From 1936 to1948

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From 1936 to 1948

Limits on Immigration and the 1936 Riots

During the 1930s, the Yishuv blossomed and diversified. More and more settlements were founded, industries and cooperatives were established, and cultural activity flourished. The hub of the Zionist movement moved from London to Jerusalem where David Ben Gurion was elected chairman of the Jewish Agency.

As the situation worsened in Europe, more and more Jews looked for a way out. The piddling number of entry permits into Palestine allowed by the ruling British was an affront to the trapped millions. No other country opened its doors. Frustrated by British intransigence and insensitivity to the plight of the Jews, the Haganah and some smaller defense organizations, all banned by the British, began a campaign of clandestine immigration.

Nationalist feelings were running high amongst both the Arabs and the Jews. Incited again by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, the Arabs demanded a ban on Jewish land purchases and an end to Jewish immigration. In 1936, the British responded by further lowering the immigration quota. Not satisfied, the Arabs, frightened of eventual Jewish domination, responded with a strike which soon erupted into widespread riots and attacks on Jews and the British.

In light of the bloodshed, the British acquiesced and sanctioned the stablishment of a small Jewish police force, of which Haganah members were conveniently prominent. During this period, the Hagana, still outlawed, developed from a militia into a military body which could protect Jews. In 1938, the Haganah established the Mossad for the express purpose of bringing illegal Jewish immigrants into British Mandated Palestine. The Arab unrest lasted intermittently until 1939 when the British, in part to obtain Arab support for the recently erupted war with Germany, banned most land sales to Jews, and issued the 1939 White Paper which further restricted Jewish immigration.

Nazi Germany, WW II and Jewish Destruction

The situation of the Jews in Europe grew progressively more precarious. As the Nazis commenced their imperial march, overtaking Czechoslovakia, Austria and in 1939, Poland, the Jews faced more and more draconian restrictions, were herded into ghettos and put into forced labor camps. Britain and France declared war on Germany in 1939, but France soon capitulated to Nazi advances. The local ultra-nationalist fascist governments which the Nazis installed from Lithuania to France were only too eager to adhere to the Nazi "Jewish policy". Often, even before the arrival of the Germans, they initiated their own anti-Jewish violence - destruction of homes and business, pogroms and mass shootings. Clamoring to help in the Allied war effort, more than 5,000 Jewish volunteers from Eretz Yisrael formed the Jewish Brigade of the British Army. They fought alongside the Allied Forces in Greece, Egypt and North Africa.

By 1941, the final solution for the extermination of the Jewish people was fully underway. Concentration camps become operational and up until 1945, trainload after trainload, millions upon millions of innocent Jews (and non-Jews) were sent to be tortured as slave laborers and then murdered. Locked into a nightmare, the Jews had nowhere to go and rarely had means to defend themselves. In country after country, Poland, Lithuania, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Denmark, Romania, Libya, Yugoslavia, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Hungary, the Jewish populations were all but wiped out. Six million Jews, one third of the Jewish population was decimated in a number of years.

Survivors and the British Mandate

The war ended in 1945 with an Allied victory. Europe was ravished. Allied troops who entered the concentration camps discovered piles of bones and ashes, and thousands of survivors suffering from starvation and disease. Homes and belongings of the surviving Jews had been taken over by locals, often hostile upon their return. 250,000 Jews were now DPs or Displaced Persons and they lived in camps within the Allied-occupied zone. The DPs overwhelmingly chose Palestine as their desired destination, although entry was still barred by the British.

Members of the Jewish Brigade who, after the war, were stationed at the Italian-Yugoslavian-Austrian border, entered the DP camps, providing palpable evidence to these destitute refugees that a different reality existed for Jews in Eretz Yisrael. This further consolidated the tie between the displaced persons and the Zionists. Emissaries from the Yishuv, Zionist Youth movements and the Jewish Brigade all cooperated in the "Briha" or the escape, helping nearly 200,000 Jews leave Europe. The Mossad was responsible for smuggling these Jews into Eretz Yisrael. 50,000 were caught by the British on their way to Eretz Yisrael and interned in Cyprus. They remained there until Israel was declared a State in 1948.

When it became clear that the British would not change their restrictive policies within British Mandated Palestine, organized Jewish resistance ensued. The British respond in kind, with large-scale, often violent, arrests. The Palestinian Arabs watched their fears materialize as tens of thousands of Jews poured into the country. The tension was high, and eruptions of violence not infrequent.

After unsuccessful attempts to bring the two sides together, Great Britain's Attlee Government proclaimed in 1947 that the situation in Palestine was "unworkable," and that they planned to remove all British troops from the Mandate. On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted with a 2/3 majority to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. Both the Jews and the Arabs disliked the plan, claiming it was unfair to their side. However, the Yishuv, with the Jewish Agency at its head, accepted the plan, while the Palestinian Arab's notoriously inflexible leadership, rejected it. Violence and enmity between the two sides increased as the British troops finally pulled out on May 14. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed.

Monday 13 October, 2008

יום שני י"ד תשרי תשס"ט