THE TRANSFER AGREEMENT - Part Two

by Barry Chamish

Now let Edwin Black tell the story with some commentary by me intruding on his narrative.

pp 137- (The) first task was to circulate word that the official proposal of Zionism was in the hands of Chaim Arlosoroff, head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency..."This leads me to a central question...the liquidation of capital and holdings belonging to German Jewish emigrants," Arlosoroff explained..."It makes no sense to ignore it or think it can be

solved without an agreement with the German government."

pp 148- Chaim Arlosoroff was one of the most provocative thinkers of his day...His Jewish friends began to fear and hate him. Arlosoroff was a top Mapai (Labor) leader, but the Labor-aligned moderates could hardly contain their fury that the prodigy of the Zionist movement was abandoning all Zionist discipline. Unilaterally he was formulating and executing policy-

binational breakthroughs with the Arabs and controversial trade-offs with the Nazis. Arlosoroff was by himself engineering the fate of societies and nations, not in theoretical, discreet ways but by one stunning fait accompli after another. He was giving away the Promised Land to the Arabs, and in doing so giving away the Zionist elections to the Revisionists (Likud). Arlosoroff would have to be stopped.

His enemies among the Jews were convinced there was no greater nemesis. Arlosoroff was a special foe of Revisionism. It was Arlosoroff who in late 1931 conceived the decree against membership in Jabotinsky's Revisionist Union. The calls for his assassination were so comonplace during early 1933 that it was rumored Revisionist circles were merely debating whether to kill him before or after the Eighteenth Zionist Congress.

pp 150- On June 9, the Palestinian Revisionist newspaper Hazit Haam declared, "At a time when the people of Israel in Palestine and abroad are in a defensive war of honor against Germany...an official of the Jewish Agency, (Arlosoroff) suggests not only a cancellation of the boycott but also a promise of a market for German imports..." The animosity of the

Jewish masses... cast Arlosoroff in a deep depression.

pp 151- Arlosoroff at first refused protection saying, "No Jew would kill me."

pp 152- At the hospital, the doctors were ill prepared and indecisive...there was no surgeon on duty...With the last air in his lungs he turned toward the mayor of Tel Aviv and whispered, "Look what they have done to me." And then he died.

pp 157- Quickly the Revisionists emerged as the logical, and to a larger extent, the most suitable culprits. Police squads raided the apartments of leading Revisionist figures, including Abba Achimeir, the editor of Hazit Haam...There they found a Betar activist named Abraham Stavsky...Sima Arlosoroff identified Stavsky as the man who held the flashlight and Polish Revisionist Avi Rosenblatt as the one who fired the pistol. Some weeks later Achimeir was accused of masterminding the plot.

Sima Arlosoroff was under tremendous pressure from Mapai leaders to maintain her damaging testimony despite doubts. In the months that followed, the murder investigation was beseiged by bought-and-paid-for Arab confessions, false witnesses, manufactured evidence, bizarre theories, dramatic revelations and unanswerable questions. Within a year Rosenblatt and Achimeir were both acquitted due to conflicting evidence...Stavsky was finally released on an evidence technicality...Mapai leaders, satisfied that Revisionism was implicated- whether or not juridically guilty- would refuse to discuss the case even decades later.

pp 158- Jabotinsky was often held personally responsible. Pamphlets call him "a bloodthirsty beast." David Ben Gurion admitted he "was less interested in whether Stavsky is the murderer than Jabotinsky." Ben Gurion declared that Jabotinsky bore full responsibility because he was Revisionism's "Commander,leader and mentor."

Hostilities continued as Mapai forces hammered away at Revisionism, labeling it a Fascist misfit of Zionism, and harassing Jews who supported Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky himself was portrayed as the Jewish Hitler, commanding forces analogous to Nazi Storm Troopers. And yet in truth, it was not the stalwarts of Jewish militancy, the Revisionists, who had constructed avenues of commercial and political detente with the Third Reich. It was the forces of Mapai.

pp 314- When the session finally resumed, Revisionists were anxious to demand more details of the Transfer Agreement. But the proceeding was interrupted by what many believed was a staged emergency. Someone dramatically handed Motzkin a telegram: Motzkin reacted with a look of shock. The presidium passed the telegram around and announced this session would be adjourned at once...word quickly spread that the cable had come from Palestine. It claimed one of the Revisionists on trial for the murder of Arlosoroff had confessed to the crime...The next day, the Congress delegates quickly learned the "confession cable" was a fake. Still, the false alarm had served to foreclose debate one more day on the truly pressing issue: The Transfer Agreement.

pp 330/331- Now that representatives of all parties had heard Political Committee testimony about at least the superficial aspects of the agreement, the Revisionists believed they could appeal to the delegates for a resolution of nullification. As expected, the only way Mapai could block this was by intensifying their allegations that Revisionists killed Arlosoroff...Hitting hard with the murder accusation, Katznelson cried, "Only one of us has been slaughtered so far..." This is how it went. Hour after hour, night after night. The crisis in Germany was omitted from the agenda. The menace of Hitlerism was bypassed. The Nazis must have been smiling.

pp 334- Mapai had finally succeeded in scheduling a special session devoted exclusively to the question of violence... The Actions Committee was then empowered "in the most effective manner...to remove from the Zionist Organization those elements responsible for violence."