The Southern Jewish Weekly

JEWISH REPRESENTATION NEEDED TO EXPLAIN FACTS

BY BORIS SMOLAR

(Editor, Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

FLUSHING MEADOWS (JTA)—The U. S. delegation to the U. N. General Assembly has apparently decided to find a means of giving Jews representation at the special session.

Although still standing by its position that there is no legal basis for granting the Jewish Agency a non-voting seat, an American spokesman indicated the U. S. was studying plans to give the Jews a voice.

At the same time, the U. S. delegation was considering the possibility of also enabling the Palestine Arabs to secure a hearing.

A demand that the Palestine Arabs be heard was made on several occasions by Asaf Ali, the delegate from India, who stated that the Palestine issue is a matter in which only the Jews and Arabs living in that country are concerned.

The five Arab states have also been pressing for a hearing for their Palestinian confreres.

The U. S. delegation, conscious that the delegates of the Arab countries during the last three days have exploited the platform of the U. N. to propagandize for their case feel that it would, therefore, only be fair to enable the Jews to state their case.

Members of the U. S. delegation—without conferring as yet with any other delegations—were today studying the following three possibilities:

1—to give a Jewish representation and the recognized spokesman of the Palestine Arabs a hearing before the U. N. Political Committee.

2—to have the representatives of the Jews and the non-Jewish community of Palestine appear for a hearing before a sub-committee of the Political Committee.

3—to arrange for such a hearing by an "ad hoc" committee, specially created for this purpose.

PLAN WOULD GIVE JEWS HEARING BY FULL ASSEMBLY, BUT BAR THEM FROM DISCUSSIONS

A hearing by the Political Committee would amount to a hearing by the full General Assembly, since the Assembly converts itself into the Political Committee when necessary.

Such a procedure would mean, however, that the Jewish representatives could not participate in the Assembly discussions as they have requested.

With regard to the formal requests of the Jewish groups, which were referred to the General Committee, the U. S. delegation is of the opinion that the Committee should merely list the communications and the U. N. Secretariat make copies available to anyone wanting them.

Representatives of Jewish groups refused to comment on the U. S. approach to the question of Jewish representation. However, it was understood that Jewish leaders do not see any reason why the Jewish spokesmen should not be heard from the same platform from which delegations of the five Arab countries have been speaking for the last three days.

POLE SUBMITS FORMAL REQUEST FOR JEWISH REPRESENTATION

The Polish representative, Josef Winiewicz, who was the only delegate to insist on the admission of Jewish representatives during discussions at the steering committee, submitted a formal request to this effect to the committee.

With Poland definitely favoring Jewish admission, and with Czechoslovakia ready to support the demand, it was predicted that Soviet delegate Andrei Gromyko may also endorse Jewish representation.

The seating of Jews was also demanded by the Ecuadorean delegate, Dr. Neftali Ponce.

The delegate of India, Asaf Ali, although stressing that the Palestine issue is a matter with which the Jews of Palestine—and no other Jews—should be concerned, also said that after hearing all the speeches of the Arab and other delegates, he feels that the U. N. "is playing Hamlet without a Hamlet," since the Jews are absent from the discussions.
The interest aroused by the USSR was due to the fact that the official Soviet attitude on Palestine has not been heard since the USSR became a great power.

There was not much in the statement of the U. S. delegate at the steering committee to satisfy the Jews.

The feeling prevailed that if the State Department wanted to, a way could have been found to grant the Jewish Agency's request for representation at the Assembly without a vote.

This feeling may have had no legal justification, but it existed nevertheless.

And the American delegation was highly embarrassed because of it.

American officials were trying their best, especially in the press lobby, to change this feeling.

This embarrassment led to the U. S. delegation's later change of attitude insisting that the Jewish Agency be heard by the Political Committee.

Incidentally, some of the important members of the American delegation believe that Zionist lobbying in Washington was partially responsible for Britain's failure to act on the recommendations of the Anglo-American Inquiry Committee on Palestine.

They indicate that the reason that the United States was mute on the section of the committee's report recommending that Palestine be neither a Jewish nor an Arab state was due to strong Zionist influence.

And they claim that had this part of the report been accepted by Washington, Britain would have had a hard time refusing to carry out all the recommendations, including the one advocating the immediate admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine.