Wise Says Attlee Statement Cancels Entire Report of Anglo-american Committee

Charging that Prime Minister Attlee’s statement “cancels in advance the entire report of the Anglo-American Committee,” Rabbi Stephen S. Wise said today that Attlee has dealt with the problem “not in the manner of statesmanship, but after the fashion of a huckster dealing with some matter of exchange and barter.

“In a word, we are asked to barter the Haganah, our security, for the possibility of getting one hundred thousand displaced persons into Palestine,” Dr. Wise said, in a statement to the press. “It cannot be done. It will not be done. We shall not barter away the immediate jewel of a people’s security in return for what is evidently to be the vague and perhaps remote possibility of saving 100,000 displaced persons, whose safety after their advent into Palestine may depend upon the continuance of the Haganah. The 100,000 displaced persons would not, in our judgment, ask that of Palestine nor even permit the so-called “disarming” of their brother Jews, which might mean that the Yishub, segmented by 100,000 displaced persons, would stand helpless in the presence of a large Arab population in Palestine and in neighboring States.

“Prime Minister Attlee’s proposal is utterly unworthy. It does him no honor, nor is it worthy of the great people whom he misrepresents. The report calls for the virtual repeal of the White Paper. If offensive and insulting conditions are to be attached to the entry of the displaced persons into Palestine, the Jewish people and, we daresay, our own Government will respond with the firmest negative.

“Prime Minister Attlee’s insistence upon so qualifying the acceptance of the report as virtually to annul it is bound up with a further suggestion which is like-wise designed to annul the substance of the Committee’s report. It is England which, through the Mandate, has secured an invaluable foothold in Palestine wherein to place a mighty army for the defense of the Suez Canal and for other military and imperialist advantages. The Prime Minister calmly proceeds to ask for American military participation in an undertaking to which the American Government is and will continue to remain unrelated. One cannot imagine a more meanly huckstering response to a great proposal then that of Prime Minister Attlee. It cancels in advance the entire report of the Anglo-American Committee. To that cancellation the American Government and people will not assent.”

ZIONISTS-REVISIONISTS REJECT REPORT; TERM IT “CRUEL HOAX”

The recommendations of the report of the Anglo-American inquiry committee were attacked today for completely ignoring the needs of the majority of the Jews of Europe as well as the Jews in Arab lands and those scattered elsewhere throughout the world, in a statement issued by Meir Grossman, president of the United Zionists-Revisionists of America, which represents the membership of the New Zionist Organization and the Jewish State Party.

Pointing out that the committee recommended relief for only one out of every fifteen Jews in Europe, Grossman termed the report a “cruel hoax on Jewish homelessness,” asserted that the committee had “utterly failed in its attempt to frame a long term policy for Palestine,” and declared that the Zionists-Revisionists would not accept the findings. The statement charged that the American members of the committee “in their eagerness to secure acceptance of President Truman’s humanitarian proposal for the admission of 100,000 displaced Jews into Palestine” had succumbed to the pressure of their British colleagues and had been “tricked into subscribing to a series of far-reaching anti-Jewish statements and recommendations.”