British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 70. Historical Summary: Period IX: December, 1943 to 1944. The agitation for a Jewish State and unrestricted immigration

CHAPTER II.

10th December, 1943.

The mukhtur and six members of the Jewish settlement of Hulda were convicted by a military court and sentenced to periods of imprisonment ranging from six to two years for the possession of arms. They were held up in the Jewish press as martyrs in the cause of Jewish defence organization.

1944.

The year 1944 witnessed a further growth of the tendency, already noted, of both communities to dwell upon their own future to the exclusion of the war and wider world issues.

The various public statements made from time to time by statesmen and representative political bodies, principally in America and in Great Britain, had their reactions in Palestine and each brought with it a resurgence of political feeling. The most notable of these statements were :-

(a) The joint resolution in favour of unrestricted immigration and the establishment of a Jewish State introduced in the United States Congress in January, 194-1, the statement made by Rabhis Silver and 'Vise after their interview with President Roosevelt in March. in regard to his attitude towards the White Paper and the subsequent deferment of the joint resolution.

(b) The message sent in March by Field Marshal Smuts to the Zionist Federation.

(c) The resolution of the British Labour Party in May, 1944, that the Arabs should be induced to move out of Palestine provoked a particularly strong outburst of indignant press comment and public protest from Arabs, who regarded it as a new manifestation of the effectiveness of Zionist propaganda abroad in distorting the local picture: it was also deprecated by the Hebrew press and official Zionist circles, who maintained their contention that Zionist aims can be achieved without displacing or harming the Arab population.

(d) The statements made bv both Democrats and Republicans in the course of the Presidential elections in the United States in the autumn of 1944, and, in particular, the text of a letter by the President, released on 15th October by Senator Wagner, in which the President expressed himself in "favour of the opening of Palestine to unrestricted Jewish immigration and colonization and such a policy as to result in the establishment there of a free and democratic Jewish commonwealth"

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