Weizmann’s Jena Speech Criticized by Non-zionist “juedisch-liberale Zeitung”

A sharp criticism of Dr. Weizmann for his speech at the German Zionist convention a month ago, in which he gave the Zionist attitude towards the present Palestinian situation, is contained in a recent editorial in the Berlin “Juedisch-liberale Zeitung,” organ of the German Reformed Jews and non-Zionists in its attitude towards Palestine. Says the paper:

“Weizmann declared in his speech: “The Jewish problem is here with us today in sharper form than ten years ago. The world will realize soon that it cannot be indifferent to the fact that ten millions of Jews are being ground to dust, and that the world, insofar as Jews are concerned, is divided into two parts, one part consisting of those countries where Jews cannot live and the other part consisting of those lands which they are not allowed to enter.’

“This sentence to our mind is the best proof of the wrong foundation upon which Zionism rests. While the Jews in practically all countries can live, while their lives are more in danger than anywhere else in the Utopia of Zionism, while a successful attempt has been made in those countries in which Jews live in large masses to make them both economically and spiritually productive and after it has been everywhere recognized that Palestine after all the Zionist efforts has only become the home of one percent of Jewry and that 99 percent will in the future too have to live outside of Palestine—after all this we are still being told that only Palestine will save Jews and Judaism from destruction. Were even Weizmann’s exaggeration true that we are ‘being ground to dust,’ it would be impossible to alter the course of world history after two thousand years.”

With regard to Weizmann’s statement that “Palestine is a national home for the Jewish people and a home for 600,000 Arabs, and the national home of the Arab people can be found in Bagdad and Damascus,” the “Juedischliberale Zeitung” says:

“To tell the Arabs that their national homes can be found in neighboring countries will only make the Palestine Arabs conscious of the fact that they are deprived of the rights of self-determination possessed by their neighboring fellow-Arabs, to which rights they feel themselves as much entitled.”