User:ZScarpia/Exodus 1947

Idith Zertal - From Catastrophe to Power: The Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel, (1998).

p. 83 - The Zionists had never intended to actually bring the 4,500 refugees onto the shores of Palestine, and such an effort had no chance of success since the Exodus was a show project from its inception. The ship's sailing was no secret, except for the moment it made its way, at dawn, out of the port at Sète, and as it set sail, it was under close surveillance by a light British patrol plane and the ships of the British navy. The messages sent from the ship to the Mossad center in Palestine, and from the Mossad to the ship, as well as the Jewish Agency political department's invitation to the members of UNSCOP to be present at Haifa when the refugees were loaded onto the British deportation ships, prove that those involved on the Zionist side were aware of the tremendous political effect of a ship carrying thousands of Holocaust survivors being denied access to the shores of their "national home" through the use of British force.

p. 84 - The British, for their part, decided to pursue a dual strategy in the case. For the Zionists, they planned to make this incident into an example of British determination to put an end to illegal immigration. They also intended to teach a lesson to the country from which the ship sailed in the first placeFranceand obligate it to bear the consequences, that is, to accept responsibility for the refugees.

p. 85 - The foreign secretary replied that the Jews were being returned to France in accordance with an oral agreement reached between him and Minister of Foreign Affairs Bidault, and that he expected to hear from the French as to which port they preferred to have the refugees brought to. ... At first the French toyed with the idea of sending the refugees to Colombia, the country whose visas the Exodus passengers held. A French Ministry of Foreign Affairs official even raised this issue with the British ambassador in Paris, saying that the British deportation ships should continue on to Colombia immediately after refueling on the French shore. The Colombians, for their part, demanded that the French investigate how the Colombian visas were issued and bring to trial the Jewish organizations responsible for this mass forgery; they refused to accept the DPs.

p. 86 - The minister of the interior also issued instructions in this spirit to his ministry's representatives in the port administration, the police, and the district. These contained explicit orders to prevent the ships from approaching the dock in order not to create even the possibility of the disembarkation of "the aliens who will refuse to descend onto our land." "I am absolutely certain that in the spirit of the human understanding that has always characterized our country you will faithfully interpret the government's intentions and decisions," the minister wrote to the prefect of the Bouches du Rhone district.

p. 88 - The British, in their documents, also admitted after this first meeting that the immediate negative response by the refugee representatives to the French offer reflected the position of the great majority of the immigrants, and that it was clear that the passengers would not disembark from the ships without the use of force.137 In all, only about 130 people, most of them ill, old, or women in the last months of pregnancy, disembarked during the period that the ships lay at anchor.

p. 89 - After twenty days passed, the political and media interest in the Jewish refugees imprisoned on the British deportation ships began to fade. In order "to reawaken the press's and the world's interest in our cause," a hunger strike was organized.

p. 91 - From London Chaim Weizmann, the elderly Zionist statesman, tried to join forces with Blum in preventing this outrageous deportation to Hamburg, but he was vehemently rebuffed by Ben-Gurion. In a way, the sending of the refugees to Germany was, for the Zionists, an additional and unexpected if cruel propaganda windfall. Not only did the leadership not try to prevent the prison ships from sailing to Germany, but it went so far as to obstruct every possibility of saving the refugees the trip.

p. 216-217 - David Shaltiel, a Mossad operative and Jewish Agency representative who served as Ben-Gurion's personal envoy to western Europe, returned from his own visit to the DP camps in Germany in the fall of 1945, having witnessed what was left of the devastation. He also expressed belief in the unique political power of the Holocaust survivors, if only Zionism would hurry to make correct use of them. Vowing that he would never against set foot in Europe, Shaltiel expressed to his colleagues in the Mapai Central Committee his revulsion with the human profile of those who survived the Holocaust and the danger they carried for the Yishuv. "The fact that an individual was in a camp cannot be sufficient reason to send him to Palestine," said Shaltiel. "Those who survived did so because they were egotistical and cared primarily about themselves." One should understand but not pity them, he added. "They [the survivors] would have to work, otherwise they'll die from hunger, they'll steal, go to jail; otherwise there will be terrible things here." ... Another young soldier from Palestine, who had learned while serving in Europe of the harsh reactions in Palestine toward the survivors and the crude treatment of them, wrote, "Must the nuns in Italy be more driven by their mission than the people of Palestine for their brothers who survived?" The common reaction, however, was condescension and rejection, and the constant reference to those who survived the massacre as a "factor" or as "human material" reveals the psychological and discoursive process of objectification and instrumentalization to which they were subjected. "The refugee element is very bad," commented a Zionist soldier serving in Italy. "In the convoy that was sent, they tried not to approve this material . . . sunk into prostitution, theft, and trade in military goods. They're making a fortune, and thus the question arises whether we should be extending them any help." The head of the Jewish Agency Absorption Department, who went to the camps in Cyprus to select the first immigrants to be brought to Palestine as part of the approved immigration quotas, did not like what he saw. Facing the agitated and desperate mass of people who had survived the Holocaust and, for the last two years, had been dragged through backroads, detention camps, quarantines, and political displays, he asked how these wretched people could be of any use to the Zionist community in Palestine. Meeting with the refugees who had just arrived on board the ship Knesset Yisrael and had fought valiantly in Haifa against their transfer to British deportation ships, which took them to Cyprus, he wondered openly before the board of the Va'ad Le'umi (National Council) about the quality of the people flooding the country through immigration: "They [the immigration organizers] took a whole shtetl with a kindergarten and an old age home and moved it to the ship."

p. 239-241 - Ben-Gurion's direct involvement in the Exodus affair was recorded only at its conclusion, upon the British deportation of the refugees from Port de Bouc in France back to Germany. He monitored the incident, however, from the time it made headlines and turned into "the affair"when British destroyers attacked the ship, with 4,500 refugees on board, several miles off Palestinian shores. Ben-Gurion carefully entered into his diary the details of the clash with the British, the course of events, and the victims, without comment.100 The enormous propaganda value he attached to the ship and its 4,500 refugees after their deportation, to France from Palestine, and then to the international publicity the passengers drew while anchored opposite the French port in three British deportation ships, is evident from his remarks to the Histadrut General Council following the hanging of two British sergeants by the Irgun on 30 July 1947, one week after the ships had reached France. Ben-Gurion was furious with the Irgun action and the harm it brought to the Zionist cause. He believed that the drama of the Exodus could yield unprecedented political dividends for the Zionist campaign at a critical historical moment just when UNSCOP was about to complete its deliberationsand that the murder of the sergeants could wipe out these gains. He compared the Irgun's deeds to the Nazi horrors and referred to collaboration between Jewish "hooligans" and the "hooligan" British government, both of which were subversive of Zionist goals. In demanding that the agenda of the meeting be changed to allow discussion of this matter, Ben-Gurion asserted that "there has never been [a situation so shameful and embarrassing] as this in the history of the Yishuv." First, Ben-Gurion cited the murder in Haifa of a Jewish bank clerk during an attempted robbery by members of Irgun, extolling him as the anonymous martyr: "The first and only Jew who dared stand up to a band of murderers ... was killed in the heart of a Jewish city, no help proffered to him," and the press remained silent. "He [the murder victim] was dropped from the agenda," said Ben-Gurion. These words about the martyred clerk only prefaced his oration about the truly great martyrs of the hour those on the Exodus. Most of his speech was devoted to the refugees being "dropped from the agenda" because of the Irgun's irrational act the hanging of two British sergeants at the height of the heroic Exodus affair: "Four thousand and five hundred Jews, the like of which has never been seen before, who sanctified the name of Israel, were dropped from the agenda because of a gang of hooligans in Palestine who wanted to perform a Nazi-type deed here .... I view this situation of the government and Ezzel [Irgun] as that of a nation under siege, the siege of a mighty and cruel enemy, cheating and hypocritical. ...  In a "trial" for the breakaway organizations (Irgun and the Stern group) he played the role of both prosecutor and judge, condemning them to total elimination. "A week ago," he said to his party, "we reached the apex of this great tragic battle the Exodus 47 and seemed somehow to shake the conscience of the world. Until these Jewish patriot-crooks came along, made the world forget this great campaign, and presented them with a different spectaclethe hanging of two hostages in a Jewish city in Palestine. They gave Bevin a gift that his entire fleet and anti-Semitic system would not have been able to deliver .... For this treachery alone, erasing the great tragic struggle of the Exodus 47 from the memory of the world, they should be obliterated from the face of the earth." ...  Even on this occasion Ben-Gurion did not pull his punches regarding Weizmann, saying that he represented "the Zionism of yesterday, Zionism from before the deluge" and criticizing Weizmann's "pathetic" appearance before the UN committee, "when an old Jew stands up and talks about the catastrophe of his life's work" without mentioning a word about the clandestine immigration. "Zionism like [Weizmann's] no longer exists," said Ben-Gurion. "Zionism without clandestine immigration, the tragedy of clandestine immigration, the courage of clandestine immigration, and the agonies of clandestine immigrationis not Zionism of our times."

''p. 244" - The watershed with regard to the refugees and clandestine immigration, their importance all at once diminished in Zionist considerations, was the battle over the Exodus waged by British destroyers on the morning of 18 July 1947 and the dragging of the passengers of the disabled ship that evening to the three British deportation ships in Haifa harbor in full view of several members of UNSCOP. In these events the refugees fulfilled their part in the Zionist political campaign to persuade the world of the link between the fate of the Holocaust survivors and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine; in fact, they did so beyond all expectations and planning, winning them lavish praise in the Zionist rhetoric. In the coming days, however, there was less need for the courage shown by the Exodus refugees. Indeed, at a time when the Zionist leadership warily awaited publication of UNSCOP's recommendations about the partition of Palestine, the bravery of the refugees, anchored off France and then in Hamburg, was almost superfluous from the Zionist point of view. After the publication of the recommendations, as the focus of political activity shifted to the UN, the steadfastness of the refugees, though bringing additional gains to the Zionist publicity campaign, became redundant. The shocking fate of the Exodus refugees, about to be returned to Germany after a harsh month on prison ships off France, did not offset the political considerations of the Zionist policymakers at the time, as is evident from the mildly worded press release issued by the Jewish Agency Executive on 24 August 1947 following the deportation announcement of the British government.

p. 247-248 - In response, the undersecretary suggested that the ships be returned to France on condition that the Jewish Agency undertake in writing to recommend that the ship's passengers disembark there voluntarily. At his own discretion (all members of the Jewish Agency Executive were then at the Zionist General Council in Zurich and thus unreachable), Weizmann appealed to Léon Blum in Paris and asked him to intervene personally to influence Bevin and to persuade the Exodus refugees to disembark without riots in France. ... Information about Weizmann's activity reached Ben-Gurion in Geneva from two sources. From Paris a Mossad agent reported Weizmann's appeal to Blum, and a telephone call from the Jewish Agency offices in London reported the meeting between Weizmann and Thomas and the undersecretary's proposal. The information about Weizmann's involvement and the way this information reached Ben-Gurion immediately set into motion Ben-Gurion's characteristic double emotional reaction, especially where Weizmann was concerned: the need to have his views prevail and the need to retaliate against anyone posing an obstacle to his forward motion, which he expressed by threats of resignation and by disrupting the Executive. "Any separate activity in London that is not approved by the entire Executive," wrote Ben- Gurion to the Executive members in London, "is liable to blow up the Executive and also possibly the Zionist Organization." He then sent instructions to the Mossad agent in Paris to immediately halt any activity by Léon Blum that was related to the affair, while warning the people in London that acceptance of the colonial undersecretary's proposal the quiet return of the ships to France contradicted the decision of the Executive, and that he himself vigorously opposed it. Ben-Gurion's letter to the members of the Agency Executive in London is almost unprecedented in its harshness of tone, actually calling Weizmann a collaborator with the British government against the Zionist cause. "The English are using Weizmann to apply pressure on us to their advantage," said Ben-Gurion, supposedly in the name of Shertok. He wrote that he "opposes the assignment of any political job whatsoever to CW [Chaim Weizmann] whether in England or America," and he added that "there is no need to explain this."

p. 249 - In truth, the two conflicting positions in the Exodus affair, the Zionist and the British, had become so complex and suffused with internal contradictions and irrational motivations that the task of unraveling them has become nearly impossible, although it is essential for understanding one of the key events of the period. From the outset, both sides sought to exploit the Exodus to make a point. The Zionist leadership and Mossad command hoped to transform the launching and journey of the ship, the largest Mossad operation to date all of whose details were known to the British, who monitored every stage of the operation into a worldwide media event in the struggle to crash the gates ofPalestine. The British foreign secretary, on his side, wanted to transform the Exodus into a publicity tool of the first order, seeking to frame the Zionist operation as a cynical exploitation of Holocaust refugees, who were already victims of fate and were now being incited to break the laws of civilized nations. The Exodus was the first Mossad ship that the British decided to send not to Cyprus but to its port of origin, thereby forcing the countries that allowed such sailings to pay for their deeds by having the refugees returned to their shores. Bevin's original plan was to demonstrate to journalists that the strategy of sea war was hopeless and that the Jewish refugees would be returned to their point of departure on the same ship in which they sailed, as is the policy for anyone entering a country illegally, and that all this was the product of the irresponsible and inhumane behavior of the Zionist leadership.

p. 250 - Bevin's attitude toward the illegal immigration had already become imbued with personal anger and frustration. "You are making a fool of us .... You are making us look ridiculous. No government can tolerate this," said Bevin to Dr. Goldmann a year earlier; and to Ben-Gurion he said, in early 1947, that the situation of Britain in Palestine was humiliating, and in another meeting at the time he defined the illegal immigration as a gun at his temple. By the summer of 1947 the anger and frustration had reached such levels that they clouded Bevin's judgment, as even Allan Bullock, the author of Bevin's semi-official biography, has written. Bevin's extraordinary touchiness about the issue was well known and became a consideration in the formulation of the American attitude toward the issue. The decision to deport the refugees to Germany can be defined as politically foolish and desperate and could be counted, in the words of Arthur Koestler, among cases "that could not be explained in terms of logical reasoning and expediency." Indeed, the British made this decision without enthusiasm and against the opinion of several of Bevin's colleagues in the British government who were handling the Palestine problem. Bevin himself anticipated that the deportation to Germany would arouse disgust and protest, especially in the United States, but his fight against the illegal immigration had already transcended the bounds of reason and taken on a bitter personal hue. He had driven himself into a dead end from which he could extricate himself only by identifying the British interest with his own feelings, seeing brinkmanship as the only way out.