“The Jewish people will soon be facing a very great challenge when the U.N. carries out the project of partition,” Dr. Chaim Weizmann declared tonight at a concert and supper party celebrating his 73rd birthday. Two thousand guests paid $250 each to attend, the funds going toward the establishment of the Weizmann Institute of Science at Rehovoth, Palestine.
“It looks as though we shall not have more than a year in which to prepare a constitution, organize our defenses and begin the actual work of remolding and re-constructing the present national home into a state,” Dr. Weizmann, who was introduced to the assemblage as “the first president of the Jewish state,” added. He called on the young Jews of all countries to “give of their human resources, bringing new forces and new points of view to bear on the whole situation.”
Turning to the problem of the Arab minority in the proposed Jewish state, he said: “The life-blood of a stable society is justice. There must not be one law for the Jew and another for the Arab. In saying this, I do not assume that there are tendencies toward inequality and discrimination. It is merely a timely warning which is particularly necessary as we shall have a very great Arab minority; I am certain that the world will judge the Jewish state by what it will do with the Arabs, just as the Jewish people at large will be judged by what we do or fail to do in this state, where we shall be given such a wonderful opportunity after thousands of years of wandering and suffering.”
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.
