The National Emergency Committee for Palestine today announced receipt of telegrams from 500 organizations within 24 hours denouncing Britain’s Palestine policy. Scores of messages were received from ministers and rabbis who will devote weekend sermons to the White Paper.
A mass meeting of protest will be held Sunday afternoon in the Hippodrome, it was announced, with prominent Jews and Christians as speakers. Zionist youth groups will hold a demonstration simultaneously at Seward Park High School. Dr. Stephen S. Wise will speak over Station WEAF Saturday night.
The emergency committee made public an exchange of cables with the Palestine Jewish National Council. The committee’s cable promised “moral encouragement and material support” to Palestine Jewry, and the council’s reply summoned Jews throughout the world to aid in the “New period of struggle for the future of our people in our land.”
Dr. Cyrus Adler, president of the American Jewish Committee and a member of the Jewish Agency Council, declared in a statement that the British policy was “a breach of faith.” The Jewish National Workers Alliance telegraphed President Roosevelt appealing to him to express disapproval of the British policy, and called on its branches in more than 160 communities to organize protest demonstrations. The Federation of Polish Jews also issued a statement of protest.
A telegraphed appeal to President Roosevelt to intercede against enforcement of the new policy was sent by the Pro-Palestine Federation of America, signed by William Green, Bishop Francis J. McConnell and other leading Christians. It urged full application of the 1924 Anglo-American Convention on the Palestine Mandate.
The American Federation of Labor declared “it is unthinkable and inconceivable that the British Government would desert the cause of humanity at a period in the world’s history when civilization is hanging in the balance.”
The New York Times declared editorially today that the White Paper was evidence of the fact that there was no just solution of the Palestine question. It urged, however, that Britain protect the Palestine Jews “to the end,” in “honor, humanity and defense of its own interests.”
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.
