A resolution challenging the “moral and legal validity” of Britain’s new Palestine policy and rejecting it as a violation of Jewish rights was drafted today by the political commission of the 21st biennial World Zionist Congress and is expected to be adopted unanimously, according to an official statement, at tomorrow’s plenary session.
Tomorrow’s session is expected to mark the closing of the Congress since the more than 600 delegates, especially those from Palestine and Poland, are anxious to rush home in view of the international crisis. The Congress, which opened on Aug. 16, was originally scheduled to last two weeks.
The resolution declares that the British policy is impracticable and cannot lead to peace in Palestine. The Jews, it asserts, cannot acquiesce to being reduced to the status of a minority in the Jewish national home, subjected to Arab rule. It charges that the British White Paper ignores international recognition, contained in the Palestine mandate, of the Jews’ historic right to return to Palestine.
The new immigration policy is denounced as a complete reversal of the mandatory obligation to facilitate immigration at a time when the greatest need for such immigration exists. The new land policy is termed a violation of the mandate which, it is stated, will injure the interests of the Arab cultivator. The resolution voices “the strongest possible protest against the discriminatory character of this legislation” and reaffirms that the mandatory obligations were undertaken to the whole Jewish people, not only to the Jews of Palestine.
Other resolutions were drafted by the political commission protesting against Britain’s six-month ban on Jewish immigration to Palestine beginning Oct. 1; expressing appreciation to members of all parties in the British Parliament who “understood Jewish needs” and appeals to the British people to uphold the sanctity of international pledges, and welcoming the report of the League of Nations Mandates Commission which held the British policy to be contrary to the mandate.
The organization committee adopted a ten-point resolution recommending that the size of the Congress be henceforth reduced to 300 delegates, and calling for certain reforms in election of delegates.
A meeting of the American General Zionist group, comprising the delegates of the Zionist Organization of America and Hadassah, proposed that Mrs. Rose Jacobs, of New York, member of the Palestine Executive of the Jewish Agency, be elected to the World Zionist Executive with headquarters in London.
Meanwhile, the Irgun Zvai Leumi (Jewish National Military Organization) affiliated with the extremist Zionist-Revisionists, who are not represented in the Congress, issued a statement denying an assertion in a German radio broadcast that the group was pursuing an anti-British policy.
“That is false,” the statement said. “The Irgun is opposed to the present British policy on Palestine but is pursuing a policy of seeking Anglo-French support for establishment of a Jewish state.”
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.
