Prof. Gur Alroey, a historian at the University of Haifa, has published a new book sarcastically titled Land of Refuge: Immigration to the Land of Israel, 1919-1927.
Based on documents in the Central Zionist Archives, the book discusses how Zionist officials discouraged the immigration of the weak and sickly, insisting that the Yishuv would be ruined by such people.
In 1919, when Ukraine was beset by vicious pogroms, Chaim Weizmann said: “Alas, Zionism can’t provide a solution for catastrophes.”
“Weizmann preferred productive immigrants over needy refugees and thought the Land of Israel needed strong, healthy immigrants, not refugees weak in body and spirit,” Alroey told Haaretz. “Jews who didn’t fit his model and knocked on the doors of pre-state offices in Eastern Europe to request immigration permits were … rejected.”
An official in the Zionist administration’s pre-state immigration department summarized the policy as follows: “Reject or deport sick migrants, people unfit for work who might become a burden, and make sure to choose strong, healthy migrants who can cope with the conditions here.”
{Matzav.com Israel}
Rachmana litzlan. How can we finally throw off the yoke of the Torah?
An ignorant headline like this is akin to saying “the secret US policy to murder babies“. We all know that it’s the US Left that likes to kill babies.
The leftist labor Zionists were the ones with these views. They were also the ones who implemented the Yemenite Jews being kidnapped from their parents. Etc. the Jabotinsky Menachem Begin Zionists had complete opposite views.
If there’s no yiras Shamayim, you end up with “dark secrets…”
Things were very rough in the old days, swamps, malaria, marauding attackers…it wasn’t like it is now.