American Zionist leaders will meet here tomorrow to define their attitude towards the policy of the United States Government with regard to Palestine as announced last night by secretary of State Byrnes, and on the exchange of letters on this subject between the late President Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud.
The full text of the letters – made public last night by Secretary Byrnes in Washington and by the Saudi Arabian legations in the Middle East – revealed that on March 10, the ruler of Saudi Arabia sent a communication to President Roosevelt asserting that the Jews in Palestine have for centuries been “merely aliens” who had come to the country at intervals, that Palestine is an Arab country in which the Arabs have lived continuously for about 5,500 years. He warned that if the Allied Governments “wish to see the fires of war break out, and bloodshed between Arabs and Jews, their support of the Zionists will surely lead to this result.”
Zionist leaders here were studying today the text of the reply which Roosevelt sent to King Ibn Saud on April 5, (reported in the JTA bulletin yesterday), in which the late President assured the Arab ruler that he would take no action “which might prove hostile to the Arab people” and emphasized that it is the desire of the U.S. Government that no decision be taken with respect to the basic situation in Palestine “without full consultation with both Arabs and Jews.”
In the meantime, it was announced today by the American Zionist Emergency Council that an unprecedented open-air demonstration “to support Palestine’s fight for freedom” will be held next Wednesday at Madison Square Park. A call was issued to all Jews in New York to participate in this demonstration which will start at 4 p.m. The call also urges the Jews in the city to close their places of business and stop work on Wednesday afternoon, so that workers may be able to march en masse to Madison Square Park from their places of employment.
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.
