By OBSERVER
On Black Friday, when the United States and the Security
Council made their about face, a delegate to the United Nations said:
“The first child of the United Nations is dead.” To which
another delegate replied: “The mother is dead, too.”
Last spring the United Nations convened in a special
session of the General Assembly. A committee for Palestine, in which
all members of the United Nations were represented, was established;
a Commission of 11 nations was sent to Palestine and Europe to investigate
the problem; after many weeks of investigation, it brought back 1st
report.
All the nations again deliberated at Lake Success in
the Palestine Committee after long discussion the plan to partition
Palestine was accepted by the Committee and submitted to the General
Assembly at Flushing Meadows.
The General Assembly of all nations again deliberated
at length and agreed by a more than two-thirds majority to the partition
of Palestine.
It fixed the date when this partition was to take place
and when the Jewish and the Arab states were to be established, with
representatives at the United Nations. Five small nations were asked
to send members to Palestine to effectuate partition. Great Britain
refused them permission to enter earlier than two weeks before the
end of the mandate on May 15.
The Arab states around Palestine sent troops into Palestine
thus violating the decision of the United Nations.
The United States imposed an embargo on arms to Palestine,
but the British sent arms to the Arab states “according to the
contracts.” It was up to the Security Council to decide whether
Palestine presented a menace to peace.
Behind a silken curtain of silence the State and Defence
Depts. planned a “shabby trick on the Jewish community of Palestine,”
in the words of the New York Times editorial of Mar 21.
There was need to build up a segment of public opinion
which should demonstrate that not every one in the United States agreed
with partition. Miss Virginia Gildersleeve, retired Dean of Barnard
College, organized a small committee.
* * *
D. Dodson in the American Mercury of July, 1946, wrote
that Barnard College under Dean Gildersleeve practices “most
flagrant discrimination where the number of Jewish applicants is concerned.”
This statement has never been disproved or disputed. Apparently, Miss
Gildersleeve believes that Jews should be admitted into Palestine
as they are into Barnard College—by a numerus clausus.
As to the prerogatives of the General Assembly of the United Nations,
Miss Gildersleeve wrote (Herald Tribune, March 9)
“In order to uphold the United Nations we are
not now obliged to put through partition just because the General
Assembly recommended it . . . So I beg you to urge our leaders,
our press, and our people to read the Charter of the United Nations.
. . of that world organization, on which our hopes for the future
so largely depend.”
Now Secretary of State Marshall calls for another special
session of the General Assembly in order to make the about-face before
a greater public. But if the General Assembly can only recommend,
then it is, in the words of Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, just a debating
society with “actors and supernumeraries busily engaged in futile
talks.”
Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. might as well ask the United
Nations for the return of his generous gift of a parcel of land on
the East Side of New York City. A debating society does not need so
much space. They can convene in Columbus Circle under the sky. And
on rainy days they can stand there under umbrellas, the symbol of
Munich, of the appeasement of evil.
