The charge that the State Department is ‘blocking’ the passage by Congress of the Palestine resolution, which favors a Jewish Palestine, was voiced here by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, president of the Zionist Organization of America, at the 48th annual convention of the ZOA which concluded this afternoon with resolutions calling for the expansion of organizational activities.
One of the resolutions adopted calls upon the American Jewish Conference to immediately convoke an extraordinary conference “so that an expression of protests may be registered of all shades of opinion of American Jewry against the policy of the labor Government in relation to Palestine.”
At an carlier session the convention adopted a declaration stating that the new British Government policy on Palestine is “the culmination of a long series of acts and omissions over a period of years, designed and calculated to defraud the Jewish people of its established rights in Palestine in defiance of solemn international covenants”.
“We accuse the British Government of utilizing and directing the discontent of the exploited Arab peoples, with whom we had no quarrel to begin with, into anti-Zionist channels to serve ends of British imperialims, the declaration said. “We accuse the British Labor Government of flagrant violation of its own party pledges; we accuse the British Government of seeking to reduce Jewish Palestine to another ghetto; we accuse the British Labor Government of fraud in proposing another study to a people for whom delay means doom.
“We are dismayed that our Government is lending itself to this chicanery and we demand that our Government insist upon the immediate entry of 100,000 Jews into Palestine, and upon the complete repudiation of the White Paper,” the declaration stated.
The declaration concluded by emphasizing that the Zionists of America “recognize no legal barrier to the right of Jews freely to settle in Palestine and rebuild a Jewish State”. It authorized and directed the new administratione to spare no effort “to achieve for our people, liberty and security in Palestine as a free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth.”
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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.
