Chapter 5 Reaching the Shore

Jewish Immigrants and Arab Boatmen

In Moshe Smilansky’s children’s story “Al ha-Saf” (On the threshold), mentioned in previous chapters, ten-year-old Shaul, an orphan whose parents were killed in a pogrom in Ukraine, is not permitted to enter Palestine because he does not have travel papers and an entry visa. The heads of the aliya bureau in Tel Aviv try to get him a special entry permit, despite British opposition, and attempt to prevent his ship from sailing back to Europe. It is the chief boatman in Jaffa, Abu Ali, who comes to the orphan boy’s aid. Abu Ali is “a head taller than all his fellows. Over two meters. His two legs were like two marble pillars, his chest was broad and prominent, and his two hands were like two iron bars.” After he helps the other passengers off the ship, Abu Ali goes back to the ship with his boatmen, climbs aboard by means of a rope ladder, and smuggles the boy off in his wide trousers without anyone seeing or knowing.

Abu Ali ordered his men to tie a rope from the boat to the railing of the ship. He leaped onto the ladder and, quick as lightning, climbed up to the third-class deck. His eyes rested on a boy standing next to the railing, his gaze fixed on the boat and on the sailors who were climbing and tying a rope to the railing. Abu Ali touched his hand to his back. When the boy saw the “Ishmaelite,” his face lit up. Abu Ali did not delay even a moment. He motioned to the boy to follow him down to one of the ship’s cabins. The boy went after him, his heart full of trust. When they reached a hidden corner, Abu Ali stood and, in one quick motion, untied his wide trousers and dropped them. The boy saw before him two long, powerful, hairy legs. Come! The boy approached him and Abu Ali tied him securely to one of his legs. The boy watched everything being done to him in astonishment, but fearlessly and without worry. Abu Ali pulled his trousers back up and tied them. The boy was swallowed up in the trousers and no one knew he was inside.1

The story, published in the children’s newspaper Ben Artzi, was intended to improve young Jews’ image of the Arab inhabitants of the country. Smilansky was a member of the First Aliya, a farmer and author who wrote extensively about the lives of Arabs in Palestine. He was affiliated with Brit Shalom, an organization that promoted the idea of binational autonomy in Palestine. In his 1926 story, there is no tension between Jews and Arabs but rather a shared fate and mutual responsibility, represented by the smuggling of a Jewish boy into the country. Not only did Jewish immigration to Palestine pose no threat to the Arab majority, but the two peoples could live together in peace and brotherhood. However, this children’s story was a far cry from reality. Disembarkation of the Jewish passengers by Arab boatmen was accompanied by extreme tension and sometimes confrontations with the passengers and the Mandatory immigration authorities. Ismain Nasrat, the chief boatman in Haifa, was—as we shall see in this chapter—the diametric opposite of Abu Ali from Smilansky’s innocent children’s story.

Disembarking in Haifa was easier than in Jaffa. Although the Haifa port had not yet been built, the natural conditions of Haifa Bay allowed for safe anchoring. Mount Carmel blocked the east winds, and the bay was not rocky, as it was at Jaffa’s port, so ships could anchor close to shore. After the ship dropped anchor, the passengers transferred to rowboats or lighters that were towed to the Turkish pier. From there, they proceeded on foot to where they underwent disinfection and medical exams.2 Each lighter could carry about two hundred passengers; in pleasant weather, two lighters could be attached to a tugboat and all the ship’s passengers could disembark together with the cargo. In Jaffa, disembarkation was more complicated, as the ships had to anchor far from shore and the many rocks endangered the rowboats.

Third-class passengers were sent straight to quarantine, whereas first- and second-class passengers disembarked at the customs house: “When the sea is not calm, which is approximately eight months of the year, they let all the immigrants out at the customs house.” Then the third-class passengers “go in automobiles to the quarantine house at our expense. The immigrants’ belongings—their heavy cargo and small parcels—all enter our warehouses, which are the customs warehouses.”3 In contrast, first- and second-class passengers received their belongings without delay when they arrived in the country.

The process of reaching the shore of Jaffa or Haifa in many ways reflected the complexity of Jewish-Arab coexistence in Palestine. The Arab leadership understood the dangers inherent in the mass immigration of Jews to Palestine and was opposed to it. Disembarking Jews, in the knowledge that they were coming to settle in Palestine, was perceived as active participation by Arabs in Jewish immigration and as a direct threat to the national interests of Palestinian Arab society. When Palestinian Arabs met with Winston Churchill, secretary of state for the colonies, they presented their concerns regarding the entry of Jews to Palestine and the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration: “It is also a fact that there has been and still is, against our will, a great influx of Zionist immigration largely composed of those least likely to make good citizens. The policy of the British Government may be, in intention, as benevolent to the Arab population as you claim, but all its outward manifestations and results (by which alone the people of Palestine can judge) show that policy will, in fact, develop into the displacement of the Palestine Arab from the control, and even from the occupation, of his own country in favour of foreign Jews.”4

As the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine increased, concern grew among the Arabs. The leaders of the Arab national movement in Haifa exerted heavy pressure in the form of boycotts, strikes, and violence against the ports administration and even more so against Arab boatmen who agreed to disembark Jewish passengers onto the shores of Palestine. The attempt to prevent Arab boatmen from doing their jobs hurt their livelihood and interfered with the routine operation of the port. The administration was compelled to intervene and break the strike.

On June 28, 1921, the Galicia anchored in Haifa with twenty-eight Jews aboard. “The local Arabs were aware of the impending arrival of these immigrants about a week before they arrived. No stirring was noticed among them. The boatman Ahmed Rino, who would disembark the immigrants, planned to disembark them this time, too. He waited impatiently for the ship, because disembarking immigrants was his sole source of income.”5 The day before the ship arrived, Ismain Nasrat called a meeting to prevent the disembarkation of the Jewish passengers. When word of the meeting became known, “representatives of the boatmen, including Ismain Nasrat, were called into the port director’s office. . . . The meeting was held behind closed doors. The quarantine doctor (an Arab) also took part. According to one of the boatmen, they promised the port director that they would not organize any strikes and would disembark the immigrants.” But promises can be broken. The boatmen refused to send their boats.

Meanwhile, the boatmen held another meeting, and they notified the government that they would not provide their boats to disembark Jewish immigrants. A mob of Arabs with sticks started forming at the shore. . . . The police chief and the deputy governor immediately came to the shore and ordered that the immigrants be disembarked in government boats. At 10 a.m. the port director rode out to the ship in the government boats (two [unpowered] boats and a motorboat). The quarantine officer gathered his policemen and started dispersing the crowd. . . . Police came from the other side and dispersed the mob armed with sticks that had gathered at the shore. At twelve o’clock the disembarkation of the immigrants was completed. They were sent from the shore in small groups under police supervision—some to private hotels and others to the lodgings of the Zionist Commission.6

The British circumvented the Arab boatmen’s strike by using government boats, but what they really wanted was to calm down the strikers and get them back to work. The next day, the Umbria arrived with ninety-five Jewish immigrants on board, and again the boatmen refused to disembark the passengers. “The situation this time was clear. The Arabs were no longer even promising to disembark immigrants. . . . An order was received . . . to have all the shore police ready and to order Ahmed Nasrat to prepare his two boats [presumably to disembark the immigrants] alongside the Umbria.”7 Nasrat refused, and the British, wanting to speed up the disembarkation and avoid demonstrations, took out the government boats again. The disembarkation was quick. “At precisely twelve o’clock the ship reached Haifa. All the formalities were concluded with extreme haste. Three secretaries and two other Haifaites were dispatched to the quarantine office. An order was also issued not to make up a smallpox [vaccine] for the Jewish immigrants so that they would not have to spend much time in the port.”8

The disembarkation of the Jews in government boats caused a financial loss to the boatmen, and they started cooperating with the port administration despite their fear of the local Arabs’ reaction. On July 10, the Campidoglio arrived from Trieste carrying twenty-eight immigrants. Ahmed Rino agreed to disembark them, but only if the government promised protection.

The government agreed to this condition. At 6 a.m. the police chief came to the shore and announced that all was quiet in the city. His officers were prepared for anything, and the disembarkation of the immigrants could begin. The disembarkation took half an hour. At 7 a.m. Ahmed Rino’s boat with the immigrants aboard arrived at the shore, escorted by a government boat. No attempt was made to create disorder. No stirring was noticed among the Arabs. Ahmed Rino’s fear was in vain. No threats were even made against him by the other boatmen.9

In Jaffa, too, there was tension between the Arab population and the coastal aliya bureau and Mandatory government. At times, the Arab boatmen refused to disembark Jewish passengers; when the ships arrived, the boatmen simply disappeared. Passengers were delayed on board and the ship could not set out again. “Al-Hamis and Ahmed Buda left [i.e., disappeared]. People were sent to find them, and eventually they brought Al-Hamis to me and the director of the government immigration office.” When asked why they were not disembarking passengers, one of them replied “that he had no boat. . . . Afterwards he said he had no boatmen . . . and when they brought him boatmen who were prepared to go with him and demonstrated that he was lying about not having a boat, he still did not want to disembark the Americans [i.e., the Jewish passengers], saying that he was afraid.”10

The Arab boatmen’s fear was understandable. A month earlier, riots had broken out in Jaffa as the local Arabs protested the entry of Jews into the country. Arab demonstrations against Jewish immigration continued even after the wave of violence in May. Chaim Ridnik, an employee of the Jaffa aliya bureau, described the Arab demonstrations when immigrants arrived at the port:

A few moments later, Arabs started to gather with sticks and shouts (as on the days of the riots). They climbed up on the rocks in the port and, with ferocious screams, wielded the sticks threateningly alongside the sea where they saw the boat carrying the people. I shut myself up in our office on shore, immediately phoned the governor, and told him what was happening at the port. The customs house was locked from the inside. Around two or three hundred Arabs armed with sticks (as far as I could see from the window) had gathered. About three-quarters of an hour after I notified the governor, English soldiers came with an officer. One of them fired in the air and they started to disperse the Arabs. Reluctantly, the Arabs slowly left the port.11

The Arab boatmen realized that their livelihood came from disembarking Jewish immigrants on the shores of Palestine. Despite the national tension and the pressure exerted on them by the Arab national movement, they chose livelihood over struggle. In May 1929, a rumor spread that the government had “given an order to disembark no more than fifty third-class passengers from each ship at Jaffa; if there were any more the ship would go to Haifa.” The rumor caused “great bitterness among the Arabs, too,” because their income was liable to suffer.12 Ha’aretz reported that in an effort to reverse the decision, Sa’id Jaber (apparently the chief boatman in Jaffa) wrote an open letter “to the mayors of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, the Sarona local council, chambers of commerce, property owners and merchants, and the sailors of Jaffa,” warning them against turning Haifa into the main entry point into Palestine.

He [Jaber] complains about this decision. He offers proof that the Jaffa quarantine house has room for three hundred immigrants and that the decision is detrimental to the shipping agency and the revenues of the city of Jaffa. The writer points out to Mr. Dizengoff that if the government’s decision goes into effect and the commercial center of Palestine moves to Haifa, the new [city of] Tel Aviv will become the “paradise” of Palestine, a primeval place. . . . Arab sailors in Jaffa went to the offices of Falastin and protested this decision. One sailor said: “We are just as entitled to a livelihood as the residents of Haifa are. It is unreasonable to deprive us in order to give others a livelihood.”13

The Arab demonstrations for and against Arab boatmen disembarking Jewish immigrants are interesting not only in the context of the procedure for disembarkation and reaching the port but also because they were some Jewish passengers’ first encounter with the inhabitants of Palestine. Their reception from the Arab boatmen and the local populace foreshadowed subsequent Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine. Even before they set foot in the country, the Jewish immigrants were exposed to the tension and polarization that characterized the two ethnic groups living in the country. Presumably, the Arab demonstrations at the entrance to the port, the wielding of sticks, and the loud denunciation of their entry into the country turned the Jewish newcomers off from the local Arab population and made it harder in later years to establish Jewish-Arab trust and dialogue in Palestine.

Despite the tension, strikes, and demonstrations, the disembarkation of passengers in the port took place peacefully during most of the year. The aliya bureaus in Tel Aviv and Haifa paid the Arab boatmen for each immigrant they disembarked onto the rowboats. Zvi Livneh (Lieberman), a Hapoel Hatzair representative in Jaffa port, describes in his memoirs how the accounting took place with the chief boatman: “All the boats in the port were organized and subject to the authority of the chief boatman Ahmed Buda, a tall, fat Arab who always had a smile on his broad, red face. On his head was a pressed red tarboush.” Once a week, an aliya bureau employee met with the chief boatman and paid him for the disembarkation of immigrants. “Each of us holds a pencil and paper and we both do the calculations. The calculation was smooth and round: one pound per person. If 74 people disembarked from a particular ship, 17 from another ship, and 97 immigrants from a third, then in the course of the week 188 immigrants had disembarked. In other words, he was owed 188 pounds. I would count out the money into Ahmed Buda’s hands, and then we would have another sip and part with a handshake.”14

Passport Control

In the 1920s, passports and entry permits were checked on board the ships when they reached the shores of Palestine. “As soon as the ship reached the coast of Jaffa (or Haifa), aliya bureau officials would board the ship, help the immigrants through passport control, organize their luggage, and disembark them in boats to the customs house.”15 Until the immigration ordinance of June 1921, the immigrant absorption procedure was in the hands of the Zionist movement; the British administration did not intervene. After the immigration ordinance took effect, the British enforced it strictly. From then on there was a great deal of tension between the British officials and the immigrants and aliya bureau workers and between the aliya bureau representatives and the Jewish immigrants. Passengers were not permitted onto the shores of Palestine until British government officials had inspected their papers. These officials placed a table on the deck of the ship and summoned passengers for inspection. Because the aliya bureau representatives were not allowed to take part in the registration procedure, they had to set up their own inspection desk on the deck, and the immigrants were asked to register there as well and answer the questions a second time. The British officials and aliya bureau representatives were joined by a Health Ministry worker, who got an impression of the immigrants’ physical state and could exempt them from the medical exam in quarantine. “The Health Ministry official always forms his impression on the ship together with our impression and the government’s, and the immigrants do not all enter quarantine.” If the Health Ministry representative did not show up, all the immigrants were examined in the port, and their entry into the country was delayed.16

The immigration officials questioned passengers based on their visas. Those who had visas of skilled tradesmen were asked about their occupations and their expertise; those with invitations from relatives were asked to provide information about their relatives; and those entitled to immigrate as persons of means were asked to present proof of their means. Passengers who were given authorization to enter Palestine then went over to the inspection desk of the Zionist immigration workers and registered again: “We also do another inspection on the ship regarding the immigrants’ means. We distinguish between immigrants who have no means and need our assistance—a hotel or immigrant home—and immigrants who don’t need any assistance from us at all. We derive all this information from the immigrants’ aliya certificates, as well as from the questions that we generally ask the immigrants, since in this sense the ship is the surest source, where the immigrants think these questions are required and they are obligated to answer them.”17

The director of the Haifa aliya bureau stated that the passengers looked on the Zionist aliya bureau workers as a welcome relief. “From the moment our workers board the ship together with the government immigration and quarantine officials, the immigrants sense that there is someone taking care of things and seeing to their property.”18 Passengers who were rejected and were waiting for resolution of their cases were the focal point of tension between the British and Zionist immigration workers. For example, a passenger by the name of Sheinfeld told the British officials that he had handed his passport over in Alexandria “in order to send it by post to Jerusalem. He had no other documents. The matter is slightly suspicious,” the Zionist representative reported. Indeed, Sheinfeld’s explanations were not deemed adequate, and he was not permitted to disembark.19 Fourteen-year-old Lazer Leifer and sixteen-year-old Ya’akov Brzeski, both orphans, had arrived without papers and “sneaked on board without tickets together with a group of halutzim. Now they want to disembark here.”20 Such cases and others created bureaucratic complications that the Zionist representatives had to work out vis-à-vis both the British authorities and the passengers.

In some cases, passengers lacking visas were permitted to enter quarantine and wait there until their cases had been resolved. However, it was clear to the passengers and the aliya bureau representatives “that disembarking in quarantine . . . does not mean an entry permit, just that he gets out of there and is considered to have disembarked. It’s like Ellis Island.”21 The British officials made things difficult for the passengers. They sometimes concluded that, based on their responses, immigrants did not qualify for the kind of visa they had or that their state of health was problematic:

Shmuel Shimonovitz. 15 months in Constantinople. He is with his family, a wife and two sons: Moshe, 25, Nechemia, 22—a shoemaker. His sons work with him. They have no money. They came at the invitation of a man named Berel Genkes. A while back he had an invitation from someone else. He doesn’t know the man who issued the invitation. When asked what the man does he replied [that he is] a guard in an orchard. The immigration official’s opinion is that an orchard guard cannot support a family of four. . . . Aharon Kranker. His visa is fine, but he is suspected of having a sexually transmitted disease. Perhaps syphilis. Therefore a blood test is needed. The blood was sent to a government bacteriological laboratory in Haifa for testing and so far there has been no reply.22

Because aliya bureau representatives often came to the passengers’ aid, the British immigration officials sought to prevent them from being involved in the inspection of the travel papers. The directors of the aliya bureaus warned against attempts to exclude their representatives, regarding them as a dangerous precedent: “Here it has long been the privilege of the Zionist Commission, and now of the Zionist Executive, to board the ship in an official capacity. . . . True, government officials have objected to this on numerous occasions. The reasons were varied . . . but we always fought for our right.” Aliya bureau representatives’ involvement in passport control was routine: “Sometimes the government officials even wait for us on the boat until we come. For the boatmen it is already an inviolable law.”23

Some passengers managed to enter Palestine on forged visas, without the knowledge of the aliya bureau:

Recently there was an unpleasant incident here that is worth noting. On the last ship from Constantinople (the Umbria) there were nineteen people whose papers were not in order: no visa and no papers. The ship’s committee informed us that eight of them are honest people and only by chance did not receive visas, but that eleven are known thieves and the committee has requested that they not be disembarked. Guarantees were not given for the nineteen people and they went to Egypt. A few days later, about ten of them returned (including seven of the suspicious characters), some with visas from Egypt and some without visas. By some means unknown to us they almost all disembarked onto the shore.24

Zvi Livneh describes in his memoirs how immigrants with forged travel papers were brought into Palestine without the knowledge of the British. Zvi Yehuda, a member of Hapoel Hatzair, sailed to Europe to expedite the arrival of the halutzim in Palestine. In Vienna, he met with the head of the Palestine Office and was surprised to find that the office, far from encouraging the arrival of the halutzim, was holding them back. On one of his visits to the Palestine Office, he overheard a conversation between a worker there and a Sephardic Jew who wanted to return to Palestine. The Jew “held out a Turkish passport attesting to his Palestinian citizenship from before the world war and asked for a visa to return to Palestine.” Yehuda, realizing that this passport entitled the man to an entry permit to Palestine, asked if he could hold onto it for a few days so that he could forge it for those halutzim who were not being allowed to go. He “carefully put the crumpled paper in his pocket and left with a feeling of relief and hope. Not a few days passed before experts produced Turkish passports from crumpled paper. Halutzim from Galicia, Czechoslovakia, and Poland started thronging the Palestine Office with crumpled passports in their hands, requesting British visas.”25

Another way of entering Palestine illegally was to bribe the Jewish secretary who worked for the British in the port. This secretary was extremely strict about the admission of immigrants into Palestine. He “was a Levantine clerk type for the British—a native of one of the Baron’s colonies who had been educated in Egypt, was careful about the crease in his trousers, was punctilious about shaving his mustache and about his hairdo, and looked down on the lowly clerks. When police officers were hired, he did not insist that the candidate be a Jew, and one of our Jews.”26 Zvi Livneh sent one of the members of his party to the village where the secretary lived to check “the situation of the port secretary’s family in great detail—who his parents were, what their occupation was, whether they had an income, who his brothers and sisters were, what kind of work they did, and so on.” Livneh found out that the official had a big family, that his parents lived in poverty, and that his brothers “had no trade and [were] unemployed.” Having discovered the secretary’s weak spot, they made him a tempting offer: “I heard you have a few brothers, older unmarried fellows. If you’re interested, I can get them a budget to study English for a few months and then they’ll get jobs on the railroad or in the government.”27 Indeed, this was an offer the “Levantine secretary” could not refuse. Before the bribery, there were fourteen police officers and one sergeant in the port, most of them Arabs. Afterward, the secretary made sure that the police force was made up “of seven Arab and seven Jewish officers. The sergeant was also a Jew.”28 From then on it was easier for the aliya bureau workers to deal with the British, to resolve bureaucratic difficulties, and to disembark passengers without visas.

I considered myself duty bound to board every ship as soon as it anchored, and when there was a particular need I would board even before the doctor—which was absolutely forbidden. . . . How would we disembark the illegal immigrants? When I boarded the ship my first question was: How many don’t have visas? When I found out the number I would gather the young men in a corner and instruct them: Don’t take any suitcases. Shave, comb your hair, put on nice clothes, and act like Palestinian [Jews] who boarded the ship to meet their relatives. When you go out through the gate of the port don’t go with the visa holders to the inspection office. Instead mix in immediately with the people watching. I would give each of them a red slip of paper—a signal to the police officer to let him pass.29

So as not to put the Jewish guards in an awkward position, Zvi Livneh asked the Jewish sergeant to post Arab police officers; these men turned a blind eye and accepted a bribe from the chief boatman in the port, Ahmed Buda: “An immigrant with a passport and visa would show the official papers to the police standing at the entrances, whereas those without visas would show my slips of paper and the Arab police officers would let them out. These slips were taken from the immigrants at the first gate and handed to Ahmed Buda, who would bring them to me and get one pound in exchange for each slip.”30 In Livneh’s estimation, “many hundreds of ‘illegal’ immigrants entered Palestine by the port gates in full view of the police and officials.” Thus, through bribery and deception and by giving gifts and perks to port officials, many immigrants who arrived without papers were let into the country.

Immigrants were also smuggled into Palestine through the port of Beirut. In his memoirs, Zvi Livneh describes Jewish immigrants arriving in Beirut and contacting the local representative of Hapoel Hatzair, who helped them cross the northern border to the Galilee villages, and from there to central Palestine. “At first just a few individuals came to the country in this way, but when it became known abroad, large groups started to come.”31 The son of the Hakham Bashi—the chief rabbi of Beirut—helped smuggle the Jews into Palestine. He greeted them at the port of Beirut, saw to all their needs, and sent them on to Palestine. The smuggling route was shut down after the Hakham Bashi innocently mentioned to the French governor of Syria and Lebanon, at a festive reception in his honor, how the French government was indirectly helping Jews enter Palestine.

Look at the difference between the enlightened French government and the British government. The latter pledged to help establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine but is essentially restricting immigration, limiting it to zero and often even sending back Jews who have arrived in their homeland through tremendous effort. Whereas glorious France—despite having made no commitment to the Jews—lets Jews disembark freely on its shores. When the guests at the reception were in high spirits from wine, one French general approached the Hakham Bashi and seemingly entered into a friendly conversation with him about the immigration. The Hakham Bashi, enjoying the conversation with the exalted individual, spared no details about the aliya via Beirut.32

The Aliya Department considered it important for aliya bureau representatives to board the ship with the government officials for several reasons. First, they had to draw up orderly lists of immigrants and prepare for the passengers’ entry and absorption in Palestine. Because the Palestine Offices did not send up-to-date passenger lists, neither the aliya bureaus nor the immigrants’ relatives knew when they were expected. “Furthermore, accompanying the immigration official on the ship step by step during the inspection of the olim enables us to draw up a list of immigrants on the spot. By the time the immigration official disembarks we already have a detailed list of everyone disembarking, along with the names of their relatives, as well as a list of all those who were rejected or whose visas require looking into. Thus we can always inform the relatives in time that they need to take action.”33

Another important reason for the aliya bureau representatives to board the ship together with the British government officials was the possibility of influencing the latter’s decisions in real time and thereby to help the immigrants. Once the officials and the doctor had decided who could enter the country and who was to be turned back, the aliya bureau representatives no longer had any influence and could not reverse the decisions. For those who had made the long, exhausting journey from Europe to Palestine, being prevented from entering the country was a real tragedy; they needed assistance from someone who had their welfare at heart. “After all, it is important to be there when the immigration official questions each immigrant and requests his visa,” wrote Joshua Gordon to Professor Hermann Pick, director of the Aliya Department, “and not afterwards, when he has already formed his opinion of the immigrant and the visa.”34 In certain senses, the assistance provided by aliya bureau workers on board the ships resembled the help provided by consuls to Jewish immigrants turned back by Ottoman officials before World War I, whereas the aid of the aliya bureau representatives resembled the aid activities of the HIAS representatives on Ellis Island, who mediated between the Jewish immigrants and the American immigration officials.

At times, government officials displayed hostility toward the immigrants, asking them antagonistic, objectionable questions. At a meeting of the aliya bureau held in Jerusalem in late 1921, Joshua Gordon claimed, “The questions that the officials ask the immigrants when they encounter them on the ships exhaust the immigrants and sometimes cause resentment. Among the questions they are asked are why they came to Palestine, what they will do here, and why they left [where they came from]. The immigrants see this as an insult to their national feelings and this sometimes results in an undesirable attitude.”35

One of the reasons for interrogating the immigrants on the ship was the British desire to keep Communists and other undesirable elements out of Palestine. In the 1920s and 1930s, Communists were considered the sworn enemies of Western countries, and these countries persecuted, imprisoned, deported, and sometimes even assassinated them. In the United States, for instance, immigration officials on Ellis Island interrogated newcomers suspected of having radical Bolshevik views. Revolutionaries who managed to deceive the immigration authorities and enter the United States became agitators who used strikes and demonstrations to undermine the existing political order. American politicians, regarding them as a genuine danger to American society, took steps to deport them and advance the quota bill that would restrict the entry of immigrants from eastern Europe.36 The case of the Jewish anarchist Emma Goldman is the best known, but she was just one of many immigrants deported from the United States.

The British had similar concerns.37 One of the reasons for the outbreak of the bloody riots on May 1, 1921, was a march, approved by the governor of Jaffa, by workers belonging to Ahdut Ha-Avoda. Another group from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP, or Mapas—a Communist group) also came out to demonstrate despite not having a permit, and a violent quarrel erupted between the two groups. The Haycraft Commission, formed to investigate the causes of the riots, found that in the wake of the initial violence on May 1, rumors had spread that the Jews had attacked Arabs and that the Jewish Communists had incited the Arabs against the Zionist imperialists and the British.38 The commission took testimony from survivors of the riots and met with David Eder, acting head of the Zionist Commission, and with Joshua Gordon, director of the Jaffa aliya bureau.

Eder and Gordon were questioned about the Zionist movement’s policy regarding the admission of Communists into Palestine. They explained that efforts were being made to prevent the entry of undesirable elements such as Communists. Eder claimed, “Regarding the level of Jews who arrived, it was said that they were all Bolsheviks. I would like to narrow down the definition of the term Bolshevik. The Bolshevik is, as I understand it, a member of the organization committed to the Socialist International. Many Englishmen from the Labor Party belong to the Second International. The number of people who arrived in this sense is very small in Palestine. As far as I know, they were under a hundred last May. They do not come as workers. Sometimes they come with money in their pockets.” Gordon, on the other hand, as the director of the Jaffa aliya bureau for the past five months, maintained, “I take care of the immigrants getting off the ship and check that their visas are in order, that is, the Zionist approval, allow them to enter, and take care of their livelihood for the first week.” He expounded on the procedure for obtaining an entry visa to Palestine and said, “The visa is British, given by the consuls in the countries of origin, and in addition they have a permit issued by the Zionist office in London that receives the consular permit. The Zionist representative confirms that the immigrant is suitable for immigration to Palestine and that he is not a Bolshevik.”39

Entry into Palestine was difficult not only for Communist enemies of British imperialism; even ordinary immigrants encountered discrimination and hostility. In Haifa, the quarantine doctor Kamil Eid was accused of deliberately harassing the Jewish passengers. Dr. Eid was described as someone who hated Jews and who “utters poisonous words about them.”40 Another report quotes Eid as saying, “No matter, let the Jews come to Palestine en masse. There is plenty of room here for graves for them.” Levi Shvueli, director of the Haifa aliya bureau, noted the Arab doctor’s discriminatory attitude toward the Jewish immigrants: “On several occasions . . . I had the opportunity to bring to . . . the attention . . . the troubles suffered by the new immigrants because of the management of the quarantine camp in Haifa, headed by Dr. Kamil Eid.” The Haifa aliya bureau asked the doctor to change his treatment of the immigrants, but to no avail.

Once or twice we saw changes for the better, but these were just temporary. We armed ourselves with patience and made friendly attempts to sway Dr. Eid not to hurt the people, but in the end we realized that it was impossible for us and perhaps also for Dr. Eid himself to overcome his personal inclinations against the Jews. This man tries to harm and harass the new immigrants every way he can. He interprets the laws and ordinances in such a way as to harm the Jews and on the basis of his understanding issues decisions that cause trouble for the immigrants.41

The inspection of passports, travel papers, and entry visas to Palestine was part of a fateful, momentous procedure for the immigrants, relatives awaiting their arrival, and the Zionist Executive, which was trying to bring as many Jews as possible into the country. One of the issues of greatest concern to all the heads of the Aliya Department was sending immigrants who had been refused entry back to Europe. This was a sensitive issue for everyone involved. For British officials to keep Jews out of Palestine was perceived as a terrible act of injustice vis-à-vis the Zionist movement and the Jewish people. According to the Aliya Department’s annual report, “We are referring here to the matter overall, which we think is the greatest wrong done to the Jewish people in recent years. We have fought this injustice by all possible means. We have sent letters and memoranda, and we have made verbal protests and efforts in various places.”42

We do not have complete data for the entire decade on the number of Jews sent back to the ports of departure, but the numbers were not negligible. British officials sent eighty-four passengers back to Europe in the space of just four months: twelve in February 1921, eighteen in March, forty-three in April, and eleven in May.43 In most cases, they were denied entry because they had the wrong travel papers or illegal visas: “On January 15 [1922], they started sending back immigrants from the shores of Palestine if the government official found that the consul had issued a visa in contravention of the law. . . . We have records of more than six hundred cases in which immigrants who came with British visas were not permitted to disembark in Palestine. Among those sent back were people of means who had come as tourists, not with a national passport [but] with a laissez-passer. For this they were sent back from the shores of Palestine.”44

Some immigrants came on forged passports. The Carnaro, which anchored in Haifa in September 1925, brought twenty immigrants, four of whom were not permitted to disembark “because the immigration official found that their passports were forged.” On the cover of the passport “within the crown on the eagle’s head, there is supposed to be a small circle. The forged ones have only a line.” Furthermore, there were spelling mistakes in the French.45 Other passengers were not admitted into Palestine because their answers did not satisfy the immigration officials: “Salt Moshe, six persons” belonged to “no category and he has no relatives and no money.” Topek Alexander, Weiss Andrei, Rosa Gustav, and Roma Yosef arrived on tourist visas, but they had no money, which tourists were expected to have. They were detained in quarantine, but they escaped under cover of darkness and were swallowed up in Palestine.46 Other immigrants were sent back because they were carrying diseases, and the quarantine camp doctor refused to let them disembark.

Recently there has been an increase in cases of immigrants being sent back. Most of them were sent to Vienna, some to Romania and Poland. Most of them were sick people who could not help themselves. A minority were sent home to their parents. Even in this case the halutz who volunteered for the country—sometimes against his parents’ will—and returns to his parents stricken with a malady and completely destitute, is nevertheless better off than the one sent back to Vienna, a place that is totally foreign to him, where he has no friends or acquaintances but only a letter of recommendation from our office. . . . Those sent [back] in order to recover not only don’t get the necessary treatment but actually die of disease on the streets and contract new illnesses.47

Sending immigrants back to their place of origin was dramatic and traumatic, not only from the Zionist and economic perspectives but first and foremost from the personal and family perspectives. The rejected immigrants could see the shores of Palestine before their eyes but could not reach them. The knowledge that their relatives were so near yet so far caused tremendous frustration and anger at everyone involved in immigration: the British officials, the representatives of the coastal bureaus, and the Palestine Office workers.

The Quarantine Camp and Disinfection Room

The immigrants who arrived in Palestine before World War I did not undergo medical exams, and most of them entered the country without any difficulty. When the British army conquered Palestine and new rules were drawn up, immigrants were required to undergo medical exams both in the Palestine Offices in their countries of origin and upon arrival in Palestine. The Quarantine Ordinance was one of the first ordinances enacted by the British in Palestine. It required examination of passengers by the quarantine camp doctor, a stay in an isolation facility when necessary, and repeated exams by the district doctor if suspicion arose that an individual was carrying a disease.48 According to Eyal Katvan, a scholar of the history of medicine in Palestine, the first passengers were examined in April 1919. These passengers were Arabs traveling from Tripoli to Alexandria, whose ship apparently anchored in Haifa.49

After disembarking, the immigrants were sent with their belongings for disinfection and immunization. Those found to be ill remained in quarantine pending the results of blood tests, after which a decision was made regarding their future. The medical exams were the responsibility of the Mandatory government health department, and the aliya bureau representatives could not intervene. This was the only time the immigrants found themselves facing the authorities alone, without the accompaniment and assistance of their representatives. “Our workers are barred from entering there,” the director of the Haifa aliya bureau wrote to the Zionist Executive. “The exhausted immigrants can get enraged by every little thing and they clash with the Arab guards, who don’t understand their language. The result is an undesirable situation.”50

A doctor from the quarantine camp or a Mandatory Health Ministry official conducted the first medical exam on the ship and gave the signal to start document inspection. If someone was found to be carrying an infectious disease and there was concern that fellow passengers had become infected, all the passengers and crew were quarantined. After completing a survey on board the ship, the doctor returned to the quarantine camp and the disinfection building and started examining each immigrant individually. “The doctor in charge of quarantine affairs, in addition to the regular work of inspecting the ships—which takes up most of his time—also works in the quarantine house: inspecting the immigrants’ state of health, making up the smallpox [vaccine], and giving injections, which according to the new law could be done only by him.”51 Making up the vaccine took a long time, and sometimes the doctors had to leave their work in the quarantine camp and go out to receive another ship that had anchored. These absences delayed the passengers, who became angry and resentful over the cumbersome, exhausting procedure.52

After the medical exam, or sometimes at the same time, the immigrants were disinfected. This procedure exacerbated their anger and frustration: “There are many justified complaints in the quarantine camp. They do two disinfections . . . of the immigrants’ clothing . . . and of their belongings. The disinfection of the immigrants’ clothing is done very badly in a way that ruins the clothing. All the clothes are dumped into one big sack and after the disinfection is finished everyone has to pick out their clothing.”53 Davar described the disinfection as a totally illogical procedure that infuriated the passengers: “There are surely those who think the quarantine house in Palestine serves just one purpose: to protect the country from the introduction of infectious disease. The facts, however, prove otherwise.” After the passengers were disinfected, going through “all the circles of disinfection,” they returned to the same room “where they had sat for two hours before disinfection.”54 It was chaos. Disorder, confusion, and embarrassment prevailed, with dozens of half-naked immigrants searching for their clothes in the big sack that had been put into a steam disinfection machine:

And as if this were not enough, then came the disinfection of the belongings. Between six and eight low-level officials were put in charge of taking underwear showing signs of use out of the hundreds of suitcases. This was done viciously . . . for the sake of speed; afterwards the immigrants, especially families with children, had to spend hours organizing the belongings that had been taken out. Because of the speed people lost objects and money. . . . Obviously, after spending two or three days with pleasures like these, the immigrants come out in a black mood and furious at the whole world. You will hear vehement cursing of the land of Ishmael here. This inquisition must be stopped. If [there must be] quarantine—then let it be quarantine and not a hellhole. Let them build quarantine houses for the hundreds of immigrants per day and not stuff those hundreds into a building intended for five passengers a month.55

To make things easier for the immigrants, the head of the Tel Aviv aliya bureau suggested buying them personal bags. Each immigrant would have a “small parcel of clean underwear and a clean suit in his hand so that he can wear them when he comes for disinfection while handing over his clothes for disinfection.”56 Shvueli, director of the Haifa aliya bureau, appealed to the district governor to intervene in the quarantine procedures: “Despite Dr. Litvori (P.M.O. Haifa) telling me that the disinfection was set up here in such a way that it takes only a minute per person to complete, we see that people are spending half a day and sometimes entire days there. And Dr. Eid always finds all sorts of excuses for delaying the work.”57 On December 19, 1921, Shvueli wrote that 234 immigrants had arrived in Haifa. One hundred of them disembarked at 11:00 a.m., but the disinfection only started at 3:15 p.m., and the passengers reached the immigrant home at 7:30 p.m. The second group, 134 people, disembarked at 2:30 p.m. All had to spend the night in the quarantine camp, causing the aliya bureau unnecessary expenses. At 9:00 a.m. they left the camp, but the disinfection only started at 11:00 a.m., and they reached the immigrant home at 4:30 p.m.58

Aside from the disorder surrounding the medical exam and disinfection, the Aliya Department had to contend with three other disturbing problems: theft, the location of the quarantine camp in Haifa, and sick immigrants. While the immigrants were being examined by the doctor, their belongings were left unguarded in the disinfection camp or customs house. “Not a week goes by without grievances from the new immigrants about thefts discovered from their luggage, especially of valuable items,” wrote Beiteli, Shvueli’s successor as director of the Haifa aliya bureau, to the head of the Zionist Organization political department, Colonel Frederick Kisch. He continued, “The immigrants claim that the theft occurred in the disinfection house because the belongings were there without their watching over them. However, in the absence of any proof of this we have no one to accuse, and the immigrants are suing us in the Jewish district court and accusing us.”59 An investigation by aliya bureau workers found that the thieves were guards at the disinfection camp and customs house: “In order to save time and to prevent the belongings from being moved to the customs house, it was arranged that the customs officials would come to the disinfection [place] and examine the belongings there. The eyes of some of them alight on valuables, and while the immigrants are completing the injections and bathing and leaving their belongings there for disinfection, which is generally done the next day, various things are stolen. (It should be noted that the immigrants’ belongings are not opened in our workers’ presence because our workers are barred from the disinfection house).”60

Ida Levin arrived in Haifa in March 1925 aboard the Barga. In a letter of complaint to the aliya bureau, she wrote that her jewelry and other valuables had been stolen from her luggage: “I disembarked that day at 6 p.m. with my belongings. . . . When I reached the shore they separated me from my belongings. They told me that everything would be all right and that I should go. I wanted to take the small suitcase with the silver and gold but they wouldn’t let me. They said everything would be all right.” She claimed that when she returned from quarantine, her suitcase was closed “in a special way, not the way I had closed it. . . . I saw that all the gold and silver were missing, as well as the kerchief that they had been in. I started screaming and complaining.” The quarantine official, “who was wearing a white apron and had a whistle in his mouth, told me to go away because everything would be all right, even though I had told him that my things were missing.”61 Six gold rings were stolen from Ida, “two simple ones, two with stones, and two with stones that had fallen out, a woman’s gold watch with a gold chain” and three wristwatches, one of them with a leather strap and two with chains. Some Russian money was also stolen.62

Often luggage was lost because the passengers disembarked in Jaffa but their cargo was sent on to Haifa, or vice versa. Sometimes luggage simply got lost en route. Scores of complaints were sent to the Aliya Department, demanding that lost luggage be found. “Dear Sir, I came to Palestine on the Barga on June 16. Because they wouldn’t let me disembark in Jaffa I was forced to disembark in Haifa, but my belongings remained in Jaffa. I am therefore asking you to send my belongings to me here, as I came on a certificate and can’t pay for the trip to come get them. I hope you will be considerate of a new immigrant with no means and accede to my request. Thank you in advance. . . . Note: The baggage is in one sack, numbered 25486.”63

Shmuel Rosenbaum lost his suitcases and sued the Zionist Executive for compensation. He stated that the suitcases had been taken off the ship with him; what happened next is described in his claim: “And when he reached the shore the plaintiff wanted to take his parcels from the boat, but they wouldn’t let him [because] he was being taken to quarantine. The next day the plaintiff came for his belongings but found only one parcel. The second parcel was lost.” The court recognized the Zionist Executive’s moral responsibility for the integrity of the belongings and stressed the need to put some order in this branch of the Aliya Department’s work. Nevertheless, the court had no choice but to reject the plaintiff’s monetary claim.64

The location of the Haifa quarantine camp on an estuary of the Kishon River, right near swamps and the Shemen and Atid factories, was a source of concern for the Aliya Department. In 1919, the Mandatory government health department established the camp in a place that was malaria-stricken due to pollution in the Kishon. The camp occupied 1.8 hectares that the British had rented from Mustafa Amr. After Amr died in 1927, his heirs demanded the land back. Although the quarantine camp was supposed to be temporary, it became permanent in the 1920s and 1930s because the replacement camp had to await the creation of a new port. The British did not want to invest ₤30,000 in building a new quarantine camp before the new port was built.65

According to the Immigration Ordinance, immigrants were to be quarantined if they had come from a port where cholera or some other epidemic had been discovered or if there had been an outbreak of disease on their ship; if they arrived in such large numbers that they could not all undergo disinfection on the day of arrival; if they arrived too late in the day to have time for disinfection; or while waiting for disinfection.66 They had to walk to the quarantine camp. The tiring walk on what wasn’t even a proper road caused anger, resentment, and especially disappointment with their initial encounter with the country. This was not how they had imagined their arrival in Palestine. After passing through document inspection, they marched to the quarantine camp—“a twenty-minute walk on loose sand, escorted by police on all sides. This is the most painful impression that the immigrants get in their first moments in the country. The singing of ‘Hatikvah’ is immediately silenced by this reception, [and] they complain about walking on sand with children in their arms, about the escort by the Arab police.” Their belongings were brought “to the quarantine field in small dinghies. Dozens of Arabs stand in the water in a long line, almost naked, and carry the parcels on their shoulders to the disinfection house.”67

When immigration via Haifa was minimal and only a few immigrants were sent to the quarantine camp, the location of the camp posed no problem. But the difficulties mounted in the years when immigration via Haifa increased and many more passengers were quarantined. Doctors from Hadassah, and afterward other doctors as well, drew attention to the fact that many of the passengers were contracting malaria while in the quarantine camp.68 Aside from the danger, living conditions in the camp were harsh and sometimes unbearable: “The entire vicinity of the quarantine camp is full of all sorts of mosquitoes, and aside from causing disease, they definitely steal the people’s rest, especially at night. Some time ago, the health department gave the quarantine camp a small number of mosquito nets, but first of all, there are not enough for everyone in the camp, and second, even most of the ones that are there are ruined and torn and don’t provide the necessary protection against the mosquitoes.”69

A doctor from the Haifa quarantine camp initially denied the claims of the aliya bureau director, but when the latter showed him proof of malaria among immigrants who had spent a few days in quarantine, he became convinced that the quarantine camp should be moved elsewhere. A report on conditions in the quarantine camp, ordered by the second British high commissioner in Palestine, Herbert Plumer, indicates that the Mandatory government was aware of the poor conditions.

The quarantine camp was divided into four compounds separated by barbed-wire fences. According to the report, the fences were in poor condition and needed maintenance every month or two. “Each compound contains wooden huts with concrete floor” and was divided into three sections by class and financial means. “The first class hut consist of single rooms furnished with all requirements but not luxuriously.” In the second-class compound, the shacks were similar, but there were two beds per room. The compounds for the first two classes had a comfortably furnished dining room for the use of the people staying in the camp. “The third class, originally Army huts, are furnished only with mattresses and blankets, tables and forms, and matting on the floors.” Beds were not provided “because of the extreme difficulty of keeping them free from bugs and lice which so commonly accompany the third class passengers and secondly because the Arab or Egyptian or Indian pilgrim or passenger, who has so frequently to be accommodated in quarantine, is unaccustomed to a bed, and is more likely to sleep under it than upon it if it is provided for him.” The report on the state of the quarantine camp indicates that the Jewish immigrants were considered Europeans, so the attitude toward them was different. “In the meantime I have ordered the completion of the fencing round the lazarat at a cost of £500. I had intended to postpone this item of expenditure for inclusion in the budget of 1927. The director of the Department of Health has been awaiting the completion of this fencing before installing certain improved equipment to meet Jewish requirements by fitting up some of the third class sections of the lazaret with European equipment including beds, linen and furniture on what was previously the second scale.”70

Men and women were housed in separate shacks in the same compound, but the showers and lavatories with wooden seats were merely separated by iron partitions. Meals were the responsibility of Jews who had been awarded the concession by the Mandatory government, and the separation between the classes was retained. In the first two classes, Arab waiters served the immigrants. For the third-class passengers, one of the shacks was used as a dining room, and the meals, mostly prepared from cans, were served by various people according to a rota.71

The stay in the disinfection room and quarantine camp made a poor impression on the immigrants and tainted their experience of arriving in Palestine. They frequently complained about the conditions and the officials’ attitude. The board of the Society of Polish Jews in Haifa sent the Zionist Executive a letter of protest signed by thirty Polish immigrants who described their terrible experiences with disinfection and quarantine. Regarding the disinfection rooms, they wrote, “We were taken off the ship weak and tired from the agonies of the journey and seasickness and were taken under guard to empty barracks without even benches to sit on. . . . The barracks were too small to hold us all and we were so crammed that there wasn’t even air to breathe. . . . While we were incarcerated, the officials treated us like a gang of robbers or murderers.”

Conditions in the quarantine camp were no better. “The way they treated us in the quarantine camp was so rough, immoral, and inhumane. . . . We were ordered to strip, and while we were standing around naked the order came that we should go eat. We were so outraged and resentful that we refused to go eat despite our tremendous hunger.” The immigrants waited naked for hours, and after a quick shower, “we men were forced to stand, still naked, for a few hours, waiting for them to release the women and children who were in the other room getting shots.”72 The letter added,

After all, you know as well as we do that from time to time when immigrants come they have to undergo quarantine and disinfection with all sorts of torments like the seven circles of hell. They complain and scream, but no one hears or lifts a finger to make things better in the future. And the bad conditions and irregularities in the quarantine camp multiply from day to day to the point that the five hundred people, entire families, who came on the Barga were treated this way. . . . We therefore appeal to you, dear sirs, as the managers responsible for immigration to Palestine, to put all available means into improving the situation, easing matters for the immigrants in every way possible starting today, not to embitter their lives with totally unnecessary agonies, and especially to admonish the officials to treat the immigrants politely and civilly.73

The thorniest problem for British immigration officials and the Zionist Executive was the arrival of sick immigrants who became a burden on the aliya bureaus and medical clinics. The Aliya Department took care of the immigrants—finding them employment and housing and providing medical care—during their first year in the country. Therefore, if immigrants fell ill or turned out to be carrying chronic or infectious illnesses, the aliya bureaus were responsible for their treatment. US immigration authorities tended to send immigrants suspected of being ill or unfit for work back to their countries of origin. In Palestine, however, this would have been problematic, both due to budgetary limitations and because aliya was perceived as a value, an integral part of the implementation of the Zionist idea. Sending Jews back to Europe instead of letting them into Palestine (even if they were not able-bodied and would be a burden on the Zionist institutions) were weighty issues of great concern that were no simple matter to decide:

In general we must stress that we are encountering cases of people who were already weak or sick upon arrival; clearly there is no room for these under the prevailing conditions. Sick or even weak people who manage to start working are affected by the maladies endemic to Palestine, spend most of their time in hospitals, and after all that are sent back, having suffered terribly and cost significant sums of money. (Perhaps some of them need the air of Palestine for their health, but only if they have the necessary means of subsistence.) We must alert all the comrades in the places that the immigrants pass through and warn them how much of a burden such elements are for them and [that they should] examine the passengers well.74

Among the Aliya Department files in the Central Zionist Archives are several dealing with medical issues pertaining to Jewish immigrants who arrived in Palestine in the 1920s. The Mandatory government and British Health Ministry issued special orders concerning immigrants carrying infectious diseases. Anyone with an infectious disease was to be hospitalized immediately and was not to encounter healthy immigrants. The coastal bureaus were required to set up special tents (a sort of temporary quarantine camp) for immigrants found to be ill following the government medical exam. These people were to remain under the supervision of the doctor of the immigrant home until they were moved to the government hospital.75

We see from the medical files that a significant number of mentally ill and emotionally frail people arrived in Palestine, and constant bureaucratic and medical efforts were made to find solutions. Conventional medical treatment or rest in an immigrant home did not help such patients; they had to be hospitalized in special institutions. Below are several examples, with the patients’ names omitted for reasons of privacy.

1. Mr. L. K., twenty-four, arrived on the Prinkipo on September 11, 1921, and was in the camp. “Last night he showed signs of insanity and the camp doctor who examined him immediately informed us that he had to be under supervision and in the care of a home for the mentally ill.”76 L. K. had been found to be healthy in the medical examinations on the ship and in the quarantine camp; his illness only appeared in the immigrant home run by the Jaffa aliya bureau. Three weeks later, the aliya bureau sent L. K. back to France, “to the place he misses.”
2. According to a letter sent to a home for the mentally ill and incurable in Jerusalem: “One young man among the new immigrants in Jaffa suffers from frequent attacks of mental illness. His condition is very serious and he needs treatment in a home for the mentally ill. Because he is hard-pressed financially, it would be impossible to pay you for his maintenance. It would be appropriate if you could take this case into consideration and admit him to your institution for free.” The institution replied, “Regarding the sick young immigrant in Jaffa, we hereby inform you that the institution’s situation . . . does not allow us to admit patients without payment.”77
3. M. A. arrived in Jaffa on the Sardinia in October 1921 with his wife and five children. Because he had no money, he received “assistance with the disembarkation expenses, i.e., the government tax, boat, boatmen, customs, and so on.” It turned out that one of his daughters, “age six, has a mental illness that is manifested in the form of kleptomania. The doctors have instructed that she must receive treatment in a hospital for the mentally ill. The father of the family works in construction and can barely support his family. Please try to have the ill daughter admitted for treatment for free.”78
4. “M. G. of Riga, who arrived as a halutz on Nov. 6, 1924, is insane. M. P., who came from Cernăuți on June 3, 1924, tried to commit suicide the day after she arrived. N. W., a family of three that came from Warsaw on Jan. 1, 1925, with no money and no relatives . . . Mr. N. W. suffers from heart disease and cannot work.”79
5. According to Dr. Dorian Feigenbaum, a psychiatrist and the first director of the Ezrat Nashim psychiatric hospital, the halutz P. G. suffered from a nervous malady and it was unclear how he had passed the medical exams conducted by the Palestine Office doctors:

   Permit me in this case to make a few comments that I feel I owe it to myself to make. I am very surprised at how the Zionist Organization brought this man to Palestine, despite the fact that his illness, which is unfortunately untreatable incurable, was already noticed in Constantinople. He will only be a burden on you here. Treating him will take a great deal of work and be expensive. My opinion is that the medical exam in the countries of origin and on the coast needs improvement, as it is apparently badly flawed if such a sick person can pass.80

   Dr. Feigenbaum tried to have the man admitted to Rothschild Hospital, but they refused to accept him due to his medical condition. “My advice is to admit him today to Bikur Holim Hospital and after a while to send him back abroad.”81 But it turned out that the psychiatrist’s suggested solution was complicated. Two years after his arrival in Palestine, the aliya bureau was still taking care of P. G.’s needs. In January 1924, Levi Shvueli wrote to the Aliya Department in Jerusalem that all efforts to send him back to Europe had been to no avail. “We did everything we could to convince the patient to leave Palestine at our bureau’s expense,” but he refused and threatened to commit suicide: “By no means will I leave Palestine voluntarily. If you decide to do something against my will, I will throw myself into the sea.” Shvueli added, “The workers in our bureau have discussed this matter seriously and decided that we must not do anything against the patient’s will, as it could have dismal consequences.”82

6. “Z. W. arrived via Jaffa in September 1921. A doctor’s certificate is attached. He has a nervous malady. I must draw your attention to the type of patients. This is the second of this sort. The first was L. K.—a mental patient—whom we sent to Jerusalem in accordance with your instructions. According to the director of the Jaffa aliya bureau, there are more and more patients with nervous and mental illnesses due to the lack of permanent employment. Waiting for a job brings them to the point of despair, and also has a terrible effect on those who come after them.”83

The heads of the Aliya Department in Jerusalem were also concerned about the arrival of mentally ill immigrants, and they asked the heads of the aliya bureaus in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem for up-to-date reports on the scope of the problem:

The frequent cases of nervous and mental illness, especially among young women, that have been brought to our attention by the bureaus are very worrisome to us. Aside from our concern for the fate of the individuals suffering from these illnesses, we are particularly frightened by the frequency of the phenomenon, which may be an indication of some mass, or at least group, psychosis. Therefore, we call your most serious attention to this phenomenon and ask that you take a special interest in all these cases that have already occurred or are about to occur. Each and every case must be investigated as thoroughly as possible, with an eye to its causes and effects. In addition, please ask the aliya doctors to gather all the material pertaining to these cases in the fullest manner. When the material is ready, we will call for a consultation with the aliya doctors, with the participation of experts on the matter, to clarify the problem and find means of combating it.84

The aliya bureau workers also had to contend with immigrants with syphilis. The concern was that they might infect the local population after leaving the immigrant home. “I hereby confirm my conversation yesterday with Mr. Unterman in this regard. He arrived on the Semiramis on April 16, 1922. He was not permitted to leave quarantine but instead was taken straight to the government hospital for a blood test out of concern that he had syphilis. Yesterday (May 4 [1922]), an immigration official informed me in the name of the government doctor that the immigrant had to leave the country because the test . . . had come out positive.”85

M. K. had a similar problem: “The aforementioned has the venereal disease syphilis in the secondary stage, i.e., the most infectious,” and according to the Immigration Ordinance, he was to be deported. The Aliya Department had no objection to his deportation from Palestine so long as he would not be a financial burden on it. However, because the British government and the shipping company refused to take responsibility for him, the Aliya Department had to find the funds to send him back. In a letter to Professor Pick, Joshua Gordon commented that there was no reason why Palestine should be different from other immigration countries in handling immigrants who were turned back: “In all countries deportation is at the government’s expense. . . . If there is a law barring certain immigrants from entering the country, then the shipping company has to know and make sure not to take such immigrants. But until it knows the law, the government itself is responsible. Here suddenly the government is requiring us to cover the cost of deporting immigrants.”86

The doctors in the Palestine Offices in Europe did not send people with sexually transmitted diseases to Palestine. They knew they would be denied entry, and this would cost the aliya bureau a valuable certificate. Presumably, these immigrants fell ill while waiting in the European port cities before sailing for Palestine. In Trieste and Vienna, immigrants tended to wait about twelve days before boarding the ship. During this time, some of the men visited local brothels and contracted syphilis. The illness incubated in their bodies while they waited to sail and while on the voyage and broke out when they entered Palestine at a problematic and even fateful time.

The coastal bureaus also dealt with sick Jewish immigrants who had arrived overland and had not undergone a government medical exam. These people went straight to the immigrant camp, where they sought medical treatment. In some cases, Zionist immigration officials were uncertain whether to treat them or to hand them over to the British. M. G. reached Beirut on a French visa and reportedly crossed illegally into Palestine. He went to the Haifa aliya bureau and then to Jaffa. Joshua Gordon, director of the Jaffa aliya bureau, reported to the Aliya Department, “He has the venereal disease syphilis [and] is absolutely unwilling to leave the country. He says he wants to recover and not die of his illness.”87 Gordon was caught in a dilemma between maintaining public health and handing over a Jewish immigrant to the British; the latter would lead to his deportation, not only because he was ill but because he had entered the country illegally: “If I turn to the government for assistance, they will jail him and sentence him to prison. Then afterwards they won’t send him away as a sick person; they will deport him as someone who entered without permission.”88 The opinion of Dr. Seinfeld, the doctor at the immigrant home, was that he should be deported immediately because he might not recover and because he needed close medical supervision to prevent a relapse of the disease. The doctor added, “Healing takes a long time (during which time he will be a burden on the public). It is impossible to ensure that the patient will recover completely, and there is always a risk to the comrades whom he will have to live with. Our opinion is: deport him.”89

The above examples shed new light on the period of the Third Aliya and Fourth Aliya. Alongside the healthy, idealistic halutzim, sick immigrants and halutzim also arrived in Palestine, infected with sexually transmitted diseases and mental illnesses of various kinds. The workers in the coastal bureaus had a hard time coping with the complicated situation forced on them; often, they found themselves lacking the appropriate tools or budgets needed to solve complex, sensitive problems of these sorts. Moreover, mentally and physically ill people had a direct impact on the healthy immigrants with whom they shared rooms—and sometimes even beds—in the immigrant homes. The Jews who had arrived in Palestine to start new lives did not expect to encounter violent, emotionally disturbed people or carriers of infectious diseases. Such a greeting no doubt never entered their minds.

The treatment of the ill and the financial cost of finding solutions to their plight elicited a discussion in principle about the ideal immigrant needed to build up the country. “Our criterion must be bringing productive elements to the country,” Gordon wrote to Pick. Gordon complained about government immigration officials who not only would not let in immigrants unfit for work but also barred the entry of young people carrying infectious diseases, who would be able to enter the workforce after recovering. The inconsistency was problematic, and Gordon believed that the Zionist Executive had to come out against the arbitrary practices of British officialdom.

Thus, for example, heart disease. From our perspective, such an element should by no means come here. In the doctors’ opinion, conditions in this country are very hard on their health and they need to live in special conditions. Moreover, such patients are hardly capable of doing any work other than selected jobs that are almost impossible to obtain in Palestine. And if we have to bar immigrants like these, or even send them back, nevertheless the government—justifiably—does not say such immigrants can enter. But completely inconsistently, it says that epileptic immigrants—an element that is also not desirable for us, exactly like heart patients—can enter. For example, in the case of syphilis, obviously this element is undesirable to us, but I see no reason why the government should bar them for no reason. If it is only on condition that they don’t become a public burden . . . from a health perspective there is no reason to bar them from entering. They are not bringing the disease to the country. There is enough syphilis without that, for instance in Ramle, Hebron, and elsewhere.90

Gordon expressed succinctly and in brief the Zionist movement’s desired immigration policy: reject or deport immigrants who were sick or unfit for work and were liable to be a burden on the Aliya Department, and select strong, healthy immigrants who could cope with conditions in Palestine. Medical care for sick immigrants posed a heavy burden on the staff of the Jaffa and Haifa aliya bureaus, but it was very difficult, and sometimes even impossible, to deport these individuals. The representatives of the coastal aliya bureaus lacked the authority and ability to deport those who refused to leave, and turning them in to the government was out of the question.

After disinfection and release from quarantine, the immigrants were asked to register with the aliya bureau workers and answer their questions. They were then given information about the country. “Each immigrant receives tea, bread, and jam and sets out for the city or the immigrant home. Their belongings are transferred after disinfection as per the immigrants’ wishes or to our bureau’s warehouse.”91 Immigrants who had starting capital or relatives in Palestine simply entered the country and started their new lives. Those who were destitute and alone in the country were sent to immigrant homes.

Immigrant Homes

In the wake of increased immigration and absorption difficulties, the heads of the aliya bureau concluded that immigrant homes were needed to ensure the newcomers’ well-being. These homes were not intended for everyone entering the country; they were specifically for destitute immigrants who had no one to greet them and see to all their initial needs in the new land. In the immigrant home, they received shelter, food, information about Palestine, and assistance in finding work.

Between 1919 and 1927, more than 106,000 Jews arrived in Palestine. About 15 percent of them stayed in the immigrant homes—58.4 percent in Haifa and 41.6 percent in Jaffa.92 As we can see from table 5.1, the proportion who stayed in the immigrant homes decreased from year to year, from 36 percent in 1922 to just 9 percent in 1927.

Source: “Tazkir al Devar ha-Aliya le-Eretz Yisrael” [Memorandum on immigration to Palestine], CZA, S81, file 37, 10.

The call for establishing temporary lodgings for immigrants came from High Commissioner Herbert Samuel. In a letter to the Zionist Commission in July 1920, immediately after the introduction of civil rule and the opening of the country to immigration, Samuel demanded that the Zionist Organization take responsibility for absorbing the newcomers and helping them find jobs and housing in their first year in the country. He asked the Zionist Organization to provide facilities for the initial housing of the immigrants and suggested that it purchase shacks and tents from the British army for this purpose.93

Until designated immigrant homes had been arranged, the aliya bureau rented four boarding houses in Jaffa: Beit Zariffa, Beit Roch, Beit Kandinof, and Beit Salant. In addition, the General Federation of Jewish Labour had a boarding house known as Beit Hechalutz that housed halutzim in their first days in the country. When more immigrants arrived (especially around Passover), the aliya bureau set up a tent camp on land it had near the beach in Tel Aviv.94 Altogether the five houses had room for five hundred to six hundred people. They provided roofs over their heads and support in their first days in Palestine. Menachem Sheinkin described how the immigrant homes functioned in the early years:

In Jaffa five immigrant homes were set up in rented buildings in various parts of the city. . . . When necessary, tents would be pitched for a few hundred more people. The immigrant homes had beds, mattresses, sheets, and blankets. In the immigrant homes themselves or very close by, kitchens were set up where they received fresh, cooked food three times a day. In the main immigrant home a reading room and infirmary were set up. In the big courtyard was a disinfection department that had showers with cold and hot water. These immigrant homes were under the supervision of a special doctor, who also kept the physical statistics on the immigrants.95

But even these facilities were insufficient; there were not nearly enough beds for the people who needed them. In times of recession and high unemployment, people were in no rush to leave the immigrant homes until they found work. They had no reason to leave: they were given a place to sleep, food, reliable information about the situation in Palestine, and help in finding jobs. Their long stay in the immigrant homes was a problem for the aliya bureaus because it meant they could not accommodate newly arrived immigrants. Furthermore, it reinforced the Mandatory government’s position that the volume of immigration was exceeding the country’s absorptive capacity. There were times when the immigrant homes were overcrowded, and sometimes even unfit for inhabiting. Ya’akov Efter, head of the agriculture committee of Hapoel Hatzair, complained to Arthur Ruppin, “Sir! The situation is very grave. In Jaffa there are currently more than 400 immigrants in need of work who are causing terrible crowding in all the lodgings and hotels. Some of them have been in Jaffa for more than ten days already. Today a ship is arriving with 110 new immigrants and by the end of the week another 300 or so [will come]. If appropriate action is not taken immediately to arrange for work, we will very soon have a catastrophe on our hands.”96

The immigrant homes in Jaffa were moved to Tel Aviv after violence broke out on May 1, 1921.97 An Arab mob broke into Beit Hechalutz, wreaked destruction, and murdered residents. Rachel Kaufman was one of the survivors. From her testimony to the British police, we learn of the panic that gripped the immigrants during the riots and the circumstances surrounding her arrival in the immigrant home.

I come from Ukraine. I am not married. On Sunday, May 1, I went to the immigrant home from Sarafand, where I was working. I arrived in Palestine about seven weeks ago, shortly before Passover. I heard that a few people from my native town were in the immigrant home and I went to see them. I arrived in the middle of the day. When lunch was over, a hubbub started and the gates [of the immigrant home] were closed all at once. The Arabs started banging on them. At that moment, all the women in the room ran to Mrs. Cherkassy’s room to hide. . . . After the door and windows were broken, we fled to the dining room. As we were fleeing, we heard a police officer shouting, “I am a Jew.” After that the police officer who had shouted tried to rape Shoshana Sandek. He was unsuccessful and then went over to another woman named Mrs. Meller. When Mrs. Meller resisted, he hit her in the head and said that if she didn’t let him rape her he would shoot everyone. Then he fired and we all lay flat on the floor. The whole time he kept threatening that he was about to shoot. . . . We escaped from the immigrant home in different directions. As I passed through the gate, an Arab hit me in the head. I lay wounded that entire time and they stole my gold watch from me.98

Eleven people were killed and twenty-eight wounded at Beit Hechalutz. During the week of bloodshed, 46 Jews were murdered and 134 were wounded.99 It was clear to the heads of the aliya bureau that the immigrant homes had to be removed from Arab neighborhoods immediately and an alternative location found for them in a better protected area. Such a place was found at the end of Allenby Street, near the shore.

When the violence died down, the aliya bureau started relocating the residents of the immigrant homes in Jaffa, the survivors of the bloodshed, and new immigrants to the new location—a camp this time, rather than a building. The haste with which the new camp was established caused numerous problems. In early July 1921, due to poor sanitation in the new immigrant camp and the Hapoel Hatzair lodgings, Gordon informed the director of Hadassah’s American Zionist Medical Unit for Palestine (AZMU), Dr. Isaac Max Rubinow, of the severity of the situation and warned him of the danger to the immigrants’ health.

Rubinow was a doctor who in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had treated Jewish immigrants living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In those days hundreds of thousands of eastern European Jews were arriving in the cities of the East Coast of the United States. They settled in poor neighborhoods and lived in crowded, filthy conditions. Due to poor sanitation conditions and poor nutrition, there were high rates of illness and many of the immigrants contracted diphtheria, dysentery, and tuberculosis. Dr. Rubinow helped the Jews of the Lower East Side and promoted social legislation in the United States to improve conditions for the immigrants.100

Rubinow’s experience as an American Jewish doctor served him well in Palestine. On June 11, 1918, Hadassah sent over the AZMU. This unit had dermatologists; ophthalmologists; gynecologists; orthopedists; pathologists; and ear, nose, and throat specialists as well as nurses, pharmacists, medics, administrators, and medical equipment. After arriving in Palestine in March 1919, Rubinow was named the medical administrator and chief of activity of the AZMU in Palestine.101 He worked hard to create a medical system like that on Ellis Island, which required all immigrants to undergo medical inspection before entering the country. The idea was to establish medical oversight of the immigrants to protect the country’s population from infectious disease and to instill proper hygienic and nutrition habits in the newcomers.

In a letter to Rubinow, British quarantine camp officials described the terrible conditions in the new camp in Tel Aviv and warned against the spread of disease among the city’s population. The wooden barracks were rife with bedbugs; they needed to be disinfected and their walls had to be plastered to make them fit to live in. The latrine pits and drainage system had been dug hastily and were liable to pollute the drinking water of Tel Aviv.102 Conditions in the Hapoel Hatzair lodgings were no better. The report notes a series of severe sanitation problems. Crowding, bedbugs, and filth were rampant in the aliya bureau camp. Sewage flowed over the ground, and residents would cover their excrement with sand. They did their laundry outside the tents, and pools of water collected. The tents, bedding, and clothes were dirty and attested to a lack of hygiene among camp residents. Flies swarmed all over the food that was scattered around the camp, and there was a real danger of pollution and disease.103

In September and October 1921, steps were taken to start improving the aliya bureau camp at the end of Allenby Street. With about one hundred tents, the camp had a capacity of three hundred people at peak occupancy. But even after the improvements, problems were discovered due to a shortage of funds and a surplus of immigrants. Security problems cropped up in the new location, too, and the Zionist Commission was asked to protect the residents. “The immigrant camp . . . is on the edge of Tel Aviv near the shore, very far from the settlement,” Joshua Gordon, director of the Jaffa aliya bureau, wrote to the Zionist Commission. “It is bordered by two roads, both leading to places populated by Arabs. Recently many shots have been heard in this area, and the case of the Arab who was killed a while back was near the camp.” Due to the location of the new camp and out of concern for the residents’ security, Gordon applied for permits for the camp guards to bear arms.104 The immigrants themselves also requested security, complaining to the camp directors that they did not feel safe in the new, isolated location on the edge of Tel Aviv.

Other problems were discovered with the sanitation, hygiene, and living conditions in the camp, especially in winter. The camp doctor, Dr. Seinfeld, had complained that “he can’t possibly receive a patient in a tent that is half-collapsed and half-torn and where the rain gets in.” Gordon complained that living conditions in the camp were terrible and unsuitable for housing the immigrants and that as the director of the Jaffa aliya bureau, he was personally ashamed of the conditions he was offering the camp residents.

It is our fault that a camp of 350 people has no library where someone can go in and sit. Ultimately, the immigrants have no place to hide from the rain, even in Tel Aviv itself. They are in a camp where the tents have no lighting; they do not even have anywhere to write a letter or sit and read a newspaper. The tent is torn and the water gets in. It is dark there even in the daytime, and I simply confess that I am ashamed to face the immigrants. . . . The blanket storeroom leaks. The blankets, sheets, and pillows are wet, and this leads to more colds than anything else.105

Complaints were also heard from Tel Aviv residents about the proximity of the camp latrines to their homes: “We have received strongly worded complaints from the residents and owners of the new homes built nearby about the lavatories that you placed a while back by the lodgings, on the hill in Tel Aviv.” The Tel Aviv municipality and the government doctor asked the aliya bureau to move the latrines “from where they are . . . so that they are hygienic. And we must insist that this be done no later than a week from today. Otherwise we will be forced to order municipal workers to remove the said latrines.”106

But conditions in the camp did not improve. In October 1923, Tel Aviv mayor Meir Dizengoff wrote to the director of the Tel Aviv aliya bureau that he had found, during a visit in which he was accompanied by the governor and several doctors, “that these places have not been set up in accordance with the requirements of hygiene. It has been decided to set up a new tent camp facility for all the inhabitants of the tents that are scattered in various parts of Tel Aviv.”107

The first immigrant home in Haifa was open from 1920 to 1924, but we know very little about it. It was in the center of town, apparently on Jaffa Street, in an Arab-populated area. A hospital was also opened there to serve the residents, in addition to a Hadassah clinic.108 After the violence in May 1921, the heads of the aliya bureau decided that it was dangerous to house the immigrants in Arab neighborhoods, so they decided to move the immigrant home in Haifa too. “The vital need to remove the immigrant camp from where it is now is rather clear. Time after time we have drawn your attention to the danger to our relations with the Arabs caused by our concentrating hundreds of unemployed people in the center of an Arab population and in the centers of town. The district governor, Colonel Symes, has hinted to us more than once about the need to remove the camp from there.”109 Aside from the tension and friction with the Arabs, Shvueli cited the dreadful living conditions for the immigrants. Two-thirds of the rooms in the rented building were used as lodgings for the immigrants, while the rest of the building consisted of apartments occupied by Jewish and Arab neighbors, a small private hotel, and shops. The area around the building was in poor condition, and there was no evidence that basic cleaning was being done.

In the immigrant home in Haifa, it was particularly hard to treat sick people in their rooms. The place housed up to four hundred people in overly crowded conditions. Shvueli told the Aliya Department in Jerusalem that there was only one infirmary room in the home, even though hundreds of immigrants were staying there. Moreover, because there was no Jewish hospital in the city, Jewish residents of Haifa—dissatisfied with the medical care in the government hospital, which was run by a mostly Arab staff—also came to the immigrant home when they were ill. Due to the increasing difficulty of taking in the immigrants who were coming to Haifa in growing numbers, Shvueli suggested moving the immigrant home to a cleaner location. The place that seemed most suitable to him was in the Bat Galim neighborhood, near the shore. The location would ensure the immigrants fresh air and the opportunity to bathe in the sea in the hot summer months. The possibility of building the new immigrant home in the Shadaliya area (near the Hadar Hacarmel neighborhood) was also considered, but the idea was quickly dropped.110 In late May 1922, the Bat Galim neighborhood committee wrote to the Jerusalem aliya bureau, requesting that the future immigrant home be established in their neighborhood:

Because we have heard that the Governor has insisted on moving the immigrant home from an Arab area to a Jewish area, and because we already expressed interest in the matter a few months ago, we hereby propose the following. On the edge of our land, located on the coast near the Cave of Elijah, are 14 dunams [1.4 hectares] of government-owned land. When the Governor made his demand that the immigrant home be moved, your representative, Mr. Shvueli, suggested to the Governor that this land be handed over to build the immigrant home. The Governor liked the idea. He dispatched a government commission to determine whether the place is suitable for this purpose, and it also expressed its consent.111

In December 1923, a building contract was signed and the cornerstone was laid for the immigrant home in Bat Galim. The event was reported in Doar Hayom:

In the middle of the day, a lot of traffic was already seen on the road leading from the city up to Bat Galim—some by vehicle, some on foot. All, young and old, flocked to the place near Bat Galim where the celebrations are to be held. In front of the field, a gate of honor was set up with a Jewish flag and a British flag. The members of the aliya committee stood at the gate to greet the guests. In a wooden shack . . . that will apparently be used as an office for the time being, is a table with refreshments. The tents that the immigrants are in were pitched in the middle of the field. In addition, a stage has been set up for speakers and important guests. Next to the stage is an orchestra led by Mr. Grinspon; around it, in a semicircle, are students from all the Jewish schools in Haifa with their teachers and inspectors. The crowd is growing. I don’t know if Haifa has ever had such a huge crowd.112

In late 1924, Shvueli reported that the construction of four buildings in the immigrant home compound had been completed and noted the amount of money still needed to complete the sanitation arrangements. The kitchen building had three rooms: a cooking room, where meals were prepared and dishes were washed; a dining room, where meals were served to a hundred people; and a smaller room that served as a storeroom and pantry. The second building had four dormitory rooms for men: two enormous rooms with thirty-two beds and two small rooms with eight beds. The third building in the compound consisted of two stories. The bottom floor housed the aliya bureau office and had three rooms: a room for receiving the public, the secretary’s office, and the administration room. On the second floor were two dormitory rooms for women containing twelve beds. The fourth building contained the lavatories and showers for men and women. Scattered throughout the camp were tents to house more immigrants.

In 1926, the camp doctor complained to the Aliya Department about the poor sanitary conditions there. The tents were so overcrowded, he said, that the residents were forced to share beds. The crowding was causing illness, especially as some of the residents did not maintain adequate personal hygiene. He was not happy with the meals served either; he believed they should be modified so as to strengthen the immigrants and improve their physical condition. A doctor from Hadassah who visited also saw problems: “Nowhere in the immigrant home are there warnings or rules of hygiene informing the new immigrants how to eat or drink, how to protect against the sun’s rays, etc.” Furthermore, there was no dedicated infirmary room, bathhouse, or “lavatories meeting hygienic requirements”; there were no laundry facilities; “and towels are not given to each and every individual.”113 According to another report, the lavatories had “only two cubicles, one for men and one for women. This is too little. It is essential for another two cubicles to be set up.” The lavatory was “arranged in a primitive fashion,” with jugs under the seat. “An Arab comes every day, removes the full jugs, and pours them out ‘far away.’ But where is this faraway place? I couldn’t get an answer to this, neither from the doctor nor from the young man who gave me the explanations.” The author of the report was surprised “that when beautiful, comfortable buildings were built, there was no supervision by the doctor or else he wasn’t consulted, and for that reason they didn’t make sure to follow the rules for a proper lavatory.”114

The overcrowding in the immigrant homes in Haifa and Jaffa sometimes led to clashes and violence. For example, Gordon described a fight between immigrants from Russia and Poland over the language spoken in the immigrant home:

Moreover, there is no room for all these immigrants and nowhere to meet. As a result, the cultural campaign for languages and familiarization with the country is not feasible. I speak from experience when I say that here in Jaffa there have been fights between Polish and Russian immigrants over the Poles’ hatred of the “Muscovites” and the Russians’ [hatred] of the Poles. And that was just because these spoke only Russian whereas those [spoke] only Polish. Furthermore, people came to my office complaining about the behavior of many young people in the streets. . . . There are a lot of different elements whom we don’t even know and who don’t belong to any group or any party or any association.115

Battalion for the Defence of the Language was upset by all the languages spoken in the immigrant homes and asked the Aliya Department for permission to offer the newcomers evening classes in Hebrew.116 The haredi community in Haifa wrote to Shvueli noting that haredi families were coming to Palestine and requesting permission “to post notices in the lodgings about our institutions here, since a large proportion of these immigrants have children.”117 But the haredim and the Battalion for the Defence of the Language were not the only ones who recognized the potential inherent in the immigrant homes as closed, bounded places where efforts could be made to shape and influence the immigrants’ worldview; the Communists also sought to add them to their ranks.

During a visit to the local immigrant home, the director of the Haifa aliya bureau found in its yard “gangs of immigrants having a heated argument on various issues. Emissaries of the SWP are the most vocal.” In a letter to the Aliya Department, he wrote, “We cannot prevent outsiders from entering the courtyard as long as there is no gate to the courtyard and anyone can enter freely. . . . Regrettably, good young people are falling into the SWP’s trap because they are getting a description of the country and living conditions from only one source—the SWP.”118 He suggested having representatives of the General Federation of Jewish Labour’s Culture Committee and others address the immigrants on various topics. “However, neither the Labor Department nor the Culture Committee has responded to my letters. Meanwhile, 194 immigrants in the immigrant home in Haifa are spending their evenings idle and bored.”119

The managers of the immigrant homes faced additional difficulties as well. In some cases, troublesome, undisciplined residents refused to leave the homes, and people who had received loans from the Aliya Department to help them start out in their new country either disappeared or left the country without repaying the debt. “I hereby draw your attention,” the director of the Haifa aliya bureau wrote to the Aliya Department in Jerusalem, “to the fact that recently halutzim have come into the immigrant home with exceptionally rude, strange, and wild behavior.” They refused to obey the rules and caused difficulties for the staff. “From their very first day in the immigrant home, they tried to provoke all sorts of scandals by not submitting to the fixed schedules in the immigrant home. . . . And they started waging a campaign in the immigrant home not to go out to work as part of the group, not to submit to schedules, and not to make their beds (they insisted that the workers who get paid a salary should do this).”120

These uncontrollable halutzim simply refused to go to work. In their opinion, the work was not suited to their skills, so they stirred up the other halutzim against the immigrant home staff. “It should be noted that a representative of the Shimron group in Hadera came here wanting to take ten people to work, but out of 120 people neither he nor a representative of the aliya center could obtain the consent of more than two people.” They gave various original excuses for refusing to go to work: they had not been offered suitable jobs; “Keren Hayesod [had] enough money” to support them “for a while longer until [they] were able to make arrangements as [they] wished”; and the wages being offered were not enough for them to send money back home. The fact that the immigrant home was not emptying out caused crowding and hindered the absorption of more recent immigrants. Since forcible evictions were not an option, the director of the Haifa aliya bureau had no choice but to threaten “that they would not be accepted as members of the General Federation of Labour if they continued their strange behavior.”121 The solution found in the end was “to give those engaged in scandalous behavior a loan of 250 Egyptian grush each and expel them from the immigrant home.” The SWP was suspected of having incited them against Zionism.

Another problem had to do with the repayment of loans immigrants received from the aliya bureau to help them in their new lives in Palestine. Many borrowers had their own means but lied about their finances in order to qualify for loans and then used the money to pay for passage on a ship leaving the country. “Many people, as soon as they set foot in Palestine, want to enjoy the people’s money.” As soon as they received the money, they would disappear or purchase tickets to return to their countries of origin. The proposed solution was to insist that borrowers’ deposit their passports; however, it turned out “that a person’s passport is a personal document under the basic laws of countries with an enlightened political regime” and could not be confiscated.122

From these descriptions it seems that the aliya bureau directors and staffs had to contend with troublesome immigrants, even among those described as “halutzim.” Some were aggressive and violent; others were exploitative liars. People with various agendas also intervened in the routine in the immigrant homes, taking advantage of the closed compound to influence the residents ideologically. On the one hand, the Battalion for the Defence of the Language sought to offer evening courses in Hebrew; on the other, the Communists tried to enroll them in their party’s struggle against the British and Zionism.

The immigrant homes were also criticized by certain circles in the Yishuv who believed that the costs were too high and that renting houses would suffice. “The extent to which there is no real concern for the public purse is attested to in part by the creation of the ‘camp,’” wrote Hapoel Hatzair editor Yosef Aharonovich:

This “genius idea,” too, seems to have been conceived mainly because it was necessary to occupy some office workers who were bored with nothing to do. And then on August 1, that is, when it was almost winter, they started establishing a tent camp for the immigrants on the shore, despite what they could have known in advance but no one mentioned: that this “camp” would be unusable in the winter. The “camp” building was completed in the middle of September and cost close to 2000 pounds. . . . But can the creators of this camp please state honestly: Did they have nothing else to do than spend 2000 pounds on a camp for a few months, when for much of this time the tents would stand empty with no one to live in them? Was it impossible to find apartments for less, even at Tel Aviv prices?123

But the criticism of the immigrant homes was unjustified. It was not good for the immigrants to stay in hotels and rented apartments in Jaffa and Tel Aviv, and the service they received there was poor. Zvi Livneh described it in his memoirs: “Gradually it became clear that housing the immigrants in hotels was not a satisfactory arrangement.” He stated that the hotel owners were eager “to make as much money as possible. They crowded people in and even set up beds in the corridors, and they were not careful about clean bedding and food provisions.” He added that not all the hotels “lived up to their commitment to provide complete, tasty meals” and that, most importantly, “scattering the immigrants in several places had a detrimental effect.” Livneh also reported that the newcomers had been placed in various hotels in Neve Shalom and Tel Aviv and that on several occasions “SWP people and simply bitter people in the hotels have slandered the Yishuv institutions and what has been created in Palestine to the new immigrants.” This had “motivated the aliya activists to think about independent institutions for room and board that would be less expensive and cleaner, and would create an intimate, encouraging atmosphere among the immigrants.”124

A Doar Hayom reporter who visited the aliya bureau summed up the work of the aliya bureaus and immigrant homes in Jaffa and Haifa and their contribution to immigrant absorption in Palestine. He recognized the importance and impact of the staff’s dedication:

Altogether, this bureau contains a director and five workers, including a janitor and a yardman. The work they do is as follows: meeting the immigrants on every ship, [assisting] with document inspection, disembarking the people and their belongings and taking them to the city, taking them through customs and disinfection, keeping precise records of the individuals who come (single immigrants, people with families, and tourists as well); paying all the expenses entailed by this as well as the government tax, settling accounts with each immigrant, and, in order to expedite matters, helping with the government registration; handling the removal of the belongings from the disinfection house and handing them over to their owners under proper supervision; setting up some of the newcomers in hotels where the bureau oversees cleaning and ensures that prices aren’t raised. Those who come without means are taken to the lodgings, where they stay until they find work; until then they provide them with room and board.125

But helping the immigrants on their first day in the country was not the only job of the immigrant homes. They were intended to “control” the traffic of immigrants, keeping them there and then releasing them gradually to strike roots in the new land only after they had found places to live and jobs. The directors of the aliya bureaus were afraid that the job market would be flooded with new jobseekers and that British government officials would voice criticism regarding the country’s limited economic absorptive capacity and refuse to admit large numbers of Jews. “Thus maintenance in the camps is considered a means of diluting, albeit artificially, the arrival of new workers. Otherwise they would necessarily affect the daily job market in such a way that the arrival of each ship would be noticeable outside by a sudden, unnatural, and therefore catastrophic increase in unemployed persons.”126

In the early 1920s, new work procedures began to take shape in preparation for integration of the immigrants arriving in Palestine after World War I. At first the Provisional Committee for the Jews of Palestine assumed responsibility for handling immigration issues and even established a special subcommittee for it. An aliya bureau was established in Jaffa, headed by Menachem Sheinkin, and more aliya bureaus were established in coastal cities near Palestine. After the Zionist Congress in Carlsbad, it was decided that the Zionist Organization would take over the handling of immigration, and the organization established the Aliya Department headed by Professor Hermann Pick. Everything to do with immigration to Palestine was the bureau’s responsibility. The three Palestine aliya bureaus—in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem—were subordinate to the Aliya Department, and their directors—Joshua Gordon, Levi Shvueli, and Ze’ev Leibowitz, respectively—were put in charge of implementing the Zionist immigration policy and taking care of the immigrants.

Entering Palestine, from the inspection of travel papers until disinfection and the stay in the immigrant home, gave the newcomers a glimpse of the life that awaited them in their new country: confrontations with British immigration officials; criticism of the aliya bureaus for not doing enough for them and the feeling that they deserved better because they had come to Palestine; complaints about disinfection, quarantine, long queues, and the long, exhausting, frustrating admission procedure; and finally, the highly charged encounter with local Arabs who were incensed by their arrival. This is how the Jewish immigrants began their lives in their new land.

One of the main difficulties for the aliya bureau was dealing with those immigrants who had become a burden on the Zionist institutions. Not everyone who came was an ideological pioneer spreading the Zionist creed, draining swamps, and making the wilderness bloom. Among the tens of thousands of newcomers were also immigrants who could do nothing to build up the country: frail old people, disabled people, physically or mentally ill people and carriers of disease (including sexually transmitted diseases), thugs, criminals, and others who regarded Palestine as no more than a default option and who in many cases wanted to go back to their native lands. The heads of the aliya bureau vacillated and fought frequently over whether to send back to Europe Jews whose contribution to the Zionist enterprise was marginal or even negative or whether to let them stay in Palestine and cope with the difficulties of their absorption.

Often the encounter with the Arab population turned out to be traumatic for the Jewish newcomers. Arab boatmen helped them off the ships into rowboats, watched over their belongings during the disinfection and medical examinations, and were part of the medical staff in the quarantine camp and hospitals. The immigrants had lots of complaints against the Arabs: irresponsible and unprofessional handling of their luggage, which often fell into the sea and sank into the depths; theft of belongings from luggage that had been left unattended; inappropriate treatment by Arab medical staff; and more. The local Arabs often demonstrated on the shores of Haifa and Jaffa against the entry of Jews into Palestine. It was a frigid welcome for the exhausted Jewish immigrants, who heard invective and curses in Arabic denouncing their arrival even before they set foot on the country’s shores.

Although the aliya bureau helped the immigrants enter the country and even took care of them in their first days after arrival, the Mandatory government oversaw the entry procedure and had the power to approve or reject people. Immigration regulations were issued, travel papers were inspected by British immigration officials on board the ship, medical examinations were conducted, a quarantine camp for the sick was set up, and the passengers’ luggage and clothes were disinfected. For the first time in history, entry into the country was orderly and organized.

The shapers of the immigration and entry procedure took Ellis Island as a successful model to be emulated: a meticulous medical examination, appropriate travel papers, and registration of those entering and leaving the country. Nevertheless, despite the similarities between the procedures for entering the United States and Palestine, there was one fundamental, conspicuous difference: in Palestine, there was someone offering intensive assistance to immigrants and taking care of their problems. In a lecture on arrangements for immigration to Palestine, Joshua Gordon stated, “Every passenger, upon arrival in an unfamiliar country, needs assistance and advice . . . especially if the country to which the person is coming is totally different in its customs and institutions from most of the countries with which he is familiar.”127 To help newcomers integrate in the society around them, numerous private organizations had been established that took care of them and offered them a hand. In general, these organizations were founded by people who had immigrated earlier and were thoroughly familiar with the new country.

In the context of Palestine, Gordon said in his lecture, the situation is different due to the expectations Jewish immigrants had of the Zionist movement and Palestine. They regarded the new country as their home and themselves as the homeowners; as soon as they arrived, they made demands and filed complaints if they didn’t get what they wanted. “In all countries, whether they are immigration countries or not, there are therefore institutions to help foreigners coming to the country. In addition, residents or immigrants who came before establish special societies to protect the new immigrants’ interests, and if necessary even to protect them from the government.” In Palestine, in contrast, the Ashkenazi Jewish community was not taking part in the absorption of their countrymen at all. Responsibility for immigrant absorption fell on the shoulders of the Zionist Executive, and the local Jewish society was not doing its share: “It suffices to cross the Egyptian border and see that in Alexandria, Cairo, and Port Said there are special societies from the communities that take care of immigrants to Egypt and even those going to Palestine. Even in our country, all the ethnic groups other than the Ashkenazim—the Persians, the Yemenites, the Maghrebis, and so on—take care of immigrants from their community more or less by themselves. The Ashkenazi community is almost the only one that has thrown off this burden and left it entirely to the Zionist Executive.”128

Just as American Jewish aid organizations (some of them discussed in the first chapter) helped immigrants to the United States and local Jewish communities did likewise in other countries, Gordon believed it was the Yishuv’s duty and not just the Zionist Executive’s responsibility to help with immigrant absorption in Palestine. This was the main difference between immigration to Palestine and to other countries, including the United States. Those who went to Palestine expected the Zionist movement to help them settle in. It would help them find a place to live, earn a living, recover their health, and even leave the country if they decided they no longer wanted to stay. When the immigrants’ expectations were dashed, even partially, they felt frustrated and betrayed and complained to the aliya bureau and the settlement institutions. The Zionist movement, for its part, tried to safeguard their journey to Palestine from the initial stage of decision-making at the Palestine Offices in Europe to their arrival on the shores of Palestine, but it could not satisfy all their expectations. The resultant tension and unpleasantness between the immigrants and the institutions in Palestine would be manifested throughout the rest of their lives in the country.