Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1919-04-20
Independence Of the Small
Nations and Worlds League
To Be Result of Conference
Rabbi Wise Hopes Union of Nations Will Give Great
Britain Mandate Comforting Power and Response
bilities of Tr1steesnip of Jewish Palestine.

OF Jewry in 1873. Since 1873 not
only have the Jews come to COM
mand a high place in the life of all
the civilized peoples, but the
world assembled through its repre-
sentatves at Paris dare not forget
that Jews have greatly and nobly
served in the armies of all nations,
and that is true even of the Russia
of the old order.
Equality for Jews.
cannot bring myself to believe
that it will be necessary to argue or
to plead on behalf of Jewish equali-
ty of status in European lands be-
fore the peace conference. A peace
conference that would suffer a
repetition of the Roumanian fiasco
of 1878 would be crime against
history and the cause for which the
allied peoples have bled. If the vic
tory of 1918, meant more than a
military feat, it must mean the end
of those disabilities and inequities
and injustices of which the ew has
too long been the victim in many
European lands. Surely it is not
chance that the nations that are
together to decree the future OF
humanity are those in which the
Jew stands out as enjoying equality
of status with his fellow citizens
America and England, France and
Italy will not do less than insist
upon bringing within the domain
of legal status that position which
the Jew has of right long enjoyed in
these lands.
In the third place, it must be
borne in mind that the four ma
tons which after all are the leaders
of the peace conference, are Eng
land, France Italy and our own
land. Great Britain has a tradition
of nearly three centuries of wholly
just and even generous treatment
of the Jew, an attitude eliminating
in the Balfour declaration of No
vember, 1917. AS for France.
have not only confidence in the
leadership of the people of France
but have reason to believe that
the French government will not
stand in the way of just and
equitable solution of the Palestine
problem at the peace conference
There may be elements in France
which are eager for territorial ad-
vantage and industrial opportuni-
ties, but l will not believe that
France, which better than any
great nation knows what it is to
suffer the denial of justice, will fail
to insist that the oldest of the IRE
dentas, the Jewish Irredenta, must
be restored as the Jewish home
land to the Jewish people.
The Zionist Question.
Is Palestine at once to become an
independent Jewish state? | answer
No. We may not hope for any
such outcome of the peace confer
ence. What we may hope for, with
grateful satisfaction, is that Great
Britain shall receive from the
league of nations a mandate which
will confer upon Great Britain the
power and responsibility of trustee
ship for a Jewish Palestine.
The rest of the picture it is for us
to fill out. for after all the future of
the Jewish Palestine will not be
matter of conference and of charter.
The Balfour declaration did not
restore Palestine to the Jews. The
league of nations cannot re-establish
the Jews in Palestine. What may be
hoped for is that under the league
of nations and with the furthering
help of British trusteeship there
will be such a reoccupation of Pal
estine as will in itself constitute the
foundations of that Jewish common
wealth which under God is once
again to arise in the land of Israel.