Prime
Minister David Ben-Gurion, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jr., and Senator John
Kennedy. Photo taken in Ben-Gurion’s Jerusalem home in early October 1951.
Award winning Israeli journalist and historian Shabtai Teveth has written a remarkable 1024-page biography of the main founder and first Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion [1]. The work, which was published in 1987 and is entitled “Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886-1948,” [2] gives a voluminous amount of information from declassified documents in Israeli archives. For Publishers Weekly the essence of the biography is: “Ben-Gurion coolly reckoned human suffering in his calculus of political thought”.
Having studied this intriguing work, I feel there is a
lot more than that to it. A number of important passages deserve close scrutiny and straightforward comment. I am listing a few of my thoughts
below.
Page 848:
“Two facts can be definitely stated: Ben-Gurion did
not put the rescue effort above Zionist politics, and he did not regard it as a
principal task demanding his personal leadership; he never saw fit to explain
why, then or later. Instead, he devoted his efforts to rallying the Yishuv and
Zionism around the Biltmore Program and to the preparations for its
implementation.”
“Why didn't Ben-Gurion head the rescue from the moment
his sober predictions materialized beyond expectations? Was it not this vision
of disaster that had led him throughout the 1930s to decisive and urgent
conclusions? The more his forebodings seem corroborated and the clearer it
appears that, from the start, he had no illusions about Hitler's true plans for
the Jews, the deeper this mystery
becomes.” [3]
Teveth argues that Ben-Gurion did
have some knowledge of Hitler’s plans, since he read Mein Kampf, having
bought a copy August 1933. Of course Mein Kampf did not elaborate on
Hitler's plans, so Ben-Gurion could merely have had a rough idea of the
disaster the Jews were ultimately going to be submitted to during the lunatic
and unfathomable rule of the Führer. Obviously
with Mein Kampf in mind, Ben-Gurion said in the Histadrut Council in
January 1934: “Hitler's rule endangers the entire Jewish people... Who knows,
perhaps just four or five years - if not less - stand between us and that
terrible day.”
On pages 849-854, Teveth comes up
with many data, all suggesting that Ben-Gurion was conscious of the disaster
history had in store for the Jews in Germany and Poland. By choosing
apologetical words, Teveth, understandably, seems intent on avoiding any
possible blame on Ben-Gurion. Page 849:
“For nearly two years - from March 1941, when Italy
entered the war, until Rommel's defeat in December 1942 - Ben-Gurion was more
concerned for the fate of the Yishuv than for that of European Jewry.
Ben-Gurion repeatedly stressed that the importance of the Yishuv went far
beyond the individual Jews of Palestine. As people they were not more worthy of
salvation than the Jews of Poland, and Zionism's first consideration was not
their individual fate. The Yishuv's importance lay solely in its being ‘the
vanguard in the fulfilment of the hope for the rebirth of the people.’ Its
destruction would be a greater catastrophe than that of any other community of Jews, for one reason: the Yishuv
was a ‘great and invaluable security, a security for the hope of the Jewish
people.’...” [3]
“Why didn't Ben-Gurion, who so accurately predicted
the catastrophe, take charge of the rescue efforts after the extermination
became a fact? This is the central question about his leadership during the
Holocaust: the answer is not simple. His approach to the rescue was the complex
product of his philosophy of what might be called the beneficial disaster; his difficulty in drawing the line between
this beneficial disaster and a total calamity; his basic disbelief, as late as
June 1944, that an actual genocide was in progress; and finally, his lifelong
rule of dealing only with the feasible. Although all these factors were
interwoven and concurrent in his mind, they can be crudely separated,
thematically and chronologically.” [3]
“In March 1928 he told the HEC [Histadrut Executive
Committee] that ‘in order to start a
movement in America, a great disaster or upheaval is needed.’ Since Hitler had
come to power, Ben-Gurion maintained it was imperative to ‘turn a disaster ... into a productive force’, and asserted that
‘distress’ could also serve as ‘political leverage’: ‘the destruction’ was a
factor in ‘expediting our enterprise [and] it is in our interest to use Hitler,
[who] has not reduced our strength, for the building of our country.’..” [3]
“Did he [Ben-Gurion] ask himself, when confronted with
information on the systematic physical extermination of the Jews, whether
history was playing a cruel joke on him, testing the courage of his
convictions? He might well have answered yes, for the terms ‘destruction’,
‘extermination’, ‘ruin’, ‘catastrophe’, and ‘extermination’ had had an entirely
different meaning before the Holocaust, the putting to death of six million
Jews, was recognized for what is was and named. When Ben-Gurion spoke in
January 1933 of the ‘annihilation’ facing German Jewry, he meant terrible
living conditions imposed on them by Hitler.”
Page 851:
“In April 1935 he (Ben-Gurion) defined ‘ruin’ as
‘economic and cultural impoverishment, the weakening of a people as a whole,
political devastation, the eradication of civil rights.’ In summer 1937, at the
Congress: ‘Physical destruction and material impoverishment endanger the
existence of the Jewish populations of many countries’, and when he wrote
Myriam from Beaver Lake in April 1942 that Hitler aimed ‘to annihilate’ these
Jews, he was thinking of political and economic ruin, not genocide. Ben-Gurion,
like his colleagues, visualized large-scale pogroms, not the Final Solution.”
“From a Jewish, Zionist point of view it mattered
little whether the six million died by typhus and shooting or by gas and
crematoriums. Hence it was difficult for Ben-Gurion to draw a line beyond which
this destruction would threaten both Jewish existence and Zionism. Had he realized sooner that an industrial
systematic genocide was taking place, he would have understood that time was of
the [utmost] essence and [he] might have reacted [p.852] differently.” [3]
Might have? For heaven’s sake,
why might? He ought to have reacted
differently, but this implies a person of a different category, someone else; not Ben-Gurion! The political zionists
were fully aware of what was going on in Germany; they were there, inside Germany, working together
with the Nazis, notably in camps
where Jews were trained for agricultural and perhaps even military purposes in
Palestine...
Page 852:
“He, ... , was thinking in terms of a relatively
modest catastrophe ... He foresaw destruction, but not the Holocaust, ... This
incomplete vision was what allowed Ben-Gurion to become so attached to the
concept of turning a Jewish misfortune into a Zionist asset. Acting
accordingly, he fell victim to his own idea. Having successfully turned such
disasters as the Arab riots of 1929 and 1936 to advantage, he became a grand master of this political
skill, to the point that he considered himself ready to take on Hitler. Each disaster, Ben-Gurion might have
said, has its rewards for Zionism,
and given that Hitler was the worst
disaster until then, Ben-Gurion was determined to make it yield the greatest prize.” [3]
“The advantage Ben-Gurion had sought after publication
of the Nuremberg Laws was a Jewish majority in Palestine; he therefore demanded
‘commencement of activity to turn Palestine into a place of refuge for the
masses of Jews, who will in turn make Palestine a Jewish country ... to get a million Jews out of [Poland
and Germany] and direct them to Palestine... I regard this as the lever for our political
activity.’ In January 1937, having adopted the partition solution recommended
by the Peel Commission, Ben-Gurion reversed
the order of his strategy, and instead of trying first to create a Jewish
majority and then establish a state, he wanted to exploit the disaster of
Hitler to obtain first a state, which could then absorb masses of the
persecuted. When the partition solution was withdrawn in November 1938 [by the
British] at the very hour when the anticipated devastation was, in his views, a
certainty, Ben-Gurion came up with combative
Zionism [4] which was also based on the disaster created by Hitler.” [3]
Ben-Gurion did not accept the partition plan suggested
by the Royal Peel-commission. He “accepted” it in attaching special conditions
of his own. Shabtai Teveth explains this in chapter 34, “Grappling with
Partition” (pgs 584-607) and on pg 588 he writes:
“Partition was also the basis of the Peel Commission's
plan. Both Ben-Gurion and the commission put the holy places under British
control. So similar were Ben-Gurion's plans and the recommendations of the Peel
Commission that they seemed almost like the work of one hand. Accordingly, all
that was required for Ben-Gurion to accept the partition idea was mere a tactical shift -- from all of Palestine to a part of it.” [3].
And on page 590 Teveth writes:
“First of all, Ben-Gurion warned that while partition
was the answer, it is not the solution under all conditions... I do not consent
to any partition of Palestine;
it depends on how it is partitioned.”
[3] There is a lot more of such stuff in Ben-Gurions skilful, if not slick,
vocabulary.
On page 853, Shabtai Teveth makes
mention of a note which Ben-Gurion - while in London October 1941, before his
departure for the United States - wrote to himself; a note which the British
secret service later got hold of:
“In my opinion, we must make it perfectly clear that
we want no less than all of western
Palestine. ... the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine is both
imperative and possible.” [3]
“There is no doubt, therefore, that in October 1941
Ben-Gurion saw the catastrophe, in its pre-Holocaust sense, as a source of
strength and momentum and a powerful accelerator of the realization of Zionism.
He did not hope for the disaster,
needless to say, but since he was not in a position to prevent it, he used it
to help solve the Jewish problem. Did he still think this way once he learned
that the Germans were carrying out systematic, full-scale genocide? When he
returned to Palestine Ben-Gurion did not know of the existence of the death
camps, and his remarks to the Zionist Executive on October 15, 1942, should be
understood in this light. Disaster is
strength if channelled to a productive course; the whole trick of Zionism
is that it knows how to channel our
disaster not into despondency or degradation, as is the case in the
Diaspora, but into a source of
creativity and exploitation.” [3]
Reflecting these misgivings,
Shabtai Teveth refers to what I would call Ben-Gurion’s devious attitude
towards the Holocaust. The author must have had his doubts about Ben-Gurion’s
true intentions. Why for example would he call this chapter a deeper
becoming mystery...? Small wonder then, when he writes:
“needless to say [Ben-Gurion] did not hope for the
disaster.”
Personally, I would not be
surprised if some day it would transpire that Ben-Gurion did have a hand in the
Holocaust so as to profit by it in establishing the ultimate political-zionist
goal, the Jewish state. Question marks remain about Mossad/CIA/... operations
aimed at benefitting Israel. These conspiracies were and are of course
carefully shielded from public scrutiny. However, with ever more states'
archives being declassified, it seems to be only a matter of time before new
realities will come to the fore.
Page 854:
“In late 1942 it became evident to Ben-Gurion that his
prophesies became true beyond all expectation, and he fell silent on the
strength of adversity and did not mention it again for three years. Only in the
final stages of the Holocaust, hoping that a remnant of European Jewry would
survive, did Ben-Gurion revert to his ‘adversity is strength’ formula. ... he
again resolved to extract the greatest possible benefit from the catastrophe.
... better that they, the suffering Jewish people, gain a state in its
aftermath than nothing at all. In December 1943 Ben-Gurion said that the tragedy would help create worldwide
sympathy for the Jews. ‘The Zionist case rest not merely on the reality we
have created so far, but also on the reality of the Jewish catastrophe
... The world must be made to see this.’ ...” [3]
To be sure, the state became
practicable only for those who had not suffered
from the Holocaust; for the Yishuv in
Palestine, and as such for Ben-Gurion himself and his fellow political zionists.
Now see this statement by
Ben-Gurion:
“Our movement will be doomed unless it exerts the
greatest effort to salvage the absolute maximum of Jewish assets for Palestine,
in the absolute minimum of time... To the disaster of German Jewry we must
offer a Zionist response, namely, we must convert the disaster into a source
for the upbuilding of Palestine, we must save both the lives and the property
of German Jewry for Palestine's sake. This
rescue takes priority over all else.”
Those unfamiliar with the date of
this statement may place it between September 1939 and the year 1945. In
reality, Ben-Gurion made it as early as November 1935. And as to the use of the
word “assets” one might wonder whether Ben-Gurion gave priority to goods over
lives of German Jewry. Besides, there were Jewish groups in Germany looking for
ways to come to a deal with the nazis: the Ha'avara Agreement (das Ha'avara Abkommen) was an
undertaking of this sort.
On pages 855-862 Teveth equally produces
several items which can be added to those typical Ben-Gurion-strong-willed
utterances. For example, this well-known sentence of December 1938, addressed
to Mapai's Central Committee:
“Were I to know that the rescue of all German Jewish
children could be achieved by their transfer to England and of only half their
number by transfer to Palestine, I would opt for the latter, because our
concern is not only the personal interest of these children, but the historic
interest of the Jewish [p. 856] people.”
Teveth explains that Ben-Gurion
knew very well that his formulation was purely theoretical and that there was
no hope at all of rescuing those children, and that his purpose in using this
phrasing - to which later events gave a
different and unintended meaning - was to hammer home the axiom that true
rescue of the Jewish people was possible only in Palestine. Now, and by this picture
by Teveth, we are getting very near the threshold of Ben-Gurions populistic
stance. And in this way Teveth makes himself more or less complicit in
Ben-Gurion's, what I would call, wild statements. A bit more distance would
have served Teveth well, in my humble opinion.
My above analysis is of course by
far incomplete. Yet the examples
provided of such ominous expressions by David Ben-Gurion - who began his life
in Poland as David Grün - will allow for an educated opinion on the extent in
which this David has been an honest defender of the personal interests of each
individual Jew during those dreadful days in both nazi-Germany and beyond...
[3] my emphasis
[4] see p. 668
Egbert
Talens is a Dutch author who in the 1960s was a volunteer for the United
Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) teaching children of Palestinian
refugees. The history of Israel and Palestine haunted him, which was reflected
in his book (in Dutch) “Een bijzondere relatie: Het conflict Israël-Palestina nader bekeken 1897-1993”(“A
Special Relationship: scrutiny of the Israel-Palestine conflict1897-1993.”)
Geplaatst door Paul Lookman op 26/10/2012
Geplaatst door Paul Lookman op 26/10/2012
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