Historical context of Israel's war on Gaza

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Now for the next part of my promised list of references on Zionist/Israeli terrorism:

3) Terrorism by Israeli Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank and other occupied territories

- Israeli settler violence (Wikipedia)
- Settler Violence = State Violence, B'Tselem (The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories)
- Settler Violence: The nature of the violence, B'Tselem
- Price tag attack policy (Wikipedia)
- Concerns over rising settler violence in the West Bank, BBC, 17 November 2011
- Huwara rampage (Wikipedia) -- occurred on 26 February 2023
- Mapping 1,400 Israeli settler attacks in the West Bank over the past year, AlJazeera, 10 Oct 2024: "There was an average of four incidents of settler violence per day in the occupied West Bank since October 7."
- How Extremist Settlers Took Over Israel, New York Times, May 16, 2024

Recent examples:

- Deadly civilian rampage in West Bank sparks rare condemnation from Israeli leaders, Associated Press, via PBS, Aug 16, 2024
- Jewish settlers rampage in West Bank, killing 1, Palestinian officials say, Associated Press, via PBS, Aug 27, 2024
- Stemming Israeli Settler Violence at Its Root, International Crisis Group, September 6, 2024
- Violence by extremist Israeli settlers increases in the occupied West Bank, NPR, Nov 13, 2024

And a rare token response from the U.S. government:

- U.S. sanctions extremist West Bank settlers for violence against Palestinians, Associated Press, via PBS, Oct 1, 2024. See also Treasury Designates Extremist Settler Group in West Bank, U.S. Treasury Dept. website, October 1, 2024 (about Hilltop Youth)

Diluting the population," "evacuating homes," "expulsion," "exile," "emptying" and even "transfer." A broad array of words was used by Israeli government ministers during the historic deliberations in the 1960s and 1970s about the future of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

A perusal of the minutes in the Israel State Archives indicates that the present aspiration of the far right to "encourage emigration" of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip only echoes ideas and proposals that came up for discussion in the past – by prime ministers, ministers and leaders in left-wing governments, who were among the country's founding fathers.

The ministers had no shortage of ideas for solving the problem that was laid on their doorstep with the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in the Six-Day War. At the time there were about one million Palestinians in the territories, about 400,000 of them in the Gaza Strip. There were proposals to send them out of the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, Jordan, Sinai, Arab countries or any other place in the world that could receive them – by force, by consent, by subterfuge and with all kinds of incentives.

Golda Meir: 'There's no other choice: We have to do it, either willingly or by force.'
"If we can evict 300,000 refugees from Gaza to other places … we can annex Gaza without a problem," said Defense Minister Moshe Dayan on June 25, 1967. He mentioned an idea that was acceptable at the time to the government, but in the end wasn't fully implemented – to annex the Gaza Strip to Israel, to empty it of the Palestinian refugees and then to settle it with Jews.

“I propose annexing Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, although I wouldn't say the two things in one breath," said Prime Minister Levi Eshkol a week earlier. "We're willing to be killed over Jerusalem, and as far as the Gaza Strip is concerned, when we recall 400,000 Arabs, that leaves a bitter feeling."

Mosh Dayan: 'You take out the furniture. Those who want to go - go. Someone doesn't come to take care of his things, you bring a bulldozer to destroy the home. If there are people inside, you remove them. Until now there was no case where people wouldn't leave.'

His ministers mobilized to help and offered ideas. Interior Minister Moshe Shapiro spoke about "how can we organize the issue of the refugees in the Gaza Strip." "If it were possible to transfer 200,000 of the refugees to El Arish or to settle some of them in the West Bank," he proposed, referring to the Egyptian city in the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel occupied in the Six-Day War. Police Minister Eliyahu Sasson suggested "transferring them to the East Bank" – namely Jordan.

"We should take them to the East Bank by the scruff of their necks and throw them there, and I don't know who will accept them, especially the Gaza refugees," said his colleague Minister Yosef Sapir.

Minister Yigal Allon said that he was "in favor of encouraging emigration overseas," adding that "we have to handle it as seriously as possible." He also concluded that the preferred destination was Sinai, but proposed expanding the options: "The entire area of Sinai, and not only El Arish, allows for the settlement of all the Gaza refugees, and in my opinion we shouldn't wait. We have to begin to settle them." Afterwards he also proposed that some of the Palestinians "go to Canada, to Australia." Eshkol summed up: "I said that even when the problem wasn't as yet so acute that the refugees have to manage outside our Israel."

”Coming out by force now, starting to drag refugees onto trucks – that's a matter that would draw attention of sorts and a spotlight of sorts to the Land of Israel that I don't think we need that now.”
Religious Affairs Minister Zerach Warhaftig

Quietly, calmly and secretly

On October 1, 1967 Justice Minister Yaakov Shimshon Shapira wondered "When will we get any information about the plan to settle the refugees from the Gaza Strip in the West Bank?" and explained: "I've heard rumors." At the time there was a professional committee called the committee for the development of the occupied territories, whose members were security personnel and academics. Its job, as Eshkol defined it, was to examine the "economic and social aspect of this entire empire or part of the empire," including "also raising thoughts about emigration."

The committee members understood the political sensitivity of their work and therefore suggested to the government "to recruit the refugees for projects whose political purpose 'isn't emphasized' and to present them as 'humanitarian campaigns' and not as 'part of a global solution of the refugee problem.'"

The ministers' deliberations continued right through to the end of the year. "The entire issue of emigration requires more serious and energetic handling, then it will be possible to encourage it and to enable many people to leave," said Dayan in November 1967. Eshkol added that "Meanwhile 2,000 people leave for Jordan every week and the majority are people from the Strip. There are various ideas about their emigration to more distant countries."

In late December, Dayan spoke about a peace agreement including "the settlement of the refugees, their removal from Gaza and their settlement on the East Bank of Jordan." He promised that in such a case "In Gaza there won't be 400,000 Arabs but 70,000 or 100,000." The following day Eshkol said: "We're interested in emptying Gaza first. Therefore we'll first let the Arabs of Gaza leave." Minister Yigal Allon was already thinking about more ambitious schemes. "It wouldn't be at all bad to decrease the number of Arabs in the Galilee," he said

” We give them 48 hours to leave. We tell them, for example, you're moving to El Arish or to another place, we'll drive you … first you give them an option of moving voluntarily.”
Moshe dayan

Minister Sasson explained how it would by possible to advance the goal by encouraging the Palestinians to leave in order to work. "Let's help them to find work. And then they'll move the entire family there. We're likely to gain from all this by reducing the number of Arabs in those areas." Dayan agreed and added: "By granting those Arabs the option of seeking and finding work for themselves in other countries, there's a greater chance that they'll want to emigrate later to those countries." Minister Allon tried once again to add Israeli Arabs to the plan. "Why can't we expand that to the Arabs of old Israel," he asked.

On the last day of 1967 Eshkol had news. "I'm involved in establishing a unit or a squad to deal with encouraging the emigration of Arabs from here," he revealed to the ministers. He added that "We have to handle this issue quietly, calmly and secretly, and we have to look for a way for them to emigrate to other countries and not only to Transjordan."

And in fact, at the time there were several active initiatives to "encourage the emigration of Palestinians from Gaza." One of them was led by Ada Sereni, the widow of paratrooper Enzo Sereni (who was captured parachuting behind enemy lines into Nazi-occupied Italy) and one of the heads of the secret effort to bring Jews from Europe to Mandatory Palestine. A document from May 1968 records a request for a monthly budget for "encouraging emigration from the Gaza Strip to be implemented according to the instructions of Mrs. Ada Sereni."

The idea was to create a "quiet emigration, in such a way that Israel wouldn't be seen as being involved in it. Toward that end, Israelis with a security background, who were familiar with Arab society, were sent directly to the population centers in Gaza in order to persuade their leaders to encourage voluntary departure.

"Because of these suffocating conditions and the enclosure there, maybe the Arabs will move from the Strip, but even afterward about 400,000 Arabs will remain here [in Israel] and another 150,000 will remain in Gaza," added Eshkol at the end of the year. The new solution he proposed was harsh. "It's possible that if we don't give them enough water they won't have any choice, because the orchards will turn yellow and wither. But we can't know all that ahead of time. Who knows, maybe we can expect another war and then this problem will be solved, but that's a kind of luxury, an unexpected solution," he said.

As along as they leave for Brazil
In February 1968 Eshkol was afraid that someone was likely to think that "We're pressuring Arabs to leave the country." However, with his typical humor he said: "We won't sit shivah if they leave." Afterwards he started to talk in numbers. "Eighty five percent have all the money necessary for emigration. I think that every Jew who has any sense will say, first take the 80 percent so you'll be certain that they'll leave."

Religious Affairs Minister Zerach Warhaftig joined the discussion and made suggestions of his own. "Our main issue should be that we'll give them an option of leaving the Gaza Strip with some kind of sum of money," he advised. "We have to enable them to realize their assets which aren't worth much, but to invest our own money in them. If we pay $1,000 for a kiosk as long as they leave with their families for Brazil or Argentina, I see great value in that. In that way we can motivate 10,000 families to leave Gaza."

”We should take them to the East Bank by the scruff of their necks and throw them there, and I don't know who will accept them, especially the Gaza refugees.”
Minister Yosef Sapir
But he also urged caution regarding the terms used in the offer: "Instead of telling them that we'll pay money for their emigration, which isn't nice and just … we'll buy their portable assets and pay them good money for them, and that will spur them to leave the Strip, with a sum of money in hand to begin their life in another country." He added that a family that goes to South America without a penny in its pocket doesn't rush to put down roots in a new country, and a family that leaves with means of survival in its possession, immediately upon arriving in a new country will have it easier to become adjusted to that country and to stay there."

In 1969 Eshkol pointed out a problem. On the one hand, Israel wants to encourage emigration, and on the other it's investing in the development of the Strip and in doing so is "likely" to encourage its residents to remain. "If we arrange things there so they'll be in order, that there will be work and industry there and we build factories there and employ the Arabs there – they'll remain in the Gaza Strip," he warned.

Agriculture Minister Haim Gvati discussed that at another session, and said: "Of course we'd like to do everything possible to reduce the population of Gaza … There's a fear that if we rehabilitate the Gaza camps too, the refugees will see that the situation is similar in both places … and then there won't be any point in leaving the Strip." Minister Allon said that he was "In favor of continuing the gap in the standard of living between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip." He said that they shouldn't "provide a standard in the Gaza Strip that's similar to that of the West Bank, because then the attraction of the West Bank will be reduced."

’Give them 48 hours to leave'
Eshkol died in 1969, and the deliberations were continued by Prime Minister Golda Meir. In 1970 Defense Minister Moshe Dayan warned not to act overtly in encouraging the emigration of Gazans. "If we're going for a plan of 20,000, it means we're announcing a transfer," he said. "In doing so we'll spoil everything from the beginning … If they ask for help from us – fine … It will be a slow and natural process. . Anything bombastic that we do will trigger its own failure."

Development Minister Haim Landau proposed a new idea. "First-class vocational education should be given and should be massive, because that's the opening for the possibility of their emigration from there." He explained that "there's a greater chance that people with a vocation will be able to be absorbed and to integrate into other countries."

In 1971 Golda Meir also took an interest in the issue. "There's a matter of thinning out the camps. There's no argument about the principle," she said. Dayan described how the residents would be evicted from their homes – some of them suspected of terror against Jews or local Arabs, and some owners of homes that have to be demolished for a different reason: "We give them 48 hours to leave. We tell them, for example, you're moving to El Arish or to another place, we'll drive you … first you give them an option of moving voluntarily. You remove the furniture from the house. If the person doesn't come to arrange his affairs – we bring a bulldozer to demolish the house. If there are people in the house, we evict them from the house. Since we give him 48 hours …There's no critical moment here when they come and say we'll load you and your furniture on the truck, but you give him an opportunity to do so voluntarily."

Chief of Staff Haim Bar Lev introduced a hot potato to the discussion, saying that Palestinians must not be moved to places designated for the settlement of Jews later on. "I'm definitely sure that it will be possible to find places – and we have found such places – that won't block our options for Jewish settlement." He added a reassuring message: "I'm convinced that it won't prevent us from building a few more Jewish settlements in the Strip."

Dayan noted that "It didn't and doesn't occur to us to settle them in a place that in some way will interfere with Jewish settlement." Tourism Minister Moshe Kol also said that "If we want to see the Gaza Strip as part of the State of Israel, we have to get rid of part of the population there, no matter what the cost. We'll pay greater compensation to people who want to move."

Unlike others, Minister Yisrael Galili also addressed the problematic aspect of the operation. "I'm not deluding myself that this is a humanitarian act and that we are doing charity work with them," he said in 1971. "I don't want to sugarcoat this cruel operation but it's the least worst option under the given conditions."

Minister Shlomo Hillel spoke about the morality of the proposal. "The moral plain isn't gauged by whether you remove people from their homes against their will, whether they like it or don't like it," he said. "The moral plain is gauged by the fact that we are the government in Gaza and we haven't been managing to comply with what is required of us [as] the government, which is first and foremost to protect innocent people, to protect the lives of those who are prepared to come work for us."

Meir asserted that what was being proposed did not involve cruelty. "It's clear that we won't manage to thin out the Jabalya camp voluntarily," she explained. "It would have been a lot more pleasant if we would do this voluntarily [on the Palestinians' part]. There's no alternative. … This really is terrible 'cruelty'," she said sarcastically, "Moving them to an apartment, … giving them compensation … If that's cruelty, I don't know how you do something comfortably. And nevertheless, there's no doubt that they don't want to be moved.

The term "force" also began to be used later in the discussion. Religious Affairs Minister Warhaftig told Meir: "It would be better to use force if there's a need for force, but only in the midst of a major commotion." He explained that there was a need to wait for a deterioration or a war to forcibly expel people from their homes.

"Coming out by force now, starting to drag refugees onto trucks – that's a matter that would draw attention of sorts and a spotlight of sorts to the Land of Israel that I don't think we need that now," he said.

Ultimately only several tens of thousands of Palestinians left the Gaza Strip during those years. The first settlement in Gaza was established in 1970, but most of the Palestinian population in the Strip remained in place. In 2005, the settlers were evacuated from the Gaza Strip in the framework of the disengagement. Nearly 20 years later, populist cabinet ministers from Itamar Ben-Gvir's political camp have been demanding their return.

In the 1970s, Allon sounded like one of them. "I agree to expulsions," he said. "We've done that in the past and we need to continue it in the future as well." Allon spoke of "creating space and thinning out the existing camps" for security reasons and "to begin to move refugees to places where, with the passage of time, it will be possible to view them as permanent solutions."

He didn't mince words: "Through coercion too," he said, arguing that there would be no alternative. "This involves one-time pain and you can also explain it as necessary for security and health requirements."

I thought that you folks might be interested in these remarks from President Clinton



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYVh2tMriFg

Also, the rabbi's conclusions.

Carry on with your debate.

13 September–3 October – Bilateral negotiations over Palestine's final status are conducted but no deal was signed due to disputes over Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, and travel rights between Gaza and the West Bank.

Jul 11, 2000 - Jul 25, 2000
Camp David Summit
U.S. President Clinton meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Arafat at Camp David in Maryland on July 25, 2000.

President Bill Clinton hosts Israeli and Palestinian leaders for talks at Camp David. Reports indicate that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is prepared to accept, among other things, Palestinian sovereignty over some 91 percent of the West Bank and certain parts of Jerusalem. The deal would include a land swap in which some Israeli land would go to the Palestinians in compensation for the remaining 9 percent of the West Bank, which would go to Israel. Two weeks of intensive discussion, however, fails to produce an agreement. President Clinton blames Arafat for the failure. Before leaving office several months later, Clinton lays out proposals for both sides. Talks between them continue, but without success.

The summit ended without an agreement, largely due to irreconcilable differences between Israelis and Palestinians on the status of Jerusalem.

[...]

The issues discussed included the establishment of a Palestinian state, the fate of Israeli settlements (illegal under international law), the status of Jerusalem, the question of Palestinian refugees, and potential Israeli control over the airspace and borders of a future Palestinian state. The summit ended after irreconcilable differences over who should have sovereignty over the Temple Mount (which Muslims call Haram al-Sharif or Al-Aqsa) : Barak insisted on Israeli sovereignty, while Arafat insisted on Palestinian sovereignty.

Reports of the outcome of the summit have been described as illustrating the Rashomon effect, in which the multiple witnesses gave contradictory and self-serving interpretations. After the summit, the Israeli narrative was widely accepted by the American media, which sought to cast Arafat as a villain and that Palestinians did not want peace. That narrative lead to the decline of the Israeli peace movement.

On 11 July, the Camp David 2000 Summit convened, although the Palestinians considered the summit premature. They even saw it as a "trap" – meaning either they would be pressured into agreeing to Israeli demands, or they would be blamed for the summit's failure. Many sources have said the Summit was rushed. Dan Kurtzer and Scott Lasensky wrote that American diplomats "scrambled at the last minute to put together U.S. positions on complex issues such as Jerusalem and borders." Israeli diplomat Gilead Sher would later write, "the most serious shortcoming of the American team was that some of its members appeared to be less knowledgeable than the president in the details and implications of the process." And Yasser Abed Rabbo, member of the Palestinian negotiating team, recalled "It was chaos. Every day a different meeting, committee and issue. We didn’t know what were our aims, to succeed, to fail, to escape."

The summit ended on 25 July, without an agreement being reached. At its conclusion, a Trilateral Statement was issued defining the agreed principles to guide future negotiations.

Negotiations

The negotiations were based on an all-or-nothing approach, such that "nothing was considered agreed and binding until everything was agreed." The proposals were, for the most part, verbal. As no agreement was reached and there is no official written record of the proposals, some ambiguity remains over details of the positions of the parties on specific issues.

I don't care who is behind it and who is being attacked. When the victims retaliate against the attacks, I'm not going to criticize them for their retaliation.

The campaign to deny that we have a right to exist, to erase our story and identity and deny us something called “legitimacy” - a strange word to apply to a nation, suggesting that you think you have the power to confer or deny “legitimacy” to a human community - has all been a disastrous distraction for the Palestinian cause.

If the entirety of Palestinian history is reexamined with the assumption that Israel cannot be wished away, then a huge number of Palestinian decisions and actions from the 1910s until this very week are suddenly seen for the catastrophically self-destructive strategic errors that they always were.

And that’s true whether Israel is good or bad, whether its wars or policies are justified or unjustified.

I have a lot of criticisms of my country. I don’t think this conflict ends until Palestinians receive the fundamental thing they deserve, which is independence from us. But my critiques don’t much matter on the ground as long as the single biggest political faction in Palestine, the same faction that destroyed the peace process and shattered the Israeli left in waves of bloody bombings, continues to champion the literal destruction of my people.

Polls tell us that 90% of ordinary Israelis genuinely and earnestly believe that the fundamental Palestinian aspiration is to exterminate them They believe it because these same ideological factions in Palestine tell them this consistently and routinely.

It’s hard to convey how devastating that simple fact is to the Palestinian cause, how high it drives the bar for successfully pressuring Israelis to change policies or behaviors.

There is no pressure the world can bring to bear on the Israelis, not even literal war, that will be higher than the countervailing pressure of this persistent promise by major Palestinian factions to turn every withdrawal into rivers of blood, up to and including the destruction of Israel.

It doesn’t matter if you think the Palestinians can’t actually destroy the Israelis. What matters for the Palestinian future, more than all the love of all the world, is that Israelis believe it.

Until that changes, no sanctions or ostracism or hatred or violence against synagogues or the construction of vast ideological narratives about Jewish perfidy will move the needle for Palestinians.

When Palestinian ideologues realize and respond to that straightforward strategic reality, the needle will finally move.
bolding=mine:

Trying to keep the thread Evidence of Israel's genocidal intentions toward Gaza? on-topic, I've created this separate thread for discussion of the historical context of Israel's war on Gaza.

I will ask the moderator(s) to move some off-topic posts from that thread to here. I will then reply to some of those posts.

I've already discussed some aspects of the historical context in the following threads:

- What life is like for Palestinians
- Israel/Palestine and settler-colonialism
- Palestine/Israel: 2-state solution vs. 1 binational state?
- Israel/Palestine -- how could a one-state solution work?
- Critiques of Zionism by Jews
- Palestinian Christians
- Christian Zionism
- Israeli settler support infrastructure here in the U.S.A.
- Changes in how Palestinians/Arabs talk about Jews
- Traditional anti-Jewish tropes and debunkings thereof

Everyone, feel free to discuss the historical context more generally here.

During the time I was creating the above-listed threads, I learned a lot about how awful the situation of Palestinians has been for lo these many decades. Here in the U.S.A., most people -- myself included -- have been pretty effectively shielded from learning about this throughout most of my lifetime.

Another important relevant thread, regarding the history of the founding of Israel: How Ethnic Cleansing Created Israel (posted by funeralxempire).

viewtopic.php?t=422096

There's the link.

Just a few days after the October 7 Hamas massacre, Elana Sztokman discovered that she had been added to a WhatsApp group of graduates of her yeshiva day school in Brooklyn. Many of them she had not seen or heard from in decades.

It soon became clear to her that while she had moved on ideologically, the rest of them remained pretty much where they had been in high school when it came to thinking about Israel and the Middle East conflict. As far as they were concerned, Israel could do no wrong, the Arabs were all bad, all they want to do was kill Jews, and therefore, they all deserve to die.

As a proud leftist who had left the Orthodox world many years earlier, Sztokman found she had very little in common with her old gang. But that was not the only thing that set her apart: Unlike most of the other members of this new WhatsApp group, Sztokman actually lives in Israel, and like most Israelis, had been personally and deeply affected by the events of October 7: Her two daughters, who lived close to the Gaza border, had been displaced, and were now living with her, and their husbands, along with Sztokman's son, had all been called up for military reserve duty.

Deeply disturbed by some comments being posted in the WhatsApp group, Sztokman reached out privately to the moderator, who happened to be an old friend, and asked her why she was allowing the platform to be used to promote radical religious ideas that justified mass murder.

"Do you have any idea what happened on October 7?" the moderator wrote her back.

Sztokman was not sure whether to laugh or cry. "Of course, I know what happened on October 7, I'm living it," she responded. "But I still don't believe that all Palestinians support Hamas or that there are no innocent people on the other side."

Taken aback by this response, the moderator advised Sztokman to seek professional help and suggested she "go back to being a grandmother and leave the thinking to the rest of us."

This exchange opens "In My Jewish State," Sztokman's latest book, scheduled for release later this month by Lioness Books and Media, the publishing company she founded to promote women's voices. It not only underscores how far the author has deviated from her Orthodox, right-wing Zionist roots, but also establishes her credentials as an authority, based on her own lived experience, on the Jewish supremacist ideology that has taken Israel by storm in recent years.

Sztokman attended the Yeshivah of Flatbush, a Modern Orthodox day school whose graduates include the likes of fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi, retired Israeli Supreme Court Justice Neal Hendel, and former Anti-Defamation League leader Abe Foxman.

It is also the school where two of the most infamous Jewish characters of recent history earned their diplomas: Meir Kahane, the racist rabbi whose party was banned in Israel, but whose protégé Itamar Ben-Gvir, a convicted criminal, serves as the powerful minister of national security in the current government; and Baruch Goldstein, the doctor who, motivated by Kahanist ideology, carried out a massacre against Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron 30 years ago, killing 29 Muslim worshippers and injuring another 125.

"I often say to Israelis that if you want to understand Ben-Gvir, you have to go back to Brooklyn," says Sztokman, who lives in Modi'in in central Israel, in a telephone interview with Haaretz. "Ben-Gvir is a direct heir to Meir Kahane. The language he uses comes straight from Avenue J [a main Flatbush thoroughfare]. It's used to play on people's fears, and now this language has been transplanted to Israel, and the radical religious right is turning it into policy."

Justifying atrocities
An anthropologist by training, Sztokman, 55, is an outspoken feminist and peace activist who has written seven books, including "When Rabbis Abuse" (2022) and "The War on Women in Israel" (2014). She has served as executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, completed a spiritual counseling program run by the Reform movement, and since July has been co-hosting a podcast called "Women Ending War" with her Palestinian friend Eva Dalak.

She raised her children Orthodox and left Orthodoxy when she was in her early forties (her husband is still observant).

"I kept my Shabbat-breaking habits private for a very long time," says Sztokman. "I didn't really leave leave until my kids were out of the house – and even today, I still have one foot in and one foot out."

In her latest book, the author sets out to explain how she got from there to here, not only religiously, but also politically. Of all her books, notes Sztokman, "In My Jewish State" was the most difficult to write. Not only because it is a memoir of sorts, forcing her to look deep into herself and take stock of past mistakes, but also because it focuses on the highly fraught topic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"So many people today are speaking from a place of trauma, and from a place of trauma are justifying atrocities, and so what I'm asking in this book is: Can we please stop doing that?" she says.

"I know people are going to take deep offense at that suggestion, and I understand that, because Jews are still living in the shadow of the Holocaust, and October 7 is still very raw. And yet, I need to say it because a lot of lives are at stake, both here and there. I also think the Jewish state is at stake, the definition of who we are as a people is at stake, and I think our humanity is at stake. We cannot use antisemitism to justify doing whatever we want to the Palestinians – and that's a stance that's hard for most Jews to engage with."

I'm saying we need to rethink what it means to be a Jewish state, we need to be rethinking the whole concept of a Jewish state, because what we're doing now is not sustainable.

Elana Sztokman

There are six selections re Zionism’s relationship to anti-Semitism and racism prior to Hitler. The 51 documents, including 35 letters, memos, articles, and reports by Zionists, are from the Hitler era and after. Seven are by Nazis, most notably Eichmann’s memoir, written in Argentina, on Hungarian collaborator RA<

Zionism convicts itself. On June 21, 1933, the German Zionist Federation sent a secret memorandum to the Nazis:

“Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own tradition. Zionism recognized decades ago that as a result of the assimilationist trend, symptoms of deterioration were bound to appear, which it seeks to overcome by carrying out its challenge to transform Jewish life completely.

“It is our opinion that an answer to the Jewish question truly satisfying to the national state can be brought about only with the collaboration of the Jewish movement that aims at a social, cultural and moral renewal of Jewry–indeed, that such a national renewal must first create the decisive social and spiritual premises for all solutions.

“Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group. For the Jew, too, origin, religion, community of fate and group consciousness must be of decisive significance in the shaping of his life. This means that the egotistic individualism which arose in the liberal era must be overcome by public spiritedness and by willingness to accept responsibility.”

Almost immediately after Hitler’s appointment as German chancellor on January 30, 1933, the Nazis organized a boycott campaign against Jewish businesses and a violent crusade against Jews. In response, a worldwide boycott against buying Nazi goods was launched, which included picketing German companies and organizing trade associations, unions, and political alliances to expand the boycott throughout the United States and overseas.

The boycott movement perhaps reached its zenith on March 27, 1933, when the American Jewish Congress held a massive and wildly successful rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. Simultaneous rallies were held in 70 other municipal areas across the United States and Europe, and radio broadcasts reached hundreds of cities throughout the world. Above and beyond the great effectiveness of the boycott in bringing pressure to bear on the German economy, it also represented a significant symbolic boost to the Jewish psyche, as the Jewish people –faced with arguably the greatest threat to their existence in history – refused to accept their fate, actively resisted the Nazis, and manifested pride and dignity in the process.

Even if, as some analysts contend, the boycott had a minimal aggregate effect on the German economy, it had an enormous impact on the Nazis. Having reached the pinnacles of power principally through promising the German people a rebuilt and thriving economy, the Nazis perceived the boycott as an enormous threat to the German economy, which was highly dependent on income generated by exports as corporations, business leaders, and the public breached German contracts, canceled German orders and refused to deal with German companies.

The effect of the boycott was particularly profound in the United States, where German imports were reduced by nearly 25 percent, and in Eretz Yisrael, where most doctors refused to prescribe German medicines, resulting in great losses to German pharmaceutical companies. Hit particularly hard by the boycott was the Hamburg-America Line, whose board was forced to resign by the Nazi regime. The Nazi response to the threat was to try to divide a very organized anti-Nazi worldwide Jewish network, which was the predicate for the Haavara Agreement.

On August 7, 1933, an official delegation of Zionists from Germany and Eretz Yisrael led by Eliezer Hoofien (1881-1957), director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank (which later became Bank Leumi) who later created Israel’s monetary system, met with representatives of the Third Reich in Berlin to negotiate an easing of the boycott of Nazi goods. With the meeting evidencing no progress and the discussions about to end with no deal, Hans Hartenstein, director of the Reich Office of Currency Control, received a telegram from the German consul in Tel Aviv ordering him to get a deal done because an agreement with the Jewish representatives was necessary to break the boycott that was crippling the Third Reich in its infancy.

The result was the controversial Haavara (“Transfer”) Agreement that allowed Jews seeking to flee Germany to sell their assets in Germany in exchange for receiving permission to keep a portion of the sale proceeds and transfer some portion of their assets to Eretz Yisrael – then under the control of the British Mandate.

There was no formal contract evidencing the Agreement but, rather, the Reich Economics Ministry issued a decree a few days later authorizing the Zionists to create two transfer clearinghouses, the first under the supervision of the German Zionist Federation in Berlin, and the second under the supervision of Anglo-Palestine’s trust company in Tel Aviv. The Tel Aviv office, known as the Haavara Trust and Transfer Office Ltd.” (or “Haavara Ltd.” for short), was operated by business managers, and all its stock was owned by the Anglo-Palestine Bank under the direction of the Jewish Agency.

An important role in the Haavara Agreement was played by Hanotea (“the Planter”), a citrus planting company based in Netanya established in 1929 by Jewish settlers on moshavot in Eretz Yisrael. According to a deal negotiated with Hitler’s Economic Ministry: (1) the Nazi government unblocked the German bank accounts of the Jews participating in the Agreement; (2) the funds in these accounts were transferred to Hanotea, which used the funds to purchase German goods and agricultural products (at exorbitant prices); and (3) these products were shipped to the original Jewish account holders in Eretz Yisrael, who sold them to import merchants there.

One potential problem with implementing the Haavara Agreement was the infamous British blockade prohibiting Jews from entering Eretz Yisrael and the broad limitations imposed by the British on Jewish immigration. However, Jews participating in Haavara were able to bypass these harsh immigration proscriptions under the British “immigrant investor program,” pursuant to which a Jew could enter Eretz Yisrael if he presented a so-called “Capitalist Certificate” issued by the British proving his possession of the equivalent of 500 Palestinian pounds (later doubled to 1,000 pounds).

It is indisputable that there never would have been a Haavara Agreement without the boycott. From the Nazi perspective, the principal purpose of the Agreement was to end the boycott and to bolster a weak German economy by reaping a financial windfall through a payoff from Zionist leaders. It also created an important market for German exports in Eretz Yisrael, with 157 million Reichmarks (about $35 million) exported to Jewish businesses there under the program.

However, there was a second – and perhaps counterintuitive – motive for the Nazis to embrace the Agreement. Early in the Reich, Hitler viewed Eretz Yisrael as a land of promise as a useful dumping ground for ridding Germany of thousands of Jewish “misfits.” As such, the Nazis saw the Agreement as a means to rid themselves of tens of thousands of “undesirables” through “voluntary emigration” before later realizing that killing millions of Jews was a relatively simple proposition of administering an inexpensive dose of Zyklon-B gas to thousands at a time.

Even today, there are deeply misguided commentators who cite the Haavara Agreement as evidence that Hitler actually supported Zionism. These include London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Mahmoud Abbas, who writes in The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to kill European Jews to encourage the remainder to emigrate to “Palestine.”

In fact, the Agreement was merely a passing concession by Hitler to improve the failing German economy and, while he did temporarily favor getting Jews out of Germany as a means to purify his Reich before he turned to exterminating them, there is nothing to suggest that he ever specifically directed them to Eretz Yisrael. Similarly, when Eichmann declared “I am a Zionist,” he was not embracing Jewish aliyah and self-determination but, rather, meant only that Zionism provided an efficient resolution to Germany’s “Jewish problem.”

In general, those favoring the Haavara Agreement pointed to important and concrete results: Some 60,000 Jews were able to escape the Nazi death camps and make aliyah without becoming pauperized and, though they were able to recover only about 40 percent of the value of their assets, that was more than they could have obtained later when they were murdered and all of their property was confiscated. Moreover, the growing Yishuv received about 39 percent of the new oleh’s funds – some $100 million (several billion in today’s dollars) – which was necessary not only to absorb Jews fleeing Europe but also to acquire land and establish the foundations of a future Jewish state. The Yishuv further benefitted from the labor provided by the new olim. Supporters contend that at the end of the day, Haavara saved Jewish lives, rescued Jewish assets, and seeded the infrastructure of Israel.

However, Haavara brought Holocaust deniers out of their fetid ratholes, who used the Agreement to “prove” that the Zionists, like all Jews, were only interested in money and that Jews were sent to “displace” the “native Palestinian inhabitants” for financial gain. The Nazis argued that if the Jews were trading with them, there could be no basis for anyone else to boycott German goods, which devastated the boycott by effectively nullifying any moral basis for taking economic action against the Third Reich. Critics of the Agreement claimed that cynical Zionists elevated aliyah to the status of a supreme value that transcended any concern for the fate of non-Zionist Jews or others who shunned aliyah.

On the other hand, Haavara supporters claimed that the boycott constituted a threat to German Jews because a mass Jewish-led worldwide boycott would incentivize the Nazis to increase their Jewish persecution even further; it would encourage a counter-boycott against Jews and increase economic anti-Semitism across Europe; and it would grant the Nazis a huge propaganda victory by providing “confirmation” of their worldwide Jewish conspiracy theories.

First and foremost, Haavara and boycott reflected fundamentally opposing approaches to the best way to help German Jews at the outset of the Holocaust. In essence, boycott supporters argued that the pressure being brought to bear on Hitler was effective and was yielding real and tangible results. On the other hand, Haavara supporters claimed that the boycott constituted a threat to German Jews because a mass Jewish-led worldwide boycott would incentivize the Nazis to increase their Jewish persecution even further; it would encourage a counter-boycott against Jews and increase economic anti-Semitism across Europe; and it would grant the Nazis a huge propaganda victory by providing “confirmation” of their worldwide Jewish conspiracy theories.

Second, the boycott vs. transfer issue became a focal point of disputes between the Yishuv and the Diaspora. The Mapai party, which all but ruled the Yishuv, viewed Haavara as crucial to its plans for a Jewish state, while Diasporan Jewish communities generally supported the boycott as the most effective tool against Nazi Germany.

Third, the boycott vs. Haavara discord further widened the gulf between Orthodox Jews on one hand and Charedi and non-observant Jews on the other. Boycott leaders actively sought the backing of Orthodox rabbis, many of whom were already boycott supporters, not only because of their considerable influence over their congregations but also because, ironically, their influence was overstated by the Nazi government and was particularly feared by the German Foreign Ministry.

On the other hand, the Agreement was bitterly criticized by many non-Orthodox Jewish leaders, both within the Zionist movement and outside it, who were furious that easing the boycott pressure on Germany would stabilize its economy and remove the Jews’ most effective weapon against Hitler. Leading Haavara opponents in the United States included Abba Hillel Silver and the World Zionist Congress, and Stephen Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress. Notwithstanding fervent appeals by Wise and others to the Nineteenth Zionist Congress (Lucerne, 1935) to vote against the Haavara Agreement, the Congress ultimately endorsed it.

Charedi leaders were strong supporters of the Nazi boycott, to the point that at its January 1934 fifth national convention in Poland, Agudat Israel issued a formal declaration that any betrayal of the boycott is a traitorous act of treachery against the Jewish people. Moreover, charedi rabbis, who opposed the “Tzionists” and viewed the very idea of a Jewish state as an anathema, were not going to support a Haavara movement that would assist the Yishuv in establishing Jewish sovereignty in Eretz Yisrael, which they believed to be contrary to the Torah.

Fourth, while the Transfer Agreement did save the lives of many Jews, they were all wealthy Jews with access to assets sufficient to qualify for the immigration certificates necessary to permit passage through the British blockade and entry into Eretz Yisrael. Boycott supporters contended that the Agreement did literally nothing for the overwhelming mass of German Jewry who lacked sufficient financial resources and that, in fact, it significantly damaged them by weakening the boycott.

Fifth, the anti-Haavara camp argued that cooperating with the Nazi regime in evacuating Germany’s Jews evidences Jewish acceptance of their banishment from their country and homes and serves as a model for the rest of Europe, particularly Poland, for ridding themselves of Jews with impunity. Haavara proponents, however, maintained that very purpose the Zionist idea – the collapse of the Diaspora and the ingathering of Jewish exiles in Eretz Yisrael – was facilitated by the Agreement.

Sixth, the clash between the respective supporters of Haavara and boycott also exacerbated tensions between the Labor Zionists movement and the Revisionists, which were already raging within the Zionist movement.

The most fervent and outspoken opponents of the Agreement were Zev Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Zionists, and the depth of their bitterness was such that it prompted rebellion, even murder, within the Yishuv and the Diaspora. Most significantly, the Revisionist Zionists were blamed for the assassination of Chaim Arlosoroff, essentially the Jewish Agency’s foreign minister, who had played a leading role in negotiating the Transfer Agreement.

Arlosoroff (1899-1933) played a major role in uniting the two major Zionist socialist political parties, Poale Tzion and the Hapoel Hatzair, a merger that established the Mapai (1930), in which he became a leader and spokesman. He was murdered while walking with his wife on the Tel Aviv seashore on June 16, 1933, just two days after his return from Germany to negotiate the Haavara Agreement, and many theories still advance the argument that he was murdered by disgruntled Jews upset about the Transfer Agreement.

Almost nine decades after the deal was negotiated, the questions remain: was it madness to enter into the Haavara Agreement, or was it a brilliant strategic move? Was it the product of weakness by Jewish leaders with a ghetto mentality, or was it a gutsy act of liberation? Did Zionists sell their birthright for a mess of pottage, or did they salvage human life and assets that would otherwise have been irretrievably lost? Was it a crucial step in the development of Israel, or was it a shameful betrayal of the worldwide Jewish anti-Nazi effort?

Until now we have been concentrating of causation by Israeli actions. The following tweet while not absolving Israel emphasis Palestinian narrative.

Haviv Rettig Gur is the senior analyst for the Times of Israel and a frequent guest on Zionist podcasts

That 90 percent of Israelis believe that all Palestinians want to do is exterminate them certainly puts Israeli statements and actions in context.

It also explains why Israel is bombing Syria when the new regime is saying everyday they want peace. It makes me wonder if there is anything the Palestinians can do to change Israeli opinion.

Putting my pessimism aside at some point Israeli Jews have stop feeling the need to constantly prove they are not the victims anymore and recognize they have done terrible things also.

This has nothing to with Palestinian intentions but their own mental health.

If you have almost two hours to spare Haviv Rettig Gur’s college lecture. He goes back to the 1800s