There is no Israel without Jews. There Are No Jews Without Israel (Part 2)

The Fifth Aliyah (1929 – 1939)

The Fifth Aliyah brought in more than 250,000 Jews and transformed the character of the yishuv. The Fifth Aliyah began with a small drop in 1929, but in 1933 – when Hitler rose to power in Germany – the drop became a flood. In the period between 1933-36, more than 164,000 Jews entered the country legally, while thousands of refugees came as “illegal” immigrants.

German and Austrian Jews – more than a quarter of the total – made an important contribution to the progress of the Yishuv. They constituted the first large-scale influx from Western and Central Europe. The majority of them (80%) settled in the cities and towns and their skills and experience raised business standards and improved urban amenities. More than half of the new arrivals made their homes in Tel-Aviv. In Haifa, construction of the country’s first modern port was completed in 1933, while in Jerusalem Jewish quarters were vastly expanded.

A relatively high proportion of newcomers from Germany and Austria practiced medicine or one of the academic professions; they provided most of the musicians who formed the new Philharmonic Orchestra. 20% of immigrants contributed to the establishment of new moshavim and kibbutzim. In 1933, a new type of immigration, called Aliyah of Youth, was initiated.

On the eve of World War II, the Jewish population in Palestine was 475,000 – about 40% of the population.

“Illegal” immigration – Ha’apalah (Aliyah Bet) 1934-1948

Ha’palah is the term used for the clandestine immigration of Jews to Eretz Yisrael. This type of immigration began under Ottoman (Turkish) rule. From 1882 onward, the Turks did not allow Jews from Eastern Europe to settle in Eretz Israel, with rare exceptions. Under British rule (1918-1948), immigration quotas set by the British Administration [1916-18] and the British Compulsory Administration of Palestine, failed to respond to pressure from pioneers seeking to settle in the country and Jews fleeing distress and persecution.

The rise of Hitler increased the pressure for aliyah.

‘“Behold, I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord , and they shall catch them. And afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks. ‘  Jeremiah 16:16

In 1934, the first organized efforts of illegal immigration by sea were used. The HeHalutz movement chartered the Greek ship “Vellos” and, with the help of Haganah members, disembarked about 350 “illegal” immigrants – ma’apilim. In the years 1937-1939, the Revisionist and Betar groups sent several ships, which carried several thousand immigrants.

During World War II, legal immigration dwindled to a trickle. The British Navy kept a constant watch on refugee boats trying to reach the gates of Palestine. Some of the boats were fired upon as they approached the coast; some were rejected; 3 sank; In all, 21 boats completed the journey, carrying about 15,000 refugees.

During the war years, the Mossad organized illegal immigration through land routes, mainly from the Middle East.

The Intelligence and Special Operations Institute (Mossad) is a national organization responsible for covert activities abroad. This involves gathering intelligence and conducting special operations to neutralize threats and exert influence to bolster the security of the State of Israel and pursue its national objectives in accordance with its laws and values.

The ancient motto of the Mossad, be-tachbūlōt ta’aseh lekhā milchāmāh is a quote from the Bible (Proverbs 24:6): “For by wise guidance you can wage your war.” The motto was changed to another passage from Proverbs (11:14): be-‘éyn tachbūlōt yippol ‘ām; ū-teshū’āh be-rov yō’éts). This is translated by the Bible as: “Where there is no guidance, a nation falls, but in the abundance of counselors there is safety.”

After the war, large-scale operations at sea were resumed by the Mossad, the immigrants being mostly refugee-survivors of the European Jews who had escaped through the Berihah rescue operation and reached the shores of Italy, France, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Greece. In the years 1945 to 1948, 65 boats of “illegal” immigrants embarked for Palestine. Most of the boats were intercepted by the British, the passengers transferred to the detention camp at Atlit.

In the Atlit camp, the men were sent one way and the women the other. They were sprayed with DDT, then told to undress and get into the showers. In 1939-1948, tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants were interned here, men and women separated by barbed wire. Some inmates stayed up to 23 months.

Beginning in August 1946, the British began deporting immigrants to detention camps in Cyprus. The struggle for the right of free immigration reached its peak in the summer of 1947 with the Exodus voyage.

Between 1934 and 1948, about 115,000 ma’apilim were brought into the country in defiance of British restrictions, while another 51,000 were exiled by British authorities to Cyprus and admitted only after independence.

After the historic Balfour Declaration, Britain publicly committed itself to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. However, British officials were heavily affected by Arab pressure and began to withdraw their support for Jewish nationalism, despite its transition to international law at the San Remo Conference and the League of Nations in 1924.

In the early 1930s, the British imposed severe quotas on Jewish immigration, and Zionist groups responded with a renewed effort to bring Jews to Palestine through the Aliyah Bet, signifying the second round of movement “upward” to the holy land of Eretz Yisrael.

There was, at the time, very limited Jewish immigration allowed by the British – known as Aliyah Aleph. But the situation in Europe and in Mandate Palestine called for a more comprehensive effort to save the remnants of Europe’s Jews from the hands of the Nazis. The Mossad l’Aliyah Bet (עלייה ב – abbreviated from Aliya Bilty Legalit (illegal) עלייה בלתי-לגאלית)  – was established by the Haganah, Jewish defense forces in the Yishuv.

Aliyah Bet became the code name given to the illegal immigration of Jews to Palestine between 1934 and 1948, most of whom were Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi Germany.

The name Ha’apala is also a modern interpretation of the verb ‘ya’apilu that appears only once in the Bible, in Numbers 14:44, ” ‘But they presumed to go up to the heights of the hill…”

The leadership of the Jewish Agency did not approve of illegal methods of immigration, but in 1939, David Ben-Gurion realized that Aliya Bet was the only real option for Jews to reach Palestine. The movement was officially referred to as Ha’apala, הַעְפָּלָה, meaning upward struggle, and the ma’apilim immigrants מעפילים. Most arrived in Palestine by boat and tried to enter the country secretly, directly defying the British government’s restriction on Jewish immigration. Yishuv emissaries, Jewish guerrillas, and Zionist youth movements worked together to enable Beriha (בריחה – escape) which grew into a recognized collaborative organization that helped nearly 200,000 Jews leave Europe.

Aliya Bet became one of the main ways to rescue Jews during World War II, and the first ship of illegal immigrants arrived in Palestine in 1934. Each effort, each ship, faced a myriad of obstacles, including the restriction of ship use, lack of funds, the continued British blockade of Palestine, and unsafe conditions. All these problems forced the slowdown of operations in 1942. The Mossad resumed its efforts in 1944 when the “Final Solution” became known to the Jews of Palestine and sought to do all it could to save those who could be saved.

In total, it is estimated that between 1939 and 1948 approximately 110,000 Jewish immigrants participated in the Aliyah Bet sailing into British Mandate territory. By land, some 9,000 Jews, including 1,350 Syrian Jews, were escorted to Palestine in intricate and audacious operations. The number of immigrants during the entire mandate, legal and illegal, was approximately 480,000, about 90% of them coming from Europe. The population of the Yishuv increased to 650,000 when the state was proclaimed.

After the war, Aliya Bet became the focal point of Zionist activity, focusing the world’s attention on the plight of Holocaust survivors who wanted to immigrate to the Jewish state. Tens of thousands of would-be immigrants arrived on Palestinian shores on dozens of ships (among them the 1947 Exodus), only to be captured by the British and interned in detention camps. About half were held in Cyprus until the State of Israel was established in May 1948.

Independent Israel – Aliyah and Absorption

The Massive Aliyah – 1948-1951

The first years of statehood witnessed the beginning of the realization of the ancient prophetic dream – the “reunion of the exiles”. The right to Aliyah was explicitly stated in the Law of Return (5 July 1950).

The first to arrive after the departure of the British and the Declaration of Independence (May 14, 1948) were the former “illegal” immigrants detained by the British in Cyprus. During May–August 1948, while the War of Independence was taking place, 33,000 immigrants entered; then, the pace picked up, with 70,000 arriving from September to December — mostly Holocaust survivors from displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria and Italy. Over the next four months, from January to April 1949, the number of immigrants reached 100,000. In all, 203,000 Jews from 42 countries arrived in the first year of independence.

This mass immigration continued until the end of 1951. During this period, entire Jewish communities were transplanted to Israel. More than 37,000 of Bulgaria’s 45,000 Jews attended; 30,500 of Libya’s 35,000; all but about 1,000 of the 45,000 in Yemen; 121,512 of the 130,000 in Iraq; two-thirds – 103,732 – of Polish Jews; and one-third — 118,940 — of Jews in Romania.

These migrations were organized as special operations. The most dramatic were Operation Magic Carpet, for Yemeni Jews, and Operation Ezra and Nehemiah, which won over Iraqi Jews. In all, 684,201 immigrants – more than the entire Jewish population when independence was declared – occurred between May 14, 1948 and the end of 1951.

Aliyah was the lifeblood of the new state, but it was only the beginning of the process of integrating veterans and newcomers from a hundred countries into one nation. The second stage was Klitah – “absorption” or integration. Full absorption was a challenge that affected all areas of the country’s life and required massive financial participation from Diaspora Jews through the Jewish Agency.

More than two-thirds of the 393,197 immigrants who arrived from May 1948 to May 1950 were settled in cities and towns: 123,669 were accommodated in houses abandoned by Arabs and 53,000 in permanent housing in cities and towns; 35,700 settled in newly established moshavim and 16,000 in kibbutzim; 6,000 children were placed in the Youth Aliyah.

Less than a third – 112,015 people – remained in migrant camps and temporary accommodation. As immigration pressure mounted, these camps filled their capacity. It was necessary to find better methods of dealing with those for whom there was no permanent dwelling. The immediate solution, conceived in 1950, was the ma’abarah, the transitional camp or neighborhood, in which the newcomers had work. The construction of a large ma’abarah took only a few weeks, and so thousands of migrants were given temporary shelter in a short period. In May 1952, there were 113 ma’abarot (ma’abarah) with a population of 250,000.

Aliyah from 1952 to 1967

After this peak, a decline in the aliyah rate began. In the years 1952-1954, the number of immigrants totaled only 51,463. In 1955, mass immigration was renewed. From 1955 to the end of 1957, immigration totaled 162,308, mainly from Morocco, Tunisia, and Poland.

Immigration from Morocco was spurred by the wave of nationalism and the achievement of independence. Between 1955 and 1957, more than 70,000 Moroccan Jews arrived. After a similar wave of Tunisian nationalism and independence in 1956, more than 15,000 Jews came from that country in the same period. The political situation in Poland also led to a considerable increase in Aliyah: 34,426 in the years 1955-1957. After the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, thousands of Jews managed to flee to Austria, from where the Jewish Agency brought in more than 8,682; after the Sinai Campaign of the same year, 14,562 Egyptian Jews arrived in Israel.

From 1958 to 1960, immigration slowed again, totaling 72,781. The largest group came from Romania (27,500). After the 1958-1960 regression, immigration increased again from 1961-1964, when a total of 215,056 immigrants arrived. More than 80,000 Jewish immigrants came from Morocco and about 80,000 from Romania. From 1965 to 1967, there was a decline in the aliyah rate.

In all, from 1952 to the Six-Day War in June 1967, 503,770 Jews came to Israel. The absorption of mass immigration from 1955-1957 was facilitated by the country’s economic recovery. There was considerable industrial growth, and the new method of settlement was put into general use: immigrants founded towns and cities in the areas of regional settlement.

During the years 1958-1960, while immigration slowed, the number of professional professionals among immigrants – doctors, engineers, economists and teachers – a trend that began in 1956 increased. To cope with immigrants of this type, the Jewish Agency set up a network of hostels where they could stay with their families in small apartments for periods of up to six months, while they learned Hebrew in the so-called ulpanim and looked for suitable work and housing.

During the years 1961-1964, the liquidation of the ma’abarot (ma’abarah) was accelerated, as more permanent housing schemes were launched in all parts of the country. During 1965-1967, as Aliyah slowed down, the Jewish Agency devoted much thought and resources to the needs of Western immigrants. This led to the establishment of absorption centers, each containing all the services and facilities—residential, social, and cultural—that the new immigrants required until they could move into permanent housing.

Aliyah from the Six-Day War (1967) to the Yom Kippur War (1973)

The Six-Day War in 1967 was followed by a considerable overall increase in aliyah from Western countries – the US, Canada, Western Europe, Latin America and South Africa. During the second half of 1967, there was a noticeable increase in the aliyah rate. By 1968, the total had increased to over 30,000 and in each of the years 1969 and 1970 – to over 40,000.

The Six-Day War was also followed by the intensification of Jewish awareness and devotion to Israel among Soviet Jews. In previous years, only a few Jews were allowed to leave the USSR to join relatives in Israel. In 1969 and 1970, there was a new development: dozens of Soviet Jews publicly declared, in letters to the Israeli government and international organizations, that they considered Israel as their historic homeland. In the late 1970s, the harsh sentence imposed on a number of Jews who tried to hijack a Soviet airliner to reach Israel—after trial in Leningrad—aroused widespread support for Soviet Jews everywhere.

After the Six-Day War, the Polish government unleashed an anti-Semitic campaign against the small remaining Jewish community in Poland, but allowed them to leave. About 5,000 came to Israel. In all, from the Six-Day War in June 1967 to the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, 260,000 Jews came to Israel.

With the rapid increase in immigration from the West, it was necessary to introduce radical changes in the immigration machine. Thus, in 1967, a joint authority of the Government-Jewish Agency on Immigration and Absorption was created. New absorption centers, hostels, kibbutzim and ulpanim were set up throughout the country. Absorption became a problem that involved various government agencies for housing, employment, and other services more directly.

In 1968 it was decided to create a Ministry of Immigrant Absorption. It was agreed that, overall, the Jewish Agency would handle immigration, while the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption would handle absorption. One of the goals of the new arrangement was to reduce the bureaucratic absorption procedures that were often criticized, especially by newcomers from the West. In 1970, a program of facilities and concessions available to immigrants was implemented, which consisted of special concessions in the areas of customs, taxation, housing, school, and university, etc. Most concessions were available for three years from the date of immigration.

Ethiopian Aliyah:

Operation Moses [1984],

In the early 1980s, many Ethiopian Jews began to leave their villages in rural areas and head to southern Sudan, from where they hoped to make their way to Kenya – and from there to Israel. The second leg of their journey was made from Sudan, aboard an Israeli Navy ship that was waiting for them at the Red Sea and brought them to Israel. The Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel at that time numbered about 7,000 souls; by the end of 1981, 14,000 more Ethiopian Jews had arrived; This number doubled by mid-1984.

In mid-1984, a mass rescue operation began, entitled “Mivtza Moshe” [Operation Moses]: over a period of a few months, 8,000 Jews were airlifted from Khartoum to Europe and from there to Israel. News of the rescue was leaked to foreign media in November 1985, with the result that President Numeiri of Sudan suspended the operation for fear of a hostile reaction from Arab states. Following U.S. mediation, Numeiri allowed six American Hercules planes to airlift the last remaining Ethiopian Jews in Sudan; their arrival in Israel brought the number of olim to about 16,000.

In December 1989, 15 years after the breakdown of diplomatic relations between Ethiopia and Israel, the Israeli Embassy in Addis Abbaba was reopened. With the resumption of diplomatic relations, contacts were made between people who had left Ethiopia for Israel and those who had stayed. The families were instructed to proceed to Addis Abbaba and ask the Embassy to bring them to Israel. By the end of 1990, between 16,000 and 17,000 Ethiopian Jews had arrived in Addis.

Operation Solomon [1991]

In May 1991, after Ethiopian dictator Mengistu fled the country, the new regime consented to allow Israel to operate a continuous airlift for a value of forty million U.S. dollars. Thus, on May 24, 1991, during the Shavuot festival, 14,000 people were transported overnight to Israel. This became known as “Mivtza Shlomo” [Operation Solomon], a procedure that lasted 48 hours and during which 7 babies were born. After this mass rescue, 6,000 more Ethiopian Jews made aliyah, putting an end to the 3,000-year saga of the Ethiopian Jewish community, as told in their tradition.

The Community in Israel

In all, about 35,000 Ethiopian Jews came to Israel.

The integration of Ethiopian Jews, with their distinctive appearance and customs, posed a Zionist challenge of the highest order to both the Israeli government and Israeli society. A special plan has been drawn up to assist in the absorption of this unique population into Israeli society.

The initial wave of aliya [1981-85] occurred during a period of record low aliya in general and was staggered over several years. By 1986, half of the olim were already settled in permanent housing after the ulpan period and the first vocational training. They were dispersed to about 40 cities and towns, with a preference for central regions and proximity to large cities.

In the second wave of aliya [1991], most olim arrived within 48 hours, at the same time that the country was experiencing a massive wave of aliya from the USSR. In 1992, due to housing shortages, Mivtza Shlomo’s olim were moved to temporary prefabricated housing sites in Israel. The issue of permanent housing was crucial and a plan was adopted in May 1993 to provide an 85% subsidy to the cost of housing, with the balance to be funded as a subsidised loan with monthly repayments. By the end of 1995, 85% of the olim living in the “caravan” sites had found housing in 65 different locations in Israel.

Special enrichment programs have been launched in schools for Ethiopian children, and institutes of higher education offer preparatory courses for Ethiopian students. The IDF has also been involved in the absorption of Ethiopian Aliyah with a number of special educational programs. To date, 1,500 Ethiopian olim serve in the IDF, including 23 officers, and there is a growing number of volunteers applying for combat units. In general, the successes of both waves of aliya are among young people: in the army, in universities and in education.

However, several problem areas have emerged in its absorption:

The transition from a traditional rural lifestyle to an urban, technological society in Israel was complicated and – for many, especially older immigrants – even a painful process.

Although the younger generation found it easier to integrate into a modernized society, this created an exceptionally large gap between them and their parents.

The transition process also led to a leadership crisis within the community: the elders who led the Jewish community in the villages of Ethiopia had difficulty taking on this role in Israel.

Some of these difficulties were common to other aliya waves, where they were largely resolved over time. It is to be expected that the problems faced by Ethiopian Jews in Israel will follow a similar path and that they will make their own special contribution to the fabric of Israeli society.

Aliya of the USSR / Commonwealth of Independent States

Between 1990-1996, more than 600,000 Jews left the CIS for Israel. Former Soviet Jews now constitute 10% of Israel’s population. For the most part, this was not an aliya motivated by Zionists; for the most part, former “refuseniks” and Zionist activists arrived in Israel between 1968 and 1973, or individually – after their liberation from Soviet prisons [1979-1986].

Between the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War, the number of Soviet olim reached 100,000. This changed dramatically after the Yom Kippur War: in 1974, Israel first encountered the phenomenon of people “bypassing” Israel. About 21,000 Jews obtained exit visas from the USSR [to Israel], but only 17,000 made aliyah; the rest waited at the Vienna transit point for entry visas to Western destinations.

This trend would become more pronounced in subsequent years, with the number of people “giving up” on their way to Israel in the 1980s actually exceeding the number of people who made aliyah. In 1987, 90% of those who left the USSR decided not to come to Israel, and the subject was extremely controversial in Israel. In fact, it disappeared from the public eye with the increasingly severe Soviet restrictions on aliyah since the early 1980s, and there was little change in aliyah numbers from the start of “perestroika” [reconstruction] in the mid-1980s until further “liberalization” of the economy and regime later in the decade.

New wave

Thus, in 1990, when it was long assumed that the era of aliya from the Soviet Union had ended and ended, the picture changed again, in a totally unexpected way.

By the spring of 1990, the Soviet aliyah’s monthly numbers had exceeded 10,000, and by the middle of the year, more than 50,000 olim had arrived in Israel. Over the next six months, another 135,000 olim arrived in the country, with planes landing one after another and dropping hundreds of olim. The tally for a single weekend in December of that year was 5,000. Of the 200,000 peak aliyah ciphers, Soviet olim accounted for 185,000.

In fact, the new massive influx of the Soviet Union resulted from a number of simultaneous factors:

Perestroika and glasnost under Gorbachev;

The deterioration of the economic situation in the USSR;

Ethnic and political conflicts in the peripheral republics of the USSR;

Covert and overt threats of anti-Semitism. Soviet Jews left the USSR en masse. With the new limitations on immigration to the U.S., the growing influx of Jews made Israel their destination.

Klita – Absorption and Integration

The mass aliyah of Jews from the USSR, which would later become the Commonwealth of Independent States, was not essentially a new phenomenon. However, with the exception of the early years of its statehood, Israel had never received such a large wave of aliyah at once. Parallel to the dream of the exodus of the Jews from the Silence, problems associated with aliyah quickly began to arise, the significance of which is due to the large dimensions of this influx of people: employment, housing, lack of Hebrew.

In the USSR, Jews were disproportionately prominent in the sciences, medicine, mathematics, physics, and art, far beyond their percentage of the population. The wave of aliyah since 1990 is similarly characterized by a significant preponderance of adults with tertiary education. Their overall contribution and potential to contribute to the State of Israel and to Israeli society as scientists, doctors, academics, in technology, research, and the arts are indisputably important.

If the Russian aliyah of the nineties is not precisely motivated by Zionism, it will undoubtedly leave its own mark on Israeli society, like any other group of olim.

Aliyah from France

During the Hebrew year 5774 (September 2013 – September 2014), for the first time, more Jews made aliyah from France than any other country, with approximately 6,000 French Jews making aliyah, mostly fleeing rampant anti-Semitism, pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist violence, and economic malaise.

In 2015, a total of 7,835 French people moved to Israel.  That dropped to about 5,200 in 2016 and 3,500 in 2017.  In 2019, 2,227 people immigrated from France, a reduction of 7.8% compared to the 2018 immigration figure of 2,416 immigrants in total.

Pray that the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel will not stop, that Israel will be whole in its entirety, reconquering its biblical borders (Israel Shlemah).

Pray the WORD with the help of our booklet with more than 160 passages about Aliyah.

May it be: the Lord taking possession of the Land alongside his people.

In the sublime and wonderful love of Yeshua haMashiach.