cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3378380

(Mirror.)

Quoting Faris Yahya’s Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany, pages 21–3:

The efforts of anti[fa] Jewish circles to organise a boycott of [the Third Reich] arose as a counter‐measure to the [Reich] authorities’ boycott of 1 April 1933.

This was “a general boycott […] of all Jewish places of business and of all Jewish doctors, lawyers and other professional men. From that day, for the next six years and a half, there was a succession of acts of increasing inhumanity until the outbreak of war ushered in a region of unparalleled barbarity. The boycott was merely a prelude to a system of persecution that robbed Jews of every source of livelihood.”²²

Jews in many parts of the world hoped that by retaliating with a boycott of German goods they could show solidarity with their oppressed co‐religionists and perhaps pressure the [Third Reich] into relaxing the persecution. The Zionists’ signature of the Ha’avara agreement effectively sabotaged this hope. “The result was that in the thirties, when American Jewry took great pains to organise a boycott of German merchandise, [Zionist‐occupied] Palestine, of all places, was swamped with all kinds of goods ‘made in Germany’.”²³

Well b[e]fore the 18th Zionist Congress, the Zionist movement has made clear its intention of sabotaging the anti[fascist] boycott. The Zionist Federation of Germany went so far as to reassure a senior [Reich] official that “the propaganda which calls for boycotting Germany, in the manner it is frequently conducted today, is by its very essence completely un‐Zionist.”²⁴

The unfortunate precedent was thus created of sacrificing the interests of the Jewish masses in Europe for the sake of Zionist political ambitions. The usefulness of this was not lost on the [Fascists].

“In signing […] the Ha’avara agreement, the [Reich] authorities were simultaneously pursing two objectives: breaching the boycott organised against Germany by the Jews in various foreign countries and facilitating the departure of Jews from the Reich to Palestine.

“But, little by little, the second objective came to be considered the more important in Berlin. On one hand, the effects of the Jewish boycott had been considerably weakened while on the other hand, the expatriation of the Jews had become one of the major goals of the [Third Reich’s] internal policy. Now the Zionists were the only ones, among Jews and [gentiles], to propose a constructive solution to the Jewish problem in [the Third Reich] and above all to be able to put it into effect. The Ha’avara had provided them with the means for this. The [Fascist] government could not remain indifferent to that. Thus one saw the Ministries of the Interior and the Economy simultaneously vying with each other to establish the Ha’avara and develop the activities of the Zionist Organisation in Germany.

“The organs of the Ha’avara thus gradually acquired a dominant, even privileged, position in German–Palestine trade… Urged on by the Zionist leaders in [the Third Reich], the 19th Zionist Congress, which met in Lucerne from 20 August to 3 September 1935, decided to place the whole Ha’avara system under the direct control of the Zionist Executive Committee whose shares, held hitherto by the Anglo‐Palestine Bank, were consequently transferred. In 1933, the transfer operations realised by the Ha’avara were for 1,254,956 marks. In 1937, they reached the value of 31,407,501 marks.”²⁵

(Emphasis added.)