Nazi and Zionist cooperation in establishing Zionism in Palestine--
two racist political philosphies cooperating in achieving their goals.
These are historical facts the "christian" Zionist as well as the Jewish Zionist would like to hide from the world.
------------------------
Lenni BRENNER
ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF DICTATORS
Chapter 8
PALESTINE-THE ARABS, ZIONISTS,
BRITISH AND NAZIS
It was the Arabs, not the Zionists, who compelled the Nazis to reexamine
their pro-Zionist orientation. Between 1933 and 1936, 164,267 Jewish
immigrants poured into Palestine; 61,854 came in 1935 alone. The
Jewish minority increased from 18 per cent of the population in 1931 to
29.9 per cent in December 1935, and the Zionists saw themselves
becoming the majority in the not-too-distant future.
The Arabs reacted first to these statistics. They had never accepted the
British Mandate with its declared aim of creating a Jewish National
Home in their land. There had been riots in 1920 and 1921; in 1929,
after a series of provocations from Zionist chauvinists and Muslim
fanatics at the Wailing Wall, the Muslim masses rioted in a wave of
atrocious massacres which culminated with 135 Jewish deaths and
almost as many Muslims killed, primarily by the British.
Palestinian Arab politics were dominated by a handful of rich clans. The
most nationalistic were the Husaynis, led by the Mufti of Jerusalem,
al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni. Intensely pious, his response to the Zionist
provocations at the Wall was to raise the faithful against the Zionists as
infidels rather than as a political enemy. He was suspicious of any social
reform and quite unprepared to develop a political programme which
could mobilise the largely illiterate Palestinian peasantry. It was this lack
of a programme for the peasant majority which guaranteed that he could
never create a political force capable of coping with the numerically
inferior, but vastly more efficient Zionists. He was compelled to look
abroad for a patron to give him some of the strength that his reactionary
politics prevented him from generating from within Palestinian society. His
choice fell on Italy.
The deal with Rome was completely secret until it was accidentally
revealed in April 1935, since it could hardly be justified in the Arab
world. Mussolini had used poison gas against the 1931 Senussi uprising
in Libya, and was, moreover, openly pro-Zionist. However, Rome was
anti-British and was willing to subsidise the Mufti on that account. The
first payment was made in 1934, but little was achieved for either the
Palestinians or the Italians. Some years later Mussolini's Foreign
Minister--his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano-- had to confess to the
German ambassador that:
for years he maintained constant relations with the Grand Mufti of
which his secret fund could tell a tale. The return of this gift of
millions had not been exactly great and had really been confined to
occasional destruction of pipelines, which in most cases could be
quickly repaired.[(1)]
'The Haganah's Goal-A Jewish Majority in Palestine'
Because Hitler did not believe that the Jews could create a state of their
own, it did not follow that he would be pro-Palestinian. They too were
Semites. In the 1920s many right-wing German political groups began to
express sympathy for the oppressed nations of the British Empire as
fellow victims of perfidious Albion. However, Hitler would have none of
this; the British, after all, were white.
I as a man of Germanic blood, would, in spite of everything, rather
see India under English rule than under any other. Just as
lamentable are the hopes in any mythical uprising in Egypt... As a
volkish man, who appraises the value of men on a racial basis, I am
prevented by mere knowledge of the racial inferiority of these
socalled 'oppressed nationst from linking the destiny of my own
people with theirs.[(2)]
However, the revolt of the Palestinian Arab masses in 1936 made Berlin
re-think the implications of their pro-Zionist policies. Intense unrest had
been aroused in October 1935 by the discovery of weapons in a cement
cargo bound for Tel Aviv, and the situation became feverish in
November when Shaykh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a popular Muslim
preacher, took to the hills with a guerrilla band. British troops soon killed
him, but his funeral developed into a passionate demonstration. The crisis
dragged on for months before it finally exploded on the night of 15 April
1936, when a remnant of Qassam's band stopped traffic on the Tulkarm
road, robbing travellers and killing two Jews. Two Arabs were slain in
reprisal the next night. The funeral of the Jews turned into a right-wing
Zionist demonstration and the crowd started marching on Arab Jaffa. The
police opened fire, four Jews were shot and, again, Arabs were attacked
on the streets of Tel Aviv in retaliation. A counter-march soon started for
Tel Aviv. The revolt was on. A spontaneous general strike developed
and the pressure from below forced the rival cliques within the Arab
establishment to unite in an Arab Higher Committee under the leadership
of the Mufti. However, the Higher Committee feared that the continuation
of the rising would put the peasantry permanently beyond its leaders'
control, and finally prevailed upon the strike committees to call off the
protest on 12 October, pending the outcome of a British Royal
Commission's investigation.
Until the Arab revolt, the Nazis' patronage of Zionism had been warm
but scarcely committed, as we have seen. However, with the political
turmoil in Palestine and the appointment of the Peel Commission, the
WZO saw their chance to persuade the Nazis to make a public
commitment to them in Palestine itself. On 8 December 1936 a joint
delegation of the Jewish Agency, the highest body of the WZO in
Palestine, and the Hitachdut Olei Germania (the German Immigrants
Association), went to the Jerusalem office of Doehle, the German
Consul-General. The Zionist scholar, David Yisraeli, has related the
incident.
They sought through Doehle to persuade the Nazi government to
have its Jerusalem representative appear before the Peel
Commission, and declare that Germany was interested in an
increased immigration to Palestine because of its eagerness to have
the Jews emigrate from Germany. The Consul, however, rejected the
proposal on the spot. His official reasons were that considerations
of increased immigration from Germany would inevitably bring out
the matter of the transfer which was detrimental to British exports to
Palestine.[(3)]
Characteristically, the Zionists were more eager to extend their
relationship than the Nazis, but Doehle's rejection of their request did not
stop them from further approaches. The outcome of the Peel
Commission's expedition was thought crucial to the Zionist endeavour
and it was therefore the Haganah, then the military arm of the Jewish
Agency (de facto the Labour Zionist militia), that obtained Berlin's
permission to negotiate directly with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the
Security Service of the SS. A Haganah agent, Feivel Polkes, arrived in
Berlin on 26 February 1937 and was assigned Adolf Eichmann as his
negotiating partner. Eichmann had been a protege of the pro-Zionist von
Mildenstein and, like his mentor, had studied Hebrew, read Herzl and
was the SD's specialist on Zionism. The Eichmann-Polkes conversations
were recorded in a report prepared by Eichmann's superior,
Franz-Albert Six, which was found in the SS files captured by the
American Army at the end of the Second World War:
Polkes is a national-Zionist He is against all Jews who are opposed
to the erection of a Jewish state in Palestine. As a Haganah man he
fights against Communism and all aims of Arab-British friendship...
He noted that the Haganah's goal is to reach, as soon as possible, a
Jewish majority in Palestine. Therefore he worked, as this objective
required, with or against the British Intelligence Service, the Surete
Generale, with England and Italy... He declared himself willing to
work for Germany in the form of providing intelligence as long as
this does not oppose his own political goals. Among other things
he would support German foreign policy in the Near East. He would
try to find oil sources for the German Reich without affecting British
spheres of interest if the German monetary regulations were eased
for Jewish emigrants to Palestine.[(4)]
Six definitely thought that a working alliance with the Haganah would be
in the Nazis' interest. They still needed the latest inside information on the
various Jewish boycott groups and on Jewish plots against the lives of
prominent Nazis. He was eager to allow the SS to help the Zionists in
return.
Pressure can be put on the Reich Representation of Jews in
Germany in such a way that those Jews emigrating from Germany
go exclusively to Palestine and not go to other countries. Such
measures lie entirely in the German interest and is already prepared
through measures of the Gestapo. Polkes' plans to create a Jewish
majority in Palestine would be aided at the same time through these
measures.[(5)]
Six's enthusiasm was not shared at the German Foreign Ministry, which
saw Palestine as a British sphere. Berlin's prime interest was in an
understanding with London on the crucial question of the Balkans;
nothing must interfere with that. The officials were also concerned about
how Italy would react to German intervention in Mediterranean politics.
Therefore, on 1 June 1937 the Foreign Minister, Konstantine von
Neurath, sent cables to his diplomats in London, Jerusalem and Baghdad:
neither a Zionist state nor a Zionist political structure under British rule
would be in Germany's interest, as it 'would not absorb world Jewry but
would create an additional position of power under international law for
international Jewry, somewhat like the Vatican State for political
Catholicism or Moscow for the Comintern'. Germany therefore had 'an
interest in strengthening the Arab world', but 'it is not to be expected, of
course, that direct German intervention would influence essentially the
development of the Palestine question'. Under no circumstances were the
Palestinians to get more than token support: 'understanding for Arab
nationalist aspirations should be expressed more clearly than before, but
without making any definite promises'.[(6)]
Zionist Notions of the Future Israel
British policy towards Palestine at this stage was elegantly expressed in
the memoirs of Sir Ronald Storrs, the first military governor of Jerusalem,
the Zionist 'enterprise was one that blessed him that gave as well as him
that took, by forming for England ''a little loyal Jewish Ulster" in a sea of
potentially hostile Arabism'.[(7)] This was the spirit of the Peel
Commission's proposal in July 1937 that Palestine be divided into three
parts. All of it would stay under British overlordship; Britain would
directly retain a strip from Jerusalem to Jaffa, and would hold Haifa for
ten years, after which it would be seconded to a Zionist statelet of two
pieces with a combined area the size of the English county of Norfolk.
The tiny Zionist entity would contain an enormous Arab minority, some of
whom the Commission contemplated moving to the Arab state which
would get the rest of the country.
Opinion within Zionism was sharply divided. The 'Jewish Ulster' differed
from the original in that the Zionists would never see themselves as
fulfilled by the partition. Their Eretz Yisrael included all of Abraham's
biblical patrimony. In the end the World Zionist Congress's position was
a carefully qualified no, meaning a yes: that particular partition was
rejected, but the Executive was empowered to haggle further for a better
deal.
What kind of state did the Zionist movement envision for itself, and for
millions of Jews, in 1937? The Labour Zionists were by far the strongest
force in the movement and there was no greater protagonist of
acceptance of the partition than its leader, David Ben-Gurion who, in the
summer of 1937, solemnly reassured a Zurich session of the World
Council of the Poale Zion that they need have no fears in this regard: later
they would definitely expand.
This Jewish state which is now proposed to us, even with all the
possible reparations and improvements in our favor, is not the
Zionist aim --in this territory one cannot solve the Jewish problem...
what will happen, in another fifteen (or any other number of) years,
when the proposed territorially limited state reaches the point of
saturation of population?... Anyone who wants to be frank to
himself should not prophesy about what there will be in another
fifteen years... the adversaries of Partition were right when they
claimed that this country was not given for us to partition it --for it
constitutes a single unit, not only historically, but also from the
natural and economic standpoint.[(8)]
The Labour Zionists certainly realised now that if a Jewish state was
going to be achieved, it would inevitably be against the powerful
opposition of the Palestinian people. Although they were basically always
Jewish nationalists, they had turned resolutely away from their own past
socialist rhetoric, as well as their previous, feeble, efforts to organise
Arab workers, and started driving them out of their traditional seasonal
jobs in the Jewish orange groves. In general, their thinking had become
morbid, and they now consciously looked for their own success to come
out of the ruination of the European Jewish middle class. It was to be
their flight capital that would build Zion. Enzo Sereni, now an emissary to
the USA, was quite correct in assessing the attraction Zionism now held
for a portion of the Jewish middle class in Central and Eastern Europe:
Two souls dwell within the breast of the Jewish bourgeoisie, one
striving after profits, the other seeking for political power... As a
political group, the Jewish bourgeoisie cannot really live without
the Jewish masses. Only on them can it hope to build its political
supremacy. Also, in order to exercise its eventual control over the
Arab workers, the Jewish bourgeoisie needs a Jewish proletariat,
precisely as the great European powers need a national proletariat
for the exercise of their imperial plans.
What separates the Jewish Zionist bourgeoisie from the
non-Zionist members of the same class is really only the fact that
the Zionists are clearly aware that they can attain their interest as
a class only in the domain of a unified people and no longer as
mere individuals, as Jewish assimilationists believed.[(9)]
Anti-Semitism was now conceded to be the main force of Zionism but, in
addition, there were also positive attractions in the establishment of a
Zionist mini-state. Moshe Beilenson, then editor of Labour's daily
newspaper, Davar, naively expressed these hopes for an Israel as the
locus of the future capitalist exploitation of the hinterland:
Great perspectives will open before the 'Greater Zionism' that now
only a few among us dare to fight for, a Jewish state in Palestine,
leading the East... The Jewish state built on such foundations will
have the full right, both socially and spiritually, to claim the title of
leadership, the title of being the vanguard of the new world in the
East...
He qualified the realities behind his rhetorical flourish:
Of what value is our closeness of race to the Arab people compared
to the great distance between us in ideas, in existence, in our scale
of values? In all these matters we are many degrees closer to the
Europeans or Americans despite the existing 'racial differences'...
We want peace with the Arab Yishub... with no false philanthropy,
and with no make-believe missionaryism. Not for any Revolutionary
approach in the Awakening of the East, be it a 'national' East or a
'class' East or a 'religious spiritual' East... Not to free others have we
come here, but to free ourselves.[(10)]
These theoreticians were in the process of creating a self-fulfilling
prophesy. By talking so determinedly of the inevitable expropriation of
European Jewry, to be followed by the exploitation of a Jewish and Arab
proletariat, these self-styled socialists were doing nothing to mobilise the
Europeans and everything to arouse the wrath of the Palestinians. |
