G. Seibert, a leader of the Bund, the Jewish Socialist Party of Poland, protested vehemently against the senti-mental mass hysteria that has been rused among Jews by the Jewish-Arab riots, in an address at the sixth annual convention of the Jewish Socialist Federation in New York. Appealing to Jewish workers and Socialists to beware of exaggerated racial feelings he declared that “political Zionism and the agitation for a Jewish National home in Palestine were he causes of the present trouble here.”
Mr. Ziebert brought greetings to the convention from the central executive committee of his party in Poland, which is anti-Zionist.
“As strongly and as bitterly as we may resent the activities of the armed hands that performed the inhuman atrocities in Palestine, we must not forget at the same time the objective causes that brought about the present situation,” Mr. Ziebert said.
“Political Zionism” and the “tactless and harmful agitation” in regard to a national home in Palestine, at a time when the overwhelming majority of the population of that country is Arab, the speaker said, were the first and last causes of the bloody tragedy in Palestine.
Mr. Ziebert said the Bund recently polled in a large Polish city a greater vote than any of the Zionist Jewish parties.
The Palestine question will be discussed by the more than 70 delegates to the convention. A detailed declaration prepared by the federation’s executive committee, which was sent out six weeks ago to the thirty-eight Jewish Socialist branches, will be taken up.
The convention, according to Saul Rifkin, national chairman, marks the final victory of the Socialists over the Communists in the Jewish trade unions. Previous conventions have been devoted to the fight against Communists, he said, but that is now a dead issue.
There were no public sessions yesterday, which was devoted to committee meetings. This morning the question of a labor party will be brought up in a speech by Hillel Rogoff of the “Jewish Daily Forward,” and the relation of the federation to the trade union movement and to other Jewish organizations will be discussed.
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.
