Peace in Palestine, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 6, 1947.

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Enduring peace will come to Palestine after the British get out and the country is divided as recommended by the United Nations.

“The Jews are convinced we shall be able to guard our own borders and that ultimately we shall have nothing to fear from the Arabs and vice versa.”

The prediction was made yesterday by Rabbi Franklin Cohn, executive director of the West Coast Palestine Histadrut campaign.

Histadrut is the Palestine Jewish labor organization to which 70 per cent of the Holy Land Jews belong. The American Histadrut committee is raising funds with which to train farmers and technicians so they can go to Palestine and add their strength to the building of a new State.

OPTIMISTIC AT OUTCOME

Rabbi Cohn is optimistic about the outcome of the Palestine problem “because,” he said, “this is the first time in a year the United States and the Soviet Union have been able to agree on a single major issue. Only technicalities, which can be ironed out, separate the two powers.”

The rabbi leans toward the United States’ plan for the governing of Palestine between the time the British quit it and the two new countries stand on their own.

The Soviet Union wants the new mandate to fall under the U. N. Security Council.

The United States wants to guide the land by a committee from the U. N. General Assembly.

The radio believes in the United States’ method because he fears the veto power of the Security Council members. He believes application of the power may stymie day-to-day decisions in Palestine.

But the important thing, he emphasized, was for the British to get out. “The British government,” Rabbi Cohn said, “has done nothing to strengthen the economic development of our country or help its colonization.”

What’s more, he charged, the British have neglected to round u the Jewish terrorist organizations-Irgun and Stern Gang-“in order to have disturbances to demonstrate the need for British troops in Palestine.”

There are about 3000 terrorists and 120,000 British troops in the Holy Land, he said.

The Jewish and Arab masses, he held, are not unfriendly toward each other. It’s just the Arab land holders who are looking for trouble, Rabbi Cohn said.

And they won’t move, he explained, because the Arabs do not have a well equipped army.

OIL INVOLVED

Also, Rabbi Cohn added, British and American oil interests pay big money-$52,000 daily to Ibn Saud of Arabia-for the right to work the oil fields.

A holy war-as some Arab leaders threaten-would disturb the operations and reduce the profits of the oil interests.

Solution-threaten to quit paying the landowners royalties if there is a war and there will be peace.

Rabbi Cohn plugged “Behind the Stricken Curtain” the story of Palestine by Attorney Bartley Crum of San Francisco.

“No other book has ever brought the issue so clearly before the people,” he said.