Leading figures of the American Zionist delegation to the 22nd World Zionist Congress headed by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, Z.O.A. president, assailed critics of the decisions of the Congress and staunchly defended its “militant” position on major Palestine issues, at a Z.O.A. mass rally tonight. The rally was the first public appearance of the delegation since its return from Basle.
Dr. Israel Goldstein, inferentially answering the attack of Dr. Stephen S. Wise upon the outcome of the World Zionist Congress, urged “those who hold the responsible positions in the Zionist movement” to recognize the authority of the Congress. “Its decisions reached by the democratic process are binding as all decisions arrived at by democratic process are binding. To discredit democratic process, “he said, “is to weaken the authority of the Zionist movement.” He asserted that the Zionist Congress “marked and registered the lowest point of Jewish confidence in the British Government.”
Judge Morris Rothenberg, president of the Jewish National Fund of America, who was elected a member of the World Zionist Actions Committee, stated that “the failure of the Labor Government to nullify the White Paper and the intensification of its restrictive policies, even in the face of the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, had engendered among the delegates to the World Zionist Congress the conviction that a policy of further cooperation with the British Government was illusory; that no other course was left to the Zionist movement but one of responsible Jewish resistance to British violation of its pledges and of its obligations under the Mandate.”
LONDON CONFERENCE BUT ANOTHER MANEUVER TO DEFEAT JEWISH HOPES
Judge Rothenberg said that the “opposition of the majority of delegates to participating in the proposed London conference, under present circumstances, indicated a determination on their part no longer to be lulled into a false belief in the good intentions of the British Government to bring about a just solution of the Palestine problem, and to regard the forthcoming conference as but another maneuver in British policy to defeat Jewish hopes.”
Daniel Frisch, chairman of the Z.O.A. Administrative Council and newly elected member of the World Zionist Actions Committee, declared that “the Z.O.A. delegation, under the leadership of Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, has triumphed in the adoption by the Congress of its militant policy.”
(Dr. Silver had not delivered his address by the time the Bulletin went to press. A summary of his address will appear in tomorrow’s issue.)
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.
