The Hypocrisy of Nationalism: Aliyah Bet, British Policy, and the Modern UK Migration Debate
The story of Aliyah Bet — the clandestine migration of Jewish refugees to Palestine under British control — is not just a historical episode. It’s a striking reflection of the moral contradictions in today’s UK political discourse, especially around migration, patriotism, and selective empathy.
Between 1920 and 1948, over 100,000 Jews — many of them Holocaust survivors — fled persecution and genocide in Europe, only to be labeled “illegal” immigrants by the British authorities. Ships were intercepted, refugees were detained, and entire families were held in internment camps on Cyprus or, in the notorious case of the Exodus 1947, sent back to displaced persons camps in Germany. The British, who portrayed themselves as civilised custodians of order, used language eerily similar to that heard today about so-called "illegal migrants": threats to security, overpopulation, chaos, and illegitimacy.
And yet, that same narrative of persecution, resilience, and the right to refuge is central to the creation of the modern Israeli state — a nation many UK conservatives and right-wing nationalists now strongly support.
Herein lies the irony:
The Jewish people’s very survival depended on breaking the same types of immigration laws that the UK now ruthlessly enforces against today’s refugees.
Many of those who cheer for Israel's right to exist — forged through illegal migration, resistance to British control, and the desperation of genocide survivors — are often the loudest voices opposing “illegal” immigrants from Africa, the Middle East, or Asia. They champion “British values” while erasing the memory of Britain’s betrayal of refugees in the 1940s — and ignoring how similar their rhetoric is to the language used by the British government to demonise Jews seeking refuge.
It’s not just hypocrisy. It’s selective morality.
How can one support the legacy of Aliyah Bet while condemning today’s migrants crossing borders in desperation? How can the UK, whose own actions turned Holocaust survivors into detainees, now claim moral superiority in refusing safe routes for modern asylum seekers?
The Aliyah Bet story teaches us this:
Desperate people will migrate, even “illegally,” when the alternative is death or persecution.
Legal status is often arbitrary, especially when laws themselves are unjust or rooted in prejudice.
Public sympathy often shifts only after suffering becomes impossible to ignore — as with the global outcry over the Exodus 1947.
And yet, in today’s UK, we see politicians and pundits equating small boats in the Channel with invasion. We see asylum seekers or treated as criminals — not unlike how Jewish refugees were once called “illegals” and locked up in Cyprus.
If we truly remember the lessons of the Holocaust, of displacement, and of Aliyah Bet, we must also remember this:
Human dignity doesn’t depend on passports. And morality isn’t selective.
To support one group’s right to survive — while denying another the same right under the same circumstances — isn’t just inconsistent. It’s inhumane.