The American Zionist Emergency Council, composed of representatives of all Zionist groups, today addressed an appeal to the United States Government asking it to intervene to secure suspension of the British White Paper which closes the doors of Palestine to Jewish immigration in April 1944.
In making this appeal, Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, chairman of the executive committee of the Council, said that American Jews will be mobilized in a battle to smash the White Paper which “erects an illegal wall about Palestine.” He denounced the document as “the greatest miscarriage of justice in our day and the most brazen repudiation of the sanctity of covenants.”
The appeal to the United States Government to intervene for the abandonment of the White Paper points out that the Zionist claims are based on four points:
“1. The solemn covenant contained in the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine is founded on the inalienable right of the Jewish people, based on an unbroken historic connection, to reconstitute their national home in Palestine.
“2. By international Convention of 1924, Great Britain may make no changes in the status of Palestine without the consent of the United States Government. The White Paper is a complete reversal of Palestine’s status and is therefore a clear violation of Great Britain’s covenant with the United States.
“3. It is repugnant to the concept of the Four Freedoms that Palestine should become the one land on earth, outside Axis-dominated nations, where, by specific legislation, Jews are to be denied admission.
“4. In the face of the disasters that have befallen the Jews of Europe under Hitler, it is unconscionable that they should be deprived of the hope of eventually finding peace and freedom in the future Jewish commonwealth.”
“The American Zionist Emergency Council will mobilize all the energies and resources of American Jewry during the next seven months to prevent the greatest miscarriage of justice in our day and the most brazen repudiation of the sanctity of covenants,” Dr. Silver said. “The United Nations, led by our own government, have continuously expressed their sympathy for the Jewish people in its intolerable plight under Hitler. To close the doors of Palestine by implementing the White Paper would be to deny the last avenue of escape for the trapped and helpless victims of Nazi terror. It would mock the dead and scorn the living.
“We have every hope that with the sympathy of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill and with the active support of freedom-loving men everywhere in the democratic world, this blow to the Jewish people and to fundamental human justice will be averted,” Dr. Silver concluded.
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.
