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takes it for granted that an attitude of positive encouragement of Jewish settlement on the land is one of the government’s primary obligations and that it must be kept in mind in framing and executing any scheme of development; that he makes it clear that he believes it to be possible to make room for an increased number of Jewish settlers on the land, the estimate being “not less than 20,000 families of settlers” from the outside; that he proposes the establishment of a development commission one of the three members of which is to be a Jew and he assumes that the commission will work in close cooperation with the Jewish Agency; that he assumes that, not merely in the long run, but from the outset, the government will see to it that the Jews share directly in the benefits of the development scheme; that as regards land purchase he does not propose that the purchases of the Jewish Agency should cease, this being indicated from his proposal for a “gentleman’s agreement,” with regard to the purchase of land, between the Agency and the development commission, in order that there may not be an artifiicial inflation of land values.

WHITE PAPER’S WORDS CHILLING

Contrasting this with the scheme as described in the White Paper, the memorandum finds that the latter document gives it quite a different aspect from that which is presented in the Simpson report. “From a Jewish point of view, the scheme might still have had its weaknesses, but thus set forth, it would at all events have presented the government’s intentions in a very different light. If the chilling words of the White Paper breathe a very different spirit, the Jewish Agency can hardly be blamed for reading some significance into the contrast.”

The memorandum also points out that when a similar development scheme was suggested by the Mandates Commission in August the British government rejected it on the ground that it was financially impracticable. The memorandum voices the fear that since the scheme, if at all practicable, can be so only on the assumption that the Palestine treasury will continue to benefit largely by revenue derived from Jewish enterprise, it is “highly problematic whether, in any case, the heavy expenditure which would be necessitated could be made. In that case, the only result of the proposals now put forward might well prove to be that, while in their positive aspects they proved incapable of execution, their restrictive features would remain….”

In dealing with the question of immigration the memorandum begins by pointing out that since the White Paper discusses immigration in terms of Jewish immigration its reference to certain irregularities in the admission of immigrants should have explained that, of the persons irregularly admitted, a considerable portion are not Jews, but Arabs. That this is the case the memorandum shows by relevant passages from the Simpson report. The memorandum, in commenting on the White Paper’s statement that “a further unsatisfactory feature is that a large number of travelers who enter Palestine with permission to remain for a limited time, stay on without sanction,” admits that the majority of persons in this case are Jews but claims that the statement is misleading “in so far as it suggests that the result is the settlement in Palestine of undesirable persons who would not have been admitted as immigrants.” The Simpson report is cited to prove that this practice had no very serious results.

RAPS ATTACK ON HISTADRUTH

The memorandum also criticizes the White Paper for presenting the General Federation of Jewish Labor in a “vaguely sinister light,” the impression conveyed by the White Paper being that the Federation “exercises a detrimental influence. The case against it is not very clearly set forth, but its main offence appears to be that its policy ‘implies the introduction into Palestine of a new social order.’ The authors of the White Paper are apparently seriously disturbed by the inclusion in the program of the Jewish Federation of Labor of features savoring of Socialism, but it will be noted that neither in the White Paper nor for that matter in the Simpson report is it attempted to show that the influence stated to be exercised by the Federation has, in fact, resulted in the desirable type of immigrants.”

Commenting on that paragraph in the White Paper which lays it down that “it is essential that the Palestine government … should be the deciding authority in all matters of policy relating to immigration, the memorandum points out that while the “uninformed reader might naturally interpret this to mean that some other body than the Palestine government is the deciding authority at the present time,” the fact is that the “government is and has always been the deciding authority in all matters of policy regarding immigration … but also in the administrative application of the policy laid down….”

JEWISH BLAME FOR ARAB IDLE FALSE

The memorandum contends too that the proposition of the White Paper that “sufficient evidence has been adduced to lead to the conclusion that there is at present a serious degree of Arab unemployment” is highly questionable, and that the White Paper’s second proposition that there are grounds on which it can be “plausibly represented” that this unemployment “is largely due to excessive Jewish immigration” contains implications which are false.

Proceeding to examine the evidence of the existence of a “serious degree of Arab unemployment,” the memorandum finds that in the testimony of a government welfare worker, a British police officer, the director of the public works department and the resident engineer of the Haifa Harbor works, as quoted in the Simpson report, the statement of these witnesses are either vitiated by their further testimony or else weakened by their having overlooked the casual Arab laborer from the rural areas, who seeks work in the cities during the agricultural off-season.

The only other specific reason advanced by the Simpson report for believing that there is widespread unemployment among the Arabs, the memorandum says, is that wage rates are falling. By referring to the 1929 annual report of the Palestine government, the memorandum demonstrates that no such fall of wages was evident to the government up to the close of that year. Broadly speaking, the memorandum finds “it is clear that in 1929, so far as there was any change in wage-rates, the general tendency was not downwards, but upwards. If then, Sir John Hope Simpson is right in thinking that wage-rates have fallen, this is a phenomenon which must have occurred during the past few months, and from which it is, therefore, hardly reasonable to draw far-reaching inferences….”

NO ARAB JOBLESS UP TO MAY 1930

This is equally true of unemployment itself, the memorandum states, for “while on some previous occasions the annual reports of the Palestine government have referred to the existence of unemployment among the Arabs, the 1929 report, though it deals in detail with labor conditions, makes no reference whatever to Arab unemployment. Indeed in Simpson’s own report there is evidence that no serious unemployment existed among the Arabs as recently as the end of May 1930. Simpson states on page 139 of his report, with reference to the labor schedule sanctioned by the High Commissioner at the end of May 1930, and providing for the admission of a large number of immigrants, that ‘there is no doubt that the recommendations of the chief immigration officer and the decision of the High Commissioner were justified by the prospects of work in Palestine.’

“On Simpson’s own principles it is clear that, in his opinion, such a schedule would not have been justified if at that time there had been a serious degree of unemployment among the Arabs. If, then, such unemployment really exists, it had developed between the end of last May and the end of August when Simpson presented his report. Accordingly, the statement in the White Paper that ‘there is at present a serious degree of Arab unemployment’ is in any case misleading unless qualified by the further statement, which the White Paper refrains from making, that this is a phenomenon which was not perceptible until a very recent date, and has, in fact, only begun to be observed during the past few months….”

Turning to the second main question of fact, that of whether there are really grounds on which it can be “plausibly represented” that Arab unemployment is “largely due to excessive Jewish immigration” the memorandum quotes Simpson, in speaking of the Arabs who