Broken Promise of Allowing Jews Into Palestine-Kept Out During Holocaust

Nadene Goldfoot                                              

                                                                           Brits in WWI Palestine

afterwards to receive mandate for the land from League of Nations

Great Britain's way of handling Arabs during World War I was to appease them.  Here they were given the mandate by the League of Nations (The UN's first try at solving problems of the world-parent group of the United Nations) to assist the Jews in creating their Jewish Homeland

So what did they do?  They placed restrictions on Jewish immigration but at the same time allowed Arabs to enter the country freely.  One of the biggest appeasers was Herbert Louis Samuel (1870-1963), a British statesman and the 1st Jew to be a member of a British cabinet from 1909.  He held office in the Liberal government from 1905 to 1916, and then in the national government from 1931 to 1932.  He wrote a memo to the Cabinet in 1914 concerning a British trust for the Jewish Home.  This was to influence the Balfour Declaration to be written, which was a good thing.  

British officer 1917

British Soldier 1917

During World War I of 1914-1917, the Jewish population, of which never completely left the land, did not receive many immigrants.  In fact, it declined due to the war, famine it caused and disease running rampant and expulsion. By 1915, about 83,000 Jews lived in Palestine among 590,000 Muslim and Christian Arabs.  By 1919 had 1,806 Jewish immigrants  enter Palestine.  Throughout the 20s, most immigrants were from Eastern Europe.
1920 had  8,223   "          "                 "      "
1921 had  8,294    "          "                 "      "

Haj Amin al-Husseini
sherif of Jerusalem
Grand Mufti

                                                       

Abdullah, later to be King of Transjordan
'Abdullah I bin al-Hussein, King of Jordan (Arabic: عبد الله الأول بن الحسين‎‎,Abd Allāh ibn al-Husayn, February 1882 – 20 July 1951), born in Mecca,Hejaz, Ottoman Empire (in modern-day Saudi Arabia), was the second of three sons of Hussein bin Ali, Sharif and Emir of Mecca and his first wife Abdiyya bint Abdullah (d. 1886).  Abdullah led a force of 5,000 tribesmen but they did not have the weapons or discipline for a full attack. Instead he laid siege to town."

In 1921,   Winston Churchill, then the Colonial Secretary,  rewarded Abdullah   by installing him as emir.  It has been thought that he was the son of Husseini, but wasn't.  His surname is Hussein, and was from Saudi Arabia.  Husseini was from Palestine, at least for a few generations.   Then Churchill severed nearly 4/5 of Palestine, some 35,000 sq. miles, to create Transjordan.  That was promised land to be the Jewish Homeland!  Did he forget the words of the mandate?  It had stated that "the Administration of Palestine...shall encourage, in cooperation with the Jewish Agency...close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not acquired for public purposes."

By the 1922 census, the Jewish population was 84,000 while the Arabs grew to 643,000.  The Arab population continued to grow exponentially while the Jews stagnated-according to British plan.  Arabs still practiced multiple marriage partners in having the limit of 4 wives each of desired.  Jews didn't.
1923 had 8,175  Jewish immigrants enter Palestine.

In 1924, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased  to 13,855 because of so much anti-Jewish economic legislation in Poland, and Washington's imposition of restrictive quotas of Jews entering the USA.

By 1925, 34,386 Jewish immigrants entered Palestine.  Jews of the Pale of Settlement and Russia were suffering from pogroms.  They needed a country to take in refugees, and Palestine should have been available to them.                                                  

Haj  Amin al- Husseini  From as early as 1920 he actively opposed Zionism, and was implicated as a leader of the 1920 Nebi Musa riots. Al-Husseini was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment but was pardoned by the British. In 1921 the British High Commissioner appointed him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a position he used to promote Islam while rallying a non-confessional Arab nationalism against Zionism.  During the period 1921-36 he was considered an important ally by the British Mandatory authorities."

                                                                     

The Brits only allowed in 1926, 13,855.  By 1927 only 3,034 were allowed in.  By 1928, 2,178; and by 1929, a terrible year of the USA stock-market crash, 5,249 were able to enter. It was also a terrible year for the Jews as Husseini, the leader in Jerusalem of Arabs created an attack on Jews.  "In 1936, the Arab Higher Committee, led by Grand Mufti Husseini, launched a campaign of anti-Jewish violence across Palestine. Accompanied by a six-month-long strike, the campaign became known as "The Arab Revolt." As the British increasingly became targets of Arab violence, they used massive force to suppress the aggression. The revolt was finally quashed in 1939. The resulting White Paper of 1939 reversed British commitment to a Jewish State (the raison d'etre of the Mandate) and drastically limited Jewish immigration into Palestine."  The ironic fact is that  a Jew of Great Britain, none other than Herbert Samuel, had  selected Husseini for his position, showing his equality in dealing with everyone, he thought.  Little did he know.  
                                                                         

Police rounding up Jews in Baden-Baden, Germany. 

From 1930 onwards, conditions were getting worse for Jews in Germany.  The 30s had immigrants escape to Palestine from Nazi Germany.  This year only 4,944 were allowed in.  1931 allowed 4,075.  1932 saw 12,533 come in; and 1933 had a surge of 37,337; 1934 had 45,267 and 1935 had 66,472.  That was the top number.  The influx of Jewish settlers coming in unnerved Herbert Samuels so placed restrictions on Jewish immigration in the interests of the present population and the ability of the land to absorb a large amount of people.  this was when less than a million were living there and it now supports 6 million Jews and 1.7 million Arabs, both citizens of Israel.
                                                                               

By 1936, Jews were receiving more and more restrictions on them in Germany, and couldn't leave easily for Palestine.  29,595 were able to get to Palestine.  1937 saw that cut down to only 10,629.
                                                                           

Kristallnacht, night of broken glass of Jewish shops 1938

 1938 allowed 14,675 to leave for Palestine.  1939, the last year allowed to leave when my uncle,  Werner Oster, was one who left in the last month of May, was one who left for the USA while 31,195 others entered Palestine.  1940 allowed 10,643 to enter Palestine but 1941 had only 4,592 enter.
                                                                       

During World War II, the gates of Palestine were closed.  This stranded hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe, most of whom became victims of Hitler's final Solution.  Even after the war, the Brits refused to allow the survivors of the Holocaust to find sanctuary in Palestine.  On June 6, 1946, President Truman asked the British to relieve the suffering of the Jews confined to displaced persons camps in Europe by accepting 100,000 Jewish immigrants.  Ernest Bevin, their Foreign Minister, replied sarcastically the the USA wanted displaced Jews to immigrate to Palestine "BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T WANT TOO MANY OF THEM IN NEW YORK!   Today's Arab refugees do not understand how lucky they are to have been taken into countries -and so easily; hardly any vetting is going on at all.  
                                                                         

The Exodus 1947-carried 4,554 Jewish refugees to Palestine organized by Haganah and was seized by the British in the Mediterranean after a battle where 3 Jews were killed.  They were all Holocaust survivors.  The old ship was returned to France but refused to land there, so they had to disembark at hamburg forcefully by British soldiers.  

Therefore, from 1919 to May 14, 1948, Israel's birth which was immediately after the Brits' mandate was up and had left, 385,066 Jewish immigrants had entered Palestine from America, Europe and Oceania which was 89.6% of the immigrants.  44,809 had entered from Asia and Africa which was 10.4%.  22,283 entered but whose origin was not known.  All this totaled 452,168 immigrants by the time Israel was created.  Altogether, they had 650,000 people, the same number that Moses had on the Exodus.  6,000,000 Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust.
                                                                       

Palmach,  Palestine Jews found cooperation from Brits with this group

During the years leading up to 1948, the Jews of Palestine (Yishuv) created their own political institutions and political parties, created a democratically elected Representative Assembly and a national Council.  They had a Jewish Agency that represented all Jews in the world as well as the Yishuv through the British authorities and the League of Nations.  Defense organization such as the Hagana and the Stern Group of which my cousin was the Chief of Intelligence were formed.  They formed educational systems and bodies that dealt with economic and social affairs were born.  This made the transition into an independent State much easier in 1948.  Everything was in place by the Jews living there.

By 1949, the British had allotted 87,500 acres of the 187,500 acres of cultivable land to Arabs and only 4,250 acres to the Jews.

Finally the Peel Commission realized and stated that "the heavy immigration from 1933 to 1936 showed that the Jews have been able to enlarge the absorptive capacity of the  country for Jews."The Peel Commission had been appointed by the British government to look into the 1936 Arab riots against Jews in Palestine.  At the time, the land of Palestine was understood by the commission at the time of the Balfour Declaration to be the whole of historic Palestine including Transjordan.  The Balfour Declaration of 1917 said, "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.  In other words, other countries couldn't expel Jews from where they were already living because of the creation of a Jewish Homeland.

Resource: Facts About Israel by division of information, ministry for foreign affairs, Jerusalem
Myths and Facts-a concise record of the Arab-Israeli conflict by Mitchell G. Bard, Joel Himelfarb
 http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=118&x_article=1691
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_I_of_Jordan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husseini
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/mufti.html