Genocide, Variations on a Theme #I
Part Ten, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine #2
Dr. Hans Friedenthal stated: “The Gestapo did everything in those days to promote emigration, particularly to Palestine. We often received their help when we required anything from other authorities regarding preparations for emigration.”
They also cooperated with the Haganah. The close cooperation between the Zionists and the Nazis was one reason why the British no longer wanted to let Jews into Palestine in 1939.
The Colonial Secretary, Lord Moyne, who was murdered by Jewish terrorists in November 1944, wrote: “We have good reason to believe that this traffic is favored by the Gestapo, and the Security Services attach the very greatest importance to preventing the influx of Nazi agents under the cloak of refugees.”
The Jewish population in Palestine, which had only numbered about 55,000 in 1919 and had grown to 160,000 by 1929, increased as a direct result of German policy. In 1930, 4,944 Jews immigrated to Palestine, in 1931 the figure was 4,075 and in 1932 it was 9,553. This trickle turned into a flood after the Nazis attained power. In 1933 the figure for Jews immigrating to Palestine was 30,327, in 1934, 42,356, and in 1936, 61,458. By 1937 the total population of Jews in Palestine was roughly 400,000.
German authorities continued to promote indirect Jewish emigration to Palestine during 1940 and 1941. Even as late as March 1942, at least one officially authorized Zionist “kibbutz” training camp for potential emigrants operated in Germany.
According to Martin Gilbert: “On the 9th of May (1942)... the leading Zionists, including Dr. Weizmann, were holding a special conference at the Biltmore Hotel in New York. The theme of their meeting was made clear by the Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive, David Ben Gurion, who declared that, as a result of the 1939 White Paper, the Jews could no longer depend upon Britain to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine. It was therefore necessary, he said, for the Jewish Agency itself to replace the British Mandate as the government of Palestine.”
As a consequence of this change in orientation the Irgun offered its services to the Nazis: “It is often stated in the speeches and utterances of the leading statesmen of National Socialist Germany that a New Order in Europe requires as a prerequisite the radical solution of the Jewish question through evacuation. The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question. This can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historic boundaries ... The NMO (Irgun) ... is well acquainted with the good will of the German Reich Government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans ... The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would be in the interests of strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East ... The NMO (Irgun) in Palestine offers to take an active part in the war on Germany’s side ... The cooperation of the Israeli freedom movement would also be in line with one of the recent speeches of the German Reich Chancellor, in which Herr Hitler stressed that any combination and any alliance would be entered into in order to isolate England and defeat it.”
When the British proposed admitting a thousand children directly into Britain in the aftermath of the Kristallnacht, Ben Gurion opposed it with the words: “If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz Israel, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.”
There were also profound divisions within the Zionist camp in America between those who were in favor of measures to help the European Jews and those opposed to them. For many the Zionist project in Palestine had priority in terms not simply of money and energy but also political capital. If the European Jews were saved and were helped to come to America there would be no need at all for a Zionist colony in Palestine; the whole project would effectively lose its raison d‘être.
What was even worse: if European Jews were let in there would inevitably be a rise in anti-Semitism in the U.S. This prospect did not inspire joy in the hearts of the American Jewish community.
The British downplayed the Nazi atrocities, which were known at the time, because they wanted to resist pressure for Jewish emigration to Britain while the Americans downplayed them because there would have inevitably been political pressure to let Jews into the United States. Simultaneously the Zionists were very much worried that additional pressure for boycotts against Germany would endanger their good relations with Nazi Germany.
What Pappé also doesn’t mention is that a number of the Jewish soldiers in the IDF had served with either the Wehrmacht or the Waffen SS. It is surely no accident that the IDF was modeled on the Wehrmacht.
Although of the estimated 150,000 “Mischlings” (half Jews and quarter Jews) in the Nazi armies, most never rose to officer levels, 2 were Field Marshals, and 15 generals.
Those who served with both armies included Shlomo Perel, who served with the Wehrmacht on the eastern front, before joining the IDF and taking part in the battle for Jerusalem, Karel Heinz Meir, who served in the Wehrmacht, achieved the rank of a major in the IDF and served in the seventh IDF brigade, Bob Winter, Siegfried Berndat, Afraim Gelzer, Nehamia Werman, Ginther Klauch, and Ulrich Shnaft who served in the SS.
Once the war was over the British tried to involve the Americans in the hope that they’d be relieved of the burden of occupation. This led to the creation of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, which made its recommendations on the 20th of April 1946. These included permitting the immigration of 100,000 Jewish Displaced Persons to Palestine while rejecting the idea of either a Jewish or an Arab state. At its core were three principles:
· I. That Jew shall not dominate Arab and Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine.
· II. That Palestine shall be neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state.
· III. That the form of government ultimately to be established, shall, under international guarantees, fully protect and preserve the interests in the Holy Land of Christendom and of the Moslem and Jewish faiths.
Given the failure of the Americans to shoulder either the potential responsibilities or the costs the British passed the buck further.