Political report of the Executive of the Jewish Agency submitted to the ... Zionist Congress and the ... session of the Council of the Jewish Agency · 1937-08-01 · 8.1937 · p. Seite 83

83 14. The representations in regard to the inadequacy of the Jewish personnel in the security forces and public services as well as the anomalous position of the city of Tel Aviv assume particular urgency in the light of the tragic events of the last ten deys. On Sunday, April 19th, anti Jewish riots broke out in Jaffa, as a result of a false rumour which must have been spread with remarkable rapidity through the city, to the effect that some Arabs had been killed by Jews. Mob elements in the streets of Jaffa, among whom non-Palestinian Arabs were prominent, murderously assaulted Jews who happend to be in that town in the course of their normal work or business, and stabbed them to death. Altogether sixteen Jews were killed, or died of wounds received in Jaffa on that and the subsequent days. The wave of lawlessness which spread through other parts of the country brought the total number of Jewish victims up to eighteen. Considerable property was damaged or destroyed in some of the mixed cities and in zones of Jewish agricultural settlement where crops were burnt and fruit trees uprooted. The leaders of Arab political parties took advantage of the unrest created by the disturbances to proclaim an Arab national strike, in order to support their demands for the stoppage of Jewish immigration, the prohibition of the sale of land to Jews, and the establishment of a National Government in Palestine. At the time of writing, the Arab strike is still in progress and the country continues in a state of tension. This is not the first time that an attempt has been made by the use of violence to force the hands of the Mandatory Government into abandoning the policy of the Jewish National Home and to deter the Jewish people from proceeding with its work of settlement in Palestine. The Jewish people has demonstrated on similar occasions in the past that no such attacks can shake its determination to rebuild its National Home in Palestine. The Jewish Agency trusts that the Mandatory Government on its part will not be deflected by any threats, strikes or violence from carrying out its mandatory obligation. It would take the opportunity earnestly to appeal to the Mandatory Government to initiate a policy of active and systematic encouragement to the work of Jewish settlement and development in order, within the shortest period of time, to render the structure