British Jewry registered its formal protest today against the British decision to suspend Jewish immigration to Palestine for six months starting Oct. 1.
A statement drawn up by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, for presentation to Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald, declared the action was “not isolated, but unfortunately the logical outcome of a series of incidents against which the Jews must protest and continue to protest.” “For us,” the statement said, “the Mandate still exists until altered by the only authority constituted for so doing — the League of Nations.”
The British Zionist Federation, at an emergency conference, also registered its protest, declaring in a resolution that “no policy of artificial exclusion can deny to the Jewish people the exercise of the historic, inalienable right of entering Palestine.” The resolution added that the measure demonstrated the “fundamental injustice of the British policy by the impossibility of putting it into effect” and said it had been taken at a time “when great Jewish communities have been destroyed and tens of thousands of Jews are searching vainly for a refugee.”
A message from Dr. Chalm Weizmann, president of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the Jewish people were united in their “determination to resist the cruel decree.”
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.
