Dr. Stephen S. Wise and Louis Lipsky, American members of the Jewish Agency, have been denied Palestine visas by the British Government, it was learned here today.
Wise and Lipsky were planning to go to Palestine together with Dr. Abba H. Silver and Dr. Nahum Goldmann, the other two American members of the Agency, because of the recent events there. It is understood that Dr. Silver and Goldmann had not yet applied for visas.
In a statement issued here on behalf of himself and Mr. Lipsky, Dr. Wise said that “the Jewish Agency is recognized in relation to the mandate, and as members of the Agency’s executive we are entitled to go to Palestine at our pleasure. If Palestine were a British Crown Colony, which it is not, we should still have the right to visit our fellow Jews. As a territory in the British mandate, it is our right to visit that land in order to learn and to tell the truth about recent happenings.
“The denial to us of visas to Palestine can only confirm our worst fears, that the British Government will seek, though in vain, to conceal behind an iron curtain, the truth of British misconduct in Palestine,” Dr. Wise added.
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