Moshe Shertok, political chief of the Jewish Agency, conferred with High Commissioner Sir Alan G. Cunningham today at the latter’s invitation. No statement was issued at the end of the discussions.
Declaring that the Jewish Agency had information that members of the British Sixth Airborne Division intended to carry out reprisal attacks on Jews before the imminent departure of their unit from Palestine, an Agency spokesman today appealed to the government to take all precautions to prevent any incident. These incidents, the spokesman said, “will not be instigated from the top, but by small groups of fellows who would like to square all sorts of accounts.”
A British officer at military headquarters in Palestine, commenting on the Agency statement, said that the authorities there “have no information of any contemplated reprisals by any military formation in Palestine. If information to this effect reaches military headquarters, steps will be taken to prevent incidents,” he added.
(In London a War Office official denied that the Sixth Airborne Division was being withdrawn from Palestine. However, he had no comment to make on the Jewish Agency’s appeal to prevent reprisal attacks.)
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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.
