President Roosevelt was appealed to today for appropriate action “to ensure the withdrawal in its entirety of the Palestine white paper of May, 1939 with its unjustifiable restrictions on immigration and land settlement,” in a resolution adopted at a mass-meeting at Carnegie Hall marking the 26th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in which the British Government pledged its support for the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine.
The resolution urged that the gates of Palestine be opened to Jewish immigration and that Palestine be reconstituted as a Jewish Commonwealth, “to the end that the Jewish people may be enabled to take its rightful place in the progressive order of mankind, which, we pray, may issue from this struggle.” The White Paper, under which Jewish immigration to Palestine is to cease on April 1, 1944, was termed a document which is “legally, morally and humanly indefensible.”
The meeting marked the opening of a nation-wide campaign for the abrogation of the White Paper. The speakers included Dorothy Thompson, Dr. Stephen S. Wise, and Mrs. Judith Epstein, president of Hadassah. Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, under whose auspices the meeting was held, presided.
The resolution adopted by the assembly declared that “the White Paper threatens the very existence of the Jewish National Home. It dose so at a time when millions of Europe’s Jews have perished at the hand of the Nazi oppressor, and when it has become clear, as never before, that the solution of the problem of homeless Jewry is in their re-establishment as a nation in Palestine. The Palestine White Paper was condemned at the time by the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations and was denounced as a breach of trust by many who later led Britain in her hour of darkest trial.”
ZIONIST COUNCIL INTENSIFIES FIGHT AGAINST WHITE PAPER
The American Zionist Emergency Council has reorganized in a move to decentralize responsibility and to speed mobilization of all forces in American Jewry to further Jewish aspirations in Palestine, it was announced today by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, chairman of the executive committee.
Fourteen committees have been established to carry forward a program to win public opinion in America. The immediate objective of all the committees is to work for the abandonment of the White Paper policy.
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