Chapter Six
FORGING AN “INGATHERING“ OF ALL JEWS
The idea behind Zionism was to create a state where Jews worldwide could escape anti-
Semitism.[108] Combined with this was the belief that all Jews would and should come to the Jewish
state in a massive “ingathering of exiles.”[109] However, when it turned out that not enough Jews
were coming of their own volition, a variety of methods were used to increase the immigration.
Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion once told a gathering of Jewish Americans: “[Zionism] consists of
bringing all Jews to Israel. We appeal to the parents to help us bring their children here. Even if they
decline to help, we will bring the youth to Israel; but I hope that this will not be necessary.”[110]
There are various documented cases in which fanatical Zionists exploited, exaggerated, invented,
or even perpetrated “anti-Semitic” incidents both to procure support and to drive Jews to immigrate
to the Zionist-designated homeland. A few examples are discussed below.
Brandeis and Frankfurter vs. U.S. diplomat
One such case involved a young diplomat named Hugh Gibson, who in 1919 was nominated to be
U.S. Ambassador to Poland. After he arrived in Poland, Gibson, who was highly regarded and
considered particularly brilliant,[111] began to report that there were far fewer anti-Semitic incidents
than Americans were led to believe. He wrote his mother: “These yarns are exclusively of foreign
manufacture for anti-Polish purposes.”[112]
His dispatches came to the attention of Brandeis and his protégé (and future Supreme Court
Justice) Felix Frankfurter, who demanded a meeting with Gibson. Gibson later wrote of their
accusations:
“I had [Brandeis and Frankfurter claimed] done more mischief to the Jewish race than
anyone who had lived in the last century. They said…that my reports on the Jewish
question had gone around the world and had undone their work…. They finally said that
I had stated that the stories of excesses against the Jews were exaggerated, to which I
replied that they certainly were and I should think any Jew would be glad to know
it.”[113]
Frankfurter hinted that if Gibson continued these reports, Zionists would block his confirmation by
the Senate.
Gibson was outraged and sent a 21-page letter to the State Department. In it he shared his
suspicions that this was part of “a conscienceless and cold-blooded plan to make the condition of the
Jews in Poland so bad that they must turn to Zionism for relief.”
Zionists and Nazis
Perhaps the most extreme case of Zionist exploitation of anti-Semitism to further their cause came
during the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Zionist leaders had a mixed response to Hitler and the rise of the Nazis. Israeli historian Tom
Segev writes, “Everyone wondered how the persecution of the Jews in Germany would affect life in
Palestine.” While papers predicted “loss and ruin beyond repair” and described a “dance of death” in
Berlin, “they expected that ‘the hour of trouble and anguish’ would open unprecedented historical
opportunities–specifically, increased immigration to Palestine. Ben-Gurion hoped the Nazis’ victory
would become ‘a fertile force’ for Zionism.”[114]
Historians have documented that Zionists sabotaged efforts to find safe havens for Jewish refugees
from Nazi Germany in order to convince the world that Jews could only be safe in a Jewish
state.[115]
When FDR made efforts in 1938[116] and 1943[117], and the British in 1947[118], to provide
havens for refugees from the Nazis, Zionists opposed these projects because they did not include
Palestine.
Morris Ernst, FDR‘s international envoy for refugees, wrote in his memoir that when he worked to
help find refuge for those fleeing Hitler, “…active Jewish leaders decried, sneered and then attacked
me as if I were a traitor. At one dinner party I was openly accused of furthering this plan of freer
immigration [into the U.S.] in order to undermine political Zionism… Zionist friends of mine opposed
it.”[119]
Ernst wrote that he found the same fanatical reaction among all the Jewish groups he approached,
whose leaders, he found, were “little concerned about human blood if it is not their own.”[120]
FDR finally gave up, telling Ernst: “We can’t put it over because the dominant vocal Jewish
leadership of America won’t stand for it.”[121]
Journalist Erskine B. Childers, son of a former Irish Prime Minister, wrote in the Spectator in
1960, “One of the most massively important features of the entire Palestine struggle was that Zionism
deliberately arranged that the plight of the wretched survivors of Hitlerism should be a ‘moral
argument’ which the West had to accept.”
He explained that “this was done by seeing to it that Western countries did not open their doors,
widely and immediately, to the inmate of the DP [displaced persons] camps.”
Childers, author of several books on conflict resolution and peace-keeping who later became
Secretary General of the World Federation of United Nations Associations, commented: “It is
incredible that so grave and grim a campaign has received so little attention in accounts of the
Palestine struggle – it was a campaign that literally shaped all subsequent history. It was done by
sabotaging specific Western schemes to admit Jewish DPs.”[122]
There was even a certain amount of collusion between Zionists and Nazi leaders. When
disturbing facts emerged in the 1950s about this, these caused considerable scandal in Israel and led
to the fall of the Israeli government of the time. A number of books are dedicated to this subject and it
is discussed in numerous others. In some cases there were accusations that Zionist collaboration with
Nazis had saved people with connections at the expense of those with none.[123] The topic inspired
novels by well-known Israeli writers Amos Elon and Neil Gordon, was the subject of a 1987 British
play, and was portrayed in a 1994 Israeli docudrama. [124]
Some Zionist leaders worked out what became known as the “transfer agreement,“ a 1933 pact
with the Nazis in which Jews who wished to go to Palestine could transfer their capital to
Palestine.[125] As part of this agreement, these Zionists agreed to reject a boycott that had been
implemented against Germany.[126]
Critics were outraged at their undermining of the boycott, a fellow Zionist calling them “Hitler’s
allies.”[127] According to author Edwin Black, “The great irony is that Adolph Hitler became the
chief economic sponsor of Israel.”[128]
Israeli author Tom Segev explains that the agreement “was based on the complementary interests
of the German government and the Zionist movement: the Nazis wanted the Jews out of Germany; the
Zionists wanted them to come to Palestine.”[129]
For a time, the Nazis worked with these Zionist leaders to promote Jewish emigration to
Palestine. A series in a Berlin paper published by Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels was
entitled “A Nazi Visits Palestine” and depicted glowing photographs of Jewish immigrants in
Palestine. Goebbels created a medal with a swastika on one side and the Star of David on the
other.[130]
Nazi official Adolph Eichmann (later famous for his public trial in Israel) learned some Hebrew
and Yiddish and briefly visited Palestine in 1937. He met with Zionist leaders on a number of
occasions, including meeting with Ben-Gurion chief assistant and future mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy
Kollek. Eichmann’s autobiography was never published and reportedly remains sealed somewhere in
Israeli archives. [131]
As already referred to earlier, Zionist leader Samuel Landman in 1936 used a particularly ironic
strategy to push for Britain’s help in opening up Palestine to the growing number of Jewish refugees
from Germany.
According to Landman, Zionist actions were responsible for the U.S. entry into World War I on
the side of Britain. U.S. involvement then enabled the Allies to defeat Germany. The knowledge of
this Zionist connection, Landman said, was a cause of the growing anti-Semitism in Germany.
Therefore, Landsman argued, there was a greater need than ever for the Jewish state in Palestine that
the British had allegedly promised in return for Jewish help in winning the war.[132]
Zionists fake “hate” attacks on Iraqi Jews
While Zionists wished for a massive “in-gathering of Jews” in one state, most Iraqi Jews wanted
nothing to do with it, according to Iraq’s then-Chief Rabbi, who stated: “Iraqi Jews will be forever
against Zionism.”
“Jews and Arabs have enjoyed the same rights and privileges for 1,000 years and do not regard
themselves as a distinctive separate part of this nation,” the rabbi declared.[133]
Zionists worked to change that by covertly attacking Iraqi Jews so as to induce them to “flee” to
Israel. Zionists planted bombs in Iraqi synagogues and in the U.S. Information Service Library in Iraq
“in attempts to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews,” according to author and
former CIA operative Wilbur Crane Eveland.[134]
“Soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel,” writes Eveland, and “... most of the
world believed reports that Arab terrorism had motivated the flight of the Iraqi Jews whom the
Zionists had ‘rescued’ really just in order to increase Israel’s Jewish population.”[135]
Similarly, Naeim Giladi, a Jewish-Iraqi author who later lived in Israel and the U.S., describes
this program from the inside: “I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called ‘cruel
Zionism.’ I write about it because I was part of it.”
Giladi states that “Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel.” In order “to force
them to leave,” Giladi writes, “Jews killed Jews.” He goes on to say that in an effort “to buy time to
confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives
from their Arab neighbors.”[136]
Chapter Seven
THE MODERN ISRAEL LOBBY IS BORN
In the 1920s and 1930s, American Zionists retreated somewhat from overtly pushing for a Jewish
state in Palestine. Instead, many focused on creating Jewish institutions in Palestine, reports historian
Naomi Cohen, who calls this approach “Palestinianism.” [137]
Cohen attributes this switch to American anti-Semitism in the 1920s and the Great Depression in
the 1930s, but Americans’ revulsion against militant nationalisms (particularly strong after WWI)
must certainly have been an important factor.
Cohen writes that this retreat from overt Zionism “permitted the spread of a ‘quiet’ Zionism in
synagogues and Jewish schools.”[138]
Meanwhile, by not publicly declaring the end goal of a Jewish state, Zionists could avoid the
appearance of “disloyalty or dual allegiance.”[139] This better fit the temper of the times, following
a war allegedly fought for democracy. A number of both Jewish and non-Jewish writers opposed the
non-democratic agenda of creating a Jewish state on land whose population was overwhelmingly
non-Jewish.
As a Jewish writer pointed out in a Zionist journal, “...forcing foreign rule upon the majority of the
population so that a minority may achieve political, economic and cultural privileges does not accord
with the conscience of people bred in America and western Europe to the principles of free self-
government.”[140]
On the other hand, creating Jewish institutions in Palestine, such as the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, seemed to non-Zionists like altruism rather than the vanguard of a colonial movement. As
Cohen explains, “To outsiders [non-Jewish Americans], it was basically a philanthropy, and
Americans admired philanthropy and philanthropists.”[141]
Zionist leaders felt that the US was critically important to their goal. Ben-Gurion, who had visited
the United States almost every year after his election to the Zionist Executive, wrote in 1939 that he
was convinced that “the main arena” for Zionist efforts outside Palestine should be America, stating
that they had “no more effective tool at our disposal than the American Jewish community and Zionist
Movement….”[142]
Zionist Moshe Shertok, a future Israeli foreign minister, stated during WWII, “America will have
a decisive influence at the end of the war… and the question of our strength in America is a very real
and important one.”[143]
No comments:
Post a Comment