Labor M.P. Crossman Calls on U.S. to Act On Palestine Problem

Charging that the United States is utterly failing to fulfill its responsibilities in the Palestine crisis, Richard H. S. Crossman, British Labor Party M.P. and assistant editor of the "New Statesman and Nation," addressed a rally of the Liberal Union and Zionist group in New Lecture Hall Wednesday night.

He said that America must immediately remove the "moral stigma" overhanging the entire issue and express a willingness to permit the entry of 100,000 displaced European Jews into this country.

"The program of action for America now," Crossman said, "is to say you'll let 100,000 Jews in America--that will silence the Arabs; then back partition and offer an American volunteer army to enforce it."

Opposed to Bevin

In the United States at the invitation of the New York Herald-Tribune Forum, Crossman served on the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry on Palestine and has led the fight in Britain to change the Bevin policy. Bitterly opposed to much of what his Government is doing in meeting the problem of the Holy Land, he asserted that "every British official in the Middle East is anti-Jewish."

A key phase of the whole matter which is often glossed over, according to Crossman, is the fact that "Palestine is a tremendous, model socialist experiment. Socialism is dynamite--if it is aided, every Arab feudal regime in the Middle East is doomed. The Arab politician knows this all too well."

Curiously enough, he added, the Arab masses regard Jewish settlement as "the symbol of Western oppression, and leaders are thus able to exploit a hatred for British imperialism to keep out the Jews."

"Let us for once and for all distinguish between the refugee problem and the Palestine problem," Crossman continued. Of the total number of displaced persons now in Europe, he said, one-ninth are Jews. Fifteen percent of the Jews have stated a preference for going to America, 70 percent for Palestine, and 15 percent felt Palestine would be their choice were it easier to enter, with an American visa quite acceptable.

Calling for greater support of active American participation in the dilemma, Crossman said that "if the American Government had agreed to back the Commission Report with troops, the 100,000 would be in Palestine now.