Israel, Part IV: Holocaust and Statehood

This if Part IV of a series on Israel, to cover some basic history and how we got where we are. For Part I covered ancient history; Part II covered Zionism; and Part III covered conflict and violence. Today we cover the Holocaust and statehood. This will take us up to 1948. It will take at least a couple more parts to get us up to the present.

It is impossible to overstate the effect of the Holocaust on Jews as well as on civilized people worldwide. As of 1933 there were about nine million Jews living in the 21 European countries. By the end of WWII in 1945 six million of them had been murdered—that’s two out of every three. The number included 1.5 million children.
 

To give you perspective, worldwide there are about 14 million Jews today. Six million of that number would be a known loss to every civilized person in the world—people they actually knew or loved ones of people they know. Compare to 9/11. That day we lost about three thousand; all of us know someone who was lost or who knew someone lost that day. We are a country of over 300 million. Twenty times that actual number of Jews were killed in the Holocaust, from a population much much smaller. If two thirds of the total US population were annihilated, that would be a loss of 200 million people. That’s how it felt to Jews in Europe.
 

But they were not allowed to immigrate to their homeland as promised, even to escape certain death from savage tyrants—because civilized people failed to keep their promises to them.
 

Despite betrayals against the Jews, among the British were 26,000 Jewish volunteers fighting against the Axis powers. In 1944 the Jewish Brigade became an independent military unit of the British army, seeing action in Egypt, Italy and northwest Europe. Following victory, these same soldiers joined the “illegal immigration” efforts to carry Holocaust survivors to Eretz Israel.
 

Victory against Hitler didn’t mean victory for the Jews. The White Papers had essentially nullified the Balfour Declaration, and they used diplomatic means worldwide to let their complaints be known. Diplomacy was not enough. People networked to smuggle in thousands of refugees past the British blockade. And simultaneously underground groups worked to defend Jewish neighborhoods, as well as supplies and infrastructure, from Arab attack. Some also worked to subvert British command. A handful were executed for their underground activities.
 

Working and fighting for their own survival, while simultaneously rallying support worldwide eventually resulted in delegations to the United Nations to explore the possibility of independent statehood. President Harry Truman took an interest almost as soon as he took office, and on Yom Kippur 1946 Truman declared his support for the Jewish Agency’s plan to partition the Palestine area into separate Jewish and Arab states.
 

Britain withdrew its paternal role, having failed to keep basic order, and referred the problem to the United Nations. After a UN study, a commission recommended that the Jews become sovereign over the area that included their main holdings (Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel-Aviv), and leave the rest to become an independent Arab state.

At the time, Arabs in the Jewish areas outnumbered Jews, and the partition severely restricted new settlement areas for the influx of European refugees. Nevertheless, the Jews agreed to the partition, and they continued diplomatic efforts, particularly to gain US support. Up until just days before the vote, the solution seemed impossible, but worldwide efforts finally came to fruition. On November 29, 1947, Resolution 181 was approved by the UN General Assembly—to much Jewish fanfare around the globe.
 

The Arabs outright rejected the partition. They responded by blowing up buses, attacking people in their neighborhoods and businesses, and destroying the main roads between Jewish cities. Jews were attacked throughout the Middle East.

With British protection withdrawing, Jews and Arabs struggled for control of strategic positions. Yet amid the conflict, on May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the formation of the State of Israel. Within hours the Arab response was to bring in the armies of surrounding Arab countries, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and contributing forces from other countries as well, to “drive the Jews into the Mediterranean.”
 

Beleaguered new Israelis used light artillery and not much more than handguns and rifles to hold off the onslaught of the surrounding Arab world—and prevailed, slightly increasing their territory during the dispute
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One of the byproducts of this battle to defend their right to exist was the refugee problem. That will be Part V.

Israel, Part II: Zionism and Migration

This is part II of a several part series on Israel, to give background to the conflict there today. For part I, see Thursday's post here.

Zionism

Somewhere during the 19^th Century, there began to be a worldwide desire among individual Jews to return to their homeland. Several influences caused this feeling to grow, mainly to escape the nationalism and anti-Semitism in Western Europe, and, even worse, the violent persecutions (pogroms) of Eastern Europe. 

Jericho Market *

In 1956 the first group of Jews tried to set up a Jewish-owned orange grove near Jaffa. This first wave of migration to Palestine (the Roman name for this Ottoman territory, not a Palestinian state) included about 25,000. But it didn’t work out well. These weren’t experienced farmers, and they were just about done in by malaria, the typical plague of swampland. But during this time the idea of Zionism grew around the world, thanks in large part to a mane named Theodore Herzl. 

During this period, freedom loving liberals in France (liberal in the classic sense, in favor of Republicanism instead of monarchy, with guaranteed individual rights) recognized persecution against Jews as wrong. A spy case against a man named Dreyfus was a catalyst; Dreyfus was falsely accused and twice convicted, when the actual traitor was liberated. The people recognized the wrong, replaced the leaders, and reinstated Dreyfus. It was the biggest issue of its day, and led to the end of state religion in France in 1905. 

Herzl dedicated his life to raising funds from Jews around the world to buy land in Israel to be settled by Jews. He died in 1904, but his influence had multiplied greatly to a worldwide movement, and others continued to seek an independent secular Jewish state in the area of Palestine. 

In Basel, Switzerland, August 1897, the First Zionist Congress set out the following formula: 

Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Eretz-Israel [land of Israel] secured under public law. The Congress contemplates the following means to the attainment of this end: 

1. The promotion by appropriate means of the settlement in Eretz-Israel of Jewish farmers, artisans, and manufacturers.
2. The organization and uniting of the whole of Jewry by means of appropriate institutions, both local and international, in accordance with the laws of each country.
3. The strengthening and fostering of Jewish national sentiment and national consciousness. Preparatory steps toward obtaining the consent of governments, where necessary, in order to reach the goals of Zionism.

Jewish communities all over the world lit up over this idea, including in the US. Rabbis around the country became strong leaders in the movement. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, “This is a cause to which I will give my life.” He eventually stepped down from the bench and lobbied for the Jewish cause. He set up the Palestine Land and Development Company, the Palestine Economic Corporation, and the American Zion Commonwealth. He evidenced a rather new idea, ethnic American Jews, with the idea that “to be a good American meant that local Jews should be Zionists.” 

Migration

The Second aliyah—wave of immigration--was made up of several segments. The first was from Russia, escaping pogroms (bloodbaths), from about 1904 to 1914. These people were intrigued by some of the socialist ideas taking root at that time in Russia. They were interpreted in Israel as the kibbutz, a collective farm where everyone did manual labor. The people benefited from a natural willingness to be industrious. By the outbreak of WWI in 1914 there were 85,000 Jews in the Palestine region, compared to a mere 5,000 when the Ottoman Empire took control. 

Balfour Declaration

During WWI, the Zionists supported the Allied Powers, including the Jewish Legion under the British Army, and served in intelligence for the British. 

If you’ll recall, the Palestine region had been under the Ottoman Turks for 400 years or so. When there was finally hope that the British would be able to overcome the Turkish forces in Palestine, the Zionists sought reassurance that the British would commit to supporting Zionist goals. This was successfully done in the Balfour Declaration. In a letter from Lord Balfour representing the British Cabinet sent to Lord Rothschild representing the Zionists in Eretz Israel, the November 1917 declaration said this:  

“His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors 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.”

Following the Balfour Declaration, the aliyah (immigration waves) came in three segments: 1919-1923 mainly from Russia, about 35,000, mostly manual laborers, continuing the establishment of rural settlements. The next was from Poland between 1924-1932, adding small businesses and light industry in cities, mainly Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem.  The last segment came mainly from Germany during the 1930s, about 165,000, in response to Hitler’s rise to power. This group included professionals and academics, contributing significantly to education and intellectual culture. 

The significant cultural development in Eretz Israel is one of the main sources of conflict in the region. The native Arab peoples willingly sold land to Jewish immigrants; they were selling swamplands and worthless rocks. But then the Jewish communities drained the swamps, planted orange groves, and developed farmland—so it looked to the former owners that they were deprived unwittingly of valuable land. 

As the cities began to develop, there was the additional conflict between developing civilization and the nomadic Arabs, who preferred the simpler way things had been for millennia.  

That leads us to Part III next time, as conflict led to violence.

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* The photo of the oranges in the Jericho Market comes from a beautiful photo book called, The Way, the Truth, and the Life: Images of the New Testament, text by S. Michael Wilcox, photos by Floyd Holdman and Don O. Thorpe, 2002, Covenant Communications. This photo is from p. 64, taken by Thorpe. This is merely a photograph of the page, which doesn't do it justice.