Having spent over half a century justifying Zionism, Israel and their treatment of the Palestinians, there has been a spluttering of outrage about making comparisons between Zionism and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. It is apparently ‘anti-Semitic’ when anti-Zionists make such comparisons, even if they are Jewish. But of course it is completely justified when Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy Defence Minister, promised ‘a bigger shoah’ for the Palestinians of Gaza.
“The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves”
At least he can’t be accused of not keeping his word! In fact it is very understandable that
a) Zionists don’t like the comparisons they themselves have made rebounding on them and
b) That people should make such comparisons for the obvious reason that you can hardly point to the oppression of Jews then see nothing when the oppression of others is carried in the name of Jews, all Jews.
But the understandable sensitivity of Zionists on this subject has nothing to do with them taking offence and being shocked. It has everything to do with the fact that Zionism was par excellence, the Jewish Volkish movement. It accepted the essential premise of anti-Semitism that Jews did not belong in the diaspora (the ‘negation of the diaspora).
When Hitler came to power on January 30 1933, the Zionist Federation of Germany wasted no time in trying to gain one over the Centralverein, the representative non-Zionist organisation of most German Jews. On June 21st 1933 they wrote to Hitler seeking an agreement:
‘Zionism (since 1897) was the first to disclose the nature of the Jewish question. Zionist insight also enabled Jews to understand anti-Semitism, which they had fought until then only apologetically. The unsolved Jewish question was recognised as the basic cause of anti-Semitism:….
Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own tradition…
Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group….
On the foundation of the new state, which has establishedt heprinciple of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total structure so that for us too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible.’ [Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, pp. 151-2] 1976.
Lest it be thought that the ZF of Germany was merely saying this in order to curry favour from the Nazis, one needs to bear in mind that this statement was consistent with the attitude of German Zionism throughout the Weimar period and indeed it is consistent with the Zionist attitude to anti-Semitism historically. In 1921 the leader of the German Zionists, Kurt Blumenfeld, warned the shortly to be assassinated German Jewish Minister, Walter Rathenau that ‘under no circumstances does a Jew have the right to represent the affairs of another people.’ [Nathan Weinstock, Zionism: A False Messiah, p. 135]
Alfred Rosenberg, the ‘theoretician’ of the Nazi Party and Minister for the Eastern Territories, hanged at Nuremburg for war crimes in 1946, wrote in Die Spur as early as 1919 that ‘Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destination.‘ As Francis Nicosia, someone who is a devoted apologist for Zionist relations with anti-Semites and the Nazis noted,
‘Rosenberg’s argument that the Zionist movement could be utilized to promote the political, economic, social and cultural segregation of Jews in Germany as well as their emigration, was eventually transformed into policy by the Hitler regime after 1933. Rosenberg also intended to use Zionism as legal justification for depriving German Jews of their civil rights.’ [F Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, IB Tauris, 1985, p.25].
Anyone who has objectively looked at the Zionist record during the Second World War cannot but be impressed with its insistence, as the ovens of Auschwitz were burning, that Jewish statehood was the main task for which everything else, including rescue, must be secondary. To some extent this was borne out by the Kasztner trial in Israel from 1953 until 1958, when a leading Jewish Agency representative in Hungary sued Hungarian holocaust survivor, Malchiel Greenwald, for libel for calling him a collaborator. Or rather the Israel State sued on behalf of Kasztner. What was a libel trial became in essence a trial of Kasztner. Greenwald’s accusations were upheld and despite a tentative Supreme Court decision absolving the by now assassinated Kasztner by 4-1 [except on charges of having given testimony at Nuremburg enabling SS war criminal Col. Kurt Becher to escape the hangman] the factual findings of the Jerusalem District Court, where the libel charge was first heard were upheld.
For example the late Noah Lucas, a distinguished and critical Zionist academic, wrote in his Modern History of Israel that ‘While hopes and efforts for the rescue of Europe’s Jews continued, the struggle for a Jewish state became the primary concern of the (Zionist) movement.’ (p.188) and that
‘For the Israeli leaders and survivors of Nazidom, a gnawing sense of guilt was perhaps their meet painful personal burden. Did the Jewish Agency and other organisations do all that had been possible to save the Jews of Europe from extermination. Were the various wartime negotiations with the Nazi executives of death morally impeccable? Also, while Jewish statehood was theoretically an instrument of rescue, in the event it came too late to avail the millions. Did the concentration on attaining statehood itself impede rescue? Did Zionist statecraft contribute to the toll of Jewish life? These and other questions involving the historical and ideological relations of Israel with world Jewry were submerged in the unconscious mind of the nation like the reservoir of a chronic nightmare. From time to time they came to the surface demanding precise elucidation in the courts of law, as in the Kastner case. [pp. 326-7]
It is therefore unsurprising that today the Zionist movement and its establishment supporters, fight shy of comparisons between Israel and Nazism.
It was with some surprise therefore that I learnt, when reading the house journal of Britain’s Jewish Establishment, that ‘Calling Jews ‘Nazis’ may be criminalised‘ [Jewish Chronicle, 16.7.09.] . At first I dismissed it as another attempt by the inarticulate to ban arguments they had difficulty dealing with.
Realising however that it was unlikely that April fool jokes were still being practised in July, I contemplated just some of the cases which could have arisen had this law been in existence.
For example when Israel’s High Court, in the Ka’adan case, ruled that Arabs were entitled to buy and rent apartments on the 93% of State and ‘Jewish’ land controlled by the Israeli Lands Authority/Jewish National Fund, Israel’s Parliament, the Knesset, voted to reverse the ruling by a massive majority of 65.
The reaction of Jonathan Artzi, a well known Israeli pacifist and conscientious objector, was to write a letter (23.7.07.) to all 120 MKs offering to help them in their endeavours. He explained that:
‘On May 4th 1939 a law was implemented, forbidding a certain minority in certain country from purchasing and leasing the majority`s lands in that country. Instead of rewriting this law now, why don`t you translate and implement that law?’
It is fortunate that Jonathan Artzi doesn’t live in New Labour’s Britain. In Israel, comparisons between the Nazis and one’s enemy are de rigeur.
When the newly elected MK for Kach, Rabbi Meir Kahane, was elected to Israel’s Knesset, the distinguished philosopher and historian Emil Fackenheim, himself a refugee from Nazism, compared Kahane’s methods to that of the Nazis during the Weimar Republic. [Sydney Morning Herald 27.8.84.] Rabbi Meir Kahane had, among other things, called for sexual relations between Arab males and Jewish females to be made a criminal offence punishable by five years imprisonment. Although sexual relations between Arabs and Jews are not criminalised in Israel today, mixed partnerships are extremely rare and subject to overwhelming public and social disapproval. Again it would ironic were a law to be passed to criminalise a holocaust survivor for calling a Jew a Nazi!
Or what does one make of the fact that one third of a million Israeli Jews are unable to marry, since although they are considered Jewish for the purposes of the Law of ‘Return’ they are not halachically Jewish? Journalist Jonathan Cook compares them to untouchables, but there is nothing in Indian law that prevents untouchables marrying other castes. The real comparison is with the Mischlinge, the ‘mixed-race’ Jews of Germany who had 1 or 2 Jewish grandparents. Like the mainly Russian Jewish non-Jews of Israel, they were neither fish nor fowl.
And when Sir Gerald Kaufmann, a Jewish MP who used to be a stalwart of Labour Friends of Israel, compared Israel’s actions in Gaza to the murder of his grandmother in Poland by the Nazis, was the old rogue being anti-Semitic?
The Guardian’s Comment is Free, whose editorial policy anticipated the proposed new law, was in something of a quandary. Unable to host a debate over the rights and wrongs of comparing Zionism to Nazism, it decided instead to stage an artificial debate over whether it is right to criminalise a political comparison.
Antony Lerman was therefore commissioned to write an article, Should we ban ‘Nazi analogies? which took as its starting point the assumption that ‘Using Nazi analogies to criticise Israel and Zionism is offensive’. The only question up for debate was therefore should it be banned? This is of course entirely consistent with the liberal idea of debate – agreement over substance and disagreement over tactics.
Now Antony Lerman is one of the dissident intellectuals of the Jewish Establishment. He has himself been subject to a witchhunt as former Director of the Institute of Jewish Policy Research and has written some excellent articles on the question of anti-Semitism, in particular refuting the idea that we are witnessing a ‘new anti-Semitism’ reminiscent of the ‘old anti-Semitism’ of the 1930’s. For example in an article Sense on anti-Semitism he argued that
‘The anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism argument drains the word anti-Semitism of any useful meaning. For it means that to be an anti-Semite, it is sufficient to hold any view ranging from criticism of the policies of the current Israeli government to denial that Israel has a right to exist as a state, without having to subscribe to any of those things which historians have traditionally regarded as making up an anti-Semitic world view: hatred of Jews per se, belief in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, belief that Jews generated communism and control capitalism, belief that Jews are racially inferior and so on. Moreover, while theoretically allowing that criticism of Israeli government policies is legitimate, in practice it virtually proscribes any such thing.’
But Lerman, for all that, is at best a liberal non-Zionist. In the present debate he is caught on the horns of a dilemma. He accepts that ‘there should be no place for Nazi analogies in public debate,’ and that “Most people would accept that it’s completely unacceptable to call a Jewish person a Nazi.” yet he realises that the motivation for the proposals to criminalise such comparisons comes from those who have other motives, namely labelling all Israel’s critics as anti-Semitic. A Report ‘Understanding and Addressing the “Nazi Card”: Intervening Against Anti-Semitic Discourse’. The work of researchers, Paul Iganski and Abe Sweiry, it was published by the European Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism’ (EISCA), which is chaired by New Labour MP and establishment toady Dennis MacShane, who also chaired the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Antisemitism in the UK.
Both the ‘Inquiry’ and the Report take as their starting point the “Working Definition of Antisemitism“ produced by the former European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC). As Lerman notes, this definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ ‘is rapidly becoming the new orthodoxy.’ It is a conscious attempt to blur and confuse the differences between anti-Zionist and anti-Semitism. It defines ‘anti-Semitism’ as:
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.
- Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
- Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis and
- Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
As Theodor Fritsch, a virulent anti-Semite and author of the Anti-Semitic explained:
‘We still consider: the Zionists as the most honest of Jews… we therefore‘demand together with the Zionists ‘a clean separation’ and the settlement of the Hebrews in a special Jews dominion… Der Hammer (Leipzig) January 1922
Now no one denies that the points three and five, especially the former, are examples of anti-Semitism. But the rest of this dogs dinner are clearly aimed at anti-Zionist criticism of Israel. In their pious ignorance, Iganski, Sweiry and all the other ‘anti-racist’ supporters of imperialism, never once stop to consider that the claim that there is one Jewish people, whose right to self-determination is being denied, is itself the foundation stone of anti-Semitic ideology!
The definition of a nation is normally understood to mean a common language, economy and territory. Otherwise such a ‘people’ is nothing more than a metaphysical and mystical entity, such as the Aryan race. Before the term ‘race’ was in vogue it was common to refer to the ‘Jewish race.’
Jews worldwide speak many different languages, are citizens of a wide variety of countries, and share the common fate of the non-Jews they live with. Yet in order for there to be a world-wide Jewish conspiracy there must be a single world-wide Jewish people, bound together by ties that are political and mystical, racial not religious. Indeed this was precisely the criticism that the overwhelming majority of East European Jewry had of Zionism when it first arose. It was validating the very tenets of anti-Semitism.
It is difficult to know what double standards are expected of Israel that weren’t also expected of Apartheid South Africa. Drawing comparisons of ‘contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ is also apparently anti-Semitic. Leaving aside the question as to whether historical analogies are a fit subject for criminalisation in a free society, as it is normally only in a police state that there is an ‘authorised’ version of history, the courts and parliament are no better able to resolve historical debates and controversies than any other body. If one widens the question, as it would have to be, is it seriously suggested that to compare the actions of the Americans in Iraq or Vietnam to the Nazis is anti-Semitic? If not why then is Israel is excepted? And were French students in 1968 being anti-Semitic for coining the slogan ‘CRS-SS’ against the hated riot police?
The irony of all this is that the party that has most in common with fascism and the Nazis, the British National Party, is also Britain’s most pro-Zionist party. So we have the absurd situation whereby the one group that will not be affected by the proposals of a report into anti-Semitism is Britain’s main repository for anti-Semites and neo-Nazis!!
As for holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of Israel, then there is little doubt that this is anti-Semitic. It is somewhat unfortunate that the people primarily responsible for this are the leaders of Zionism, such as Britain’s Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks. At a rally to support Israel’s barbarous attack on Lebanon in 2006, Sacks exclaimed “Israel, you make us proud.“ In fact all the pro-Israel activities of the Board of Deputies, which is purportedly a body to represent all British Jews, is anti-Semitic by this definition!
It is in the context of this mixture of hypocrisy and mendacity that the proposals of EISCA must be understood. Their clear and obvious purpose is to criminalise criticism of Zionism and Israel under the guise of ‘anti-Semitism’. Comparisons between Israel, the pampered child of western imperialism, and the Nazi regime, have begun to be felt. Gone are the days when you could get by labelling the Palestinians as Nazis. The first and obvious reaction of ordinary people to the war crimes committed in Gaza was how Jewish people could condone such atrocities in view of their own history. This was an understandable and perfectly natural reaction, the criminal law notwithstanding.
But the question which Lerman took for granted, namely are comparisons between Nazism and Zionism and Israel valid, is not one that has been addressed. Both Lenni Brenner, in his book Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, and myself in articles such as ‘Holocaust Analogies: Repaying the Mortgage’ have drawn attention to the undeniable fact that the Zionist leaders in the second world war both collaborated with the Nazis and undermined rescue attempts that were not directed at Palestine. Indeed the leaders of the terrorist Stern Gang/LEHI, which included Yitzhak Shamir, who became Prime Minister of Israel in 1984, actually proposed a military alliance with the Nazis in 1941! As the late Professor Israel Shahak of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a childhood survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and Belsen-Bergen, noted:
‘LEHI showed its uniqueness in its very earliest political strategy, namely in its persistent search for an alliance with Nazi Germany throughout 1940-41.’
It is therefore worth making a few observations. Firstly the only reason for not comparing the crimes of the Nazi regime with that of Israel is if the former is beyond history. In particular, this depends on whether the holocaust was such a unique event that comparisons between it and any other act of genocide are impossible and therefore illegitimate. But is it seriously argued that comparisons between say the slave trade, during which millions of Africans died or the murder of up to 10 million people in the Belgian Congo are anti-semitic? A comparison is not the same thing as saying two phenomenon are the same or equal but that there are certain similarities. It would seem obvious that all acts of genocide are both unique in themselves and share similarities with each other.
Indeed if the Nazi holocaust is to serve any useful purpose it is as a reminder of the dangers of racism and where it can, in extremis, lead. The 12 years of the Nazi dictatorship, between 1933 and 1945, can be broken into 3 periods.
- There was the period before the war, 1933-39, when restrictions on Jews became ever more severe as the Jews became increasingly isolated and economically marginalised. During those years physical attacks on Jews were the exception rather than the rule and were generally deprecated as undermining order and stability. The primary exception of course being Kristalnacht on November 9-10 1938.
- The second period was that of 1939-1941 prior to the setting up of the extermination camps and the onset of the Final Solution. This was a period of the ‘euthenasia’ or ‘mercy killings’ when the first people to be killed by poisonous carbon monoxide gas were physically and mentally handicapped Germans in the sanitoria of Germany itself.
- The third period of the Final Solution began with Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 15 1941 and the actions of the killing squads, Einsatzgruppen, and the Order Police, who followed in the wake of the Wehrmacht, slaughtering at least one million Jews from the Baltic republics down to Southern Ukraine and the Crimea.
To say that comparisons between the first two periods of Nazi rule should not be made is to argue for Jewish exceptionalism. That racism against Jews is somehow worse than that against any other people. That pogroms against and the murder of Jews stands apart from that directed against any other people. The fact is that the reinterpretation of the Talmud by the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel does indeed say exactly this. For example Lubavitch Rabbi Manis Friedman recently declared that:
“The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle),” [Haaretz 9.6.09.]
When Israeli soldiers invaded Gaza this year they were “spiritually elevated” and “morally empowered” by Israel’s military rabbis who urged them to show no mercy to the civilian population, but to treat them like the Philistines and other heathens, whose men, women and children, yea even women with suckling babes, were put to the sword.
“When you show mercy to a cruel enemy, you are being cruel to pure and honest soldiers. This is terribly immoral. These are not games at the amusement park where sportsmanship teaches one to make concessions. This is a war on murderers. ‘A la guerre comme a la guerre.’ ” ‘IDF rabbinate publication during Gaza war: We will show no mercy on the cruel’ [Haaretz, 26.1.09.]
There is no doubt that the Nazi treatment of the Jews of Germany as strangers in their own land has been mirrored by that of the Palestinians. When thousands of religious settlers held a demonstration through the Arab quarter of Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day on June 2nd 2008, their main slogan was Mavet La`Aravim` or`Death to Arabs`. The comparison between the cries of pogromists in Russia in the early years of the last century and the mobs in Israel who cry out their desire for the elimination of Israel’s Arabs is obvious. The examples of this racist abuse and in particular the Nazi-like graffitti that Israel’s soldiers left in their way in Gaza, which talked about the ‘annihilation’ of the Palestinians, are legion.
What makes this ‘debate’ so absurd, is that it is in Israel itself that such comparisons are regularly made. When 46 Palestinians in the village Kfar Quassem were murdered in cold blood as they were returning from their fields, just prior to the Suez War, as unknown to them a curfew had been imposed, Rabbi Benyamin wrote that ‘‘We must demand of the entire nation a sense of shame and humiliation. That soon we will be like Nazis and the perpetrators of pogroms,”.
Likewise, after the massacres and expulsions of the 1947-9 war Aharon Zisling, later Minister of Agriculture for the Zionist Mapam party said at a cabinet meeting that
‘I have not always agreed when the term Nazi was applied to the British. I would not want to use that expression with regard to them, even though they committed Nazi acts. But Nazi acts have been committed by Jews as well, and I am deeply shocked.’ [Tom Segev, the 7th Million, pp. 300-1]
Those who decry any comparison between the actions of the Nazi and Israeli states are effectively saying that Israel should be judged by different standards from the rest of the world and previous settler-colonial states. What is therefore being said is that it is fine for Zionism’s propagandists to justify their deeds by reference to the holocaust, but that it is not acceptable for Palestinians to refer to that same history as a reason why Israel should not be indulging in war crimes and apartheid.
This is the kind of logic that leads world leaders and their tame supporters in the press to quietly ignore the fact that Israel earlier this year achieved some kind of historic milestone. An open fascist, Avigdor Lieberman, was appointed as Israel’s Foreign Minister. When Jorg Haider, leader of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party , entered government in 2000 the Austrian government was subject to a boycott by European leaders, including Prince Charles. Contrast this with the reception that Lieberman has received from European and American leaders.
Yet Jorg Haider was a pale shadow when compared to Lieberman. He didn’t propose executing Jewish members of the Austrian Parliament who disagreed with him or drowing thousands of Jewish prisoners in the sea. Yet this is exactly what Lieberman is on record as saying about Palestinian prisoners and Israeli Arabs who talk to Hamas.
Rather than boycotting him, world leaders have been falling over themselves to meet the thug from Molvova. Of course the idea that there is a comparison to be made between the actions of Israel and the Nazis is shocking, or should be, to someone who is Jewish. That is the whole point. To shock Israel’s devoted and unquestioning supporters. ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ is a refrain one constantly hears, as if the repetition of a lie makes it true. It is for that if no other reason, that comparisons between the practice of the Israeli state and Nazism are valid.
But a word of caution. It is understandable when a Palestinian in the wake of the Gaza attack compares Israel’s actions to that of the Nazis. But that doesn’t therefore mean that a simple equation can be drawn between Israel’s attack, however brutal, and that of the planned and deliberate extermination of millions of human beings. Likewise it is to be welcomed when Palestinians identify their plight with that of the Jews of Warsaw. That is an anti-racist comparison. The media harlots who repeat every last word of Zionist hasbara would no doubt prefer that the Palestinians identified with SS General Stroop rather than the Jewish Fighting Organisation of Warsaw Jews (ZOB) instead of Jews. That would then ‘prove’ that Israel’s battle is against anti-semitism.
During the Gaza war I and many others equated the siege of Gaza to that of the Warsaw Ghetto. Did we therefore mean that Israel was planning to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza in the same way as the half-million Jews of the Ghetto were murdered in Treblinka? Of course not.
But in laying siege to Gaza for over two years, in using the weapon of hunger in their battle against a civilian population and seeking to deprive it of all but the most limited amounts of food, in deliberately attacking civilian installations with phosphorous bombs, in razing civilian houses to the ground and in its mass murder of Gaza’s children, Israel’s actions did resemble that of the Nazis in certain crucial respects. Likewise Israel’s imprisonment and torture of children is Nazi-like.
Nor are such comparisons to be confined to Gaza. When the District Governor of the Galilee Israel Koenig issued “The Koenig Memorandum” in 1976 calling for the Judaification of the Galilee: “We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.” how is that different from Aryanisation or deJewification?
When a prominent Zionist rabbi ruled that according to the Halacha (Jewish religious law), a non-Jew cannot serve as a Knesset member even if the public agrees to it because “This is a Jewish state and Jews are the ones leading the Jewish state.” why is that any different from The Reich Citizenship Law of Nuremberg 1935? The latter law made a distinction between German nationals and citizens. Is not this the same difference that exists in Israel whereby Arabs are citizens of Israel but not nationals?
And if one compares the Zionist settlers of Hebron who daub ‘Arabs to the gas chambers’ on the walls of the old city to Nazis, is one also being anti-Semitic?
To ask these question is to answer them. If one’s sole purpose is to humiliate and ridicule someone who is Jewish by comparing them to Nazis then that is anti-Semitic, as well as grossly offensive. But if one compares the actions of the Israeli military or state to that of the Nazis, then the first question is ‘why is it anti-Semitic’. Bearing in mind that Israeli soldiers themselves have all too often seen themselves in that role. Indeed not so many years ago, Israeli soldiers in the Golani Brigade consciously called themselves the ‘Mengele Squad’. [Al HaMishmar 24 July 1989, Ha'Aretz 27 July 1989].
And sad to say, the level of anti-Arab racism as measured by popular opinion in Israel, is far higher even than anti-Jewish hatred was in Nazi Germany. As Ian Kershaw showed in Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich most Germans ‘despite the efforts of the Nazis, continued to maintain social relations with the members of the Bavarian Jewish community.’ [Marrus, Michael The Holocaust in History, Toronto: KeyPorter, 2000 page 90].
Yet in Israel anti-Arab racism predominates throughout the Jewish population.
Over half Israeli Jews believes the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason and over 75 percent do not approve of apartment buildings being shared between Arabs and Jews. 60% would not allow an Arab to visit their home and about 40% agreed that “Arabs should have their right to vote for Knesset revoked”. Over half agreed that Israel should encourage its Arab citizens to emigrate from the country and would not want to work under the direct management of an Arab. 55 % said “Arabs and Jews should be separated at entertainment sites”. When asked what they thought of Arab culture, over 37 percent replied, “The Arab culture is inferior.” 27.3.07. Indeed a total of 62 percent of Israelis want the government to encourage local Arabs to leave the country, according to the 2006 democracy index by the Israel Democracy Institute.
It would be churlish not to give credit where credit is due. The spiritual author of these proposal to criminalise criticism of Israel is one Dennis MacShane. MacShane holds himself out as an authority on anti-Semitism. He’s even written an error ridden book, ‘Globalising Hatred: The New Antisemitism’ about it. Yet, and here’s a strange thing. MacShane has absolutely no record when it comes to opposing fascism and racism in Britain. I’m not aware of him playing any significant part in the anti-fascist movement in Britain from the 1970’s onwards when the National Front first began to grow and pose a threat to Black and Jewish people.
Nor has be been prominent or visible in the campaign against the BNP today. As a signed up member of New Labour MacShane is as about right-wing as they get. Anti-racism isn’t and never has been part of his agenda. There is not even one example of MacShane rebelling against New Labours racist and poisonous attacks on asylum seekers. Nor did he speak out when Gypsies were pilloried by New Labour in the Czech Republic and an immigration desk was actually set up at Prague’s airport (before the House of Lords ruled its operation an act of racial discrimination). This caused the Chair of the American Helsinki Committee to recall that ‘it was 47 years to the day when the Nazis gassed 2,897 “gypsy” women, children and men at Auschwitz.’
MacShane is one of the most disgusting reptiles that New Labour has produced. His reaction to the proposed deportation of Gary MacKinnon, the computer hacker who broke into the Pentagon’s computer systems, who has Aspergers Syndrome, was that it was ‘a ruse’.
For all his rhetoric about anti-semitism, MacShane has behaved exactly like his predecessors in Parliament who, in the 1930’s consistently voted against the admission of British Jews from Germany. When MacShane says he is a devoted opponent of ‘anti-Semitism’ it is important to understand that what he means by anti-Semitism is not traditional Jew hatred and discrimination but criticism of Israel. Because MacShane is if nothing else an arch-imperialist. Before being sacked by Brown in 2005, as a junior Foreign Office minister, with special responsibility for Latin America, he welcomed the CIA coup that temporarily overthrew Hugo Chávez of Venezuela by denouncing the latter as “a ranting, populist demagogue” (Hugh O’Shaughnessy, March 12 2007), likening him to Mussolini.
Isabel Hilton Cheering on democracy’s overthrow wrote that
‘Mr MacShane committed the undiplomatic error of describing Chavez as a “ranting demagogue”. Of course, when he let slip those unfortunate comments, Mr MacShane thought that Hugo Chavez was a leftwing ex-president of a country with important mineral reserves in which the US takes a strong interest…. Odd, though, that Friday’s coup, a procedure not normally considered an aid to democratic practice, did not attract the condemnation it deserved. Chavez, after all, has twice been elected president by the largest margins in Venezuela’s history.’
All this makes the remarks by the Editor of Comment is Free, Matthew Seaton, even more strange. As Mark Elf wrote:
‘In the comments someone referred to Denis MacShane as Denis the Menace and Matt Seaton intervened to describe MacShane as a “sound democrat”…. The strange thing is that there are at least two responses to Seaton’s bizarre but unsurprising intervention for a Zionist but his intervention seems to have disappeared. Like the great Dr Hirsh, our Mr Seaton seems to have censored himself for a change!’
Describing MacShane as a democrat is akin to describing the Marquess of Queensbury as a pioneer of gay rights. Bizarre isn’t quite the right word. It would seem that Mr Seaton would be best employed returning to his old job as Guardian bicycling correspondent. At least he would know then what he was talking about!
Tony Greenstein
This is a slippery rambling article which conflates the separate issues of whether modern day Israel is like Nazi Germany, whether Zionism historically allied itself with Nazism and whether criticising Israel is anti-Semitic. It’s intention seems to be to justify comparisons of modern day Israel and Nazism – an activity which is as politically stupid as it is intellectually invalid. As the article points out, politicians and writers have been playing the Nazi card ever since the fall of the 3rd Reich it is an easy and cheap piece of political rhetoric which invariably a) weakens the argument being made and b) cheapens the holocaust. Clearly it would be absurd and ridiculous to criminalise such acts of rhetoric – if people want to make poor arguments they should be free to do so. But let’s stop writing nonsense: whatever operation Cast Lead was, it was not analogous in any way to the holocaust.
I’m sorry if the purpose of the article was not clear. It was to raise the proposal of banning comparisons between Nazi Germany and Zionism/Israel but also to say that it is a false debate where you are accepting that it is wrong to make such comparisons and merely debating whether or not to criminalise it.
I have never said that modern day Israel is like Nazi Germany for the simple reason it isn’t. Israel is not a fascist state, it is a settler-colonial state, something very different. E.g. there are, within limits, democratic rights for Jews the dominant group, in Israel. There are very few such rights, and getting fewer for Israeli Arabs. In Nazi Germany there were no democratic rights for anyone, Jew or German (which is the major lacuna of Daniel Goldhagen and his book ‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners’.
BUT there are comparisons. The concept of race, the blut and bloden (blood and soil) concept of reinvigoration of the Jewish ‘race’ was something that both Zionism and Nazism had close to their hearts. In the Nazi case the ideas of people like Richard Darre, the Nazi Agriculture Minister were very similar to those who saw the Kibbutzim as playing a similar role.
There are other comparisons, e.g. the Law of Return defines a Jew in the same way as the Nuremberg Laws. The basis behind Labour Zionism and its ‘class to nation’ (i.e. the role of Labour was to support not its class but its national interests) was again similar to the role fascism – Italian and Nazi – saw for labour in the volkish state.
The attitude to the indigenous people, since one aspect of Nazi Germany was the settler-colonisation of areas in the East such as Poland. That is why you get repeated instances of soldiers and settlers almost unconsciously identifying with the Nazis. I’ve given the examples of the ‘Mengele Squad’ but also the ‘Arabs to the gas chambers’ graffitti. Although Zionism and the Israeli state are not exterminatory, there are sections of that movement, not least the orthodox, who are beginning to advocate just such measures.
Nor is it a question of playing the Nazi card, which is something the Zionist movement has done par excellence but seeing that there are both similarities and dissimilarities. The Holocaust has already been cheapened by the continuous use of it by the Zionist movement to justify their own works. One of the main props of holocaust denial now is the fact that some people are so turned off by this use of the Holocaust that they simply say, well there can’t have been a holocaust in that case. Ironically Zionism needs holocaust denial to give credence to the threat against Jews and in the process it gives it a helping hand by, in Antony Lerman’s words, draining the term ‘anti-semitism’ of any meaning.
Rebbe says that Operation Cast Lead i.e. the savage blitzkrieg on Gaza was not analogous to the holocaust. But actually I don’t say it was. The holocaust took place in the last 4 years of a 12 year period of Nazi rule.
Why is it so important you to be able to make a comparison between Zionism and Nazism?
What actually are you trying to demonstrate by doing so?
The first of these question is an interesting one. The other less so as it rests upon an assumption that I am trying to demonstrate anything.
But there are several reasons for why it is important that people are not criminalised for making comparisons between Zionism and Nazism. Even leaving aside the fact, which is often implied, that saying there are comparisons between 2 things means that they are identical or very similar.
It is, first and foremost, a question of basic democratic rights. We live in a society where people are more tightly controlled than ever before. Massive databases monitoring peoples’ prefernces, their ID and what they do and where they are going. I’m Secretary of Brighton Unemployed Workers Centre and we have a minibus which is used for all sort of charitable stuff but also used by animal rights protesters, anti-fascists etc. The bus has been repeatedly stopped because it is on a police national intelligence database and this means that everyone is checked up on, the minibus searched, attempts made to ‘prove’ it is unroadworthy etc. In other words people are harassed for engaging in quite legal, and more to the point quite legitimate political activity.
When I drove people up to the picket of Israel’s Agrexco Carmel, the main if not only distributor of West bank produce we were stopped before getting to the march and then afterwards too. The same questions as before with the attempt to declare us unroadworthy and a little form which says I should take various documents to a police station i.e. waste my time as a penalty for the offence of demonstrating. It became even more ludicrous when Uxbridge police insisted on escorting the bus onto the M25 and we insisted we were going to have a drink first! This result in 2 police vans being parked outside a nearby pub for over half an hour until we came out. This happened much the same at a picket I attended a couple of years ago at Harmondsworth and the nearby detention centre whose name I’ve forgotten, where ‘illegal’ immigrants i.e. refugees and asylum seekers escaping the consequences of Blair’s wars are held without charge often for months. And with their children as well.
In other words we are seeing, with control orders, extraordinary renditions etc. the creation of an authoritarian state and it is to this state that it is now being seriously proposed handing the power of deciding if you are allowed to say certain things? I am opposed to criminalisation of even holocaust denial views. I’d be happy to shoot the fascists but not to give the state powers over what they say! So it is important at that level.
But it is also important at another level which is to understand Zionism itself you have to be able to make comparisons unless Zionism is sui generis. On the contrary I believe that both anti-Semitism and its later variants, including the anti-Semitism of the Nazis, did have an effect upon the ideological and political development of Zionism. Let me give an example. Most people might have heard of Arthur Ruppin, the father of Israeli land settlement, head of the Jewish Agency’s land settlement division. He was also a Zionist peacenick, a founder of Brit Shalom. How many know that he was an ardent supporter of the racial ‘sciences’, a believer in eugenics and being able to tell from the size of brain and skull how someone would develop? Ruppin visited in 1933 no less than Professor Hans Gunther in Jena. Gunther was Himmler’s mentor and was foisted by Goebbels on the University of Jena. At the meeting with Gunther, Ruppin was an avid listener and they both ended up in full agreement with each other. Ruppin’s views e.g. led to the imposition of strict criteria on who could immigrate to Palestine. Only the best ‘human material’ were given immigration certificates in a process of selectivity that would appear during the holocaust. So yes, there are very valid reasons for making comparisons, just as it is important to point out differences such as Zionism is a settler-colonial not a fascist phenomenon.
You’re right in your fears about the creeping authoritarian state, but unfortunately that’s merely one good point, amongst some other good points, in an overflowing bouquet of points, variously bad, strange and offensive, as well as occasionally good.
So you’re angry at not being able to say what you want, that’s legitimate and we do need to fight state censorship. But to slip that in, in tandem with a larger argument about Zionist-Nazi comparisons, means you’re just muddling everyone. Defending your right to say things – yes, I’ll fight for that. But if you simultaneously say something contentious, I won’t.
Here’s a comparison for you then – I defend the right for fascists to open their mouths, if they’re intellectually torn down immediately, yes. But I won’t defend it whilst they’re standing right in front of me, because I”ll be too busy taking their words apart.
I’m not angry, Quietly calm! There was no muddle. The whole point of the article was that unlike the fake debate in the Guardian there needs to be a debate in respect of the proposal for criminalisation (& in practice it won’t happen, ‘guidance’ will be issued to the Police recommending action on the basis of their own discretionary powers) of Nazi-Zionist comparisons which defend not merely the right but the substance of such comparisons as legitimate. In other words is it wrong per se to make such comparisons.
And whilst your pondering this, then let me refer to another article I’ve just posted.
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-is-meaning-of-jewish-state.html
It concerns a little girl, 1 year old, who was booked into the nursery at Merhavia. At least she was until 6 Jewish parents objected to having an Arab child mix with their children. She was therefore barred. Now what does that remind you of? Nazi Germany is clearly one place, given that between 1933 and 1939 Jews were progressively edged out of the German education system. South Africa and the American deep south too. Either way does this kind of virulent racism not suggest past racism against Jews?
Not that a word of such things will ever get past Pollard at the JC
hi tony, yeah interesting read. I found your analogy honest in the way of facing up to issues that become untouchable to those who’ve sucumbed to the zionist prop, the ‘echo chamber’ as you say. I remember 3yrs ago whilst squatting in London in a hesidic part, four jewish boys (8-9yrs) next door leaned out of the bedroom window while we were in the garden and started calling us niggers and pigs. We didnt challenge their behaviour, but just wondered what was going on in that household. A few weeks later at the eviction some of the jews were pleased, but some spoke out against it as we’d been no trouble. On youtube the zionist israelis use the same insults on the palestinians as well as calling people nazis. So I feel supportors of zionism living in the UK are being used as ‘useful idiots’ by the zionist hierarchy as we had nothing against them as neighbours.Anyway I’m gonna read your piece again as its got alot to think about. Cheers
I might be missing something really obvious, but who exactly is calling for comparing Zionism and Nazism to be banned?
I havent noticed any vitriolic Melanie Philips editorial pieces in the JC. I havent noticed the Board of Deputies asking for this and I havent really noticed this anywhere else.
Try reading the article again. It was a Jewish Chronicle report of 16.7.09. of a report by EISCA (Eurpean Institute for the Study of the Contemporary anti-Semitism) aka Dennis McShane MP which did recommend criminalisation. This led to an article by Antony Lerman on th Guardian’s CIF opposing a ban whilst conceding the primary argument.
Yawn Yawn Yawn
Hi Duke, whats with the yawn. Is it because your happy with things the way they are and you find this all a bit tedious and boring? or is it ‘cos you’ve been up all night (2:20am) worrying about the opppressive zionist state. I am new to the jew thing and I want to understand it better, so lets hear it. It’s sites like this that show the anti & undecided a more reasonable and balanced veiw of whats going on in the jewish world, where as, the zionist maxim is one of ‘accept what we do or you’re a nazi or a terrorist and we will destroy you’. Don’t be smug, thinking it don’t matter what people think, it does. Hitler,Herzl,Blair etc get ideas and next thing innocent people are being killed. The zionist state has over 200 nuclear missiles(duke nukem?). and loads of american support, to me this isn’t boring, they are not the victim. It is a self-serving tactical move to ban comparisans with the nazis even though in my opinion its petty obvious why people make it. None of what i have written is intended to insult you or any memories you have.
Maybe the reason why Nukem Duke missed the really obvious was that he was yawning at the time!
Robert, you are right, apologies for being so flippant.
Before I respond directly to your post let me ask you something. You mention that you are pretty new to this ‘Jew thing’, yet you seem pretty sure of your views. How much have you genuinely investigated the topic? What makes you so sure of your positions and are there any arguments or facts that would lead you to change your opinion with regards to Israel and Zionism. I disagree with the majority of what is written in Tony Greensteins article. I wouldn’t say though that I am a ‘useful idiot’ being utilised by the ‘Zionist heirachy’
As for some of the things you said:
I am a ‘Zionist’ and I certainly dont hold the maximum: ‘accept what we do or you’re a nazi or a terrorist and we will destroy you’. In fact, I know lots of ‘zionists’ and none of them hold that point of view. Im sure there a few Zionists out there who hold this type of view, but the majority I am also sure don’t. Does that in any way change your views of ‘Zionists’?
You also say sites like this give a more balanced view of what is going on in the Jewish world. I certainly wouldn’t say that this article is in any way reasonable or balanced. You might want to read what the Rebbe writes about this article (one of Jewdas’ main contributors) to see what the general feeling from Jewdas contributors about the article is.
Ok, so I have made a statement, that I do not think this article is in any way reasonable or balanced. So now I have to give arguments to back up my points. I am going to work my way from the bottom of the comments section up and deal with every comparison between Zionism and Nazism that occurs. Lets see (PS. Tony, forgive me for talking in the third person about you – it is just that I am replying to a comment by Red Robert, but I am also seeking to engage in a dialogue with you:
“6 Jewish parents objected to an Arab child attending nursery with their children and then the child was barred. Now what does that remind you of? Nazi Germany.”
Im sorry, this does not remind me of Nazi Germany. I don’t know the specifics of Nazi policy concerning childcare, but in Nazi Germany there were explicit state laws http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws excluding Jews from civic life. Some of the Nuremburg laws included:
Prohibiting Jews from marrying Germans; Prohibiting sexual intercourse between Germans and Jews; Prohibiting Jews from employing female citizens under the age of 45.
Now, whatever you think of the incident in the nursery, this is an incident of racism by individuals within a country. It is not an example of the Israeli state enacting legislation depriving Arab citizens of their basic human rights and dignity as was the hallmark of anti Jewish legislation in Nazi Germany. For the reasons I have given I don’t really see how the comparison in this example holds.
Tony gives the example of Arthur Ruppin, who believed in Eugenics and who once met and agreed with a prominent Nazi Eugenics scientist. I don’t know if this meeting actually took place, or whether Ruppin actually believed in Eugenics. It is highly possible that he believed in some form of Eugenics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics, which was highly fashionable across the world at the time, but did he believe in Nazi Eugenics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics – ie. Forced sterilisation and mass murder of those that are not deemed to be suitable. Either way, I do not see how this is evidence that Zionism as a whole in any way engaged or wanted to engage in a Nazi type Eugenics programme.
Moreover, Tony makes the point that immigration certificates were only given to ‘the best “human material”. Aside from the highly emotive use of language, there was a valid reason why immigration certificates tended to be given to younger and healthier people. At the time, the British had a policy of immigration restrictions against Jews wishing to emigrate to Palestine, whereby there was a set quota of Jews who were allowed to emigrate in any given year. As the yishuv (the pre state Jewish community) was in the process of building a state, it had a policy of trying to encourage (and give immigration certificates) to those that were best placed to help the establishment of the state ie. Younger and healthier people – seems pretty natural to me. When the state was established and the law of return was passed, this meant ANY Jew, in whatever physical health was allowed to emigrate to Israel. Don’t really see where the comparison with Nazi Germany comes in?
The concept of blood and soil was a Nazi concept. It is not a Zionist concept. Yes, Labour Zionism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Zionists had a doctrine of the redemption of the soil. I don’t know if it was in any way similar to the Hitler’s concept of soil, but the concept wasn’t a racial concept. It was seeking to revolutionise the Jewish soul by working the land and returning to ‘roots’. So yes this was a ‘volkish’ movement, but I don’t see how that is a negative criticism of the movement? It was actually Robert Red, a socialist movement with socialist aims and intentions rather than fascist aims and intentions.
Also, interestingly to anyone who calls Zionism a settler colonialist ideology, Labour Zionism which formed the basis of early Zionism was about impoverished Jews working the land themselves rather than exploiting other people to work for them. Something very different to most colonialist ideologies.
In fact questions of blood were relatively rare in early Zionism, and occupied almost no time in the thoughts of Zionist thinkers. There was a simple reason for this: It was pretty obvious who were Jews and who were not (and I don’t mean based on physical characteristics) ie. They had Jewish parents, identified themselves as Jews and so forth, and this had been pretty similar for hundreds and even thousands of years. Whereas, Hitler was ‘creating’ a notion of the Aryan race and Aryan identity, so I don’t really agree that Zionists had any ideology similar to the German notions of ‘Blut/Blood’ To the extent that Zionism wanted to work the land etc, this wasn’t influenced by the Nazis. Chronologically speaking it is pretty easy to work this out. AD Gordon, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_David_Gordon who was the founder/inspiration behind Labour Zionism died in 1922. Yet Mein Kampf was first published in 1925, so what Tony is saying is that the Nazis influenced Labour Zionist ideology even though the dominant figure of Labour Zionist ideology had never even heard of the Nazis or read anything written by them. Something seems a bit fishy there.
Tony mentions that the Law of return defines a Jew in exactly the same way as the Nuremburg Laws. I don’t really see how that shows there is a big comparison between say the law of return and the Nuremburg Laws to be made. I have already posted a link to the Nuremburg Laws, and given an example of a couple of them, none of which are remotely similar to any Israeli laws. Im sure you can notice that there is a massive difference between defining a Jew in the same way as defined in the Nuremburg laws, and saying that the content of the Nuremburg laws in any way influenced Israeli laws.
For the reasons I have given, I don’t really see how any of the comparisons between Zionism and Nazism hold much water. I have restricted myself to comparisons made in the comments section. I could go on to comparisons in the article itself, but I am sure you can appreciate that I have to be selective due to the sheer length of Tony’s articles.
Rob, you say “it is a self-serving tactical move to ban comparisons with the nazis even though in my opinion its petty obvious why people make it.” Maybe there are a high number of ‘zionist’ jews who want to ban such comparisons, but the reaction of the vast majority would be to usually say that such comparisons are facile, intellectually lazy and factually incorrect (as I have attempted to show through the comparisons I have discussed.) That is why to the vast majority of people it is not at all obvious why people make such comparisons.
At last there are specific criticisms and I will reply to them. But first a more general criticism. Duke say that ‘I certainly wouldn’t say that this article is in any way reasonable or balanced.’
Please. Whatever other claims I will make for myself I shall never describe them as ‘reasonable’ or ‘balanced’. There is no such thing as a ‘reasonable’ political opinion. This is very much to do with the attempt to use language to outlaw certain opinions which challenge the status quo. Hence an ‘extremist’ is someone who disagrees with the prevailing orthodoxy. In South Africa anti-apartheid Whites were considered ‘extremist’. Today, and I was talking just before the weekend to someone who visits his family there recently (Jewish) no Whites will now admit (except for a tiny die-hard minority – the political descendants of the ‘bitter enders’) that they supported apartheid. Most of those who are remembered by history were branded extremist in their time. None more so than the extreme democrat and republican Thomas Paine, who had to flee Britain for his life.
And as for balanced, well this is a product of liberal muddle headedness. Any trenchant or strong opinion is unlikely to be balanced as it wouldn’t be a strong argument! You don’t change things by being balanced but by arguing your case no holds barred. Were the suffraggettes ‘balanced’ or the opponents of the slave trade? When I was active in anti-fascist politics in the 1970’s and 1980’s we had vehement disagreements with those who believed in peaceful opposition to the NF. Our way was to meet force with force. Balanced? Hardly. Effective? Very much so.
Now to the substance of Duke’s criticisms. I can only reiterate what I previously wrote. That to compare 2 phenomenon is not to say the are identical or the same but that they share certain characteristics in common.
For example you may not have heard of Dov Yermiya, a former colonel in the Israeli army. He came from the elite fighting forces and was a member of Mapam, the ‘left’ Zionist party which coined the slogan ‘to shoot and cry’. They could both kill with the best of them but they would then agonize not so much over what they had done but the effects on themselves. An excellent book by Gabriel Piterberg last year, The Returns of Zionism, describes how Amos Oz and a group of fellow soldiers, visited the Mercaz Harav yeshivah in Jerusalem, the spiritual home of the most racist and messianic of settlers. This was for a propaganda book, ‘Soldiers Fight’ in the wake of the ’67 war. Oz went away disappointed. Not over their views but because they didn’t understand the existential dilemmas and conscience of their fellow Zionist peaceniks.
Yermiya, who I first heard of a quarter of a century ago, produced a moving book War Diary about his experiences in Lebanon and the war of 1982. He was of course ostracised and more in Israel. He has just written a statement (he’s 95 by the way) abandoning Zionism and calling it a fascist state (with which I disagree). Yet because he expresses his views, not with balance but with passion he achieves something. http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2009/08/dov-yermiah-veteran-zionist-and-senior.html
And one more general point. In Israel there is, or was until recently, only one law which explicitly discriminated against non-Jews and in favour of Jews. The Law of Return which accorded the right of ‘return’ to people who have never lived in Israel whilst denying those born there who are not Jewish of any such right – they are ‘present absentees’ in many cases i.e. they stayed behind in 1948, despite the pressures, but if they were a mile away from their home they were classified as absent and their lands subject to confiscation as happened for example with the Arab village of Birim, which became the Mapam kibbutz of Baram.
All other discriminatory legislation was based on this one single law.
This observation is becoming less true as legislation is increasingly abandoning the pretence that it conforms with arbitrary criteria that is non –discriminatory, for example the innocuously titled Dischared Soldiers Amendment Act of 1969 granted Jewish women higher child benefits to encourage them to produce more Jewish children whereas Arab women would receive lower benefits. Is that racist? Well today most people understand what indirect discrimination is. The criteria were service in the army, which most Arabs don’t undertake. But the 2002 Act preventing spouses of Israeli citizens from residing in or becoming citizens of Israel was specifically aimed at Palestinians of the West Bank and Israeli Arab citizens who marry them.
So discrimination in Israel is not like in Apartheid South Africa with its ‘No Blacks’ signs. So when a human rights worker took a Palestinian in his car on Route 443 in the West Bank, the Palestinian was arrested for travelling on a Jewish –only road. When asked why there were no signs to this effect, the soldier retorted that if they put up ‘Jews only’ signs then photographs would quickly appear in the media. But the fact remains that Arabs are banned from these roads. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/966013.html
Is what happened to the Israeli Arab nursery school girl an isolated incidence, which I have blown out of all proportion? It could indeed be argued that I am taking an incident out of context but the context is the almost complete segregation of Israeli solicitor schooling. The vast disparity of resources allocated to the Jewish and Arab educational sectors merely compounds this and confirms the 1953 judgement of the US Supreme Court that there is no such things as ‘separate but equal’ the original justification of the Jim Crow laws.
But was this an isolated incident? Bear in mind that Israel has no anti-racist or anti-discrimination laws worthy of the name. Well what of public attitudes. Leave aside the fact that Israel now boasts a fascist as Foreign Minister whose party’s favourite slogan is ‘death to the Arabs.’
According to Ynet (Yediot Aharnot on-line) over half Israel’s Jewish population believes the marriage of a Jewish woman to an Arab man is equal to national treason. Over 75 percent do not approve of apartment buildings being shared between Arabs and Jews. Sixty percent of participants said they would not allow an Arab to visit their home.
About 40 percent of participants agreed that “Arabs should have their right to vote for Knesset revoked”. The number was 55 percent lower in the previous survey. Also, over half of the participants agreed that Israel should encourage its Arab citizens to emigrate.
Over half of the participants said they would not want to work under the direct management of an Arab, and 55 percent said “Arabs and Jews should be separated at entertainment sites”.
Over 56 percent of participants believe that Israel’s Arab citizens posed both a security and a demographic threat to the country, the classic ‘fifth column’. Over 37 percent believe that “Arab culture is inferior.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3381978,00.html 27.3.07.
see also: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3248693,00.html 9.5.06.
This not an example of marginal racism or antagonism but of a deep and virulent racism that speaks volumes about Israeli society. Marriage between Jew and Arab is ‘national treason’. Those are the views of the BNP and NF in respect of Black and White intermarriage. But I doubt that 5% of people would support those views in an opinion poll. In Nazi Germany the level of popular anti-Semitism was far lower. And that is the context in which I made the comparison.
Yes the meeting with Ruppin took place. He described it in his diary for August 6, 1933 where he wrote the following entry:
‘Through Dr. Georg Landauer I traveled to Jena on August to meet Prof.
Hans F.K. Günther, the founder of National-Socialist race theory. The conversation
lasted two hours. Günther was most congenial but refused to accept
credit for coining the Arian-concept, and agreed with me that the Jews are not
inferior but different, and that the Jewish Question has to be solved justly.’ For more information about Ruppin see Arthur Ruppin’s Concept of Race, Israel Studies, Vol. 3. See also Tom Segev, The 7th Million, p. 19 and Piterberg’s book.
Ruppin was a die-hard believer in the racial sciences as were many of Zionism’s founders. For example Pinhas Felix Rosenbluth, a leading German Zionist (later to become Israeli Minister of Justice) wrote that Palestine is ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin.’ [Classic Zionism and Modern Anti-Semitism: Parallels and Influences (1883-1914), Joachim Doron, Studies in Zionism, No. 8 Autum 1981 citing “Feldbrief aus dem Osten’ Der judische Student (1914) p. 74.]
And when Ruppin, head of the Jewish Agency 1933-35 was accused of being anti-Semitic he retorted that ‘I have already established here that I despise the cancers of Judaism more than does the worst anti-Semite.’ [Diary 4.8.1893]. Ruppin even called for the execution of Dreyfuss, symbol of the fight against the reactionary and clerical anti-Semitism in France.
Yes Blood and Soil was a volkish and Nazi concept and Zionism reflected it, but that is precisely the point. Zionism adopted the outlook of the Jews’s persecutors. Yes the concept of ‘redemption’ of the Jewish soul is precisely what I mean. I reject the idea that there is a Jewish or any other type of soul. The whole concept was determintedly racist. That was the taunt of the Nazis and anti-semites more generally, that the Jews were concentrated in the professions and didn’t work in the manual trades. In fact they were wrong as East European Jews certainly did. But then they were the proletarianised hordes. Baron von Mildenstein, later head of the Jewish desk at the Gestapo travelled at the invitation of the German Zionists to Palestine in 1933 and wrote exactly on these lines in a series of articles for Goebbel’s Der Angriffe in 1934.
The point I make is a simple one. Zionism took on the colour of European anti-Semitism. It adopted the same outlook, the same definitions, the same terms of reference. It was a reaction to anti-Semitism not the cause thereof, but having achieved its own state it is behaving towards the Palestinians in the same way that Jews were treated in Europe.
As for the Law of Return the only point I am making is that the definition of who is a Jews is exactly the same as that in the 1935 Nuremburg Laws, a racial definition.
Zionism was one of a number of Jewish reactions to anti-Semitism. But it was also the most reactionary making deals with anti-Semites and openly opposing Jewish socialists, especially the Bund. When Herzl parleyed with the Czar’s Ministers (Plehve and Witte) and in return for support for Zionism agreed that Russia should not be criticised by the Zionist Organisation, the Bund denounced his venture as treason.
That to me seems a pretty fair analysis and I’d rather take my cue from the Jewish socialists of the Bund who led the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising than Ruppin who fawned over the worst Nazi race scientist.
Tony Greenstein
Hi duke, thankyou for responding. To answer your questions and points:-
”how much have you genuinely investigated the topic?”
As ‘genuinely’ as anyone with limited access to the truth. Even the most experienced historical, political, religious experts can’t agree on the simplest of issues. Even you, tony and rebbe with your superior knowledge can’t agree, so what chance have I of getting the facts. So lets stick to whats on table before us: A group of people(zionists) moved onto someonelses land and started ruffing them up,imprisoning and killing them(palistinians). This activity didnt just settle down and balance out, it esculated continually for over sixty years, to the place we are at now, with the zionist goverment having a strangle hold over the palestinians. With regard to this ”any arguments or facts that would lead to changing your opinion” the answer is no. The zionists in power have the weapons,the money,the resourses etc. This zionist activity is surely comparable to all power mad regimes intent on total domination? Step back and look at the situation objectivly for a minute, it isn’t right, is it?
When I referred to a zionist maxim, I was specifically refering to the zionists in power and their ultra defensive attacks on any critique of their regime. There are many examples expoused by the ADL etc.
” but the majority, I am also sure don’t” with what authority can you say this? Just a question.
I think what I meant by ”balanced and reasonable” was that you were more likely to get the ‘other side’ or at least
an equally polarised opinion e.g tonys view – rebbe view- dukes view and even my ‘uninformed’ view.
I can’t really argue about about all the jewish history because I’m only just finding out and don’t know, but I’d be interested in your view on whether the european jews are by definition semites. There is the question of jewish hierarchy in israel amogst the jews, could you tell me more about this as regards ashkenazi, sephardic etc.
Anyway, apology accepted, thankyou and I look forward to your reply. By the way Red in my name does not refer to my politic ie socialist.
Hi Tony,
1) I don’t see how the ‘to shoot and cry slogan’ points to any similarity between Nazism and Zionism.
As for who led the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I am not quite sure where you get your facts from? The two Jewish groups who fought the uprising were the ZOB and the ZZW. The ZOB was a formed by Hashomer Hatziar members (a socialist/Zionist youth movement) and the ZZW was formed by Betar members ie, revisionist Zionists – I am sure many Bundists took part in the uprising, but it was overwhelming led and organised by Zionist affiliated Jews. As always, the obligatory Wipipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising. Sorry if that upsets an idealised view of Bundist history.
2) Maybe they agonised about the effects on themselves precisely because they had realised what they had done. (Morality is ambiguous as it turns out)
3) I don’t see how Amos Oz visiting the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and being disappointed points to any similarity between Nazism and Zionism
4) “Separate but Equal” refers to the US constitution, and shouldn’t really be taken out of that context.
5) There are separate Arab and Jewish educational systems in Israel. This is not a racist policy, but the choice of the Arab population of Israel who wish to maintain their own ethnic and cultural identity.
6) There are huge issues relating to the funding levels of the Arab educational sector and admission of Arab students to Jewish schools, but again, I don’t really see the comparison between Nazism and Zionism.
7) Yes there are huge levels of racism in Israel, such as the statistics in the survey you have mentioned, and as you rightly say, they speak volumes about Israeli society. I don’t really see why this automatically leads you to compare Israel with Nazi Germany. It is a racist country, and there are a lot of them around the world, but they don’t get compared to Nazi Germany. They just get called racist and that is enough of a criticism.
9) As to whether “having achieved its own state Israel is behaving towards the Palestinians in the same way that Jews were treated in Europe” and this is because of anti Semitism, I don’t know. It might be true, or it might not. The problem is it is not provable by pointing to endless examples of racism in Israel and saying : “see! I told you, the same as Nazi Germany” because another person, such as myself will simply say, “sorry, I don’t really see the connection.”
10) In essence you are posing a psychological theory saying that anti Semitism suffered by Jews has led to an inversion whereby Jews are acting this anti Semitism out on the Palestinians, but you never give a psychological account of how and why this happened. All you do is point to examples that may or may not be similar to Nazi policies.
Also what do you make of the whole range of Zionist perspectives (including Zionist Perspectives in Israel) that do not seek to seek to act out anti Semitism on the native Arab population,
11) Also it leads me to again question why you are so keen to make the link between Israel and Nazi Germany. Israel is something that is happening in the here and now. Some people agree with its policies and some people don’t. Some people understand the place where some of its policies come from, yet disagree with their effect on the Palestinian people. Some people agree with some policies and disagree with others. What I am trying to say is that Israel is a morally ambiguous entity. It is certainly not always in the right, but it is not at all obvious that it is always in the wrong, or as a concept the fact that Israel exists is wrong. You might disagree and think that Israel is something that is wholly wrong in theory and in practice, but you cant have failed to notice that a huge number of people do not agree and see the moral ambiguity inherent within Israel/Zionism (ie. It might just might have a right to exist and some of its policies might have been intended for other reasons than to primarily oppress the Palestinian population).
With the crimes of Nazi Germany however, there is no ambiguity associated with them. It seems to me that by comparing Israel to Nazi Germany you are seeking to refuse the ambiguity inherent within Israeli society and Zionism generally. If Zionism/Israeli society is like Nazism, then they are in the wrong. If they are not similar to Nazi Germany, then moral ambiguity arises, and you need to adopt a more nuanced understanding of Israel and Zionism.
That is my major conceptual criticism of your whole article. It seems that you are trying to compare Israel and Nazi Germany so that you can point to the comparison and say that Israel is wrong, just like Nazi Germany. Unfortunately it is not a legitimate comparison. Not just because the comparisons rarely make any sense factually, but because Israel and Zionism are not unambiguously wrong in theory or practice. To acknowledge this would mean you might be a bit more circumspect about comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and being a bit more circumspect about comparing Israel and Nazi Germany might mean you might have to develop a bit more of a nuanced understanding of Zionism, its narratives and Israel. As you say, you are not trying to be balanced or reasonable, so if you want to compare Israel and Nazi Germany, go ahead, I don’t think anyone is going to ban you from doing so anytime soon.
Respectfully yours, Duke Nukem
Dear Duke,
I don’t have a great deal of time so these responses are fairly quick and off the cuff. But bear in mind 2 things.
Firstly that the Nazi period includes the non-exterminationist period. Secondly that the main point I am trying to make, and it is difficult because of the knee jerk reaction from those who have spent their whole political fortune in equating the oppressed, i.e. the Palestinians with Nazis. This point is simply that the Nazi period is not beyond history, is not unique and is a product of what went before it. I don’t know if you’ve ever actually read Mein Kampf but there are, in my edition, 3 quotes highlighted before the start of the book itself. One is from David Lloyd-George who is well known as someone who became and admirer of Hitler and visited him and two equally laudatory ones from Winston Churchill. If the Nazi period is to be understood other than a collection of dates and people then it has to become part of comparative history rather than the junk history of the Zionists, Bush and other imperialists from Anthony Eden onwards (for whom Nasser was Adolf reincarnate).
1) I don’t see how the ‘to shoot and cry slogan’ points to any similarity between Nazism and Zionism.
2) Maybe they agonised about the effects on themselves precisely because they had realised what they had done. (Morality is ambiguous as it turns out)
No it’s more than that. By comforting themselves that they are sensitive to what they have done the left-Zionist militias and soldiers, who made up the bulk of the Palmach shock troops, actually reinforce their sense of superiority and the belief that they have done right. What is the similarity between Nazism and Zionism in this? The same psychologicl mechanism of justification.
Perhaps the most important speech justifying the Holocaust, and incidentally the answer to the holocaust deniers, is the speech of Himmler to senior SS officers in Posen (Poznan) on October 1943. I quote a few short extracts:
‘We Germans, the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also take a decent attitude toward these human animals….
I also want to make reference before you here, in complete frankness, to a really grave matter. Among ourselves, this once, it shall be uttered quite frankly; but in public we will never speak of it. Just as we did not hesitate on June 30 1934 to do our duty as ordered, to stand up against the wall comrades who had transgressed and shoot them [Night of the Long Knives] so we have never talked about this and never will….
I am referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the annihilation of the Jewish people… To have stuck this out and – excepting cases of human weakness – to have kept our integrity, that is what has made us hard. In our history this is anunwritten and enver-to-be-written page of glory…. We had the moral right, we had the duty toward our people, to kill this people which wanted to kill us… [Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, pp. 130-140]
3) I don’t see how Amos Oz visiting the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and being disappointed points to any similarity between Nazism and Zionism
Mercaz Harav is the central institution of what Yeshayahu Leibowitz called the ‘Judeo-Nazis’ i.e. the settlers and their supporters. Leibowitz won the Israel prize prompting a veritable onslaught from the establishment led by Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin. He was a religious scholar as well as philosopher and Professor at the Hebrew University Jerusalem (I think he had 4 PhDs!] It was the yeshivah of Rabbi Zvi Cook, the founder of religious Zionism, Mizrahi and has provided the inspiration and support for the most fanatical and murderous of settlers.
4) “Separate but Equal” refers to the US constitution, and shouldn’t really be taken out of that context.
Why not? Are principles not to be applied outside of the immediate context? Was not the separation of the Jim Crow laws not similar to that of Apartheid South Africa [separate development is the meaning of Apartheid] and Israel’s own apartheid structures and practices? All the evidence suggests that if you discriminate and freeze out the indigenous people or any ethnic minority it is precisely because you intend to allocate to them inferior resources.
5) There are separate Arab and Jewish educational systems in Israel. This is not a racist policy, but the choice of the Arab population of Israel who wish to maintain their own ethnic and cultural identity.
You have to be joking. Israel’s Arabs never had a choice. The demand for separate education was a Zionist and religious Zionist one. It is a guarantee against pollution and assimilation. Are you not aware of the repeated comparisons by the religious between assimilation, which ‘loses’ a Jewish soul and the holocaust and the loss of millions of Jews?
6) There are huge issues relating to the funding levels of the Arab educational sector and admission of Arab students to Jewish schools, but again, I don’t really see the comparison between Nazism and Zionism.
Any form of systemised discrimination i.e. permanent racist structures bears comparison. It is the treatment of the outsider, be it the Arab in Israel or the gastarbeiter in Germany. Nazi racism didn’t fall out of the sky.
7) Yes there are huge levels of racism in Israel, such as the statistics in the survey you have mentioned, and as you rightly say, they speak volumes about Israeli society. I don’t really see why this automatically leads you to compare Israel with Nazi Germany. It is a racist country, and there are a lot of them around the world, but they don’t get compared to Nazi Germany. They just get called racist and that is enough of a criticism.
I’m not talking about levels of racism as are typical for western countries. You can put a ball park figure of between 5-10% possibly on overt expressions of racism in opinion polls. But when you get 3/4 of the people saying that to marry an Arab is ‘national treason’ – note treason, that marriage is considered a political act of disloyalty to the nation, then this is indeed comparable. It is like the accusation that those of us who are Jewish anti-Zionists have always faced – of being ‘self-haters’. Which was again the accusation that anti-fascist Germans faced from the Nazis.
It’s not a good idea to quote Wikipedia, especially on Israel. There have been systematic attempts by Zionist groups like Camera, to obliterate, delete, alter and deface anything which is anti-Zionist or simply tells the truth about what happened. The Israeli government is funding people to trawl the internet each day to defend Israel and Wikipedia is one of the main if not the main target.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was certainly not a mainly Zionist enterprise. Its main components were the Bund and to a lesser extent Jewish communists. Anielwicz was chosen to lead it because he was the only one who had military experience – he was a junior officer in the Polish Home Army. There were others like Hehalutz and Left-Poale Zion.
That the youth of Hashomer Hatzair and Hehalutz participated in the Ghetto Uprising doesn’t excuse the role of their parent organisations. E.g. one of the most notorious collaborators, who ZOB were unable to get their hands on, was Abraham Gancwajch, leader of the ’13′. He was also a leader of Hashomer Hatzair in Poland. [WD Rubinstein, 'The Left, Right and the Jews' p.110] In fact ZOB was formed jointly by Hashomer Hatzair and the Bund primarily. The Bund took their time agreeing to the formation because of their doubts about the record of the Zionist groups who they held to be guilty of ‘volunteerism’ setting up kibbutzim on Polish farms whose owners had been deported to Germany as slave labour.
The deputy commander of ZOB was Marek Edelman, who survived the Nazi razing of the ghetto. He was deliberately not called as a witness to the Eichman trial because of his anti-Zionist politics would have disturbed the attempt to restore the Zionist narrative of the holocaust after the disastrous Kasztner Affair which lasted 5 years (1953-8).
But the main point is this. The Zionist participants in ZOB were the youth. They were openly contemptuous of the Zionist leaders. Anielwicz expressed his regret over the “wasted time” he had spent undergoing Zionist educational work. Training on Kibbutzim in Poland and so on. The decision to fight the Nazis represented an abandonment of Zionism whose sole object was the building of a Jewish Palestine. On the contrary Anielwicz commanded that no one shoudl entertain hopes of escape. They would fight to the bitter end and the vast majority of Jewish combatants did just that. [Y. Guttman, ‘The Jews of Warsaw - 1939-1943, Ghetto Underground Revolt’, Harvester Press, 1982, p.143 citing Yitzhak Zuckerman and Counci1 of Kibbutz Hi Meuhad 4/1945] Guttman incidentally is a Yad Vashem historian, dedicated to the Zionist version of these events. Zionism isn’t a mark of Cain. Zionists in Eastern Europe swung between Zionism, i.e. the abandonment of the fight against anti-Semitism [it was inevitable] and fighting their oppressors. Like all political movements it contained people who, by and large, were susceptible to mood swings, changes in consciousness and events. Anielwicz went on to say that “had the fate of the Jews in 1942 lain in the hands only of the [Zionist] political parties , the revolt would never have taken place.” Gutmann, p. 441 fn. 23
It is true that Zionism today has claimed the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as its own but the truth is the reverse. Without the Bund there would have been no uprising. Why? Because the Zionists (with the partial exception of Left Poale Zion) believed in separating themselves off and then emigrating, not working with existing political forces. This posed a problem for any revolt – where to obtain weapons. The Revisionist ZZR obtained theirs via right-wing Polish nationalists (with whom they had worked closely, being sponsored by Marshall Pilsudski before hitting it off with Mussolini). The Bund had relationships, not good, with the Polish Home Army and the Jewish Communists of course had their links with the Polish CP. Hashomer Hatzair had none of these. They had to persuade the Bund to join with them. The Bund had prevented for months even the establishment of the Ghetto due to their agitation among Jews against the setting up of this prison. The Zionists of course were on a different planet.
9) As to whether “having achieved its own state Israel is behaving towards the Palestinians in the same way that Jews were treated in Europe” and this is because of anti Semitism, I don’t know. It might be true, or it might not. The problem is it is not provable by pointing to endless examples of racism in Israel and saying : “see! I told you, the same as Nazi Germany” because another person, such as myself will simply say, “sorry, I don’t really see the connection.”
I’ve never said that it is ‘the same as Nazi Germany’. Rather that there are disturbing similarities.
10) In essence you are posing a psychological theory saying that anti Semitism suffered by Jews has led to an inversion whereby Jews are acting this anti Semitism out on the Palestinians, but you never give a psychological account of how and why this happened. All you do is point to examples that may or may not be similar to Nazi policies.
Also what do you make of the whole range of Zionist perspectives (including Zionist Perspectives in Israel) that do not seek to seek to act out anti Semitism on the native Arab population,
TG: It is in the nature of all separatist movements, e.g. Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam or Marcus Garvey who at one point collaborated with the Ku Klux Klan or the radical feminists who adopted as their own a form of biological determinism, that in their reaction against their oppressor they take on the ideological viewpoint of the oppressor and claim it as their own. As the quotes I made from Rosenbluth and Ruppin, and I could quote far more, make clear is that the Zionists accepted the terms of reference of the anti-Semites. The Jews did not belong, they were strangers, they did have a distorted occupational structure (hence the ‘inverted pyramid’ of Ber Borochov, the mentor of Mapam/Hashomer Hatzair). Hence they drew the conclusion that as they were not wanted in Europe they should set up a state in Palestine. As Isaac Deutscher noted in ‘the non-Jewish Jew and other essays’ the anti-Semites shouted ‘Jews to Palestine’ and the Zionists echoed them.
Those Zionists who don’t seek to act out their anti-Semitism on the Palestinians are becoming fewer and fewer in number. Have you ever wondered where are the Peace Now demonstrations that once attracted 100,000 and more?
11) Also it leads me to again question why you are so keen to make the link between Israel and Nazi Germany. Israel is something that is happening in the here and now. Some people agree with its policies and some people don’t. Some people understand the place where some of its policies come from, yet disagree with their effect on the Palestinian people. Some people agree with some policies and disagree with others. What I am trying to say is that Israel is a morally ambiguous entity. It is certainly not always in the right, but it is not at all obvious that it is always in the wrong, or as a concept the fact that Israel exists is wrong. You might disagree and think that Israel is something that is wholly wrong in theory and in practice, but you cant have failed to notice that a huge number of people do not agree and see the moral ambiguity inherent within Israel/Zionism (ie. It might just might have a right to exist and some of its policies might have been intended for other reasons than to primarily oppress the Palestinian population).
With the crimes of Nazi Germany however, there is no ambiguity associated with them. It seems to me that by comparing Israel to Nazi Germany you are seeking to refuse the ambiguity inherent within Israeli society and Zionism generally. If Zionism/Israeli society is like Nazism, then they are in the wrong. If they are not similar to Nazi Germany, then moral ambiguity arises, and you need to adopt a more nuanced understanding of Israel and Zionism.
That is my major conceptual criticism of your whole article. It seems that you are trying to compare Israel and Nazi Germany so that you can point to the comparison and say that Israel is wrong, just like Nazi Germany. Unfortunately it is not a legitimate comparison. Not just because the comparisons rarely make any sense factually, but because Israel and Zionism are not unambiguously wrong in theory or practice. To acknowledge this would mean you might be a bit more circumspect about comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and being a bit more circumspect about comparing Israel and Nazi Germany might mean you might have to develop a bit more of a nuanced understanding of Zionism, its narratives and Israel. As you say, you are not trying to be balanced or reasonable, so if you want to compare Israel and Nazi Germany, go ahead, I don’t think anyone is going to ban you from doing so anytime soon.
TG: No I’m not comparing aspects of Nazi Germany and the Israeli State in order to ‘prove’ that Israel is morally bad. Firstly a country is not a person and has no morality. Secondly there are differences as well as similarities, the main one being that Israel is not a fascist country and has not moved to exterminate or liquidate the Palestinians. But given the right set of circumstances, such as occurred in 1982 in the Sabra and Chatilla camps in Beirut, then that is an option.
There are people who also say that whatever Nazi Germany did to the Jews they still built the autobahns and reduced unemployment. I make such comparisons for the purposes of illumination. It is an unfortunate fact that the oppressed or sections thereof, also become contaminated by their oppressor in the absence of a socialist perspective. We can see this in the way the elites of Africa like Mugabe behave towards those who liberated the country. There is an uncanny similarity in the way that Israel, uniquely today, has segregated and separated the Arabs from the Jews and in the process ensured that the former receive a morsel of the latter. All the areas in which Nazi Germany gradually separated off the Jews of Germany are relevant to the Arabs in Israel. Does that not make you pause for thought? A segregated education system is of course justified via religion. The injunction to go out, be fruitful and multiply justifies the difference in child and welfare benefits – to encourage Jewish women to produce more children. The same was true of Nazi Germany. Reproduction for race and nation. And I should say that the criteria used for benefits, being a relative/descendant of some who has served in the army did not apply to the most fruitful of all Jews, the ultra-orthodox. And how was this resolved? Through an increased grant to the Ministry of Religion to hand out to orthodox families!
Regards
Tony Greenstein
“So lets stick to whats on table before us: A group of people(zionists) moved onto someonelses land and started ruffing them up,imprisoning and killing them(Palestinians).”
Robert, these aren’t the basic facts of the conflicted – they are your facts. The whole issue of the conflict is that it is incredibly complicated and if you simplify the conflict and select ‘facts’ and ignore other facts and narratives then you are not properly going to understand the motives and viewpoints of others (including those you might be supporting). How about this for an alternative understanding of whats going on: Jews have a right to the land and Palestinians have a right to the land. To me that seems a pretty good starting point, and a pretty good explanation of the conflict, but then many people will disagree with those assertions too.
You say that Israel has all the power and the money, but that does not automatically mean Israel is in the wrong, and if you want to say that Israel is a power mad regime intent on total domination, that is your prerogative. It is not an opinion I share. I do not think Israel is ‘power mad’ whatever that might mean, although obviously it over steps the mark with respect to how it wields its power, and I also do not see that Israel is intent on total domination: there are a huge number of people in Israel and the wider Jewish (Zionist) world in prominent ‘Zionist’ positions who argue precisely that Zionism isn’t about the oppression and domination of another people and the last thing they want is for the occupation of the Palestinian people to continue one minute longer.
As for what you mean by the ‘Zionists in power’, talking about Zionists in power is a bit of a problematic concept in the sense that there is no one doctrine of what Zionism is and there is no one doctrine that ‘Zionists in power’ adhere to. Different ‘Zionists’ are in power at different times, and they are in power because they are elected (If by this you are referring to the Israeli government) based on the wishes of the Israeli voting public (including the Arab population of Israel). Also there are those people who are ‘zionists’ (ie. would call themselves Zionists) and have power because they wield influence. The ADL are not in power – they are an interest group and they have power because they have influence and people listen to what they say. Just like people listen to prominent Rabbis from a left wing Zionist perspective, just like people listen to columnists in the JC, and just like people listen to a much lesser extent to Zionist perspectives within lets say Jewdas.
As for on what authority I say the majority don’t – I am Jewish. I spend a large part of my life speaking to Jews, hanging out in Jewish circles and consuming Jewish media. That’s the authority I say it with – it’s just my personal judgement.
I don’t quite understand your question about European Jews being by definition Semites, but yes to me European Jews are by definition Semites – both in the dictionary sense of what it is to be a Semite and also in the genetic sense that genetic studies have shown that European Jews have much more genes in common with non European Jews than with the wider Jewish population, and also I think with other people from the Middle East. Check out the section ‘DNA clues’ in this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews
Maybe you are referring to some stuff that you have seen about Ashkenazi Jews being descendants of Khazars. I would tread carefully about taking this kind of stuff seriously, as it seems to me to be a mixture of half truths and slurs. There is a reason why certain people want to propagate theories like this and it is by doing so they seek to delegitimise the right of Jews to be Zionists – on the basis that if Jews are actually descendents of Khazars, then they have absolutely no right to settle in Israel. It is true incidentally, and it is an interesting and strange episode of Jewish history, that there was a large en mass conversion of Khazars to Judaism way back when.
As to your question about Jewish hierarchy in Israel between Ashkenazi, Sephardi etc. In the early years of the state, Israeli society was generally speaking dominated by an Ashkenazi elite, with various other groups underneath (in order of economic status) Mizrachi/Sephardi Jews, later on Ethiopian Jews and then below them Israeli Arabs. There were various reasons for this; some institutional, some racial, some informal, some simply cultural, and today there are some divisions between Ashkenazi Jews and Mizrachi Jews. Some people would say this is still hierachical, and others would say it is more of a North/South type thing like we have in this country. What is clear is that increasingly, Mizrachi Jews hold positions of power ie. high political office, high positions in the IDF etc, are instrumental in Israel’s cultural life and that there are high rates of intermarriage between Mizrachi and Ashkenazi, so that the idea of an Ashkenazi elite is becoming less and less representative of the true picture of Israel (at least that is what many people argue.)
I point you to two articles. The first by Khaled Diab, who I don’t rate at all as a commentator on Israel, basically for the reasons stated by Litah at the top of the comments section and the other by Lynn Julius.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/01/middle-east-israel-mizrahi
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/03/israel-arab-jewish-mizrahi
Cheers, Duke
Duke say that the issues around the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are ‘incredibly complicated’. I disagree. They are extremely simple but as is always the way with settler colonialism, be it Palestine/Israel, Ireland or South Africa, the colonists have a vested interested in making them complicated!
Between 1850 and 1914 some 2.5 million Jews fled the pogroms and anti-semitism in Russia (which included much of Poland). Do you know how many of them went to Palestine? Less than 2%. There was nothing to stop them going to Palestine. There were no immigration barriers or borders as such. Yet 98% preferred the USA or UK. That in itself should say something about what is described as ‘Jews have a right to the land’. Why? Because their religion talks in spiritual and mystical terms about next year in Jerusalem? There was nothing for the 3 centuries of the Ottoman Empire that prevented each and every Jew in Europe migrating. Why didn’t they? Because people generally don’t emigrate in order to become poorer than they already are.
Who were the 2% that did emigrate to Palestine? The traditional colonists of the 1st Aliya from 1882 to 1900, the Biluim, who oversaw the exploitation of Arab labour on the settlements of Baron Edmond de Rothschild and the Zionist colonists of the 2nd Aliya onwards who sought to exclude the Arabs, first from the economy and then from the land altogether.
And if a religion grew up in France that held the ‘return’ to Palestine was also part of their theology, would they too have a right to the land?
There is no doubt that the Zionists were colonialists. Colonialism in the late 19th century was completely respectable. It was the solution to unemployment and the vagabonds of Victorian England. That was the theory of people Edward Gibbon Wakefeld. I say there is no doubt that the Zionists were colonists because they colonised the land, they settled on it and they drove ou t the indigenous populace and aimed to form a State to supplant them. The proof of that is the fact that they described themselves as colonists. Read something like Ben Gurion’s Rebirth & Destiny where he repeatedly refers to them as colonists. Or institutions such as the Jewish Colonisation Agency.
I don’t quite understand why I or Duke has a ‘right’ to land in Palestine. By what right do I have right to return? That I was born Jewish? Why is that a greater or an equal right to someone born there who is Palestinian and not allowed to return?
I said it was a simple issue in Palestine because it is. Zionist colonists came, armed with the bible in one hand and a rifle in the other. They bought land from largely absentee landlords and without fail evicted the existing peasants and they set about creating Jewish only settlements as a precursor to a Jewish state, which they did their best to ensure was purely Jewish. In the process they created organisations like the Jewish National Fund which bars Arabs from leasing, renting or buying the 93% of Israeli land in the hands of the state or quasi-state organisations. It really is so simple once one has overcome the usual justifications for colonialism.
It is pretty much an accepted fact that most Jews in Europe are descended from the Khazars. They are clearly not semitic, which refers to a genus of languge anyway. Not that biological roots would or should entitle someone to any such right over those who do live there. The fact that anti-Jewish racism is called anti-Semitism because an anti-Semite in 1870, Wilhelm Marr, called it such, doesn’t change existing facts.
Missing in this is the best seller that Shlomo Sands has written ‘The Invention of the Jewish People’ that throws all such myths into stark relief. Info below
http://inventionofthejewishpeople.com/about/
The Invention of the Jewish People
by Shlomo Sand
‘Shlomo Sand has written a remarkable book. In cool, scholarly prose he has, quite simply, normalized Jewish history … Anyone interested in understanding the contemporary Middle East should read this book.² –Tony Judt
³One of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time²‹Tom Segev
Publisher’s blurb:
“A historical tour de force that demolishes the myths and taboos that have surrounded Jewish and Israeli history, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a new account of both that demands to be read and reckoned with. Was there really a forced exile in the first century, at the hands of the Romans? Should we regard the Jewish people, throughout two millennia, as both a distinct ethnic group and a putative nation returned at last to its Biblical homeland?
“Shlomo Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation out of these disparate groups could only take place under the sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise of nationalism throughout Europe. Beneath the biblical backfill of the nineteenth-century historians, and the twentieth-century intellectuals who replaced rabbis as the architects of Jewish identity, The Invention of the Jewish People uncovers a new narrative of Israel¹s formation, and proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the old myths.
“After a long stay on Israel¹s bestseller list, and winning the coveted Aujourd¹hui Award in France, The Invention of the Jewish People is finally available in English. The central importance of the conflict in the Middle East ensures that Sand¹s arguments will reverberate well beyond the historians and politicians that he takes to task. Without an adequate understanding of Israel¹s past, capable of superseding today¹s opposing views, diplomatic solutions are likely to remain elusive. In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel¹s future.
“Shlomo Sand studied history at the University of Tel Aviv and at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, in Paris. He currently teaches contemporary history at the University of Tel Aviv. His other books include L¹Illusion du politique: Georges Sorel et le débat intellectuel 1900, Georges Sorel en son temps, Le XXe siècle à l¹écran and Les Mots et la terre: les intellectuels en Israël.”