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 140

140 after this statement, everything possible was done to bring home to the authorities the dangers and the gross injustice of thus apparently, on the one hand penalising the discipline and fortitude displayed throughout the disturbances by the Jewish population of Palestine, and on the other, rewarding outrage and intimidation. It was strongly urged further that such action by the Government at the outset of the Commission's investigations was likely seriously to prejudice the character of their enquiry; while, in addition, emphasis was placed on the hardship which such a decision would involve for thousands of persons who would, but for this arbitrary exclusion, have been entitled to enter Palestine. Nor was it until November 5th (the day on which the Commission left for Palestine) that the Colonial Secretary, in announcing a schedule of 1,800 for the current six months, informed the House of Commons that H. M. Government had decided that "a temporary suspension of immigration would not be justifiable on economic or other grounds." The announcement of the schedule nevertheless evoked mixed feelings among Zionists, for while there was inevitably great relief at the fact that the threatened stoppage of immigration had been averted, at the same time the schedule actually granted (based, as stated by the Colonial Secretary capacity on a conservative estimate of the country's economic absorptive capacity) represented a drastic reduction on previous schedules, and was, in fact, the smallest since October, 1921. III. The Jewish Agency before the Royal Commission: The task of preparing the material for submission to the Royal Commission — in particular the principal memorandum outlining the main Zionist case — was entrusted to Mr. Leonard Stein (the Honorary Legal Adviser to the Jewish Agency, and formerly — ,1921-29 — its Political Secretary), and in collaboration with the London Office this work had been going forward steadily for some time prior to the departure of the Commission for Palestine. This memorandum — a comprehensive work of some 280 pages — was accordingly in print and ready for submission to the Commission at an early stage of the latter's proceeding's in Palestine. Upon its completion, Mr. Stein (who had aiready spent a month in Palestine on the preparation of material for the memorandum) returned to Palestine to continue his work of advice and collaboration with the Executive and their helpers there. The departure of the Commission and the opening of its enquiries in Palestine produced a decided détente in the political atmosphere in London. Not merely was attention concentrated, for the most part, on the actual enquiry as it proceeded in Jerusalem, but as regards political action in London, many of our friends in Parliament and elsewhere took the view that further developments must await the conclusion of the Commission's en-