Palestine and the United Nations
The British decision to refer the problem of Palestine to the United Nations is now over a fortnight old. Consequently the sooner the next step is taken the better. But what is the next step? To wait for the next full session of the Assembly in September is dearly wrong. A special session of the Assembly to consider this issue only would be almost equally misguided. It would have to be requested by a majority of the members and it could only be con- voked by a decision of the Security Council. Moreover the constant Russian pressure to remove all major issues away from the Assembly and towards the Security Council would have to be taken into account. There is no good reason for lengthening the road which inevitably leads to the Security Council. Certainly the suggestion that a small informal committee should first visit Palestine has nothing to commend it at all. All the facts are perfectly well known. What is wanted now is a decision, and the Security Council is best fitted to take that decision. There has already been too much delay, and for that the British Government must take its full share of the blame. But it clearly cannot take on the responsibility for fighting a war alone. If that could be done it would have been done already. Instead, the latest and biggest wave of outrages has only produced more security measures, which have little in common with an active campaign. It is too much to expect that militant Jews will drop their increasingly violetit attempts to bring in illegal immigrants, their pettifogging attempts to secure writs of habeas corpus on behalf of such immigrants, their irresponsible refusal .o help bring in the terrorists and their more than irresponsible demands for a Jewish political State of Palestine.- They must De taught that these are not just crimes against the British, but crimes against the world.