Chapter 3 The Gates Open

The Regulation of Immigration: First Steps

The repatriated Jews who had been deported from Palestine or simply stranded outside the country during World War I and the immigrants who arrived in 1919 found a Jewish community that was licking its war wounds. Because its organized structure had collapsed, the community had a very hard time absorbing them.1 But the reality of thirty-eight hundred Jews entering the country in that year could not be ignored; guidance was needed to regulate and organize immigration. The leaders of the Zionist movement believed that immigration must not be left to local or spontaneous initiatives; instead, the movement had to prepare for and control it. The issue of organizing and overseeing immigration to Palestine was addressed in a postwar Zionist conference that took place in February and March 1919. There, Zionist Organization representatives who were able to reach London resolved to establish an aliya department and a network of Palestine Offices that would deal with applications for immigration throughout the Jewish world, mainly in eastern Europe but also in Palestine.2 In June 1919, an official announcement was sent out to all Zionist organizations about the establishment of an aliya department under the auspices of the Central Zionist Office in London. According to the announcement, the department intended to open aliya bureaus in the countries of origin of Jewish immigration, establish information bureaus to provide Jews interested in going to Palestine with up-to-date information about the journey and about living conditions in Palestine, and to negotiate with the shipping and cargo transport companies regarding conditions on the voyage.3

The Provisional Committee for the Jews of Palestine took responsibility for organizing immigration, in cooperation with the Zionist Commission for Palestine. During the Ottoman period, no orderly records had been kept on people entering the country; immigrants had been given no guidance in advance, so the Zionist institutions had had difficulty helping them settle in and deal with the hardships. In contrast, under the British military regime, an official policy was developed for the admission of immigrants, as was customary in modern immigration countries; the policy included recordkeeping on people entering and leaving the country, ties with shipping companies, medical exams in the countries of origin and in Palestine, cargo handling procedures, immigrant houses for the newcomers to stay in initially, and dispersal around the country.

The Provisional Committee sought to establish an orderly admission procedure in Palestine resembling the one on Ellis Island in the United States. The immigration station on Ellis Island, located in the Hudson River estuary between Manhattan and New Jersey, had opened on January 1, 1892. Previously, immigrants had been processed at Castle Garden in Battery Park (Manhattan) and given permission to enter the city from there. The increase in the volume of immigration, however, was hard for immigration officials in New York to cope with and forced US immigration authorities to find another solution. Ellis Island was chosen partly for its physical proximity to Manhattan but also because it was separate from it. After passenger ships anchored in Manhattan, the first- and second-class passengers disembarked and entered the country with no inspection or processing. Third- and fourth-class passengers waited for ferries to take them to Ellis Island, where they began the procedure for entering New York. From the day Ellis Island opened until it closed in 1954, 12 million people passed through it. Immigration officials, with the help of interpreters, asked the newcomers about their family status and employment, their age, their former place of residence and their destination in the new land, their height, their physical condition, and their state of health. From 1899 they were also asked about their ethnicity. Immigrants who had not completed the entry procedure spent the night there, and those who fell ill were hospitalized and given medical treatment. Only 2 percent of immigrants were sent back to their countries of origin.4

When the leadership started thinking about a registration and admission procedure for people entering Palestine, their intention was to adopt the Ellis Island model. On December 21, 1918, the Provisional Committee for the Jews of Palestine convened in the auditorium of the School for Girls in Jaffa to start preparing for general elections in the Yishuv.5 Representatives of Moshavot Yehuda, the Jaffa community board, the ICA, Hapoel Hatzair, Poalei Zion, Hashomer, and the Teachers’ Center, “representatives of Hanikhei Herzliya, representatives of the national democratic clubs in Petah Tikva, Rishon Lezion, and Nes Ziona, and members of the organizing committee” took part.6

In their meetings, the Provisional Committee addressed various aspects of the postwar rebuilding of the Yishuv, including regulation of immigration and preparations for it. On April 24, 1919—a month after the Zionist conference in London—the Provisional Committee resolved to establish an “immigration council” (referring to it as hagira—“immigration”—and not aliya) comprising Israel Shochat (Ahdut ha-Avoda), Menashe Meirowitz (Moshavot Yehuda), Michael Erlich (Center for Skilled Tradesmen), Rachel Grazovsky (Women’s Association), and Nachum Tversky (Hapoel Hatzair).7

About a month later, the immigration council met to discuss anticipated difficulties and ways of resolving them. Its decisions were of great importance, as they laid the foundations for immigrant absorption throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The participants specified the assistance period for newly arrived immigrants (up to seven days for singles; up to ten days for families); resolved to establish aliya bureaus in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem; considered disembarkation arrangements, including a contract with the Arab boat owners, employment terms for Jewish stevedores, and the disembarkation fee; and discussed the establishment of a shelter for immigrants’ first few days, operation of a kitchen for them, and assistance with job hunting.8

At another meeting a few days later, the council’s areas of activity were delineated. Henceforth the immigration council would be responsible for all aspects of immigration to Palestine and would convene every Tuesday afternoon.9 Immigrants would be offered financial assistance in the form of loans (if they could be expected to repay them) or gifts (when there was no chance of repayment). The loans would be distributed from a loan fund at the discretion of two representatives of the immigration council, who would determine each immigrant’s financial status and likelihood of repaying the loan. They decided to postpone discussing which immigrants were desirable until a special meeting to which the heads of the agriculture and industry departments would be invited.10

At one meeting of the immigration council, it was reported that a twenty-three-room house had been found near the Jaffa shore where immigrants could be housed. The council stated, “Obtaining a house for the immigrants is one of the most vital needs. When the exiles from Jaffa arrived from Egypt, there was no house to put them in, and the few homes obtained were expensive.”11 Opening the immigrants’ house in Jaffa was the first step taken in the 1920s toward offering newcomers decent, spacious housing; additional buildings were subsequently found in Jaffa, Haifa, and Jerusalem. These houses were managed meticulously and in an orderly manner during the Mandate period: immigrants were registered, loans were issued, and efforts were made to help the immigrants settle in and find jobs in the cities and villages.

The meeting that would address the desirability of certain categories of immigrants was scheduled for the middle of June 1919. By then a significant number of immigrants had already arrived, and the immigration council was asked its opinion on what sort of immigrants the Yishuv needed. No dramatic decisions were made at this meeting; from the discussion it seems that this was a highly sensitive topic and that the council was not equipped to take a position on the matter. “We discussed what type of immigrant is desirable for the country. This question is currently important because certain answers are needed to questions being asked abroad in this regard. It is therefore essential to determine what lines of work new immigrants can be employed in. On the other hand, it is impossible to give a clear-cut answer. Moreover, the present conditions—both political and economic—are not permanent, so it is not yet possible to determine the country’s true needs and to draw conclusions based on current wages and needs in Palestine. Certain decisions were not made.”12

This discussion was one of the first held after World War I on this sensitive topic, which continued to occupy the Zionist movement and the State of Israel for many years. Although nothing was decided at the meeting, it was clear to the council members that mass immigration should not be allowed and that immigration should be guided by the absorptive capacity of the country and the needs of the Yishuv. It should be noted that the immigration council did not have the authority to decide such a sensitive issue, but its members were certain of the need for a decisive, official immigration policy that would encourage able-bodied people to settle in Palestine. A few months later, the Zionist Executive would claim full authority over immigration to Palestine and would set immigration policy.

The uncertainty regarding the type of immigrant needed to build up the land was nothing new for the Zionist movement. Between 1882 and 1914, approximately sixty thousand Jews arrived in Palestine; only a small minority were Zionists who chose to come for reasons other than being pushed out of their countries of origin. Due to the objective limitations on mass absorption of immigrants, the leaders of the Zionist movement and immigration policymakers were compelled to decide what sort of Jewish immigrants were desirable.13 In his article “Derekh La’avor Golim” (The path of exiles), written in the early days of the First Aliya, Moshe Leib Lilienblum wrote, “When rousing people to settle the country, we think only of the wealthy, who can pay in full for property and prepare all the instruments at their own expense. The poor, however, have no place in Palestine.”14 Menachem Sheinkin, head of the Hovevei Zion information bureau in Jaffa in the early 1920s, and Arthur Ruppin, director of the Palestine Office, begged Jews not to come to Palestine unless they had the means to support themselves.

This dilemma led to a selective immigration policy that gave preference to people with capital and young, able-bodied olim over older, destitute immigrants. The country’s inability to take in every Jew who wanted to come evoked a moral debate in the Zionist movement on the good of the people versus the good of the country. Those who gave precedence to the good of the people advocated mass immigration to Palestine in order to save the Jews physically and spiritually. In contrast, those who favored the good of the country maintained that Palestine could not, within a short time, absorb the masses of Jews who wanted to go there, and therefore they preferred people with capital or the young and able-bodied over poor or disabled immigrants who would contribute little to the Yishuv.

Sheinkin’s involvement in immigration affairs and the information bureau were the main reasons for his appointment as head of the Zionist Commission’s aliya bureau in Tel Aviv.15 During World War I, Sheinkin had been deported from Palestine and had gone to the United States. When the war ended, he returned to Palestine. There was no better candidate to head the aliya bureau at the time. Sheinkin understood not only the importance of ensuring orderly, organized immigration but also the need to determine what sort of immigrants were needed for settling Palestine.

In early February 1920, Sheinkin was officially appointed head of the Tel Aviv aliya bureau. In a letter to the Zionist Organization, he announced, “The Central Bureau of Immigrant Affairs has been established here in Jaffa by the Zionist Commission for Palestine, and I am honored to head it. We have branches in Jerusalem, Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, and Beirut.”16 He said he would send out his bureau’s detailed plans soon. In addition, he asked the Zionist Organization for up-to-date, accurate information about the number of people setting out for Palestine and whether they were poor or wealthy. Along with precise recordkeeping on people leaving and entering the country, Sheinkin tried to institute an orderly procedure for the entry of immigrants.

In the near future we will send you [the following items] for those traveling to Palestine:

1. Slips of paper to paste onto the belongings in order to distinguish between hand luggage that the passenger must take with him . . . when leaving the ship and bring to the hotel (these parcels will generally not be inspected in the customs house unless some passengers abuse this and embarrass us), and large items of baggage, which we will take from the ship to our storerooms on shore in special boats, and which the passengers can receive once they have rested a bit from the journey.
2. Lists of immigrants on which each passenger will write the number and sort of packages that he has with him on the ship, [and] what is in the packages: clothing, underwear, housewares, merchandise, and so on. . . . This will be very helpful in facilitating and expediting the arrival of passengers and belongings in an orderly, dignified manner befitting returnees to Zion rather than panic-stricken immigrants.17

For the first time in the history of immigration to Palestine, the disembarkation procedure would be regulated, with the newcomers being informed what baggage they could take with them and what they should leave on the ship for the stevedores. The order and discipline at the entrance to Palestine had additional significance as well, aside from merely increasing efficiency. For Sheinkin, they were a means of giving their arrival an ideological, national character and turning the panic-stricken immigrants into olim. Meanwhile, Sheinkin started establishing aliya bureaus in the port cities where the ships docked on the way: Beirut, Alexandria, Port Said, and Sidon. These bureaus were of great importance because many immigrants who headed for Palestine were forced to travel via those cities and arrange for travel documents with the British consuls there: “Here those who have no visa from the British consul are not permitted to enter,” Sheinkin wrote to the Zionist Organization. “They disembark in Beirut and after extensive efforts they obtain permits to come to Haifa or the Upper Galilee overland. We have now arranged for an aliya committee in Beirut with a paid official. The official is Mr. Trifon, a hard-working young man who is acceptable to the French and English authorities there.”18

The purpose of the aliya committee in Beirut was to help with arrangements for the Jews who were arriving en masse in the port cities of Egypt and Lebanon. These people had become a burden on the local Jewish communities, which were trying with great difficulty to assist them and resolve their problems. “During this time I have managed to see and observe the disorder in the aliya committees in Sidon and Beirut,” Trifon wrote to Sheinkin. “People come to Sidon and spend weeks staying on the synagogue floors, suffering from cold and hunger. The carters take however much they want for transporting them to Haifa or bringing them from Beirut. There is no one to take care of this and get involved. The same is true in Beirut. People come and the boat owners rob them, steal their belongings, and take them wherever they want.”19

Trifon reported to Sheinkin that while in Sidon and Beirut, he had sent Jewish immigrants to Palestine “by various means: on horseback over the mountains, via Tyre, and many by ship.”20 His reports strongly reinforce the argument that the number of immigrants who arrived in Palestine during the period of the military regime was much greater than reported by the Zionist Commission’s information bureau because many entered the country by land and were not counted or included in the records.

Due to the immigrants’ hardship and the need to help them out, the Jewish community board in Beirut established an aliya committee: “We are hereby honored to inform you [Sheinkin] that, at its last meeting, the board in the city of Beirut discussed the aliya plan proposed in your aforementioned letter and decided to appoint a special committee to handle the affairs of immigrants in our city. . . . This committee, composed of people who are dedicated to the idea, will be in touch with you directly on all matters concerning aliya.”21 To help immigrants who had reached Beirut and Sidon, Trifon suggested to Sheinkin three essential steps: finding a house for the immigrants “furnished for at least 25 people”; appointing a representative of the Zionist Commission to board ships anchored in Sidon and Beirut, “put [the passengers] in boats with their belongings, transport them to the house, and try to send them on right away by any means”; and renting a permanent office in the city so that “those passing through know where to go and do not spend days at the doors of the members of the city board.”22

In addition to the information bureau in Beirut, the Zionist Organization made sure to establish one in Alexandria, an important port and way station for Jewish immigrants en route to Palestine from the port of Trieste. In early June 1920, the Zionist Commission wrote to Zionist Organization headquarters, announcing the establishment of a combination information and aliya bureau. The monthly budget that the Zionist Organization made available to the bureaus in Egypt was very small—not enough for the Alexandria bureau to take care of the immigrants efficiently and quickly. Zionist Commission chair Menachem Ussishkin therefore proposed that the wealthy Jewish community of Alexandria help out: “Regarding your letter in which you ask us to allocate 15 Egyptian pounds a month to support this bureau, attached is a comment by Mr. Ussishkin saying that in his opinion the Alexandria community is wealthy enough to provide for the needs of the bureau and that for now we should just maintain the Cairo bureau at our expense.”23

After the Arab riots of 1921 and the temporary suspension of immigration to Palestine, Alexandria became a bottleneck, as hundreds of immigrants arrived there and were unable to continue on to Palestine. The information bureau had no choice but to find a shelter for those stranded in the city. The bureau secretary wrote to the Zionist Commission asking for its consent to establish a “pioneers’ home,” where immigrants would stay until they could sail for Palestine.

We hereby confirm receipt of your letter of June 19, 1921, regarding the pioneers’ home in our city. The halutzim here are costing us a lot. We are paying 6 pounds a day per person for a hotel and tea, and this does not include food, which is still not organized for want of a pioneers’ home. In our previous letter we therefore advised you to look into this matter. We have found a two-story house in Miharem Bey; it has eight large rooms and open space around the house. This house can hold 150–200 halutzim and will cost us 180 pounds a year in rent. We hereby advise you to arrange for a pioneers’ home in our city because, as we know, it is currently impossible to send large groups of halutzim to Palestine. . . . Most of them will have to wait here a while for a ship in order to continue on to Palestine. In order to minimize the high cost, we advise you to look into this matter and arrange for a pioneers’ home in our city as soon as possible.24

We do not know how the Zionist Commission responded to the initiative, but the idea of establishing a “pioneers’ home” in Alexandria was just one of the ideas for assistance suggested during the period of the military regime (some of which were put into practice). By the time Herbert Samuel arrived in the summer of 1920 to assume the office of high commissioner, there was an organized system of aliya bureaus in Palestine and the nearby coastal cities to welcome the immigrants and help them settle in. Within a relatively short time—from the end of the war until the establishment of the civil administration—the Provisional Committee’s immigration council managed, despite the many difficulties, to create a modern system suited to receiving the immigrants; this system was further developed and improved in the 1920s and 1930s, as we shall see in the coming chapters.

Immigration to Palestine during the Period of the Military Regime

Under the military regime (1919–June 1920), both Jews and non-Jews immigrated to Palestine. We do not have complete data on the entry of non-Jews, but from the limited documentation available, it seems that Arabs who had left Palestine due to the war returned when this became possible. In this sense the Arab exiles were no different from the Jews who had been deported from Palestine and returned at the first opportunity.

Concerned about the return of the Arab exiles, the Zionist Executive in London asked the Zionist Commission for accurate data: “Recently (in late August of this year [1919]) you started to send us, at our request, a list of non-Jewish immigrants as well. We are exceedingly grateful to you for this, because these lists are now especially essential to us.”25 It is not clear what was “especially essential” about them; however, the letter gives the impression that the Zionist Executive was concerned that mass Arab immigration to Palestine might hinder realization of the Balfour Declaration and wanted to prepare for this possibility: “The evidence from the lists that you obtained, according to which 80–90 percent of all non-Jewish immigrants are exiles who have now returned to their homeland, seems somewhat dubious to us. The proofs of this detail leave a great deal of room for seeing the applicants for entry permits. We would like to know your opinion on this matter.”26 To provide the Zionist Executive with the desired information, an official working on behalf of the Zionist Commission sat in the port of Jaffa and kept records of people entering Palestine.

According to estimates, fifty-four hundred Jews and Arabs entered Palestine from the beginning of the military regime period until High Commissioner Herbert Samuel arrived. Presumably, the true numbers are much higher because the available data is for Jaffa only, whereas people also entered the country through Haifa port and overland; however, the Zionist Commission did not record those people.

As stated, most of the non-Jews who entered Palestine were Arabs who had been abroad and returned when the war was over. They were mostly merchants, some of them petty merchants, who had spent the war years in the United States, South America, or Europe. Only 10 percent of the 420 Arabs who arrived at Jaffa port between March and July were immigrants; the others were returnees.27 Half were young and about 8 percent were children. Between August 17 and 19, 1919, sixty-four immigrants arrived by ship from Beirut and Alexandria, half of them merchants coming from South America (Argentina, Brazil, and Chile). According to the records, all were Palestine residents who had lived in villages near Jaffa and Jerusalem before the war.28 On August 28 and 29, another 151 Arab exiles arrived in Jaffa port. Ninety percent of them had spent the war in America working in commerce and skilled trades. In September and October 1919, about 80 percent of the Arabs who entered Palestine via Jaffa port were petty merchants from Bethlehem returning from America. All the others were women and children coming from Beirut and Egypt for short visits.29

The extraordinary story of one halutz, Shlomo Zacharin, offers additional evidence regarding the return of the Arab exiles to Palestine. In his memoirs, Zacharin recounts that when he reached the age of military service in 1913, he was unsure whether to move to Palestine or visit his brother in one of Baron Hirsch’s colonies in Argentina. He arrived in Argentina a few months before the outbreak of World War I and was stranded there until the end of the war. To obtain an immigration certificate to Palestine, he posed as a Palestine-born Arab, paid the membership fee for a Muslim association in Argentina, and received a document attesting that he was a returning exile. In February 1919, Zacharin sailed from La Plata to France, but due to a shortage of ships in Marseilles, he roamed around the port city with nothing to do. “After we had wandered the streets of Marseilles for about two weeks, it occurred to one of our men, an Arabic speaker, to take advantage of our Arab brothers who had found themselves in Marseilles during and before the war and had been stranded there with no hope of returning to Syria. There were about 80 of them, most of them out of work and destitute.”30 Zacharin and his friends organized a demonstration together with Arabs who wanted to return home; together, they tried to exert pressure on the municipality to find them a solution to their plight. “Their job was to shout and make as much noise as possible in the offices at Marseilles city hall, a job they did perfectly. After a few such demonstrations, which prevented the municipal officials from being able to work, the city of Marseilles decided to get rid of them no matter what.”31 Finally, the city obtained permission for them to leave for Beirut, and Zacharin was able to immigrate to Palestine along with the Arabs. Some of them disembarked in Beirut—others, like him, in Jaffa.

Studies of immigration to Palestine at the beginning of the Mandate period do not give reliable immigration figures for 1919. In the Statistical Abstract of Palestine, David Gurevich, the statistician of the Zionist Executive, writes that 806 people arrived in the country in 1919, 670 of them on the ship Ruslan.32 The demographer Moshe Sicron, in contrast, states that immigration that year totaled 1,806.33 Baruch Ben-Avram and Henry Near maintain that Sicron’s figure originates in a misprint, since Gurevich’s figure of 806 immigrants is based on monthly immigration rates.34 Gurevich explains that the aliya figures from September 1919 until the end of 1934 are based on records from the aliya bureaus in Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem, where all Jews entering the country were recorded on cards containing their particulars: sex, age, family status, nationality, last country of residence, and occupation.35 Because some immigrants arrived before the aliya bureaus opened in September 1919, however, Gurevich’s statistics are incomplete and therefore inaccurate.

Table 3.1 shows that the number of Jews who entered Palestine in 1919 and the first six months of 1920 is estimated at 3,815—at least twice that of Arabs. Most of the non-Jewish arrivals were Arab exiles returning to their villages. In contrast, only 1,200 of the Jews were exiles; the others were all immigrants and refugees. “The following numbers refer mainly to the immigration of Jews via the coast of Jaffa, as well as some of those who disembarked in Haifa (about 60 people),” reported the Zionist Commission’s Department of Statistics and Information, “and 1,220 returning exiles who came from Egypt by train (740 to Jaffa and 480 to Jerusalem). But we have no figures on those who entered the country by train via Egypt or via the shores of Beirut.”36 Moreover, Jewish immigration to Palestine in 1919 exceeded not only Arab immigration to Palestine but even Jewish immigration to the United States.

Source: CZA, L2, file 231; Yediot ha-Mahlaka le-Statistika ule-Informatsia [News of the Department of Statistics and Information], July 30, 1920.

The demographics of immigrants entering Palestine during the period of the military regime suggests that they were not halutzim: 58 percent were men and 42 percent were women; 31 percent were children up to age fourteen; 61 percent were aged fifteen to fifty-nine; and 8 percent were aged sixty or over. More than 72 percent were married, 17 percent were single, and the rest were widowed, divorced, or orphans.37 The descriptions of the newcomers in the press at the time confirm the conclusions that emerge from the statistical analyses. Many of them did not conform to the definition of halutzim; instead, they were ordinary immigrants, who sometimes arrived without prior planning and may have gone to Palestine as a default. Yitzhak Lufban, editor of the newspaper Hapoel Hatzair, described immigration to Palestine after the British “cannon fire” had augured “a new political era for the country and Zionism”:

This we know and the olim also know: they have been called on to be pioneers, to immigrate under poor conditions and with no guarantees. They have been called on to be volunteers, doing hard work that pays little and whose yields are not particularly noticeable, but whose national principal is unequaled and enduring and whose cost is outweighed by the gain. This was the aim of this aliya, which began in dire straits. But it was not always possible to achieve this aim in full; it was not always possible to select the human material with precision. Non-halutzic elements were swept along by the current—refugees from the Polish draft and ordinary people fleeing economic hardship in eastern Europe, who basically don’t care whether they go to Palestine, America, or some other land of refuge. Obviously these people are not ineligible to be in the country; but under the present conditions of volunteer work that requires immigrants to make sacrifices and make do with little, they cannot cope.38

The Ruslan

The historiography of the Yishuv and aliya regards the Ruslan as the ship that heralded the onset of immigration to Palestine after World War I. The ship anchored in Jaffa on December 19, 1919, with roughly 670 passengers on board. Most were refugees from the civil war in Ukraine or Jews who had been deported from Palestine. Some were halutzim and Zionist activists coming to build up Palestine; they included prominent public figures such as Dr. Joseph Klausner, Moshe Glueckson, the poet Rachel Bluwstein, Rosa “Red Rosa” Cohen, and Dr. Baruch Nissenbaum. The impending arrival of these well-known Zionists evoked excitement and interest in the Yishuv.

On November 27, 1919, at the height of the civil war in Ukraine, the Ruslan sailed from Odessa for Palestine. News of the ship’s imminent departure made waves among Russian Jewry: “From all over the country, many families started streaming to Odessa, having heard the rumor about mass immigration to Palestine. The Zionist activists were faced with the difficult, tragic duty of explaining to those hoping to emigrate that the Ruslan was just the first swallow and was not yet bringing spring in its wings.”39

The migration of the ship’s passengers was made possible thanks to residents of Palestine who had settled in the Black Sea port city of Odessa during World War I. Some of them were merchants who had gone there on business and had been stranded by the war and the closure of maritime routes; others were refugees—primarily from Safed and Tiberias—fleeing persecution by the Ottoman regime and the grave economic situation in Palestine. Approximately 150 refugees from Palestine had arrived in Odessa in the winter of 1918 after an arduous journey from the Galilee to Syria, then by train to Constantinople, and from there on a collier to Odessa. Because no one knew of their arrival, they had nowhere suitable to stay, and they spent several nights on the shore before local Zionist activists offered assistance. The Zionists housed them in a warehouse in the suburbs and even established the “Committee to Send the Refugees from Palestine Back Home.” Thus was born the idea of aliya on the Ruslan.

The committee, headed by David Hachamovich and his deputy Moshe Goldin-Zehavi, decided to take advantage of the refugees’ return to Palestine to send other Jews along, posing as refugees. The people pretending to be refugees had to learn the geography of Palestine and “various details such as the streets of Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa, Petah Tikva, Rishon Lezion, etc., Yishuv activists, etc.”40 The committee provided each of the refugees—the original ones and the impostors—with a certificate written in Russian, Hebrew, and French identifying the person as a refugee from Palestine who was entitled to reenter the country. “The journey from Odessa to Jaffa lasted about a month. The captain had promised it would take only about ten days, but because the ship visited various shores that they had not originally intended to go to, its arrival in Jaffa was delayed for another two weeks or so.”41 A shortage of water, poor sanitary conditions, and extreme crowding on board made the voyage even harder for the passengers. On December 19, 1919, the third night of Hanukkah, the Ruslan reached the coast of Jaffa.

Jaffa had no deep-water port for anchoring safely, so ships would anchor about a kilometer from the shore. Sometimes passengers had to wait a long time on board during a storm until the sea quieted and rowboats could approach to pick them up. At other times, when it proved impossible to reach the shore, ships even sailed back to Beirut or Port Said, returning to Jaffa a few days later. This was what happened with the Ruslan. The passengers were greeted by a storm, and even before they could all disembark and their belongings could be unloaded, the anchor came loose. The Ruslan sailed to Egypt and returned to Jaffa a few days later. Despite the stormy weather, the passengers received a warm welcome. Their arrival had stirred up tremendous excitement. Zionist Commission chair Menachem Ussishkin gave a speech, and refreshments were served. In all the hubbub and excitement, one passenger collapsed and died—the first casualty of the Ruslan aliya.

The arrival of the Ruslan triggered rumors in Jaffa that the “Third Aliya” was imminent and that the ship was just “the first convoy to Palestine.”42 Indeed, the Ruslan and its passengers went down in history as the harbinger of the Third Aliya—“the Palestinian Mayflower that opened the country’s gates after World War I.”43 Its immigrants “breathed life into the Yishuv and their part was evident in all areas of life and activity.”44

The number of immigrants who arrived in Palestine on the Ruslan far exceeded that on any other ship in 1919: 670 people, 520 of them actual immigrants and 150 returning exiles.45 The impressive number of immigrants, olim, and refugees arriving on one ship was one of the reasons why the Ruslan was etched in the minds of its contemporaries as a symbol of the start of postwar aliya to Palestine. One ship bringing hundreds of olim was considered a major turning point, more significant than the scores of ships that routinely reached the country with no more than a few dozen olim on board. Moreover, the Ruslan brought community leaders, Zionist activists, and well-known public figures; thus, the impression was that the Ruslan was different from the ships that had preceded it not only in the number of immigrants but in their identity as well.

However, the Ruslan was one of the last ships to arrive in Palestine under the military regime, and it did not carry halutzim only. Of the sixty-eight ships that brought immigrants to Palestine in 1919 and early 1920, hardly any came after the Ruslan.46 The Carinthia, for example, brought 124 people to Jaffa port in September 1919; the Galicia, which preceded the Ruslan by five days, brought 62 new immigrants who “mostly belong to the General Zionist Organization and have come to settle in the country.”47

A comparison of the immigrants on the Ruslan with overall immigration in 1919 by sex, age, and occupation (see tab. 3.2 below) shows that Ruslan passengers were no more pioneering than the rest. The percentage of women and children on the Ruslan was greater than the overall percentage on ships that arrived that year. Although the percentage of laborers on the Ruslan far exceeded that on earlier ships, that is not necessarily indicative of a ship carrying halutzim, as the number of immigrants traveling on their own (rather than through a Zionist youth movement, for instance) on the Ruslan was over 10 percent less than on other ships. Not everyone who described himself as a laborer was necessarily a halutz.

Source: CZA, L2, file 231.

Contemporary testimonies confirm and reinforce the statistics. In Doar Hayom, Esther Slonim gave a bleak description of the ship’s passengers, whom she called “refugees”:

In the flow of speech, some call them “immigrants.” Others use more precise, prettier language, affectionately and caressingly calling them “olim,” “returnees to Zion.” The truth is that they are refugees, refugees from the vale of killing. Six hundred fifty came, a drop in the ocean, a tiny grain that can do nothing to save Russian Jewry. But in our small, narrow world, it was an event. The Russian refugees are a microcosm of the whole terrible situation there. . . . Do you see the thin, gaunt Jew over there, moving slowly like a weakling? He is all of thirty-five years old, but he has already managed to die four times. No joking! He’s a dead man who has come back to life for the fourth time. He’s from a little shtetl in the Poltava area. When “the action” started in his town he was beaten, wounded, and left for dead. Only when he was about to be buried did he open his eyes. Through hard work and many metamorphoses, he carried himself to Odessa.48

A similar description of the Ruslan immigrants appeared in Hapoel Hatzair: “On a gloomy ship rocking on murky waves, after long, extensive wanderings, they reached their destination. Some of them were despondent and grieving, shadows of human beings, the frightful reflections of the life of terror in Russia and Ukraine still visible in their faces and eyes; widows and orphans, half-families and remnants of families, uttering the dreadful news, first-hand, of the tremendous wrath that was poured out onto the masses of our wretched people.”49

In Doar Hayom, Itamar Ben-Avi wrote, “I don’t know the nature of many of the immigrants who arrived on last week’s ship. . . . I have grounds for suspecting that some of them—and not a small portion—will not settle in this country, even if they find work here by which they can earn a living.”50

Irrespective of the gap between those who viewed the Ruslan as the harbinger of the Third Aliya and those who regarded it as a “pathetic cargo ship, the most pathetic of cargo ships” that had rescued its passengers from a “life of terror in Russia and Ukraine,” the ship served as a meeting place between the immigrants and olim on board. Speaking to the passengers when they arrived at Jaffa port, Menachem Sheinkin asked them not to consider themselves “immigrants, like people who are just wandering aimlessly from place to place,” but rather “olim [literally, “people ascending”] to their ancestral land.” True, Sheinkin maintained, “in the recent aliyot there have also been negative, exilic factors operating, but we have to assume—even if you are unaware of this—that even now most of the olim from Russia have a national spark and love for the Land of Israel entrenched deeply in their hearts.” Thus, Sheinkin took the “immigrant” label away from the Ruslan passengers and relabeled them “olim”—“so that they [would] appreciate the magnitude of what they have done by coming here.”51 Klausner added, “You are not ‘immigrants’ and you are not ‘olim’; you are children who have returned to their mother’s bosom. Until now you had been banished from your father’s table, but you have returned to your parents’ home. This elevated feeling should accompany you in everything you do in this country. With the help of this feeling you will adjust to conditions in this country and settle in it.”52

In this encounter with the Ruslan immigrants at Beit Ha’am in Jaffa, a distinction was drawn between Jewish immigration to Palestine and to other countries. In other countries, the Jewish immigrants did all they could to integrate in the surrounding society, to prosper economically, and to become citizens with equal rights. But in Palestine—alongside the natural aspiration of all immigrants to better their living conditions—they were exposed, then and even more so in the years that followed, to the national ideology. This ideology, initially the domain of a small group, was instilled in the newcomers and their offspring in encounters and events like the meeting with Sheinkin at Beit Ha’am.

British Immigration Policy

British immigration policy in the 1920s can be divided into two periods: The first started with the issuance of the first immigration regulations in late September 1920 and ended on July 3, 1921, with the enactment of new regulations following the riots of May 1921. This was a period of unrestricted immigration to Palestine, under the full responsibility of the Zionist Executive. The second period started in June 1921 and lasted throughout the 1920s, until the publication of the White Paper in October 1930 following the bloody riots of 1929.

In July 1920, the military regime was replaced by a civil administration headed by High Commissioner Herbert Samuel, and in September of that year, the first immigration ordinance was issued. According to the ordinance, the high commissioner was to permit entry into Palestine, whether for permanent or temporary residence, according to the conditions and needs of the country. Immigrants had to have an entry visa and prove that they had the necessary means to support themselves and their dependents or that they were able to obtain them. Permanent residents of Palestine who had left the country during the war or after the British occupation started were allowed free entry. Immigrants were required to show passports or other form of identification, and they had to satisfy all the requirements of the director of the government immigration department. According to Aviva Halamish, admission to Palestine in the 1920s was based on the country’s economic absorptive capacity and the state of the Jewish economy, not on British political considerations. In the 1930s, however, things changed. Political considerations were given increased weight in British immigration policy, and the influence of the Zionist institutions was reduced.53

The vague phrase “according to the conditions and needs of the country” left the British and Zionists a great deal of leeway and was subject to changing interpretations. The ordinance divided the immigrants into two categories: Category A included those who had been issued immigration permits by the Zionist Organization because they were needed to build up the country and could be beneficial to it. The Zionist Organization was to give the Mandatory government a guarantee for housing in Palestine for one year. Immigrants in this category could obtain a visa from the British consul in their place of residence after presenting authorization from an official Zionist Organization representative. The number of immigration permits was determined by the government with the consent of the Zionist Organization, in accordance with the country’s absorptive capacity. From October 1920 until September 1921, they agreed on 16,500 households—that is, about 85,000 immigrants per year. The Zionist Executive did not take full advantage of the quota, however; by the beginning of March, only 1,250 immigration certificates had been issued. Category B consisted of people of means who could support themselves in their first year in the country. The minimum sum needed was estimated at 120 pounds per person.

The immigrants who arrived in Palestine in the period of the first immigration ordinance had a hard time finding work and housing. Their integration was slow and took longer than anticipated. Consequently, the Zionist movement faced a dilemma: Should it admit the legally permitted number of immigrants, or should it restrict immigration? In his book Palestine Immigration Policy under Sir Herbert Samuel, Moshe Mossek states that the movement decided to limit immigration. The Zionist Commission reported to the Zionist Executive in London on the problems the immigrants were having and asked it to temporarily delay the influx of immigration. After serious vacillations, the Zionist Executive decided to request assistance from the British Foreign Office in regulating the flow of immigrants, to admit no more than one thousand immigrants a year and to give preference to young and unmarried people.54

A wave of violence that broke out in Palestine in May 1921 put an end to free immigration. The Mandatory government issued an order to turn back those who were already in the ports of Palestine and Egypt or on ships en route to Palestine and to delay the departure of those waiting their turn in the ports of origin and Palestine Offices. Although the Zionist Executive managed to persuade the Mandatory government to issue entry permits for the people on board the ships, it was stripped of most of its powers, which were taken over by the government. On June 3, 1921, Herbert Samuel announced changes in the immigration regulations. The new regulations, issued in September, limited the authority of the Zionist Executive and divided the immigrants into three groups: those sponsored and guaranteed by the Zionist Organization; those not sponsored by the Zionist Organization but who possessed assets and would be able to find employment and means of subsistence in Palestine; and family members of Palestine residents with sufficient means.55 The three groups were then further divided into seven categories:

A–Travelers coming for a period of no more than three months

B–Persons of independent means who could support themselves in Palestine

C–Members of professions who intended to work in their professions

D–Wives, children, and others who were wholly dependent on residents of Palestine

E–Persons with a definite prospect of employment with a specific employer

F–Persons coming for religious reasons who could show that they had adequate means of subsistence

G–Returning residents

The most conspicuous, fundamental change in the new immigration policy was the elimination of category A of the immigration regulations of September 1920, which recognized immigrants sponsored and guaranteed by the Zionist Organization. Henceforth, able-bodied immigrants capable of building up the country were included in category E. Such people were entitled to an immigration certificate only if they worked in a specific occupation and had a definite prospect of employment with a specific employer.56 Family members of applicants for immigration wrote to the Aliya Department requesting authorization for their relatives and asserting that they could guarantee them employment in Palestine. The Aliya Department sent the requests on to the relevant Palestine Office, noting the applicant’s name and requesting authorization for immigration in accordance with the quota for each country of origin.

Below are a few examples of the many hundreds of letters sent to the heads of the Aliya Department.

[1.] I, the undersigned, request that the Aliya Department . . . issue an entry permit for Palestine to my brother Avraham Weissmann and his family, who are in the city of Novograd-Volynskiy, Ukraine. My brother has a trade; he knows how to make candy and pastries. . . . Moreover, his wife knows photography and photographic enlargement and can manage on her work. Thus, when they arrive they will not have to be a burden on anyone. Allowing them to enter the country will save a family that is being destroyed there. I think writing about the situation there is superfluous because our city is known for the pogroms that it has experienced.57

[2.] I hereby appeal to you with the following request. I have been in this country for about three years. Although when I arrived I was dependent on my brother, who works here in printing, I have been employed the entire time in the workers’ kitchen and have earned an ample living the whole time. I already applied to the government more than three months ago through the community board for a permit for my sister in Ukraine, who has a trade and will not be a burden on anyone. In any case I am always willing to take responsibility for her subsistence. Despite my frequent efforts for more than three months, however, they have not agreed. . . . I now cry out and vehemently request: let me bring my sister here.58

A new immigration ordinance issued in August 1925 resembled the ordinance of June 1921 but included precise definitions of the categories as well as the rights and responsibilities of the Zionist Organization. The aim of the ordinance was to minimize the Zionist movement’s leeway for interpretation and to make the rules clearer and more understandable. It set forth three main categories of immigrants: persons of independent means, laborers, and dependents of Palestine residents. The “persons of independent means” category, which included all those who could support themselves, was divided into subcategories: businesspeople with at least 500 pounds; skilled artisans with at least 250 pounds; people with an assured income and at least 60 pounds; people in religious occupations whose maintenance was assured; and students whose maintenance was assured. The Mandatory government allocated very few entry permits to artisans and the other subcategories, and immigrants with an assured income needed a bank guarantee valid for an unlimited period.59

The new ordinance tightened the requirements for obtaining visas for dependents of Palestine residents and hamstrung the Zionist Executive. Because visas now had to be authorized in Jerusalem by the British, they took much longer to obtain. The authorization was valid for only a limited time, so prospective immigrants had to close their businesses and leave more quickly than anticipated, sometimes losing a lot of money as a result. Furthermore, the permits were sent directly to the applicant and not to the Palestine Office; because of this, many valuable permits were lost. The Zionist Executive, for its part, was required to submit a proposal every six months for increasing the number of immigrants, to state the likelihood of their finding work, and to pledge to support them for a period of one year of unemployment. Following a recommendation by the Zionist Executive, the Mandatory government decided on quotas for laborers, stating the maximum number of laborers to be admitted and their division by occupations. After the high commissioner approved the quotas, certificates were sent to people who had applied directly to the government, to employers who had listed the workers’ names, and to the Zionist Organization.60

The Volume and Social Composition of Jewish Immigration in the 1920s

Between 1919 and 1929, more than one hundred thousand Jews arrived in Palestine. Of them, 27 percent arrived between 1919 and 1923; 73 percent between 1924 and 1929. About half of the immigrants to Palestine in the 1920s arrived in 1924 and 1925. The year 1925 was an important turning point because for the first time more Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine than in the United States.

The standard assumption among scholars is that the halutzim who arrived as part of the Third Aliya came mainly between 1919 and 1921.61 An analysis of the immigrant population of 1919, based on reports by the Zionist Commission, refutes this claim and shows that even in its first years, the Third Aliya was not particularly halutzic.

The Statistics Department of the Zionist Executive did not keep orderly records of people entering the country at the time, so we do not have complete demographic data about the immigrant population. The historian and economist Jacob Metzer tried—in a trailblazing study—to decipher the demography of immigrants to Palestine in the 1920s. His conclusions are based on a special database containing the personal records of applicants for aliya, some of whom ended up going to Palestine and others who didn’t. The 53,191 names in the database represent about 42 percent of the number of people who entered Palestine in the 1920s.62

We do not have complete data on immigration in the first decade of the Mandate. In addition to Metzer’s study, we have reliable, accurate statistics on immigration during the period of the military regime in 1919 from a June 1920 bulletin of the Zionist Commission Statistics Department.63 A comparison of Metzer’s data on immigration in the first decade of the Mandate with the profile of the population of immigrants to Palestine in the period of the military regime (until the first immigration ordinance) reveals real differences between the periods. The profile of immigrants from 1919 until September 1920—the period of free immigration to Palestine—was not the same as the average profile of immigrants from 1919 to 1932. The graphs shown here present Metzer’s data for 1919–1932 alongside the data of the Zionist Commission Statistics Department for 1919–1920.

As figure 3.4 shows, the two periods were similar in terms of gender. However, in terms of age and family status, there was a significant difference between the decade as a whole and the years of the Ukrainian civil war.

In figure 3.5, we see that 15 percent of people entering Palestine between 1919 and 1932 were aged fourteen or under, compared to 31 percent in 1919–1920; 68 percent were aged fifteen to forty, compared to 51 percent in 1919–1920; and 17 percent were aged forty and up, versus 18 percent in 1919–1920. Under the military regime, the rate of children who arrived in Palestine was twice that for the entire period of the Third Aliya and Fourth Aliya.

The immigrants who arrived in Palestine during the period of the military regime differed demographically from the immigrants in the 1920s overall for two main reasons:

1. The return of exiles: The people who had been deported during World War I returned to Palestine in 1919, and they included a high proportion of families with children. However, this is not enough to explain the demographic difference because only 32 percent of people entering Palestine were exiles. The other 68 percent were distributed as follows: 25 percent aged fourteen or under; 57 percent aged fifteen to forty, and 18 percent aged forty or over.
2. The pogroms in Ukraine: Until the 1921 riots, Palestine was fully open to immigration with no restrictions. Refugees from the bloodbath in Ukraine took advantage of the liberal immigration policy before the introduction of a selective policy that gave preference to the young and healthy and to persons of independent means over the elderly, sick, and destitute. Many of the people entering Palestine in that period were refugees from the civil war in Ukraine, and they included orphans, widows, and families with members of various ages.

The case of the Khokhlinets is representative of many ships that sailed for Palestine during the civil war and can explain the demographic differences between the immigrants in the early 1920s and in the decade as a whole. In mid-December 1919, the Khokhlinets sailed from Sebastopol in the Crimean Peninsula, with some two hundred Jewish refugees on board. Most were between the ages of twenty and thirty and had received permission from the Sebastopol authorities to leave Ukraine in exchange for renouncing their Russian citizenship. “The ship sailed, but for where? Even the sailors and the captain [didn’t] know.” When the ship anchored in Constantinople, the refugees were not permitted to disembark. According to the Hapoel Hatzair representative in the city, when he was informed “of the refugee ship I loaded a boat with bread and went out to search for it. I found it anchored far from shore. . . . When I approached the ship I saw the faces of frightened Jews. All were on deck shivering with cold. Many of them were sick and most had gone hungry for a few days.” The representative asked them where they were headed. They replied that they intended to immigrate to Palestine and asked him to try to put them on the Ruslan, but their request was turned down. “There was a shocking scene when the two ships—the Khokhlinets and the Ruslan—neared each other. The refugees on the small ship lifted their eyes enviously to their fortunate brethren and called out to them: ‘Let us on board! Aren’t we Jews?’”64 The Ruslan continued on to Palestine, while the refugees on the Khokhlinets waited for days for permission to disembark. Because they were stateless, no country or consulate would agree to take them. Only after persuasive efforts by the Zionist representative in Constantinople were the refugees finally allowed to enter the city temporarily, mainly because they threatened to “first throw their children and then themselves into the sea” if they were sent back to Russia.65

The occupational distribution of immigrants to Palestine and the United States in the 1920s shows both similarities and differences between the two groups. As we can see in figure 3.6, 35 percent of the immigrants to Palestine were skilled tradesmen, approximately the same as among those entering the United States. The internal breakdown among skilled tradesmen who immigrated to Palestine shows that 32 percent of them worked in the garment industry, 20 percent in the wood industry, 16 percent in construction, 11 percent in the metal industry, and small percentages in the leather, weaving, printing, and other industries. In the United States, the percentage of workers in the garment industry was twice as high: 60 percent. Another 15 percent worked in construction, 9 percent in the metal industry, 7 percent in the food industry, and 2 percent in leather and paper. Another interesting statistic is that 42 percent of those going to Palestine were unskilled workers: 26 percent simple laborers and 16 percent agricultural workers. In the United States, the proportion of unskilled workers was 41 percent: 38 percent simple laborers and only 3 percent agricultural workers. Of those entering Palestine, 13 percent were members of the liberal professions, compared to only 5 percent of those entering the United States. Ten percent of immigrants to Palestine were merchants versus 17 percent in the United States.

Analyzing the data on the immigrants’ occupations, we find that agricultural workers and professionals immigrated to Palestine more than to the United States. The proportions of skilled tradesmen and unskilled workers were similar in the two countries.

Redemption or Rescue? Zionist Immigration Policy

The annual conference of Hapoel Hatzair was held on December 25–27, 1919, about a week after the Ruslan arrived in Palestine. The participants were given an overview of “the terrible plight of the Jews of Russia and Ukraine” and expressed their sorrow “about the fact that aside from protests and expressions of opinion, the Jewish world is apathetic to the dreadful, unprecedented tragedy and to the fate of tens of thousands of our tormented brothers and sisters.”66 The conference participants passed several resolutions regarding the Jews of eastern Europe in general and Ukrainian Jewry in particular. They urged the leaders of the Zionist Organization to act quickly and decisively to open up Palestine to immigration “and to start extensive settlement work immediately so that some of the flow of migration of Russian Jewry can be diverted to Palestine.” They also called on the Zionist Organization to do “all it can so the young halutzim can be moved from Russia to Palestine as soon as possible in order to prepare the country for mass immigration.” In addition, they resolved to establish a special committee that would collect “the material about the events in Russia, organize it, and publish it appropriately.”67

A month after the conference of Hapoel Hatzair, the executive board of the Provisional Committee for the Jews of Palestine met in Jaffa. The participants called for Palestine to be opened up to immigration and for Ukrainian Jewry to be saved from annihilation. They were aware of the urgency and the magnitude of the emergency and regarded the Zionist movement as a rescue movement destined to save eastern European Jewry:

The recent pogroms in southern Russia, which have wiped out tens of thousands of Jews and put the survival of all the Jews in those lands in jeopardy, mandate that the entire Jewish people not only attempt to secure protection for some of those Jews (the success of which is doubtful), but try to extricate them completely from all the regions where the Jews’ lives are in danger. Their last remaining hope is to be saved in Palestine, which the Jews of southern Russia hold in their hearts. The anguished cries and calls for help that have reached us from there require all the Jewish people today, the Zionist Organization foremost, and us, the residents of Palestine, in particular, to come to the aid of our brethren. The only truly necessary action is to try to take the Jews in southern Russia away from their enemies and move them to Palestine. We regard immigration from the lands of southern Russia as the rescue of thousands, even tens of thousands of Jews from annihilation.68

Shmuel Yavnieli’s exhortation to open Palestine to immigration and rescue “thousands, even tens of thousands of Jews from annihilation” reflects a dilemma noted by the historian Hagit Lavsky. According to Lavsky, the limit on the number of immigrants was not only a decision imposed by the Mandatory government but an objective necessity that the Zionist Executive had no choice but to accept. Weizmann could not completely abolish the quantitative restriction because he was concerned that without any objective economic absorption policy, an economic crisis would ensue, ultimately leading to return emigration from Palestine and a loss of trust among Jewish immigrants in the country’s ability to absorb them.69 The Zionist Executive’s dilemma should be considered not only in relation to the country’s economic absorptive capacity and the crisis that was liable to result from the uncontrolled arrival of tens of thousands of immigrants, but also in relation to the annihilation of Ukrainian Jewry.

The historian Meir Margalit has identified three fundamental approaches in the public debate over the refugees from Ukraine: Some people maintained that priority should be given to saving survivors of the pogroms and that the Yishuv was duty bound to rescue those in danger of annihilation. Others held that there was no contradiction between saving Jewish lives and building up the Yishuv; all Jews should be allowed to immigrate to Palestine, whether their motivations were ideological or material/physical. According to a third group, immigration to Palestine had to be selective because the welfare of the country took precedence over the welfare of the nation; therefore, only the needs of the Yishuv should be considered.70

The Zionist Executive, headed by Chaim Weizmann and others who dealt routinely with the implementation of settlement policy, advocated the third approach. Requests from within the Yishuv to allow mass immigration and rescue Ukrainian Jewry fell on deaf ears.71 Arthur Ruppin, for instance, warned that the people likely to come to Palestine would endanger the Yishuv. The Zionist Organization’s immigration policy, he insisted, had to be selective and had to further Zionist objectives: “The higher the level of the immigrant, the more easily the objective can be reached. And the level will be raised if, by sifting our immigrants as far as possible, we shall help bring into the country such elements as by education, occupation and character come closest to our ultimate aims. As stated, thus far the selection of human material has not fulfilled any function.”72

The first Zionist conference after World War I took place in London in early 1919, with the participation of Zionist Organization representatives from various countries. The conference participants decided to establish an aliya department that would operate out of the Zionist office in London as well as a network of Palestine Offices that would handle aliya requests throughout the Jewish world, especially in eastern Europe.73 Shortly after the conference, Nahum Sokolow and Chaim Weizmann warned against mass immigration and called for minimizing immigration as much as possible: “The hour of immigration to Palestine has not yet arrived. Such immigration will be impossible until systematic settlement programs are in place that address the financial and economic elements and all the other issues—programs that require a solution to the political questions that our country is known to have. Until then not a single immigrant should enter Palestine. We consider it essential to emphasize this warning as vehemently as possible to all societies and individuals so that they do not do anything hasty with respect to continual immigration to Palestine.”74

The main consideration behind the desire to limit immigration to Palestine or to stop it completely was not fear of mass aliya but fear of the arrival of hordes of refugees from the pogroms and immigrants unfit to build the country. On several occasions in late 1919 and early 1920, Weizmann said he was concerned not about the country’s economic absorptive capacity but about who would enter the country. Weizmann was afraid of a rabble of unfit refugees and immigrants; he was willing to accept only olim who were physically and mentally healthy.75

In a speech on December 17, 1919, shortly before the arrival of the Ruslan and his departure from Palestine for the Zionist conference in London, Weizmann stated explicitly that Palestine could absorb thousands of olim each year, but that those seeking to go there were unsuited to the “great Zionist program” whose objective was the establishment of the national home in Palestine. The speech, given at the Laemel School in Jerusalem, was attended by prominent public figures, Yishuv activists, teachers, doctors, and writers.

Immigration arrangements must also be in our hands. We have made this demand and it is essential, but I don’t believe in unorganized aliya. Though it pains the heart, we must always insist that Zionism cannot be the solution to a catastrophe. I admit to you that when we spoke at the peace conference about tens of thousands of immigrants annually, I felt pangs of conscience, not because it was impossible—the country can absorb this number year after year—but because I don’t see in the terrible destruction that we have today the tremendous constructive force required for this great program.76

Weizmann regretted having announced at the Paris peace conference that he anticipated tens of thousands of immigrants a year. Although Palestine could absorb the masses of Jews who wanted to go there, the catastrophe experienced by eastern European Jewry had brought to Palestine undesirable elements unsuited to building up the country. Weizmann therefore asked for patience so as not to repeat the mistake of permitting indiscriminate immigration.

Perhaps in ten years we will be able to accept larger numbers. We have to understand all this so as to avoid despair. There are no grounds for despair. We have not strayed from the path; we are moving forward slowly. Hyperbole has understandably put us in a pessimistic mood. Remember all the exaggerated rumors that circulated after Herzl’s meeting with Wilhelm, remember all the flights of Jewish fancy in the Diaspora regarding the imminent redemption, and you will understand how exhilarated the Jewish imagination has been in this time of affliction and anguish to hear the proclamation read through to the end in a single breath. The excitement is understandable and the despair is understandable, if after the rumors of a Jewish republic in Palestine people come and find a military government.77

Weizmann said something similar, albeit in different words, at a meeting of the Zionist General Council in London on February 23, 1920. He argued that the Jewish settlement in Palestine had to contend not only with the issue of British permission for immigration but most importantly with the composition of the immigration. Weizmann believed that the revitalization of the Jewish People depended on the nature and quality of the immigrants, and he compared the rebuilding of Palestine to General Herbert Kitchener’s organization of the British army: Kitchener first established a volunteer corps within the Royal Army during World War I, and eventually the entire British army was based on it. “The question of the Jewish state, not just concessions by the British government but an actual Jewish state, is in my opinion just a matter of the first 400,000 Jews in Palestine. What we want now is exactly what Lord Kitchener wanted when he started recruiting the British army. The British army of millions grew out of ‘the first hundred thousand.’”78 Weizmann’s statements make it clear that he was afraid of indiscriminate immigration bringing undesirable elements to Palestine. Although his comments furthered the policy of the Zionist movement and the Yishuv, they certainly did not benefit eastern European Jewry. If we consider his remarks in the context of the pogroms in Ukraine and the annihilation of Ukrainian Jewry, he was clearly saying that Zionism was not the solution to the catastrophe in eastern Europe and that Palestine was not the solution for the tens of thousands of refugees from the civil war.

Weizmann preferred productive olim over needy refugees. Applications for immigration permits by Jews who did not fit Weizmann’s model were turned down by the Palestine Offices in eastern Europe on the grounds that the time was not yet ripe. Weizmann was aware of the bloodbath taking place in Ukraine and the plight of the Jews there, but he nevertheless opposed mass immigration: “The Zionist Organization is taking into consideration the dreadful plight that currently plagues the masses of our people almost everywhere in eastern Europe,” Hapoel Hatzair wrote. “It is also aware of how eagerly all segments of the nation hope to immigrate to Palestine.” Only through well-organized, orderly immigration, however, “will we achieve fulfillment of our national ideal—to erect our national home, the Land of Israel.”79

The fear of uncontrolled mass immigration stemmed, as stated, from the large number of applicants thronging the Palestine Offices in Europe. “The situation is extremely grave here,” wrote Ze’ev Tiomkin, director of the aliya committee in Constantinople, to the Zionist Commission in Jerusalem. Immigrants were coming from countries “where the economy has suffered massive destruction. Most of them are destitute from the day they arrive here and need continual assistance.”80 This highly problematic situation put the aliya offices between a rock and a hard place: on the one hand, they were under tremendous pressure from the masses who wanted to go to Palestine, but on the other hand, the selective immigration policy limited their discretion.81 The Zionist Commission’s instructions were clear and left no room for interpretation: undesirable elements—particularly refugees from the pogroms—who would not be able to participate in building up Palestine were not permitted to immigrate. “You should therefore alert all the Zionist bureaus with which you are in contact regarding aliya that each and every immigrant must be examined thoroughly. Attention must be paid to the immigrants’ state of health, both physical and mental. We hope you can influence these bureaus to work patiently and with moderation and not make matters worse by being rash and rushing things.”82

Eyal Katvan and Nadav Davidovitch have shown that the doctors who examined the migrants before they set out for Palestine were instructed to hold back anyone in poor health who could not contribute to building up the land.83 As we shall see in chapter 4, the medical exams conducted for immigrants and prospective immigrants were part of a medical policy that was not limited to health matters. The policy was intended to serve Zionism rather than the ordinary Jew who wanted to immigrate to Palestine.84

The horrific slaughter of Jews in Ukraine—including acts of abuse, rape, and sadism by soldiers and the local populace—and the plight of the tens of thousands of refugees did not trigger the opening of Palestine to free immigration by all. On the contrary, it resulted in restrictions on the number of Jews admitted and the adoption of a selective immigration policy that reflected, at root, a preference for halutzim over refugees, for the strong over the weak.

By the time of the second Zionist conference in London (July 1920), the military regime in Palestine had been replaced by a civil administration headed by High Commissioner Herbert Samuel. As noted, the first immigration regulations were issued in September 1920. These were liberal regulations that permitted the entry of anyone who was physically and mentally healthy, had a guaranteed livelihood, and did not pose a danger to society from a criminal or political standpoint. Although the regulations officially went into effect on September 1, it took another few months to complete the bureaucratic arrangements needed to implement them fully. In the six months between the abolition of the military regime and the enforcement of the regulations, immigration to Palestine was free and unrestricted. In that half year, approximately seven thousand immigrants arrived in Palestine, many of them Jewish refugees from eastern Europe. Because such a population was inconsistent with the immigration policy set by Weizmann and Sokolow, the Zionist movement sought to reduce the cap on immigration from eighty thousand to just one thousand.85

The decision to limit immigration during such a fateful period for eastern European Jewry is one of the most controversial decisions in the history of Zionism, and it is surprising that historians have paid little attention to it. Scholars and historians of the Yishuv in Palestine have treated the catastrophe suffered by Ukrainian Jewry as something incidental and for the most part have merely mentioned the events that caused one hundred thousand casualties laconically and in passing. Zionist historiography has tended to look at Zionist immigration policy in the context of contacts with the British government, the economic absorptive capacity of Palestine, the type of immigrants needed to build the country, the contribution of the Third Aliya to the development of the Yishuv, and so on. These issues have not been examined as independent events against the backdrop of the bloody pogroms in Ukraine. This was not just another wave of eastern European pogroms. It was of such crucial significance that without addressing it, one cannot possibly understand and analyze the Yishuv in the 1920s and Zionist policy concerning immigration to Palestine.

The Zionist movement was confronted with a harsh reality when it had to decide between rescue immigration and selective immigration. On the one hand were the desire, the need, and the obligation to help fellow Jews who had survived the pogroms; on the other was genuine fear that Palestine was not capable of absorbing the thousands of refugees and immigrants who wanted to enter the country. Of these two mutually exclusive options, the Zionist leaders and policymakers chose selective immigration. Zionism, Weizmann and Sokolow argued, could not solve the pressing problems caused by the calamity in Ukraine. Palestine needed healthy, resilient immigrants, not refugees weak in body and soul. The Zionist leadership chose not to lend a hand to the survivors of the massacres and not to put the economic absorptive capacity of the Yishuv to the test. Weizmann and Sokolow preferred one thousand halutzim over eighty thousand “despondent and grieving [people], shadows of human beings, the frightful reflections of the life of terror in Russia and Ukraine still visible in their faces and eyes.”

The selective aliya policy that prioritized the select few and the gradual building of the country over mass immigration was not viewed favorably by certain circles within the Zionist Organization. For instance, at the London conference, Max Nordau proposed bringing half a million immigrants into Palestine. His proposal was not even discussed, however, partly because it was deemed unrealistic and partly due to the “lack of emotional preparation” among the Zionist leadership.86 Nordau was one of the most prominent opponents of Weizmann’s policy, which he lambasted in his writings and speeches: “I furiously protest against the craven cowards who constantly insist that everything must be done with extreme caution, that Jewish immigration to Palestine must proceed extremely slowly and in a very sober, gradual manner, and that the number of immigrants to Palestine must not exceed two thousand a year if we want to avoid mishaps. In this way—or so they tell us—we can hope to have a few hundred thousand Jews in our ancestral land after fifty years.”87

Given the race against time in the wake of the slaughter of Ukrainian Jewry, Nordau believed that mass immigration to Palestine should be permitted. He recognized the importance of the halutzim and their contribution to the development of the Yishuv but believed that under the circumstances, thousands of people should be brought in. Small-scale immigration and gradual building, he maintained, were wrong:

No. This will not happen and will not be! The present times require that we look at this matter from another standpoint entirely. We must ensure that the business is done on a large scale. We must take wide-ranging action. Our masses in the lands of the pogroms want to shake the blood-soaked dust of those lands off their feet—not in fifty years, not tomorrow, but today! They fought heroically during the years of the inferno of the world war. From now on they want to live as a free people, as a dignified nation with full human and national rights.88

Nordau utterly rejected the Zionist immigration policy of tailoring the volume of immigration to the economic absorptive capacity of the country. He believed that despite the grim, complicated economic situation, it would be possible to take in all the Jews who wanted to come. In an article entitled “Tseva’a la-Tsiyonit” (A will for Zionism), he presented his views and countered the arguments of Weizmann and Sokolow regarding the country’s economic absorptive capacity:

We have no houses for them to live in. No houses? So put them in tents. It’s better to live in a tent than to be murdered in a pogrom. They won’t have food to eat. So feed them with the first crop that comes in. After all, 22 million recruits were fed during the four years of the war, when no one was planting or harvesting. It would cost billions. No, but it would cost many millions, and this must be found. The Jewish people will give it when they are certain that it will be used in a way that is likely to lead to lasting results. And what will the millions of immigrants do to earn a living . . . ? They will work the land, at first not assiduously and in a primitive manner, until they get used to the work and switch to more scientific methods.89

The mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, basically agreed with Nordau; he believed that Palestine could and should take in the refugees: “Palestine must be a land of refuge for us, the place where our national home is built, and we must make all the preparations and do all the training necessary so that the immigrants from Russia can be absorbed in our land.” Dizengoff stressed the feeling of solidarity of the Jews of Palestine with their brethren in Ukraine. “We now all feel the anguish of our brethren in Russia, and we are prepared to meet, as brothers, all the survivors from that vale of killing coming to our land. The entire Jewish community of Palestine has opened its arms and is waiting to welcome gladly their brethren coming from Russia.”90

Weizmann, as stated, disagreed with Nordau and Dizengoff. He was more cautious, opposed mass immigration, and was convinced that only the gradual admission of immigrants could lead to the establishment of the national home. One person who expressed Weizmann’s worldview well, coming out against Nordau, was Itamar Ben-Avi; in his newspaper Doar Hayom, he set forth his fundamental position on the refugees seeking to come to Palestine: “Because despite all the thundering of Dr. Nordau and like-minded people, Prof. Weizmann and his colleagues were absolutely correct in declaring that for now Palestine is not the answer to the huge crisis affecting a large portion of our people in the Russian exile. . . . The entire fate of our activity here depends on our insisting on this foundation without budging by even a hair’s breadth. This national enterprise cannot be based on compassion and mercy. Where the downfall of the nation’s revival on its ancestral land is at stake, compassion cannot be factored in.”91

The selective immigration policy of the 1920s has not been considered according to the same criteria as the immigration policies of the 1930s and post–World War II—even though then, too, not only was a sword hanging over the Jews’ heads but it was being wielded against them. Historical research on Zionist immigration policy in the early 1920s has been conducted in isolation from the so-called mini-Holocaust in Ukraine. The dialogue with the British, the country’s limited absorptive capacity, and the riots of 1920–1921, which influenced the scope of immigration, have been overemphasized, and too little attention has been given to the plight of the refugees who had survived the slaughter in Ukraine and were trying to reach Palestine in those years.

The disagreement between Weizmann and Nordau over Zionist immigration policy is considered part of a fundamental dispute within the Zionist movement that began with the Uganda debate and was pointed up by the pogroms in Ukraine. It was a dispute between Zionists with a catastrophic worldview, who were pressing for an immediate, rushed solution, and Zionists who believed in a cautious, gradual immigration policy. This conflict came to the fore at the 12th Zionist Congress in Carlsbad, Czechoslovakia, in 1921—the first Zionist Congress after World War I and the civil war. Sokolow, the newly elected chair of the Zionist Executive, opened the Congress, speaking about the bloody pogroms in Ukraine and the helplessness of European nations.

Nahum Sokolow’s speech at the Zionist Congress is important to understanding the Zionist response to the pogroms because it was made around the time the events occurred and included an assessment of the postwar situation of the Jewish people and the Zionist movement. Sokolow devoted much of his long, comprehensive speech to the subject of the pogroms, expressing the official Zionist position on the matter. “Horrors, unspeakable horrors took place in Ukraine,” Sokolow began.

In hundreds of Jewish communities there were bloodbaths; the Jewish masses were like dung upon the fields, as a wicked mob sliced them with swords and knives and split them in pieces. They cracked their bones and chopped up their skulls; brains poured out onto the ground. They dragged the wounded with the slain, those wallowing in their blood with organs diluted in lakes of mire and pipes of effluent. . . . Murder, rape, torture, beating, robbery, and destruction were the order of the day. The wild mob knew no mercy. . . . They slaughtered the Jews as if they were sheep.92

After describing what the Ukrainians had done, Sokolow denounced Europe for having watched the bloodshed from the side and done nothing to help the Jews: “Europe watched this slaughter with folded arms: no heartwarming protest, no demonstration or simple disclosure of facts, not a word of solace rang in the wretches’ ears.”93 But despite all this, Sokolow stressed to the Congress delegates: “Our people lives!” World Jewry had mobilized to help the Jews of Ukraine; Sokolow particularly praised American Jewry: “Our brethren in America took the moral high ground. They set up a large array of societies and saved what they could. It would be insulting to say that our American brethren ‘gave donations.’ In our nation we have no ‘givers and takers,’ only members of one people who know their duty to help themselves.”94 It was a time when the Jewish people shone, Sokolow believed, “an episode full of lofty splendor” that showed the strength, and especially the morality, of the people.

Sokolow took the opportunity, at the podium of the Zionist Congress, to call on world Jewry: “Rescue the Jews of Ukraine! Save the children! We are sure this voice will be heard. Such a nation cannot vanish from the world stage! But it is duty bound to prepare itself for free, natural living conditions.” In calling for the rescue of Ukrainian Jewry, Sokolow linked the act of rescue to the Zionist movement and its aspiration for free, natural life in Palestine. He maintained that Zionism had warned the Jews of the imminent catastrophe, but some had refused to listen and opposed Zionism. The result of not having a national home, he said, was the slaughter of the Jews:

Theodor Herzl, whose great shadow precedes us to this day, guiding us like the pillar of cloud, warned a quarter-century ago of the growing dangers of the lack of a national home. Wisely and in good faith, Herzl disclosed the source of the evil. For that they fell upon him and us with the libel that we see in the clouds. The outcry of the offended humanity within us, which burst out bitterly, insisting that this situation must not continue, that outright annihilation would be better than living through a conflagration and suffering these troubles, the call for redemption that burst from our hearts back at the First Zionist Congress, was not addressed seriously. . . . If the Jewish people had devoted all its strength then to fulfilling our ideal, we would already have had the national home.95

In his speech, Sokolow stressed the correctness of the Zionist idea and denounced its opponents. According to him, if only the Jewish people had cooperated with the Zionist movement from the start, if only they hadn’t been so skeptical about its intentions, if they had taken its pessimistic predictions seriously and heeded its warnings about the anticipated dangers for the Jewish people, the national home would already exist. According to Sokolow’s depiction, the Zionist movement had foreseen the catastrophe and had sought to save the Jewish people before it was too late.

Sokolow’s claims require us to reexamine Zionist thought and activity from the day the Zionist Organization was founded until the Zionist Congress convened in Carlsbad in August 1921. It was not the Jews’ skepticism or opposition to the Zionist idea that had delayed the building of the national home. The reasons for the delay were mainly prosaic, along with the Zionist policy that preferred the good of the country over the good of the people. Herzl, in his diplomatic activity and Zionist doctrine, had indeed “of the growing dangers of the lack of a national home.” Without international and legal recognition, he foresaw a bleak future for the Jewish people; as he saw it, a Jewish state was the only possible solution to the Jewish problem. However, it was not the “libel [against the Zionists] that we see in the clouds” that had prevented the diplomacy from achieving its aim and had caused the failure to receive a charter for large-scale settlement of Palestine.96 On the contrary, it was voices within the Zionist movement—including those of Sokolow and Weizmann—that had disagreed with Herzl and opposed his diplomatic policy.

The bloodbath in Ukraine was the first test for the Zionist movement after the Kishinev pogrom and the pogroms of 1904–1905. It was the first time since Herzl had introduced the proposal to settle in East Africa at the Zionist Congress that the Zionist movement was forced to decide between saving Jews and building up the country; between bringing over and absorbing tens of thousands of Jewish refugees from the killing fields in Ukraine and bringing physically and mentally healthy halutzim; and between selective immigration and indiscriminate immigration. In each of these dilemmas, the Zionist leadership chose the good of the country over the good of the people, the halutz over the refugee, and a selective immigration policy that met the needs of only a specific, limited group within the Jewish people.

The policy of selective immigration to Palestine that Weizmann and Sokolow formulated in 1919–1920 was a continuation of the selective immigration policy developed by Arthur Ruppin during the Second Aliya. That, too, favored people of independent means over destitute immigrants. In Ruppin’s opinion, Palestine was not a land of refuge and was not capable of absorbing everyone who wanted to come. He called for giving preference to immigrants with money, who would not be a burden on the Zionist movement and who would lay the foundation for the absorption of the masses who would follow. To those fleeing Russia, he recommended going to the United States.97

There were two fundamental and essential differences between Ruppin’s immigration policy and that of Weizmann and Sokolow. The first is that Ruppin had no power to enforce his proposed policy; he was merely making recommendations. Weizmann and Sokolow, in contrast, had a real influence on immigration quotas, at least until May 1921; they had the power to open or close Palestine to newcomers. The second difference had to do with the chaotic situation in eastern Europe before and after World War I. Pogroms had taken place in eastern Europe even before the civil war. Between 1903 and 1906, roughly three thousand Jews were murdered in the Pale of Settlement. The next eight years were relatively quiet. Jewish refugees were not thronging the Zionist information bureaus, and the hardship was mainly economic. But after the world war, in 1919–1920, approximately sixty thousand Ukrainian Jews were murdered in one of the most horrific periods the Jewish people experienced before the Holocaust.

Few of the Congress delegates knew that Sokolow and Weizmann, in conjunction with the British, had reduced the quota for Jewish immigration to Palestine from eighty thousand to just one thousand. The delegates thought the restrictions on immigration had been imposed in the wake of the riots of 1920 and 1921 following Arab pressure on the high commissioner. In this context, Sokolow’s call to rescue Ukrainian Jewry and his complaints about the Jewish people’s failure to cooperate with the Zionist movement took on different meaning. The Zionist rhetoric was inconsistent with the Zionist policy. Weizmann and Sokolow were aware of the dimensions of the catastrophe in Ukraine, but they were more concerned about the limited absorptive capacity of Palestine than about the tens of thousands of Jewish refugees seeking in vain to escape eastern Europe.

The publicist and author Moshe Smilansky came out against the selective Weizmann-Sokolow immigration policy. According to Smilansky, the purpose of immigration to Palestine was not just to build up and settle the country but also to rescue the survivors of the pogrom in Ukraine. The Zionist movement was obligated to lend a hand to the needy; otherwise, it would be a miserable failure from a moral standpoint and would be irrelevant to the Jewish people. On the question of the “good of the country” (selective immigration) versus “the good of the people” (mass immigration), Smilansky chose the people and called for free immigration to Palestine:

What should the immigration be like? Limited, selective, and blocked, or large-scale, free, and unlimited? Large-scale and free! We must understand immigration as a means of saving at least some of the refugees from the Russian hell and as a means of building up our land. . . . Yes, for many years we have been saying that Zionism is not here to resolve the question of the survival of individual Jews. And that was true in ordinary years. It is not the case now during these emergency years. If Zionism cannot provide at least a partial solution now for the question of the survival of individual Jews, then it is bankrupt—and it can never become a popular movement with the potential to resolve the question of the Jewish people.98

Menachem Sheinkin felt similarly. He opposed an immigration policy that preferred young, idealistic halutzim over a rabble of destitute immigrants:

Nevertheless, we must point out here the injustice in the fact that the young elements have obtained a monopoly on the name “halutzim,” which they have taken from all the other Jews. And we must especially note the unforgivable error of the Zionist Organization and the Zionist Executive, which have put all their moral weight and the bulk of their strength on the side of these halutzim exclusively; all the other thousands of Jews who yearn for the land and come to it have been left in the shadows as stepchildren of the movement, as less worthy immigrants and lower-class citizens in Palestine itself.99

In an article titled “Me-Eizeh Sug Mehagrim Netuna Eretz Yisrael” (In what kind of immigrants does the hope of Palestine lie), printed in the US-based newspaper Der Tog in early June 1922, Sheinkin claimed, “Of the more than twenty thousand Jews who have entered Palestine in the last two years, over five thousand have been of the pioneering type—in other words, youths who, either back in the Diaspora or when they came to Palestine, were organized in groups with a work plan.” The rest, “approximately three-quarters, are mostly ordinary Jews with families who came at their own expense and on their own responsibility.”100 This group, Sheinkin believed, could make a real contribution to building up Palestine, and the Zionist movement must not give up on them. “They have settled quietly and peacefully and have found themselves sources of income naturally by means of their crafts and skills and by their ability to adapt to local conditions, something in which the Jews excel in every country they go to.” Moreover, Sheinkin argued that the immigrants who went to Palestine were different from those who went to the United States and elsewhere: “In Palestine the Jew does not engage in peddling or trade in old clothes. The Jew tries to earn his bread honestly [and] he does so because of national honor. This is a very good sign of our spiritual redemption.”101 He termed such people folk pioneers and believed it was a mistake not to bring them to Palestine. Instead, the Zionist movement should once again issue “the great call to the Jewish people: ‘House of Jacob, come and let us go.’ Come, Jews, let us go build the Jewish home. From all classes of our people those with a strong will and tremendous energy will appear and become pioneers.” Although many of those coming would not share the Zionist ideology, “let us not panic about the exilic mindset that prevails among extensive segments of our people.” Just as among the halutzim “all that glitters is not gold,” so, too, “not all the people are flotsam. Many precious souls are rolling in the muck at the bottom of the middle and ‘lower’ classes. . . . This is correct Jewish democracy; it is very hard work, but we must do it or the nation cannot be revived.”102

Immigration to Palestine resumed soon after World War I. The first ships arrived in January 1919 and more came throughout that year. Over thirty-eight hundred immigrants entered the country under the military regime, and more than one hundred thousand came throughout the 1920s. The main countries of origin were Russia in the first half of the decade and Poland in the second half. At the start of the period, in addition to members of the Hechalutz movement, the newcomers included survivors of the pogroms in Ukraine and returning exiles. For this reason, the proportion of children and married people in the first two years of this period far exceeded the multiyear average for the entire decade. The occupational distribution of immigrants from 1924 to 1927 bears some similarity to that of immigrants to the United States before it was closed to immigration: specifically, there was a high proportion of skilled tradesmen and unskilled workers. However, the proportion of agricultural workers and professionals was higher among immigrants to Palestine than among immigrants to the United States.

The resumption of immigration led to a series of debates in the Jewish National Council, the Zionist General Council, and the Zionist Commission and to the fundamental decision that the Zionist movement had to take responsibility for regulating and organizing immigration. With the arrival of High Commissioner Herbert Samuel, an immigration policy was introduced that changed with political circumstances in Palestine. The first immigration ordinance gave the Zionist movement extensive authority over immigration, but this was taken away after the bloody riots in Jaffa in May 1921. Herbert Samuel suspended immigration for one month, after which he issued a new immigration ordinance that divided the newcomers into categories, with rigid quotas for each.

We see from the Zionist immigration policy in the 1920s that the Zionist movement was opposed to indiscriminate immigration and during part of the time even tried to minimize it. In the debate between Max Nordau, who advocated mass immigration and came up with the idea of bringing in half a million Jews, and Zionist Organization president Chaim Weizmann, who favored controlled, selective immigration, Weizmann won out. The Zionist Commission, and in later years the aliya bureau, sent clear instructions to the Palestine Offices about what sort of immigrants the country needed. The Palestine Offices were asked to send only those who would be able to actualize the Zionist idea, not only by immigrating but also by settling in Palestine and building up the country. It seems that when it was a choice between “the good of the people” (physical rescue and survival) and “the good of the country” (settlement and building), the Zionist leadership in the 1920s preferred the good of the land.

The Zionist policy was intended first and foremost to strengthen the Yishuv rather than to help the Jews of eastern Europe or relieve their distress. The needs of the Yishuv took precedence over saving the nation; there was no room in Palestine for anyone who did not serve the Zionist ideology and did not contribute to the settlement effort. The Zionist policy had an internal logic that was inconsistent with Zionist rhetoric. Fear that the Yishuv was incapable of absorbing masses of refugees overcame solidarity and concern for their plight. The primary mission of the Zionist leadership in the years that followed the Balfour Declaration was to build the national home in Palestine, and this required an immigration policy that would place the national interests of redeeming the land above the moral considerations of saving the people.

In the next chapter, we will see that the Palestine Offices developed a selective procedure for sending only the physically and mentally fit to Palestine. Nevertheless, to the displeasure of the Zionist leadership, some of the immigrants and refugees who arrived were motivated not by Zionist ideology but by personal and other considerations.