European Jewry and the Palestinian Question: Appraisals and Predictions
Early in World War II Ben-Gurion and Weizmann, not believing that most of European Jewry would be destroyed, told Lord Moyne that after the war Palestine would have to absorb three million Jews. Moyne, against mass immigration to Palestine, suggested an enclave in Europe, Madagascar, or South America. Roosevelt, too, thought that most of the Jews would return to their countries in Europe and reside there comfortably and honorably. It was widely believed that the solution to the Jewish question was not primarily absence of a homeland. Rather, it was a problem arising from racial and political persecutions and the removal of regimes practicing such anti-Jewish measures would solve the Jewish problem.