Jabotinsky Charges Palestine Administered Contrary to Final Aim of Zionism (Jewish Telegraphic Agency)
About seventy delegates from various European countries were present at the opening session of the conference of the League of Zionist-Revisionists which began here yesterday.
Few delegates are present from Poland and none from Hungary. A praesidium was elected consisting of Richard Lichtheim of Berlin, Vladimir Jabotinsky of Jerusalem, Meer Grossman of London and Messrs. Hoffman and Soskin.
The keynote of the Zionist-Revisionists’ program was sounded by Vladimir Jabotinsky, president of the League, in an address which lasted two hours. He criticized severely the recent decisions of the Zionist General Council concerning the extension of the Jewish Agency. The Zionist-Revisionists, he declared, will continue to fight the Jewish Agency project until the last trench. The formation of the Jewish Agency means an end of the World Zionist Congress created by Herzl and of the democratic national Jewish renaissance movement.
Despite the decisions taken, the Zionist-Revisionists will not leave the Zionist Organization when the Jewish Agency will come into existence. They are rather determined to continue the fight for the “restoration of the sovereignty of the World Zionist Congress,” Mr. Jabotinsky declared. His League does not intend to usurp the perogatives of the Zionist Executive, but it is the “right and duty of the Zionist-Revisionists to continue through their own channels a campaign of enlightenment of public opinion in the British Empire and throughout the civilized world.”
The leader of the Zionist-Revisionists charged that at present Palestine is administered in a manner contrary to the interest of the ultimate aims of the Zionist movement. “We have to deal not only with an unfriendly local government, as was demonstrated in the Wailing Wall scandal and in the closing of the gates to immigration. The policy is more directly indicated in the economic field. The authorities in Palestine wilfully hamper the Jewish colonization of Palestine. That is why the Zionist-Revisionist movement must insist on the introduction in the country of a Zionist colonizing regime.
“Also, the Zionist movement under its present leadership is being conducted in a manner contrary to the interest of the ultimate aim of the movement. This is demonstrated by the fact that in recent years the leadership has given up the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine and simultaneously Zionists are busy justifying the regime in Palestine. In addition, the Zionist Organization conducts a plan-less economic policy,” Mr. Jabotinsky charged.
Revisionism has succeeded to reawaken in the Zionist movement the desire for revising the political and economic methods. Even the Palestine government saw itself compelled to grant some concessions, particularly in regard to the protection of industries, he stated. Revisionism is friendly to the Palestine Arabs, Mr. Jabotinsky stated. What it declines to do is to recognize the right of the Arabs to veto Jewish immigration to Palestine. That is the reason why Revisionists are against all attempts to introduce into Palestine parliamentary government and institutions, before the process of Jewish immigration has fully developed.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
