A Zionist History
Fulfillment: The Epic Story of Zionism.
by Rufus Learsi.
World Publishing Company. 426 pp. $5.00.
Mr. Learsi’s book is well written, carefully composed, and it sums up a wide range of relevant facts, moving with intelligence and skill over a subject of immense complexity; its language is mostly moderate and restrained, and the general reader can get from it a good picture of the historical and spiritual forces which created the mystique of Zionism and the modern Zionist movement.
But, like most histories of Zionism, this book is mainly a piece of propaganda, and this harms its value as a historical work. Mr. Learsi tends to accept uncritically, sometimes even naively, the official Zionist version of history; he sees all opposition as expressing a sinister malevolence, and thus he misses the essential drama of the story, which was—and remains—most often a story, not of right against wrong, but of opposed rights.
Typical of this tendency is Mr. Learsi’s treatment of British-Jewish relations. Perhaps it is still too early for anyone to tell that story objectively, but surely it cannot be understood without adequate exposition of the historical background. The pledge to permit establishment of a Jewish National Home was one of the few promises growing out of the First World War which were actually kept—in contrast, for instance, to the promise of an “Armenia for the Armenians” or the pledge of an all-Arab kingdom made to Sherif Hussein of Mecca. It should be remembered also that at the time of the 1922 White Paper a considerable part of the Tory party (usually regarded as ultra-imperialist) was clamoring for a complete British evacuation of the Middle East. About the same time, under the influence, inter alia, of President Wilson’s philosophy of “self-determination” and Lord Luggard’s theory of the “double trust,” British colonial policy adopted the principle of the “paramountcy” of native interests, often against the clamors of white British settlers in Africa. In a similar way the British Colonial Office felt it impossible to ignore the wishes of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine. Since Britain did not wish to abandon Zionism, it tried—in vain—to steer a middle course, and this peculiarly British indecision, this only half confused “muddling through,” was Zionism’s opportunity. Step by step, and in spite of opposition, the National Home could grow up. Seen in the proper perspective, it is less puzzling that the British tried to “whittle down” the Zionist program than that they nevertheless did provide the chance to establish accomplished facts. This inconsistency and tolerance, which certainly would not have characterized any other mandatory power, continued even up to the final days of the Mandate, making it possible, for example, that while the British Navy watched the coast of Palestine to intercept immigrant ships, the Jewish Brigade in Europe, a part of the British Army, should be allowed to collect these immigrants from remote parts of Europe in British Army cars and trucks and deliver them to the embarkation camps.
I cannot agree with Mr. Learsi that the Yishuv was not recognized as a “national entity.” The Palestine government itself provided the legal conditions for national life, from the organization of the community as a semi-autonomous body with a completely independent educational system, to the granting of large quasigovernmental powers to the Jewish Agency. The British did fear that “excessive” Jewish nationalism would result in the oppression or even expulsion of the original inhabitants of Palestine, whom the British believed it their duty to protect. Mr. Learsi makes no reference to this complex problem, which was amply dealt with in the reports of the various investigation commissions; nor does he describe the actual situation as it developed after the establishment of the Jewish state, contenting himself with a few official clichés, such as the statement that the minorities in Israel are “on a footing of civil, political, and religious equality with the Jews,” or that Zionists recognize the obligation to aid in the solution of the Arab refugee problem. This is a glossing over of a very serious state of affairs that for many constitutes also a matter of conscience. The situation can be explained in terms of war, of necessity, of tragedy, but the really difficult question which no one likes to mention is how the huge Jewish immigration of the past three years, considered absolutely essential to the existence of the new state, would have been possible if the Palestinian Arabs had remained in their homeland. The statement about the equality of the minorities also calls for qualification; Israeli newspapers often discuss quite freely the government’s failings in its treatment of the Arabs, and the author of a history of Zionism might be expected to pay careful attention to these sources.
On the economic problems which beset the Palestinian Yishuv and now threaten the State of Israel, Mr. Learsi offers almost no illumination. It is not sufficiently made clear, for instance, that the Yishuv was on the verge of economic collapse in 1931, and was saved only by a sudden influx of new capital, brought in mostly by German Jews. Similarly, 1938 and 1939 were years of depression, until the outbreak of war changed the situation. Mr. Learsi rightly stresses Palestine’s economic importance to the Allied cause, but he fails to appreciate the other side of the picture: that the Yishuv owed its own economic salvation, and most of whatever wealth it had accumulated by the time of its struggle for independence, to the millions of pounds spent by the British Army. When one considers the economic “miracles” upon which the young state has had to rely, it becomes easier to understand the skepticism of those earlier economic experts whom Mr. Learsi dismisses as wicked: they could not anticipate these extraordinary sources of wealth, but had to base their reports on “normal” calculations. They started on the supposition that the main requirement of the National Home was to be self-supporting—a principle emphasized also by Justice Brandeis in 1921. Seen from this angle, the economic viability of the state is still a complex problem.
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Some Other points can only be dealt with summarily.
Nobody in Palestine believes that the “Patria,” which blew up in Haifa harbor in 1940 loaded with illegal immigrants who were being taken by the British to Mauritius, was destroyed, as Mr. Learsi indicates, by its own passengers or by “refugees resolved to bring their hopeless odyssey to an end.” The blowing up of the ship, in which some 250 Jews died, was a political action in a “cold war.” Other incidents of that war are also rendered not quite accurately.
In quoting the report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, the author mentions nothing except its recommendations for immediate admission of 100,000 Jews and the abrogation of the land laws; but there were eight other recommendations which a careful historian ought not to ignore.
Only at the end of the story, having dealt with the confusion in Palestine, does Mr. Learsi mention the Biltmore program, as if it were an event which belonged primarily to the internal history of American Zionism. But the Biltmore program was the battle cry of almost all Jewish parties in Palestine; this—among other facts—explains why all Jewish demands, including the demand for a Jewish battalion to fight Hitler, inevitably took on a purely political coloring.
In describing the illegal immigration of 1945-1948 after the liberation from Hitler, the author overstresses the humanitarian motive, as was usually done at the time but appears superfluous today. As a matter of fact, this immigration was largely a political action; Mr. Learsi misses an opportunity to reveal the fascinating inside story of an unmatched masterpiece of organization which stretched over the whole of anarchic postwar Europe.
Mr. Learsi seems not well informed on Zionism in Germany. The movement may have been small, but at the time in question it was certainly stronger than in any other Western country including America. It had a considerable influence on Zionist thought, and perhaps one may be allowed to say—in spite of the personal embarrassment involved for this reviewer—that its organ, the Jüdische Rundschau, was generally regarded as the leading and most serious Zionist publication. Franz Rosenzweig, however, was a great man and a great Jew but not a Zionist leader. And if Mr. Learsi says that “large numbers of German Jews set their faces towards Palestine not from conviction, but from compulsion,” one must ask where the Jewish community is which went to Palestine from conviction only and without compulsion. Actually many German Jews chose Palestine as their refuge for Jewish reasons, since, under the impact of Nazism, German Jewry from 1933 to 1938 experienced a deep psychological self-reassertion.
There are some minor mistakes which should be corrected in any reprinting. The Twelfth Zionist Congress did not meet in Prague (p. 230) but in Karlsbad. The murdered Jewish religious leader was de Haan, not “de Hahn” as it is spelled on page 291. The Nazi murder mills started their work in 1942, not in 1940, as is stated on page 316. On page 350 there is some confusion of the figures of membership of the ZOA as compared with figures on page 305. The resolution of the Twelfth Congress regarding cooperation with the Arabs (p. 232) should be quoted in full, not only in part. And something seems to have gone awry with the bibliography, which is quite inadequate.
Summing up, I should like to repeat that this book is a useful and well-composed compendium of information necessary to anyone working within the Jewish community of our time, though, alas, it falls far short of being the history of Zionism to which we are entitled.
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