A History of Zionism (90 page)

On the eve of the Second World War the Hashomer Hatzair world movement counted about seventy thousand members. During the war, those in the occupied countries of east Europe, like members of other Zionist youth movements, played a leading part in the resistance to Nazism. Many died. Of the few who survived most went to Israel after the war. The main Jewish communities in Europe had ceased to exist, and with them their youth movements, but branches of Hashomer Hatzair (like Habonim and the religious youth movements) continued operating in western Europe and the Americas, as well as in North and South Africa, Australia and, in fact, in most Jewish communities throughout the world.

Hashomer Hatzair was for many years the strongest youth movement, but it did not have the field to itself, even on the Left, not to speak of the revisionist Betar, of which mention has been made already. In 1923-4
Gordonia
was founded in Poland, a youth movement inclined broadly speaking towards the Zionist Left. It was strongly influenced by the thought of A.A. Aordon and by the German youth movement, but in contrast to Hashomer Hatzair it subscribed to humanitarian Socialism rather than Marxism.
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It orientated itself towards life in the kvutza, though in its early days it did not preclude other forms of agricultural settlement in Palestine. In the 1930s Gordonia merged with Makkabi Hatzair; it had its main bases in eastern Europe. In 1929 the first members of Gordonia arrived in Palestine and started a collective settlement.

In addition to those mentioned, dozens of Zionist youth movements came into being between the two world wars, and a few of them continued to exist after 1945. In Poland there was
Dror-Freihait
; in the United States
Young Judaea
, and later on
Avuka
, a student association with branches in more than twenty universities.
Habonim
developed in the early 1930s in London’s East End and spread to other English-speaking countries, Sweden and Holland. Over the years its members helped to establish four kibbutzim (Kfar Blum, Kfar Hanassi, Amiad and Beth Ha’emeq). In 1951 a world federation of Habonim was established with its headquarters in Tel Aviv.

Some of these movements were shortlived. Their ideological discussions, like those of other youth groups, make in retrospect curious reading. But, like other youth movements, they should not be measured by the degree of their political sophistication. The issue that really mattered was the common experience and identity shared by the members, and seen in this context these movements played an important role in the history of Zionism. Among the present leaders of the state of Israel there are few, if any, who did not at one time belong to one of them.

At a time when family ties were loosening, when protest against school and other forms of authority was spreading, these youth movements provided new ideals and values, the promise of both national revival and a new and better way of life. In common activities, such as discussions, seminars, sports meetings, camping and excursions, a spirit of community was developed. The members were taught Hebrew and the essentials of Jewish history and culture. They regarded life in Palestine, and specifically in the collective settlements, not just as part of the solution of the Jewish question, long overdue, but as the most desirable way of life for idealistic young men and women. In this respect the Zionist youth movement differed from all other youth movements of the day, which in the European dictatorships simply served as a reserve army to replenish the ranks of the state party, or, as in the democracies, failed to carry the idea of a live community beyond the dreams of adolescence.

Years of crisis

The 1920s were on the whole an uneventful period in the history of mandatory Palestine. The over-optimistic expectations of the Zionists had been buried and there was resentment about the lack of assistance given by the British administration. But was it really the fault of the British, as Weizmann asked the Zionist congress, if the Zionists had bought only one million dunams of land rather than two, and if consequently their position was relatively weak? It was not, after all, surprising if the mandatory authorities were reluctant to aid the Zionists in building their national home as envisaged in the Balfour Declaration: the officials felt that there was an inherent contradiction in the task imposed on them. They realised that whatever they did they were bound to provoke either Arab or Jewish protest, and they therefore drew the conclusion, not unnaturally, that the less they did the better.

Samuel, the first high commissioner, was replaced by Field Marshall Plumer, after whom Chancellor was appointed. The Zionists were suspicious of Plumer. They had hoped that a Jew would again be made high commissioner, and feared that a professional soldier would have little understanding, let alone sympathy, for the Zionist cause. These fears were somewhat exaggerated. Plumer declared that he had no policy of his own but was simply following instructions from London.
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The Jewish leaders were impressed by his firmness in dealing with Arab threats. When leaders of an Arab delegation told him that unless some Jewish parade was banned they could not be responsible for the maintenance of public order in Jerusalem, the high commissioner told his visitors that he did not expect them to do anything of the kind, since the preservation of law and order was his job. Relations between the Zionists and Chancellor were much cooler. In fact Chancellor was cordially disliked. He enjoyed neither the reputation of a statesman nor the prestige of a military leader. It was, moreover, during his term of office that the riots of 1929 took place, which were to put Anglo-Zionist relations to a severe test.

The chain of events in which 133 Jews were killed and several hundred wounded is described elsewhere in the present study. Soon after the end of the disturbances Lord Passfield (Sidney Webb), colonial secretary in the Labour government, appointed a commission of enquiry to investigate the immediate causes of the riots. The commission went to Palestine at the end of October, stayed there until late December, and published its findings, known as the Shaw Report, in March 1930.
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While putting the responsibility for the bloodshed squarely on the Arabs, it stressed that the fundamental cause was Arab animosity towards the Jews, consequent upon the disappointment of their national aspirations and the fears for their economic future. Specifically, the report mentioned Arab fears that as a result of Jewish immigration and land purchase they would be deprived of their livelihood and in time pass under the domination of the Jews. Arabs had been evicted from their holdings and as a result a landless and discontented class had been created. The crisis of 1927-8, the report claimed, was due to the fact that during the previous years immigration had exceeded the country’s absorptive capacity, a mistake that should not be repeated.

The Shaw Commission noted that the Arabs were disappointed because no progress had been made towards self-government and resented the fact that unlike the Jews (who had the Jewish Agency), they had no direct channel to the government. Above all, the commission suggested that His Majesty’s government should issue a clear statement of the policy it intended to pursue. These guidelines were to contain a definition, in clear and positive terms, of the meaning attached to the passages in the mandate providing safeguards for the rights of the Arabs. While the Zionists argued that the Palestine government had shown lack of sympathy towards the Jewish national home, and thus created conditions favourable to an Arab attack, the commission absolved the government of guilt, stressing that the Jews failed to appreciate the dual nature of its responsibility and that they had shown (like the Arabs) ‘little capacity for compromise’.

The Shaw Report was received by the Arabs with jubilation, whereas the Jews were outraged.
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The Zionists had suspected from the outset that the commission would exceed its assignment to deal with the immediate causes of the disturbances, and their worst fears had come true. Their reaction was summarised by Sokolow, in his speech at the Zionist congress in 1931, when he quoted the Jew in Kishinev who had said: ‘God protect me from commissions - from pogroms I can protect myself.’

The Jewish Agency answered the report in a detailed memorandum. Lord Passfield, presumably to gain time for working out his own policy, countered by appointing Sir John Hope Simpson, a retired Indian civil servant, to prepare a further report on economic conditions in Palestine. This was delivered in August 1930 and dealt a further blow to Zionist hopes, for it stated that with the given methods of cultivation no land was available for agricultural settlement by new immigrants, with the exception of the undeveloped land already held by the Jewish Agency.
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Regarding future immigration, the report stated that with comprehensive development there would be room for not less than twenty thousand families of settlers from outside. Hope Simpson was doubtful about the prospects of industrialisation. His report was attacked by the Zionists as based on insufficient evidence. He certainly greatly underestimated the cultivable land area available, as the spectacular agricultural development of Palestine since 1930 has shown.

The report was published in London on 20 October 1930, at the same time as the British government issued its statement of policy, the Passfield White Paper. This stated at some length that Britain’s obligations to Jews and Arabs were of equal weight and that the Jewish Agency had no special political position.
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While it was not said in so many words, the general impression created by the White Paper was that the building of the Jewish national home had more or less ended as far as Britain was concerned; its continued growth was to depend on Arab consent. The Zionist executive, with rare understatement, said the White Paper was a reinterpretation of the mandate in a manner highly prejudicial to Jewish interests, that it retreated not only from the Churchill statement of 1922 (which had itself been a retreat from the mandate), but that it did not even accept the positive recommendations for economic development contained in the Hope Simpson Report.
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The White Paper, as Weizmann later wrote, was intended ‘to make our work in Palestine impossible’.

The publication of Lord Passfield’s statement of policy provoked intense indignation throughout the Jewish world. Weizmann tendered his resignation from the Jewish Agency, as did Felix Warburg and Lord Melchett. For the first time the Jewish leaders had not been kept informed of London’s plans, and while it was known that Passfield was totally out of sympathy with Zionism, they had thought that there was at least a certain measure of goodwill among some of his colleagues. The one member of the Shaw Commission to make strong reservations as to its conclusions had been Henry Snell, a Labour MP, but there were also protests from many other quarters. When the White Paper was discussed in Parliament on 18 November, Passfield found the going rough. Conservative and Liberal spokesmen attacked it as a breach of trust and contract. Inside the Labour Party too there was a good deal of uneasiness about its provisions. Passfield beat a tactical retreat, admitting to doubts about certain passages. He assured Weizmann that the Zionists had misunderstood the Paper, but at the same time he continued to resist their essential demands (e.g. mass immigration); he was the ‘head and fount of the opposition to our demands’ (Weizmann). Under pressure from all sides, the government decided to modify its policy. It could not, for obvious reasons, withdraw the White Paper but the bureaucrats knew a way out of the dilemma: just as the White Paper had been an interpretation of the Churchill declaration of 1922, it was decided to issue a new document to serve as an authoritative interpretation of the Passfield White Paper. A committee composed of members of the government and representatives of the Jewish Agency, after lengthy deliberations, reached agreement on essential points, and made the outcome public in the form of a letter from Ramsay MacDonald to Weizmann. Disavowing any injurious allegations against the Jewish people, the prime minister reaffirmed the intention of his government to fulfil the terms of the mandate and acknowledged that it had made an undertaking not only to the Jews living in Palestine but to the Jewish people as a whole. There was no intention to freeze existing conditions. As far as immigration was concerned there was no desire to depart from the Churchill White Paper. The criteria applied to establish the absorptive capacity of the country were to be purely economic, not political in character.

The Passfield White Paper was an unsuccessful attempt to reverse the policy initiated by Balfour and Lloyd George. It failed, and the positive change in the attitude of the British government enabled the Zionists, to quote Weizmann again, to make the magnificent gains of the 1930s. But it was a warning sign inasmuch as it showed the Arabs that there were forces in Britain only too willing to yield to Arab pressure. If they had failed for the time being to press home their case, perhaps a renewal of violence on a bigger scale at some future date would be more successful? The restrictions on immigration and land purchase proposed by Passfield were embodied in the White Paper of 1939 which finally repudiated the policy of Balfour and Lloyd George.
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The MacDonald letter provided a respite of seven years, but this at a critical period in Jewish history, and it enabled hundreds of thousands of refugees to find a new home. Many Zionist leaders rebuked Weizmann for having accepted a mere letter from the prime minister instead of a formal reversal of policy, and wanted to reject it as a basis for continued collaboration with Britain. But it was not the form of the answer that mattered but its substance, and Weizmann, the pragmatist, was absolutely right when he concentrated on the essential achievement and ignored the form.