New York Post

SUNDAY, MARCH 26, 1948

Munich at Lake Success


The Black Friday When We Betrayed
Partition Appeased Only Evil

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.

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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.