Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 14:38:12 +0200 (IST)

Title: The Transfer Agreement

By: Barry Chamish

Email: <chamish@netmedia.net.il>

Part One

It has been called, along with Ben Hecht's Perfidy, the most controversial book about Israel ever written. Unlike Perfidy, The Transfer Agreement by Edwin Black (MacMillan, 1985) never had an audience. It was taken off the shelves quickly and surreptiously and is almost impossible to find. I thank David Perkins for travelling to Washington and making copies at the Library of Congress.

What Black's book painstakingly proves is that in 1933, while the rest of World Jewry was organizing an economic boycott of the new Nazi regime in Germany in the hope of breaking it before it could mount the Holocaust, the Mapai (Labour Party) faction of the Zionist Organization based in Jerusalem decided to make Nazi Germany Palestine's chief trading partner.

The vehicle for trade was The Transfer Agreement. The Nazis and Labour Zionists had one very important thing in common: The Nazis wanted Germany ridded of Jews and the socialist Zionists did too, so long as they emigrated to Eretz Yisrael. To accomodate such a transfer of Jews, an agreement was arranged whereby each Jew wishing to leave Germany for Palestine would have to use his capital to purchase German goods there. Thus, while world Jewry was busy fighting Nazi Germany economically, the Mapai Zionists were saving Germany from financial ruin.

In short, the Labour Zionists assured the survival of the Nazis. To do so, it was essential that their rivals, the Revisionist Zionists (Likud) were eliminated from the power structure of the impending state of Israel. The murder of Labour Zionist leader Chaim Arlozoroff, who was a chief negotiator of the Transfer Agreement, was the means to totally discredit the opposition and get on with the task of doing business with the Nazis and in doing so, create a state in the socialist image.

I admit, Black does not paint things quite so black and white. However, I'm certain most readers would be left with this impression. Black does conclude, "Could the boycott really have overturned the Hitler regime? I believe the answer is that for a short period of time, the anti-Nazi boycott did have an excellent chance of toppling the Third Reich. The boycott's greatest momentum occurred just after April 1, 1933. Had the world's Jewish and Zionist organizations unified behind the boycott at that point, they probably could have mobilized much of the Christian population and many governments into joining...In their first few months of power, the Nazis would not have been able to maintain control."

However, a veritable who's who of early Zionist heroes sabotaged the boycott. In Part One of my review, I will follow the story of the secret agreement in Black's own words. While I will not slow down the narrative with explanations of every Jewish leader and organization, those fighting the boycott allied themselves with the Labour Zionists of Palestine. In Part Two, I will focus on the Arlosoroff murder and its more than coincidental resemblance to the Rabin assassination just over fifty years later. Then, instead of negotiating with the Jew-hating Nazis, the same Labour Zionists exploited a political murder to promote their pacts with the Jew killers of the PLO by eliminating Revisionist (Likud) objections through deliberate, wrongful blame.

The Transfer Agreement, pp 107- Locker advised the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem that for tactical reasons, Zionists in all countries should avoid participating in the struggle against Hitler. Locker feared that open criticism of Hitler would precipitate crackdowns on German Zionism... Zionists were seeking detente with an enemy to achieve Jewish nationalism...But the American Jewish Committee's antagonism to anti-Nazi activity defied even their own definition of Jewish defense.

pp 127- By linking the purchase of German goods to the settling of German Jews in Palestine...the Zionist movement would be obliged not only to refrain from and oppose any boycott, they would be obliged to aggressively sponsor German exports.

pp 134/135- The German government felt certain it had triggered the breakup of the boycott because the Zionist movement would now be in the German export business...The Jews of the world would now have to choose between fighting Hitler and building Palestine...the plan was not a rescue or relief project. If it was, the Zionists would have labored for an agreement for Jews fleeing Germany without regard to where they sought refuge.

pp 201- Yet at a Mid-July rally held at the height on London's anti-Nazi

agitation, Nahum Sokolow, in his capacity as Federation president, advised

an anti-Nazi rally to forgo boycott plans. And Chaim Weizmann and other key

Zionist figures repeatedly advised the Deputies to persist in their

non-boycott policy.

pp 293- Chaim Weizmann, a General Zionist, boycotted the session and requested his name be removed from the Congress speaker list altogether because the Revisionists had been allowed to participate.

pp 301- The same afternoon as Revisionist leader Jabotinsky was exhorting

his followers to postpone their political grievances in favor of the war

against Nazism, Labor leader David Ben Gurion, speaking to the Mapai

strategy conference, demanded that his followers do the opposite. The most

important task of the movement, Ben Gurion declared, was to cleanse the

movement of Revisionism and extend Mapai's political borders to cover the

entire Zionist Organization.

pp 306- Dr. Ruppin saw to it that most drafts of his speech deleted any

reference to the Transfer Agreement. Dr. Ruppin apparently preferred history

to believe he had never even metioned the subject.

pp 308- The Revisionist argument would never be heard. Motzkin announced

that after the resolutions were presented, there would be no debate, this by

the decision of the Mapai-dominated presidium...Nahum Goldmann urged that

the Congress show unity by considering only the Mapai-based resolution.

pp 310/311- Holders of German bonds, loans and investments around the world

had been implored to forgo the material gain of trafficking in Nazi

wares...But now the Zionist Organization was willing to betray the boycott

in exchange for the same economic stimulus many in the world were being

urged to relinquish.

pp 361- As such, leadership of the worldwide boycott was being consigned to

Zionist officials and Zionist organizations. This was the fate of the

international boycott nurtured by the Jews of the world. The boycott would

be led by the leaders who, in fact, opposed it.

pp 373- By 1935, Palestine's need to sell German merchandise to offset

Jewish deposits in transfer accounts became greater than anyone expected. So

the Zionist Organization established another transfer corporation (which)

operated a regional sales network in Iraq, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere in the

region. Mideast markets were opened for a vast array of German exports, from

Volkswagens to municipal bridgeworks.

pp 375- By 1936, the Jewish population had doubled...The town of Haifa had

grown into a bustling German immigrant city. Palstine was on its way to a

Jewish majority, on its way to Jewish statehood.

pp 382- The haunting question is: Was the continuing economic relationship

with Germany an indispensable factor in the creation of the State of Israel?

The answer to that is yes.

Thus ends Black's disturbing book. Labor Zionism got its way: it created

a state in its image. And the cost was only 6 million dead. The same state

could have been created by the Revisionists had they been allowed to fight.

And the price in dead would have been high but, in retrospect, far more

reasonable.

end