Zionism and Immigration: Claims About the Rejection of Needy Jews

I think the most common misconception about Zionism

is that the movement was primarily about rescuing Jews

from persecution, rescuing Jews from poverty

and destitution,

and bringing them to Israel,

bringing them to Palestine before forty-eight.

The reality is much the opposite. It was precisely those Jews, those

needy Jews, those Jews who were impoverished and destitute, who were,

uh, uh, who faced pogroms in Eastern Europe.

Uh, it was those Jews who were the first ones rejected by the

Zionist movement, 'cause the Zionist movement,

they didn't want needy,

impoverished, uh, uh dependents.

They didn't want families with lots of needy kids who couldn't work, who

had, who had to bear all these burdens of

taking care of the elderly and their

diseased kids, or their sick children or, or, or their family

members who need extra help. The Zionist movement didn't want those

people.

That's not how you're gonna build a, a Jewish state in a land of, uh, of ninety

percent non-Jews. No. To build a state, a Jewish state, in a land

of overwhelmingly non-Jews requires force, and if it requires force, that

requires able-bodied, physically healthy, not

diseased, wealthy Jews with capital,

coming from the right professions, and that was the philosophy of the Zionist

movement from the 1880s, uh, well into the 1950s, even

beyond. Uh, the, the first two people in charge of Zionist

immigration

policy in Palestine, these were Menachem Shenkin and Arthur Ruppin.

From 1880 until 1914, they rejected sixty-one

percent of these applicants, these Zionists in Europe who wanted

to move to Palestine. They were rejected,

and the reason for their rejection, 'cause they were too destitute.

They were impoverished, right? A-a-and, and the Zionist movement had no use for

these people. Chaim Weizmann, leader of the Zionist movement,

said the same thing

in 1919, after you have a-- had a wave of pogroms in, in U-Ukraine,

after which hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were left impoverished.

They were left without work. These were the people actually who, who

were desperate

to move to Palestine, who wanted a safe haven

and who needed a safe haven.

Chaim Weizmann said, "We can't help you.

This movement isn't about saving Jews, needy Jews who, who have suffered

from persecution. No, we want rich, wealthy,

able-bodied, physically, uh, able Jews who didn't have kids, who

didn't have needy dependents." That was the philosophy, and by the way, that

philosophy was true even after forty-eight, even after the establishment

of the state, when in theory now you have the resources

of, of the state.

You have an army. Uh, uh, you have s-- you have help from the United States

and the

Soviet Union, both countries that recognized your l-- uh,

your state just minutes

after its establishment in June 1940-- in May 1948.

And, and even beyond, you have, uh, Zionist officials that, "Oh,

we rejected three

hundred Tunisian Jews because they were diseased.

They had epilepsy and, and syphilis," and, uh, you know, "We rejected, uh, five

hundred Jews from Poland." These are Holocaust survivors that

were rejected 'cause

they, they were unhealthy and sick.