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The Chimera of Palestinian Resettlement in Argentina in the Early Aftermath of the First Arab-Israeli War and Other Similarly Fantastic Notions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Ignacio Klich*
Affiliation:
University of Westminster, London, England

Extract

Just as the Nazi destruction of European Jewry during World War II led to the dramatic dissemination of the realities of genocide in the 1940s, so a painful corollary to the more recent breakdown of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia has been the all too familiar newsworthiness of the concept of ethnic cleansing, i.e., the forcible and unheroic eviction of undesired groups. The practice of applying varying degrees of coercion and/or violence to purge national, religious and other minorities, though, is far older than the inception of either of the aforementioned multiethnic states, let alone their disintegration, and it is not limited to these particular countries. Such a dilemma—the presence of implacable competitors for political supremacy over the same territory—is a position with certain similarities to that of Palestine and early Israel in the first half of this century, especially after binational and other minimalist solutions were deemed irrelevant by the respective mainstreams of the Jewish and Palestinian national movements.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1996

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Footnotes

*

Thanks are due to Yitzhak Navon, Petrona Sapira and Raanan Weitz for their readiness to confirm and/or enlarge on the information arising from archival materials and published sources. I would like to thank as well, Gladys Jozami, Fida Nasrallah, Leonardo Senkman, Jocaobo Serruya, Nadim Shehadi, and John Strawson for supplying six items cited below. The generosity of Nasrallah went so far as to provide me with an English language version of an Arabic text. I am also indebted to Nezer Minuchin for his assistance and encouragement, and to Jeffrey Lesser, Walter Zenner, and The Americas' reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft. Such contributions notwithstanding, I am solely responsible for this paper's contents.

References

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9 See, for instance, Abou, Sélim, Immigrés dans l’autre Amérique: Autobiographies de quatre Argentins d’origine libanais (Paris, 1972)Google Scholar; Allard, Michel, “Les Libanais en Argentine de l’émigration à l’intégration (1902–1914),” Travaux et Jours (Beirut), 48, 1973 Google Scholar; Vela Ríos, María Elena and Caimi, Roberto, “The Arabs in Tucumán, Argentina,” in Martínez Montiel, Luz María, ed., Asiatic Migrations to Latin America (Mexico, 1980)Google Scholar; Bertoni, Lilia Ana, “Una colectividad en formación: Los llamados ‘turcos’ en Buenos Aires hacia 1895,” Paper presented at the Primeras Jornadas Nacionales sobre Inmigración en Argentina, Buenos Aires, 5–7 November 1981 Google Scholar; Jozami, Gladys, “Aspectos demográficos y comportamiento espacial de los migrantes árabes en el NOA,” Estudios Migratorios Latinoamericanos (EML) (April 1987)Google Scholar; Bestene, Jorge O., “La inmigración sirio-libanesa en la Argentina: Una aproximación,” EML, August 1988 Google Scholar; Tasso, Alberto, Aventura, trabajo y poder: Sirios y libaneses en Santiago del Estero (1880–1980) (Buenos Aires, 1989)Google Scholar; Akmir, Abdelwahed, “La inserción de los inmigrantes árabes en Argentina (1880–1980): Implicaciones sociales,” Anaquel de Estudios Arabes 2 (1991)Google Scholar; Biondi-Assali, Estela, “L’Insertion des groupes de langue arabe dans la société argentine,” Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, 7:2 (1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klich, Ignacio, “Criollos and Arabie Speakers in Argentina: An Uneasy Pas de Deux, 1888–1914,” in Hourani, Albert and Shehadi, Nadim, eds., The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration (London, 1992)Google Scholar; Assali, Estela Biondi, “ ‘Beine … beineta:’ El uso de (p) en el habla española de los inmigrantes de origen árabe en la Argentina,” Hispanic Linguistics 5:1–2 (1992)Google Scholar; Klich, Ignacio, “Argentine-Ottoman Relations and their Impact on Immigrants from the Middle East: A History of Unfulfilled Expectations, 1910–1915,” The Americas (October 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Klich, Ignacio and Jozami, Gladys, “La Integración de los ‘exóticos’: Arabes y judíos en el Servicio Exterior de la la Nación, 1900–1966” paper presented at the 8th International Conference of the Latin American Jewish Studies Association (LAJSA), Mexico, 11–14 November 1995.Google Scholar

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11 National Archives (NA), Washington, Civil Reference Branch, Record Group (RG) 59, 835.55/ 3–2746, Report by Richard H. Post.

12 Avni, Haim, Raicher, Rosa Perla and Bankier, David, eds., Historia viva: Memorias del Uruguay y de Israel (Jerusalem, 1989), p. 100.Google Scholar

13 On Jewish agricultural settlement in Argentina see, for instance, Avni, Haim, “La agricultura judía en la Argentina ¿éxito o fracaso?Desarrollo Económico (January-March 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Senkman, Leonardo, comp., La colonización judía (Buenos Aires, 1984)Google Scholar; Norman, Theodore, An Outstretched Arm: A History of the Jewish Colonization Association (London, 1985)Google Scholar; Bargman, Daniel Fernando, “Un ámbito para las relaciones interétnicas: Las colonias judías en Argentina,” Revista de Antropología, 7:11, (1992)Google Scholar; Eisenberg, Ellen, “The Influence of Settler Origins on the Jewish Colonies of Entre Ríos, Argentina, 1890–1910,” Paper presented at the Seventh International Research Conference of LAJSA, Philadelphia, 10–12 November 1993.Google Scholar

14 Author’s interview with Navon, Yitzhak, Jerusalem, 1 July 1993.Google Scholar

15 Shlaim, Avi, Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (Oxford, 1988),Google Scholar pp. 83ff; Morris, Benny, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 299300.Google Scholar

16 Morris, Benny, “Yosef Weitz and the Transfer Committees, 1948–49,” Middle Eastern Studies (October 1986), 540.Google Scholar

17 Author’s interview with Navon.

18 Morris, Benny, Israel’s Border Wars 1949–1956: Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation and the Countdown to the Suez War (Oxford, 1993), p. 117.Google Scholar

19 Pappé, Ilan, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–51 (London, 1992), p. 97.Google Scholar

20 Morris, , The Birth, pp. 275–85.Google ScholarPubMed

21 Author’s interview with Navon.

22 According to Ilan Pappé, Weitz did not consider Palestinian Arab “ ‘friendliness’ or ‘hostility’ ” a useful divide to determine who should be evicted. Hence, this Israeli historian concluded that if Weitz, had had his way, even more [Palestinian] evictions would have taken place.” Pappé, , Arab-Israeli Conflict, p. 95.Google Scholar

23 Established by the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901, the Jewish National Fund was created for the purpose of acquiring land in Palestine as “an inviolate possession of the Jewish people.”

24 Weitz, Yosef, Yomani velgrotai laBanim (Tel Aviv, 1965), p. 4,Google Scholar 164.

25 As with Ben Gurion’s reluctance to commit to paper any such words of encouragement, Tsur’s memoirs do not mention Weitz’s mission in Argentina. See, for instance, ben Gurion, David, Israel: A Personal History (New York, 1972), p. 123 Google Scholar; Tsur, Jacob, Cartas credenciales No 4 (Jerusalem, 1983).Google Scholar

26 According to his son Raanan, Weitz was also keen to acquire in Latin America agave seedlings for a 5,000 dunam plantation in Israel, given the textile and pharmaceutical applications of this semi-desertic plant. Author’s interview with Weitz.

27 Central Zionist Archives (CZA), Jerusalem, KKL5/19021, Weitz to KKL, 30 November 1951.

28 Weitz, , Yomani velgrotai laBanim, p. 168.Google Scholar

29 CZA, KKL5/19021, Weitz to KKL, 16 December 1951.

30 Weitz, , Yomani velgrotai laBanim, p. 173.Google Scholar

31 CZA, KKL5/19021, Weitz to M. Ezrachi, 22 and 30 November 1951.

32 See, for example, Ruppin, Arthur, Los judíos en América del Sur (Buenos Aires, 1938), pp. 6579 Google Scholar; Avni, Haim, Argentina & the Jews: A History of Immigration (Tuscaloosa, 1991), pp. 42,Google Scholar 52 and 59.

33 On the post-war winding down of JCA operations in Argentina, a course of action recommended since 1947 but which was not effectively accomplished before the 1970s, see Jewish Colonization Association papers, London, Séance du Conseil Administratif, Simon Weill to Louis Oungre, 6 January 1947; Norman, , An Outstretched Hand, pp. 229–41.Google Scholar

34 It should be noted that by 1948, some 127,000 of the nearly 620,000 hectares which the JCA had originally owned in Argentina were either rented or sold to non-Jews, with state and municipal schools, hospitals and other public institutions benefiting from JCA land donations during 1949–50. Norman, , An Outstretched Hand, pp. 232,Google Scholar 237.

35 The Syro-Lebanese in San Rafael were among Argentina’s most vocal supporters of Arab nationalism. Following the success of Argentina’s Central Aid Committee for Syria and Lebanon, an early postwar umbrella organization created by the immigrants to assist their countries of birth, the San Rafael Arabs suggested maintaining this successful body to collect funds in support of the Palestinian Arab cause. Additionally, it was a Mendoza-based writer of Syrian parentage and later Argentine diplomat who penned the single most important book aimed at a Spanish language readership explaining the Palestine question from an Arab perspective, with the volume paid for by Hassan Hadid, the Mendoza Central Aid Committee for Palestine chairperson. See Khouri, Malatios, Palestina, corazón de los árabes (Mendoza, 1948).Google Scholar

36 Compared to earlier periods of Muslim immigration, the country’s arrival and departure statistics for 1948–51 record an increase in the influx of Muslims, part and parcel of a more general upsurge in the settlement of Middle Easterners of all creeds during the early years of the second postwar (see table). Gladys Jozami, “The Manifestation of Islam in Argentina,” in this issue.

37 The situation was different in the Caribbean where Muslims from the Indian subcontinent and Indonesia were introduced by the British and Dutch respectively as part of the region’s indentured labor. See, for example, Reichert, Rolf, “Muslims in the Guyanas: A Socio-Economic Overview,” Journal Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (JIMMA) (Winter 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kasule, Omar, “Muslims in Latin America Part II,” JIMMA, (July 1984)Google Scholar; MacKenzie, Clayton G., “Muslim Primary Schools in Trinidad and Tobago,” The Islamic Quarterly First Quarter 1989.Google Scholar On the Muslim presence in Argentina, see “Les Musulmans dans le Monde,” La Documentation française (9 August 1952); Ahsani, S.A., “Muslims in Latin America: A Survey Part I,” JIMMA, (July 1984), pp. 457–58Google Scholar; Delval, Raymond, Les Musulmans en Amérique latine et aux Caraïbes (Paris, 1992), pp. 262–69Google Scholar; “Islam in Argentina: A Report,” JIMMA, (January 1992), p. 273; Jozami, Gladys, “El retorno de los ‘turcos’ en la Argentina de los noventa,” Paper presented at the International Seminar “Discrimination and Racism in Latin America,” Buenos Aires University, 23–25 November 1994.Google Scholar

38 “El inmigrante en la Argentina,” Buenos Aires, n.d. [1951?], p. 24. While Muslims could certainly pray in private, and at the premises of their social institutions, the country’s first mosques date from the 1980s. This is in line with the fact that previously Argentina did not recognize such Muslim institutions as religious bodies. Hence, the reference to Muslim temples in this official brochure of the early 1950s, which was issued in several languages for the benefit of potential immigrants, conceals the absence of mosques while rightly positing that Muslims can count on the existence of places of worship in the country. Attesting to the fact that such an absence was the rule in most of the region is a Muslim author’s late 1970s hope that “each capital in Latin America should eventually have its mosque.” See Irving, T.B., “Islamic Education in Spain and Latin America,” Muslim World League Journal (February 1977), p. 45.Google Scholar

39 Shapira, Yoram, “External and Internal Influences in Latin American-Israeli Relations,” in Curtis, Michael and Gitelson, Susan Aurelia, eds., Israel in the Third World (New Brunswick, 1976), p. 164.Google Scholar See also Assaf, Nadim, Los emigrantes y sus hijos (Caracas, 1983)Google Scholar; el Ashkar, Housn, “Los árabes en Venezuela: Relación entre dos mundos. El proceso de integración de los inmigrantes árabes en Venezuela: Sirios, libaneses y palestinos (1945 a 1971),” Licenciate thesis, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 1992.Google Scholar

40 On the Latin Americans in Israel see, for example, Peñalosa, Fernando, “Pre-Migration Background and Assimilation of Latin American Immigrants in Israel,” Jewish Social Studies, 24:2, (1972)Google Scholar; Faigón, Iehoshúa, Los tiempos de Avot (Buenos Aires, 1984)Google Scholar; Herman, Donald L., The Latin American Community of Israel (New York, 1984)Google Scholar; Itzigsohn, José A. and Itzigsohn, Sara Minuchin, “Inmigrantes latinoamericanos en Israel: Problemas de identidad,” Dispersión y Unidad (Jerusalem), Second Era, 3 (1986)Google Scholar; Goldberg, Florinda and Rozen, Iosef, eds., Los latinoamericanos en Israel: Antología de una aliá (Buenos Aires, 1988)Google Scholar; Itzigsohn, José A., “Los inmigrantes latinoamericanos en Israel: Aspectos clínicos,” in AMILAT, eds., Judaica latinoamericana: Estudios histórico-sociales (Jerusalem, 1988)Google Scholar; Roniger, Luis, “The Latin American Community of Israel: Some Notes on Latin American Jews and Latin American Israelis,” Israel Social Science Research, 6:1, (1988–1989)Google Scholar; Stoliar, Irene, “Israel-América Latina: Dos miradas peligrosas,” in Finzi, Patricia, Toker, Eliahu and Faerman, Marcos, eds., El imaginario judío en la literatura de América Latina: Visión y realidad (Buenos Aires/São Paulo, 1992?)Google Scholar; Leonardo Senkman, “Escribir en español en Israel,” in Finzi, Toker and Faerman; Melzer, Pessy Druker, “Components of the Identity in the Social Self of Argentinians in Israel,” Paper presented at the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem, 22–29 June 1993 Google Scholar; Graciela Spector, “On Being Non-Native: Language and Ethnic Identity among Argentinian Immigrants in Israel,” id. ant.; Klich, Ignacio, “Lo latinoamericano en Israel: Ensayo de reseña,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas (1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Tsur, , Cartas credenciales, pp. 7781.Google Scholar

42 Jordanian foreign ministry estimate for Palestinians holding passports issued by the Hashimite Kingdom and other countries. Author’s interview with Malik Twal, Amman, 3 August 1985.

43 Official figures for 1949, especially those of transatlantic boat arrivals, show that 7 out of 49 Palestinian entrants, that is to say up to 15 percent, were Jewish. Bearing in mind that none of the other 42 Palestinians were Muslim, the landing in Buenos Aires of such Palestinian Jews suggests one of three possibilities: they stopped en route to another country; they were non-immigrant Israelis, whether envoys of Zionist institutions or other; or, perhaps, Jews were not the most undesirable among the visa applicants whose requests the immigration authorities of the Perón era had to consider.

44 Author’s interview with Weitz.

45 Masalha, Nur-eldeen, “On Recent Hebrew and Israeli Sources for the Palestinian Exodus, 1947–49,” Journal of Palestine Studies (Autumn 1988), p. 135.Google Scholar Masalha’s candid warning that the possibility of finding in the Hebrew sources “unpalatable revelations about Palestinian public figures and their conduct throughout the exodus” should not deter Arab authors from looking into “the mass of Israeli material on the exodus” is sufficiently clear. While avoiding the risks of facile generalizations, it is as well to keep in mind in connection with such a possibility France’s unsuccessful efforts in the nineteenth century to prop up the Christian presence in Algeria with Maronites from Lebanon. These could count on the support of such Maronite personalities as Sheikh Merhi al-Dahdah, Father Jean Azar and the Emir Asad Shihab. Whereas Masalha also alerts against possible elements of disinformation in Zionist files, the credibility of his call draws support from a similar Israeli warning to historians and students to peruse Zionist documents with prudence, the latter issued by an Israeli historian whose work, paradoxically, the Palestinian writer does not find entirely satisfactory. See Zeid, Sarkis Abou, Tahjir al-Mawarina ila al-Jazair 1845–1867 (Beirut, 1994), pp. 45,Google Scholar 53 and 64; Morris, Benny, “Falsification dans les Archives sionistes,” Revue d’Etudes palestiniennes (Spring 1994), p. 104.Google Scholar

46 Times Atlas of World History (London, 1984), p. 246; de Zayas, Alfred-Maurice, The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace (London, 1993), p. 150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Whereas the atlas mentions 9 million expellees during 1945–47, De Zayas refers to a much higher figure by extending the count to ethnic Germans who were deported or expelled from other parts of central and Eastern Europe during 1945–50.

47 On Syrian and Lebanese arrivals in Patagonia during the first two decades of this century, see Ripa, Julián I., Inmigrantes en la Patagonia (Buenos Aires, 1987), pp. 5673 Google Scholar; Biondi, , “L’Insertion des groupes de langue arabe dans la société argentine,” pp. 141–42,Google Scholar 145.

48 NA, RG 59, 835.55/3–2746, Report by Post, R.H., La Natura, 30 January 1946.Google Scholar

49 Scherman, Samuel, “Actividades antijudías de los árabes en la Argentina,” DAIA, (April 1958), p. 7.Google Scholar

50 “Discurso del Presidente Perón a la comunidad de los pueblos árabes,” Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, Buenos Aires, 1954, p. 13.

51 For other aspects of the Syro-Lebanese under Perón, see Abou, p. 323.

52 For a catalogue of anti-Arab legislation in Latin America, see Klich, Ignacio, “Introduction to the Sources for the History of the Middle Easterners in Latin America,” Temas de Africa y Asia 2 (1993), 209–10.Google Scholar See also de Mizrachi, Selly Dayán and Arjona, Nadhji, La saga de los sefarditas: Del Medio Oriente a Panamá (Panama, 1986), p. 80.Google Scholar

53 It has been noted that in El Salvàdor, for example, palestino as well as turco are terms imbued with negative connotations. See Suter.

54 See, for example, Jorge Omar Bestene, “Inmigración y discriminación en la Argentina: Imágenes de árabes y judíos en los escritos de Santiago M. Peralta,” unpublished manuscript; Scherman, , “Actividades” p. 5.Google Scholar

55 On middleman minorities, see, for instance, Bonacich, Edna, “A Theory of Middleman Minorities,” American Sociological Review, October 1973 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bonacich, Edna, “Middleman Minorities and Advanced Capitalism,” Ethnic Groups, 3 (1980)Google Scholar; Zenner, Walter P., “Middleman Minority Theories: A Criticial Review,” in Bryce-Laporte, Roy Simón, ed., Sourcebook on the New Immigration: Implications for the United States and the International Community (New Brunswick, 1980)Google Scholar; Zenner, Walter P., Minorities in the Middle (Albany, 1991).Google Scholar

56 Boulgourdjian, Nélida Elena, “Algunos aportes al conocimiento de la inmigración armenia en Argentina (1909–1923),” paper presented at the Primer Congreso Nacional de las Colectividades, Tucumán, 13–16 octubre 1988, and reprinted in Armenia, 9 November 1988.Google Scholar On the Armenians in Latin America, see, for instance, Kherlopian, D.G., “Armenians Today,” Middle East Forum (March 1961), p. 13 Google Scholar; Binyan, Narciso, “Arabs and Armenians in Latin America,” Patterns of Prejudice (November-December 1979), pp. 511 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elie, Habalián D., “La comunidad venezolana-levantina y la sociedad venezolana: Primera aproximación,” Universidad Central de Venezuela, May 1991 (mimeo)Google Scholar; Grün, Roberto, Negócios & famílias: Armênios em São Paulo (São Paulo, 1992)Google Scholar; Berberian, Vahan, Guía de la comunidad armenia en Venezuela, Asociación de Venezuela, Armenia, Caracas, 1993 Google Scholar; Grün, Roberto, “A Renascença Armênia no Brasil,” Paper presented at the XVIII International Congress of LASA, 10–13 March 1994 Google Scholar; Epstein, Diana and Boulgourdjian, Nélida, “Judíos y armenios en el Once,” Paper presented at the 8th International Research Conference of LAJSA, Mexico, 11–14 November 1995.Google Scholar

57 Sabella, p. 78.

58 See n. 43. See also Senkman, Leonardo, “Etnicidad e inmigración durante el primer peronismo,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe (EIAL) (July-December 1992), p. 23.Google Scholar

59 AMREC, Near East Division, Various 17/955, Jorge G. Blanco Villalta to Directorate of Foreign Affairs, 7 July 1955. On the (largely Syrian) Middle Eastern Orthodox, see Hillar, Moisés, Historia de la Iglesia Católica Ortodoxa de Antioquía en la República Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1928?)Google Scholar; Jozami, Gladys, “Identidad religiosa e integración cultural en cristianos sirios y libaneses en Argentina (1890–1990),” EML, April 1994.Google Scholar

60 AMREC, Consular Division, Iran 2/948, Eduardo Colombres Mármol to Humberto Sosa Molina, 6 October 1948; Decree 38,919 M. 1207, 21 December 1948.

61 AMREC, Personnel Division, M 69, Alberto Viñas to Foreign Minister, 25 August and 26 September 1947; Resolution 960, 19 November 1947. See also, Klich and Jozami.

62 Gálvez, Manuel, Tránsito Guzmán (Buenos Aires, 1956), p. 32 Google Scholar; Arlt, Roberto, Aguafuertes españolas (Buenos Aires, 1971), pp. 75107 Google Scholar; Martel, Julián, La bolsa (Buenos Aires, 1979), p. 35.Google Scholar Worthy of note is the fact that nearly all those who have remarked on the anti-Jewish aspects of Martel’s work have failed to notice that his antisemitism was both anti-Jewish and anti-Arab. A notable exception can be found in the work of Evelyn Fishbum, who not only offers an English language version of the relevant passage on the “turcos,” but also points out that Martel had no “pity or understanding” for these or other poor immigrants. Instead, he insidiously blamed them for their miseries. See Fishburn, Evelyn, The Portrayal of Immigration in Nineteenth Century Argentine Fiction (1845–1902) (Berlin, 1981), pp. 9596.Google Scholar

63 A variation on the theme of Israel’s future pull on diaspora Jews was articulated by a prominent Jesuit intellectual and later unsuccessful ALN parliamentary candidate in 1946; he implied that a Jewish state would make it easier to rid the country of unassimilable Jews, as well as suggested that Jewish concentration in Israel would afford the possibility of achieving a Catholic church expectation, eventual Jewish conversions en masse to Christianity. See Castellani, Leonardo, Decíamos ayer … (Buenos Aires, 1968), pp. 328–29.Google Scholar

64 On Argentina and the Palestine question, see Lanús, Juan Archibaldo, De Chapultepec al Beagle: Política exterior argentina, 1945–1980 (Buenos Aires, 1984), pp. 354355 Google Scholar; Klich, Ignacio, “Argentina, the Arab World and the Partition of Palestine,” in Proceedings of the Ninth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1986), 3, pp. 271–77.Google Scholar On Argentina and the Arab world in general, and Jordan in particular, see Klich, Ignacio, “Towards an Arab-Latin American Bloc? The Genesis of Argentine-Middle East Relations; Jordan, 1945–1954,” Middle Eastern Studies (July 1995), 550–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 Author’s interviews with Weitz and Navon.

66 See, for example, Chambers, Edward J., “Some Factors in the Deterioration of Argentina’s External Position, 1946–1951,” Inter-American Economic Affairs, (Winter 1954), p. 33 Google Scholar; Mauriño, Mónica Quijada, “Política inmigratoria del primer peronismo; Las negociaciones con España,” Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe (December 1989), p. 58 Google Scholar; Barbero, María Inés and Cacopardo, María Cristina, “La inmigración europea a la Argentina en la segunda posguerra: Viejos mitos y nuevas condiciones,” EML, (December 1991), p. 298 Google Scholar; Albònico, Aldo, “Italia y Argentina 1943–1955: Política, emigración e información periodística,” EIAL, (January-June 1992), p. 51.Google Scholar

67 From the statements of the younger Weitz it would appear that Moshe Dayan, especially when he served as a cabinet member in prime minister Levi Eshkol’s government, coopted elements of Yosef Weitz’s earlier ambitious plans. According to Raanan Weitz, after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 some 47 Palestinian families from the Israeli-occupied territories were persuaded to emigrate, in some cases to Latin America. Nevertheless, the effort invested in such migration seems to have yielded very little: twenty such families returned within the first year. Other Israeli sources claim that “hundreds of refugee families accepted the offer of new passports, a small start-up capital, and single fares from an Israeli travel agency to their new homes in South America or North Africa.” As far as could be verified, none of these developments involved Argentina or was part of a population exchange scheme. Instead, they appear to have included Paraguay, with the perpetrators of the first Palestinian attack on an Israeli diplomatic representation in Latin America (Asunción, May 1970) apparently seeking to exact retribution for the unsatisfactory hand they had been dealt by the Israelis, according to Dan Raviv and Yosi Melman. Presumably because of the latter, the wife of Benjamín Sapira, Israel’s first honorary consul in Asunción, would later recollect that the Palestinian attackers, described by the then Israeli ambassador as unaffiliated to any of the groups under the PLO umbrella, were not unknown to Israel’s representation in the Paraguayan capital. Author’s interview with Weitz and Petrona Palacios de Sapira (Asunción, 9 June 1984); Raviv, Dan and Melman, Yosi, Todo espía un elegido: La verdadera historia de los servicios de inteligencia israelíes, sus aciertos y fracasos, sus orgullos y vergüenzas (Buenos Aires, 1991), pp. 181–82Google Scholar; Varon, Benno Weiser, Professions of a Lucky Jew (New York, 1992), pp. 390–95.Google Scholar

68 Masalha, p. 3.

69 Stemplowski, Ryszard, “Los ucranianos en la Argentina,” Estudios Latinoamericanos (EL), 1976, pp. 301–5Google Scholar; Smolana, Krzysztof, “Sobre a gênese do estereótipo do Polonês na América Latina (caso brasileiro),” EL (1979), p. 77.Google Scholar

70 On Poland’s emigration to Argentina, see, for example, Lukasz, Danuta, “Las asociaciones polacas en Misiones, 1898–1938,” EL (1981)Google Scholar; Stemplowski, Ryszard, “Los eslavos en Misiones: Consideraciones en torno al número y la distribución geográfica de los campesinos polacos y ucranianos (1897–1938),” Jahrbuch für Geschichte von Staat, Wirtschaft und Geselschaft Lateinamerikas, (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stemplowski, Ryszard, “Los colonos eslavos del nordeste argentino (1897–1938): Problemática, fuentes e investigaciones en Polonia,” EL (1985)Google Scholar; Bartolomé, Leopoldo José, The Colonos of Apóstoles: Adaptive Strategy and Ethnicity in a Polish-Ukrainian Settlement in Northeast Argentina (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; Wojski, Zygmunt, “La influencia del español argentino en el polaco de la revista Oredownik, EL (1991)Google Scholar; Biemat, Carolina, “Fuentes para el estudio de la inmigración polaca en la Argentina en el Archivo Histórico de Lwow,” EML, August 1993.Google Scholar

71 The term “primitive” is used following such important Polish authors as Krzysztof Smolana (Argentine case) and Marcin Kula (Brazilian case). The same is mentioned in the anthropological study by Argentina’s Leopoldo Bartolomé. Without such precedents, it would be fair to say that Polish farmers were less successful than those in the same Argentine province and Brazilian states who belonged to other foreign ethnic groups. See Smolana, p. 75; Kula, Marcin, “Algumas observaçães sôbre a emigração polonesa para o Brasil,” EL (1976), p. 172.Google Scholar See also Bartolomé, , The Colonos of Apóstles, p. 12.Google Scholar

72 Smolana, , “Sobre a Gênese,” p. 71.Google Scholar Hence, references in official decrees of 1940 to Polish nationals, among agriculturalists of several other Central European nationalities authorized to participate in three specific colonization projects, are, for the time being, clear evidence that such Poles were welcome on paper only. Whether they also resulted in the arrival of Polish nationals still depends on the crucial need to establish the nationalities of those who actually took part in such projects in Formosa, Mendoza and Santiago del Estero respectively.

73 Interestingly, the surviving perception of the predominantly Christian Polish immigrants as being less assimilable than Italians and Spaniards, not just the Cold War inspired fear that “they might be agents of Moscow and “bad Argentines,” was among the main reasons given by Buenos Aires-based British diplomats to explain the Perón government’s hostility towards visa applications by Poles who fought World War II on the Allied side. Public Record Office, Kew, FO 371/74488/AS 4212, Chancery to South America Department, 13 August 1949. The role of Perón’s anticommunist concerns in immigration affairs, especially the October 1948 ban on visas for Slavs, has been discussed, for example, in Senkman, Leonardo, “Las relaciones EE.UU. Argentina y la cuestión de los refugiados de la posguerra: 1945–1948,” in AMILAT, eds., Judaica Latinoamericana: Estudios Histórico-Sociales (Jerusalem, 1988), p. 107.Google Scholar

74 Lepkowski, Tadeusz, “La presencia de la emigración polaca en América Latina y la política cultural de Polonia en este continente,” EL (1978), p. 223 Google Scholar; Stemplowski, , “Los eslavos en Misiones,” p. 359.Google Scholar

75 Alsina, Juan, La inmigración en el primer siglo de la independencia (Buenos Aires, 1910), p. 209 Google Scholar; Senkman, Leonardo, “Nacionalismo e inmigración: La cuestión étnica en las élites liberales e intelectuales argentina: 1919–1940,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe (January-June 1990) 86,Google Scholar 88.

76 A Polish foreign ministry project of 1936 favored emigration as a means “to achieve [Polish] sovereignty over the new lands,” i.e., a Paraná-based Nueva Polonia. See Kula, pp. 176–77; Lepkowski, , “La presencia de la emigración,” p. 224 Google Scholar; Smolana, , “Sobrea Gênese” p. 76 Google Scholar; Stemplowski, , “Los eslavos en Misiones,” p. 386.Google Scholar

77 Polish proponents of such notions appear to have been blind to the outrage expressed a decade earlier by the conservative Buenos Aires daily La Prensa at Italian press suggestions of “concessions” in Argentina and Brazil, where Italian colonists dedicated to farming, mining, or industry, backed by Italian capital, would produce commodities to be shipped to Italy on that country’s merchant fleet, with such ships bringing to Latin America Italian goods in exchange. See Newton, Ronald C., “Ducini, Prominenti, Antifascisti: Italian Fascism and the Italo-Argentine Collectivity, 1922–1945,” The Americas (July 1994), pp. 5253.Google Scholar

78 Equated by some historians with the now discredited notion of a Third Reich interest in Patagonia, Polish imperial designs, like the Senate pronouncement in favor of Poland’s obtention of colonies, show that it was actually Poland, not Nazi Germany, the European state that harbored territorial aspirations over Latin American land. On the bogus claim of Nazi designs over Patagonia see, for example, Newton, Ronald C., “The German-Argentines between Nazism and Nationalism: The Patagonia Plot of 1939,” International History Review (IHR) 3:1, (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rout, Leslie B. Jr. and Bratzel, John F., “Heinrich Jürges and the Cult of Disinformation,” IHR, 6:4, 1984.Google Scholar

79 Bradford, Sax, The Battle for Buenos Aires (New York, 1943), pp. 10,Google Scholar 43. As highlighted elsewhere in the text, this U.S. observer was perfectly aware of the difference between Ukrainians, Poles and Jews. Hence, his reference to Ukrainian women in what may be described as the Buenos Aires’ red light district of the day can not be easily dismissed as the result of some confusion.

80 Smolana, , “Sobrea Gênese,” p. 72.Google Scholar In other Latin American states, polaco became synonimous with Polish Jewish ambulant salesmen, with the verb polaquear used in respect of peddling. See, for example, Sikora, Jacobo Schifter, Lowell Gudmundson and Mario Solera Castro, El judío en Costa Rica (San José, 1979)Google Scholar; Levine, Robert M., Tropical Diaspora: The Jewish Experience in Cuba (Gainesville, 1993), pp. 26,Google Scholar 50, 217.

81 On Jews and white slavery in Argentina and Brazil, see, for instance, Bristow, Edward J., Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight against White Slavery 1870–1939 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 111–45,Google Scholar 309–319; Glickman, Nora, “The Jewish White Slave Trade in Latin American Writings,” American Jewish Archives (November 1982), pp. 178–89Google Scholar; Glickman, Nora and Rosembuj, Rosalía, La trata de blancas/Regeneración (Buenos Aires, 1984)Google Scholar; Mirelman, Victor, “The Jewish Community versus Crime: The Case of White Slavery in Buenos Aires,” Jewish Social Studies (Spring 1984), pp. 145–68Google Scholar; Scarzanella, Eugenia, “Gli ospiti ingrati: Immigrazione italiana e criminalità nell’Argentina di fine secolo,” in Ostumi, Maria Rosaria, ed., Studi sull’emigrazione: Un’analisi comparata (Biella, 1989),Google Scholar pp. 287ff; Londres, Albert, El camino de Buenos Aires: La trata de blancas (Buenos Aires, 1991), pp. 125–31Google Scholar; Guy, Donna J., Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family and Nation in Argentina (Lincoln, 1991), pp. 120–29Google Scholar; Lesser, Jeffrey H., Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkeley, 1994), pp. 3539.Google Scholar

82 The tendency to consider the Jewish, Lithuanian and Ukrainian minorities among Poland’s citizenry as non-Poles is well illustrated in the contemporary writings of various Polish scholars herein cited, and there is no reason to assume a priori that recent attempts by Polish intellectual Jan Blonski to scrutinize the country’s record vis-à-vis Jews in a critical light essentially represent a change on the part of a majority of his fellow Poles in the perception of the 10,000 Jews living in that country as a minority group. Hence, the earlier search by their co-nationals for a term that would help identify Catholic and Jewish Poles differently should be read cum grants salis if solely attributed to their need to differentiate themselves from a small group of Polish Jews involved in prostitution in Argentina and Brazil. Polonsky, Antony, “ ‘Loving and Hating the Dead’: Present-Day Polish Attitudes to the Jews,” Religion, State and Society 20:1 (1992), pp. 6979.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

83 Just as Jewish prostitution rackets had deleterious effects on Latin American perceptions of all immigrants from Poland, regardless of occupation, creed or ethnic identity, so Polish imperial aspirations, as well as the type of agriculture practiced by her Christian emigrants, would have had negative consequences for ill-informed Polish Jews, especially those who entertained illusions that a feigned Christian identity would help them overcome immigration hurdles. On the friendly relations between Jewish, Ukrainian and other Slav migrants in Tacural, a small provincial village in Santa Fé, see Kaplan, Alberto D., Memoria de un médico (Buenos Aires, 1993), p. 23.Google Scholar

84 Before this, in March 1938, Argentine consulates in Poland were reported as having “suspended until further notice” the issuing of visas to Polish passport holders. NA, RG 59, 840.48 Refugees/186, Report by Winifred Hunter, 16 April 1938, as reproduced in Mendelsohn, John, ed., Jewish Emigration from 1933 to the Evian Conference of 1938 (New York, 1982), p. 210 Google Scholar; Stemplowski, , “Los eslavos en Misiones,” p. 351.Google Scholar

85 Whereas Israeli authors have concentrated on the anti-Jewish implications of such restrictive regulations, their Polish counterparts have, on the strength of Polish diplomatic reports, highlighted that such restrictions generally affected all Polish citizens. Nevertheless, the reference in Polish diplomatic papers to Argentina granting no more visas to Poles after October 1938 is not borne out by Argentine immigration statistics. As transcribed by Leonardo Senkman, the latter show that not less than 1,654 overseas Poles either gained legal entry into Argentina or secured the right to do so during 1939–45, most of them in 1939. Needless to say, such figures do not include first-class travellers, as well as all the legal Polish re-emigrants from neighboring countries. See Stemplowski, , “Los eslavos en Misiones,” p. 386 Google Scholar; Senkman, Leonardo, Argentina, la Segunda Guerra Mundial y los refugiados indeseables 1933–1945 (Buenos Aires, 1991),Google Scholar pp. 210ff.

86 Newton, Ronald C., The “Nazi Menace” in Argentina, 1931–1947 (Stanford, 1992), p. 86.Google Scholar

87 Nicosia, Francis R., The Third Reich and the Palestine Question (London, 1985), p. 155.Google Scholar

88 Nicosia, , The Third Reich p. 152.Google Scholar

89 Newton, , “Ducini, Prominenti, Antifascisti” p. 87.Google Scholar

90 Ibid., p. 151.

91 In January 1928, following an official directive not to grant visas to “dissolute or useless” immigrants, the Syro-Lebanese in Argentina discovered that the Argentine consulate in Beirut grew “systematically resistant” to allowing the landing in Buenos Aires of their kinsmen. For the sequels to this measure, annulled on paper four years later, see Memoria y balance general correspondiente al 1er ejercicio anual, Sirio-Libanés, Patronato, Buenos Aires, 1929, pp. 12,Google Scholar 43–44; Klich, “Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina,” p. 269n.

92 Adler-Rudel, S., “The Evian Conference on the Refugee Question,” Leo Baeck Yearbook (London), pp. 235–73.Google Scholar

93 See, for example, NA, RG 59, 840.48 Refugees/585, Myron Taylor to Secretary of State, 20 July 1938, as reproduced in Mendelsohn, pp. 245–64.

94 Lasserre, André, “La politique de l’asile en Suisse de 1933 à 1945,” Relations Internationales (Summer 1993), p. 212.Google Scholar See also Penkower, Monty Noam, “American Jewry and the Holocaust: From Biltmore to the American Jewish Conference,” Jewish Social Studies 47:1, 1985 Google Scholar; Avni, Haim, Judíos en América (Madrid, 1992), pp. 266–79.Google Scholar

95 Ministerio de Agricultura, Memoria correspondiente al período comprendido entre el 20 de febrero y el 31 de diciembre de 1938 (Buenos Aires, 1939), vol. 2, p. 461; de Agricultura, Ministerio, Memoria correspondiente al ejercicio de 1940 (Buenos Aires, 1941), vol. 2, p. 295.Google Scholar

96 Future research may well help to establish whether Argentine diplomats and immigration officials took note of return migration to the Third Reich, in particular that of some ten percent of the Jews who fled during 1933-35, and if so assess the impact this had upon those likely to conceal their anti-Jewish prejudice behind the notion that refugees should not be seen as immigrants. Niederland, Doron, “Back into the Lion’s Jaws; A Note on Jewish Return Migration to Nazi Germany (1933–1938),” in Mendelsohn, Ezra, ed., Modern Jews and their Musical Agendas (Oxford, 1993), p. 175.Google Scholar

97 See Strauss, Herbert A., ed., Jewish Immigrants of the Nazi Period in the U.S.A. (New York/Munich, 1987), vol. 6, pp. 210–25Google Scholar; Jackisch, Cariota, El nazismo y los refugiados alemanes en la Argentina 1933–1945 (Buenos Aires, 1989), p. 150 Google Scholar; Smolensky, Eleonora M., “El exilio de científicos y académicos italianos judíos y los orígenes de la colectividad judía italiana de la Argentina (1938–1948). Un proceso de resignificación social,” Ibero Amerikanisches Archiv, 21:1–2, 1995.Google Scholar

98 Levín, Elena, Historias de una emigración (1933–1939): Alemanes judíos en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1991), pp. 3954 Google Scholar; Klich, Ignacio, “La inmigración judía a la Argentina: Una perspectiva jerosolimitana,” EML (August 1995).Google Scholar

99 Newton, , “Ducini, Prominenti, Antifascisti,” pp. 141–42.Google Scholar

100 Like the government in Buenos Aires, most Argentine officials of the day can be clearly assumed to have been far from Judeophilic. Without all necessarily being extreme Judeophobes either, their strong anti-communist and other anti-leftist phobias, in addition to practical difficulties stemming from the evolution of World War II, apparently resulted in the country's absorption of smaller numbers of Spanish Republican refugees than Jews. To begin with, only Basques, unlike all other categories of Spanish Republican refugees, were granted preferential treatment by the Ortiz government, and this since 1940 only. Hence, according to Leonardo Senkman, Basque arrivals were scarcely significant in quantitative terms. For their part, Jews achieved nothing comparable to the Basques on paper; in practice, though, 4,919 Jews legally arrived in 1938 and 1,873 in 1939, with an additional 7,824 Jewish entries (formal or otherwise) taking place in 1940–45. Based on the same JCA source information, Haim Avni also mentions 1,962 legal Jewish entries in 1933; 2,215 in 1934; 3,160 in 1935; 4,261 in 1936; and 4,178 in 1937. Altogether, JCA figures and estimates indicate that not less than 22,568 Jews migrated to Argentina legally during 1933–45, while the number of preferred Basques has been put at 1,400. As a matter of fact, even if one assumes that all 13,256 Spaniards who put down roots in Argentina during 1933–45 were Spanish Republicans, a patent exaggeration, their number is still lower than that of the legally entered Jews, most of whom can anyhow be legitimately surmised to have settled in Argentina. Unless the contrast between Spaniards and Jews can be convincingly proved to have been the result of lubricating expenses incurred by most Jewish visa applicants, it would be certainly worthwhile probing into the hypothesis that Argentina (whose immigration policy, like that of other states, was certainly unequal to the tragedies of the time), was harsher with those deemed undesirable on political rather than on ethnic grounds. For the time being, though, no historian has convincingly proved that “the immense majority” of the Jews who arrived in Argentina in 1933–45 did so illegally. Thus, the latter remains an unsubstantiated claim and, depending on the estimate of Jewish entries during the Nazi era, may also be a self-evident case of flawed arithmetics. Avni, Haim, Argentina y la historia de la inmigración judía (1810–1950) (Buenos Aires, 1983), p. 543 Google Scholar; Senkman, , Argentina y los refugiados indeseables, p. 223 Google Scholar; Senkman, Leonardo, “La Argentina neutral de 1940 ante los refugiados españoles y judíos,” Ciclos, 9 (1995),Google Scholar pp. 61ff. For the text of Argentina’s Decree 65,384 on preferential treatment for the Basques, see de Ugalde, Martín, “Euskadi,” in Naharro-Calderón, José María, ed., El exilio de las Españas de 1939 en las Américas: Adónde fue la canción? (Barcelona, 1991), p. 351.Google Scholar

101 Katz, Yossi, “Transfer of Population as a Solution to International Disputes: Population Exchanges between Greece and Turkey as a Model for Plans to Solve the Jewish-Arab Dispute in Palestine during the 1930s,” Political Geography, (January 1992), pp. 5572.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

102 On overtly anti-Slav and covertly anti-Jewish immigration rules in Latin America, see, for example, Becú, Horacio Zoraquín, El problema del extranjero en la reciente legislación latino-americana (Buenos Aires, 1943),Google Scholar pp. 52ff; Senkman, Leonardo, “La politica migratoria argentina durante la década del treinta,” in Primeras Jornadas Nacionales de Estudios sobre Inmigración en Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1985), pp. 600–5Google Scholar; Mármora, Lelio, “La fundamentación de las políticas migratorias internacionales en América Latina,” EML (December 1988), pp. 380–81.Google Scholar

103 Confronted with the same problems, Arabs and Jews in Argentina participated in similar institutional ventures. See Klich, Ignacio, “Arabes, judíos y árabes judíos en la Argentina de la primera mitad del novecientos,” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, (July-December 1995), pp. 109–43.Google Scholar

104 It is important to recall that, other than preferred and undesirable immigrants, there were also those towards whom the Argentine élites were either neutral or failed to take action until 1928. The reasons for this state of affairs were that Arabs and Jews respectively were not too different from other immigrants from the Mediterranean or simply were of European provenance, with those devoted to agriculture among the latter initially standing out. See Devoto, Fernando J., Movimientos migratorios: Historiografía y problemas (Buenos Aires, 1992), p. 84.Google Scholar

105 For a discussion of the elements of continuity in the Argentine élites’ preferences concerning ethnic origin and provenance of immigrants, see Quijada, Mónica, “De Perón a Alberdi: Selectividad étnica y construcción nacional en la política inmigratoria argentina,” Revista de Indias 52: 195/196 (1992), pp. 867–88.Google Scholar