“I feel sure that Stavsky is innocent, and it is evident that the investigation has so far produced no proof of his guilt that has a chance of convincing any unbiased court. We will stand by this innocent man, as my generation stood by Mendel Beilis,” Vladimir Jabotinsky, Revisionist President and head of the Brith Trumpeldor said in a statement which he has made to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency here.
“Timid friends urge me,” he continued, “to treat this case as an opportunity for assuring the world that Revisionism and the Betar (Brith Trumpeldor) neither preach nor countenance murder. I must disappoint these friends. Just as during the Beilis case no decent Jew ever abased himself to swearing again and again that our religion does not teach drinking Christian blood, so I decline to insult, by such assurances, the movement into which I put the best of my soul, trying to rear and fashion it in the loftiest of Jewish ethical traditions. Our answer to the calumny will be not apologia, but accusation.
“There are two rules sacred to all civilized humanity: a man claiming his innocence is considered innocent until a court has pronounced him guilty (the decent part of humanity sometimes goes even farther, as in the Dreyfus, or the Sacco-Vanzetti cases); and, secondly, even the proved guilt of any individual should never be construed as a guilt of his community. Both these rules should be especially sacred to all Jews, doubly so the second, whose violation has ever been a poisoned weapon in the hands of anti-Semitism.
VIOLATING PRINCIPLES
“I accuse a large section of Jewry, in this case, of ignominiously violating both those intangible principles,” Jabotinsky declared. “They see a young Jew in a Palestine prison swearing his innocence, fighting for his life and his honor; they have not yet heard of any proof against him; yet they already proclaim him a murderer and push him to the gallows. Moreover, they charge a whole great movement, counting tens of thousands of adherents and tenfold more sympathizers in Jewry, with moral complicity in the hideous crime.
“And they do it for the open, obvious and ugly sake of party vendetta and electioneering speculation. With all the authority of a life spent in the service of the Jewish cause, I throw in the face of all that unworthy section of Jewry my cold and bitter contempt.
“I know that the vast majority of our people are disgusted at this shameful pogrom and blood-libel campaign by Jews against Jews,” Jabotinsky said. “But I warn them that, by their timid silence, they contribute to an unheard-of demoralization of our public life; and worse— they help the enemies of all Jewry and of Zionism to divert the inquiry on Arlosoroff’s murder from investigating into the real origins of this crime — origins which, no doubt, are the same as those to which, in Palestine, we owe the events of August 1929, the Jadjur and Nahalal murders, and the fire recently set to the Balfour Forest.
PROUD TO BE A REVISIONIST
“As to Revisionism and the Betar, I am proud of being a member and leader of both, proud of the men and women and youths gathered under those two manners, proud of their programs, their records and their tactics. Both movements will continue to be led in the same direction as before; no flinching, no changes, and, in particular, both will go on, armed with the clean weapons of persuasion and organization, fighting the danger of class-war and class-domination, until that course of Palestine Jewry is utterly and tracelessly broken.”
Concluding his statement with a reference to Dr. Arlosoroff Jabotinsky said, “I take my hat off to the memory of this honest, quiet, hardworking Jewish patriot who tried, on his death-bed to render a last service to his nation by saying: ‘I do not believe that the murderer was a Jew.’ Nor do we; and we will act accordingly.”
JOSEPH RIDDER OFF AGAIN
Joseph Ridder, publisher of the New York Staats-Herold, sailed Saturday for Europe aboard the S.S. Europa of the North German Lloyd line. At the office of his newspaper it was stated that he plans to go to Berlin on business and would remain there indefinitely.
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.
