CAIRO, Egypt, Dec. 3 (U.P.)—The Arab League announced today that its eleven member States would boycott all Jewish-produced goods from Palestine beginning Jan. 1.

The League’s secretary-general, Abdul Rahman Azzam Bey, said the boycott was ordered because Jewish industry in Palestine was “based on Zionist funds, collected in foreign countries, to serve a political purpose — the establishment of a Jewish national home and State in Palestine.”

“This purpose is not realizable except by the exploitation of markets in Arab countries,” he added.

Without indicating their nature, Azzam Bey said the League was prepared to take additional steps, if necessary, to combat Zionist aims.

Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen, Trans-Jordan, and Syria are members of the League. Arab groups in Palestine are represented in its councils. Azzam Bey called on non-League Arab States to join the boycott. He specifically exempted products of Jewish industries in Arab States other than Palestine.

Asked whether the League had acted to protect the welfare of the estimated 70,000 Arabs working for Jewish industry in Palestine, Azzam Bey said he believed the Zionists “will be most pleased when 70,000 Arabs are forced to leave Palestine.”

Rabbi Chides at Delay

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — President Truman’s not having named a single member of the British-American Palestine Commission three weeks after announcing his intention to do so was criticized today by Rabbi Baruch Korff of New York, who recently led a march of 600 rabbis in Washington.

In Washington to confer with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on pending Palestine resolutions, saying he was still waiting to hear from the President on his proposal for a “deadline” by which the commission would be required to report.

“If this commission is the only medium to facilitate the inescapable repatriation of Europe’s Jews to Palestine, we must act now before the winter imposes additional hardship and privation upon the depleted Jewry,” Rabbi Korff said.

President Truman wrote that he was taking a personal interest in making possible the entry into Palestine of a substantial number of the unfortunate Jews in Europe. In his reply made public today, Rabbi Korff said:

“It is obvious that England will meet your request following the investigation of the Anglo-American Fact-Finding Commission. To have granted your petition outright would have been inconsistent with British Colonial Office policy, since such a decision in the absence of empire paraphernalia would in all likelihood spur the Jews to greater demands.

I should be very grateful to you, Sir, for your personal assurance that this commission will act at least with the speed comparable to that of the gas chambers of Oswiecim.”

Policy in Europe Denounced

A scathing denunciation of British policy on the Jewish question in Europe was issued by the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation, signed by eight Americans, including two Representatives and William B. Ziff, Louis Bromfield, Emil Lengyel, Ben Hecht, and Karin Michaels, writers.

Representatives Andrew Somers of New York and Bertrand W. Gearhart of California were joined by former Representative Will Rogers Jr. in the 6,000-word statement.

The group denied the existence of any basic Arab-Hebrew animosity except that stimulated by the British. They said the present leadership in all Arab countries was placed in power through British intervention and kept there by the same means.

“Great Britain keeps up the fiction of Arab might and military threats in order to get rid of her obligation toward Palestine—for fear of Hebrew industrial competition and of introducing democracy in the Middle East.” It was also being used, he said, as a pretext to preserve her “imperial domination in the whole area in expectation of war against Russia, in which she hopes that America will be involved.”

“The British administration, in pursuing the above aims, is therefore determined to sacrifice the remnants of the Hebrew people through forbidding them entrance into their national territory. Pursuing this object, it has transformed Palestine into the only country on earth where anti-Semitic laws still prevail.”

Unprovoked Firing Denied

By Wireless to The New York Times

LONDON, Dec. 3 — Replying in the House of Commons to a question on the recent shooting incident in Hoola, Palestine, in which six Jews were killed by the British military while attempting to break through a cordoned village, George Hall, Colonial Secretary, said today in a written statement:

“It is necessary to take this opportunity to state categorically that the allegation, to which some currency has been given, that British troops opened fire without provocation on unarmed persons is completely without foundation. I am satisfied that the forces in Palestine have been displaying exemplary restraint in the face of great provocation.”

Original Source

December 4, 1945 | © The New York Times

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