Collated Research On The Holocaust As A Factor in The Creation of Israel

Balfour Declaration 1917
November 2nd, 1917
Dear Lord Rothschild,
I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the
following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been
submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.
"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national
home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the
achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which
may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."
I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist
Federation.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur James Balfour
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Creation of the State of Israel
Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the British
assumed control of Palestine. In November 1917, the British government
issued the Balfour Declaration, announcing its intention to facilitate the
"establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." In
1922, the League of Nations granted Britain a mandate over Palestine which
included, among other things, provisions calling for the establishment of a
Jewish homeland, facilitating Jewish immigration and encouraging Jewish
settlement on the land.
The Arabs were opposed to Jewish immigration to Palestine and stepped up

their attacks against the Jews. Following an increase in Arab attacks, the
British appointed a royal commission in 1936 to investigate the Palestine
situation. The Peel Commission recommended the partition of the country
between Arabs and Jews. The Arabs rejected the idea while the Jews
accepted the principle of partition.
At the end of World War II, the British persisted in their immigration
restrictions and Jewish survivors of the Holocaust were violently turned
away from the shores of Palestine. The Jewish Agency and the Haganah
continued to smuggle Jews into Palestine. Underground cells of Jews, most
notably the Irgun and Lehi, engaged in open warfare against the British and
their installations.
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The British concluded that they could no longer manage Palestine and
handed the issue over to the United Nations. On November 29, 1947, after
much debate and discussion, the UN recommended the partition of
Palestine into two states one Jewish and one Arab. The Jews accepted the
UN resolution while the Arabs rejected it.
Meanwhile, since the time of the British Mandate, the Jewish community in
Palestine had been forming political, social and economic institutions that
governed daily life in Palestine and served as a pre-state infrastructure.
Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) served as head of the pre-state
government.
The British mandate over Palestine of cially terminated at midnight, May

14, 1948. Earlier in the day, at 4:00 p.m., David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the
creation of the State of Israel and became its rst prime minister. Longtime
advocate of Zionism in Britain Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952) became Israel's
rst president. On May 15, the United States recognized the State of Israel
and the Soviet Union soon followed suit.
The edgling State of Israel was faced with many challenges. While ghting
a war of survival with the Arab states who immediately invaded the new
nation, Israel had to also absorb the shiploads of immigrants coming in
daily to the Jewish homeland. Many were penniless refugees from Europe
broken in body and in spirit. They needed immediate health and social
services in addition to acculturation to their new home.
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The Jewish State - Theodore Herzl - 1896
Society of Jews and Jewish State

NEGOTIORUM GESTIO
This pamphlet is not intended for lawyers. I can therefore touch only cursorily, as on
so many other things, upon my theory of the legal basis of a State.
I must, nevertheless, lay some stress on my new theory, which could be maintained, I
believe, even in discussion with men well versed in jurisprudence.
According to Rousseau's now antiquated view, a State is formed by a social contract.

Rousseau held that: "The conditions of this contract are so precisely defined by the
nature of the agreement that the slightest alteration would make them null and void.
The consequence is that, even where they are not expressly stated, they are
everywhere identical, and everywhere tacitly accepted and recognized," etc.
A logical and historic refutation of Rousseau's theory was never, nor is now, difficult,
however terrible and far-reaching its effects may have been. The question whether a
social contract with "conditions not expressly stated, yet unalterable," existed before
the framing of a constitution, is of no practical interest to States under modern
forms of government. The legal relationship between government and citizen is in
any case clearly established now.
But previous to the framing of a constitution, and during the creation of a new State,
these principles assume great practical importance. We know and see for ourselves
that States still continue to be created. Colonies secede from the mother country.
Vassals fall away from their suzerain; newly opened territories are immediately
formed into free States. It is true that the Jewish State is conceived as a peculiarly
modern structure on unspecified territory. But a State is formed, not by pieces of
land, but rather by a number of men united under sovereign rule.
The people is the subjective, land the objective foundation of a State, and the
subjective basis is the more important of the two. One sovereignty, for example,
which has no objective basis at all, is perhaps the most respected one in the world. I
refer to the sovereignty of the Pope.
The theory of rationality is the one at present accepted in political science. This
theory suffices to justify the creation of a State, and cannot be historically refuted in
the same way as the theory of a contract. Insofar as I am concerned only with the
creation of a Jewish State, I am well within the limits of the theory of rationality. But
when I touch upon the legal basis of the State, I have exceeded them. The theories
of a divine institution, or of superior power, or of a contract, and the patriarchal and
patrimonial theories do not accord with modern views. The legal basis of a State is
sought either too much within men (patriarchal theory, and theories of superior force
and contract), or too far above them (divine institution), or too far below them
(objective patrimonial theory). The theory of rationality leaves this question
conveniently and carefully unanswered. But a question which has seriously occupied
doctors of jurisprudence in every age cannot be an absolutely idle one. As a matter
of fact, a mixture of human and superhuman goes to the making of a State. Some
legal basis is indispensable to explain the somewhat oppressive relationship in which
subjects occasionally stand to rulers. I believe it is to be found it; the negotiorum
gestio, wherein the body of citizens represents the dominus negotiorum, and the
government represents the gestor.
MidEastWeb PDF Edition http://www.mideastweb.org 37

The Romans, with their marvelous sense of justice, produced that noble masterpiece,
the negotiorum gestio. When the property of an oppressed person is in danger, any
man may step forward to save it. This man is the gestor, the director of affairs not
strictly his own. He has received no warrant -- that is, no human warrant; higher
obligations authorize him to act. The higher obligations may be formulated in
different ways for the State, and so as to respond to individual degrees of culture
attained by a growing general power of comprehension. The gestio . is intended to
work for the good of thedominus -- the people, to whom the gestor . himself
belongs.
The gestor administers property of which he is joint-owner. His joint proprietorship

teaches him what urgency would warrant his intervention, and would demand his
leadership in peace or war; but under no circumstances is his authority valid qua joint
proprietorship. The consent of the numerous joint-owners is even under most
favorable conditions a matter of conjecture.
A State is created by a nation's struggle for existence. In any such struggle it is

impossible to obtain proper authority in circumstantial fashion beforehand. In fact,
any previous attempt to obtain a regular decision from the majority would probably
ruin the undertaking from the outset. For internal schisms would make the people
defenseless against external dangers. We cannot all be of one mind; the gestor will
therefore simply take the leadership into his hands and march in the van.
The action of the gestor . of the State is sufficiently warranted if the common cause
is in danger, and the dominus . is prevented, either by want of will or by some other
reason, from helping itself.
But the gestor becomes similar to the dominus by his intervention, and is bound by
the agreement quasi ex contractu. This is the legal relationship existing before, or,
more correctly, created simultaneously with the State.
The gestor .. thus becomes answerable far every form of negligence, even for the
failure of business undertakings, and the neglect of such affairs as are intimately
connected with them, etc. I shall not further enlarge on the negotiorum gestio, but
rather leave it to the State, else it would take us too far from the main subject. One
remark only: "Business management, if it is approved by the owner, is just as
effectual as if it had originally been carried on by his authority."
And how does all this affect our case?
The Jewish people are at present prevented by the Diaspora from conducting their
political affairs themselves. Besides, they are in a condition of more or less severe
distress in many parts of the world. They need, above all things a gestor . This gestor
. cannot, of course, be a single individual. Such a one would either make himself
ridiculous, or -- seeing that he would appear to be working for his own interests --
contemptible.
The gestor . of the Jews must therefore be a body corporate.
And that is the Society of Jews.

THE GESTOR OF THE JEWS
This organ of the national movement, the nature and functions of which we are at
last dealing with, will, in fact, be created before everything else. Its formation is
perfectly simple. It will take shape among those energetic Jews to whom I imparted
my scheme in London [Dr. Herzl addressed a meeting of the Maccabean Club, at
which Israel Zangwill presided, on November 24th, 1895].
The Society will have scientific and political tasks, for the founding of a Jewish State,
as I conceive it, presupposes the application of scientific methods. We cannot
journey out of Egypt today in the primitive fashion of ancient times. We shall
previously obtain an accurate account of our number and strength. The undertaking
of that great and ancient gestar of the Jews in primitive days bears much the same
relation to ours that some wonderful melody bears to a modern opera. We are
playing the same melody with many more violins, flutes, harps, violoncellos, and bass
viols; with electric light, decorations, choirs, beautiful costumes, and with the first
singers of their day.
This pamphlet is intended to open a general discussion on the Jewish Question.

Friends and foes will take part in it; but it will no longer, I hope, take the form of
violent abuse or of sentimental vindication, but of a debate, practical, large, earnest,
and political.
The Society of Jews will gather all available declarations of statesmen, parliaments,
Jewish communities, societies, whether expressed in speeches or writings, in
meetings, newspapers or books.
Thus the Society will find out for the first time whether the Jews really wish to go to
the Promised Land, and whether they must go there. Every Jewish community in the
world will send contributions to the Society towards a comprehensive collection of
Jewish statistics.
Further tasks, such as investigation by experts of the new country and its natural
resources, the uniform planning of migration and settlement, preliminary work for
legislation and administration, etc., must be rationally evolved out of the original
scheme.
Externally, the Society will attempt, as I explained before in the general part, to be
acknowledged as a State-forming power. The free assent of many Jews will confer on
it the requisite authority in its relations with Governments.
Internally, that is to say, in its relation with the Jewish people, the Society will create
all the first indispensable institutions; it will be the nucleus out of which the public
institutions of the Jewish State will later on be developed.
Our first object is, as I said before, supremacy, assured to us by international law,
over a portion of the globe sufficiently large to satisfy our just requirements.
What is the next step?
THE OCCUPATION OF THE LAND
When nations wandered in historic times, they let chance carry them, draw them,
fling them hither and thither, and like swarms of locusts they settled down
indifferently anywhere. For in historic times the earth was not known to man. But this
modern Jewish migration must proceed in accordance with scientific principles.

Not more than forty years ago gold-digging was carried on in an extraordinarily
primitive fashion. What adventurous days were those in California! A report brought
desperados together from every quarter of the earth; they stole pieces of land,
robbed each other of gold, and finally gambled it away, as robbers do.
But today! What is gold-digging like in the Transvaal today? Adventurous vagabonds
are not there; sedate geologists and engineers alone are on the spot to regulate its
gold industry, and to employ ingenious machinery in separating the ore from
surrounding rock. Little is left to chance now.
Thus we must investigate and take possession of the new Jewish country by means
of every modern expedient.
As soon as we have secured the land, we shall send over a ship, having on board the
representatives of the Society, of the Company, and of the local groups, who will
enter into possession at once.
These men will have three tasks to perform: (1) An accurate, scientific investigation
of all natural resources of the country; (2) the organization of a strictly centralized
administration; (3) the distribution of land. These tasks intersect one another, and
will all be carried out in conformity with the now familiar object in view.
One thing remains to be explained -- namely, how the occupation of land according to
local groups is to take place.
In America the occupation of newly opened territory is set about in naive fashion.
The settlers assemble on the frontier, and at the appointed time make a
simultaneous and violent rush for their portions.
We shall not proceed thus to the new land of the Jews. The lots in provinces and
towns will be sold by auction, and paid for, not in money, but in work. The general
plan will have settled on streets, bridges, waterworks, etc., necessary for traffic.
These will be united into provinces. With- in these provinces sites for towns will be
similarly sold by auction. The local groups will pledge themselves to carry the
business property through, and will cover the cost by means of self-imposed
assessments. The Society will be in a position to judge whether the local groups are
not venturing on sacrifices too great for their means. The large communities will
receive large sites for their activity. Great sacrifices will thus be rewarded by the
establishment of universities, technical schools, academies, research institutes, etc.,
and these Government institutes, which do not have to be concentrated in the
capital, will be distributed over the country.
The personal interest of the buyers, and, if necessary, the local assessment, will
guarantee the proper working of what has been taken over. In the same way, as we
cannot, and indeed do not wish to obliterate distinctions between single individuals,
so the differences between local groups will also continue. Everything will shape itself
quite naturally. All acquired rights will be protected, and every new development will
be given sufficient scope.
Our people will be made thoroughly acquainted with all these matters.
We shall not take others unawares or mislead them, any more than we shall deceive
ourselves.

Everything must be systematically settled beforehand. I merely indicate this scheme:

our keenest thinkers will combine in elaborating it. Every social and technical
achievement of our age and of the more advanced age which will be reached before
the slow execution of my plan is accomplished must be employed for this object.
Every valuable invention which exists now, or lies in the future, must be used. By
these means a country can be occupied and a State founded in a manner as yet
unknown to history, and with possibilities of success such as never occurred before.

CONSTITUTION
One of the great commissions which the Society will have to appoint will be the
council of State jurists. These must formulate the best, that is, the best modern
constitution possible. I believe that a good constitution should be of moderately
elastic nature. In another work I have explained in detail what forms of government I
hold to be the best. I think a democratic monarchy and an aristocratic republic are
the finest forms of a State, because in them the form of State and the principle of
government are opposed to each other, and thus preserve a true balance of power. I
am a staunch supporter of monarchial institutions, because these allow of a
continuous policy, and represent the interests of a historically famous family born
and educated to rule, whose desires are bound up with the preservation of the State.
But our history has been too long interrupted for us to attempt direct continuity of
ancient constitutional forms, without exposing ourselves to the charge of absurdity.
A democracy without a sovereign's useful counterpoise is extreme in appreciation

and condemnation, tends to idle discussion in Parliaments, and produces that
objectionable class of men -- professional politicians. Nations are also really not fit for
unlimited democracy at present, and will become less and less fitted for it in the
future. For a pure democracy presupposes a predominance of simple customs, and
our customs become daily more complex with the growth of commerce and increase
of culture. "Le ressort d'une democracie est la vertu," said wise Montesquieu. And
where is this virtue, that is to say, this political virtue, to be met with? I do not
believe in our political virtue; first, because we are no better than the rest of modern
humanity; and, secondly, because freedom will make us show our fighting qualities at
first. I also hold a settling of questions by the referendum to be an unsatisfactory
procedure, because there are no simple political questions which can be answered
merely by Yes and No. The masses are also more prone even than Parliaments to be
led away by heterodox opinions, and to be swayed by vigorous ranting. It is
impossible to formulate a wise internal or external policy in a popular assembly.
Politics must take shape in the upper strata and work downwards. But no member of
the Jewish State will be oppressed, every man will be able and will wish to rise in it.
Thus a great upward tendency will pass through our people; every individual by trying
to raise himself, raising also the whole body of citizens. The ascent will take a normal
form, useful to the State and serviceable to the National Idea.
Hence I incline to an aristocratic republic. This would satisfy the ambitious spirit in
our people, which has now degenerated into petty vanity. Many of the institutions of
Venice pass through my mind; but all that which caused the ruin of Venice must be
carefully avoided. We shall learn from the historic mistakes of others, in the same
way as we learn from our own; for we are a modern nation, and wish to be the most
modern in the world. Our people, who are receiving the new country from the
Society, will also thankfully accept the new constitution it offers them. Should any
opposition manifest itself, the Society will suppress it. The Society cannot permit the
exercise of its functions to be interpreted by short-sighted or ill-disposed individuals.
LANGUAGE
It might be suggested that our want of a common current language would present
difficulties. We cannot converse with one another in Hebrew. Who amongst us has a
sufficient acquaintance with Hebrew to ask for a railway ticket in that language! Such
a thing cannot be done. Yet the difficulty is very easily circumvented. Every man can
preserve the language in which his thoughts are at home. Switzerland affords a
conclusive proof of the possibility of a federation of tongues. We shall remain in the
new country what we now are here, and we shall never cease to cherish with sadness
the memory of the native land out of which we have been driven.

We shall give up using those miserable stunted jargons, those Ghetto languages
which we still employ, for these were the stealthy tongues of prisoners. Our national
teachers will give due attention to this matter; and the language which proves itself
to be of greatest utility for general intercourse will be adopted without compulsion as
our national tongue. Our community of race is peculiar and unique, for we are bound
together only by the faith of our fathers.
THEOCRACY
Shall we end by having a theocracy? No, indeed. Faith unites us, knowledge gives us
freedom. We shall therefore prevent any theocratic tendencies from coming to the
fore on the part of our priesthood. We shall keep our priests within the confines of
their temples in the same way as we shall keep our professional army within the
confines of their barracks. Army and priesthood shall receive honors high as their
valuable functions deserve. But they must not interfere in the administration of the
State which confers distinction upon them, else they will conjure up difficulties
without and within.
Every man will be as free and undisturbed in his faith or his disbelief as he is in his
nationality. And if it should occur that men of other creeds and different nationalities
come to live amongst us, we should accord them honorable protection and equality
before the law. We have learnt toleration in Europe. This is not sarcastically said; for
the Anti-Semitism of today could only in a very few places be taken for old religious
intolerance. It is for the most part a movement among civilized nations by which they
try to chase away the specters of their own past.
LAWS
When the idea of a State begins to approach realization, the Society of Jews will
appoint a council of jurists to do the preparatory work of legislation. During the
transition period these must act on the principle that every emigrant Jew is to be
judged according to the laws of the country which he has left. But they must try to
bring about a unification of these various laws to form a modern system of legislation
based on the best portions of previous systems. This might become a typical
codification, embodying all the just social claims of the present day.
THE ARMY
The Jewish State is conceived as a neutral one. It will therefore require only a
professional army, equipped, of course, with every requisite of modern warfare, to
preserve order internally and externally.
THE FLAG
We have no flag, and we need one. If we desire to lead many men, we must raise a
symbol above their heads.
I would suggest a white flag, with seven golden stars. The white field symbolizes our
pure new life; the stars are the seven golden hours of our working-day. For we shall
march into the Promised Land carrying the badge of honor.
RECIPROCITY AND EXTRADITION TREATIES
The new Jewish State must be properly founded, with due regard to our future
honorable position in the world. Therefore every obligation in the old country must be
scrupulously fulfilled before leaving. The Society of Jews and the Jewish Company will
grant cheap passage and certain advantages in settlement to those only who can
present an official testimonial from the local authorities, certifying that they have left
their affairs in good order.

Every just private claim originating in the abandoned countries will be heard more
readily in the Jewish State than anywhere else. We shall not wait for reciprocity; we
shall act purely for the sake of our own honor. We shall thus perhaps find, later on,
that law courts will be more willing to hear our claims than now seems to be the case
in some places.
It will be inferred, as a matter of course, from previous remarks, that we shall deliver
up Jewish criminals more readily than any other State would do, till the time comes
when we can enforce our penal code on the same principle as every other civilized
nation does. There will therefore be a period of transition, during which we shall
receive our criminals only after they have suffered due penalties. But, having made
amends, they will be received without any restrictions whatever, for our criminals
also must enter upon a new life.
Thus emigration may become to many Jews a crisis with a happy issue. Bad external
circumstances, which ruin many a character, will be removed, and this change may
mean salvation to many who are lost.
Here I should like briefly to relate a story I came across in an account of the gold
mines of Witwatersrand. One day a man came to the Rand, settled there, tried his
hand at various things, with the exception of gold mining, till he founded an ice
factory, which did well. He soon won universal esteem by his respectability, but after
some years he was suddenly arrested. He had committed some defalcations as
banker in Frankfort, had fled from there, and had begun a new life under an assumed
name. But when he was led away as prisoner, the most respected people in the place
appeared at the station, bade him a cordial farewell and au revoir -- for he was
certain to return.
How much this story reveals! A new life can regenerate even criminals, and we have a
proportionately small number of these. Some interesting statistics on this point are
worth reading, entitled "The Criminality of Jews in Germany," by Dr. P. Nathan, of
Berlin, who was commissioned by the "Society for Defense against Anti-Semitism" to
make a collection of statistics based on official returns. It is true that this pamphlet,
which teems with figures, has been prompted, as many another "defense," by the
error that Anti-Semitism can be refuted by reasonable arguments. We are probably
disliked as much for our gifts as we are for our faults.
BENEFITS OF THE EMIGRATION OF THE JEWS
I imagine that Governments will, either voluntarily or under pressure from the Anti-
Semites, pay certain attention to this scheme, and they may perhaps actually receive
it here and there with a sympathy which they will also show to the Society of Jews.

For the emigration which I suggest will not create any economic crises. Such crises as
would follow everywhere in consequence of Jew-baiting would rather be prevented by
the carrying out of my plan. A great period of prosperity would commence in
countries which are now Anti- Semitic. For there will be, as I have repeatedly said, an
internal migration of Christian citizens into the positions slowly and systematically
evacuated by the Jews. If we are not merely suffered, but actually assisted to do
this, the movement will have a generally beneficial effect. That is a narrow view, from
which one should free oneself, which sees in the departure of many Jews a
consequent impoverishment of countries. It is different from a departure which is a
result of persecution, for then property is indeed destroyed, as it is ruined in the
confusion of war. Different again is the peaceable voluntary departure of colonists,
wherein everything is carried out with due consideration for acquired rights, and with
absolute conformity to law, openly and by light of day, under the eyes of the
authorities and the control of public opinion. The emigration of Christian proletarians
to different parts of the world would be brought to a standstill by the Jewish
movement.
The States would have a further advantage in the enormous increase of their export
trade; for, since the emigrant Jews "over there" would depend for a long time to
come on European productions, they would necessarily have to import them. The
local groups would keep up a just balance, and the customary needs would have to
be supplied for a long time at the accustomed places.
Another, and perhaps one of the greatest advantages, would be the ensuing social
relief. Social dissatisfaction would be appeased during the twenty or more years
which the emigration of the Jews would occupy, and would in any case be set at rest
during the whole transition period.
The shape which the social question may take depends entirely on the development
of our technical resources. Steam power concentrated men in factories about
machinery where they were overcrowded, and where they made one another
miserable by overcrowding. Our present enormous, injudicious, and unsystematic rate
of production is the cause of continual severe crises which ruin both employers and
employees. Steam crowded men together; electricity will probably scatter them
again, and may perhaps bring about a more prosperous condition of the labor market.
In any case our technical inventors, who are the true benefactors of humanity, will
continue their labors after the commencement of the emigration of the Jews, and
they will discover things as marvelous as those we have already seen, or indeed more
wonderful even than these.
The word "impossible" has ceased to exist in the vocabulary of technical science.
Were a man who lived in the last century to return to the earth, he would find the life
of today full of incomprehensible magic. Wherever the moderns appear with our
inventions, we transform the desert into a garden. To build a city takes in our time as
many years as it formerly required centuries; America offers endless examples of
this. Distance has ceased to be an obstacle. The spirit of our age has gathered
fabulous treasures into its storehouse. Every day this wealth increases. A hundred
thousand heads are occupied with speculations and research at every point of the
globe, and what any one discovers belongs the next moment to the whole world. We
ourselves will use and carry on every new attempt in our Jewish land; and just as we
shall introduce the seven-hour day as an experiment for the good of humanity, so we
shall proceed in everything else in the same humane spirit, making of the new land a
land of experiments and a model State.

After the departure of the Jews the undertakings which they have created will remain
where they originally were found. And the Jewish spirit of enterprise will not even fail
where people welcome it. For Jewish capitalists will be glad to invest their funds
where they are familiar with surrounding conditions. And whereas Jewish money is
now sent out of countries on account of existing persecution and is sunk in most
distant foreign undertakings, it will flow back again in consequence of this peaceable
solution, and will contribute to the further progress of the countries which the Jews
have left.

The Holocaust: Factor in the Birth of Israel?
by
Evyatar Friesel
It is widely believed that the catastrophe of European Jewry during World

War II had a decisive influence on the establishment of the Jewish state in
1948. According to this thesis, for the Jews the Holocaust triggered a supreme
effort toward statehood, based on the understanding that only a Jewish state
might again avoid the horrors of the 1940s. For the nations of the world,
shocked by the horror of the extermination and burdened by feelings of guilt,
the Holocaust convinced them that the Jews were entitled to a state of their
own. All these assumptions seem extremely doubtful. They deserve careful
re-examination in light of the historical evidence.
Statehood in Zionist Thought

The quest for a Jewish state had always been paramount in Zionist thought
and action. For tactical reasons official Zionism was cautious in explaining its
ultimate aims, especially when addressing general public opinion. Terms other
than "state" were used in various political documents or official utterances by
leading Zionist statesmen: Jewish home, Jewish National Home,
commonwealth, Jewish commonwealth. But there is no reason to doubt that
the ultimate aim of the Zionist mainstream was the creation of a state in
Palestine. The question remained as to what methods should be used in order
to reach the consummation of these hopes. One possibility was the
evolutionary path, implied also in the political relations between the Zionists
and leading British statesmen between 1917 and 1920. It found implicit
expression in the terms and the structure of the Palestine Mandate approved
by the League of Nations in July 1922. The underlying idea was that the
Jewish National Home should attain political independence after a process
that would prepare the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, to look
__________________________________________________________________________
1/26 Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies
after its own affairs. It was more a position of principle than an articulated
plan. Nevertheless, for most Zionist leaders it represented a concrete aim,
despite the uncertainty as to the ways and means of attaining it.
More radical alternatives developed later, reflecting disenchantment with
British policy in Palestine and increasing awareness of the gravity of the Arab
question. As the tensions in Palestine worsened and a crisis developed
between the Jews, the mandatory administration and the Arabs, the possibility
that Jewish independence in Palestine may have to be attained not only in
armed confrontation against the Arabs, but also in opposition to the British
began to be considered. Already in 1932, Chaim Arlosoroff, the head of the
Political Department of the Jewish Agency, evoked the prospect of the Jews
seizing political power in Palestine through a revolutionary act.1
But these were the more extreme possibilities within the wide range of Zionist
political options. During the 1920s and even the 1930s, Zionist policy took a
more moderate approach. Most Zionists believed that the British Mandate still
represented an acceptable framework for the development of the Jewish
National Home. Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist
Organization, maintained that if the Jewish National Home had not come
closer to realization, this was the fault - at least up to the early 1930s - of the
Jewish people and of the Zionist movement, rather than of the mandatory
power.2 Even a radical Zionist like Vladimir (Ze'ev) Jabotinsky considered that,
in principle, Great Britain was the right choice for a mandatory power, in spite
of his deep disagreement with British policy in Palestine. In 1937, when the
Peel Commission proposed a partition solution for the country, it was
practically rejected by the Zionist movement. One of the reasons was the
unformulated consensus among a majority of centrist and moderate-left
Zionists that the status quo in Palestine still worked to the Zionists' advantage.
Such a position, which, in hindsight, was a terrible mistake, made sense when
considered in light of the realities in 1937. The Jewish community had been
growing impressively during the 1930s; the forecast of population trends for
Palestine prepared for the Peel Commission showed, by extrapolation of
existing immigration figures, that a Jewish majority in Palestine was
1
Letter to Chaim Weizmann, June 30, 1932, Weizmann Archives, Rehovot, Israel.
2
Chaim Weizmann, The Zionist Movement 1916-1931, London, 1931, p. 16
__________________________________________________________________________
foreseeable in ten to fifteen years3. If so, why not wait ?
Political Reformulation in 1939

The White Paper of 1939 caused a fundamental change in the political
situation in Palestine.4 Despite fluctuations, British policy had hitherto
considered a growing Jewish National Home as a logical corollary of its
administration in Palestine. The 1939 White Paper revised this policy and
imposed harsh limits on the development of the Jewish National Home. As
noted in a statement of the Jewish Agency from May 17, 1939:
…the effect of the new policy for Palestine laid down by the Mandatory
Government... is to deny to the Jewish people the right to reconstitute their
national home in their ancestral country. It is a policy which transfers authority
over Palestine to the present Arab majority, decrees the stoppage of Jewish
immigration as soon as the Jewish inhabitants form one-third of the total, and
set up a territorial ghetto for the Jews in their own homeland.5
The 1939 White Paper was unconditionally rejected by the Zionist movement.
After its publication the Zionists were faced with a situation that demanded
new decisions if the ultimate aim of the movement in Palestine was to be kept
alive. Sooner or later the Zionists were brought to acknowledge that the
alternative way toward statehood in Palestine - the active, even violent option
- had been forced upon them .
Were they ready? During the 1930s the Jewish community in Palestine had
developed considerably in all fields. Now, almost half a million strong, it may
still have fallen short of the original Zionist expectations, but it certainly had
created a strong communal structure that could function independently if
necessary. Politically speaking, there seemed no other way: acceptance of
3
See ESCO: Palestine, A Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies, vol. II, New Haven,
1947, pp. 852-857; Palestine Royal Commission, Report, Cmd 5479 (1937), p. 281.
4
For the text of the 1939 White Paper, see John N. Moore, ed., The Arab-Israeli Conflict, vol.
III (Documents), Princeton, N.J., 1974 (hereafter, Moore), pp. 210-221; Yehuda Bauer, From
Diplomacy to Resistance, Philadelphia, 1970 (hereafter, Bauer), pp. 28-43.
5
Moore, pp. 222-224; see also Ch. Weizmann to the High Commissioner for Palestine, May
31, 1939, in Jewish Agency - Book of Documents, New York, May 1947 (hereafter, Book of
Documents), pp. 140-151.
__________________________________________________________________________
the British White Paper meant to jeopardize the political future of the
community. Now, after May 1939, the "revolutionary situation" mentioned by
Chaim Arlosoroff in 1932 was at hand.
During the months between the publication of the White Paper and the
Twenty-first Zionist Congress (Geneva, August 1939), the Zionist leadership
began to formulate a new political line. The Zionists treaded cautiously on the
shifting soil of political concepts, which, although expressed before, now had a
disturbing dimension of immediacy. At the Congress David Ben-Gurion,
chairman of the Jewish Agency, proclaimed the leading intention of Zionist
policy for the coming years:
The "White Paper" has created a vacuum in the Mandate. For us, the
"White Paper" does not exist in any form, under any condition, under
any interpretation. For us there is only that vacuum created in the
Mandate, and it is up to us to fill this vacuum, by ourselves alone...We
ourselves shall have to act as if we were the state in Palestine; and we
have to act that way until we shall become and in order that we shall
become the state in Palestine.6
The outbreak of World War II in September 1939 forced upon the Zionist
leadership new challenges and influenced the immediate Zionist priorities.
Zionist policy during World War II was encumbered by the worsening situation
of European Jewry and by the danger of a German invasion in Palestine.7 Yet
while worrying about these developments, the leaders of the movement did
not forget that the 1939 White Paper still represented an unavoidable point of
political reference.
In the first half of 1941, Ben-Gurion presented before the Zionist institutions in
Palestine plans for a huge and concentrated effort at the end of the war, "to
execute the rapid transfer of millions of Jews [to Palestine] and their
settlement as a self-governing people." While hoping for an understanding
with the British, Ben-Gurion did not exclude the possibility of confrontation,
even armed struggle.8
6
David Ben-Gurion, Bama'arakha, vol. II (Hebrew), Tel Aviv, 1957, pp. 188-189. For further
expressions of the gradual radicalization of Ben-Gurion's position at that time, see Bauer, pp.
43-51.
7
Regarding British policy in Palestine during the war, see Ronald W. Zweig, Britain and
Palestine During the Second World War, London, 1986.
8
See Bauer, pp. 230-233.
__________________________________________________________________________
At about the same time, Weizman, then in London, was developing the ideas
published in January 1942, in his well-known article in Foreign Affairs,
"Palestine's Role in the Solution of the Jewish Problem." Weizmann, too,
foresaw the establishment of a Jewish state at the end of the war. The
situation of the Jews in Europe was evoked in Weizmann's article only in
passing. Both his and Ben-Gurion's arguments were primarily directed against
the 1939 White Paper. In the autumn of, 1941Ben-Gurion went to the United
States to establish contacts in American political circles and to explain the
necessity of the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine after the war.9
The Biltmore Program, 1942

The process of political maturation evolving among the Zionist leadership
since the publication of the 1939 White Paper was due to express itself,
sooner or later, in a new political platform. This happened in May 1942, when
the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs convened an
Extraordinary Zionist Conference in the Biltmore Hotel in New York. Among
the participants were Weizmann, Ben-Gurion and Nahum Goldmann. The
conference approved an eight-point declaration, which came to be known as
the Biltmore Program. Point six called for the rejection of the White Paper of
May 1939. Point eight urged that the gates of Palestine be opened; that the
Jewish Agency be vested with control of immigration into Palestine and with
the necessary authority for upbuilding the country...and that Palestine be
established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the new
democratic world.10
The creation of the Jewish state had become the imminent political goal of
the Zionist movement.
The minutes of the conference indicate that both the 1939 White Paper and
the situation of European Jewry were present in the minds of the speakers.
9
Moshe Perlman, Ben-Gurion Looks Back, 1965, p. 111.
10
Minutes of the Extraordinary Zionist Conference, Zionist Archives and Library, New York.
The resolutions were published in Abraham Tulin, ed., Book of Documents Submitted to the
General Assembly of the United Nations Relating to the Establishment of the National Home
for the Jewish People, New York, May 1947, pp. 226-227.
__________________________________________________________________________
But the arguments touching on the fate of European Jewry, while displaying
anxiety, were couched in rather general terms. Reference was made to "Nazi
persecutions," but there was no mention of a Holocaust or of massive
extermination of the Jews. Weizmann expressed the fear that up to 25 percent
of East European Jews might be "liquidated" during the war. The remainder,
in his estimation two to four million Jews, would be uprooted from their homes,
and "...will be left as a floating population between heaven and hell, not
knowing where to turn." He recalled his earlier warning in 1936, when he had
said that for European Jewry the world was to be "...divided in two parts: the
countries where they cannot live and the countries they cannot enter." But in
spite of all this, Weizmann was still optimistic about the ultimate survival of
European Jewry. The experience of World War I led him to hope that once
again European Jewry would survive pogroms and persecutions to emerge
stronger than before.
If Weizmann's position was more Diaspora-oriented, Ben-Gurion
concentrated on the situation in Palestine. He demanded the fulfillment of the
original terms of the Mandate, criticized the 1939 White Paper, and suggested
solutions for the Arab problem.11 But for both Weizmann and Ben-Gurion, it
was the new political reality created by the 1939 White Paper that provided
the impelling thrust toward a Jewish state. Both were still unaware - as were
almost all the other delegates to the Biltmore Conference - that total
destruction threatened European Jewry. The only hint of the magnitude of the
catastrophe, reverberating strangely and almost dissonantly through the
proceedings, came from Nahum Goldmann. He alone suggested that the
large majority of European Jewry may not survive the war, and that those who
might would be left without the strength to rise again and rebuild their
shattered lives and communities.
The Biltmore Conference was not an official meeting of the leading
institutions of the Zionist movement. Its resolutions were not binding, only
political guidelines. Nevertheless, the program adopted at the conference
represented a clear watershed in Zionist policy. It summed up the thoughts
11
Minutes. Ben-Gurion's speech was published in David Ben-Gurion, Rebirth and Destiny of
Israel, New York, 1954, pp. 113-132 .
__________________________________________________________________________
and feelings that had begun to develop among Zionists since 1939. They were
now translated into a program of political action that was gradually accepted
both by the Zionist movement and by the main currents in world Jewry. The
drive toward the creation of a Jewish state had now been proclaimed, and, in
spite of subsequent political fluctuations, it was to remain the central goal of
Zionist policy in the coming years .
In the formulation of the Biltmore Program, there was an awareness of the
dangers confronting European Jewry. However, not before the summer of
1942 would the facts about the systematic extermination of European Jewry
be known.12
Confronting the Holocaust

From the end of 1942, the realization that European Jewry faced literal
annihilation introduced a new element of bitterness and anger in Jewish life
everywhere. Jewish leaders and communities sought in different ways to act
against the extermination, to help the Jews trapped in Europe, to participate in
their efforts at resistance and revolt. If and how the Jews acted against the
Nazi onslaught has remained a controversial theme in Jewish life; however,
there is general agreement that there was a glaring disproportion between the
appalling dimensions of the Jewish disaster and the limited possibilities of the
Jews outside Europe to come to their brethren's aid. In the 1940s, the feeling
of helplessness and the suspicion that the nations engaged in war against
Germany were indifferent to the fate of European Jewry, brought about a new
mood, combining despair and grim determination. An element of urgency and
affliction was now added to the fundamental aim of Zionist strategy - to
achieve Jewish statehood.
By October 1944, the Jewish Agency had indicated to the British government
that its political aim was to transform Palestine into a Jewish Commonwealth
at the end of the war. Without varying from this goal, between 1944 and 1947,
Zionist policy was to undergo several changes in its position vis-a-vis a
possible partition of the country between Jews and Arabs .
12
Yehuda Bauer, "When Did They Know?", Midstream, April 1968, pp. 51-58.
__________________________________________________________________________
In October 1944, the Jewish Agency had stated that all of Palestine should be
turned into a Jewish state. However, at the important meeting of its executive
in Paris in August 1946, the Jewish Agency declared itself ready to consider a
partition plan, provided the dimensions of Jewish Palestine were acceptable.
Later, at the first postwar Zionist Congress, held in Basle in December 1946,
the idea of partition was rejected, and a resolution calling for a Jewish state
throughout Palestine was approved.13
This resolution was actually something of a tactical step: it was thought that
more might be obtained, in terms of partition, if the Zionists demanded all of
the country and left it to a third party to suggest a division. The resolution also
reflected the confrontation between the gradualist position of Weizmann and
the more radical trend led by Ben-Gurion. The latter's approach prevailed at
the Congress, and Weizmann was not re-elected president of the World
Zionist Organization. By now, however, both moderates and radicals were
working toward the creation of a Jewish state.
In the formulation of Zionist policies in those years, the Holocaust and its
consequences were mentioned in practical rather than in moral terms. The
primary emphasis was on the problem of thousands upon thousands of
survivors, uprooted, clamoring for a solution, asking to enter Palestine. The
Holocaust was certainly very much present in the minds of the delegates at
the Zionist Congress in 1946, but the tone of the resolutions was directed
against British policy in Palestine and in favor of opening the gates of Eretz
Israel to the European refugees.14
The same applies to the copious written statements and memoranda by the
Jewish Agency and other Jewish bodies15, as well as to the statements of
Zionist leaders (Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, Silver, Shertok and others)16
presented before the Anglo-American Commission of Enquiry in 1946, and
before the diverse bodies of the United Nations in 1947. Mention of the
13
See Jacob C. Hurewitz, The Struggle for Palestine, New York, 1976 (hereafter, Hurewitz),
pp. 204, 260, 268-269.
14
See Book of Documents, pp. 238-242, 304-308.
15
Jewish Agency for Palestine: Statements, March 1946, The Jewish Case Before the Anglo-
American Committee of Enquiry on Palestine, Jerusalem, 1946, pp. 3-259; The Jewish
Agency Before the United Nations, New York, May 1947; The Jewish Plan for Palestine,
Jerusalem, September 1947 (hereafter, The Jewish Plan for Palestine), pp. 269-559.
16
Ibid.
__________________________________________________________________________
Holocaust was subdued; precedence was invariably given to the refugee
problem and the situation in Palestine.
How to explain this kind of reticence, so soon after the greatest disaster in the
history of the Jewish Diaspora? It seems that, for a time, Jews and Zionists
were unable to react to the catastrophe beyond the basic level of shock and
grief. What had happened seemed unbelievable and inexplicable. But this was
the critical hour of political decision. The Zionist leaders kept their feelings
under a tight rein, outwardly at least. The problems of the Jewish people were
almost beyond solution. The only way out was to concentrate on the urgent
issues that were the immediate consequences of the Catastrophe; they at
least represented a political platform to be fought for, in line with Zionist
objectives.
Inevitably, however, there were occasions when the burden of the tragedy
broke sharply through: "Can anybody realize - a million Jewish babies burned
in the gas chambers? A third of our people, almost as many as the whole
population of Sweden, murdered? cried out Ben-Gurion, perhaps the least
sentimental, the most goal-directed among the Zionists leaders in his
testimony before UNSCOP.17
The reserve displayed by the Zionists in the presentation of their case
paralleled, curiously enough, the kind of attitude exhibited by the various
international bodies that dealt with the question of Palestine. Some of the
members of these commissions were aware of the connection between the
Holocaust, the history of European Jewry, and the political hopes of the
Zionist movement. In this respect there was a difference between the position
of the Anglo-American Commission of Enquiry and of UNSCOP. The former's
terms of reference included the examination of both the "economic and social
conditions in Palestine" and the "position of the Jews in those countries in
Europe where they have been the victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution."
Diversely, UNSCOP's terms of reference mentioned only the facts connected
with the Palestinian problem.18 However, considered in terms of
recommendations, both commissions dealt only with practical matters - the
17
The Jewish Plan for Palestine, p. 310.
18
Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, Preface, pp. 11-15 ; Report to the
General Assembly by the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), August
31, 1947 (hereafter, UNSCOP, Report), p. 3.
__________________________________________________________________________
situation in Palestine, the problem of the Jewish refugees - and nothing was
said about the larger connection between the Holocaust and the existing
difficulties of the Jewish people. Almost all the issues raised and painstakingly
analyzed during the questioning of the Zionist representatives who appeared
before the various commissions were concerned with current political matters.
The situation of European Jewry and its fate were hardly mentioned .
The Palestine Issue at the UN, 1947

The last phase in the historical process leading to the creation of the State of
Israel began on February 14, 1947 when the British government decided to
refer the problem of Palestine to the United Nations.19 In a sense, this
decision was an outcome of the report of the Anglo-American Commission.
The rejection by the British government of the commission's main
recommendation - the admittance of 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine -
increased the political pressures surrounding the Palestine issue both in
Britain and abroad. Months before the report of the Anglo-American
Commission was published, there had been a growing feeling in Parliament
that British policy regarding Palestine was going from bad to worse. The
tension in Palestine, the changing circumstances in the Middle East, and the
postwar political weight of the United States in international matters brought
the British to turn the issue over to the United Nations.
This did not necessarily mean that the British government was considering
the relinquishment of political power in Palestine. As it was explained by the
Secretary of State for the Colonies:
We are not going to the United Nations to surrender the Mandate. We

are going to the United Nations setting out the problem and asking for
19
This period is well described by Michael J. Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers 1945-
1948, Princeton, 1982, and Wm. Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945-
1951. Arab Nationalism, the United States and Postwar Imperialism, Oxford, 1984 (hereafter,
Louis), part IV; good descriptions from the time are found in Jacob Robinson, Palestine and
the United Nations, Washington, 1947 (hereafter, Robinson), and the detailed but uncritical
account of Joseph J. Zasloff, Great Britain and Palestine - A Study of the Problem Before the
United Nations , 1952 (hereafter, Zasloff) also, Leonard L. Leonard, "The United Nations and
Palestine," International Conciliation, no. 454, October 1949 (hereafter, Leonard), pp. 603-
786; see also the very perceptive article by Susan Strange, "Palestine and the United
Nations," Yearbook of World Affairs, 1949 (hereafter, Strange), pp. 151-168.
__________________________________________________________________________
their advice as to how the Mandate can be administered. If the
Mandate cannot be administered in its present form we are asking how
it can be amended.20
But once the issue was presented before the UN, the international community
began to consider the question of Palestine from its own vantage point, which
did not necessarily run parallel to Britain's ideas and interests. It soon became
clear that the problematic position of the British in Palestine was not going to
be politically improved by the outcome of the UN discussions.
During the months from the middle of 1947 to the first part of 1948, British
policy was characterized by bewilderment and frustration. In September 1947,
the British announced that it was their intention to leave Palestine as soon as
possible. Later on, after the partition resolution in late November, British
behavior was a rather sour note of non-cooperation and even obstruction,
tempered by the occasional feeling of relief at the imminent termination of the
Mandate.21
The discussions on Palestine in the United Nations, from February 1947 until
mid-1948, can be divided into four major phases: the First Special Session of
the General Assembly (April 28 to May 15, 1947), which decided to establish
the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP); the
deliberations of UNSCOP and its recommendations; the decision of the
General Assembly of November 29, 1947, on the partition of Palestine; and
the deliberations at the UN up to the middle of 1948, which tried to cope with
the worsening conflict between Jews and Arabs. With regard to our theme -
the Holocaust and the creation of Israel - similar patterns run through all four
phases. As Jacob Robinson has pointed out with regard to the First Special
Session of the United Nations:
The overwhelming majority [of the delegates] did not express their
preferences or sympathies on behalf of either of the two directly
interested parties in the Palestine issue. While there was a group which
solidly supported every move in the interest of the Arab Higher
Committee, no such group existed to support the Jewish position.22
20
Robinson, p. 44.
21
British reactions are lucidly described in Louis, pp. 464-494.
22
Robinson, p. 248.
__________________________________________________________________________
The neutrality of most of the delegations only emphasized the fact that one
side - the Arabs - already had firmly committed supporters. Some of the
delegates expressed sympathy or understanding for the Jewish national
aspirations in Palestine, but even then they were careful to balance their
words with identical declarations regarding Arab interests. Only one country,
South Africa, maintained a firm pro-Zionist position from the beginning.
At this stage, therefore, there was very little indication in the opinions
expressed by the different nations to show that the Holocaust had influenced
their positions.
UNSCOP
In the entire process of the UN deliberations on the Palestine question in
1947-1948, the activity of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine
was of pivotal importance. Its work was the factual expression that Palestine
had become an international issue entirely in the hands of the UN. Its
recommendations (late August 1947) put an end to any intentions the British
still nurtured of holding on to Palestine.
UNSCOP's report formulated the main concepts later approved by the
General Assembly - a three-fold partition of the country, the creation of two
states, the idea of an economic union between both, and the fact of their
mutual dependence in matters of security, due to the peculiar form of the
frontiers suggested.23 The UNSCOP report both represented and shaped the
trend of thought at the United Nations during that period. Two matters
demanded immediate solutions: the growing political tension in Palestine, and
the problem of the homeless Jewish refugees in Europe. The readiness of the
refugees to go to Palestine and of the Jewish community there to absorb them
offered a practical possibility for a political answer. Again, there is little
evidence that the knowledge about the Holocaust played a significant part in
these deliberations and in the shaping of the resolutions. As we have
23
UNSCOP, Report; for excerpts, see Moore, III, pp. 259-312. A vivid description of
UNSCOP's work is found in David Horowitz, State in Making, New York, 1953 (hereafter,
Horowitz); see also, Edward B. Glick, Latin America and the Palestine Problem, New York,
1958 (hereafter, Glick), pp. 60-77
__________________________________________________________________________
previously noted, the Zionist representatives who appeared before the
Commission barely alluded to the subject.
During its deliberations the Commission approved a set of twelve general
principles, which served as guidelines for more detailed recommendations.
The last of these principles (the only one not adopted unanimously) deserves
attention:
In the appraisal of the Palestine question, it [must] be accepted as

uncontrovertible that any solution for Palestine cannot be considered
as a solution of the Jewish problem in general.24
The arguments for this position were both practical and political. As the
country was small, quite densely populated, and of limited natural resources, it
was thought "most improbable that there could be settled in Palestine all the
Jews who may wish to leave their present domiciles..." Furthermore, serious
consideration had to be given to Arab opposition throughout the Middle East
against large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine.25 In other words, it was
not thought advisable to unload upon the already complicated Palestine
situation the additional burden of connecting it with "the solution of the Jewish
problem in general ".
In spite of the fact that this principle was included in the UNSCOP report, it
can be said that its meaning got lost in the rush of events during the following
months - which was felicitous, from a Zionist point of view .
Viewed as an expression of a basic trend of thought, Article XII may well be
considered as one of the major ideological defeats that the Zionists suffered
during the UN deliberations. The entire moral case for a Jewish national home
in Palestine had, after all, rested upon its connection with the Jewish people at
large, with its past history and its present problems. The recognition of "the
historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" as the grounds for
"reconstituting their national home in that country" had been inserted into the
preamble of the Palestine Mandate only after strenuous efforts of the Zionist
leadership. It represented one of the cornerstones of Jewish aspirations in
Palestine .
24
UNSCOP, Report, p. 71.
25
Ibid., p. 72 .
__________________________________________________________________________
The Arabs understood the importance of this matter perfectly well. During the
1945 discussions about the draft of the United Nations Charter, they had
invested great efforts (in vain) to prevent the terms of the Palestinian
Mandate, which had been approved by the defunct League of Nations, to be
transferred to the United Nations.26 When the British Foreign Minister, Ernest
Bevin, declared in November 1945 that the Palestine question should be
separated from the Jewish problem in general - as it had now been stated in
the UNSCOP principles - the Jewish Agency objected vehemently.27
Therefore, even if the UNSCOP recommendations did not bind the General
Assembly, and even if Article XII did not surface later among the resolutions
approved by the United Nations, its basic significance remains: it was a clear-
cut indication of the general approach of most of the nations regarding the
Palestine question, the relationship to the Jewish problem and to the
aspirations of the Jewish people regarding Palestine. It contradicted the very
basis of Zionist aspirations.
American and Russian Policies at the UN
The United Nations vote for the partition of Palestine on November 29, 1947,
was one of the most dramatic moments in the early history of the
organization.28 Historians still wonder at the outcome. "One way of interpreting
the sequence of these complex events would be to maintain that it was the
Zionists' year for a miracle" - wrote Wm. Roger Louis.29 Why each nation
voted as it did, or abstained, are questions whose answers may still lie buried
in the archives of the Foreign Offices of the different countries, if they were
26
Robinson, pp. 2-6; Eliyahu Elath, Zionism at the UN, a Diary of the First Days, Philadelphia,
1976, entries for 29 May 1945 to 6 June 1945.
27
Hurewitz, pp. 237-238. See also the arguments of E.R. Fabregat, the representative of
Uruguay, who, together with the representative of Guatemala, J. Garcia-Granados, voted
against Article XII, UNSCOP, Report, Annexes, pp. 77-79.
28
There is a large corpus of literature describing and analyzing the efforts and pressures
exerted by the different sides to influence the final vote. See Hurewitz, pp. 302-309; John
Snetsinger, Truman, the Jewish Vote and the Creation of Israel, Stanford, 1974 (hereafter,
Snetsinger), pp. 66-72; Zvi Ganin, Truman, American Jewry, and Israel 1945-1948, New
York/London, 1979, chapter IX. Pro-Zionist descriptions are to be found in Jorge Garcia-
Granados, The Birth of Israel, New York, 1948, pp. 246-269; Horowitz, pp. 275-304; Glick, pp.
78-122. For anti-Zionist descriptions, see Alfred M. Lilienthal, What Price Israel?, Chicago,
1953; Kermit Roosevelt, "The Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Politics," Middle
East Journal, vol. II, 1948, pp. l-16.
29
Louis, p. 395.
__________________________________________________________________________
recorded at all.30 But there were several factors affecting the decision of the
General Assembly that seem clear enough. What made the final decision
possible was the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union found
themselves in agreement regarding the actual proposed solution. This was not
only remarkable - at the time it seemed like a true wonder.31 These were, after
all, the years of the Cold War, with Western and Communist interests clashing
in Greece, Turkey and Iran.
In historical perspective, it has become evident that the agreement between
the two super-powers regarding partition was possible only because it
reflected completely different motivations. Although the Soviet decision
surprised many, the reasoning behind it seems quite straightforward.
They saw clearly, as did some helpless British and American diplomats, that
with the British forced out of Palestine, Britain's power and prestige in the
Near East would come closer to collapse. A Jewish state in the midst of the
Arab world would be a continuous cause of conflict between the West and the
Arabs and would offer Russia some interesting opportunities in an area from
which she had been completely excluded.32
In other words, the Soviet Union had much to gain and nothing to lose from
partition.
The attitude of the United States regarding Palestine was more complex.
Comprehending it is not made any easier by the misconception that American
policy in 1947-1948 was significantly influenced by the idealistic desire to help
the Jewish people to establish their own state. True, American public opinion
was generally sympathetic to the plight of the Jewish people. Perhaps the
30
See Strange, p. 152. Some partial information is to be found in Glick's book, pp. 78- 122.
The favorable decision was obtained due to changes in the positions of Haiti, Liberia and the
Philippines; see the comparative vote tables in Snetsinger, note 48, pp. 167-168.
31
“The main point is the positive attitude of both of America and of Russia, and it is almost
tantamount to a miracle that these two countries should have agreed on our problem," wrote
Ch. Weizmann to J. Ch. Smuts, on October 28, 1947; The Letters and Papers of Chaim
Weizmann, Series A, vol. XXIII, Jerusalem, 1980, p. 23.
32
Adam B. Uman, Expansion and Coexistence - The History of Soviet Foreign Policy 1917-
1967, New York, 1968, p. 584; Y. Ro'i, "Soviet-Israeli Relations, 1947-1954," Michael Confino
and Shimon Shamir, eds., The USSR and the Middle East (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1973 pp.
123-146. Ro'i adds another possible element in Soviet policy regarding Palestine in 1947:
Russian hopes for greater influence on American Jewish public opinion (ibid., p. 128). See
also Alexander Dallin, The Soviet Union at the United Nations, New York, 1962, pp. 29-31;
Robinson, pp. 236-239.
__________________________________________________________________________
great political effort of organized American Jewry in the postwar years had
some influence on American political decision-making regarding Palestine.33
But to consider these factors as decisive or leading motives of American
foreign policy seems unrealistic and hampers the comprehension of American
strategy at that time.34
Up to World War II, the Middle East was, in the eyes of American policy-
makers, Great Britain's political turf. This situation was well suited to
America's isolationist foreign policy. It spared the Americans involvement in
the political problems of the region, but did not hinder the aggressive efforts of
the big American oil companies to secure large concessions in the Arabian
peninsula.35 This situation changed radically in the aftermath of the war. The
Middle East acquired a new importance in the strategic and economic
considerations of the United States. The political and military thrust of the
Soviet-backed movements and parties in Greece, Turkey and Iran
transformed the Middle East into one of the main areas of confrontation
between Western and Soviet policies. By 1947, the Middle East had become
a major front in the Cold War.
Regarding Palestine, American policy was cautious, even hesitant. If, until
1946, there was little to justify a major American involvement in the country,
there was still much about it advising prudence. The political problems of
Palestine seemed more complicated and less clear-cut than those the
Americans were facing in Greece and Iran. The British represented a political
presence to be reckoned with - as a matter of fact, all through 1947, the
33
The effort was real; its actual influence, doubtful. Even Samuel Halperin, in his
comprehensive, although apologetic, work, The Political World of American Zionism, Detroit,
1961, concluded: "To what extent the evolving American Zionist power and influence potential
chronicled in this study contributed to the creation of the State of Israel is not at all certain.
Perhaps little more can ever be claimed than that the Zionist [in the United States] was one of
the necessary prerequisites for the realization of the Zionist program" (p. 295 ). Years later, in
an interesting article published in 1977, Zvi Ganin maintained that the political work of the
American Zionist Emergency Council had influenced the partition resolution of the UN, but
that the AZEC was unable to avoid the American retreat from partition in March 1948; see
"The Limits of American Jewish Political Power: America's Retreat from Partition, November
1947-March 1948," Jewish Social Studies, XXXIX, 1977 pp. 1-36.
34
See Alexander Deconde, A History of American Foreign Policy, New York, 1967, pp. 745-
749; John C. Campbell, Defense of the Middle East, New York, 1958; E.H. Nolte, "United
States Policy and the Middle East," Georgiana P. Stevens, ed., The United States and the
Middle East, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964; Elizabeth Monroe, Great Britain's Moment in the
Middle East 1914-1956, London, 1963, pp. 158-159.
35
see Benjamin Shwadran, The Middle East, Oil and the Great Powers, New York, 1973, pp.
347-318.
__________________________________________________________________________
Americans tried hard to avoid the British retreat from Palestine. The published
documents on American foreign policy clearly show how reluctant the gradual
American involvement in the Palestine question was.36
An additional reason for American hesitation was the opposing pressures in
Washington, forcing American policy-makers to find their way under divided
counsel. On the one hand, the State Department was very doubtful about the
viability of a Jewish state and opposed to antagonizing the Arab countries and
rulers of the region. Its position was strongly supported by the representatives
of American oil interests in the Middle East. On the other hand, there were the
efforts of the American Jewish and Zionist organizations, as well as the
sympathy of American public opinion regarding the Jewish problem and
Zionist aspirations. Even if their political weight was (and has remained)
difficult to evaluate, they could not be ignored.37 Electoral considerations - the
influence of the Jewish vote in some key American states - were also an
element to be considered. Presidential elections were scheduled in late 1948,
and President Truman's prospects of election were by no means secure.38
Indeed, the American policy-makers found it so difficult to adopt a clear
position on Palestine that it is curious why the Americans became involved in
the Palestine imbroglio at all.39 It seems that the decisive factor was the
growing recognition that the situation in Palestine was rapidly deteriorating
toward an armed conflict between Jews, Arabs and the British. Considering
the realities of the Middle East, this represented a danger to be avoided at all
costs. A Jewish-Arab war in Palestine, probably engulfing other countries in
the Middle East, could only be detrimental to the many Western interests in
that region. It certainly would open new avenues to Soviet political influence
and penetration.
36
see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, vol. V, Washington, D.C., 1971
(hereafter, FRUS); 1948, vol. V, part 2, Washington, 1976 (hereafter, FRUS, 1948).
37
Beside Samuel Halperin's The Political World of American Zionism, see also Joseph B.
Schechtman, The United States and the Jewish State Movement, New York, 1966 (hereafter,
Schechtman), chapter 15, "Zionism and Palestine in American Politics”, which, if read in a
careful and unbiased way, is illuminating indeed; Snetsinger; and Frank F. Manuel's still
important book, The Realities of American-Palestine Relations, Washington, D.C., 1949.
38
In Snetsinger's opinion, pp. 137-149, electoral considerations were one of the major
reasons behind President Truman's decision to recognize the State of Israel minutes after its
proclamation on May 15, 1948.
39
See State Department Memorandum, September 30, 1947; President Truman's position,
October 6, 1947, November 24, 1947, FRUS, pp. 1166-1170, 1177-1178, 1283-1284.
__________________________________________________________________________
The guiding line of American diplomacy from the beginning of the
deliberations at the UN was, therefore, to reduce the possibilities of conflict in
Palestine. As stated by the American delegate to the UN Herschel V. Johnson
in the spring of 1947:
We believe that this may be the last chance for the solving of this
problem in a peaceful and fair manner. If this chance is missed, chaos
and disorder might well result in Palestine of so serious a nature that
that country would be ruined physically and morally.40
As a result, when, at a given moment, the various political pressures acting in

Washington had to be translated into a policy at least partially acceptable to
the diverse interests involved, the United States decided to support partition.
Since the Arab-Jewish confrontation seemed to exclude the possibility of a bi-
national state, partition represented, if not the best of solutions, at least one
that might avoid a war. Partition also opened a way for a solution for the
Jewish refugees in Europe. Last but not least, it was the main
recommendation of UNSCOP .
Making virtue out of necessity, the emphasis was not - as it was among the
Zionists - on Jewish statehood. American interest lay not in states and
independence, but in the avoidance of armed conflict in the Middle East.41
This position was clearly stated in President Truman's memoirs: "I was not
committed to any particular formula of statehood in Palestine or to any
particular time schedule for its accomplishment." His aims were peace
between Jews and Arabs and a solution for the Jewish refugees in Europe.42
Decision and Indecision at the United Nations

Basically, it seems that most of the nations who voted for partition on
November 29, 1947, accepted the reasoning described above. The General
Assembly also decided that, in addition to the two states, an international
40
Robinson, p. v.
41
See State Department Memorandum, September 30, 1947; President Truman's position,
October 6, 1947, November 24, 1947, FRUS, pp. 1166-1170, 1177-1178, 1,283-1,284.
42
Harry S Truman, Memoirs, vol. II, Garden City, N.Y., 1956, pp. 156-157.
__________________________________________________________________________
regime under the United Nations should be established for Jerusalem - in
spite of the fact that more than two-thirds of the city's population were Jews
and that a Jewish state without Jerusalem represented a fundamental
contradiction from a Zionist and a Jewish point of view. The UN resolution
also defined the borders between the two parts as well as their economic
relationship. A Palestine Commission was appointed to implement the
decision.43
From November 19, 1947, to May 15, 1948 ,the United Nations did nothing of
consequence to carry out the partition plan it had adopted for Palestine. The
provisions made in the plan itself for execution by UN organs depended
completely on British cooperation. Since this was denied, the Palestine
Commission that was appointed could only submit gloomy reports of growing
chaos and of their own helplessness.44
The inactivity of the commission had its causes. The very premises upon
which the partition plan was based, i.e., the avoidance of an armed
confrontation between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, started crumbling soon
after November 29. The United States now took the initiative to deal with the
worsening situation. In December 1947, an American embargo was declared
on arms shipments to the Middle East. It soon became clear that the
resolution worked mainly against the Jews and that, in the long run, it was
ineffective, since sooner or later both sides managed to obtain arms
elsewhere.45 When, in February 1948, the Palestine Commission reported to
the Security Council that it could not fulfill its functions, the United States
considered new means of bringing the Palestinian situation under control .
The political considerations that had given birth to the partition resolution
were now coldly reconsidered, and new solutions were suggested. The
American delegate declared on February 24, 1948, that his country would be
ready to consider some form of armed intervention by the United Nations in
Palestine - not for the enforcement of partition, but in order to guarantee
peace. On March 19, the State Department went one step farther: the
American delegate to the Security Council declared that, instead of the
43
For the November 29, 1947, UN resolution, Resolution 181, II, see Moore, pp. 313-319.
44
Ben Halpern, The Idea of the Jewish State, Cambridge, Mass., 1961, p. 375.
45
See Schechtman, pp. 318-328.
__________________________________________________________________________
partition plan, a temporary trusteeship of the United Nations in Palestine
should be considered. On April 16, the Second Special Session of the
General Assembly convened to discuss new alternatives for the future
government of Palestine.46
A sharp internal controversy erupted between the White House and the State
Department because of the March 19 declaration. The Jewish Agency and the
Jewish community in Palestine protested vehemently against what was
considered a surrender of the United Nations in general and of the United
States in particular to British non-cooperation and to Arab violence.47 Had
American policy really undergone so major a change? From an American
point of view, their policy regarding Palestine may have been hesitant and
tactically inconsistent. Nevertheless, it seems that their strategic approach to
the problem did not change during this period. Their basic aim remained the
same all along: to avoid, or at least to minimize, the looming armed conflict in
Palestine, in accordance with the interests of the United States in the Middle
East.
At the beginning of May, a new proposal was approved by the UN, again
spurred by the United States: to nominate a Mediator for Palestine with broad
powers. The way the Mediator (Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden) was to
understand his role and responsibilities throws further light on the attitude of
the United Nations toward the question of Palestine. He was not bound (and if
he was, Bernadotte did not consider himself so) by the terms established in
the November 29 resolution and, arguably, not even by partition itself.48
But events soon overtook the intentions of the United States and the plans of
the UN. On May 15, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed. A new political
reality was thus established. In the words of the Israeli diplomat Walter Eytan :
If this Jewish state came into being...it was not primarily because the United
46
See Zvi Ganin's detailed analysis of American policy in the article cited above (note 33), as
well as in his book, Truman, American Jewry and Israel, 1945-1948, New York/London, 1979,
chapter X: "America's Retreat from Partition"; also FRUS, 1948, p. 825; Leonard, pp. 661-
666; Zasloff, pp. 104-111.
47
Ganin, ibid; FRUS, ibid., pp. 744-746, 753, 776-777. The White House maintained that the
declaration had been made without the authorization of President Truman.
48
See the correspondence between the Israeli government and Bernadotte during July 1948;
F. Bernadotte, To Jerusalem, London, 1951, pp. 149-158.
__________________________________________________________________________
Nations had recommended it...When the day of independence dawned, the
decision was Israel's alone.49
The Question of the Connection: The Viewpoint of the Non-Jews

Was there, then, a connection between the Holocaust and the creation of
Israel? Is it conceivable that the two most decisive events in modern Jewish
history could occur almost simultaneously and not be linked? Is it possible that
the emergence of the Jewish state was unrelated to the terrible disaster of the
Jewish people and to the remorse of the nations of the world?
Regarding the deliberations of the United Nations and its bodies in 1947-
1948, it is difficult to find evidence that the Holocaust played a decisive or
even significant role. No bloc of nations proclaimed during the UN discussions
on Palestine that its foremost aim was the creation of a Jewish state. (On the
other hand, an important group of countries did favor the transformation of
Palestine into an Arab state.) What impelled the international body was the
practical problem of the Jewish refugees and, even more, the awareness that
the Palestinian problem was drifting toward chaos and war.
The actual General Assembly decision regarding partition was made possible
by the support of the two super-powers. However, although their agreement
was a necessary condition for the UN partition resolution, it was not in itself
sufficient. The majority of the UN members who voted for the resolution
deserve additional consideration, especially since the American
representatives abstained from lobbying too actively for the UNSCOP
proposal. True, some of the countries of the Western bloc did display an
understanding - and, in a few cases, even a genuine interest - in Jewish and
Zionist aspirations, but, for most of the states represented at the UN, the
Jewish problem was something far removed from their concerns. It was,
however, natural and understandable for them to go along with the Soviet-
American proposition, given the great political and moral weight of such an
agreement between the super-powers. And since the measure of agreement
49
Walter Eytan, The First Ten Years, New York, 1958, pp. l-2 .Evyatar Friesel, "The
Holocaust: Factor in the Birth of Israel?", In Major Changes Within the Jewish People in the
Wake of the Holocaust , Yad Vashem 1996, pp. 519-544.
__________________________________________________________________________
between the United States and the Soviet Union neutralized clear-cut
international rivalries, their tendency was to consider the Palestine question in
terms of political realities. Factors such as the historical connection of the
Jewish people to Palestine, or feelings of remorse because of the recent
Jewish tragedy were hardly heard, if at all. Indeed, were they to be expected?
It is only reasonable to assume that the great majority of UN members
considered the Palestine question in "practical" terms. That attitude was well
expressed in Article XII of the UNSCOP principles, which stressed that there
could be no connection between the Palestinian issue and the Jewish problem
.
Consequently, when at the beginning of 1948, it became increasingly clear
that partition was not going to prevent a war in Palestine, the UN (spurred by
the United States) started looking for a different, "practical" solution. All of
which only emphasizes how modest a role the facts about and the reactions to
the Holocaust played in the considerations of the international community.
Even if there were a similarity in the actual outcome under consideration,
there was little in common between the reasons impelling Jews and Zionists
toward Jewish statehood and the reasoning behind the United Nations
resolution for the partition of Palestine.
The Question of the Connection: The Jewish Standpoint

Obviously, from the standpoint of Jewish history, there is a different
perspective about the relationship between Jewish statehood and the
Holocaust. One factor to be pondered is the subjective attitudes of post-
Holocaust Jewry regarding the Holocaust. The process of weaving the
knowledge of the Holocaust into the texture of Jewish historical
consciousness, which began with the extermination and which has continued
ever since, has a sense of its own. It is an ongoing labor in which diverse
segments of the Jewish people, in Israel or in the Diaspora, tend to
emphasize different aspects of the tragedy that befell the Jewish people
during World War II. The nearness in time between the Holocaust and the
birth of Israel also encourages the connection between the events, if only for
the purpose of self-consolation. But their enormous historical significance
__________________________________________________________________________
demands sharp and unpitying lucidity in order to understand their place in the
history of the Jewish people. The complex logic of this historical problem
suggests apparently contradictory conclusions: that there was a relationship
between the Holocaust and the emergence of Israel - and that there was
none.
Either way, it seems clear that both the Holocaust and Jewish statehood had
some common historical foundations. Each expressed, in its own way, the
final crisis of the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish society, a
relationship based on patterns of co-existence that had developed in Europe
since the Middle Ages. In that sense, both represented radical responses.
Rather than converging, however, both responses ran parallel and in opposite
directions. Considered alongside the establishment of the Jewish state, the
Holocaust represented the sitra ahra, the other face, of Jewish existence - the
side of darkness and destruction, against the side of creation and continuity.
The reaction to the Holocaust brought about a peculiar tension in Jewish life,
a sense of aharit ha-yamim ("end of days"), reminiscent of the response to the
earlier disasters in Jewish history, such as the destruction of the First and the
Second Temples, or the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in the late Middle
Ages. This consciousness brought about an awakening of inner strength,
blending despair and grim hope that permeated the political struggle of the
Jews to prevail in Palestine and to overcome all obstacles in spite of and
against all odds. This spirit, uncharacteristic - and perhaps undesirable - in
times when the life of a people runs its normal course, was an essential
component of the Zionist and Jewish effort to establish their state in Palestine .
Any examination of what happened in the late 1940s in Palestine and at the
United Nations shows that the Jews were not the strongest among the political
participants in that international drama. But they were possessed by a
singleness of purpose and by a sense of total dedication to a constructive goal
that were unmatched by any of the other direct or indirect participants in the
question of Palestine.
That characteristic in Jewish political activism became a powerful lever in a
situation that, for reasons unrelated, had already reached the point of
maturation. As we have shown above, in a narrower sense it was the British
__________________________________________________________________________
policy in Palestine, or, more specifically, the White Paper of 1939, that set in
motion the process leading toward the political aim of Zionism - the creation of
a Jewish state. In the background there were additional long-term factors. The
wheels moving toward the emergence of Israel the state reflected
developments going back a century at least: the modernization of Jewish
society, the rise of Jewish nationalism, the crisis of the Jewish-Gentile
relationship in modern times, and the emergence of Zionism itself. The
extermination of European Jewry happened long after these long or short term
forces in Jewish history, striving toward national sovereignty and independent
statehood, had been set into motion.
True, a distinction should be made between the influence of the Holocaust as
a historical occurrence (as we have just done), and the Holocaust as a
molding factor in later Jewish consciousness. In the second case there seems
little reason to believe that the Holocaust influenced the creation of the Jewish
state. In terms of subjective insight, it would take a long time for the Holocaust
to be absorbed by the Jewish people in its deeper historical and meta-
historical significances. The incorporation of the Holocaust into the collective
awareness of the Jewish people is a process that is far from complete even at
the end of the twentieth century. It will take a long time for the Jewish people
to learn how to live with the knowledge of the Holocaust and how to merge
this knowledge into the complex structure of its millennial historical
consciousness, with its varied patterns of shadows and light, tragedy and
creation, death and life. The emergence of the State of Israel in 1948 occurred
long before then.
Nevertheless ...
Nevertheless, there was a point of contact and influence between the
Holocaust and the creation of the Jewish state. It was, however, exactly the
reverse of what is commonly assumed: the destruction of European Jewry
almost rendered the birth of Israel impossible.
Zionism as an idea and a movement expressed yearnings and needs of very
diverse strata of the Jewish people, from the fringe of the almost assimilated
to the opposite fringe of those almost untouched by modern secular culture. In
__________________________________________________________________________
its focal point, its vital and most creative mainstream, Zionism was the
movement of a broad part of Jewish society, combining a significant degree of
cultural integration in the secular world with a high degree of Jewish
consciousness. Zionism arose out of a long experience of relations between
Jews and non-Jews, where all the options of mutual understanding had been
tried and had failed, up to the point in modern times where only negative
solutions remained open - from the Jewish as well as from the non-Jewish
perspectives. In this respect Zionism was essentially a product of European
Jewry, especially East European Jewry.
Ironically, that sector of the Jewish people was almost completely annihilated
in the Holocaust. When the dust settled after the tempest of World War II, and
Jewry took stock of its situation, what remained were three major groups of
Jews. First, the Jewish communities in Arab lands, soon to be swept by the
messianic hope of Israel-reborn, but strangers to the European-grounded
social and ideological premises that had created modern Zionism. Second,
there were the new Western communities, such as American Jewry, rich and
active, but still young and unsettled sociologically and trying to define its
status in its new general environment. But the patterns of Jewish life there
were developing significantly different from the conditions that had brought
about the development of Zionism in Europe. Finally, there was the Jewish
community in Palestine - the last creation of a Jewry that was no more.
The most vital segment of modern Jewry, the most settled and vigorous
among the Jewish communities, the East European Jewry that had created
the Jewish National Home in Palestine and would have been the most able
and most prepared to complete the task, had been exterminated in the war.
The child of its hopes and endeavors, Israel-the-state, was reborn beside the
graves of its fathers and mothers at the Jewish people's darkest hour. Israel
came forth smaller and poorer, in the physical and spiritual sense, than she
would have had the huge reservoir of manpower and talent within European
Jewry attended her birth and kept watch over her cradle. In her internal
structure, in her spiritual life, even in her relationship with her surroundings
and in her position among the nations of the world, both as a state and as a
people, Israel is still enduring the consequences of the Holocaust.
__________________________________________________________________________
Source: Major Changes Within the Jewish People in the Wake of the
Holocaust , Yad Vashem, Jerusalem 1996, pp. 519-544.
__________________________________________________________________________
22/02/2019 Did the Holocaust Play a Role in the Establishment of the State of Israel?
UCSB Oral History Project Homepage > Research and Teaching Homepage > Pro-Seminar Papers > Did the
Holocaust Play a Role in the Establishment of the State of Israel?
Did the Holocaust Play a Role in the Establishment of the

State of Israel?
By Tomer Kleinman, UCSB, March 2002,
Israel and the Holocaust
“Moving to Israel was very difficult. We ate only pita and drank water, we worked long hours and
we were constantly in fear of Arab attacks.” Those were the words of Chaim Tsabag, an immigrant to Israel
in 1947. At the age of 23, Chaim witnessed the hardships that many Jews had to endure when arriving to
Israel from Europe. Just one year after his arrival, Chaim was in the army fighting for Israel’s
Independence. When Chaim went home after the war, he recalled “a country that was in need of food,
construction and money.” Israel received their independence in 1948, but was going to fall if they did not
receive outside help.
The establishment of the State of Israel would have been possible without the Holocaust due to
the Zionist movement, however the reparations from the Holocaust given by West Germany gave
Israel the resources necessary to survive. In this paper I will argue that the Holocaust played an important
role in the founding and long term visibility of the State of Israel in three respects: The Holocaust motivated
large numbers of immigrants to move to the new country, providing the necessary population; secondly, the
Holocaust enabled Israel to pressure Germany into supplying the economic base necessary to build
infrastructure and support those immigrants; and finally, the Holocaust swayed world opinion so that the
United Nations approved the State of Israel in 1948.
The founders of Zionism, led by Theodore Herzl, proposed the establishment of the State of Israel.
Herzl, in the latter parts of the 1800’s, started a movement among Jewish idealists to create a homeland for
Jews because he felt that Jews always had been and always would be persecuted.[1] Herzl encouraged many
Jewish people from Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe to leave their homes and move to Palestine.
The establishment of the World Zionist Organization was created in 1897 in response to a small number of
Jewish pioneers who moved to Palestine in 1882.[2]
The World Zionist Organization convinced Britain to recognize the importance of a Jewish
homeland. In 1917, Britain introduced the Balfour Declaration, pledging “a national homeland for Jewish
people.”[3] By the 1930’s, Britain had taken back the Balfour Declaration and decided to not give Jews a
homeland in Palestine. In response, Zionists under the leadership of Menachem Begin started to resist with
military tactics against Britain’s control of Palestine. Another leading Zionist, David Gurion, made a deal
with Hitler in 1933 called the “transfer agreement.”[4] The agreement allowed Jews to leave Germany and
go to Palestine in exchange for all of their possessions. The treaty was an accomplishment, but many Jews in
1933 did not want to leave Germany, let alone leave to go to a desert in Palestine.
Between 1937 and1947, Begin and other rightist revisionists were organizing in military groups
called “Ezel”.[5] Ezel was willing to use force against Britain through military attacks, causing Britain to
give the problem of Palestine to the United Nations in 1947.[6] On November 29, 1947, the General
Assembly of the United Nations passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine into an Arab and
a Jewish State.[7]
While scholars would argue this determination enabled the State of Israel and nothing to do with the
Holocaust, evidence supplied by other scholars argues otherwise. Michael Wolffsohn, author of Eternal
Guilt? Forty Years of German-Jewish-Israeli Relations, argued that the creation of the State of Israel was
primarily due to the political, economic, social and military achievements of its founders.[8] Wolffsohn
contests the argument of Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress, who stated that
without Auschwitz there would be no Israel.[9] Wolffsohn does not see why such a determined Zionist
community would have shown less willingness to struggle for its independence even if there had been no
Hitler.[10] In addition, Wolffsohn states that, “the Second World War and the Holocaust were events which
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/projects/holocaust/Research/Proseminar/tomerkleinman.htm 1/7
rather than intensifying [the Zionist fight for Independence,] actually forced a suspension in the Zionists’
anti-British struggle for Independence.”[11]
The Zionist movement did have an important role in the establishment of the State of Israel, and
Wolffsohn and other scholars who argue that the Zionists could have succeeded without the Holocaust and
WWII fail to see a few key points. First, Zionist resistance groups could not have fought off Britain if
Germany had not weakened the British military power during WWII. Second, once Israel was established in
1948, Israel needed resources to survive the initial influx of immigrants. West Germany supplied the
resources in reparation for the Jews who suffered in the Holocaust. The State of Israel was established
with the determination of the Zionist community as Wolffsohn points out, although the Holocaust gave
Israel the money, population, resources and approval from other countries, which allowed Israel to
survive and thrive for the past fifty years.
Reasons for Economic Problems
The first five years of Israel’s existence was plagued by economic crisis. Some of the leading
problems that Israel faced were housing, hostile environment, huge balance of payments deficit,
unemployment and lack of foreign currency. The main reason for all of the problems mentioned, according
to Lily Gardner Feldman, Associate Professor of Political Science, was immigration.[12]
Signs of anti-Semitism and the dream of a Jewish homeland prompted many to leave Europe from the
time of Nazi seizure of power to the outbreak of WWII. Over 170,000 fugitives from Central Europe settled
in Palestine between 1933 and 1938.[13] The migration determined Palestine as a safe haven for many
Jews. In the aftermath of WWII, the dream of a Jewish homeland was seen as necessary. The Nazis had
stripped the Jews of their possessions, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Jews wandering in Europe
homeless. When many survivors returned to their cities, they were shocked to see others living in their
homes.[14] Many survivors decided to flee Europe and migrate to Palestine in hopes of establishing a
Jewish homeland.
The territory on which Israel stands was called Palestine prior to 1948. A British Mandate controlled
the territory and was responsible for establishing order. Jews and Arabs lived side by side, neither group
dominating the region. The population in Palestine in 1947 consisted of 630,000 Jews and 700,000 Arabs.
[15] Three years after the Holocaust, the United Nations voted on establishing Palestine as the new home for
Jews, and on May 14,1948, Palestine would be called the State of Israel.
When the State of Israel was established, its first measure was to open its gates to Jews all over the
world. Over 325,000 Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe came to Israel between 1948 and 1951. The largest
concentration of Jews came from Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary.[16] When Israel first opened to
all Jews in 1948, 13,000 Ashkenazim Jews emigrated every month. In 1949, the numbers rose to 20,000 per
month.[17] By the end of 1949, Israel was overwhelmed by the immigrants, but continued to welcome every
Jew with open arms. In addition to the Jews in Europe, between 1950 and 1951, over 160,000 Sephardic
Jews went to Israel as a safe refuge from Islamic Arabs.[18] Not only did Israel need to deal with the mass
numbers of European Jews, now Israel had to deal with Sephardic Jews as well. In Israel’s first three years
alone, the population more than doubled, as 687,624 refugees mostly from postwar Europe and the Arab
States, poured into the country. The mass immigration forced Israel into an economic crisis.
Many of the Jews who came to Israel from Europe in 1948 were difficult welfare cases. Most
Holocaust survivors came with nothing at all. The European Ashkenazim arrived in Israel with no
possessions except some gold coins, some precious stones and some money that they were able to hide in the
ghetto.[19] Many men and women arrived in Israel chronically ill, physically exhausted and aged.[20] For
many immigrants, Israel was the only place they could call home because no other country was prepared to
admit them.
Immigration was the chief problem, which resulted in other economic difficulties for Israel.[21]
Heavy tax burdens and a system of severe economic restrictions had to be decided on in order to produce
homes and the means of existence for the immigrants.[22] Israel faced an enormous inflationary gap, and the
government had to make a decision to either let the market forces generate enough forced savings and thus
restore equilibrium, or to control inflationary pressures by a system of direct controls. Overall, the
government had to convince the Israeli population to tighten their belts and reduce their standard of living
(Balabkins, P.98).[23]
To add to the problem of large immigration, Israel also suffered massive destruction during the 1948
Independence War. After Arab nations from neighboring countries learned of Israel independence, they
attacked Israel from all fronts. Israel was victorious, but suffered heavy losses. The 1948 war left a lot of
transportation infrastructures damaged and railroads cut off. These problems led Israel to seek outside help.
Reparations
Israeli political leaders communicated with the United States and England about receiving reparations
from Germany. Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the President of Israel, sent a letter in September 20, 1945 to Allies
for restitution of $8 billion.[24] The $8 billion was a number estimated by Dr. Nehemiah Robinson, head of
the Institution of Jewish Affairs of the World Jewish Congress, of the money Nazis stole from Jews, either
from stolen homes, jewelry, art and compensation for material damages to the Jews as a nation. In his letter,
Weizmann stressed that the “collective claim of the Jewish people as a whole will be used for the rebuilding
of Palestine as a Jewish national homeland.”[25] The United States and England did not want to get
involved, and demanded that Israel deal directly with West Germany. The United States government replied
that America could not “impose on the government of the German Federal Republic an obligation to pay
reparations to Israel.”[26] In order to obtain sorely needed funds for the nation-building efforts, Israeli
leaders had to respect the wishes of the Western powers and negotiate with West Germany directly.[27]
According to George Lavy, author of Germany and Israel: Moral Debt and National Interest, the reason that
the United States did not help Israel get money from Germany was because the government was far less
concerned about the former enemy than about a possible threat from a new one, the Communist bloc.[28]
America did not want to give West Germany a reason to ally with Communism. Israeli leaders understood
that if they wanted to receive reparations to help the country, they would need to start negotiations with West
Germany.
The Israeli government had a difficult time convincing Israeli citizens that they should ask for
reparations from West Germany for the aftermath of the Holocaust. Every third Israeli had personally
experienced the horrors of Nazism.[29] Many Israeli citizens did not want to negotiate with West Germany
because they felt negotiations with Germany were morally wrong. Joseph Sprinzak, President of Israeli
Parliament, strongly opposed money from West Germany because “the honor of the Jewish people precluded
any acceptance of restitution from Germany even if it were voluntary and spontaneously offered.”[30] Jews
outside of Israel, such as Dr. Joseph B. Schectman of New York, led Jews in the Diaspora against
negotiations with West Germany because he felt Israel should not accept “blood money” in compensation for
the six million who died in the Holocaust.[31] Many Jews from Israel and the United States shared the view
that West Germany could not pay for the lives that the Nazis took.
Political leaders of Israel understood the emotional hatred Jews had toward West Germany, although
Israel needed to get money in order to compensate all of the problems the country was having in its early
stage. Dr. Nahum Goldmann, the leading negotiator with West Germany, argued that since the Nazis had
looted Jewish property, it would be immoral for the Jews not to claim it back.[32] In addition, Dr. Goldmann
wanted to reassure the Israeli citizens that, “nobody is saying to the Germans: You pay us; we forgive you.
We are promising nothing; we are offering nothing. We are simply claiming what is Ours, morally and
legally” (Balabkins, p.94).[33] The statement received much of support from the Israeli citizens.
The difficulty that faced Israel was how Germany in 1949, suffering from post-WWII economic
downfall, was able to make an agreement. Factories, homes and lives were destroyed, and Germany did not
have the financial ability to recuperate by 1949. West Germany’s first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, never
the less wanted to take small steps in claiming responsibility for the Holocaust. On November 11, 1949
Chancellor Adenauer made a speech proclaiming that West Germany would give Israel DM 10 million worth
of German made goods.[34] Israeli leaders saw the offering as a beginning of communication between Israel
and West Germany. Years of talks continued until 1951, when Israel and West Germany came up with the
first important deal between the two nations.
In 1951, Israel was facing their hardest economic decline, which was reversed by the Luxembourg
Treaty. In the fall of 1951, Israel’s shortage of foreign currency became alarming.[35] Israel needed to trade
with other countries and stop relying only on domestic goods. If Israel was to avoid the danger of isolation
by Western Europe, they would need to trade with West Germany. [36] Therefore, political leaders of Israel
and West Germany opened talks addressing how one country could help the other. Lily Gardner Feldman,
associate professor of political science, stresses that the establishment of the special relationship between
Israel and West Germany was a result of Israel’s need for economic help and Germany’s need for political
rehabilitation. Germany and Israel saw each other as uniquely capable of fulfilling these needs which to a
large extent were satisfied with the Luxembourg Treaty.[37] Within a decade after the Holocaust, German
and Jews, the West Germans and the government of the State of Israel, simultaneously concluded that they
could not prosper without each other.[38]
However, many Germans and Jews shared outrage towards the Luxembourg Treaty. Dr. Noah Barou,
Vice President of the World Jewish Congress, demanded that the West German government assume a binding
obligation to make collective reparation and accept the moral, political, and material responsibility for the
deeds of the Third Reich.[39] West Germany, suffering from the post-WWII economy felt that they had had
no part in the destruction of European-Jewry and therefore had no blame attached to them. If the
government and a minority of the public figures expressed their view that the German people owed a heavy
moral debt to the Jews, the majority did not share that view.[40] Hundreds of speeches against the
acceptance of collective compensation were made in Israel as well as in the United States. Jews in Israel and
the Diaspora were unwilling to accept the fact that they were getting help from Germany.
The Luxembourg Treaty marked the beginning of an official Germany-Israel-Jewish triologue.

Chancellor Adenauer took the initiative in the negotiations with Israel and should be credited with a lot of
praise.[41] The Chancellor did not have the pressure of the United States, the German population was
against the treaty and he risked the economy falling, but he still fought until the Luxembourg Treaty was
signed. In an interview between Karl Marx and Chancellor Adenauer on November 11, 1949, Chancellor
Adenauer stated that, “the State of Israel is the outwardly visible concentration of Jews of all
nationalities.”[42] Chancellor Adenauer did not want to admit “guilt” for the Holocaust, but was willing to
include in the Luxembourg Treaty that the Federal Republic of Germany pledged to make good, within the
limits of its capacity, the material damages suffered by the Jews under the government of the Third Reich.
[43] The Luxembourg Treaty was seen as “overcoming of the past,” a phrase coined by the West Germans to
describe the efforts to be made by the German people as a whole to live down.[44] Although most Germans
did not accept the notion of “collective guilt” of the whole German people, they in some way felt
responsible.[45]
As a result of hard work by both West Germany and Israel’s administrations, the Luxembourg Treaty
was finally signed on September 10,1952. The treaty would give Israel the needed resources to survive the
difficult first years of mass immigration, war, and economic crisis. As Dr. Goldmann stated in 1951, West
German payments “should make Israel as economically independent as any country can hope to be in our
interdependent world.”[46] Israel was facing a lot of problems, but the Luxembourg Treaty helped Israel
recover and advance. In an interview with a West German newspaper in 1961, Prime Minister Ben Gurion
reflected on the need for Israel to work together with West Germany if Israel was going to survive, “My
views about the present day Germany have not changed. There is no longer a Nazi Germany. On the Israeli
side there is a readiness for close and normal relations and full cooperation.”[47] Israel was facing a lot of
hardship and needed to look to West Germany for help.
The Luxembourg Treaty helped Israel achieve a level of economic stability between 1953 and 1964.
The Treaty was divided into four separate agreements, one specifically pertaining to Israel. The Israel
agreement, otherwise known as the Shilumim, committed West Germany to pay Israel 3 billion Deutsche
Marks (about $800 million) over a twelve year period.[48] The reparations from West Germany were not
based on cash. Israel had little need for cash, and West Germany had little means of supplying the cash.
Israel needed raw materials to promote production. Therefore, some eighty- percent of the agreement was
accepted in shipments of capital goods of all kinds. [49]
After the agreement was signed, West Germany became one of Israel’s foremost importers. Twenty-
five percent of Israel’s shipbuilding came from West Germany, nine percent of the electrical industry, eleven
percent of the iron and steel and thirteen percent of machinery.[50] Shipments under the agreement made up
twelve percent of all annual Israel imports.[51] They helped fuel Israel’s economy and stimulate future
production. In the north, Israel’s ironworks were built entirely from German shipments. About 2000
individual enterprises, both large and small, received machinery and other equipment.[52] According to
Nicholas Balabkins, author of West Germany Reparations to Israel, the most important influence of the
agreement was towards Israel’s field of telecommunication. Balabkins argued that, “although ships,
electricity generating and transmitting equipment, and railroads considerably improved the operating
capacity of the sectors of Israel’s material infrastructure, the most remarkable qualitative improvement was
in the field of telecommunication.”[53] Without the Shilumim agreement, the equipment for the
telecommunication could never have been financed.
The Luxembourg Treaty also opened doors for outside deals between West Germany and Israel.
Between 1953 and 1965, exports and imports outside of the agreement started to emerge. In 1953 exports to
Israel from West Germany added up to DM 20.6 million, in 1960 the number climbed to DM 77.8 million,
and in 1965 exports rose to DM 276 million. On the other side, imports from Israel to West Germany
increased; in 1953 imports were limited at DM .4 million, although in 1960 the imports grew to DM 101.3
million and finally in 1965 the number blossomed to DM 206 million.[54] The rise of Israel’s importation of
goods to West Germany is linked to reparations Israel received from the agreement. The economy in Israel
was starting to rise and a lot of the economic upswing was due to the Luxembourg Treaty. In an interview
Dr. Goldmann stated that, “for Israel, particularly in those difficult financial days, the agreement was a
downright salvation. When we remember that in recent years the greater part of Israel’s deficit in foreign
exchange has been covered by Germany under the agreement, we can see what tremendous importance it had
for Israel.”[55] In addition, the reparations helped stimulate other industries in Israel, such as iron and
rubber, which would have been difficult otherwise.
The Hashilumim report offered five alternatives if the Luxembourg Treaty never existed. The first
step was to reduce imports, which would lead to additional domestic resources. Then Israel would need to
borrow abroad, resulting in foreign investments and unilateral transfers.[56] The Hashilumim report offered
good points, but it would have led to a slower economy, which Israel could not afford because of the grave
circumstances of the Arab nations. Israel did not have time to try to work out their own problems because
danger was always around the corner and Israel needed the resources desperately
Epilogue
A sharp turn in Israel’s foreign exchange policy occurred in 1957. After the Sinai campaign, few
countries, including the United States, were willing to trade with Israel. Israeli leaders at this time felt that
Israel needed to stop relying too much on the United States and start looking to other countries. West
Germany was one of the countries Israel looked to because West Germany had an army that could help.[57]
Shimon Perez, Director General of the Israeli Defense Ministry went to West Germany to negotiate another
agreement, later called the “secret agreement”. In an interview about his reasoning behind negotiations with
West Germany, Perez responded that, “Germany should contribute in every possible way to Israel’s safety
and we therefore discussed the two questions: the supply of German weapons to Israel and the sale of our
weapons to the Federal Armed Forces.”[58] Israel was forced to create a new relationship with Germany,
one that had some connection to the Holocaust. Israeli leaders, such as Perez, felt that West Germany had
the responsibility to protect Israel from Arab nations because of the Holocaust.
The “secret agreement” was hidden from the public for some time because Israeli leaders did not
know how the Israeli citizens would react to Israel selling and buying arms from West Germany. Israel only
agreed to buy arms from West Germany because nobody else would sell it to them and because of the serious
security issues Israel was facing. The negotiations over the uzi pistol showed that West Germany continued
to feel a sense of responsibility towards the Jewish State. By buying arms from Israel, trade between West
Germany and the Arab nations suffered. The “secret agreement” resulted in a new understanding that Israel
and West Germany would need to help one another.
The establishment of the State of Israel was a great accomplishment for the Jewish people. After
being exiled for 2000 years, Israel was finally a home again for Jews all over the world. It would be nice to
say that the Zionist organization and the desire of the Jewish people were enough to create Israel, but
realistically, Israel needed outside help. The Holocaust provided resources for Israel, which helped Israel
survive for over half a century. Many countries received independence after WWII, although no country
succeeded economically as much as Israel. A lot of the success is due to the reparations given by West
Germany to Israel and the continuation of trade between the two countries. The Holocaust was not the
reason for the establishment of the State of Israel, although reparations from West Germany helped Israel to
stay economically viable in times of great struggle.
[1] Michael Wolffsohn, Eternal Guilt? Forty Years of German-Jewish-Israeli Relations (New York: University Press,
1993), 5.
[2] Wolffsohn, 6.
[3] Wolffsohn, 6.
[4] Wolffsohn, 2-3.
[5] Wolffsohn, 5.
[6] Wolffsohn, 7.
[7] Wolffsohn, 7.
[8] Wolffsohn, 10.
[9] Wolffsohn, 1.
[10] Wolffsohn, 6.
[11] Wolffsohn, 7.
[12] Lily Feldman, The Special Relationship Between West Germany and Israel (Boston: George Allen and Unwin,
1984), 66.
[13] Wolffsohn, 5.
[14] “The Fighter”, film shown at Campbell Hall in 2001.
[15] Nicholas Balabkins, West Germany Reparations to Israel (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press,
1971), 97 found in M. Sicron, Immigration to Israel, 1948-1953 (Jerusalem: Central Bureau of Statistics, 1957), 35.
[16] Central Bureau of Statistics, “Immigration to Israel,” (2002) in: <http://www.us-

israel.org/jsource/Immigration/Immigration_to_Israel.html> (15 Mar 2002).
[17] Balabkins, 96 found in Sicron, 35.
[18] Central Bureau of Statistics, “Migration and Tourism,” (1998) in: http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton/shnatone.htm.
[19] Balabkins, 97.
[20] Balabkins, 96 from J.T Shuval, Immigrants on the Threshold (New York: Atherton Press, 1963), 6
[21] “Austerity and Enterprise in Israel,” World Today 6 (1950): 6-15.
[22] Rolf Vogel, ed., The German Path to Israel (London: Oswald Wolff, 1969), 30.
[23] Balabkins, 98.
[24] Balabkins, 83.
[25] Balabkins, 83.
[26] Balabkins, 88 from a note sent by the United States on July 5, 1951.
[27] Wolffsohn, Eternal Guilt?, 14.
[28] George Lavy, Germany and Israel: Moral Debt and National Interest (Portland, Oregon: Frank Class, 1996), 206).
[29] Balabkins, 92.
[30] Balabkins, 89.
[31] J.B Schectman, “Case Against Negotiations with Germany”, The Jewish Herald 15:19 (1951): 7.
[32] Nahum Goldmann, “Bonn-Israel Claims Settlement Opens Way to Economic Expansion,” Israel Economic Horizon, 5:4
(1953), 10.
[33] Balabkins, 94, taken from Nahum Goldmann, “Direct Israel-German Negotiations? Yes,” The Zionist Quarterly, 1:3
(1952).
[34] Balabkins, 85.
[35] Balabkins, 78.
[36] Lavy, 5.
[37] Feldman, 75.
[38] Feldman, 49.
[39] Balabkins, 90.
[40] Lavy, 2.
[41] Lavy, 206.
[42] Vogel, 18.
[43] Balabkins, 3.
[44] Lavy, 72.
[45] Lavy, 72-73.
[46] Goldmann, “Bonn-Israel Claims Settlement Opens Way to Economic Expansion.”
[47] Lavy, 88.
[48] Balabkins, 143 from the “Luxemberg Accord” found in Israel.
[49] Vogel, 88.
[50] Vogel, 89.
[51] Vogel, 88.
[52] Vogel, 88.
[53] Balabkins, 246.
[54] Vogel, 96, found in a report on the delivery of goods by the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs.
[55] Vogel, 99 from an assessment of the German-Israeli Reparations Agreement by Nahum Goldmann in 1962.
[56] Balabkins, 260.
[57] Inge Deutschkron, Bonn and Jerusalem: The Strange Coalition (Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 1970), 264-
265.
[58] Vogel, 126 from an interview with Shimon Perez by Vogel early in 1967 on military co-operation between Israel and the
Federal Government.
UCSB Oral History Project Homepage > Research and Teaching Homepage > Pro-Seminar Papers > Did the
Holocaust Play a Role in the Establishment of the State of Israel?
Text written March 2002 by Tomer Kleinman [corrected 4/25/2017]
Last Updated: March 2003/April 2017
This Page Part of the UCSB Oral History Project
Created and Maintained by H. Marcuse and Associates
In those days it was still possible to buy emigration certificates 8 to Palestine. I had asked my father
to sell everything, to liquidate everything, and to leave. "I am too old, my son," he answered. "Too
old to start a new life. Too old to start from scratch in some distant l a n d … "
Two boys came to join our group: Yossi and Tibi, two brothers from Czechoslovakia whose parents
had been exterminated in Birkenau. They lived for each other, body and soul. They quickly became
my friends. Having once belonged to a Zionist youth organization, they knew countless Hebrew
songs. And so we would sometimes hum melodies evoking the gentle waters of the Jordan River and
the majestic sanctity of Jerusalem. We also spoke often about Palestine. Their parents, like mine,
had not had the courage to sell everything and emigrate while 50 there was still time. We decided
that if we were allowed to live until the Liberation, we would not stay another day in Europe. We
would board the first ship to Haifa. Still lost in his Kabbalistic dreams, Akiba Drumer had discovered a
verse from the Bible which, translated into numbers, made it possible for him to predict Redemption
in the weeks to come.

Collated Research On The Holocaust As A Factor in The Creation of Israel

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Balfour Declaration 1917

November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

Home / Education / Creation of the State of Israel

r ANTI-SEMITISM GLOBALLY ISRAEL ADVOCACY & EDUCATION

Creation of the State of Israel

The Arabs were opposed to Jewish immigration to Palestine and stepped up

The British mandate over Palestine of cially terminated at midnight, May

r ANTI-SEMITISM GLOBALLY ISRAEL ADVOCACY & EDUCATION

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The gestor administers property of which he is joint-owner. His joint proprietorship

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THE GESTOR OF THE JEWS

This pamphlet is intended to open a general discussion on the Jewish Question.

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THE OCCUPATION OF THE LAND

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Everything must be systematically settled beforehand. I merely indicate this scheme:

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A democracy without a sovereign's useful counterpoise is extreme in appreciation

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[4] Wolffsohn, 2-3.

[8] Wolffsohn, 10.

[14] “The Fighter”, film shown at Campbell Hall in 2001.

[16] Central Bureau of Statistics, “Immigration to Israel,” (2002) in: <http://www.us-

[17] Balabkins, 96 found in Sicron, 35.

[19] Balabkins, 97.

[21] “Austerity and Enterprise in Israel,” World Today 6 (1950): 6-15.