Zionism in the Age of the Dictators by Lenni Brenner

Author:Lenni Brenner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 2015-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

Lenni Brenner

Zionism in the Age of the Dictators

13. Choosing the Chosen People The Doctrine of Zionist Cruelty

The statistics on Jewish emigration from Germany vary to some degree, depending on the authority, but broadly speaking they tally. Herbert Strauss, for one, estimates that there were 270,000-300,000 émigrés in all, of whom 30,000 perished in their presumed countries of refuge. [1] Yehuda Bauer reckons there were 44,537 legal emigrants to Palestine from Germany and Austria from 1933 to 1938 about 20 per cent of all Jewish immigrants. [2] The Encyclopedia

Judaica reckons 55,000 went to Palestine by 1939. [3] Fawzi Abu-Diab lists only 39,131 German immigrants from l919 to 1945, but his low German listing is qualified by Mandate and Jewish Agency categories of authorised travellers, stateless and unspecified, many of whom were German domiciled in those years. [4] In comparison the Encyclopedia Judaica estimates 63,000 emigrants went to the United States, 40,000 to the United Kingdom, 30,000 to France, 25,000 to Belgium and 25,000 to Argentina. [5] The International Settlement in Shanghai took in about 16,000 from 1938 to 1941, and South Africa let in 5,000. [6]

It was the British, not the Zionists, who determined the immigration policy for Palestine, using a combination of political considerations for example, an evaluation of the reaction of the Arabs, and relatively objective computations related to the absorptive capacity of the Jewish economy. Each year a quota would be set and the precious immigration certificates were given to the WZO. There were always political criteria for would-be immigrants. Communists were always barred and 6 per cent of the certificates had to be given to the anti-Zionist Agudaists but, on the other hand, £1,000 capitalists were always allowed entry over the quota. Until the 1936 Arab revolt compelled the Mandatory to drastically lower immigration, the Jewish Agency never seriously challenged London over the proposed figures or the economic rationales behind them.

The WZOs own immigration policy had slowly evolved. Before the First World War, most immigrants came from Russia, but the Bolshevik revolution eventually closed that source; in the post-war era it was Poland that provided the largest contingent of settlers. The anti-Semitic line of the Polish Endek government encouraged thousands of artisans and lower-middle-class Jews to consider emigration. Refused entry to America because of its new immigration restrictions, they turned to Palestine, and their capital influx soon produced a land boom as Tel Aviv lots were hawked in the market-places of Warsaw. The Jewish National Fund, which organised the agricultural colonies of the WZO, was also compelled to pay exorbitant prices for its own land requirements. Tel Aviv did expand as a result of the new immigration, but primarily as independent Polish artisans moved in: the old patriarch with his extended family working a few handlooms. The Poles were solving their own problems, but their tiny establishments could never become the basis of a Zionist economy, an absolute essential if they were ever to wrest the country from the Arabs. Eventually the land boom collapsed, leading to

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