Indignant denials of the charges by Lord Lloyd, former High Commissioner of Egypt, that Jewish immigration was turning Palestine into a “springboard for Bolshevism in the East,” are made today in letters to the London Times by Chief Rabbi Hertz and Col. Richard Meinertzhagen, former chief political officer of Palestine.
Rabbi Hertz points out that the accusation of bad faith which is being hurled at Great Britain from every quarter of the globe “cannot be weakened by repeating cruel and baseless charges against Zionism or the Jews of Palestine.” Rabbi Hertz, who has been a leader in the campaign against religious persecution in Russia, charges Lord Lloyd with being unaware of the fact that no class of the Russian population has been “persecuted with greater ferocity than the Zionists, the Bolshevists openly boasting of their share in instigating the Arab massacres of 1929.”
Declaring that “it is therefore inconceivable that the Zionist authorities should grant immigration certificates to Soviet propagandists,” Rabbi Hertz concludes by saying that the Federation of Jewish Labor, representing the entire Jewish working class of Palestine, is strongly anti-Communist and no Communist is permitted to remain in its ranks.
Pointing out that the Jews of Russia have suffered most from Bolshevism and are therefore “least likely to spread the disease,” Colonel Meinertzhagen quotes the late Lord Balfour as having told him in Paris on July 30, 1919, on the eve of Meinertzhagen’s appointment to Palestine, that “all development, industrial schemes of all kinds and financial assistance must be based on the principle that the Jews are the most favored nation in Palestine and all preparatory work undertaken before the final destiny of Palestine is settled must be similarly based on this principle.”
Asserting that the British policy in Palestine since 1920 has been whittled down to “exasperating limits by the very persons whose duty it has been to carry out the policy according to Lord Balfour’s interpretation,” Colonel Meinertzhagen says that obstruction to Zionism by the government or by persons “blinded to the immense moral and physical advantages of the Palestine policy by anti-Semitism and by unsympathetic officials in Palestine and in Downing Street proved greater enemies of Zionism than all the economic and political obstacles.”
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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.
