Haavara FAQs: Did Zionist leaders and organizations lobby to open safe havens other than Palestine to persecuted European Jews?

You would think Zionist leaders and organizations lobbied to open safe havens other than Palestine to persecuted European Jews!

Nowhere in Zionist leaders' communications (either private or public) have they advocated for any safe havens except for Palestine. On the contrary, Zionists exploited and weaponized Jewish suffering to force Great Britain to rescind the White Paper of 1939 and to open Palestine for unfettered Jewish immigration. All Zionists' communication shows they didn’t relent for a moment on this demand even at the height of Nazi repression, inclusive of the Holocaust. This fixation on Palestine (as a solution for Europe’s Jewish refugee crisis) was pushed and advocated by all Zionist organizations and lobbying arms (in GB and US), especially between 1933 and 1945. Here are samples of Zionist leaders' communications during this period: BBC Fact File: Bermuda Conference, The Detroit Jewish Chronicle: April 23, 1943, Ariel Lekaditis in this Times of Israel blog, NY Times, Jan. 4th, 1983 & The Jewish Trail of Tears p. 147-150, Palestine as a Destination for Jewish Immigrants By Aviva Halamish p. 131-2, 135). Click here if you wish to examine our evidence, all scanned from pro-Zionist and Israeli sources.

Thus, Zionist leaders in practice made sure that Europe's Jews were left with two options: either they make aliyah to Palestine to join the yishuv, or go to Auschwitz; and lobbied feverishly like hell against any viable thirds alternative. As you digest this earlier information and you allow to it sink in for a minute, please keep in mind that this evil Zionist policy persisted even after the war ended in the DP camps. Zionists fought with tooth and nail against an resettlement scheme for Jews unless the destination was Palestine. Just in case you think our characterization is over the top, wait until reading it from ChatGPT (who framed the two options as: land or coffin), or reading it from Ben-Gurion himself when the Holocaust was in its infancy:

At the Biltmore Conference in May 1942 Ben-Gurion said: “The meaning of these two ships [Patria and Struma -- both were sunk during WWII with Jewish refugees onboard] is simple: Eretz-Israel or death-- and as soon as the war ends, many ships like these will stream to Eretz Israel.” (Beit-Zvi, p. 259)

[Two important points to keep in mind: A) When Ben-Gurion said this statement, he knew that Patria was sunk by the Haganah based on Moshe Sharett's orders in November 1940 (almost 16 months earlier ). That by itself was very telling. B) The mass majority of Europe's Jewry after WWII ended immigrated to the Americas and preferred to live with the Gentiles even after Palestine was emptied of its people.]

What is chilling is that when you examine Zionist leaders' communications, you will find no reassessment of their policies even when it became clear that appeasing Hitler only ended up emboldening him, and Jewish suffering only increased! In layman's terms, Zionists in the 1930s and 40s often spoke of Jewish pain and suffering would become the LEVER that will end up creating their "Jewish state." Anyhow, here are a few of the quotes that will give you an idea about Zionist leaders' mindset at the time. David Ben-Gurion, expressed in December 1935 (yes, a few months after the Nuremberg Race Laws were enacted) to Jewish Agency Executives (JAE),

that "we must give a Zionist response to the catastrophe faced by German Jewry -- to turn this disaster into an opportunity to develop our country, to save the lives and property of the Jews of Germany for the building of the land. This salvation comes before anything else" (NY Times, April 18th, 1993, Abraham Burg, p. 72 )

Actually, around the same period too, Ben-Gurion made his infamous LEVER speech as well, here is how his official biographers Shabtai Teveth put it:

Having successful turned such disasters as the Arab riots of 1929 and 1936 to advantage, he [referring to Ben-Gurion] became a grand master of this political skill, to the point that he considered himself ready to take on Hitler. Each disaster might have said, has its rewards for Zionism, and given that Hitler was the worst disaster until then, Ben-Gurion was determined to make it yield the greatest prize.

The advantages Ben-Gurion had sought after publication of the Nuremberg Laws were a Jewish majority in Palestine into a place of refuge for the masses of Jews, who would in turn make Palestine a Jewish country....to get a million Jews out of [Poland and Germany] and direct them to Palestine...I regard this as the lever for our political activity." (The Burning Ground, p. 852)

A month after the infamous Nazi pogrom against Germany's Jews (famously known as Kristallnacht), Ben-Gurion provided an interesting mathematical formula for saving German Jewish kids who immigrated to England instead of Palestine. He stated in December 1938 (a month after the pogrom):

"If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transfer to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter----because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People." (Righteous Victims, p. 162 and The Burning Ground by Shabtai Teveth) Ben-Gurion was so concerned that the "human conscience" might bring various countries to open their doors to those persecuted German Jews [God forbid]. He saw this as a threat and warned: Zionism is in danger. (The Seventh Million p. 28 & NY Times, July 12th, 1987)

Pay attention A) How Ben-Gurion used the word "save" before the Final Solution was in the picture, which confirms that Zionist leaders spoke of Shoah in the past tense before it happened. In Zionists' minds, the calamity is happening and nothing could stop it; therefore, it should be exploited. B) Hitler's infamous hate speech at the Reichstag on Jan. 30th, 1939, almost immediately followed Ben-Gurion's speech by two months; which leads us to believe that David was speaking to Hitler because he (referring to David) refused to retract his antisemitic hate speech although he was heavily criticized for it. Actually, it has been documented that he said something similar (if not worse) 10 days later. If you are interest, here is our complete analysis about this infamous speech!

Here is a fun fact: Not even a thank you cable was sent to thank the British people for their quick response! Anyhow, you may think this was a slip of the tongue; it was spoken in the heat of the moment, and it didn't reflect how Zionist leaders thought at the time. No, that wasn't the case at all. Actually, David ended up doing the same thing but for children in the DP camps eight years later after WWII ended. If you care for more evidence, here are the boring details; we have researched this topic from so many angles. Does this explain why investigating Jewish organizations' passivity was nixed & de-funded in early 1983? (NYTimes, Jan. 4th, 1983)

If saving Jews was paramount to Zionist leaders, as Zionists assume, you would think they allocated any money to fund the Capitalist visas (P£1,000 per immigrant) program? Not only were ZERO pennies allocated, but they even refused to allocate any funds from Zionist enterprises (who were funded by Haavara for a decade) at the height of the calamity. You won't believe it until you read Wikipedia, quoting the head of the so-called United Rescue Committee (here is a saved image just in case it will be taken down). Pay attention to what Wikipedia wrote about his Kapo son, much of whom used to be Zionist activists (Dan Porat - 35-36, & see also the below section on Kastner's infamous train). It should be noted that much of JNF's funds came directly from Haavara, and nothing, as far as we know, was allocated to rescue Jews. Rescue funds (if any were ever used to save Jews) came from other sources (i.e., either from JDC, who represented wealthy Jews, or direct donations from Jews worldwide) and not from Zionists' enterprises, which were enriched tremendously because of the British war efforts in Palestine (profits tripled in 1944). Once you read how much Zionist leaders allocated (from what was collected, not from their resources) to rescue Europe's Jews at the height of the calamity, well, you might lose your mind. You've been warned; here are the boring details from a primary source.
If saving Jews was paramount to Zionist leaders, as Zionists assume, you would think Ben-Gurion and Co. had welcomed Europe's persecuted Jews under any condition in Palestine! Well, you can not be further from the truth. The Jewish Agency refused to accept Jews under the status of refugees (The American Zionist Lobby, 1943-1945 by Aaron Berman, p. 144-45). As you absorb the earlier facts, please remember that the Jewish Agency's response occurred when the last two millions were alive, and the vast majority of those poor souls perished in the last batch to Auschwitz!

If saving Jews consumed Zionists during WWII, would you think they did anything meaningful to fight Nazi and Fascist forces? What is tragically comical is that Zionist leaders made sure that their boys would see tiny itsy-bitsy of action(s) at war's end, and by far ten thousand times more Indians, Muslims & Arabs fought and died saving real lives compared with the impostering heroes of the so-called Yishuv. (The Seventh Million, p. 83-4, 86-89, JVL) Zionist leadership was keen that their boys wouldn't be wasted in any side meaningless battles (like the meat grinders on the Libyan, Tunisian & Italian fronts), and to save them against their real enemy: That Indigenous Arab (who doesn't exist) just a couple of years after WWII ended, Zionists deployed more than twenty times as much to fight their real enemy: Those "Evil Arabs" who now replaced Nazis & Fascist. On the other hand, those antisemitic Europeans (who murdered millions of Jews whose graves were still fresh) quickly got a free pass just a few years after the Shoah ended. No wonder every European nation eagerly voted for partition in late 1947, and of course, bygones became the bygones. Please don't take our word for it; here are the boring details from Zionist and Israeli sources.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that Jewish Agency personnel were the only Jews to be granted entry visas into Germany after 1938, whose German offices continued to function as late as May of 1941 (Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p. 276).

God forbid, if you made it down here and you still have the time to read, here to is our exhaustive research on Zionists' fixation on Palestine and its ramifications on Europe's Jews.