ACTION CONDEMNED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26530, 4 August 1947, Page 5

ACTION CONDEMNED

MURDER OF TWO BRITISH SERGEANTS Rec. 9 p.m. NEW YORK, Aug. 2. The Herald Tribune, in an editorial on the murder of the two British sergeants, headed: “The Climax in Palestine,” appeals to Jewish ' leaders there to restore order to their people. “The cause of Zionism faces a disaster which it would be folly to disguise. However, one may sympathise with the Jewish people for their delays and disappointments. The events of the last few days have revealed a barbarism in the terrorist mind which threatens to compromise a great cause.” The Zionist Organisation of America has issued a statement denouncing the hanging of the two British sergeants by the Irgun Zvai Leumi. The statement said: “We condemn the Irgun for this foul deed as vehemently as we condemn the British Government for the foreign terror it has instituted in Palestine.”

The Jewish Agency in London, replying to the Archbishop of York’s statement that if the agency in Palestine had co-operated earlier the sergeants would not have been murdered, said the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Council and the vast majority of Jews in Palestine had done everything they could to. combat terrorism. “Members of the Haganah had sacrificed their lives in foiling terrorist plans to blow up military establishments, and Jewish organisations in Palestine strove to save the sergeants. They can no more be blamed than can all the soldiers and police who tried to do the same and also did not succeed,” adds the statement.