Palestinian Rebellion, the Holocaust, and the Partition of Palestine; 1936-47

The defeat of the Palestinian Rebellion and the exile of their political leadership mean that the Palestinian Arabs will be politically disorganized during this crucial era in which the future of Palestine will be decided.Although Palestine is largely closed off to Jews fleeing Nazi-dominated Europe throughout the Second World War, a conflict that involves virtually every part of the world during the years 1940 to 1945, the majority of the Jewish population supports the Allies during the conflict while seeking, when possible, clandestine Jewish immigration to Palestine.Throughout the war, Zionists will seek with growing urgency to increase Jewish immigration to Palestine, while the British will seek to prevent such immigration, regarding it as illegal and a threat to the stability of a region essential to the war effort.Immigration is not an option for much of European Jewry, declared enemies of the Third Reich, who perish in Nazi concentration camps by the hundreds of thousands in what will come to be called the Holocaust.Although many Jews had become Zionists by the early 20th century, until the rise of Adolf Hitler and the institution of a "Final Solution" to rid Greater Germany of its Jews, the majority of Jews were not Zionists.

Most orthodox Jews were antiZionists, maintaining that only God should reunite Jews in the Promised Land, and regarding Zionism as a violation of God's will.

However, Hitlerism and the large-scale destruction of European Jewry leads many Jews to seek refuge in Palestine and many others, especially in the United States, to embrace Zionism.

After the Second World War, tens of thousands of Jewish displaced persons, though liberated from enslavement by the Nazis, die in camps from miserable conditions and lack of care.

U.S. Congressional Displaced Persons (DP) legislation assigns priority not to Jews but to refugees from the Russian-occupied Baltic states, many of them Nazi sympathizers, even SS troopers.

There is little American Zionist support for legislation intended to bring DPs to the U.S., in contrast to massive support for resolutions calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

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