A History of Zionism (98 page)

The Zionists were deeply angered by the sophistry of the British interlocutors: if they had been bluntly told that H.H. government had realised that the Balfour Declaration had been a mistake, not in the best interests of Britain, and that, in any case, the present British government was no longer strong enough to carry out this policy, it would, of course still have been a cruel blow. But such an open admission of failure would have caused less resentment than the cynicism of the White Paper. As Namier wrote of MacDonald’s performance on another occasion: ‘He soothed uneasy consciences. He earned gratitude, the atmosphere was reminiscent of the days of Godesberg and Munich.’
‡

British opponents of the White Paper took a similar view. Herbert Morrison, later a minister in Churchill’s cabinet, said in the parliamentary debate on 23 May: ‘I should have had more respect for the Right Hon. Gentleman’s speech [Malcolm MacDonald] if he had frankly admitted that the Jews were to be sacrificed to the incompetence of the government.’ Morrison called the White Paper ‘dishonourable to our good name’, a ‘cynical breach of pledges’. There were other strong speeches in a similar vein: Leopold Amery said that he could never hold up his head again to either Jew or Arab if the British government were to go back on its pledge. Noel-Baker called the White Paper cowardly and wrong and said that the British people would not agree to it. Archibald Sinclair, a Liberal leader, said several months later in the debate on the land regulations: ‘What a moment to choose to inflict fresh wrong on the tortured, humiliated, suffering Jewish people, who are exerting themselves to help us in this war.’ But the Chamberlain government had a safe majority in both houses, and though its majority on this occasion was a hundred less than usual, it was not unduly worried. The British press, with one exception (the
Manchester Guardian
) either approved the government decision or gave it minimum coverage. There was a marked feeling of unease about the whole affair.

Nor was the British government greatly concerned about the reaction of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. All the seven members present when the issue was debated expressed the view that the White Paper was not in accordance with the interpretation which the commission had always placed on the mandate. Three of them (including the British delegate) argued, however, that circumstances might justify a change in policy if the League council did not oppose it. The four other representatives simply registered their view that the White Paper was not in accordance with the mandate. After the outbreak of war the League council no longer met. Thus the White Paper was not ratified and it did not, strictly speaking, acquire international sanction. But after 1 September 1939 no one bothered any longer about legal niceties.

The Zionist leaders faced an impossible problem: to find an effective policy to combat the new British policy. Various suggestions were discussed at closed meetings. There was support for a campaign of civil disobedience in the Indian style, including the systematic violation of those laws designed to prevent the further development of the national home. Illegal immigration was to be intensified, new settlements founded, and stronger emphasis placed on military training for young people. For the first time Hagana carried out several acts of sabotage directed against the mandatory authorities, including the destruction of a patrol boat used to combat illegal immigration. But these activities were uncoordinated and on a small scale and were discontinued even before the outbreak of war.

There was no unanimity as to the strategy to be adopted. Ben Gurion maintained that the White Paper had created a vacuum which should be filled by the Jewish community: they were to behave as though they were the state of Palestine and should so act until there was a Jewish state. At another meeting he said they should no longer talk about the mandate as a possible and desirable solution but demand the establishment of a Jewish state. But with all this, it seems that at the time he still wanted to bring about a change in British policy rather than expel the British from Palestine.

Much has been made of the political differences between Ben Gurion and Weizmann in 1939 and later. Unlike Weizmann, Ben Gurion did not exclude the possibility of armed conflict in Palestine. In a cable to Chamberlain in April 1939 he said that the Jews were determined to make the supreme sacrifice rather than submit to the White Paper régime. If London’s object was pacification, it would surely be defeated, for the government would be compelled to use force against the Jews.
*
Weizmann, on the other hand, still favoured cooperation with Britain. As he saw it, the Jewish community in Palestine needed the help of a great power, and however inadequate British goodwill, they could rely even less on any other power. Ben Gurion seems to have reached the conclusion that there was no chance of making the British modify their policy unless Zionism demonstrated its nuisance value. If Arab resistance had inconvenienced the authorities, the yishuv could make things at least equally difficult.

One of the main issues at stake was illegal immigration. Between 1936 and 1939 the number of illegal immigrants had risen sharply: they came mostly in small ships from the Balkans hired either by the Hagana or by political parties, or, in a few cases, by private entrepreneurs. It was the policy of the authorities to arrest the ‘illegals’, some of them being kept in detention camps in Palestine, others being turned back. Ben Gurion at one stage in 1939 favoured open landings which would inevitably have led to armed clashes between the Hagana and the British. He thought that such a demonstration would have an impact on world public opinion and thus perhaps force the British to modify their policy. But most members of the Jewish Agency executive in Palestine opposed this course of action. They argued that the overriding aim was to save as many Jews as possible and that illegal immigration should therefore proceed in such a way as to ensure maximum numbers rather than maximum publicity.
*
Illegal immigration was quite openly discussed at Zionist meetings: Rabbi A.A. Ailver, subsequently a leading activist, opposed it at the congress in 1939, whereas Berl Katznelson, the Palestine labour leader, vehemently defended it.
†

The Geneva congress of August 1939 was the shortest on record and the most subdued. For the first time German was not the official language. ‘We met under the shadow of the White Paper, which threatened the destruction of the national home’, Weizmann wrote later, ‘and under the shadow of a war which threatened the destruction of all human liberties, perhaps of humanity itself.’
‡
Up to 22 August, when the Nazi-Soviet pact was signed, there was still a faint hope that the general catastrophe could be averted, but on that date, with the congress still in session, the Jewish calamity, again in Weizmann’s words ‘merged with, was engulfed by, the world calamity’. The usual petty intrigues, warnings and manœuvre seemed out of place. The right-wing faction of the General Zionists threatened to walk out and join the revisionists if the general debate, as had been suggested, were to be omitted.

But the world situation was too serious for the usual party jockeying for position. Weizmann said in his opening speech that bitter injustice had been done to the Jewish people: ‘We have not failed, we believed in Britain.’ He reviewed the events of the past year, and said that it was again the almost impossible task of the Zionist movement to find the Archimedal point in a confused world. In spite of the White Paper the Jews would support British democracy in its present dark hour. Constructive work in Palestine would continue whatever the circumstances. Even in the straitjacket of the White Paper there were certain possibilities.
§
This was challenged by other speakers: ‘For us the White Paper does not exist,’ Ben Gurion declared. Weizmann said in explanation that he was thinking,
inter alia
, of immigration. Surely no one would turn down the entry permits provided for by the White Paper?

The opposition speeches did not point to a real alternative: Grossman argued that Weizmann’s loyalty to Britain had suffered bankruptcy, so had his policy of evading conflict with the Arabs at any price. Zerubavel, representing the Poale Zion, appearing again for the first time in thirty years at a Zionist congress, told the delegates that they should never have tied their fate to an imperialist power. But how could they have built Palestine if not on the basis of the Balfour Declaration and the mandate? They should have relied on the Socialist revolution instead. Rabbi Berlin (on behalf of the Mizrahi) said they should trust in God. Such well-meaning exhortations apart, there was no practical advice. Even an outspoken critic of Weizmann such as Rabbi Silver admitted that much: not Weizmann but Britain had failed, and there was still hope that the White Paper policy would be nullified. Therefore extremist measures should not be adopted. It was risky to provoke an open conflict with Britain. Zionism in its despair should not put weapons into the hands of its enemies. It was dangerous to act as though the yishuv was the state, when it was not.
*

There were delegations from Germany as well as from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia and from Austria. The short speech of Dr Franz Kahn, from Czechoslovakia, was the most moving of all: ‘Palestine is our only anchor in these days of adversity. If the gates of Palestine are closed there is no hope left.’ In his political survey Shertok sharply condemned the revisionist terror which, he said, was without purpose, suicidal, damaging from the military point of view and morally reprehensible. The congress ended, earlier than originally envisaged, with a short speech by Weizmann whose
leitmotif
was ‘there is darkness around us’. He said that it was with a heavy heart that he took leave:

If as I hope we are spared in life and our work continues, who knows — perhaps a new light will shine upon us from the thick, bleak gloom. … There are some things which cannot fail to come to pass, things without which the world cannot be imagined. The remnant shall work on, fight on, live on until the dawn of better days. Towards that dawn I greet you. May we meet again in peace.

The annals of Zionist congresses always registered at this late stage in the proceedings joyful scenes and prolonged applause. The protocols of the twenty-first congress tell a different story: ‘Deep emotion grips the congress, Dr Weizmann embraces his colleagues on the platform. There are tears in many eyes. Hundreds of hands are stretched out towards Dr Weizmann as he leaves the hall.’ Old rivalries were forgotten for the moment at least. Weizmann’s heart was overflowing, he embraced Ben Gurion and Ussishkin as though he would never let them go, Blanche Dugdale, Balfour’s niece, noted in her diary.

Less than a week later the German armies invaded Poland. Most delegates had great difficulty in making their way home through a continent which within a few days had become an armed camp. By the time the Palestinians had returned, war had in fact been declared. In a letter to Chamberlain dated 29 August 1939, Weizmann had promised full support for Britain in the war against Germany and offered to make immediate arrangements for utilising Jewish manpower, technical ability and resources. The Agency executive in Jerusalem in its declaration a few days later said that ‘the war is also our battle’. Ben Gurion declared at a press conference ‘that we have no right to weaken our resistance to the White Paper’, but Shertok added that Jewish Palestine was in a state of armistice with Britain, and the Jewish offer of assistance was not necessarily confined to action within the boundaries of Palestine.
*
On 11 September the
IZL
announced in circulars distributed in the streets of Tel Aviv that it was suspending its terror campaign in order to join Britain in the fight against Hitlerism. But the conditions were inauspicious; two Jewish illegal immigrants on board SS
Tigerhill
were killed on 4 September when a coastguard cutter opened fire. The ship had won fame during the Spanish civil war as a blockade runner. It was discovered south of Jaffa while discharging its passengers, and fled on the approach of the coastguard cutter with about two hundred immigrants still on board. Those who had already embarked were taken to the Sarafend detention camp.

Within two weeks of the outbreak of war most of Poland was occupied by the Wehrmacht: it was the beginning of the end of the largest European Jewish community. Every Jewish community in Europe, and eventually in Palestine too, faced the danger of extinction. The First World War had given the Zionist movement its great chance, the charter for which it had striven for so long. As the Second World War broke, what was at stake was not further expansion but survival.

The Second World War

The thunder of the battle in Europe sounded only faintly in Palestine during the first year of the war. The Arab rebellion had slowly died down, and after September 1939 ceased altogether. Jews and Arabs again lived in peace side by side even though the conflict between the national aspirations of the two peoples remained unresolved. But the repercussions of the fall of France were soon felt: 1941 and 1942 were years of crisis. The German armies in a giant pincer movement reached the western desert and advanced to the Caucasus. In Syria the Vichy administration had taken over and the pro-Axis Rashid Ali coup endangered British bases in Iraq. The tide turned as 1942 drew to its close. With the German armies in full retreat both in the Soviet Union and in North Africa, the danger of invasion was averted. Apart from a few isolated air attacks, Palestine was not directly affected by Axis military activities. The country became an important base for the allied forces in the Middle East, and its economic development received a powerful impetus.

During the early part of the war the yishuv suffered severely from economic dislocation. Citrus exports ceased, all but paralysing the most important branch of the national economy. According to government estimates, the number of unemployed in the Jewish sector was fifty thousand in 1939–40, a staggering figure in a community of little more than half a million. But industrial activity and public works expanded at a rapid rate. Some thirty thousand men and women had been employed in 1936 in industry and manufacture; their numbers had more than doubled by 1943. The newly established Haifa refinery played an important part in the fuel supply for the allied war effort, a new diamond industry came into being, and the textile industry underwent rapid expansion.