The Origins of Israel, 1882–1948: A Documentary History

Section V: World War II, The Holocaust, and the Yishuv

  Arthur Szyk, “Jewish Soldiers,” 1942 (reproduced with the cooperation of The Arthur Szyk Society, Burlingame, CA, www.szyk.org)   ,  ,    A s in 1914, so in 1939 Palestine became part of a Middle Eastern theater of war. The German-Italian Axis vied with an alliance of Britain, France, and, after June 1941, Russia for control over a vast territory from North Africa into Central Asia. Unlike the previous conflict, where the Allies gained Arab support by encouraging rebellion against their Ottoman rulers, this time around the Allies themselves were the rulers and thus liable to be perceived as the enemy. In order to assuage Arab anger over ongoing British control over Palestine, the British further tightened immigration restrictions by the 75,000 per year figure set forth in the 1939 White Paper. During the war, only about 50,000 Jews immigrated to Palestine, and at least 16,000 of them were smuggled in by sea by the Haganah, the Revisionists, and other groups. The British authorities were zealous in their attempts to prevent ships laden with Jewish refugees from entering Palestine. These efforts led to great tragedies, such as that of the Struma, which in February 1942 foundered at sea, killing all but one of the 768 on board. Despite their coldness to the suffering of European Jewry, the British did much during the war to develop the economic and military infrastructure of the Yishuv. This occurred in response to British self-interest, not a change of heart toward Zionism. Palestine’s central location in the Middle Eastern theater made it an industrial and commercial hub, and many Yishuv industries were placed on a war footing. Moreover, the Yishuv, with its educated and skilled population, much of which had military training, was a valuable manpower reserve for the British army. After initial attempts to suppress the Haganah and imprison its commanders, the British military realized that the militia was needed in the increasingly desperate battle 271 against Axis forces in the Middle East. In the spring of 1941, there was a meeting of minds between the Haganah, which wanted to beef up its forces in preparation for an Axis invasion of Palestine, and the British, who needed reconnaissance specialists for the upcoming Allied invasion of Vichy-controlled Syria. The result was the formation of the Yishuv’s first permanently mobilized military force, the Palmach. (The Palmach operated within the framework of the Haganah and was responsible to the Haganah national command.) Palmach members served with distinction in Syria and Libya. The British also made use of Irgun members. In May 1941, the Irgun commander David Raziel died while fighting against an anti-British revolt in Iraq. When the war broke out, the Jewish Agency, Haganah, and Irgun proclaimed support for the British struggle against Nazism. They not only saw Hitler as a terrible and common enemy, but they also believed that assistance to the British would result, after the war, in the rescinding of the 1939 White Paper. To that end, Weizmann demanded the formation of a separate Jewish army within the British forces. The British had no qualms about integrating recruits from the Yishuv into the British army, and they created de facto British battalions in Palestine, but the formation of a Jewish Brigade was delayed until 1944. More frustrating, the British attempted to disband the Palmach and suppress the Haganah after the Axis threat in Egypt and Palestine passed with the defeat of Nazi commander Erwin Rommel’s North African forces at El-Alamein in late 1942. During the first three years of the war, the residents of the Yishuv feared for their very existence. They anxiously followed the Axis’ eastward advance across North Africa. Italian bombers attacked Tel Aviv and Haifa, killing more than one hundred Jews and Arabs. Jewish volunteerism for the British forces, however, was low, as many Jews wanted to defend Palestine rather than be sent abroad. As the threat to the Yishuv passed, there was even less of a motive to volunteer, but in June 1942 the British imposed a general conscription order, which the Jewish Agency was obliged to supervise. Some zealous Zionist activists beat up draft dodgers or doused them with castor oil, a punishment previously devised by the Italian fascists against their opponents. While approximately 20,000 Jews went off to war, the rest of the Yishuv lived more quietly than in many years. There were few clashes...