The Yishuv and the Shoah
The actions of the Yishuv in Palestine during the Shoah has been a controversial subject. Some have blamed the Yishuv leaders for not doing enough to help the Jews of Europe, others have criticized the the way in which the survivors were treated when the arrived in Israel. See here for a review of some recent books.
A new book by Prof. Dina Porat, who has written about the subject before, claims that the Yishuv did a lot more than people thought, and that they had plans to do even more, but for a number of reasons many of them never became actualized. Porat admits that the new archival evidence that she examined caused her to change her mind somewhat about the actions of the Yishuv during the Shoah.
This article (Hebrew) discusses Porat’s new book.
May 2nd, 2011 at 1:34 pm
I’ve always found the attacks on the yishuv to be ridiculous. As Prof. Yoav Gelber pointed out, the yishuv had very little real power and influence on events, and to expect more of it is anachronistic. It’s kind of like expecting the IDF of 1948 to perform like they did in 1967. As for all the “why didn’t X do more?” questions, and blaming non-perpetrators for the Holocaust, may I paraphrase George Pickett:
“I always thought the Nazis (and their collaborators) had something to do with it”