Benjamin Netanyahu and probably a large portion of Israeli Jews today would be delighted to solve the “Palestinian problem” in Gaza by obliging the two million or so terror-stricken Palestinian survivors to flee en masse to neighboring Egypt—no Palestinians in Gaza, thus no Hamas. They’d also certainly be thrilled to have all their Palestinians in the West Bank as well go elsewhere. No Palestinians. No worries about having to bother with a Palestinian State.
The only problem is that the Palestinians’ supposed Arab brethren in Egypt—or at least their military government--don’t want them. Nor, it seems, does anyone else. Which leaves Netanyahu and Israel’s Jews stuck with a problem.
There’s a tragic parallel to this situation. On July 6, 1938, an international conference convened in the picturesque resort town of Evian-les-Bains in Eastern France, on the border with Switzerland. Thirty-two countries took part. It had been called by American President Franklin Roosevelt, and its supposed purpose was to resolve the escalating refugee crisis precipitated by the Nazi regime's persecution of Jews and other minorities. Millions were desperate to flee. The conference aimed to convince enough countries to save them by opening their borders.
At the time, though predictions were grim, few had any concept of the horrendous fate that awaited the Jews if they could not escape: the massive killings of the Holocaust were still three years away. But by 1938, the situation of Jews in Germany and Austria—which Hitler had annexed--was increasingly dire. The Nuremberg Laws, enacted in 1935, had already stripped German Jews of their citizenship and fundamental rights; the violence and economic disenfranchisement escalated dramatically, culminating in the horrors of Kristallnacht later that year.
Spurred by Hitler’s increasingly brutal acts and a vociferous Jewish lobby, Roosevelt and other Western leaders felt compelled to act--if only for appearance’s sake. Held at the luxurious Hotel Royal, the conference began with considerable fanfare. But expectations were quickly dashed by the speakers who, one after another, made clear that xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism ruled the day. No country was going to open its doors.
America’s delegate, Myron C. Taylor, set the tone by clarifying that the U.S. would not significantly alter its immigration quotas to help the Jews. The British speaker, Lord Winterton, explained that Britain, with its economic problems and the complexities of its empire, would similarly do nothing: “His Majesty’s Government feels that there should be no expectation that any substantial number of refugees could be admitted to Palestine.”
The reports from various Jewish organizations presented harrowing accounts of the conditions faced by Jews in Nazi-occupied territories made no difference.
--France, the conference's host, faced its own challenges with a large influx of refugees from Spain following the Spanish Civil War. Henri Bérenger, representing France, articulated a common sentiment: “We are already under heavy strain and cannot absorb any more refugees without endangering our own social fabric.”
--Argentina’s Foreign Minister, Dr. José Maria Cantillo, expressed a typical stance: “Our country has always been a land of asylum, but we must carefully manage our immigration policies to maintain social harmony.”
--The Australian delegate, Colonel Thomas Walter White, infamously declared, “As we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.”
As for Canada (my country), even before the conference began, Canada’s Minister of Immigration—a notorious anti-Semite--was arguing that Canada should form a united front against accepting any refugees. His view was that if the Jews had no place to go after Evian, then “the Nazis would be forced to find a domestic solution to their Jewish problem.” At Evian, the chief Canadian delegate told friends that “the trouble is that the more that is done for the Jews, the more of them there will be. Help from abroad will result in more vicious German persecution at home.
The views of Canada’s Prime Minister at the time, Mackenzie King, were even more blunt. Because of French Canada’s rabid opposition to any Jewish immigration—the P.M. said he regarded the admission of Jewish refugees as a greater menace to Canada than Hitler himself. He was sad, he said, about the methods Hitler was using but understood his motives. He wrote that Hitler ‘might come to be thought of as one of the saviors of the world…’
.A few countries at Evian, such as the Dominican Republic, offered to accept a limited number of refugees, but more than these gestures were needed to address the scale of the crisis.
Ultimately, the delegates washed their hands of the matter by voting to set up a commission “to study the problem.”
The conference's failure to act had profound consequences. It sent a clear signal to the Nazi regime that the international community lacked the will to oppose their policies of persecution. Editorialists from the German and Austrian press cited the results of Evian to prove that the nations of the world had already turned their backs on the Jews. They accepted Hitler’s argument that ‘the Jews are a problem’—and they are leaving that problem for Hitler to resolve.
As historian Henry Feingold noted, “The lesson drawn by the Nazis from the reluctant response of the democracies at Evian was that destruction of the Jews was permissible since no nation would lift a hand to save them.
"
The plight of the two million terror-stricken Palestinians in Gaza today –under constant bombardment, without food or medical facilities--is worse than the plight of the Jews under Nazi rule in 1938. Yet neither Egypt nor any other country is ready to open its borders to save them.
Which, as I wrote at the beginning, leaves Netanyahu and Jewish Israelis stuck with the problem.
What will be their final solution?
-----
One poignant moment from Evian involved Golda Meir, who would become Prime Minister of Israel in 1969. In 1938, she attended Evian as a representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. She later recalled her frustration: “There is only one thing I hope to see before I die, and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore.”
Ironically, years later, Golda Meir scoffed at the Palestinians’ attempts to have a state of their own. “When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? … It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist,” Meir said.
.