Revisionist Criticism of the Yishuv Leadership in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume XXIII

Revisionist Criticism of the Yishuv Leadership During the Holocaust

Weitz contends that the Revisionist criticism was a continuation of the prewar controversy between “quantitative,” (Revisionist), i.e., calling for Jewish mass immigration to Palestine, disregarding the means and the consequences, and the “qualitative” (Centrist–Labor) strains of Zionism. The Revisionists blamed the Jewish Agency and the Centrist–Labor establishment in Palestine for exploiting the genocide of European Jews for their own purposes (e.g., fundraising) and for their desire to hold on to their leadership of the Yishuv at any price. However, both strains of Zionism linked the rescue of European Jews with demands for their admission to Palestine, and rejected all the territorialist rescue plans. He also refutes the allegation made by many Revisionist writers that Jabotinsky was the only Zionist figure who was able to “anticipate the Holocaust.”