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Palestine Can Absorb a Million Jews in Ten Years, Dr. Silver Says in Washington

October 12, 1943
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Opening a campaign to “present the moral case of Palestine to the American people,” Dr. Abba hillel Silver, newly elected chairman of the executive committee of the American Zionist Emergency Council, today denounced the white Paper as “part of the breakdown of moral principles that preceded this war.”

Speaking at a press conference, Dr. Silver estimated that Palestine could absorb 100,000 Jews-a year from Central and Eastern Europe for the next 10 years. He hoped, he said, to marshal public opinion here and in England against the policy that would halt Jewish immigration into Palestine on March 31 next. He expressed the opinion that after the war, only 3,000,000 of Europe’s 6,000,000 Jews would be left alive and that even these could not be reabsorbed into the strained economics of the continent.

Dr. Silver denied that Zionists oppose “legitimate Arab national aspirations,” adding that Jews were ready to help Arabs develop Palestine.

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