Zionist Movement Narrowly Averted Disaster, Says Silver; Urges Pressure on Washington

The Zionist movement narrowly averted “political disaster” yesterday, Dr. Abba Hillel Silver said today, disclosing that as of Tuesday night President Truman had decided to accept the British plan for Palestine.

The President’s decision to delay action on the proposal gives American Jews a “breathing spell” during which they must mobilize all possible political pressure on Washington, the chairman of the American Zionist Emergency Council warned. The three months that remain before the Congressional elections are crucial, he told a press conference.

Dr. Silver criticized the support given the British loan by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, co-chairman of the Emergency Council, asserting that if the loan had been delayed for six to eight weeks, sufficient pressure could have been placed on Prime Minister Attlee to compel him to accede to at least the recommendations of the Anglo-American inquiry committee for the immediate admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine. He pointed to the fact that the British “federalization” plan was pushed through as soon as the loan had passed.

The President’s sudden shift on the plan resulted from appeals sent to the White House by Herbert H. Lehman and other prominent Jews, by influential members of Congress and by Bartley Crum, James MacDonald and Frank Buxton, three of the six American members of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine, Dr. Silver revealed. He said he believed that the President, and Secretary of State Byrnes, had been taken by surprise by their experts’ acceptance of the “federalization” scheme, and quoted Mr. Truman as having told Sen. Wagner that he did not wish to do anything to injure the Jews.

Describing the British proposal as “partition without partition,” the American Zionist leader charged that the Anglo-American experts had been instructed to implement the report of the inquiry committee, but, instead, had made recommendations which were at wide variance with the report. If these recommendations had been accepted by the President, it would have represented a victory for circles in the State Department’s Near Eastern Division which have always followed the British line, he added.

Asked to comment on the meeting of the Jewish Agency executive which will open in Paris tomorrow, Dr. Silver said that this conference cannot set a definitive policy for the Zionist movement. He advocated that a World Zionist Congress be held as soon as possible, preferably in the United States.