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So, what I understood from the comments, correct me if I’m wrong, is that there is a document from Samuel, a Jewish pro-Zionist and a British cabinet minister, who wrote a policy memo to other British officials. At that time, Britain was at war with Germany, and logically it would have made sense for Britain to take over all German colonies. But Samuel believed that if Britain stripped Germany of all its colonies, Germans would feel deeply humiliated and angry. That resentment could eventually lead to a future “war of revenge”. Since the Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany, Britain instead decided to weaken the Ottoman Empire and expand its influence in the Middle East. They wanted to secure Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq). During Samuel’s plan in 1915, Britain also promised to support the creation of a “Jewish national home,” either because they believed Zionism was a solution or because they wanted to gain sympathy from Jews in Russia, the United States etc. But everything changed when Germany lost all of its colonies after its defeat in 1918. As mentioned before, Samuel was afraid of provoking German revenge. Because of this, and because the existence of Zionism in Palestine would help justify British control of the territory after the war, they pushed forward with the Balfour Declaration.
From 1918 to 1923, Britain’s declaration created the legal and political framework that allowed Jewish settlement in Palestine. Those who first established organizations, schools, and infrastructure were mostly from the lower class. Between 1924 and 1929, middle-class merchants and small business owners followed. Then, in 1933, when persecutions intensified, the Haavara Agreement was created, which allowed primarily wealthy Jews to emigrate.
So the purpose of the first low- and middle-class immigrants was to establish a foundation for wealthy Jews to arrive later, and that the rest of the Jewish population was not deliberately warned, despite knowing from the end of World War I how severe things could become. So they could later make an agreement that benefited only the wealthy, while leaving millions of others to die
2025-12-20 20:34:47