News Brief

The rejection or acceptance of the recommendations of the Jewish Agency Commission, now the center of heated debate among Zionists in Europe and in Palestine, will not, as such, determine the fate of the enlarged Jewish Agency, argues the “Juedische Rundschau,” German weekly, organ of the German Federation of Zionists, in its issue today.

The “Rundschau” points out that if the matter is brought to a vote in an extraordinary Zionist Congress this year or in the regular Zionist Congress next year, the paradox of the situation would be that those who are opposed to the Jewish Agency idea would vote for the recommendations of the Jewish Agency Commission, while those who are for the enlarged Agency will vote against its recommendations.

Within the Zionist Congress such groups as the Eth Libnoth, the pro-Weizmann section of the Polish Zionists; a large section of the Mizrachi, the Revisionists, many Radical Zionists, the Palestine middle class parties and a section of the center group have the same views as the Jewish Agency Commission regarding the Kvuzoth and other questions of labor, and colonization. The question, therefore, as to whether the recommendations of the Jewish Agency Commission will be accepted has no relation to the question of the Jewish Agency per se, because it is quite possible that those who criticise the negotiations with the Marshall group will, at the next Zionist Congress, adopt a program practically similar to the Commission’s recommendations. Groups like the Revisionists, which oppose the Agency policy, held similar views regarding the economic work. The labor parties, which supported Dr. Weizmann’s Agency policy, must vote against the report because it is contrary to their most important principles.

Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress and vice president of the Zionist Actions Committee, will not be present at the Committee’s meeting scheduled to open in Berlin on July 19. At the Free Synagogue today, in reply to an inquiry of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, it was declared that Dr. Wise will not go to Europe this summer.

Much interest was displayed in Zionist circles in the expected discussion on the Jewish Agency report which will take place at the Berlin meeting and the attitude which Dr. Wise would take on that occasion.

The central committee of the Jewish Socialist Labor Party Poale Zion of America issued a statement criticizing the recommendatons of the Jewish Agency Commission as containing “principles and proposals which are in thorough contradiction to the principles of Zionism and the interest of the Jewish people.”

The declaration calls “pon Dr. Weizmann to repudiate the main principles upon which the Jewish Agency report is based. Failing that, “the Actions Committee will have to abide by the most far-reaching consequences.”

“The report avoids specifying its attitude toward Jewish labor, does not contain any undertaking to employ only Jewish workers in the new colonization, takes away the main control from the national colonization institutions and paves the way for private concessions in Palestine which will place in the foreground the material interests of private capital and not the economic and national interests of the Jewish masses in Palestine.

“The report does not indicate any special care for Jewish immigration, denies in principle the national funds thus taking away the ground for the creation in Palestine of a Jewish majority in the course of time.

“The recommendation against the concentration of the land under the auspices of the Jewish National Fund and the attempt to transform the National Fund into an agency to purchase and to sell land to private persons instead of giving it under a long term lease to those who wish to till it, constitutes a danger for the entire colonization in Palestine, threatens to transform small Palestine into a center of speculation and to remove those safeguards which would secure the soil remaining with those who till it and thus build the national home,” the declaration reads.