The Passfield White Paper on Palestine was the culmination of a sinister policy rather than its commencement, declares Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in the first of a series of articles by prominent American Zionist leaders appearing in the New York Evening Telegram. “What Colonial Office servants had in part planned and long practiced,” says Rabbi Wise, “they have at least attempted to enact into law under Pass-field.
“I, for my part, am ready to charge the officials of the Palestine Administration, alike in London and Jerusalem, with having so bedevilled a situation as to deepen Arab-Jewish differences, which at the outset were superficial. Statesmanship with good will could easily have composed a situation which Colonial Office bureaucracy with ill intent has done everything to confound.
“As for Lord Passfield’s White Paper, it has crystallized and even petrified the refusal of Anglo-Palestine officials honorably and fully to discharge the obligations of the Mandate. Until cancelled in substance, this will remain a blot upon England.”
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