To The Editor:
Your “The Month of History” of November, treating the report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, makes the following statement:
“The President had been able to control his overwhelming desire for the immigration of 100,000 Jews into Palestine when it involved support of the Anglo-American Committee recommendations or the federalization plan, both of which were opposed by Zionist extremists.”
I underscore your use of the words “Zionist extremists.” Your readers might assume from that, that there were organized forces in the Zionist movement that supported the Anglo-American Committee recommendations. Unless I am very much mistaken, only one Jewish organization in the United States came out in full support of all the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee, to wit, the American Council for Judaism.
This is not without some public interest, since there is in some quarters a criticism of both the British government and the American government for their failure to approve at once the complete set of recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. Regrettably, these circles do not know that with a single exception, the American Council, no Jewish organizations came out in support of the full adoption of the report. To what extent this failure influenced the inaction by the American and British governments—or furnished them with justifications for that inaction—can only be conjectured. I think it reasonable to believe that the failure on the part of Jewish organizations was not without some effect.
Sidney Wallach
New York City