Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Volume 1 (39 page)

By the autumn of that year (1946) American Zionism’s threat to replace its moderate leaders with more extreme gentlemen had been executed. Rabbi Silver was the President of the Zionist Organisation of America (ZOA). On 26 October, and as reported the following day by
The New York Times
, Rabbi Silver said the following to a Z0A conference (my emphasis added).

I am happy that our movement has finally veered around to the point where we are all, or nearly all, talking about a Jewish state. That was always classical Zionism... But I ask, are we again, in moments of desperation, to confuse Zionism with refugeeism, which is likely to defeat Zionism? ... Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is not the product of the Second World War nor the First.
Were there no displaced Jews in Europe, and were there free opportunities for Jewish immigration in other parts of the world at this time, Zionism would still be an imperative necessity
.
⁷⁷

In the light of what was shortly to happen in Congress, I think Rabbi Silver’s statement above is the single most revealing statement about the in-America politics of Palestine at the time.

Implicitly but obviously Rabbi Silver was acknowledging that, if legislation was successfully introduced into Congress to allow a great number of European Jewish refugees to enter the U.S.A., Zionism might well be finished. Why? Because, probably, a majority of those Americans who up to this point were supporting Zionism for emotional reasons—on account of the way they had been moved by reports of the slaughter and suffering of Europe’s Jews—would have regarded the refugee problem as having been settled. And in that event American popular support for a Jewish state might have withered, at least to the point at which President Truman could have faced the Zionists and said “No” to their demands.

Rabbi Silver would have known all there was to know about how his fellow Zionist zealots had been working day and night (since President Truman’s instructions on 23 December 1945) to prevent the introduction in Congress of legislation that, if enacted, would give the Truman administration use of the unused visa quotas. He would also have known that Illinois’ Congressman Stratton was intending to introduce such legislation and would not be stopped from doing so by any kind of Zionist pressure or threats. In any event, Rabbi Silver’s speech was more than a statement. It was an exhortation with a question mark. “But I ask, are we again, in a moment of desperation, going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism, which is likely to defeat Zionism?” In effect Rabbi Silver was saying: “If legislation to solve the refugee problem is introduced into Congress, we must use our influence to make sure it has no prospect of being enacted.”

When Congressman Stratton did introduce his Bill, Zionism’s chosen weapons for the campaign, to see that it had no chance of being enacted, were an orchestrated and deafening silence and programmed inactivity.

Stratton’s Bill called for the U.S. to admit up to 400,000 displaced persons of all faiths. If legislation to allow that had been enacted, all of the Jewish refugees in Europe could have been admitted to America, along with a good number of refugees of other faiths.

The best way to appreciate how American Zionism handled the problem of the Stratton Bill of 1947 is to compare Zionism’s response then with how it mobilised to support the Wright-Compton Resolution of 1944. (As we have seen, it called for the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth, a state by another name.)

When the hearings on the Wright-Compton Resolution were taking place (before President Roosevelt had them stopped), there was, as Lilienthal noted, “scarcely a Zionist organisation that did not testify, send telegraphed messages or have some congressman appear on their behalf.”
⁷⁸
In four days
500 pages
of testimony were produced, the vast bulk by the Zionists and their allies.

When the hearings on the Stratton Bill were taking place, the testimony given by Jewish organisations covered only
11 pages.
Only one witness appeared for all the major Jewish organisations—Senator Hebert Lehman, then the ex-Governor of New York. In addition to Lehman’s statement, there was a supporting resolution from the Jewish Community of Washington Heights and Inwood; and the National Commander of the Jewish War Veterans testified (with, I imagine, the private approval of both Eddie Jacoboson and his friend Harry). But from the Zionists there was not a single word on behalf of the displaced Jews of Europe, those for whom the visas were required. And this at the time the Zionists were busy recruiting members and soliciting funds “to alleviate human suffering”—suffering that could have been relieved if Zionism had supported the Stratton Bill.

Congressman Stratton subsequently expressed “surprise” that he had failed to get the support of “certain organisations” that normally would have been most active in liberalising the immigration law. Only a good but very naïve man could have been surprised.

The brutal truth was that Zionism looked upon the Jewish refugees of liberated Europe as manpower and justification for whatever it had to do to create a Jewish state in Palestine.

A Jewish commentary on this episode of Zionism’s history was published in 1950, two years after Israel’s birth. It appeared in the
Yiddish Bulletin
and was written by Rabbi Philip S. Bernstein. This particular rabbi had served in 1946 as an Adviser on Jewish Affairs to the U.S. High Commissioner in Germany and, as he later confessed, had lied to President Truman. When he met with the President on 11 October (two weeks before Rabbi Silver delivered his exhortation to his fellow zealots), Rabbi Bernstein said that 90 per cent of the Jewish refugees wanted to go “only to Palestine”. That, Rabbi Bernstein knew, was not the truth. It was that most Jewish refugees, given the choice, would have opted for America. Rabbi Bernstein said what he said to President Truman because it was what Zionism had required him to say. He was only following orders. It might be that Rabbi Bernstein was motivated to write what he wrote in the
Yiddish Bulletin
to atone for the sin of his lie to President Truman, but even if that was the case, it could not diminish the significance of what he wrote:

By pressing for an exodus of Jews from Europe; by insisting that Jewish DPs did not wish to go to any other country outside Israel; by not participating in the negotiations on behalf of the DPs; and by refraining from a campaign of their own—by all this they (the Zionists) certainly did not help to open the gates of America for Jews. In fact, they sacrificed the interests of living people—their brothers and sisters who went through a world of pain—to the politics of their own movement.”
⁷⁹

So close to the events only a Jew could have written and had published such an explicit condemnation of Zionism’s use and abuse of the holocaust card.

As a consequence of being the first to play the Zionist card for reasons of short-term political expediency, and thus by definition without regard for what was morally right or wrong, Britain was, by 1947, in a most dangerous mess from which there seemed to be no escape.

On the ground in Palestine the British were failing to stop the violent confrontation between Arabs and Jews from escalating. Adding to the chaos was the fact that the two main Zionist terrorist organisations had declared war on the British and were winning it. And in America the Zionists (ten out of ten for the brilliance of their propaganda) had succeeded in portraying Britain, for its efforts to stop illegal Jewish immigrants entering Palestine, as an enemy of a kind that most Americans were happy to see defeated by any means.

In Europe Zionism had established a well-organised “underground railway to Palestine”. Jews from all over Europe were moved to ports on the Mediterranean. From these ports, in vessels of all kinds, many of them unseaworthy, Jews were being shipped, in conditions of appalling squalor, to Palestine.

A very large proportion of this human freight was brought in from the countries of Eastern Europe; by this time, and as a result of the Big Three’s carve-up of Europe, a part of the Soviet Union. Soviet policy-makers were happy to co-operate with the Zionists in this people trafficking because they were keen to have options for securing influence in the Middle East.

At this point in time, Soviet policymakers had no idea about who they would end up backing in the region—the Jews or the Arabs. The Soviet Union’s only interest was turmoil in the Middle East, which it hoped to be able to exploit for the purpose of pushing the British out or, at the very least, securing itself a toe-hold in the region. (As we shall see, the truth is that if there had been no Arab–Israeli conflict, the Soviet Union would have remained for the whole of its existence without significant influence on the ground in the Middle East. By culture and values the Arabs were the most unnatural allies of communism in the world; and there was not a more anti-communist leadership anywhere in the world than that of Saudi Arabia’s ruling family).

In the shadow of the Nazi holocaust, Zionism’s strategy was to dare the British to stop the ships bearing illegal Jewish immigrants at sea and, if they made it to Palestine, to prevent the wretched Jews on board entering the Holy Land. The Zionists knew, of course they knew, that they were bound to be the winners either way. If they succeeded in getting more Jews into Palestine against the wishes of the Arabs and in defiance of British policy—great. And if the British took action to stop the immigrant ships and prevent Jews from entering Palestine illegally, Britain could be portrayed, in America especially, as a monster. In that event Zionism would achieve a priceless propaganda victory that would put the whole of American public pinion on its side, which would make stopping Zionism from achieving its ambition in Palestine a mission impossible.

The Zionist strategy presented Britain with a stark choice—to confront Zionism on the matter of illegal immigration, which the Anglo- American Committee had said was the necessary and right thing to do, or surrender to Zionism.

For reasons of strategic interest—oil and trade especially—and in the name to some extent of the thing called justice, Britain decided to confront Zionism on the matter of illegal immigration. Official British records were subsequently to show that from 1946 to February 1948, 47 boatloads of illegal immigrants were intercepted and, as a consequence, 65,307 illegal immigrants were interned in detention camps on the island of Cyprus.

The immensely powerful images in words and pictures of that confrontation—armed British forces turning back the immigrant ships and denying their passengers entry—resulted, as the Zionists knew it would, in most Americans seeing the struggle for Palestine as nothing more than a noble, heroic, epic effort by the Jewish survivors of Hitler’s gas chambers to claim back their ancient homeland, with every right and justification on their side. The fact that most if not all of the Jewish refugees were the descendants of those who converted to Judaism long after the fall of ancient Israel and who therefore had no claim on Palestine was not known to Americans. And the Arab case was not a factor in the equation because most Americans did not know the Arabs had a case.

When Britain terminated all entry into Palestine, popular American sentiments were inflamed by anti-British feelings. As Lilienthal noted, there was no movie house in America that did not carry newsreel footage of the distraught Jewish faces aboard the
Exodus
when it was intercepted by the British and its passengers were forcibly prevented from illegally entering the Holy Land.

The masterful way in which the Zionists orchestrated their anti- British campaign in America would have won them the admiration of Hitler’s propaganda chiefs. Americans were told that the war in which Zionism was engaged was the same kind of war the American Revolutionaries had waged against the very same imperial power, Britain, to secure their own independence and freedom. America’s citizens of Irish descent were informed that the British were using in Palestine against Jewish freedom fighters the same ruthless tactics they had used against Ireland’s freedom fighters. For each special interest group the Zionists had an appropriate anti-British message.

How different the story might have been if there had been support for President Truman’s visa initiative of 23 December 1945; or before that, President Roosevelt’s wish for worldwide asylum.

In a last desperate and predictably futile attempt to reconcile the Arab and Zionist positions, Britain called for the admission into Palestine of 4,000 Jews a month for two years, with subsequent admissions depending on the future absorptive capacity of the country. It was a significant shift in Britain’s policy and also a way of giving President Truman the 100,000 entry certificates he had requested and which the Anglo-American Committee had called for. The British, no doubt, were hoping that this shift in their stance would be enough to enable Truman to assist them in the business of crisis managing Palestine. But this British offer was never going to be accepted by the Zionists even if the Arabs could have been persuaded to buy it. In Tel Aviv Ben-Gurion’s Jewish Agency denounced the British offer as incompatible with Jewish rights to immigration, settlement and ultimate statehood.

At this point Britain decided that the burden of being responsible for the future of Palestine was too big for it to carry; and it dumped the problem of what to do about the Holy Land into the lap of the UN for adjudication by the governments of the member states.

When it was still the number one power in the world Britain had given Zionism what it most desperately needed at the time—recognition and thus a degree of spurious legitimacy, without which the Zionist enterprise would not have been taken seriously by even most Jews. As we have seen, Britain gave Zionism the Balfour Declaration because it needed Zionist influence, and because it believed it could use Zionism to serve and advance the cause of the British Empire.