80. How did the Jews react to the outrage of 1936-1939?

The Jews were worried because of the British measures that contradicted their Mandate again. The British government introduced measures to limit the transfer of lands from Arabs to Jews (1930s) even though they were easily circumvented by very willing buyers and salesmen. The Jewish settlement improved its quality and their Jewish union federations required Jewish labor (especially after the extreme massacre of 1929). In 1925 only 12.000 Arabs (5% of the population) worked for Jews, half of them in agriculture, while the other 32.000 worked for the Mandate authorities and the other 211.000 were independent or worked for Arab employers. The economic crisis favored the radicalization of the armed conflict. Furthermore, it was discovered in October 1935 a shipment of weapons from Jaffa to the Jewish Hagana rising Arab fears. In parallel, the Jewish immigration also reached its highest point after Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. Between 1933 and 1936 more than 164.000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, going from 175.000 to 370.00 people, the Jewish population rose from 17% to 27%. In the summer of 1936, thousands of acres and crop fields cultivated by Jews were destroyed, civilians were attacked and murdered and, in some Jewish communities, like those on Beit-Shean and Acco, people fled to safer zones. The attacks of 1936 to 1939 contributed to a major decoupling of the Jewish and Arab economies. The development of the economy and the Jewish infrastructure accelerated. Ben-Gurion had to affirm: “we could reward the Arabs for pushing us to our current creation”. The Jews opened metallurgical companies to produce steel for armored vehicles and a company of rudimentary weaponry. Most of the important industries in Palestine were Jewish property and they were better positioned in commerce as in the banking sector than the Arabs.