Haim Arlosoroff - Political Career

Political Career

In 1930, Arlosoroff was influential in unifying the two major Zionist socialist political parties, the Poale Zion and the Hapoel Hatzair. This merger brought the establishment of the Mapai Labour Party. Through the Mapai's political muscle, Arlosoroff received election as a member of the Zionist Executive at the 1931 Zionist Congress. In addition, he was named Political Director of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, a prominent position he filled until his 1933 assassination.

As the Jewish Agency's Political Director, Arlosoroff first believed that the British would help settling Jews in Palestine, so he worked with the British government which was in charge of running that territory. Prior to his tenure as Political Director, Arlosoroff had already familiarized himself with the British system of rule, having written an essay titled "the British Administration and the Jewish National Home". During his years in office, Arlosoroff would develop close working relationships with Britain's High Commissioner Arthur Wauchope and British Colonial Secretary Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister.

Arlosoroff was a close friend of the Jewish scientist and statesman, Chaim Weizmann. Dr. Weizmann was considered to be among the most politically moderate of Arlosoroff's Mapai Zionist contemporaries .

In the months leading up to his assassination, Arlosoroff's fervor to help establish a Jewish national homeland intensified. At a Mapai Labour Council meeting occurring in January 1933, Arlosoroff strongly clashed with David Ben-Gurion and other prominent Mapai leaders regarding whether or not the Zionists should work within the British government's infrastructure to help bring about Jewish statehood. Arlosoroff warned his colleagues that if the Zionist movement maintained an isolationist policy with the British ruling authorities, Arab political influence would increase within the British Administration and cause the rights of Jewish people in Eretz Israel to suffer.

On April 8, 1933, Arlosoroff organized a historic event at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on the Jewish Agency's behalf. The luncheon, attended by Weizmann and prominent Arab leaders in the British Mandate of Palestine, would be the first time Jewish Zionists and key Arabs gathered together to help promote cooperative efforts between the two groups. However, not everyone was pleased with Arlosoroff's vision for Jewish/Arab collaboration, nor the possibility of a bi-nationalistic future in Eretz Israel. After the luncheon, Arab radicals openly chastised the moderate Arabs who had attended the meeting. Particular anger was directed at Transjordan's Emir Abdullah, the ruler over large territories in Transjordan, who had taken a leading role in the conciliation efforts. Jewish opposition to the King David Hotel meeting also became apparent as the major party of religious Zionism, Mizrachi, demanded that Arlosoroff resign from his position at the Jewish Agency. Some radicals in the Revisionist Movement went even further and questioned Arlosoroff's right to be alive.

As a result of Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, Arlosoroff directed his focus to the plight of German Jewry. The Germany Arlosoroff coveted as a child growing up changed quickly and drastically upon Hitler's ascension to rule. In April 1933, the Nazi regime implemented the first of many anti-Semitic ordinances by terminating all Jewish employees from German government positions. Also at that time, Nazi officials decreed Jewish people would not be permitted to flee Germany without a specially issued exit visa. Jewish groups responded worldwide to Hitler's dictatorship through protests and boycotts of German products.

Though Hitler hated Jewish people and wanted them expelled from Germany, in 1933 the Nazis were not willing to let a large number of Jewish refugees flee to the surrounding nations. This was because Reich officials were concerned that fleeing Jewish refugees would lend large numbers to a growing international movement for the economic boycott of Germany. Adding to Hitler's worries, German financial advisers warned the Nazi government that a mass exodus of Jewish laborers from the German workforce would badly damage Germany's economic stability. The Nazis needed a convenient solution to rid themselves of Jews without a political or economic backlash.

In 1933, Arlosoroff and German Reich officials viewed the British Mandate of Palestine as a land of opportunity for very different reasons. In the eyes of the Nazi leadership, the remote British-controlled territory appeared to be a "dumping-ground" suitable to isolate thousands of anti-Hitler Jewish refugees from the world's political arena. In addition, a financial agreement with Zionist leaders for the transfer of the refugees would help bolster a German economy adversely affected by anti-Nazi boycotts. For Arlosoroff and other Zionists, however, the potential mass transfer of Germany's Jews along with their assets to Eretz Israel presented a historic opportunity to help guarantee the future establishment of a Jewish nation in the ancient Biblical Land of Promise.

Arlosoroff came to feel that the British could not be trusted and that the Jews must risk angering them in order to rebuild their own homeland and save the Jews of Europe from the nationalist and authoritarian regimes under which they lived, especially in Nazi Germany.

In his efforts to help Jews escape the tyranny of Hitler, Arlosoroff would face staunch opposition from the Revisionist ranks within his own Zionist movement. Though Mapai Labour leaders attempted to prepare the way for an agreement with Germany by mitigating anti-Nazi sentiment within Zionist circles, prominent Revisionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky steadfastly opposed them. In a radio broadcast on April 28, 1933, Jabotinsky strongly condemned any possible pact between Zionism and Hitler. Jabotinsky upheld in his radio address the Revisionist platform for an international economic boycott on German exports, suggesting in addition that the British Mandate of Palestine should assume the lead in the boycott efforts.