by the British authorities” in a resolution adopted here at the closing session of the 57th annual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. The 400 assembled rabbis charged that the “deliberate desecration of the Jewish sabbath was a wanton violation of religious freedom which represents a reversion to the barbaric practices of ancient Syria and Rome.”
Citing the gallant war record of the thousands of Palestine Jews recruited for the Allied forces by the Jewish Agency, the rabbis appealed to President Truman to use his good offices to obtain immediate release of the imprisoned members of the Agency executive and all others being held, and implementation of the recommendation for the admission into Palestine of 100,000 Jews. The resolution was unanimously adopted, with prominent non-Zionists lending their support.
Earlier, the conference attacked the “unprovoked and malicious” statement on Palestine made recently by British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, which, it said, “deliberately impugned the high motives of our Government and the American people in relation to the salvation of our broken people in Europe.” A resolution on the findings of the Anglo-American committee stated that the Conference does not assent to those sections of the committee report which “negate the British pledge to the Jewish people in the Balfour Declaration.”
Dr. Abba Hillel Silver was re-elected president of the Conference for a second term.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
