Students and Revisionists Hiss Magnes at Opening Of. Hebrew University

The Hebrew University on Mount Scopus opened its winter session yesterday amid considerable excitement.

For the first time in the history of the Hebrew University, the convocation speech of Dr. Judah L. Magnes, Chancellor, was greeted with hisses by students of the University and the Zionist Revisionists. M. M. Ussishkin. President of the Jewish National Fund, one of several hundred invited guests, interrupted Dr. Magnes, in the midst or his address to remind him that his audience had come to hear a learned address and not a political speech.

What drew fire was Dr. Magnes’s statement to the effect: “If the only way of establishing the Jewish National Home, is upon the bayonets of some empire, our whole enterprise is not worthwhile and it is better that the eternal people that has outlived many a mighty empire should possess its soul in patience and plan and wait. It is one of the great civilizing tasks before the Jewish people to try to enter the Promised Land not as Joshua, but bringing peace, culture, hard work sacrifice, love and determination; to do nothing unjustifiable before the conscience of the world.”

The stand taken by Dr. Magnes was not unexpected in Jewish circles, rumon having been current for weeks concerning the attitude of the former Rabbi and Jewish pacifist leader.

Declaring the the Hebrew University is being reopened on the assurance on the High Commissioner that the Police Commandant will protect the Jewish community of Jerusalem and the Staff and the students, he said: “The Hebrew University is attempting to open its sessions under melancholy circumstances. Order has not yet been restored and it is still not clear whether the Administration will be able to take steps to prevent daily attacks on the life and property of the Jewish com- (Continued from Page 4)

“Will conditions be established making scholarly work possible?” he asked. “Shall we be able to leave our houses without the fear of being stabbed as we walk up University hill, without fear of being shot from ambush? In Hebron, the Hadassah clinic was one of the first objects of attack. Is that the fate awaiting the delicately adjusted balances of the microscopes of our laboratories? Up until this moment, the University, together with the whole community, awaits the answer to this elemental question. There is no adequate answer from the government. There is no answer at all from the Arab leaders.”

Deploring the fact that there is no Arab leadership “of at least humane and high language,” and declaring that he does not know enough about the Arabs to pass judgment on the whole people, among whom he does not doubt there are fine and simple Arabs. for example those who protected the Jews, he exclaimed: “But have there been any Arab leaders who had the common humanity to express sorrow at the barbarous methods of their inflamed followers? Let one speak and by him shall be judged the righteousness of his whole people! Are there among them those who understand the international language of learning? Who know what is meant when one talks of Palestine not as an Arab, not as a Jewish land, but as an international land, whose significance is more important to mankind than to its inhabitants?

“We ask not only of the authorities, but of the civilized world, is this work to continue. The first condition is the establishment of order. And it is the irony of fate that the Commission should investigate the violence of yesterday while no day passes without an outbreak of violence, terrorization and abuse. It is necessary to find ways of living together. But how hard it is made for us to speak in such terns when not only blood is shed in the most primitive religious and nationalistic orgy, but when one finds so little understanding on all sides of the sacred character of this Holy Land. Many of those who yesterday were ready to consider new relations between Arabs and Jews are now frightened of making concessions as “reward for the methods employed in Hebron, Safed, Motza and Talpioth. This question is natural and human, yet I say we must not be deterred even by massacre and corruption from facing the problem and giving as far as we can an objective, ethical and intelligent answer. We must face it not because of the pogroms, but despite of them; not because of physical pressure from without, but because of spiritual pressure from within. Unless we have the courage to face and the insight and wisdom to solve it, our enterprise has not been put on the firm foundations necessary to its development,” Dr. Magnes asserted.