Hope of Return to Zion

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 38, 15 February 1939, Page 5

Hope of Return to Zion

Must Be One Place In World for Jews

LEADER’S ELOQUENT APPEAL

(British Official Wireless.)

Reneived Tuesday, 9.20 p.m.

RUGBY, Feb. 14.

In his statement of the Jewish caso which he made at the meeting between the British and Jewish delegation, Dr. Weizmann said at the root of the Jewish problem lay the hopelessness of the Jewish people. Everywhere a minority and in many countries helpless and at the mercy of others, they had preserved their identity because of their attachment to Palestine and of their hope of a return to Zion. The claim to Palestine had never been abandoned and the Jewish community there had never ceased to exist. In every age a group of Jews worked their way to Palestine and for the last sixty years active resettlement had been going on. The Balfour Declaration recognised these historic facts and in the preamble to the mandate international recognition was given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestnic and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.

It was essential that there should be one place in tho world whero Jews should n'ot be a fraction, an appendix or an adjunct to something else—where they should bo themselves musters of their own destinies.

Dr. Weizmann criticised the abandonment of the project for the Jewish State envisaged in the Peel report, while mentioning the objections of the Jews to Bianyn features of the scheme. He argued that tho Arabs had emerged from the war with four kingdoms. Insofar as the Balfour Declaration had contributed to victory for tho Allies it had also contributed to the liberation of the Afabs. He thought it was not irrelevant to compare what the Arabs had made of the extraordinary opportunities which had come to them with very little trouble and what the Jews had made of the chances vouchsafed to them. Tho Arab claim that Palestine was an Arab country and should have an Arab national Government was not capable of realisation. The Jews already .formed one-third of the population and were responsible for two-thirds or more of the economic and cultural activity of Palestine. The Arabs professed fear of Jewish domination but the Jews did not want to dominate Arabs but would not allow themselves to bo dominated by them.

Dr. Weizmann believed sincerely that the Jews and Arabs could find a meeting ground beneficial to both, but this could only be oil the basis of the mandate implemented in the spirit and letter, including the largest total of Jewish immigration in accordance with the economic capacity principle, an active policy of development and effective safeguards against the minority status.