The eugenist history of the Zionist movement

 

From the late 19th century through the 1950s, Zionist leaders adopted a selective immigration policy designed to exclude ‘undesirable’ Jews. The goal of the Zionist movement was to build a Jewish state in a Palestinian Arab land, and that required Jewish capitalists, skilled laborers, professionals and fighters, not children, elderly people or refugees. The Zionist leadership rejected persecuted, disabled, destitute, sick, diseased and elderly Jews because they were persecuted, disabled, destitute, sick, diseased and elderly. They instead prioritized what they called “halutzim,” or young, healthy Zionist ideologues willing to sacrifice their youth, capital, labor and life for the cause. This is the eugenist history of Zionism, in brief.

Between the 1880s and 1920s, Jews faced waves of pogroms across the Russian Empire. After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, Jews were scapegoated and over 200 pogroms erupted, destroying Jewish homes and businesses. A more violent wave followed the 1903 Kishinev pogrom and peaked during the 1905 Russian Revolution, with thousands of Jews murdered and entire towns devastated. By 1914, recurring outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence had displaced hundreds of thousands, fueling mass migration.

Most of these migrants settled in the United States but a small number arrived at ports in Palestine in the 1880s and 1890s. Many were “poor people who had nothing,” as the Zionist leader Moshe Smilansky put it. “Those who had no money remained in the country … [and] became a burden on the [Zionist] executive committee.” Menahem Sheinkin described them as “miserable paupers, depressed and patched up, with bundles like rag-merchants, the poorest of the poor, who could not possibly be a blessing to the country.” 

It was in this context that the Zionist movement developed its highly selective immigration policy to stem the tide of the undesirables. By the early 1900s, an office was established in Jaffa to screen Jews hoping to settle in Palestine. Menachem Sheinkin and Arthur Ruppin reviewed application letters sent from prospective migrants and told 61% of them not to come, primarily because they were too impoverished.  (more...)

The eugenist history of the Zionist movement