The United States may have to take a stand on the Palestine issue before Election Day, F. Lawrence Baboock, an editor of Fortune magazine, states in the current issue of that publication, after returning from an eight months’ investigation in the Middle East.
With the liberation of the Balkans, there will be many more than 27,000 Jews qualifying for asylum in Palestine under the terms of the White Paper, Mr. Babcack points out. No British excuse for denying them entrance to Palestine will be valid. “Obviously,” the Fortune editor concludes, “Britain cannot act without us. She cannot safely adopt a course on her own responsibility unless she knows that the United States will accept it and not detonate the whole Middle East by reversing it later.”
Emphasizing that if Allied military power is withdrawn from the Middle East, frustrations will break loose to a point where “the explosive forces behind them may give them the range and destructiveness of a robot bomb,” Mr. Babcook says that the Allies must make their decision on Palestine now. This key decision, he says, cannot wait much longer and must condition all future choices the United States may make in the Middle East.
“Simply stated,” the Fortune article reads, “it is this, Shall we back continued Jewish immigration into Palestine, as pledged by the platforms of both parties? Or shall we agree to the Arab world’s uncompromising opposition to the further expansion of a Jewish national home in a land they regard their own? Or have we to offer some new alternative to these showdown propositions, including shouldering ourselves a share of the responsibility for Palestine?”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
