Quoting Tony Greenstein’s Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation, pages 178–181:

At the Revisionists’ New Zionist Congress in September 1935 Haʻavara was attacked for only giving 39% of German Jews’ capital back. The main beneficiaries were Zionist institutions such as the JNF [Jewish National Fund].

Kaplansky alleged that without Haʻavara it was possible for Jews with £1,000 to emigrate and that ‘the Transfer Agreement not only did not help the Jews of Germany but did a lot of harm.’ Before Haʻavara Jews could take their wealth out in the form of money, losing about two-thirds in taxes. With Haʻavara, Jews were told that their wealth could only be taken out in goods.¹²¹

In a debate between Berl Locker and Baruch Vladeck, the Bundist editor of the Yiddish Forward and Chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee, Vladeck described how ‘The whole organized labor movement and the progressive world are waging a fight against Hitler through the boycott. The Transfer Agreement scabs on that fight.’

Vladeck contended that ‘the main purpose of the Transfer is not to rescue the Jews from Germany but to strengthen various institutions in Palestine.’ Vladeck termed Palestine ‘the official scab agent against the boycott in the Near-East’.¹²²

Selig Brodetsky, a member of the ZO Executive, argued that Haʻavara wasn’t a breach of the Boycott because there was no foreign exchange transfer. Yet what mattered was not the loss of wealth so much as the need to keep [Fascism’s] economic wheels turning.¹²³

[…]

Today the Zionist justification for Haʻavara is that it was intended to save the lives of German Jews; however, at the time the JA [Jewish Agency] threatened to cut the 22% of Palestine immigration certificates allocated to German Jewry if the ‘quality’ of the immigrants didn’t improve.

The staunchest supporters of the agreement in the Yishuv did not see the saving of lives as an independent goal at that time, rather they sought to extract German Jewish property for the benefit of the Yishuv.¹²⁸

Both Tom Segev and Moshe Zimmerman, stressed ‘the cynical abandonment of German Jewry out of Palestinocentric Zionist considerations’.¹²⁹ The ZE [Zionist Executive] declared that Haʻavara was ‘the sole way of bringing into Palestine the maximum amount of German Jewish capital.’¹³⁰ Zionist activists spoke of ‘saving the wealth’ and ‘rescuing the capital from Nazi Germany.’¹³¹ Hitler boasted that [the German Reich], in contrast to Britain, was aiding Jewish emigration, letting them take the currency required for entry into Palestine.¹³²

Yehuda Bauer conceded:

No one knew then that the holocaust would happen. Nobody knew that a holocaust was even possible… the Germans had not decided on anything like it in the 1930s.¹³³

Abraham Margaliot likewise concluded that ‘none of the individuals who drew up the various proposals perceived the unprecedented danger which lay in store for the Jews under the [Third Reich].’¹³⁴

To suggest therefore that Haʻavara was agreed in order to rescue [the German Reich’s] Jews, when Palestine was not capable of taking them in and when the Zionists themselves did not foresee a future holocaust, is a post hoc rationalisation.

Weizmann was particularly disturbed by the statement of Hilfsverein, the German Jewish aid organisation, criticising Haʻavara and supporting Jewish emigration to South America, South Africa and the Far East. His concern was not saving German Jews but that Palestine might lose them. To Weizmann this was ‘a betrayal of our trust.’¹³⁵

The NYT Berlin correspondent, Frederick Birchall, reported that the World Jewish Economic Conference in Amsterdam passed a resolution warning that the [Fascist] government would proceed from annihilating the Jews economically to annihilating them physically.¹³⁶

Between 1933 and 1939 the Jewish population in Palestine, the Yishuv, increased from 234,967 to 445,457,¹³⁷ of whom 52,600 were from Germany. Only in 1939 did they make up more than half the total immigrants.¹³⁸

The number of Jews who emigrated because of Haʻavara was approximately 20,000, 37% of the total number of German Jewish immigrants.¹³⁹ They entered on A-1 certificates, which enabled unrestricted entry to those bringing in £1,000.¹⁴⁰ Most would have found refuge elsewhere, because they were relatively wealthy.

In 1937 and 1938, as a result of the Arab Revolt, Jewish emigration to Palestine slowed down and Haʻavara was no longer seen as effective.¹⁴¹ After 1937 the USA supplanted Palestine as the main destination for German Jews. 38% of all Germany’s Jewish emigrants gained admission to the USA.¹⁴²

(Emphasis added.)