British Withdrawal from Palestine?: Statement by Former Colonial Secretary Made Basis of Revisionist

The Executive Committee of the Revisionist World Union deems it its duty to warn public opinion that the present conditions in Palestine should they endure are bound to call for a more fundamental revision in the sense of the following words pronounced by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Duke of Devonshire, in the House of Lords, on December 13th., 1923. “The Balfour Declaration was the basis on which we accepted from the principal Allied Powers the position of Mandatory Power in Palestine. It is not possible for us to say that we wish to reserve certain portions of the Mandate and dispense with others. If we are compelled to admit the impossibility of carrying on the obligations placed upon us, we shall have to retire altogether”, says a statement issued by the Executive Committee of the Revisionist World Union made public here today by Dr. Soskin, on behalf of the Revisionist Executive Committee at a reception of press representatives.

The statement (which has also been issued by the Revisionist World Executive Committee in London), declares that in 1930 the Revisionist World Conference proclaimed that with the 1929 disturbances in Palestine there had set in a period of “last experiment” which was to show whether the Zionist aspirations could be attained with Great Britain as Mandatory. Since that Conference, the Passfield White Paper, based on the Simpson Report, has carried the Mandatory even further on its anti-Zionist policy; Mr. MacDonald’s letter to the former President of the Zionist Organisation practically confirmed, it says, the essential points of the White Paper; difficulties have since been placed in the way of land purchase by Jews; Jewish immigration into Palestine has been virtually stopped; a Development Scheme has been announced, and partly set in motion, gravely endangering the prospects of Zionist work in Palestine; a census of the population has been conducted under conditions liable to produce returns grossly inaccurate, and detrimental to Jewish interests; the state of insecurity has become alarming, while the establishment of an adequate Jewish self-defence is still officially hampered; and a systematic effort, with official connivance tantamount to official support, is being made to transform Jerusalem into a centre of Pan-Islamic anti-European extremism threatening the very existence of Palestine Jewry.

All this, happening in the face of an unprecedented distress among Jewry and culminating in the closing of the Jewish National Home to the Jewish masses, whose only salvation is immigration into Palestine, the statement goes on, gives a distinct impression of the and andatory’s unwillingness to appreciate not only the ideals, but also the humanitarian aspect of the great movement England pledged herself to support.

The Executive Committee of the World Union of Zionist Revisionists is therefore compelled to place on record that the attempt at a “last experiment” with England as Mandatory has been arrested by the force of events. Confidence in Great Britain’s word, almost an article of faith with every Jew for many generations, is rapidly being replaced by distrust, threatening to drive our world-scattered masses, henceforth deprived of their only constructive hope, along roads of despair dangerous both to our people and to society in general.

This situation, it declares, forces us, the Party which was foremost in upholding confidence in England, to bring now the Jewish charge against the Mandatory before the whole world. Furthermore, the conditions created in Palestine logically and inevitably operate in the direction of compelling the Jewish masses and Palestine Jewry in particular, to adopt new methods of political action for systematic and effective opposition to the anti-Zionist policy of the Mandatory administration.