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 146

146 and in other Swiss towns, as well as in the various countries visited by him from time to time, and has granted a number of interviews and spoken at several press conferences with regard to the situation in Palestine. In October, 1935 the Geneva Office arranged a special performance of the new Keren Hayesod Film, "The Promised Land." Some 2100 persons attended, including members of the Mandates Commission, and of the Secretariat of the League of Nations, various diplomatic and consular representatives, as well as representatives of the local and the international press. A French version of Dr. Weizmann's evidence before the Royal Commission was prepared and published as a pamphlet by the Geneva Office, while a number of other pamphlets and leaflets in French were also issued by the Office in Paris for circulation in French-speaking countries. While these various propagandist activities are in the first place directed towards the non-Jewish world, it should be added that they are also not wiuxout their effect on Jewish circles in French-speaking countries. There has latterly been evident a growing interest both in the Council and in the Assembly of the League in the question of the Mandated territories, and not least in Palestine and the development of the Jewish National Home. In September 1935 a debate took place in the Sixth (political) Commission of the Assembly on the subject of Palestine, in which the re~i:: Jentatives of eight nations participated. The settlement work of the Jewish Agency came in for special commendation, and several of the speakers urged the desirability of a liberal immigration policy on the part of the Mandatory Power. At the June 1936 meeting of the Permanent Mandates Commission, when the affairs of Palestine would in the ordinary way have come under examination by the Commission, the accredited representative of the Mandatory Power declared that his Government would be unable, in view of the outbreak of the disturbances and the appointment of the Royal Commission, to enter into any review of the situation until the report of the Commission had been received. The members of the Commission, on the other hand, took the view that the sending of a Royal Commission to Palestine should not be permitted to interfere with the enquir}7 which the Mandates Commission, as the controlling organ of the mandatory system, would be called upon to undertake. The Mandatory Government, however, maintained its standpoint, and the Commission finally agreed to defer its consideration of the Palestinian situation to a later date. The examination of the annual memorandum of the Jewish Agency for Palestine to the Permanent Mandates Commission, was accordingly also postponed. Notwithstanding the absence of any examination by the Per^ manent Mandates Commission at its June session of the report of