JEWISH PLANS

Grey River Argus, 1 February 1946, Page 5

JEWISH PLANS

TO RUSH MIGRANTS Into Palestine JERUSALEM, Jan. 30. “Haganah,” the Jewish illegal defence organisation responsible for the landing of the majority of Jewish illegal immigrants, has prepared new plans to enable four to five times the number of immigrants to reach Palestine in 1946 than in 1945, according to the organisation’s underground newspaper. It says ' that several thousand illegal immigrants were smuggled into Palestine in 1945. More than 2000 British air-borne troops cordoned off the four Jewish quarters north of Tel Aviv. Police and troops carried out a six hours' search and interrogated several hundred men, two being detained for further questioning. Loud-speaker vans' tuored the area when cordoned off, warning the people that a curfew had been imposed for the duration of the search. The Jewish National Council has called mass meetings throughout Palestine to-morrow to protest against the cessation of Jewish immigration into the country. All Jewish shops, offices and restaurants will be closed and Jewish transport will stop from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. The council urged all who attended the meetings to observe complete internal discipline and a sense of responsibility. The object of the meetings was to convey an unequivocal reply from united Palestine Jewry to attempts to divide Palestine Jewry and world Jewry. The "Palestine Post,” a Zionist newspaper published in English, describes as "naked anarchy” the new defence regulation giving the power of detention to any person generally or specifically authorised by the Military Commander. This is not civil or martial law, says the paper. Moreover, if the regulation threaten: ing eight years’ imprisonment or a fine of £lOOO for any person harbouring illegal immigrants is enforced, the Palestine Government will require prisons for 600,000 Jews. A member of the Arab Higher Committee stated that Sir Alan Cunningham informed the Committee the British Governmnet had decided to allow 1500 Jews monthly to enter Palestine, pending completion of the work of the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry. Nothing is known officially in London of any Government statement on Jewish immigration into Palestine. JEWISH PLEAS IN LONDON LONDON, Jan. 30. Doctor James Parkes told the Anglo-American committee on Palestine: "There will be thousands of Jewish suicides throughout the world, and thousands of decent youngsters will be turned into desperadoes if Palestine is turned into an Arab State.” It is unfair to expect the Jews to cope with the difficulties of anti-Semitism, because anti-Semitism is a Gentile problem not a Jewish problem. The Jewish fellowship proposed that U.N.O. should be responsible for the settlement of the homeless European Jews. U.N.O. should guarantee the rights of Jews who wanted to emigrate and re-settle, and take effective steps to prevent deliberate dissemination of anti-Semitic doctrines within countries of member States. Colonel Louis Gluckstein, President of the Liberal Jewish synagogue, said that if two great enlightened nations, Britain and America, could achieve a solution of anti-Semitism then the problem would at long last be laid to rest. “It is our duty to rehabilitate physically and mentally, the Jews who suffered, rather than say ‘which do you prefer, Belsen or Palestine.’ ’ Fie added he thought the best solution was opening the gates of the world to the Jew. ■ The Anglo-Jewish Association supported the ' case for a Palestinian State with extensive immigration to be so developed as to provide a Jewish national home either with selfgovernment or in association with the British Commonwealth. Mr Justice Singleton asked why Palestine should be asked to take all the Jewish refugees, if other parts of the world did little or nothing. Mr L. J. Stein, a member of the Anglo-Jewish Association said: “We can And no other country willing or capable of taking Jews in large numbers.”