"The Zionists made no secret of their intentions, for as early as 1921, Dr. Eder, a member of the Zionist Commission, boldly told the Court of Inquiry, `there can be only one National Home in Palestine, and that a Jewish one, and no equality in the partnership between Jews and Arabs, but a Jewish preponderance as soon as the numbers of the race are sufficiently increased.'  He then asked that only Jews should be allowed to bear arms."  Sami Hadawi  "Bitter Harvest"

"We shall try to spirit the penniless Arab population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."  Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, quoted in John Quigley's  "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice"

"I am also surprised at the leaders of the Agudah who want thousands of Jews to move to Eretz Israel. How can they ignore the welfare of their children, since there is no other place on earth where there is so much heresy and sectarianism as in the Holy Land in our day."  Rabbi Shaul Brach of Kashoa.

"Clearly, the last thing the Zionists really wanted was that all the inhabitants of Palestine should have an equal say in running the country... Chaim Weizmann had impressed on Churchill that representative government would have spelled the end of the Jewish National Home in Palestine... Churchill declared: `The present form of government will continue for many years. Step by step we shall develop representative institutions leading to full self-government, but our children's children will have passed away before that is accomplished."  David Hirst  "The Gun and the Olive Branch"

"The main danger which Israel, as a 'Jewish state', poses to its own people, to other Jews and to its neighbors, is its ideologically motivated pursuit of territorial expansion and the inevitable series of wars resulting from this aim... No Zionist politician has ever repudiated Ben Gurion's idea that Israeli policies must be based, within the limits of practical considerations, on the restoration of Biblical borders as the borders of the Jewish state."  Israeli professor, Israel Shahak  "Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 3000 Years"

"In Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharatt's personal diaries, there is an excerpt from May of 1955 in which he quotes Moshe Dayan as follows: `Israel must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no - it must - invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge... And above all - let us hope for a new war with the Arab countries, so that we may finally get rid of our troubles and acquire our space."  Quoted in Livia Rokach's  "Israel's Sacred Terrorism"

Saving the Jews from the Holocaust ?

"In 1938 a thirty-one nation conference was held in Evian, France, on resettlement of the victims of Nazism. The World Zionist Organization refused to participate, fearing that resettlement of Jews in other states would reduce the number available for Palestine."  John Quigley  "Palestine and Israel: A Challenge to Justice"

"It was summed up in the meeting, of the Jewish Agency's Executive on June 26, 1938, that `the Zionist thing to do is belittle the Evian Conference as far as possible and to cause it to decide nothing... We are particularly worried that it would move Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for aid to Jewish refugees, and these collections could interfere with our collection efforts'... Ben Gurion's statement at the same meeting: `No rationalization can turn the conference from a harmful to a useful one. What can and should be done is to limit the damage as far as possible."  Israeli author Boas Evron  "Jewish State or Israeli Nation?"

"The Zionist movement, interfered with and hindered other organizations, Jewish and non-Jewish, whenever it imagined that their activity, political or humanitarian, was at variance with Zionist aims or in competition with them, even when these might be helpful to Jews, even when it was a question of life and death... Beit Zvi documents the Zionist leadership's indifference to saving Jews from the Nazi menace except in cases in which the Jews could be brought to Palestine... [e.g.] the readiness of the dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, to absorb one hundred thousand refugees and the sabotaging of this idea, (as well as others, like proposals to settle the Jews in Alaska and the Philippines), by the Zionist movement"...

..."The obtuseness of the Zionist movement toward the fate of European Jewry did not prevent it, of course, from later hurling accusations against the whole world for its indifference toward the Jewish catastrophe or from pressing material, political, and moral demands on the world because of that indifference."  Israeli author Boas Evron  "Jewish State or Israeli Nation?"

"Ben Gurion stated: `If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second, because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people.'  In the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, Ben Gurion commented that `the human conscience' might bring various countries to open their doors to Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and warned: `Zionism is in danger."  Israeli historian, Tom Segev  "The Seventh Million"

"The Zionists brought us to the Holocaust. It is well known that it was possible to redeem Jews from the Nazis with money, and save many hundreds of thousands of Jews in Hungary from the fire. The Zionist leaders who now sit in government prevented it!"  Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Eherenreich.

Palestine was not necessarily a safe haven either

"In September 1940, the Italians, at war with Britain, bombed downtown Tel Aviv, with over a hundred casualties... As the German Army overran Europe and South Africa, it appeared possible that it would conquer Palestine as well. In the summer of 1940, in the spring of 1941, and again in the fall of 1942 the danger seemed imminent. The Yishuv panicked... Many people tried to find a way out of the country, but it was not easy...  Some were taking no chances; they carried cyanide capsules."  Tom Segev  "The Seventh Million"

Most Jews just weren't interested in emigrating to Palestine, but still, the Zionists insisted

"The pogroms forced many Jews to leave Russia. Societies known as 'Lovers of Zion', which were forerunners of the Zionist organization, convinced some of the frightened emigrants to go to Palestine. There, they argued, Jews would rebuild the ancient Jewish 'Kingdom of David and Solomon'. Most Russian Jews ignored their appeal and fled to Europe and the United States. By 1900, almost a million Jews had settled in the United States alone."  "Our Roots Are Still Alive"  by The People Press Palestine Book Project.

"In 1936, the Social Democratic Bund won a sweeping victory in Jewish kehilla elections in Poland... Its main hallmarks included 'an unyielding hostility to Zionism and to the Zionist enterprise of Jewish emigration from Poland to Palestine'. The Bund wished Polish Jews to fight anti-Semitism in Poland by remaining there... The Zionist goal was also opposed, as a matter of principle, by all the major parties and movements among pre-1939 Polish Jewry... Elsewhere in eastern Europe, Zionist strength was weaker still."  Prof. William Rubinstein  "The Myth of Rescue"

"In fact, Zionism suffered its own defeat in the Holocaust; as a movement, it failed. It had not, after all, persuaded the majority of Jews to leave Europe for Palestine while it was still possible to do so."  Tom Segev  "The Seventh Million"

"In 1947 the U.N. appointed a special body, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), to make the decision over Palestine. UNSCOP members were asked to visit the camps of Holocaust survivors. Many of these survivors wanted to emigrate to the United States, a wish that undermined the Zionist claims that the fate of European Jewry was connected to that of the Jewish community in Palestine. When UNSCOP representatives arrived at the camps, they were unaware that backstage manipulations were limiting their contacts solely to survivors who wished to emigrate to Palestine."  Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in "The Link" January March 1998.

Roosevelt's advisor writes on why Jewish refugees were not offered sanctuary in the U.S. after WWII

"What if Canada, Australia, South America, England and the United States were all to open a door to some migration? Even today, it is my judgment, and I have been in Germany since the war, that only a minority of the Jewish DP's (displaced persons) would choose Palestine...

...Roosevelt proposed a world budget for the easy migration of the 500,000 beaten people of Europe. Each nation should open its doors for some thousands of refugees... So he suggested that during my trips for him to England during the war I sound out in a general, unofficial manner the leaders of British public opinion, in and out of the government... The simple answer: Great Britain will match the United States, man for man, in admissions from Europe... It seemed all settled. With the rest of the world probably ready to give haven to 200,000, there was a sound reason for the President to press Congress to take in at least 150,000 immigrants after the war...

...It would free us from the hypocrisy of closing our own doors while making sanctimonious demands on the Arabs... But it did not work out... The failure of the leading Jewish organizations to support with zeal this immigration programme may have caused the President not to push forward with it at that time...

...I talked to many people active in Jewish organizations. I suggested the plan... I was amazed and even felt insulted when active Jewish leaders decried, sneered, and then attacked me as if I were a traitor... I think I know the reason for much of the opposition. There is a deep, genuine, often fanatical emotional vested interest in putting over the Palestinian movement (Zionism). Men like Ben Hecht are little concerned about human blood if it is not their own."  Jewish attorney and friend of President Roosevelt, Morris Ernst  "So Far, So Good"

Jewish Criticism of Zionism

Martin Buber: "Only an internal revolution can have the power to heal our people of their murderous sickness of causeless hatred... It is bound to bring complete ruin upon us. Only then will the old and young in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were brought here from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards we gather; and in whose cities that we robbed we put up houses of education, charity, and prayer, while we babble and rave about being the 'People of the Book' and the 'Light of the Nations'."

Professor Erich Fromm, a noted Jewish writer and thinker, stated: "In general international law, the principle holds true that no citizen loses his property or his rights of citizenship; and the citizenship right is de facto a right to which the Arabs in Israel have much more legitimacy than the Jews. Just because the Arabs fled? Since when is that punishable by confiscation of property, and by being barred from returning to the land on which a people's forefathers have lived for generations? Thus, the claim of the Jews to the land of Israel cannot be a realistic claim. If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse... I believe that, politically speaking, there is only one solution for Israel, namely, the unilateral acknowledgement of the obligation of the State towards the Arabs, not to use it as a bargaining point, but to acknowledge the complete moral obligation of the Israeli State to its former inhabitants of Palestine."

"A Jewish Home in Palestine built up on bayonets and oppression is not worth having, even though it succeed, whereas the very attempt to build it up peacefully, cooperatively, with understanding, education, and good will, is worth a great deal even though the attempt should fail."  Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, first president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, quoted in "Like All The Nations?". ed. Brinner & Rischin.

Albert Einstein: "I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State, with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain."

"In an article published in the Washington Post of 3 October 1978, Rabbi Hirsch of Jerusalem is reported to have declared: `The 12th principle of our faith, I believe, is that the Messiah will gather the Jewish exiled who are dispersed throughout the nations of the world. Zionism is diametrically opposed to Judaism. Zionism wishes to define the Jewish people as a nationalistic entity. The Zionists say, in effect, Look here God, we do not like exile. Take us back, and if you don't, we'll just roll up our sleeves and take ourselves back. The Rabbi continues: `This, of course, is heresy. The Jewish people are charged by Divine Oath not to force themselves back to the Holy Land against the wishes of those residing there'."  Sami Hadawi  "Bitter Harvest"

"If it is hard to understand the whole matter of the Golden Calf, by seeing the matter of the State, one can understand it. The matter of the State is similar to the Golden Calf."  Chazon Ish.

"The corruption of Judaism, as a religion of universal values, through its politicisation by Zionism and by the replacement of dedication to Israel for dedication to God and the moral law, is what has alienated so many young Americans who, searching for spiritual meaning in life, have found little in the organized Jewish community."  Allan Brownfield  "Issues of the American Council for Judaism", Spring 1997.

"The Rabbis of the generation should gather together and issue a writ of excommunication against the Zionists and eject them from the Jewish People, and make decrees against their bread and wine, and to forbid marrying with them, just like our sages did with the Samaritans."  Rabbi Moshe Leib Diskin.

"The Zionists aren't taking Jews away from Judaism in order to have a State, They need a State in order to take Jews away from Judaism."  Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik.

"When a Jew recites `Hear O Israel, the Lord your G-d, the Lord is One', he should have in mind rejecting all idolatry in the world, including Zionism, which is also idolatry."  Rabbi Yechezkel Shraga Halberstam.

Injustice

"What has to be justified is the injustice to the Palestinians caused by Zionism, the dispossession and victimization of a whole people. There is clearly a wrong here, a wrong which creates the need for justification...

...The inheritance claim: The aim of Zionism is the restoration of a Jewish sovereignty to its status 2,000 years ago. Zionism does not advocate an overhauling of the total world situation in the same way. It does not advocate the restoration of the Roman empire... In addition, Palestinians have claimed descent from the ancient inhabitants of Palestine 3,000 years ago!...

...Jewish suffering as justification: It was easy to make the Palestinians pay for 2,000 years of persecution. The Palestinians, who have felt the enormous power of this vengeance, were not the historical oppressors of the Jews."  Benjamin Beit-Hallahami  "Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel"