ZOA National Council Backs Action of Its Executive in Emergency Council Dispute

The National Administrative Council of the Zionist Organization of America voted today to support the action of the ZOA’s executive committee in relation to the crisis within the American Zionist Emergency Council. The vote, which followed a heated five-hour debate, backed the ZOA delegates on the Emergency Council, who voted to accept Dr. Abba Hillel Silver’s resignation from that body and re-elected Dr. Stephen S. Wise as chairman.

Prior to the debate on the Silver-Wise controversy, Dr. Israel Goldstein, president of the ZOA, appealed to Great Britain, the United States and Russia to initiate “a new era, that of Palestine’s establishment as a Jewish Commonwealth.” Dr. Goldstein said that American Jewry looks to President Roosevelt to do what he can in the fulfillment of such a policy. He expressed the hope that “an opportune time in the near future” the State Department will withdraw its objections to the Palestine Resolution.

Prof. Selig Brodetsky, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who has just arrived from London, told the meeting that he is confident that Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin will discuss the status of the Jews at their forthcoming meeting. “In many ways these leaders have shown their understanding of the Jewish problem,” Prof. Brodetsky said. “The Jews appreciate deeply the fact that in the armistice terms, the removal of racial discrimination was laid down and enforced. World Jewry now expects further steps, for in the rebuilding of Europe must be included the rebuilding of broken Jewry, and in freedom to the whole of humanity must be included freedom to Jews as citizens, and the reestablishment of a free Jewish life in Palestine.”

The four-man delegation of French Jewry now visiting here, consisting of Joseph Fischer, Leon Meiss, Capt. Guy de Rothschild and Rabbi Jacob Kaplan, also addressed the meeting. Mr. Fischer, who is general secretary of the Zionist Organization in France, reported the emergence of strong Zionist sentiment in that country.

Other speakers included Dr. Nahum Goldmann, who demanded that Britain cease treating Palestine as a “colony;” Meyer F. Weisgal, who reported on latest developments in Palestine, from which he recently returned after a six-week visit; Daniel Frisch, chairman of the national administrative council, Saul Spiro, ZOA national secretary, Judge Louis E. Levinthal and others.