Comments on: Banning Comparisons between Nazism and Zionism http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/ radical voices for the alternative diaspora... Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:17:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 By: Tony Greenstein http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/comment-page-1/#comment-174 Tony Greenstein Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:05:49 +0000 http://www.jewdas.org/?p=1044#comment-174 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." 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.”

]]> By: Duke Nukem http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/comment-page-1/#comment-173 Duke Nukem Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:56:11 +0000 http://www.jewdas.org/?p=1044#comment-173 “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 “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

]]> By: Tony Greenstein http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/comment-page-1/#comment-167 Tony Greenstein Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:07:16 +0000 http://www.jewdas.org/?p=1044#comment-167 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. 8) 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. 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 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.

8) 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.

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

]]> By: Duke Nukem http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/comment-page-1/#comment-163 Duke Nukem Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:50:36 +0000 http://www.jewdas.org/?p=1044#comment-163 Hi Tony, 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) 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. 8) 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. 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 Hi Tony,

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)
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.
8) 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.
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

]]> By: robert red http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/comment-page-1/#comment-158 robert red Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:05:29 +0000 http://www.jewdas.org/?p=1044#comment-158 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 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.

]]> By: Anti-Racist http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/comment-page-1/#comment-157 Anti-Racist Mon, 17 Aug 2009 03:27:24 +0000 http://www.jewdas.org/?p=1044#comment-157 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 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

]]> By: Duke Nukem http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/comment-page-1/#comment-154 Duke Nukem Sun, 16 Aug 2009 13:07:07 +0000 http://www.jewdas.org/?p=1044#comment-154 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. 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.

]]> By: Tony Greenstein http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/comment-page-1/#comment-152 Tony Greenstein Sun, 16 Aug 2009 01:03:58 +0000 http://www.jewdas.org/?p=1044#comment-152 Maybe the reason why Nukem Duke missed the really obvious was that he was yawning at the time! Maybe the reason why Nukem Duke missed the really obvious was that he was yawning at the time!

]]> By: Robert Red http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/comment-page-1/#comment-151 Robert Red Sat, 15 Aug 2009 10:54:37 +0000 http://www.jewdas.org/?p=1044#comment-151 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. 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.

]]> By: Duke Nukem http://www.jewdas.org/2009/08/banning-comparisons-between-nazism-and-zionism/comment-page-1/#comment-150 Duke Nukem Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:20:21 +0000 http://www.jewdas.org/?p=1044#comment-150 Yawn Yawn Yawn Yawn Yawn Yawn

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