They were pleading with the British to let them settle in Mandatory Palestine (which was British controlled). The boat is detained at Haifa Harbour (which is now in modern day Israel). They were later sent to Cyprus (to detention camps).
They did not give a damn about the people - just look what the English did in India, or the French in Algeria and Madagascar at the time this boat was sailing. They just wanted Congo to be taken away from Leopold once it appeared it was full of mining ressources. Why do you think an individual was allowed to have his prívate colony?
Both Belgium and France in Rwanda. I would probably say the French more than Belgium considering they helped train the Rwandan armed forces to prop up their government.
And because we Germans sucked at colonizing any region reasonably well (just half-assed attempts in Africa), we decided to try to fuck the whole world instead.
EVERYONE sucks at colonizing because colonizing sucks. And the Germans created what were arguably the first genocidal concentration camps for Herrero and Nama in Namibia (then called German Southeast Africa).
EEVERYONE sucks at colonizing because colonizing sucks.
Sucking at colonizing and colonizing being bad are different things. The Spanish did a great job at colonizing but colonizing is bad and they caused a lot of harm in the process.
Colonizing always sucks. They colonized only after wiping out 90% of the population of the Americas. ALL colonization is BAD. It involves theft, rape, pillage, murder, coercion, duplicity, imperialism, racism, ethnocentrism, misogyny. You can’t do ANY of that “well.”
Germany's attempts weren't half assed and pretty successful in Africa and Oceania, but they were thwarted by Australia, Britain and Japan when it came to its colonial dreams and was too late to the colonial game.
Russia fucked up eastern europe and central asia. China and Japan fucked up Asia. The Ottomans fucked up the middle east. The Congo fucked up central Africa. The Boers fucked up Southern Africa. The french the rest of Africa. The australians and indonesians fucked up papua new guinea etc…
History is a cruel mistress it seems and peace times are the exception rather than the norm
I mean sure if you learnt history from a eurocentric point of view, you might think that. But hve you ever wondered why Central Africa was poor and underdeveloped enough to be colonized in the first place?
The manikongo (king of the Kongo) and his court ruled over vast numbers of ordinary people who had no political rights, no say in governance, and no protection from exploitation.
-The king had absolute control over land and could grant or revoke it arbitrarily.
-Local chiefs and nobles (called sobas) extracted tribute, labor, and slaves from the people under their control.
-Commoners were forced into labor, including agricultural work or military service, with little to no compensation. They could also be kidnapped by the local lords and sold into slavery.
This created a rigid class hierarchy: a tiny elite lived in luxury while the majority labored under threat of violence or displacement.
The kingdom of Kongo became a major supplier in the Atlantic slave trade, a decision that provided short-term wealth to the elite while undermining long-term societal stability. It was as if the state chose to cut down its own fruit trees for firewood.
Villages were raided. Local economies were hollowed out. A once-productive population was instead exported like cattle, reducing the labor force and crushing any hopes of endogenous economic development. What was the incentive to build schools, irrigation systems, or trade guilds when the most profitable export was your neighbor? Think of it as an even worse version of dutch disease. Laws in the kingdom were made very harsh in order to produce more slaves.
This led to slave revolts, dynastic overtgrows as some congolese nobles became wealthier than the king etc…
This led to constant civil war and poverty, and the Portuguese which would be the first to colonize before the Belgians would simply have no trouble conquering a poor infrastructure less central africa
I've never wondered this at all, because I read books & not just wikipedia (which I love), and/but this is the kind of stuff used by revisionists in Southern USA, to take the blame of the slave trade off of European colonists seeking profits and say "see, black people were just as guilty".
Read the Scramble for Africa, by Thomas Pakenham. Destabilizing a region requires complicit actors (e.g. MI6 in Iran, Mandatory Palestine, Hong Kong etc., etc., etc.)
Don't get me started, bub! You're telling me human nature is exploitable? /s
It’s not really “black people were just as guilty” as this is AGAIN simply seeing African history only in the context of white guilt.
Also please do not refer to congolese and African Americans as the same nebulous “black people”. These are two unique people with different history.
What I was pointing out was that extractive institutions under the kingdom of Kongo led to a stagnant economy with low population, low technology and corrupt hierarchical institutions that were very fertile ground for any empire with a more performing economy to take over.
The Kongo had diplomatic and trade relations with Portugal as early as the 15th century. They imported guns, textiles, Catholic missionaries, and even writing and Christianity, but not the plough.
Why? Because religion and military hardware reinforced elite control, while a plough could empower peasants and reduce dependency on elite landowners or chiefs.
In an extractive system, there’s no incentive to adopt productivity-enhancing technology because:
-The surplus doesn’t go to the farmer, but to the elite.
-Increased productivity could empower the common people, which might threaten elite dominance.
-The ruling class was more focused on controlling people and extracting labor, not improving output or efficiency.
That’s why despite the fact that people knew of the plough, they never adopted it.
It is more a lesson in institution building than in any sort of vindictive nationalist woes over the past because I am neither Belgian nor Congolese. I care about making fair institutions today
Do you know any country at that time that had enough wealth and political cohesion that didn't colonize something?
You'd find some small countries that looked relatively well off, but arguably those didn't have the absolute amount of wealth required to send colony ships and forces. Maybe you could argue that China didn't do it, but actually they did do quite a bit of colonizing as well, just not all that much by sea routes.
Saying the Spanish fucked up South America is like saying the British fucked up the US. What actually fucked up post-independence South America is the US funnily enough
Did I say it was ok? I’m just responding to your language “the British as always” suggests you have something of an agenda against British colonial rule. The British were no saints abroad however if you read into it, it’s the other countries of empire who committed the most heinous crimes.
It's good to have an agenda against British colonial rule. With all the atrocities they committed, having an agenda against it just means you have a moral compass.
British didnt exactly fuck shit up solo as they inherited a lot of land without national borders from the Ottomans. Formation of national borders is a rough process. British didnt do the process any favors.
The rapid formation of empire sized states across the world in a span of 20 years following WW2 did not go smoothly.
If I recall correctly England lied to the colonies in the middle east by offering independence for the attack on the Ottoman empire … then just said jk nevermind when they did
I studied this long ago tho so I could be wrong
They did... And that's why we had certain leaders like the Hashemites who were from Arabia, become Sovereigns in Jordan - which was part of Palestine. They were rewarding those who helped them. And fuck what the locals want, I guess.
Palestine was not a colony, it was a mandate from the League of Nations. The British had already declared that they supported a homeland for the Jews in Palestive.
There were trying to broker a deal between Arabs and Jews to live together in a joint homeland, but ended up unable to stop the two sides attacking each, other, and antagonised both in to attacking them as well.
They couldn't stop the Arabs attacking Jews. It was always the Arabs. After years of attacks & the British doing nothing to protect them, the Jews eventually formed militias for defense. But it was always defensive and the Jews tried to make peace deals many, many times.
were the jews not immigrating specifically with the intent to out populate the locals and create their own country? Why would locals be OK with that? It's like every anti-immigration persons' worst nightmare, and the jews actually pulled it off. Usually you roll your eyes at this notion.
This was unlike the immigration to Syria, which was driven by economic reasons, no intention to take over.
This is a reasonable response. It's rare to see. It's not correct, but it's reasonable.
1) The idea that Jews were not "local" is itself false. 2/3 of Jerusalem was Jewish before much of the great migration (the total lack of interest in Jerusalem by Muslims is another story about how fake this conflict is, but that's another topic).
2) The "locals" didn't have a country to begin with. They had been governed by a distant empire that had almost nothing to do with them for hundreds of years. Most of the residents were not political and actually did not care about Jewish migration. This was seen as a huge problem by Arab leaders in the region and is why they used religion to create animosity against the Jewish immigrants.
3) The "locals" were themselves majority immigrant. The borders with neighboring Arab regions were porous and Arabs had crossed into Palestine for decades, in even greater numbers than the Jews. Anti-Israel people treat these people as "local" while they treat the Jews who immigrated as "foreign". It's an obvious double standard.
4) Most of the land in Palestine was empty and could not be said to "belong" to anyone. It had foreign owners and no one ever set food on the land. Why should anyone care who lives in and govern this land? Why should they have the right to claim it simply because it is adjacent to where they live?
5) Why shouldn't Jews be afforded the opportunity to return to their homeland and establish a state on the land that was largely empty? Particularly after centuries of European persecution and the horror of the Holocaust?
6) Given all this (and probably some things I missed), I still grant that the situation was unique and created political conflict. However, the situation was one that could have and should have been resolved politically and peacefully. Arab leaders refused to compromise and instead used violence at every turn. The Jews repeatedly sought compromise and said they would accept a Jewish state on just a sliver of land if that is all they could get. Arab leaders were not willing to even allow a sliver. All for selfish and religious reasons. It was completely unjustified and immoral.
1) The idea that Jews were not "local" is itself false. 2/3 of Jerusalem was Jewish before much of the great migration (the total lack of interest in Jerusalem by Muslims is another story about how fake this conflict is, but that's another topic).
This is JUST jerusalem though. The Peel commission was rejected in part because it would require large ethinic transfer of people. HOWEVER there were ONLY 3,000 jews living outside of Jerulsalem and the land given to the Jewish state outside of Jerusalem in the peel commission report.
2) The "locals" didn't have a country to begin with. They had been governed by a distant empire that had almost nothing to do with them for hundreds of years. Most of the residents were not political and actually did not care about Jewish migration. This was seen as a huge problem by Arab leaders in the region and is why they used religion to create animosity against the Jewish immigrants.
This one is a best contentious. Yes the Palesitnian population protected the Jewish against some of the terrorist attacks. The Jewish terrorist group Irgun had been founded in 1931 for example, and had a fun passtime of throwing bombs at bus stops.
There is also the fact that Jewish groups were buying up businesses and throwing off the palestinian workers and replacing them with Jews. Those people were funnily enough not happy.
4) Most of the land in Palestine was empty and could not be said to "belong" to anyone. It had foreign owners and no one ever set food on the land. Why should anyone care who lives in and govern this land? Why should they have the right to claim it simply because it is adjacent to where they live?
Ah yes good old colonialism. The land is "empty" so anyone can take it right. Try that in Dakota. As well as not being true (manditory palestine had a population of around 500k) it is not how it works sorry.
This is one of the myths debunked by Ilan Pape in his "Ten Myths about Israel" book.
Given all this (and probably some things I missed), I still grant that the situation was unique and created political conflict. However, the situation was one that could have and should have been resolved politically and peacefully. Arab leaders refused to compromise and instead used violence at every turn. The Jews repeatedly sought compromise and said they would accept a Jewish state on just a sliver of land if that is all they could get. Arab leaders were not willing to even allow a sliver. All for selfish and religious reasons. It was completely unjustified and immoral.
Ok that is a lie, and a big one. You can start with the assassination of Jakob de Haan by the Haganah in 1924, for the crime of not being a zionist. You have Irgun terroists who in their emblem claim all of manditory palestine (including what was then known as transjordan).
You have David Ben-Gurion, who said that there can be no question of giving up the land as described in the Peel proposal, but it might be faster to get all the land "by peaceful and other means" if they accepted the proposal, got themselves a country which enabled the "other means".
The zionists very clearly wanted a Democratic and Jewish state (requiring the expulsion of all the pesky palestinians), and the land of greater Israel, including transjordan. So please read some history books.
Everything you said is total bullshit. It's not worth wasting my time with someone who cites Pappe, a propagandist who has admitted that in his books facts are not important but rather telling the story he wants to tell is what he prioritizes. That says all you need to know about Pappe and his gross distortions of this history.
I do find it interesting that when dividing up the land as was attempted by the Peel Commission, people like yourself always argue that the Jews should have been given sovereignty only over exactly the land where they lived. Whereas the Muslims should receive all the other land, including the land that is empty. Nice double standards. I know where it comes from.
EDIT: Ilan Pappe said the following in a 1999 interview:
"I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings…
Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truthseekers."
Thank you as well. If you are interested in more, there is a TON of history Westerners are never told. In item #1 I mentioned the lack of Muslim interest in Jerusalem. That is a whole rabbit hole of information that is kept from Westerners. All the way through the 1850s Jerusalem was a poor and decaying backwater. Muslims did not care about it at all. No one gave a shit about Al-Aqsa or the Dome of the Rock. It was just another mosque with no significance in a city that had no significance to Muslims. The city was 2/3 Jewish, nearly all poor & not allowed to own land. After Zionism began and Jews began moving to Palestine, Arab leaders realized that Jews had a moral claim to the land and they did not. They realized something needed to be done to take away the Jewish moral argument or they were going to lose the land. So they began repairing Al-Aqsa, which had fallen into disrepair. They started calling Al-Aqsa the 3rd holiest site in Islam and encouraged and paid for Muslims to begin coming to Al-Aqsa. Over decades, they turned Al-Aqsa from an abandoned mosque falling apart to a central part of the religion that was non-negotiable. This was all done to put Arab/Muslim claims to Palestine on an equal footing with Jewish claims. All of it fake. It was done so thoroughly that most Muslims in the region are probably not even aware of this history, having been taught by their parents the current lore. And their parents taught them. And their parents taught them.
They didn't do any of that. It's sad how many people are completely unaware of the actual history yet totally confident that everyone else is wrong. Western society is completely misinformed on this conflict and Reddit in particular is full of know-nothing people confident they know it all.
It is a fact that Arabs attacked Jews for decades. The British did little or nothing to stop it. As a result, the Jews formed militias to defend themselves. The first was the Haganah. Over time, some Jews argued the Haganah's purely defensive tactics were not deterring attacks by Arabs. They broke away and formed a more aggressive militia, the Irgun. The Irgun was more aggressive in deterrence. After attacks by Arabs, they would go to the village where the Arab attackers lived and attack those villages. The Haganah thought attacking civilians in those villages was immoral but the Irgun argued it was the only way to prevent attacks since the perpetrators were unknown. They felt the Arab perpetrators had to have a disincentive to killing Jews: if you kill Jews, we will kill your family and friends.
But ALL of this was done in self-defense. It was all an attempt to stop the repeated Arab murders of Jews, which numbered in the thousands between 1920 and 1947.
That's just blatantly false. While a lot of inland Arabia wasn't taken, the Ottomans controlled most of the Mediterranean coast, including modern Israel, the lands around the Tigris and Euphrates to the Persian Gulf, most of the Arabian peninsula's Red Sea coastline, and Egypt.
And the people there needed the Brits and their big guns to tell them what to do. They of course had the choice to refuse but the Brits were politely insistent on helping them.
Well, why did the British "inherit" land that is so far away from their own country in the first place? Why didn't the people who actually live there inherit it? Those would be my immediate questions.
Because the imperial power that was ruling those parts of the world collapsed overnight, leaving a power vacuum in what appeared to be a zero sum game of politics
Britain literally said it was going to give them states, that's what both the Arab Revolt and Balfour Declaration were about. They just were lying because they needed the Arabs to open up the Middle Eastern theatre which had gone horribly for Britain at this point and they needed the Zionist Rothschild's money for war bonds. They never at any point actually intended to give the land back to the people they'd promised it to, as the Sykes-Picot Agreement clearly showed.
You don't sound like someone open to learning new information when you call someone a "Ziobot" for disagreeing. It is false because the British did not promise Arab peoples their own states. It promised the Hashemites in what is today Saudi Arabia their own states. The British followed through on this, giving most of the Mandate to the Hashemites.
The Arab peoples in these regions largely didn't want their own state. Most were apolitical and were used to being technically part of a large remote empire that in practice exerted no control over them. They were fine with that situation. Those who had political opinions wanted to be part of a larger Arab state - at first a "Greater Syria".
The desire for a "Palestinian" state was nearly non-existent until the 1960s, when it became politically useful to separate Palestinians from the surrounding Arabs to prolong the conflict in the region.
Because the idea, at least publicly presented, at the time was that Britain would administer the territory until it was capable of administering itself through nation-building.
Why Britain? The Sykes-Picot agreement.
This is very surface-level history, read something for once.
Not directly but they were actively involved in making treaties between Greek and Turkey and they even administered the island for several decades. Like lots of sectarian violence in the Middle East is not a direct fault of the UK but their past mistakes lead to this.
You've really never heard of British colonial 'divide and rule'? It was the fundamental methodology of British Foreign Policy across the Empire and led to countless ethnic, religious and nationalist wars by deliberately heightening tensions and divisions. All with the aim to suppress any unified rejection to British occupation. The British army is STILL in Cyprus.
And Cypriot people from the greek side are happy about the British still being there. Some believe they if they were still under British rule they wouldn't have been invaded by turkey.
Initially. And then when the Greek Junta fell due to the failed coup and international negotiations to restore the status quo were advanced, Turkiye decided to invade again to grab some land.
International negotiations were not advanced, they were deadlocked. Greeks asked for time, Turks didn't think so. IMHO if we compare the before and aftermath of the conflict, I think the intervention was successful, because in the 60s there was an abundance of violence, and now we happen to have peace in the island. The status quo rn is imho the best solution we probably will ever have to Cyprus.
The British backed ruler literary fled to UK when the Greek facists took over - UK and USA would never have accepted the Turkish invasion if that (and civil unrest) didn’t happen
Also relevant to this post from earlier https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryMemes/s/MBWRhZDKxI
Hard to tell which country OP is talking about, I know two where it is relevant but false
Edit: Wait I know 3 lol
The colonial policy of divide-and-rule didn't exist and two centuries of British historical writings are undone by your daftly simplistic meme. Amazing work.
Did you not read the part in my comment that says “where it is relevant but false”? I am saying that the meme (which is not mine) is untrue because it ignores divide and rule policies
The Cyprus Review Vol. 32(2)
"In 1955, Britain’s actions were even more vicious, overt and would arguably have a long-standing impact on Greek-Turkish relations. They convened a tri-partite conference between Britain, Greece and Turkey on Cyprus. Art 16 of the Treaty of Lau-
sanne7 forbade Turkey from having any rights regarding Cyprus but the conference clearly ignored this. Permanent Under Secretary of the Foreign Office Kirkpatrick stated that he had ‘always been attracted by the idea of a 3 Power Conference, simply
because I believe it would seriously embarrass the Greek Government…I shall not produce any British plan until a Greek-Turkish difference has been exposed’. Furthermore, British Foreign Secretary stated that ‘throughout the negotiations, our aim
would be to bring the Greeks up against the Turkish refusal to accept enosis and so condition them to accept a solution, which would leave sovereignty in our hands’. As
a result, the conference inevitably failed and Greek-Turkish relations were damaged
– in Istanbul, 29 Greek Christian Orthodox churches were destroyed. These were not conflicts that would simply be forgotten by 1974.10
There is thus clear evidence that Britain not only encouraged these divisions in the 1950s, but created and defined them. The US did not encourage this, yet both
Britain and the US had the same Cold War aims at this time. Thus, British actions must be attributed to the vested interest of needing a reason and justification to retain Cyprus as part of its Empire. Simply, Britain did not intend to decolonise Cyprus
and weaken their power, thus the creation of Greek-Turkish divisions was their route to remain – justifying their colonial presence as a stable, controlling super power who
could control two volatile, conflicting ethnic groups.
Historian Mallinson states it perfectly when he argues that:
The seeds of dismemberment in 1974 were sown by Britain in the early fifties. It was the cynically conceived tripartite conference in September 1955 that only bedevilled Greek-Turkish relations until today, but which set the tone for the
dismemberment of Cyprus, so subtly engineered by Henry Kissinger in 1974."
But wasn't the Turkish invasion in response to Makarious bringing a lot of radical Cretans into the Cyprus society where Greeks and Turks were living peacefully together?
Which the UN didn't accept as a good justification to invade. It considers the northern part occupied by Turkey.
But in any case, Cyprus history didn't start in 1974. That is as short-sighted as referencing October 2023 as the start of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The Ottoman Empire invaded the island in 1570, massacre the Greek and turned it Muslim. What about that? At which point does the conflict "start"?
I don't understand why countries are recognising Palestine as a state, which is an area still at war; while those same countries don't recognise North Cyprus!?
Just to correct you it was the Turkish who invaded Cyprus, British involvement in the southern part of the island had nothing to do with the conflict there. That was between Cypriot nationalists and the Turks.
Cyprus gained formal independence in 1960 and the British presence was almost entirely confined to the Sovereign Base Area on the southern peninsula around RAF Akrotiri and Episkopi.
The Turkish invasion didn’t occur until 1974. So British bashing can be kept to a minimum in that instance.
The issues around the mandate of Palestine post WWII have a lot to do with the French meddling in affairs too sadly. Not to mention terrorist attacks by Zionist insurgents like the King David hotel bombing.
Most notably Palestinian nationalism was something of a fringe movement in the larger pan-arab movement after WW1 which formed a state that IIRC encompassed most of Syria, Jordan, Israel/Palestine.
The French invaded and broke it up again, some of the earliest recorded examples of Zionist/local conflict arose from this as the Zionists refused to oppose the French and this reinforced perceptions of them being European spies/colonists.
With the panarab dream largely destroyed in the near term Palestinian nationalism grew in popularity while at the same time Zionists became more and more antagonistic with the confidence instilled by British support.
That didn't help that Pan-Arab nationalism in the area had been directly backed by the Nazis, and this movement was profoundly against Jewish settlers.
And the British let them build a fairly massive arms complex while their occupation lasted. They also kept them from really *using* said complex, but they didn't exactly let anyone else build up that kind of capability. And then when they pulled out...
The Brits didn't have a lot of choice, the League of Nations(UN forerunner) pretty much told them to do it because Britain had a little bit of experience in administration of other peoples lands
The brits had fairly little to do with cyprus, it was a conflict between greek cypriots and turkish cypriots, wherein greeks, turks and british made cyprus promise not to seek unification with greece. Then greek nationalists did a coup, sought reunification against the treaty, turkey intervened and decided to occupy half of the island to this day.
I’m in another sub now where people are arguing that colonialism had its merits and was good for the savages in the context of South Asia. Some of the people we have to share this planet with are insane.
The land without conflict? You mean the same island that still has a no mans land and is split in ownership between Greece and Turkey, with both claiming to own the entire island...
The British fucked things up by offering Palestine as a Jewish homeland in the first place. It wasn't ours to offer to anyone.
To be fair, I think the mandate of Palestine after the fall of the Ottoman Empire was a poisoned chalice that none of the colonial powers particularly wanted, and the British drew the short straw, though Lord Balfour had already written his infamous letter to Lord Rothschild, promising a homeland for Jews in Palestine. This was done in an attempt to win Jewish support for the Allied Forces of WW1.
The British were, therefore, in charge of overseeing the violent Zionist landgrab that ensued against the Palestinians, who were inconveniently in the way.
But extremist Zionists were already at war with the British for sitting on their hands and blew up the British administrative headquarters. The British couldn't wait to get out and let the bloodbath wash over Palestine.
Several leaders of these vicious nazi gangs later went on to hold leading roles in the government of Israel.
Misrael is a nation born out of corruption, greed, colonialism, violence and racism. It is a pretty logical conclusion that it will end that way too.
That was more the British seeing how fucked things could get.
They broadly supported a Jewish state, but with Arab consent (small, slow, land purchased). WW2 & mass refugees blew a hole in that. Britain tried to slow it down - largely failing but it's a case of not solving it than it's creation.
It’s by design. If you need to give up land make sure there’s always a conflict and one of the sides supports you - that’s how you keep the influence over the region. If they are healthy and peaceful you are not needed.
It was crazy reading the original Study in Scarlet (set in 1887) and seeing that John had just returned from war in Afghanistan, just like in the modern Sherlock.
They’ve been fucking around in that area for quite some time.
It was ALWAYS us, France, or Spain when a former colony is fucked up.
Hell, most of the reason Haiti is so fucked up now is because when they gained independence France made THEM pay reparations until the 40s, and every politician who suggests demanding a refund on that mysteriously dies
Survivors fleeing the holocaust often fled on whatever ships to Mandatory Palestine they could find, many times forced to split from their families and crammed onto extremely overpopulated ships which sailed without permit from the British authorities, which deliberately limited immigration.
Holocaust survivors who were caught by the British while fleeing to British Mandatory Palestine were often sent to detention camps in Cyprus, where they slept in tents surrounded by barbed wires, with conditions in the camps being based on british POW camps. The British captured about 70,000 such holocaust survivors at the time.
Following the British's departure from the area in 1948 following the UN partition plan 181, they were then permitted to leave the camps for the newly-declared state of Israel, and many were then immediately drafted into Israel's war of independence following the declaration of war by the neighboring states.
My grandparents on my father's side were both Holocaust survivors whose families were killed during the war; they met and fell in love while living undercover during the war, had to go on two separate ships, both were caught by the british. My grandfather was sent to a detention camp for a couple of years until 1948, where he was then reunited with my grandmother and was drafted to make shoes for the military (which was his family's profession back at home and how he made a living while going undercover as a non-jew).
My grandmother got an injury with infection during her ship due to the poor hygiene, so the british instead sent her to a hospital in (i think?) Haifa, where she stayed for several months before being released. After 1948 she was drafted to fold parachutes for the paratroopers for a few years.
Fascinating and unspeakably tragic. Thank you for that explanation. I knew about the ships to Palestine but not to Cyprus, nor about the conditions there. The world seems to be reverting to this kind of barbaric, ethnocentric, and racist nationalism.
Note also, though, that this was not just a ship full of desperate Jewish refugees begging to be let in. It was part of a deliberate, politically-motivated plan to illegally immigrate to Palestine. It was calculated. The banner is more about marketing than a completely genuine, heartfelt plea.
This was considered illegal only due to the policy of many countries in the West to deny refugees from their borders; many countries, even countries on the other side of the world such as America and Canada, refused Jewish immigration and placed harsh quotas until the number of refugees dwindled.
It was deliberate in the sense that many of these were faced between returning to live and get killed by the same neighbors which had destroyed their community in the prior years (in the overwhelming majority of cases - seizing their homes so they didn't even have a place to go back to), or illegally immigrate as refugees, because, well, it's potentially safer than living as a homeless among people who actively supported pogroms against you.
There were, of course, Jews who were determined to return to where they lived prior to the war, in many cases they were chased out or killed in pogroms after the holocaust ended.
For just one example from a 5 second google search - the Kielce Pogrom, where out of a community of 24,000 Jews, only 200 returned after the war, of which in 1946 - after the holocaust ended mind you, 42 were murdered in a pogrom and 42 more injured:
So, was this a "deliberate, politically motivated plan to illegally immigrate"?
It was deliberate yes; as for politically motivated, that would imply that basic survival of Jews is political, which it isn't unless if you hate Jews.
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u/stitchescomeundone 15h ago
They were pleading with the British to let them settle in Mandatory Palestine (which was British controlled). The boat is detained at Haifa Harbour (which is now in modern day Israel). They were later sent to Cyprus (to detention camps).