Dr. Stephen S. Wise, speaking tonight on the subject of “Zionist Division and Strife – Could They Have Been Avoided?” replied to the charges by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver that he is for “minimal Zionism,” considers the Zionist movement of America “a piece of personal property,” and is injuring the Zionist cause through a policy of appeasement, timidity and backstair diplomacy.
“I would not know how to define ‘minimal Zionism’, unless it have reference to non-Zionism, or to the non-Zionist viewpoint which not even Dr. Silver would accuse me of sharing.” Dr. Wise said, “We are all maximal Zionists — that is to say, we believe in the cancellation without delay of the lamentable White Paper. We belive in unlimited Jewish immigration, and Jewish resettlement under Jewish control, at the earliest possible moment in Palestine. We believe in the reconstituting of Palestine, the Jewish National Home, as a free and democratic Jewish Commonwealth.”
Emphasizing that it was he who insisted that Dr. Silver become co-chairman of the Zionist Emergency Council, Dr. Wise pointed out that this in itself is the best answer to Dr. Silver’s charge that be, Dr. Wise, seeks to maintain monopoly over the American Zionist movement.
“More serious than this absurd charged,” Dr. Wise continued, “is the characterization of my service to the Zionist cause as ‘shtadlanut, which has been an egregious failure for many years, and not only as far as Zionism is concerned.’
“If that charge be true and valid. I am not fit to serve as chairman of the Council, to which chairmonship I have again been elected. A Shtadlan in other days was a person who, before the days of democratic movements, democratically organized and democratically led, sought, by indirection and by personal and publicly unsupported exertions, to secure exceptional favor from those in power. If true, the charge were grave indeed. Whether it is true or not, I can safely leave it to my fellow-Jews and to leaders of the political life of my country to decide. Jewish history will take care of this and other calumnies now levelled against my head.
“Finally, there is the most far-reaching accusation of all, namely, that the speaker is responsible for the failure of the Senate to adopt the Palestine Resolution. Now the facts may, and in truth must, be told. After a regrettable experience in the Spring of the year, when the resolution was halted by the insistence of the War and State Departments, the officers and members of the Emergency Council reached the unanimous decision — the co-Chairman, Dr. Silver, concurring — that no attempt should be made to bring about the adoption of the resolution unless the State Department previously gave its approval. That approval was withheld; and the disapproval was thrice repeated. Again and again the Emergency Council resolved not to press for the adoption of the resolution in either House, in view of the circumstance that the State Department saw fit not to give its approval. In persistent and never-ceasing contravention of the unanimously-reached decisions of the Emergency Council, Dr. Silver moved forward and sought to bring about the passage of the resolution, which he had every reason to know was for a time, and for reasons that had been made clear, disapproved by the State Department and in friendly terms even the President. In the end, the resolution was defeated.”
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.
