How Israel was Nudged into Existence

Nudging was used to force German Jews to move to Palestine

Letters from Vienna #48

How Israel was Nudged into Existence

There is nothing new about “nudging”. In the 1930s a form of “nudging” was used to force German Jews to move to Palestine. Without this “nudging” the creation of Israel in 1948 wouldn’t have been possible at all. This is the story of that particularly intriguing experience. 

“…in the 1920s” writes John Newsinger “the Zionist project came close to foundering altogether because European Jews showed no inclination to emigrate to Palestine.”

“The faltering of Jewish immigration took the edge off Palestinian hostility and indeed suggested that the Zionist settlement, the Yishuv, would never become strong enough to take over the whole country. A serious economic crisis hit the settlement in 1926 and the following year, while 3,000 arrived, 5,000 left. What transformed the situation was the rise of extreme anti-Semitism in Europe, in particular the coming to power of the Nazis in Germany.”[1]

“Of all the Jews in the world in the 1930s” writes Christopher Jon Bjerknes, “German Jews were the fittest ones to create a viable Jewish State in Palestine. They were often highly educated and in many of the largest cities, they dominated the professions, education and commerce. Many German Jews were assimilating, becoming Christians and marrying non-Jews. If the Herzlian political Zionists could find a way to transplant them to Palestine, the German Jews would provide the capital, talent and expertise needed to lay the foundations of a new Jewish nation.”

“The Transfer Agreement (Ha’avara 1933-1939) was a contract between the Zionists and the Nazis which facilitated the population transfer of German Jews to Palestine and the needed resources to build the Jewish state. It provided Germany with revenue through the purchase of German exports which the Zionists sold. By means of this arrangement, 60,000 Jews emigrated to Palestine and $100 million dollars was transferred from Germany to Palestine ($ 1.9 billion in dollars adjusted to the year 2009). The Nazis agreed to help form a Jewish state in Palestine. The Zionists agreed to help keep Hitler and his government afloat so that they could do this. The Zionists obstructed boycotts of German goods and provided Germany with goods, including oranges, and with desperately needed funds. The Zionists also obstructed anti-Nazi atrocity propaganda…”

“The process went as follows. A German Jew wishing to emigrate would pledge to move to Palestine, sell off his assets and surrender £1,000 worth of Reichmarks in his frozen bank account in the Paltreu Bank in Germany. The Zionists would receive one thousand British pounds worth of British goods, which would be shipped on German vessels to Palestine. The Zionists would sell these goods throughout the Middle East, thereby profiting the Germans and keeping the German economy afloat despite the boycotts against them. The proceeds from the sale of German goods would then be deposited in the Anglo-Palestine Bank’s Ha’avara Ltd, in Palestine. The emigrating Jew would then be able to provide the British with the needed certification that he was bringing £1,000 to Palestine and the British would let him into Palestine. The Zionists would use or sell the German goods and the migrating Jew would receive some of his money in the form of land, housing and/or goods and services. The Zionists also bartered with the Nazis in various ways and it was the Zionists who enabled Adolf Hitler to remain in power during the troubled economic times of the early Third Reich. Without the Zionist’s economic assistance Nazi Germany might have quickly crumbled.”[2] 

“In the minds of Zionism’s founders” writes Alan Hart, “a Jewish state in Palestine was to be the answer to the age-old curse of anti-Semitism, which, at the time of Zionism’s birth in 1897 (in this respect Alan Hart errs but this will be reserved for a later letter), was mainly a phenomenon of European cultures. For many centuries previously, Eastern Europe and mainly the Russian Empire of the Tsars had been the heartland of world Jewry. For most Jews this heartland life was one of abject poverty and they were required to live in ghettos–designated and restricted areas where they could be watched and controlled. And more easily persecuted. But the ghetto was not just a physical thing. It was a mental thing. A Jewish mindset. A coping mechanism.”           

“According to Zionism, it was only in a state of their own that Jews could be guaranteed security and freedom from persecution. In effect Zionism said: “Jews cannot afford, ever to trust the Gentiles. Without a state of our own we Jews are doomed to extinction.” Zionism was therefore about separating Jews and Gentiles and, in essence, it was a philosophy of doom.”

“Before Zionism there was a Jewish philosophy of hope. It had been given concrete expression by the coming into being of the Haskala (Enlightenment) movement of the 18th century. The Haskala solution to the problem of anti-Semitism – the persecution of the Jews in their Eastern Europe heartland, was emigration and assimilation (the opposite of separation) in Western secular culture. This, the Haskala movement reasoned, was most likely to be the best form of protection for Jews. The giant of anti-Semitism would never die, but in the West, it might well be encouraged to remain asleep if Jews contributed to Western societies and demonstrated their loyalty to the states of which they became citizens. In other words, if Jews made the effort, they would in time be accepted and permitted to lead fulfilling and secure lives in the Western nations of which they became citizens.”

“The nature of the challenge for Jews who took the Haskala route to salvation was clear. They had to cast off their ghetto mentality and all the practices, habits and attitudes which went with it.”[3]

Victor Klemperer, the cousin of the conductor Otto Klemperer, who was a professor of Romance Languages at the Technical University of Dresden at the time the Nazis attained power on January 30th 1933 was the epitome of assimilated Jewry; he regarded himself as being both German and a Protestant and had amply demonstrated his loyalty by fighting for his country in WWI.

The nudging, which had the aim of “persuading” Jews to move to Palestine, just as the nudging now has the aim of getting people to take the jab, started almost immediately the Nazis attained power. It must be emphasised that the Nazis (who were financed by Wall Street) weren’t democratically elected and used a false flag (the burning of the Reichstag) to solidify their power; they were never a legitimate political force to begin with.

In the same way that governments have terrorised the populace with fear over the last two years the Nazis terrorised the populace of Germany in the 1930s.

On 10th of March 1933 Klemperer wrote: “Ban of the Central Association of Jewish Citizens in Thuringia for criticising and disparaging the government in a “Talmudic” way. Since then, day after day, commissars, trampled governments, hoisted Swastika flags, occupied houses, people shot, bans etc. etc.”[4]

A week later he observed: “It is shocking how naked acts of violence, breaches of the law, terrible hypocrisy, and barbaric attitudes emerge, quite openly, as decrees day after day.”[5] He might well have been writing about Australia, New York, California or Canada today as Germany in 1933.

In the same way that the anti-vaxxers are demonised as “enemies of the people” today the Jews were the “enemies of the people” then. On the 21st Klemperer mentioned: “Terrible threats of pogroms in the “struggle for freedom” along with horrid, medieval insults against Jews. – Deposed Jewish judges.”[6]      

All of a sudden Jews weren’t permitted to have servants. On the 22nd of March Klemperer noted: “Blumenfeld’s maid, the good (...) Wendin Käthe, resigned. She’d been offered a secure job, and the professor will soon no longer be able to keep a girl. – Miss Wiechmann visited. She tells of how, in her school, in Meissen, everyone cringes in front of the Swastika, trembles for their position, observes and distrusts each other…A mood of fear such as must have prevailed in France among the Jacobins. One doesn’t yet tremble for one’s life – but for one’s bread and freedom.”[7]

The government was “constantly in denial, there are no pogroms, and revokes bans on Jewish associations. Again, it openly threatens to take action against German Jews if the agitation of the “World Jews” doesn’t stop. Meanwhile, no bloodshed but oppression, oppression, oppression. No one breathes freely anymore, no free word, neither printed nor spoken.”[8]

Above all the pressure was psychological: “Yesterday at the Blumenfelds with Dembers for dinner. Atmosphere as before a pogrom in the deepest Middle Ages or in innermost tsarist Russia. The National Socialists have called for a boycott. We’re hostages...I actually feel more shame than fear, shame for Germany.”[9]

Instead of 2G or 3G the Nazis used boycotts as a way of pressurising Jews: “Tomorrow the boycott begins. Yellow posters, guards. Forced to pay Christian employees two months’ salary, Jewish ones fired... One kills coldly or in “delayed” fashion. “Not a hair is harmed” – you just starve to death.”[10]

It is hardly surprising that many Jews succumbed to the pressure then, just as many succumb to the pressure now, and decided to move to Palestine. On the 22nd of May 1933 Klemperer wrote in his diary: “Mr. Kaufmann, at the moment a grass widower, visited. His wife in Berlin with Edgar’s family. They’re going to Palestine next week, leaving the child with the parents for the time being, taking 15,000M with them, wanting to find some kind of livelihood. Cruel joke, spread by Dembers: the Palestine immigrant is asked: “Are you coming out of conviction or from Germany?”[11]

Instead of taking the side of the persecuted Jews the Zionists sided with the Nazis. On the 21st of June, 1933, the Zionist Federation of Germany declared: “Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group. For the Jew, too, origin, religion, community of fate and group consciousness must be of decisive significance in the shaping of his life. This means that the egotistic individualism which arose in the liberal era must be overcome by public spiritedness and by a willingness to accept responsibility.”

The suggested solution to the “Jewish problem” was emigration: “Zionism wishes to shape Jewish emigration to Palestine in such a way that a reduction of pressure on the Jewish position in Germany will result.”[12]

Yet despite the Nazi pressure Klemperer didn’t move to Palestine. On the 9th of July he wrote: “We hear a lot about Palestine now; it doesn’t appeal to us. Whoever goes there, exchanges nationalism and narrowness for nationalism and narrowness. It is also an immigration country for capitalists. It is said to be about the size of the province of East Prussia; Population: 200,000 Jews and 800,000 Arabs...”[13]

A year later he was even more emphatic in his rejection of Zionism: “To my mind the Zionists, who adhere to the Jewish state of anno 70 A.D. (Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus), are just as disgusting as the Nazis. In their blood sniffing, their “old culture”, their partly hypocritical, partly narrow-minded, turning the world back, they resemble the National Socialists. The joke that a monument was erected in Haifa with the inscription “Our leader” actually has a deep and unfunny justification. Mentally, he (Hitler) is also their military leader. That is the fantastic thing about the National Socialists, that they live in a community of ideas with Soviet Russia and with the Zionists at the same time.”[14]

That Israel was created after years of Nazi persecution and after appallingly brutal, Nazi-like “ethnic cleansing”, in 1948, shouldn’t surprise. There never was much of a difference between Nazis and Zionists to begin with.

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[1] p. 135 The Blood Never Dried, John Newsinger

[2] p.11 Adolf Hitler Bolshevik and Zionist Volume II Zionism, Christopher Jon Bjerknes

[3] pp.63-64 Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews, Alan Hart  

[4] p.9 Tagebücher 1933-1941, Victor Klemperer

[5] p.11 Ibid

[6] p.13 Ibid

[7] p.14 Ibid

[8] p.15 Ibid

[9] p.15 Ibid

[10] p.16 Ibid

[11] pp.28-29 Ibid

[12] p.61 51 Documents Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, Lenni Brenner

[13] pp.38-39 Tagebücher 1933-1941, Victor Klemperer

[14] pp.111-112 Ibid