The seventeenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration which pledged Great Britain to facilitate establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine will be observed Thursday evening at a mass meeting at the Hotel Astor. The meeting will be under the auspices of the Zionist Organization of America.
In addition to honoring the memory of the late Lord Balfour, the meeting will also be the occasion for the launching of a city-wide effort to enroll 75,000 Zionist endorsers in support of an extended program for the economic expansion of Palestine and the opening of its gates to greater numbers of Jews from Germany and other parts of Europe. This local campaign will be a part of the nation-wide Zionist roll call to enlist the aid of 250,000 Jews.
The Balfour Declaration was issued on November 2, 1917, by Lord Balfour, then Great Britain’s Foreign Secretary. Made while British troops were fighting in the East under Allenby, the declaration pledged Great Britain and the Allies to aid in the settlement of Palestine as a homeland for the Jews.
In the period since 1917 more than 250,000 Jews have settled in Palestine. During the past year, since the persecution of Jews by the Hitler regime, more than 18,000 refugees from Germany have settled in Palestine.
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.
