After a stormy debate the House of Commons today authorized the British Treasury to guarantee the principle and interest on the £2,000,000 loan negotiated by the Palestine government.
The debate was featured by sensational charges made by Colonel Josiah Wedgwood that the government of Palestine “was the most anti-Semitic government in the British Empire,” and by further charges that immigration was restricted to keep out Jews, fine roads were being built for Arabs only, and that the educational system in Palestine made young people ansxious to leave the country.
Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, British Secretary of State for Colonies, opened the debate with the declaration that two-thirds of the loan would benefit the Arabs of Palestine, while one-third would rebound to the benefit of the Jews.
PALESTINE CREDIT IMPROVED
The Colonial Secretary stated that the credit of the government of Palestine was incomparably better today than it was in 1926, when a similar loan was negotiated. He estimated that the surplus in the treasury of the Palestine government for 1933-1934 was in the neighborhood of £1,000,000.
“Then why do you want to borrow money?” the former Liberal minister, George Lambert, interposed.
“Because it is a very sound principle to borrow for capital expenditures and to build up a large reserve,” Sir Philip answered.
He declared that the loan would be used largely for revenue-producing projects, such as the expenditure of £210,000 for the oil dock at Haifa, which would yield an annual revenue of at least £30,000. Part of the loan will also be expended for the Jerusalem post office, which is earning its cost. Sir Philip also stated that one of the conditions of the loan was that orders amounting to £600,000 be placed with English concerns.
When Sir Philip finished Colonel Wedgwood made a motion to reject the loan, declaring that the Minister’s thesis that “when you have a lot of money in the bank you borrow more,” was utterly strange to him.
CHARGES DISLIKE OF JEWS
He complained that the Palestine government, “instead of building up the idea of a Jewish National Home, is one of the most anti-Semitic governments in the British Empire. The attitude of the Palestine government toward the Jewish refugees from Germany is explainable only on the ground that the governing heirarchy dislike the German Jews and desire to keep them out of Palestine.”
He cited the fact that the “Brown Book of the Hitler Terror” was prohibited in Palestine, while the government allowed “a flood of vile documents from Germany to be freely circulated by Nazi agents.”
The Colonel also complained that the government had cut the immigration schedule to 5,600.
Sir Philip objected to the remark as a misstatement, pointing out that the schedule was only a small part of the total and that last year 19,000 labor certificates were granted and the total number of immigrants was 30,000.
Colonel Wedgwood, who recently visited Palestine, resumed his attack on the Palestine government by pointing out that admirable main and side roads had been built in Palestine, but only near Arab villages and not near Jewish villages.
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.
