In this post, I argue that most of the Jewish immigrants to the Holy Land in the 19th and 20th century came as refugees and not predominantly for ideological reasons.
BACKGROUND:
It is common for critics of Israel to speak in a way that attributes the flaws that they perceive in Zionist ideology, leadership, and institutions to the population of Israeli Jews at large. The flaws that these critics identify are worth discussing in their own right, but it is important to be clear about what exactly one can correctly attribute to the wider population. In this post, I'll argue that most of the Jewish immigrants to the Holy Land in the 19th and 20th century came as refugees and not predominantly for ideological reasons. This is part of a response to the accusation that massive Jewish immigration to The Holy Land during this period was unjust. (Note: though it's uncommon, in principle one could hold that the establishment of a Jewish state was unjust even though massive Jewish immigration was not.) One immediate point that doesn't get made nearly often enough: this debate only concerns the justice of (one step in) the creation of Israel, not the justice of Israel's continued existence. Even if critics are right that Israel's creation was unjust--which I don't necessarily concede--to get from that to "Israel's continued existence is unjust" requires controversial premises that, at the very least, would need to be spelled out explicitly and discussed in their own right. ARGUMENT: Below, I follow the UN in holding that a sufficient condition for being a refugee is that one has a reasonable fear of persecution in one's home country. Also, I assume that for pretty much all of the Jews who left out of fear of persecution during the period in question, their fears were reasonable. We could maybe quibble about that, but I think it's a reasonable default position. Here's my argument in a nutshell. (See here for some supporting data.) Suppose we assume that no one in the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Aliyot counts as a refugee. Even granting the other forces that drove these Aliyot, this is doubtless a gross idealization! And suppose we make the largest estimates for the sizes of these Aliyot, and the smallest estimate for the size of the Fifth Aliyah. Even in that grossly idealized scenario, we still get that almost half of the Jewish immigrants up to the end of the Fifth Aliyah were refugees. The Fifth Aliyah was enormous--comparable if not larger than all the preceding Aliyot combined. And, it is hard to dispute that the Fifth Aliyah consisted overwhelmingly of refugees. Let us now add to these the Jews who immigrated in the close aftermath of WWII mostly from Europe, from Displaced Persons camps and the like--249,954 in 1949 alone--and those refugees amongst the 700,000-900,000 Jews who left Muslim lands in the 1950s and 1960s and amongst the 30,000 who left Iran during the Islamic revolution. After this, it's hard to avoid coming to the conclusion that substantially more than half of the Jewish immigrants to The Holy Land in the 19th and 20th centuries were refugees. As a defense of Jewish immigration to The Holy Land, this conclusion by itself only goes so far. It is, for example, consistent with the observation that during WWI and the Mandatory period, Jews in The Holy Land cooperated with British colonial administrators more than did Palestinian Arabs, and that at times various British officials facilitated Jewish immigration because they believed that it served British colonial goals. (This is emphatically not to say that Jewish immigrants themselves were out to help the British, as some pro-Palestinian conspiracy theorists claim, but rather that regardless of their intentions, their immigration was perceived--inaccurately, I might add--as useful to the British.) It's also worth noting that my claim that most Jewish immigrants were refugees is consistent with the often-leveled accusation that Zionism is a colonialist ideology. Of course, I have other problems with that claim! But set that aside for now-- the 'colonialism' terminology opens up a huge can of worms. What I will address below is the claim that the immigrants' refugee status did not make massive Jewish immigration just. Still, my conclusion is worth noting, if only because, prima facie, it obliges people who take standard leftist positions about refugees to be more sympathetic to Jewish immigration to The Holy Land than they often seem to be. And in the other direction, unless more is said, it puts pressure on people who regard Jewish settlement in The Holy Land from 1880 to 1941 as an unmitigated injustice to take a harder line on refugees. COUNTERARGUMENTS AND REPLIES: I can envision two counterarguments here. Both would be out to show that even if most Jewish immigrants to The Holy Land were refugees, Jewish immigration to The Holy Land was unjust nonetheless. Counterargument A: Regardless of their refugee status, many Jewish immigrants to The Holy Land also came with the intention of creating a society that would exclude the Arabs, or developed it once they arrived and assimilated into the Yishuv (= the Jewish community in The Holy Land). That is, either before or shortly after arriving, they didn't plan to assimilate to Arab culture and create a shared society, but rather wanted to create their own culture and State, which, in one way or another, would exclude Arabs. Moreover, while there may have been plenty of Jews who came only with the intent of escaping persecution, the arrival of more Jewish immigrants inevitably served to strengthen the existing Jewish institutions, which did have the aforementioned goals. These points alone suffice to morally justify Arab opposition to Jewish immigration; one need not appeal to any general reservations against unrestrictedly admitting refugees. And it contrasts with the situation of most refugees today, who have neither exclusionary intentions nor strengthen any institutions that systematically exclude preexisting inhabitants. Reply to Counterargument A: In fact, I think that these are all good points. For these reasons, I'd even be willing to grant that there was an element of injustice in these waves of Jewish immigration. However, it simply doesn't follow that Jewish immigration to the Holy Land was entirely unjust. Even setting aside Jews' historic connection to the region (see below), surely the fact that they escaped anti-Semitism by immigrating meant that there was also a measure of justice in their immigration. Counterargument B: Another line of argument is very familiar:
Reply to Counterargument B: Point 3 perpetrates the mistake that triggered this post. Even if it was Zionist organizations that made The Holy Land the path of least resistance for Jewish refugees, and even if there is something to criticize in that (which I don't necessarily grant; it is a separate question), it just doesn't follow that the refugees themselves acted wrongly by taking the path of least resistance to escape anti-Semitism. An individual family fleeing the Nazis had pretty much no control over which path of escape was going to be easiest. One could insist that even so, in immigrating, such a family made itself complicit in flooding the Palestinian Arabs with refugees against their will, and in strengthening a society that was going to exclude the Arabs. But, faced with concentration camps, most people would choose complicity. As for point 2, this is more legwork than I can do at the moment, but I'm sure that the case is made in other places. The U.S. was enforcing the quota very strictly by that point, and I'm sure that desperation came before ideology, as it would for most people, I think. As for point 1, I'd actually want to grant that Jews historical connection to The Holy Land (or "ideology", if you prefer) was important to the Jews who made aliyah. Yes indeed-- we never forgot our homeland, even after thousands of years in Europe! That's one of the reasons why there was a measure of justice in returning there. CONCLUDING REMARKS: In light of the above considerations, the most that I'm comfortable conceding is that Jewish immigration to The Holy Land in the 19th and 20th centuries carried with it both a measure of justice and a measure of injustice. This doesn't settle whether or not it was all-things-considered just; for the moment I leave that to others. Lastly, and most importantly, I repeat: this debate only concerns the justice of (part of) the creation of Israel, not the justice of its continued existence. I think that the case in favor of the continued existence of Israel is overwhelming, for a variety of reasons.
5 Comments
Horazio
5/31/2019 12:41:58 pm
I'll confess that I was never sanguine about this "humanitarian" case for Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel. It strikes me as way too apologetic (Jews didn't *need* to be refugees to be entitled to immigrate). Also, without some additional qualification and non-obvious distinctions it might have disturbing implications, for example that refugees in sufficiently large numbers have the collective right to demographically overwhelm and ultimately replace sovereign nation states. I find this consequence so implausible that it makes me inclined to just drop any reference to refugees from Zionist discourse altogether. (Though I can see why liberal Zionists more liberal than I am may not.)
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LiberalZionist
5/31/2019 04:37:10 pm
Thank you, Horazio, this is fascinating.
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LiberalZionist
5/31/2019 04:40:07 pm
To elaborate: the concern is that in these cases, it seems unfair to say that the absentee landlord forfeited the tenant farmer’s right to exclude— because we are talking about a moral right, and even though the landlord had a legal right to sell, morally speaking it wasn’t his to sell.
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Horazio
6/1/2019 03:16:39 am
Yeah, good point about the question of land purchases; I thought of thadt complication but instead of writing and even longer post, I wanted to wait until someone brings it up. I'm glad you did.
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LiberalZionist
6/21/2019 07:54:42 am
Hi Horazio,
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