The Jews of Palestine “are most reluctant to have a conflict, or to enter into open warfare with the Arabs,” Israel Rokach, mayor of Tel Aviv, declared here today upon his first visit to the United States. He was given a reception at City Hall by Mayor William O’Dwyer of New York.
Mayor Rokach said that the primary purpose of his visit to this country is “to insure the implementation of plans mapped out by the Jewish National Fund of America which will make possible a sound agricultural and urban development within the Jewish State, and will secure its frontiers and sefeguard all its people.” The plans will be discussed at a three-day conference of J.N.F. leaders which will open Jan. 2 at the Pennsylvania Hotel here.
“The question of defense,” Mayor Rokach stated, “is in this crucial period present in the minds of the friends of Jewish Palestine and of all those who believe in the sanctity of international agreements and decisions. Palestine Jewry is most reluctant to have a conflict or to enter into open warfare with the Arabs. I am a descendant of a family which has lived in Palestine for more than a hundred years and has maintainel most frienily relations with our Arab neighbors. I know that our Arab neighbors are also averse to such conflict. The present Arab attacks are the handiwork of hired hands directed by intriguing politicians. At all events, we, the Jews of Palestine, will know how to defend our lives and our national status. Naturally, we shall need and have every right to expect and receive the cooperation and armament to which we are entitled by virtue of the decision of the United Nations.
“Important as these problems of defense are, they do not, to our way of thinking, eclipse the imperative necessity for uninterrupted immigration of Jews into Palestine and for continous land purchase and development. We are preparing to receive many thousands of our fellow-Jews who are still languishing in the DP camps in Europe. Every Jew in Palestine wants more Jews to come there. For the absorption of the great influx we must prepare the necessary land areas,” the Tel Aviv mayor said.
Speaking briefly, Mayor O’Dwyer greeted Mr. Rokach “as a leader and representative of a new and honorable state” and “as a man who has dedicated himself to the task of enlisting aid for a liberty-loving people.” He said that it was very appropriate that Mayor Rokach made his first official stop in New York, which was the seat of the U.N., whose historic decision means statehood for the Jewish people. The ceremony was attended by several hundred persons. Judge Morris Rothenberg, president of the JNF, spoke and the Police Department chorus sang Hatikvah.
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