ZIONIST BILTMORE PROGRAM

MAY 11, 1942

1. American Zionists assembled in this extraordinary Conference reaffirm

their unequivocal devotion to the cause of democratic freedom and international

justice to which the people of the United States, allied with the other United

Nations, have dedicated themselves, and give expression to their faith in the

ultimate victory of humanity and justice over lawlessness and brute force.

2. This Conference offers a message of hope and encouragement to their

fellow Jews in the Ghettos and concentration camps of Hitler dominated Europe

and prays that their hour of liberation may not be far distant.

3. The Conference sends its warmest greetings to the Jewish Agency

Executive in Jerusalem, to the Va'ad Leumi, and to the whole Yishuv in

Palestine, and express its profound admiration for their steadfastness and

achievements in the face of peril and great difficulties. The Jewish men and

women in field and factory, and the thousands of Jewish soldiers of Palestine

in the Near East who have acquitted themselves with honor and distinction in

Greece, Ethiopia, Syria, Libya and on other battlefields, have shown themselves

worthy of their people and ready to resume the rights and responsibilities of

nationhood.

4. In our generation, and in particular in the course of the past twenty

years, the Jewish people have awakened and transformed their ancient homeland;

from 50,000 at the end of the last war (WWI) their numbers have increased to

more than 500,000. They have been made the waste places to bear fruit and the

desert to blossom. Their pioneering achievements in agriculture and in

industry, embodying new patterns of cooperative endeavor, have written a

notable page in the history of colonization.

5. In the new values thus created, their Arab neighbors in Palestine have

shared. The Jewish people in its own work of national redemption welcomes the

economic, agricultural and national development of the Arab peoples and states.

The conference reaffirms the stand previously adopted at Congresses of the

World Zionist Organization, expressing the readiness and the desire of the

Jewish people for full cooperation of their Arab neighbors.

6. The Conference calls for the fulfillment of the original purpose of the

Balfour Declaration and the Mandate which `recognizing the historical

connection of the Jewish people with Palestine' was to afford them the

opportunity, as stated by President Wilson, to found there a Jewish

Commonwealth.

The Conference affirms its unalterable rejection of the White Paper of May

1939 and denies its moral or legal validity. The White Paper seeks to limit,

and in fact to nullify Jewish rights to immigration and settlement in

Palestine, and, as stated by Mr. Winston Churchill in the House of Commons in

May 1939, constitutes a `breach and repudiation of the Balfour Declaration,'

The policy of the White Paper is cruel and indefensible in its denial of

sanctuary to Jews fleeing from Nazi persecution; and at a time when Palestine

has become a focal point in the war front of the United Nations, and the

Palestine Jewry must provide all available manpower for farm and factory and

camp, it is in direct conflict with the interests of the Allied war effort.

7. In the struggle against the forces of aggression and tyrrany of which

Jews were the earliest victims, and which now menace the Jewish National Home,

recognition must be given to the right of the Jews of Palestine to play their

full part in the war effort and in the defense of their own country, through a

Jewish military force fighting under its own flag and under the high command of

the United Nations.

8. The Conference declares that the new world order that will follow

victory cannot be established on foundation of peace, justice and equality,

unless the problem of Jewish homelessness is finally solved.

The Conference urges that the gates of Palestine be opened: that the

Jewish Agency be vested with control of immigration into Palestine and with the

necessary authority for upbuilding the country, including the development of

its unoccupied and uncultivated lands; and that Palestine be established as a

Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the new democratic world.

Then and only then will the age-old wrong to the Jewish people be righted.