The Holocaust Had Many Victims–The Palestinians
Among Them
Allan C. Brownfeld
Issues
Fall 2021
Increasingly, the treatment of the Palestinians by the government of Israel is
coming under extensive international scrutiny. In July, for example, over 600
intellectuals from more than 45 countries signed a declaration calling for the
dismantling of what they called “the apartheid regime” set up “on the territory
of historic Palestine” and “the establishment of a democratic constitutional
arrangement that grants all its citizens equal rights and duties.”
The signatories include Nobel Peace Prize laureates Adolfo Perez Esquivel of
Argentina, and Mairead Maguire of Ireland, legal expert Monique Chemallier-
Gendreau and Richard Falk, economist and former Assistant Secretary General of
the United Nations Sir Richard Jolly, South African politician and veteran anti-
apartheid leader Ronnie Kasrils, and Canadian peace activist and former Green
Party leader Joan Russow. Among the academics signing the declaration are
Daniel Boyarin, professor of Talmudic Culture at the University of California,
Berkeley; Neve Gordon, of Queen Mary University, London; Adi Ophir, professor
emeritus at Tel Aviv University, and Alice Rothchild, professor emeritus at the
Harvard Medical School.
When we discuss the Holocaust and Hitler’s slaughter of six million European
Jews, we often forget the fact that the Holocaust had other victims as well,
namely the Palestinians, the indigenous inhabitants whose country was taken from
them. They, of course, played no part in the Holocaust, but saw their country
taken from them as the world sought to make a place for Jews who had been
displaced by the Nazi tyranny. The world wished to do so in a way that did not
involve inviting Jewish refugees into their own countries.
Zionism: A Minority Movement Among Jews
From the beginning, Zionism was a minority movement among Jews. It was created,
notes Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper, by “…Jews with little knowledge of
Palestine and its people, who launched a movement of Jewish return to its
ancestral homeland…after a national absence of 2,000 years…In their eyes the
Arabs of Palestine were mere background…Palestine was, as the famous Zionist
phrase put it, ‘a land without a people.’ The European Zionists knew the land
was peopled, but to them the Arabs did not amount to “a people.”
Halper, a Jewish American anthropologist who emigrated to Israel and heads the
Israeli Committee Against House demolitions, points out that from the beginning,
“Zionism…attracted but a tiny fraction of the world’s Jews in its formative
years. Only 3 per cent of the 2 million Jews who left Eastern Europe between
1882 and 1914 went to Palestine, and many of those subsequently emigrated to
other countries.”
Ironically, the leading Jewish voices in the late 19th and early 20th century
rejected Zionism, while it was embraced by anti-Semites as a way to remove
unwanted Jews from their own countries. For Reform Jews, the idea of Zionism
contradicted almost completely their belief in a universal prophetic Judaism.
The first Reform prayerbook eliminated references to Jews being in exile and to
a Messiah who would miraculously restore Jews throughout the world to the
historic land of Israel. The prayerbook eliminated all prayers for a return to
Zion.
“America is our Zion”
In 1897, the Central Conference of American Rabbis adopted a resolution
disapproving of any attempt to establish a Jewish state. The resolution
declared, “Zion was a precious possession of the past…as such it is a holy
memory, but it is not our hope for the future. America is our Zion.”
While most Jews opposed Zionism, many anti-Semites embraced it. Peter Beinart,
an editor for Jewish Currents, writes in The Guardian: “Some of the world
leaders who most ardently promoted Jewish statehood did so because they did not
want Jews in their countries. Before declaring, as foreign secretary in 1917,
that Britain ‘views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home
for the Jewish people,’ Arthur Balfour supported the 1905 Aliens Act, which
restricted Jewish emigration to the United Kingdom…Two years after his famous
declaration, Balfour said Zionism would mitigate the age-long miseries created
for Western civilization by the presence in its midst of a Body (the Jews)
which it too long regarded as alien or even hostile , but was equally unable to
expel or absorb.”
In England, most Jewish leaders opposed the Balfour Declaration. A Jewish
member of Lloyd George’s cabinet, Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu,
insisted that Jews be regarded as a religious community. He used the term
“anti-Semitism’ to characterize the sponsors of the Balfour Declaration. A
document he issued on August 23, 1917 was titled, “The Anti-Semitism of the
Present Government.”
Anti-Semites Welcome Zionism
In an essay entitled “The Perils of Zion,” the British Jewish leader Claude
Montefiore stressed the theme that “those who have no love for the Jews and
those who are pronounced anti-Semites all seem to welcome the Zionist proposals
and aspirations. Why should this be, unless Zionism fits in with anti-Semitic
presumptions and with anti-Semitic aims?”
Writing in The New York Times, Henry Moskowitz, in an article entitled “Zionism
Is No Remedy,” described the curse of nationalism which hung over the world as
World War I raged, “in which the idea of dominion has given certain nations a
form of megalomania.” He had no wish for the Jews to join this enterprise.
The whole nature of Jewish nationalism was reactionary and an unsatisfactory
philosophy of life, he argued . Instead, what Jews needed was a revival of the
Hebraic spirit which gave birth to the visions of the Prophets, to David’s
psalms and to Spinoza’s God.
At the same time, an even more militant form of Zionism was emerging, that of
Revisionism. Its leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky, embraced the negative view of
Jews he imbibed from anti-Semites. In his autobiography, he describes how he
first came into contact with the Zionist movement when he was studying in Bern,
Switzerland. He announced on the spot his adherence to the cause: “I am a
Zionist because the Jewish People are a very nasty people and its neighbors hate
it, and they are right; its end in the Dispersion will be a general
Bartholomew’s Night, and the only rescue is general immigration to Palestine.”
Affinity for Fascism
Jabotinsky had an affinity for fascism and was ready to form a tactical alliance
with groups such as the anti-Semitic Ukrainian national Petliura after World War
I. Jabotinsky’s spirit lived on as young Revisionists like Menachem Begin,
Abraham Stern and Yitzhak Shamir fought against the British during World War II.
In his book “The Controversy of Zion,” Geoffrey Wheatcroft writes, “In his
struggle for a Greater Israel stretching as far as the Euphrates, Stern led a
violent group called Lehi in terrorist acts against the British…He met a
representative of Mussolini…He sent an agent…to talk to talk to a representative
of the Third Reich, Otto von Hentig, of the Berlin Foreign Office. He expressed
sympathy with National Socialists, whose goal of removing the Jews from Europe
he understood, spoke of ‘the good will of the German Reich Government…towards
Zionist activity.’”
Because Zionism remained a minority view among Jews until the advent of Nazism
and the Holocaust, it is unlikely that a Jewish “homeland” or state would have
been established in Palestine after World War II if it were not for these
horrors. What is clear is that the Zionist leaders did not envision sharing
Palestine with its indigenous population.
From the very start of Jewish settlement in Palestine, Zionist leaders
were quite open in making it clear that they wanted to remove the country’s
indigenous population. As far back as 1914, Moshe Sharett, a future Israeli
prime minister, declared, “We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty
land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from a people
inhabiting it, that governs it by virtue of its language and savage culture…If
we seek to look upon our land , the Land of Israel, as ours alone and we allow a
partner into our estate—-all context and meaning will be lost to our
enterprise.”
“Leave Palestine Alone”
Even earlier, in 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, former mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed
by the Zionist call to transform Palestine into a Jewish state, wrote a letter
aimed at Theodor Herzl, the leading Zionist of the 19th century. He pointed out
that Palestine had an indigenous population that would not easily accept their
displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “In the name of
God, leave Palestine alone.”
In his book “The Hundred Years War on Palestine,” Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s
grandnephew and professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, notes
that in Herzl’s response to Yusuf Diya, the Zionist leader assured him that the
arrival of European Jews in Palestine would improve life for the indigenous
inhabitants because of Jewish “intelligence” and financial acumen. He declared,
“no one can doubt that the well-being of the entire country would be the happy
result.”
Herzl’s response, notes Khalidi, concealed Zionism’s real intentions: “With the
smug self-assurance so common to nineteenth century Europeans, Herzl offered the
preposterous inducement, that the occupation, and ultimately the usurpation of
their land by strangers would benefit the people of that country. Herzl’s
thinking…appears to have been based on the assumption that the Arabs could
ultimately be bribed or fooled into ignoring what the Zionist movement actually
intended for Palestine.”
Herzl Didn’t Practice Judaism or Believe in God
In his biography of Herzl, “The Labyrinth of Exile,” Ernst Pavel notes that the
Zionist leader did not practice Judaism or believe in God. Indeed, he once
considered mass conversion to Christianity the best resolution of the Jewish
“problem.” He regularly denigrated Judaism and in one letter declared, “Just
think what the Jews have suffered over the past two thousand years for the sake
of this fantasy of theirs.”
Herzl wrote: “I consider religion indispensable for the weak. There are those
who, weak in willpower, mind or emotions, must always be able to rely on
religion. The others, the normal run of mankind, are weak only in childhood and
in old age; for them, religion serves as an educational instrument or a source
of comfort…Which religion, or which god , really makes no difference…Any Jew who
has children and decides to get baptized has my blessings.”
Pavel shows that Herzl had every reason to understand the Arab population of
Palestine, their numbers and their point of view. Prior to the Second Zionist
Congress in 1898, he sent the young Zionist activist Leo Motzkin on a tour of
Palestine. One passage in his report, Pavel declares, “deserves the special
attention it failed to receive at the time.” In that passage, Motzkin reported:
“Completely accurate statistics about the number of inhabitants do not presently
exist. One must admit that the density of the population does not give the
visitor much cause for cheer. In whole stretches throughout the land one
constantly comes across large Arab villages, and it is an established fact that
the most fertile areas of our country are occupied by Arabs…”. (Protocol of the
Second Zionist Congress).
Irony of Referring to “Our country”
Ernst Pavel points to the irony of referring to “our country” when discussing a
land already inhabited by others. When Herzl himself visited Palestine in 1898,
he seemed to ignore the local inhabitants almost completely. Pavel points out
that, “The trip took him through at least a dozen Arab villages, and in Jaffa
itself, Jews formed only 10 per cent —-some 3,000—-of the total population. Yet
not once does he refer to the natives in his notes, nor do they ever seem to
figure in his later reflections. In overlooking, in refusing to acknowledge
their presence —-and hence their humanity—-he both followed and reinforced a
trend that was to have tragic consequences for Jews and Arabs alike.”
In his book “The Promised Land: A History of Zionist Thought,” Rabbi David
Goldberg, a leading spokesman for Progressive Judaism in the United Kingdom,
points out that one of the great shortcomings of the early Zionists was their
indifference to the indigenous Arab population of Palestine. Some other
Zionists, however recognized that a potential injustice against those living in
Palestine was being perpetrated and warned against it.
Unlike his fellow Zionists who persisted in fantasizing about “a land without
people for the people without a land,” Ahad Ha’am, the Russian Jewish writer
and philosopher, refused from the very beginning to ignore the presence of Arabs
in Palestine. Ahad Ha’am paid his first visit to the new Jewish settlements in
Palestine in 1891. In his essay “The Truth From The Land of Israel,” he says
that it is an illusion to think of Palestine as an empty country: “We tend to
believe abroad that Palestine is nowadays almost completely deserted, a non-
cultivated wilderness and anyone can come there and buy as much land as his
heart desires. But in reality this is not the case. It is difficult to find
anywhere in the country Arab land which lies fallow.”
Primacy of Jewish Ethics
Jewish ethics were the heart and soul of Ahad Ha’am’s philosophy and to the end
of his life he denounced any compromise with political expediency. In 1913,
protesting against a Jewish boycott of Arab labor, he wrote to a friend: “I
can’t put up with the idea that our brethren are morally capable of behaving in
such a way to humans of another people, and unwittingly the thought comes to
mind: If this is so now, what will our relations to the others be like if, at
the end of time, we shall really achieve power in Eretz Israel? And if this be
the Messiah , I do not wish to see his coming.”
In 1923, Albert Einstein toured Palestine. He believed that Jewish settlers
should be fair to their Arab neighbors and on November 25, 1929, he wrote to
Chaim Weizmann: “Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and
honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our
2,000 years of suffering, and deserve all that will come to us.” Later, in
January 1946, testifying before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry,
Einstein was asked whether, in his view, refugee settlement in Palestine
demanded a Jewish state. He replied: “The State idea is not according to my
heart. I cannot understand why it is needed. It is connected with narrow-
mindedness and economic obstacles. I believe that it is bad. I have always
been against it.” He lamented that the concept of a Jewish commonwealth was
“an imitation of Europe, the end of which was brought about by nationalism.”
In 1952 in a message to a “Children of Palestine” dinner, Einstein spoke of the
need to curb “a kind of nationalism which has already arisen in Israel if only
to permit a friendly and fruitful coexistence with the Arabs.” Discussing this
incident, Alfred M. Lilienthal in “The Zionist Connection,” writes: “When the
portion of the Einstein message was censored in the organization’s press release
so as to impart the impression of all-out support for Israel, I went to
Princeton to seek the Professor’s views on the incident. Einstein then told me
that he had never been a Zionist and had never favored the creation of the State
of Israel. It was then that he also told me of a significant conversation with
Weizmann. Einstein had asked him: ‘What of the Arabs if Palestine were given
to the Jews?’ And Weizmann replied: ‘What Arabs? They are hardly of any
consequence.’”
Policy of Reconciliation
A small number of thoughtful and sensitive Zionists sought a policy of
reconciliation with the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. In 1925, under the
leadership of Arthur Ruppin, an association called Brit Shalom (Covenant of
Peace) was established in Palestine and proposed binationalism as the proper
solution to the conflict between Zionists and Arabs, two peoples claiming the
same land.
In their credo, issued in Jerusalem in 1927, Brit Shalom said it was intent on
creating in Palestine “a binational state , in which the two peoples will enjoy
totally equal rights, as befits the two elements shaping the country’s destiny,
irrespective of which of the two is numerically superior at any given time.”
Its spokesmen included such respected figures as Judah Magnes, chancellor and
first president of the Hebrew University, and such university faculty members as
Martin Buber, Hugo Germann, Ernst Simon and Gershon Scholem. For these men,
Zionism was a moral crusade or it was nothing.
Brit Shalom’s leader, Arthur Ruppin, was saddened by the growing disparity
between universal moral values and narrow Jewish nationalism. “what continually
worries me,” he wrote, “is the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Palestine…
the two peoples have become more estranged in their thinking . Neither has any
understanding of the other, and yet I have no doubt that Zionism will end in
catastrophe if we do not succeed in finding a common platform.”
“No equivalent in History”
What Zionists we’re doing, he argued, “has no equivalent in history. The aim is
to bring Jews as a second nation into a country which already is settled as a
nation—-and fulfill this through peaceful means. History has seen such
penetration, by one nation into a strange land only by conquest, but it has
never occurred that a nation will fully agree that another nation should come
and demand full equality of rights and national autonomy at its side."
As far back as 1930, Albert Einstein had warned in the Palestinian newspaper
Falastin that “oppressive nationalism must be conquered,” and that he could
“see a future for Palestine only on the basis of peaceful cooperation between
the two peoples who are at home in the country …come together they must in spite
of all.”
We have become familiar with the term “ethnic cleansing” in recent years, but
until recently, few have used it to describe the Zionist efforts to remove
Palestine’s indigenous inhabitants. David Ben-Gurion advocated for “compulsory
transfer” of Palestinians. In 1937, he established a Committee for Population
Transfer within the Jewish Agency. “Transfer,” of course is the euphemism for
“ethnic cleansing,” and was carried out at a mass level in 1948 and again in
1967. One of its perpetrators, Yosef Weitz, director of the Jewish National
Fund’s Land Settlement Department, wrote: “It must be clear that there is no
room in the country for both peoples. The only solution is a Land of Israel
without Arabs…There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here…”
Indifferent To Jews Who Did Not Come to Palestine
Ben-Gurion was not only not concerned with the fate of the Palestinians, but
was indifferent to what might happen to Jews who did not emigrate to Palestine.
In 1938, he declared that if he knew he could save either all the Jewish
children of Germany by transporting them to England or only half by bringing
them to Palestine, he would not hesitate to choose the latter, because, “Before
us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of
the people of Israel.”
Israeli historian Tom Segev notes that, “Disappearing the Arabs lay at the heart
of the Zionist dream , and was also a necessary condition of its realization…
With few exceptions, none of the Zionists disputed the desirability of forced
transfer—-or its morality.”
Another Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, writes: “By 1945, Zionism had attracted
more than half a million settlers to a country whose population was almost two
million…The local native population was not consulted…nor was its objection to
the project of turning Palestine into a Jewish state taken into account…As with
all earlier settler colonial movements, , the answer to these problems was the
twin logic of annihilation and dehumanization. The settlers’ only way of
expanding their hold on the land beyond the 7 percent, and ensuring an exclusive
demographic majority, was to remove the natives from their homeland. Zionism is
thus a settler colonial project and one that has not yet been completed…Israel
is still colonizing …dispossessing Palestinians , and denying the rights of the
natives to their homeland…the crime committed by the leadership of the Zionist
movement, which became the government of Israel, was that of ethnic cleansing.”
Final Victims of the Holocaust
The reason that the Palestinians may properly be seen as the final victims of
the Holocaust is that growing anti-Semitism in Europe caused many Jews, who had
previously opposed Zionism, to begin to look positively upon the idea of
creating a Jewish state in Palestine as a refuge for those being persecuted.
Jewish organizations in the U.S. that had always opposed Zionism, slowly began
to view it more favorably. Without Hitler, there would have been little support
from Jews in the U.S. or Western Europe for the creation of a Jewish state.
Without the Holocaust, the United Nations would have had little reason to
establish the State of Israel.
Now, the victimization of the Palestinians, who had no role in the Holocaust, is
becoming more widely understood. Both the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem
and Human Rights Watch have characterized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as
“apartheid.”
The groundswell of international opposition to Israel’s occupation and
mistreatment of Palestinians is being widely compared to the movement which grew
in opposition to apartheid in South Africa. Jeff Halper points out that, “The
Palestinian cause has attained a global prominence equal to that of the anti-
apartheid movement. Palestinians have become emblematic of oppressed peoples
everywhere. Israel is an established and strong settler state just as South
Africa was, yet neither was able to defeat or marginalize an indigenous
population with state-national aspirations. Now, the Palestinian struggle has
achieved the level of significance of the anti-apartheid struggle in the world.
Those Who Had Been Oppressed Then Mistreated Others
These facts were eloquently enunciated many years ago by the late Israel Shahak,
a Holocaust survivor who emigrated to Israel after World War II and had a
distinguished career as a professor at the Hebrew University. He was chairman
of the Israel League for Human and Civil Rights and lamented that Jews, who
had been so horribly oppressed, would then be guilty of oppressing others.
Dr. Shahak was particularly critical of American Jews, many of whom, he argued,
had made the State of Israel a virtual object of worship, flying Israeli flags
in synagogues, and ignoring completely the treatment of the Palestinians. He
wrote: “I want to argue that this behavior…has no support in historical
Judaism…It is contrary to what is in my opinion the best part of Judaism, the
prophetic tradition, the exhortations of the Great prophets of ancient Israel.
When Amos said: ‘But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a
mighty stream.’ (5:24), against whom did he intend this? It is not said against
the Assyrians or the Egyptians. It was intended, to use modern terms, against
the government of Israel of his time..when Isaiah represents the Jews of his
time …as saying ‘for we have made lies our refuge and under falsehood have we
hid ourselves’ (28:15), he stands in glaring contrast to what is condemned by
the American Jewish organizations, that is a critique of Jews themselves.”
In Shahak’s view, “If a Jew would suggest now what I believe to be true—-that
the majority of American Jews have made lies and falsehoods their refuge when
they discuss Israeli affairs or the injustice done by Israel, with their
support, to Palestinians—-he would be described as a ‘self-hating Jew,’ a
definition applicable to not only all Jewish prophets , but to many (perhaps
most) other great Jewish figures as well…The best part of historical Judaism is
not only critical of the power of the Jewish state and of the Jewish religion
itself when during times of corruption it supported the Jewish state. When the
power of the official Jewish religion was exerted in support of injustices
committed by the Jewish state, the prophets did not hesitate to condemn not only
Jewish kings…but also Jewish prayers, holidays and temples. When Isaiah
concluded that ‘Your hands are full of blood’ (and it is about Jewish hands that
he said this), he continued and told the Jews of his generation to cease to pray
on Sabbaths and not to make assemblies: ‘your new moons and your appointed
feasts my soul hates, they are a trouble unto me…when you make many prayers, I
will not hear’ (1:14-15).”
Worship of a Jewish State Should be Condemned
One of the most important duties of Jews, Shahak argues, “…is the critique of
the Jewish state when it commits a wrong…in the absence of fulfilling this duty
, Jewish religious observances become an abomination and an idolatry. Temples
and synagogues, whether during the time of Amos and Isaiah or now, which are
devoted to worship of a Jewish state (or of any other state) should be condemned
in the same terms as every other totalitarian institution..It should be…asserted
that those who support the injustices committed by Israel are not its true
friends, but its worst enemies.”
More and more Israelis, concerned about their country’s treatment of
Palestinians, lament its departure from Jewish moral and ethical values.
Professor David Shulman of Hebrew University writes: “We are, so we claim, the
children of the prophets. Once, they say, we were slaves in Egypt. We know all
that can be known about slavery, suffering, prejudice, ghettos, hate, expulsion
exile. I find it astonishing that we of all peoples have reinvented apartheid
in the West Bank.”
Making a direct connection between the Holocaust and the suffering of
Palestinians, Jane Hirschmann, whose family fled Germany at the time of the
Holocaust, writes this in a June 14 post in Truthout: “I am a first generation
American. My Jewish parents fled Germany as the horrors of the Holocaust were
unfolding. They left behind family who perished in the camps…Once the war was
over, Germany gave my father reparations for the loss of his business as well as
for the crime of persecution. Both of my parents were welcomed back by the
German government and told they could get their passports and citizenship
returned…I wonder why the 750,000 Palestinians forced from their homes and land
in 1948 when Israel was founded are not entitled to the same treatment my family
received after World War II ended.”
Reparations for Palestinians.
Hirschmann concludes: “But the war against the Palestinians was never over.
Instead, Israel continues to this day its policy of ethnic cleansing…I ask
myself how is it possible that the victims of the Holocaust and their progeny
can so brutally victimize another people on racial grounds? I ask myself why
the Palestinians don’t have the same rights to reparations and return afforded
my family after Germany accepted responsibility for their crimes. Shouldn’t
Palestinians be entitled to reparations and the right of return? Shouldn’t
they have the same right to self-determination that Israel itself claims? I am
deeply ashamed and angry that these acts are committed in the name of the Jewish
people and that my government provides the money and arms to support these
Israeli crimes.”
The Holocaust casts a long shadow. The declaration “Never Again” is one all of
us should take to heart. But it should apply not only to attacks on Jews but on
any religious, racial,or ethnic group. Today, it is the Palestinians who are
being threatened with continued ethnic cleansing, ironically as a result of the
Holocaust itself. They are, sadly, its final victims.
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