867N.01/3–2245: Telegram
The Chargé in Syria (Satterthwaite) to the Secretary of State
[Received 1:58 p.m.]
14. My 13, March 20. The students have now returned to their classes and all stores reopened.
[Page 696]However, the Legation has received telegrams protesting against the President’s alleged statement on Palestine from the Arab Party and “the striking students of Horns”. Also the Committee Against Zionism, composed of a large number of the leading politicians, editors and professional men of Damascus, has sent a delegation to the Legation to present the following written protest:
“The Zionist movement is a movement of colonization, the object of which is to take Palestine by force from its Arab owners and transform it into a Zionist home. The Arabs, who are fighting colonization and who hold to their rights with all their strength, determination and faith, see in this insistence a wound to the feelings of the whole Arab world. Moreover, they consider such insistence as contradictory to the principles of the Atlantic Charter, for the defense of which the democratic world has been fighting. That is why the Committee Against Zionism at Damascus received with great surprise and deep sorrow the news of support by the President of aggressive Zionism and of his approval of opening the doors of Palestine to unlimited Jewish immigration and colonization.[”]