Jewish Agency Has Begun Recruiting Civil and Military Forces for New State

The Jewish Agency has started mobilizing young men and women for civil and military service in the Jewish state which it hopes will soon be established, Mrs. Goldie Meirson, political chief of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, said today.

She told a press conference that the emphasis in the recruiting drive is on service in government bureaus to supplement the ranks of the Jews, Arabs and Englishmen who are already employed, but that military reserves might be drawn from the ?ranks of the recruits if the necessity arose.

Mrs. Meirson said that it was the Jewish community’s ambition to build a modern civilized state based on justice and equality for all citizens regardless of race and creed and one rule for all – the rule of justice.” She stressed that no distinction will be made between citizens and that an attempt would be made to raise the standards of the Arab population in the Jewish state to that of the Jews. Hebrew will be the official language of the state, but Arabic will have equal recognition and no effort will be made to compel Arabs to learn Hebrew.

Jewish leaders have reached no decision on the site of the capital of the new state nor its name, Mrs. Meirson said, adding that “those will be decided the day after the U.N. acts favorably.”

A demand that some $80,000,000 worth of heirless property in Palestine owned by Jews who were killed in Europe by the Nazis be turned over to the Jewish authorities during the transition period between the termination of the Palestine Mandate and the declaration of independence of a Jewish state, was voiced here today at a press conference by Dr. Zorach Warhaftig, legal expert of the Jewish National Council, speaking in the name of the national Jewish institutions.

In a joint appeal to Jews everywhere, Chief Rabbis Isaac Herzog and Ben Zion Uziel today urged them to pray that the United Nations will be “Divinely inspired” to approve partition by the necessary two-thirds majority.