Summary
The Zionist policy platform of 1942 which, in the Anglo-American Committee Report’s account, formed the basic policy advocated in the Jewish case presented at Washington, London and Jerusalem, summed up in three points: that the Mandatory should hand over control of immigration to the Jewish Agency, that it should abolish restrictions on the sale of land, and that it should proclaim as its ultimate aim the establishment of a Jewish State as soon as a Jewish majority has been achieved — with the additional demand that 100,000 certificates for immigration into Palestine be issued immediately (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, line 1109).
Details
- The demand for a Jewish State goes beyond the obligations of either the Balfour Declaration or the Mandate, and was expressly disowned by the Chairman of the Jewish Agency as late as 1932, as the Report states (line 1109).
- The Program has the support of the overwhelming majority of Zionists and of the Zionist movement as a whole, chiefly because it expresses the policy of Palestinian Jewry, which plays a leading role in the Jewish Agency; whether that support rests on full knowledge of its implications and risks is, the Report says, quite another matter (lines 1109-1117).
- Its Palestinian critics — Aliyah Hadashah, Hashomer Hatza’ir and Judah Magnes’s Ihud — do not exceed one quarter of the Jewish population in Palestine at the time of the Report, while the Revisionist Party and the more extreme groups stand on its other side (lines 1117-1125).
- The Arabs were opposed to the idea of a Jewish National Home even before the Biltmore Program and the demand for a Jewish State, and their opposition has become more intense and more bitter since that program was adopted, as Chapter VI of the Report states (Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, lines 1225-1229).
Related pages
Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Jewish Agency, Jewish National Home, Hashomer Hatza’ir, Ihud