In 1958, then-foreign minister Golda Meir raised the possibility of preventing handicapped and sick Polish Jews from immigrating to Israel, a recently discovered Foreign Ministry document has revealed.
"A proposal was raised in the coordination committee to inform the Polish government that we want to institute selection in aliyah, because we cannot continue accepting sick and handicapped people. Please give your opinion as to whether this can be explained to the Poles without hurting immigration," read the document, written by Meir to Israel's ambassador to Poland, Katriel Katz.
Haaretz
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This comment on the article on Haaretz expresses it very well:
After WWII, many Israelis were "embarrassed" by the survivors. Apparently, they didn`t want to be reminded of the "weak Jewish image".
This could very well be related to that.
That was one of the first heavy disappointments I had after I made alia, and it still hurts.
Holocaust survivor
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If it happened once I would say it was a fluke, but it is seen in other areas from different people in positions of power in Israel. So it is more than the hardcore decision of one person.
ReplyDeleteI heard that the Moroccan-Jewish aliyah was effected this way - the Israelis made a deal with the King of Morocco; this allowed them to round up the Jewish population and fly them to Israel. The Israelis didn't want any old people who would be unproductive and a burden on the welfare services. So they just split families up and the old folks were left behind.
ReplyDeleteA spartan nation bent on war, aggression and destruction. The weak and the old would be cumbersome..
ReplyDeleteI'm reading Ilan Pappe's "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" and it boggles the mind to see how gong ho they were from the beginning, ruthless, fierce and inhumane. The locals never had a chance. They were just not prepared for such ruthlessness. It was not war but an organised wave after wave of relentless terror!