August 4 1937 – 27 Av 5697
Chaim Weizmann gave an emotional address lasting two hours in the twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich, after protracted negotiations with the Peel Commission. The British commission of inquiry set up to weigh the possibility of dividing Mandate Palestine between its Jewish and Arab populations had come to the conclusion that partition was the only solution to the violence wracking the country. Weizmann invoked the unity of the Zionist movement as the supreme consideration, presenting his fellow Zionists with a stark choice, a Jewish minority in all of Palestine, even an Arab Palestine – or a Jewish majority in a concentrated block in part of Palestine.
The congress decided to reject the specific borders recommended by the Peel Commission but empowered its executive to negotiate a more favorable plan for a Jewish State in Palestine. The Arabs however, rejected the recommendations of the Peel Commission out of hand – slamming the door on a possibility that could have saved two million Jews from Hitler and brought them safely to a Jewish homeland.
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