BRITISH POLICY ON PALESTINE

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 25020, 31 October 1946, Page 3

BRITISH POLICY ON PALESTINE

“JEWS IN EUROPE FORGOTTEN” CRITICISM BY NEWSPAPER (Special Correspondent N.Z?P-A.) LONDON. October 29. The “Manchester Guardian,” in a leading article, strongly criticises the British Government’s policy on Palestine. “The British Government has achieved one remarkable feat which was certainly not in its election programme. It has contrived to ignore as far as possible what is happening in Palestine and forget completely the Jews who still remain in Europe," says the newspaper. “In this ignoble course it is being followed by the majority of the Labour Party, the House of Commons, and the country at large. Any criticism of our policy in the United States is, of course, the lowest kind of politics. Any complaint from Russia is inspired by a desire to embarrass us in the Middle East. If the Jews themselves revolt, that is obviously the basest ingratitude.” After pointing out that 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 Jews lost their lives in Europe as a result of Nazi persecution, and that 500.000 of the survivors are now desperately trying to leave countries like Poland, where anti-Semitism is widespread, the newspaper says: “Since obviously all these Jews cannot go to Palestine, it is for the British Government, which is preventing them going to Palestine, to give a lead in finding them alternative homes. “The British Government should realise that there is no stronger argument for Zionism than the failure of the United Nations to provide an alternative to Palestine. We cannot cling greedily to a mandate which we are no longer trying to fulfil. We cannot maintain an army in Palestine without a policy to justify it. We cannot keep Jewish leaders imprisoned without trial. We cannot go on filling the camps in Cyprus with refugees without having some alternative to offer them.

“Clumsily and stupidly, though often with the best of motives, the Government has neglected that spirit of liberal government which, as Professor Trevelyan has written, has ’held together the modern British Empire and never been neglected without a disaster.’ If Mr Attlee and Mr Bev in are honestly convinced that there is no way out of this dilemma they should have the moral courage to go to the United Nations Assembly and ask for help, or even return the mandate to the Trusteeship Council. We cannot blunder on indefinitely.”