Additional contributions were being received today to the Zionist Emergency Fund created at a meeting of 250 prominent New York Jews at the Astor Hotel on Saturday night. The Fund “has no relation to the Allied Jewish Campaign or to the Jewish Agency Fund for Palestine,” said Mr. Robert Szold, chairman of the Zionist Administration, who presided at the meeting. “It is to be used to make known the Jewish cause to the world.”
Rabbi Stephen Wise, who sent a message to the meeting from his sickbed, said, “We need funds to acquaint the public with the true facts in Palestine, and to counteract the untruths which have emerged from the British Colonial Office. We must arouse public opinion to a realization of the breach of international law which has been committed by the British Government through treating the Balfour Declaration as a ‘scrap of paper’.”
Congressman Emanuel Celler declared that twenty New York congressmen would support him in a resolution put forward in the House of Representatives asking the United States to protest Great Britain’s nullification of the Balfour Declaration.
Congressman William I. Sirovich read parts of the agreement signed at the American-British Palestine Mandate convention of 1924 in which it is specified that no modification in the mandate may be made “unless assented to by the United States.” It is charged that the new Palestine declaration violated this treaty.
Announcement was made that plans are almost complete for the huge Madison Square Garden demonstration on Nov. 2, the thirteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. Telegrams continue to come in to Zionist headquarters from all over the United States, indicating that the protest meetings on that date will be even more numerous than had been expected.
The board of directors of the Baltimore Zionist district has issue da call for such a meeting. Aaron Riche, chairman of the Zionist District of Los Angeles, reports plans in full swing for a Nov. 2 protest.
Cleveland Jewry could not wait for the anniversary and are holding what is expected to be the largest mass meeting in Cleveland Jewish history on Thursday at the Public Auditorium. Thirty leading Jewish organizations are aiding the Zionist District organization to arrange the meeting. Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver will speak.
Numberless statements of protest and indignation, from the most prominent Jews and non-Jews all over the world, continued to fly over the wires.
Emanuel Neumann, chairman of the committee on Public Information of the Zionist Organization of America, called “hypocritical” the cablegram of Premier MacDonald to General Jan Smuts, defender of Zionism, who is now in Africa.
“It is astonishing to observe how political expediency can corrupt a man’s integrity,” said Mr. Neumann of Ramsay MacDonald. “In his cable attempting to reply to General Smuts, who has charged the British government with repudiation of the Balfour declaration, Premier MacDonald uses phrases and expresses views which are wholly at variance with opinions he held before he became an office-holder.”
Mr. Neumann quoted an article written by Ramsay MacDonald in 1922, after a trip through Palestine, in which MacDonald said, “It is perfectly evident that the present Arab population will never make good the defects of the country. There is room and to spare in the neglected lands of Palestine for as many Jews as are likely to go there.”
LIPSKY ADDRESSES ZIONISTS
Louis Lipsky, former president of the Zionist Organization of America, addressed a meeting of the representatives of the New York Zionist region at the Hotel Pennsylvania on Sunday. “It was never expected that a Mandate issued by the League of Nations should be made a plaything of the imperial interests of the Mandatory Government,” he said. The meeting was also addressed by Congressman William I. S. Sirovich, by Horris Rothenberg, Zionist member of the Jewish Agency, by Jacob Fishman, managing editor of the Jewish Morning Journal, and by Maurice Samuel, author. At the meeting, $10,000 was raised for the Zionist Emergency Fund.
Asher Pierce, president of the “Gan Chaim” Corporation of Palestine, wired from Montreal his protest against the Simpson report, saying that “Ninety per cent of the Jewish capital invested in Palestine goes into Arab hands. Stoppage of Jewish immigration will close all hope of future prosperity in Palestine.”
Judge Isadore Bookstein of Albany issued a statement calling upon “all right-minded American citizens to express their indignation and the government at Washington itself to forthwith lodge a strong protest with the British government against this new proposed policy of stunting and crippling all future Jewish efforts for the establishment of ‘a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine’.”
The New England section of the Jewish Socialist Verband, in convention in Springfield, Mass., adopted a resolution saying, “We appeal to our comrades of the English labor party to induce the Labor government to change its attitude.”
Meanwhile President Hoover was urged to send a special commission to Palestine to ascertain for the American people the true facts about the situation there. The plea was made by Louis Yale Borkum, editor of the Detroit Jewish Guide and the Pittsburgh Jewish Leader in a telegram to the president.
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.
