The Palestinian gun-running trials, which concluded in Jerusalem today, were denounced tonight as “part and parcel of a systematic effort by the Palestine government to discredit Jewish aspirations in Palestine by indirection and conniving,” by Louis Lipsky, member of the World Zionist Executive, speaking at a Zionist meeting here.
“The Palestinian gun-running trials which have now reached their predestined conclusion indicate, as nothing else could, the real intention of the Palestine administration to destroy Jewish aspirations in Palestine,” Mr. Lipsky said. “These trials were part and parcel of a systematic effort by the government to discredit Jewish aspirations by indirection and conniving. They have been magnified and distorted beyond all proportions in a deliberate program of frame-up.
“Gun-running in a war zone is an every-day occurrence,” he continued. “Arabs have engaged in it in Palestine since long before the war and their intentions were hostile to democracy and the United Nations. But the Palestine administration has seen fit to convert a routine trial involving two Jews into a cause cerebra. Reporters were specially summoned to Cairo to magnify the incident. The trial was a sounding board for the most vicious anti-Jewish utterances by the prosecuting officials, and these were broadcast around the world. Every effort was made by the authorities to make it appear that the Jews, the first victims of Hitler’s aggression and a people whose dead are on every battlefield in this war, were acting in a manner inimical to the United Nations. The intent was clear. It was to justify a perpetuation of the white Paper policy.
“It is the intrigue of men who are determined to turn the Jewish National Home into a ghetto. They must be repudiated by the responsible leaders of the United nations. Sooner or later England must give a candid reply to the Jewish appeal that it honestly keep its covenant to establish a Jewish National Home in Palestine,” the Zionist leader declared.
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