The mass immigration had started even before the Law of Return was discussed in the Knesset. The task of the Law of Return was to regulate a process that was already well underway. The leaders of the young state made the decision to encourage the aliyah of the remnants of the European communities destroyed in the Holocaust and of the communities of the Arab lands in North Africa and the Middle East. The British had stringently restricted aliyah during the last decade of the Mandate, at tremendous cost in lives to the Jews of Europe. It was now clear that immigration should be totally unlimited: as many Jews as possible should be brought to the new state. So the mass immigration began, changing completely the demography of the young state. If the Jewish population of the Yishuv numbered around 650,000 on the eve of independence, the first three and a half years of statehood - the period of mass immigration - saw an additional 684,000 Jews entering the country. It was almost impossible for the young state to absorb so many immigrants; widespread chaos and hardship resulted. The immigrant camps, where the immigrants spent their first weeks and months, were scenes of complete disorder. Here is a description of one such camp, as viewed by a reporter who smuggled himself in, pretending to be a new immigrant.
Such conditions were extremely demoralizing for the immigrants. Attempts by the authorities to improve the situation met with very partial success. There was inadequate food and little hygiene in most of the camps. Medical facilities were inadequate. In such a situation many inevitably became ill: some died, especially infants and young children. There was a feeling among some of the officials responsible for the administration of the camps that the state was breaking down. In this situation voices started to be heard calling for the limiting of immigration. Some called for a temporary slowing-down of the flood of immigrants in order to allow the state to organize and to plan its absorption process more rationally. But there were other voices, too, that called for a permanent slowing-down of immigration. Some said, for example, that Israel could no longer continue to accept all the immigrants who wanted to come. Selection must be used in order to limit the sick and the old who constituted a burden on the society and the economy. Israel must start accepting immigrants on the basis of what was good for the country. Proposals were made that Israel must publicize that the country could not be responsible for welfare cases, and that such cases would not be accepted. A correspondence developed between the authorities responsible for immigration into Israel and their representatives abroad, questioning the decision to absorb certain immigrant groups. There were those, like Ben Gurion, who stood behind the demand that all immigrants be encouraged to come, but it was no longer an article of faith for all. Zionism's traditional responsibility for the good of the whole of the Jewish people was now clashing with the needs of the State of Israel. |
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ActivitiesBringing The Jews To Israel.The aim of this exercise is to deepen the students’ examination of the place of Israel in the Jewish world and the state’s responsibility for Jews in the rest of the world. Deepening The Picture. |
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