Refugees and the UN; fashion and cheese
UNO and the DPs
Delegates of three Arab States expressed at Monday’s session of the Social Economic, and Humanitarian Committee of the General Assembly of UNO their determined opposition to any linking of the Palestine and refugee problems. The intervention followed a remark by the Polish delegate, M. Jan Stanczyk, that “the problem of Jewish refugees cannot, of course, be separated from Palestine.” M. Jussef Salem, of the Lebanese delegation …stressed that Zionism was not a humanitarian but a political movement, aiming at introducing into the country the greatest possible number of Jews and granting them Palestinian citizenship so as to eliminate the Arab majority. The United Nations, he declared, could not repair one injustice by committing another one. He admitted that there was a problem in the case of Jews who were unable to return to their former countries, and said that the Lebanon was ready to co-operate in the solution of this problem “in proportion to its population and resources”.
The new fashions
The early fashion parades that have recently been held in London display a total revolution in women’s wear. Notably, there is a revulsion from the enforced utility of the war period and also from the general practicability and usefulness of war uniforms and costumes. Thus squared shoulders, the fashion for which came from a sly admiration for the male silhouette beloved of the film-goer, are no longer to be tolerated. Shoulders will slope once more, we are told, languidly and gracefully from the ivory column of the neck. But it should not be overlooked, that some of the fashions to which we have become so accustomed arose not merely because of the whim of the designer, but because there was a good reason for their adoption. Athletic young women generally do have broad shoulders. And to imagine that at the stroke of a pen, or of a designer’s pencil, we can revert, as it were, overnight to the consumptive silhouette of women in 18th-century novels is misleading.
Cheese it!
A remarkable instance of a breach in the Arab boycott was given this week. The Royal Egyptian Court ordered a special kind of cheese from the Jewish Co-operative Agricultural Marketing Association, Tnuva. When the order … was not fulfilled as the suppliers feared that the consignment would be confiscated on its arrival in Egypt, the Palestine Government was informed that the Palace authorities in Cairo were very much upset that the cheese had not arrived.