In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• • 274 8 The Zionist Conscience A f t e r 1933, Magnes was greatly concerned about the situation of Jews in Germany. As discussed earlier, he spent much effort trying to employ the Hebrew University as a place of refuge for German Jewish academics. He also publicly spoke out about the situation in Germany. In his 1937 speech to the Jewish Agency, he highlighted the “Jewish misery” in Europe. He also discussed the issue in university addresses. But it was not his focus; the Arab-Jewish conflict always remained at the center of his attention. However , in response to the catastrophe in Europe, continued Arab attacks on Jewish settlements, and a changing British policy toward Palestine, by 1939 Judah Magnes came to share a dominant sentiment within the Yishuv: that Jews must free themselves from dependence on Britain. In 1938, the British government rejected the partition plan. A round-table conference that met early in 1939 with the intention of resolving the Arab-Jewish conflict failed. Eager to appease the Arabs for their own strategic purposes, the British government subsequently issued a new white paper that called for the establishment over a ten-year period of an independent Palestinian state tied to Britain. Jews would have permanent minority status, and only seventyfive thousand Jewish immigrants would be allowed in for five years. After the ten-year period, Jewish immigrants could come to Palestine only with the permission of the Arabs. At the moment of their greatest need, Britain was closing the gates of Palestine to Jews. In response, Zionists initiated a struggle against the British government that focused on efforts to subvert immigration restrictions.1 In despair, Magnes complained that the 1939 White Paper represented a “victory” for Arabs and a “defeat” for Jews. Nevertheless, he believed it would be more productive to work with the British rather than against them.2 In the opinion of most Jews living in Palestine and Zionists in general , because the British government had closed the doors to Palestine and failed to adequately protect Jewish settlements from Arab raids, it could no The Zionist Conscience | 275 longer be trusted. The Haganah, a Jewish defense force that defended Jewish settlements from Arab attacks and also supported the illegal immigration of Jewish refugees from Europe, represented one way for Jews in Palestine to assert their independence. Magnes involved himself as mediator between the Haganah and the British. When the British demanded in the spring of 1940 that the Haganah surrender their arms, he intervened. In a meeting with General Sir George Giffard, the commanding general of British forces in Palestine, he tried to mediate a compromise.3 His advocacy for the Haganah did not represent a change on his part; he had always believed in the validity of Jewish self-defense. More difficult for Magnes was his endorsement of Britain’s war effort against Germany. After agonizing over his position because of his pacifism, at the opening of the academic term at the Hebrew University in October 1939, he publicly expressed his support for the war against Germany. He maintained that he was unwilling to “say to the German Satan: Keep on conquering .” Still, the war represented a serious challenge for Magnes. He claimed to hold a “pacifist faith” while he simultaneously endorsed the Allied war effort. He had always argued that pacifism was a fundamental Jewish characteristic. For that reason, he did not want the war to be understood as a Jewish war, but rather as a war for humanity. The “indignation” expressed against the Nazis from around the world indicated to him that the war concerned all of mankind, not just Jews. Rather than endorsing the war as an effort to save Jews from the Nazis, Magnes thus couched his support for the war in religious language and explained his position by stating that the “incarnation of the devil sits on the German throne.” In both Jewish history and Christian tradition, Magnes claimed, Satan “is always the persecutor,” and thus Hitler fit that definition. Therefore, so far as he was concerned, “the reason for our helping to prosecute this war is . . . to help put down the devil.” The religious terminology, however, could not veil Magnes’s decision to choose the preservation of the Jewish people over his pacifist ideals.4 The Jewish press in Palestine was delighted that the president of the Hebrew University “turned his back on a lifetime of pacifism and endorsed the war of Great Britain against Germany.” However, Magnes’s...

Share