Premier Benito Mussolini’s Popolo d’Italia, in one of the first extended Italian comments on Britain’s new Palestine policy, declared in an article of its Palestine correspondent today that the policy would not solve the problem because the Arabs were thinking only of getting rid of the Jews and the Jews only of subjugating the Arabs.
The article, which was given considerable prominence, spoke of an alleged declaration of war against Britain by the Jews and noted approvingly that the British were inclined to look less favorably on the Jews than hitherto, but asserted that the Jews held the threat over the British that they were able to do more damage in a day than the Arabs had done in three years.
The British White Paper was likened to a bowl of Mulligatawny soup including something to attract every taste which had been set before the Jews and Arabs, but from which the Jews were elbowing the Arabs away. The article intimated that the Jews were tempted by the offer to admit 75,000 Jewish immigrants in the next five years, while the Arabs were not yet decided on the policy.
The Jews were declared to be aiming at mastery of the East Mediterranean shore, as symbolized by a statue of “Hope” to be erected in the Tel Aviv harbor, similar to New York’s Statue of Liberty. But the statue, the correspondent declared, was doomed for the present to be veiled “until the happy day, which is still far distant, comes.”
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.
