The Reader’s Forum

The editors reserve the right to excerpt all letters exceeding 250 words in length. All letters must bear the name and address of the writer although not necessarily for publication.

To the Editor, Jewish Daily Bulletin:

Your headline: “Locker Favors Policy of Placating Britain” (italics are mine) is definitely injurious to the Zionist cause.

What has Jewry done to Britain that requires “placating?” This type of loose talk which places Jewry in the wrong produces inevitably a vigorous reaction on the part of upstanding Zionists and solidifies the ranks of those who have with good reason protested against the infirm tactics of the Zionist leadership prior to 1929 and 1930. Berl Locker throws scorn upon those who have criticized the Mandatory Government’s policies instead of criticizing officials of the Mandatory for their failure to cooperate adequately with the Yishub and the Zionist movement.

When the British officials are prepared to cooperate with Jewry, Jewry is only too pleased to abandon its program of protest and criticism. But when the Mandatory devises plans hurtful to Zionist enterprises, it is our duty not to undermine Jewish spokesmen, but to stand firmly behind them. When Rabbi Stephen S. Wise warned the Weizmann administration at the Basle Congresses that British officialdom in Palestine was unfriendly to the Zionist cause, and was throwing stumbling blocks in the Yishub’s path, the then leaders of the World Zionist Organization, with the help of a handful of American Zionists, attacked Rabbi Wise and sought to discredit his criticism. The consequences of this short-sighted attitude are too well-known and too tragic to require further comment here.

Berl Locker and others of his group must not lull themselves into a false sense of security with respect to the program of the Mandatory Power. It is true that the present High Commissioner is sympathetic and helpful, but Zionists are never fully aware of the unexpected elements in the Palestine situation which may at any moment rise up to plague them. We hope the day will never come when Jewry will be under the necessity of organizing world-wide protests against a half-hearted British police system or a Pass-field Paper, but Great Britain must continue to appreciate that the Mandatory administration must reckon with the influence of a Stephen Wise, a Jabotinsky and others, if the occasion warrants their outspoken utterances. Moreover, the Mandatory Power must continue to know that behind the immigration of 50,000 a year is a great multitude of underprivileged and harassed Jews who are pressing at the gates. We have gained notable victories since the protest meetings of 1929 and 1930, and since the Basle Congress of 1930, with its change of World Zionist leadership, and we do not wish these gains to be nullified by pianissimo tactics today.

Jewry may seem to be weak in its approach to the Mandatory Government, but it is an error on the part of Berl Locker to describe us as weaker than we truly are. I commend to his attention, and to the notice of hush-hush Jews everywhere, the ringing militant words of Professor Harold J. Laski in London a few weeks ago. Berl Locker may breathe fire and brimstone against the Revisionists, but when he speaks of the British Government, his phrases betoken a hesitancy which must not be permitted to characterize the movement as a whole. If there is any “placating” to be done, it must not be by the Zionists towards the Mandatory Power, but by Berl Locker towards Jewish public opinion.

Louis I. Newman.

New York, N. Y.

January 2, 1935.