Comparing Zionists or Israel to Nazis is Anti-Semitic – Isn’t It?

One of the main crimes that I am apparently accused of in my suspension from the Labour Party [I haven't been informed of them by the Labour Party but by the Daily Telegraph and The Times] is that I compared Israel’s marriage laws to the Nazi Nuremberg Laws.  

The coin that the Nazis struck on the return from a 6 month visit to Palestine by Baron von Mildestein - head of the Jewish section of the Gestapo - he was a guest of the Labour Zionist kibbutzim

In Activist who derides critics as 'Zionist scum' admitted to Labour inlatest anti-Semitism scandal to hit Party The Telegraph wrote that I had written that ‘Jews supported the Nuremberg laws’.  The Telegraph had confused ‘Zionists’ with ‘Jews’.  There is no doubt historically that the German Zionist Federation did support the Nuremberg Laws.

In the printed version of the Telegraph it alleged that I had ‘compared Israel’s views on inter-racial marriage to the Nazi party’s Nuremberg laws on race.’

Daily Telegraph 2.9.16. 'Corbyn told to exorcise anti-Semitism in his party'

The  Times wrote that I had compared an Israeli soldier, who 50,000 Israelis had proposed for a military award to the honour attached to the SS.  

The Times, 2.4.16. 'Labour welcomes back blogger who compares Israelis to Nazis'

And telling the truth is anti-Semitic

Indeed I did both of these things.  The soldier, Elor Azarya, deliberately shot in the head a Palestinian who had stabbed a soldier, when he was lying wounded on the ground, already severely injured by a bullet.  The Palestinian had been shot but not killed.  Elor Azarya told another   soldier that he ‘deserved to die.’  Later inspection of the soldier’s Facebook page revealed he was a supporter of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded Kach, a neo-Nazi Jewish terrorist group.  Kach campaigns for the compulsory expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and for imprisoning Palestinian males who have sexual relations with Jews (just as with the Nazis, it isn’t an offence if it is a Jewish male having sex with a non-Jew). 

In Israel though the soldier is not considered a murderer, other than by 5% of the Jewish population.  A full 57% believe his actions, deliberately executing a wounded Palestinian, were justified, even though the soldier was in no danger.  50,000 people have signed a petition calling for him to be given a medal!

How do I plead to all these charges?  Absolutely guilty.  But it wasn’t me who compared Israel’s racial laws to the Nazi’s Nuremberg laws.  That honour belongs to the greatest political philosopher in the last century, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany by the name of Hannah Arendt.  In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem – The Banality of Evil she compared Israel’s marriage laws, which prevent a Jew marrying a non-Jew (because there is deliberately no civil marriage in Israel) to the Nuremberg laws, which also forbade the marriage of a Jew with an ‘Aryan’.  She wrote:

Hannah Arendt - Eichmann in Jerusalem - The Banality of Evil p.7 compares the prohibition of marriage between Jew & non-Jew in Israel to the forbidding of marriage or sexual relations between Jew & 'Aryan' in Nazi Germany

 But it was even worse.  As Francis Nicosia, the Raul Hilberg Professor of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University noted, Berl Katznelson, a founder of Mapai and editor of Labour Zionism’s daily paper, Davar, second only to David Ben-Gurion, saw the rise of Hitler as “an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”. [Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p.91]

Francis Nicosia, Zionism & Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p. 91.

The Zionists were a tiny minority amongst German Jews, most of whom were horrified at the formation of a Nazi government on January 30 1933.   The reaction of Jews internationally was equally one of horror and they determined on an international Boycott of Nazi Germany.  The Zionists, both in Germany and internationally were fiercely opposed to a Boycott.  Instead they concluded, in August 1933, a trade agreement, Ha'avara with Nazi Germany.

The German Zionist Federation wrote to Hitler in June 1933 (they never got an answer)  that:

‘On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race... fruitful activity for the fatherland is possible. Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we don’t wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we too are against mixed marriages and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group…. The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda… is in essence fundamentally unZionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build. [Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, p.150-153]

Excerpts from letter the German Zionist Federation wrote to Hitler

Rabbi Joachim Prinz, the President of the ZVfD and later Vice-Chairman of the World Jewish Congress, wrote an article ‘Zionism Under the Nazi Government’ in The Young Zionist, November 1937 (cited in Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, p. 52) that:

‘Everyone in Germany knew that only the Zionists could responsibly represent the Jews in dealing with the Nazi government.  We all felt sure that one day the government would arrange a round table conference with the Jews… there was no country in the world which tried to solve the Jewish problem as seriously as did Germany… It was our Zionist dream!… Dissimilation?  It was our own appeal!…’ [Joachim Prinz, ‘Zionism under the Nazi Government’, Young Zionist, London Nov. 1937 p.18].     

Rabbi Joachim Prinz, President of the German Zionist Federation and later Vice-Chairman of the World Jewish Congress

So my disciplinary hearing faces a problem.  Is it going to constitute itself as a historical investigation?  Surely not something it is equipped to do or is it going to make it an expulsion offence under the Labour Party's rules to tell the truth on a matter of historical fact?

Tony Greenstein

Telegraph Retracts Any Suggestion That Implied That Tony Greenstein Was Anti-Semitic

After making clear to the Daily Telegraph my views on their article Activist who derides critics as 'Zionist scum' admitted to Labour in latest anti-Semitism scandal to hit Party and that I would, if necessary, bring legal action, the Telegraph has agreed to include the following at the end of the article:

‘CLARIFICATION:  Since this article was published, we have been asked to make clear that we had not intended to imply that Tony Greenstein is anti-Semitic. We are happy to do so. 

This does, of course, make the aforementioned article, a complete nonsense!

The Telegraph will also be carrying a letter from me making my views clear on the subject matter of the article.

Tony Greenstein 

No British Collaboration in the Murder of Palestinians

Demonstration Friday 8 April 2016 Thales Arms Factory in Crawley

Today there was a lively demonstration of about 70 people organised by Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Sussex Stop Arming Israel (SSAI) group.  It was covered on RT and in the local press and is a very good start.

Thales (UK) works with the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems to develop the Watchkeeper drone, modelled on Elbit’s Hermes 450 drone used extensively over Gaza. Thales is therefore a major target in the STOP ARMING ISRAEL campaign.

The contract to develop the Watchkeeper drone is worth about £1 billion.  It is this which lies between all the ‘anti-Semitism’ nonsense in and around the Labour Party.

We are calling on campaigning groups in London and the South East to endorse, publicise and come along to this demonstration to give a clear message to Thales that:

• they are complicit in Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people through their joint enterprise with Israeli arms company Elbit Systems
• arms manufacturers are not welcome in our communities.

Why Thales?

The UK’s Watchkeeper drone has been developed under a £1 billion joint venture contract awarded by the Ministry of Defence to Thales UK and Israel’s Elbit Systems, allowing the UK military to benefit from technologies that have been ‘field tested’ on the Palestinians.

The Crawley factory is one of Thales’s largest facilities in the UK.

The Watchkeeper drone project illustrates the collaboration between the UK government and Israel, and the joint working between private arms companies from both countries.

The demo outside the Thales arms factory in Crawley on April 8th will be an important part of the campaign for a two-way arms embargo against Israel, as called for by the Palestinian BDS National Committee:

“A comprehensive military embargo on Israel is long overdue. It would form a crucial step towards ending Israel’s unlawful and criminal use of force against the Palestinian people and other peoples and states in the region and would constitute an effective, non-violent measure to pressure Israel to comply with its obligations under international law.” 

These are critical times for Palestinians.There is evidence that Israel, supported by its ever-belligerent US backers, is planning another murderous attack on defenceless Gaza civilians, in tandem with its brutal attacks on Palestinian resistance in the Occupied West Bank.

Bring banners and other displays for a lively visual impact at the factory’s surrounding fence!

See also the CrawleyNews 

US Police More Violence Against Black People

US Cops Slam 12 Year Old Girl Head First to Ground

Times Prints Letter But Savagely Cuts It!

The Times, despite refusing initially, has printed a letter I sent them by way of reply to their article at the weekend.  See Labour Party Witch-hunters Employ the Daily Torygraph to Pursue Bogus Allegations of Anti-Semitism  

The letter I sent them was:

Friday, 08 April 2016

The Times

1 London Bridge Street,

London

SE1 9GF.

letters@thetimes.co.uk

Dear Sir/Madam,

Zachary Spiro [Labour welcomes back blogger who compares Israel to Nazis, April 2^nd] suggests that my opposition to Zionism and Israel’s virulent racism are anti-Semitic.  I refute this entirely.  It is no accident that Spiro ‘forgot’ to mention that I am Jewish.

When the Prime Minister of Israel goes on Facebook to complain that ‘Arabs are voting in droves’ then there is clearly something wrong in Israeli society.

Spiro finds it shocking that I have stated that the Israeli state does its best to prevent Jews and Arabs marrying or having relationships.  What is shocking is that organisations such as the fascist Lehava are funded by the Israeli state in order to violently campaign against Jewish-Arab liasons.  Lehava is led by a man, Benzi Gopstein, who openly justifies burning down mosques and churches.

Yes I posted an article ‘When Nuremberg Came to Israel’.  Just 3 months ago Israel’s Ministry of Education removed from the high-school English syllabus a book ‘Borderlife’ which depicted relationships between Jewish and Arab teenagers because this threatened ‘national identity’. [see Israel Bans Novel on Arab-Jewish Romance From Schools for 'Threatening Jewish Identity' Ha’aretz, 31.12.15. http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.694620]  Preventing Jewish and non-Jewish relationships lay at the heart of the Nuremberg Laws.

Most western societies would find it shocking that a crowd of hundreds of people would hold a demonstration outside a marriage reception for a Jewish and Arab couple chanting ‘death to the Arabs’.  In Israel this is normal.

The horrifying growth in racism in Israel is indeed comparable to anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany.  According to opinion polls, over half of Israel’s population believe marriage to an Arab is ‘national treason’ and more Jews support the expulsion of Israel’s Arabs than oppose it.  Instead of pillorying me you might like to report on the reality of life in Israel.

The reason that there is no civil marriage in Israel is in order to prevent the marriage of Jews and non-Jews.  Hannah Arendt remarked, in Eichmann in Jerusalem over 50 years ago, the breathtaking hypocrisy involved in condemning the Nuremberg trials when Jews and Arabs are unable to marry in Israel.  Perhaps the greatest Jewish political scientist in the last century, herself a refugee from Nazi Germany, was also anti-Semitic?

I have been refused all details of the allegations that led to my suspension.  It was only when  this information was leaked to you and the Daily Telegraph that I finally knew.  That is the real story which you should be publicising.

Yours faithfully,

Tony Greenstein 

Lies in the Service of the Witch-hunters - McNicol Denies Labour Party HQ leaked to Telegraph

Labour Party General Secretary ‘regrets’ leak of information to Telegraph 

Ian McNicol - lying to protect serial leakers in the Compliance Unit

Well Iain McNicol responded to my email.  I had written making the point that I had not yet had sight of the reasons for my suspension from the Party whereas the Daily Telegraph had been informed.  McNicol responded ‘entirely refuting’ that the leak was from the Compliance Unit.  Since it could hardly come from me, it begs the question where it did come from.  MI5 is about the only other candidate unless there has been a burglary at Labour Party headquarters.

Iain McNicol - General Secretary of Labour Party and from GMB union - not Ed Miliband's first choice for post

 I have written back to McNicol asking who the hell could leak this information bar the complainants themselves, though the story in the Te legraph suggests that they also knew details of what it calls my previous application.  In fact I applied to become a registered supporter not a member.  If it was the complainant that should throw doubt about their motives for making the complaint in the first place.

John Stolliday - former Head of Media Monitoring now in charge of Witch-hunting Department - on Permanent Leave and in a job with no benefit to the Labour Party

It is therefore a deliberate lie and of course McNicol is hardly going to investigate his own lies.

The fact remains that the Zionist lobby in and outside the Labour Party has targeted a Jewish anti-Zionist with strong anti-fascist credentials for having the temerity to criticise the racist Israeli state and its actions.

It is however gratifying that yesterday, after less than 2 days notice, some 52 Jewish members of the Labour Party put their names to a letter to the National Executive opposing my suspension.

Anyone who is Jewish and a member of the Labour Party is encouraged to add their names either via Jews 4 Jeremy or at my own email at azvsas@gmail.com

Tony Greenstein

Dear Mr McNicol,

Despite writing twice to the Compliance or is it Constitutional Unit, as Mr Stolliday titled it, noone responded to my correspondence.  The first email was sent c/o a Ms Sophie Goodyear, who didn't have the courtesy to even acknowledge my correspondence still less to inform me of Mr Stolliday's absence or who was deputising for him.

In any event Mr Stolliday bears the responsibility for the department of which he is the head, a department which has a culture of leaking.  I will ask you once again.  Are you going to investigate how and why the details about why I was suspended were leaked to the Daily Telegraph, a paper which is almost an appendage of the Tory party?  If not why not?

If the Compliance Unit did not leak the details of the allegations against me then how did they get into the public domain?  The Telegraph explicitly stated that:

'Evidence compiled by Labour's compliance unit when Mr Greenstein attempted to join the party last summer, seen by The Telegraph,...'

 If it wasn't leaked by the Compliance Unit, unlikely in view of the above, then it could only have been leaked by the Complainants, in which case their motives for making the complaint should immediately be suspect and itself negate continuing with their complaint.

I am therefore faced with the situation whereby information has been handed over to The Telegraph concerning my suspension yet I have not been given any information other than via the Tory press.   I will therefore ask you now to instruct the Compliance Unit to send me the full dossier of allegations and complaints which have been made against me.

You say that you regret that information was leaked to the media but I see no signs that you are prepared to do anything about it.  If you are unwilling to take action regarding the leak of  information and are also not prepared to ensure that I am given full information regarding the complaints made against me then, as General Secretary of the Labour Party, you are also complicit in what has happened.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Dear Mr Greenstein

I am aware of your suspension and that Harry Gregson, as the investigating officer, has written to you to about the matter.

I am disappointed that you have taken the opportunity to make an unwarranted attack on a hardworking and diligent member of the Compliance Unit. John Stolliday has been out of the country on leave since 21^st March, and no doubt he will respond to your outstanding correspondence upon his return.

Like you I regret that information was given to the media. However, I entirely refute the allegation that the Compliance Unit leaked any details of your suspension to the Daily Telegraph or to anyone else.

The investigation will proceed as set out and you will, no doubt, make your points clearly to Mr Gregson.

Yours sincerely

Iain McNicol

General Secretary

The Labour Party

Southside, 105 Victoria Street

London

SW1E 6QT

---

From: Tony Greenstein <tonygreenstein111@gmail.com>
Sent: 04 April 2016 16:57
To: Iain McNicol
Cc: annblack; Jim Kennedy; Gordon Pattison; christineshawcroft; Mike Creighton
Subject: My suspension and articles in Saturday's Times and Telegraph

Dear Mr McNicol,

I enclose a letter to Jeremy Corbyn regarding my suspension on March 18th.

I was given no reason for my suspension other than it was for comments I was alleged to have made.  Despite refusing to let me know what the comments were they were leaked to last Saturday's Daily Telegraph.

I have previously written, twice, without a response to John Stolliday asking for details of the same.  He did not deign to reply.  Instead he or someone in his department decided to leak that information to the Daily Telegraph of all papers.

The allegations appear to be regarding anti-Semitism.  Since I have been an anti-fascist activist most of my life and I have even written the only book on the fight against fascism in Brighton and on the South Coast this is pernicious  nonsense.   I oppose Zionism, I don't support anti-Semitism.  Unsurprisingly since I am Jewish.

See the Review in the local Brighton Argus

In view of the deliberate leaking of details of my suspension to the Tory press, I am asking that Stolliday be immediately suspended and an investigation begun into who leaked what.

Tony Greenstein

In Israel even conversion to becoming Jewish depends on your race

Not everyone can join the herrenvolk

One of the arguments used by those who say that Zionism is not racist is that anyone can convert to being Jewish and thus become part of the master race in Israel.  There is no barrier if you meet the religious criteria of adherence to Orthodoxy, observance of the commandments (mitzvot) etc.

Now we learn that Israel’s conversion authority routinely rejects Palestinian and refugee requests to convert on grounds of ethnicity or their legal status as refugees.  What has one’s status as a refugee got to do with religious adherence?  Nothing of course.  Except of course that the Orthodox Jewish institutions fulfills much the same function vs the Israeli state as the Reich Church in Germany fulfilled in respect of the Nazi state.  The difference was that in Nazi Germany the Confessing Church supplanted the Reich Church which became unpopular with German Christians (not the Confessing Church ever stood up to the Nazis).

In Slovakia during WW2 approximately 10% of Slovakian Jews, between 6,000 and 8,000 converted to Christianity to escape deportation.  In Budapest in 1944 thousands of Jews converted for the same reason.  Almost without exception the Churches put no obstacles in the way of conversion, even though they knew that the reasons for conversion were to save themselves rather than out of religious devotion.  In the majority of case it did not save the Jewish converts from deportation though it did in somc cases.

Tony Greenstein

'Palestinian requests to convert to Judaism rejected automatically'

JTA  Fri, 01 Apr 2016 

Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, director of the Israeli government’s Conversion Authority, made the statement earlier this week, according to NRG.

Photo by: REUTERS

Israel’s authority handling conversions to Judaism rejects Palestinian applicants without review because of their ethnic origin, its head said.

Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, director of the Israeli government’s Conversion Authority, spoke about his organization’s handling of requests by Palestinians to convert on Tuesday during a discussion on conversions at the State Control Committee of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, the news site NRG reported.

To initiate an officially recognized conversion to Judaism in Israel, foreigners need to apply to the special cases panel of the Conversion Authority.

“The threshold requirements” to be considered by the special cases panel, he said, “are that applicants be sincere and that they are not foreign workers; infiltrators; Palestinian or illegally in the country.” In 2014, he added, the special cases committee received 400 applications. “Half of the applicants were accepted, the rest were rejected as foreign workers, infiltrators, illegal stayers and Palestinians,” he said.

Conversions to Judaism by Palestinians are rare in Israel.

Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which is the legal basis for the country’s basic laws  - a set often referred to the equivalent of Israel’s constitution - ensures “absolute social and political equality to all its citizens regardless of faith, race and gender.”

The Israeli government fears that Palestinian attempts to convert to Judaism would be a covert form of realizing "the right of return," which is demanded by Arabs who were forced to flee or fled their former homes and lands in pre-state Israel just before the state's founding.

'African infiltrators have no halachic affiliation to the Jewish people' (archives) Photo: Gil Yohanan

Israel rejects Africans' request to convert to Judaism

Dozens of Eritrean and Sudanese infiltrators have asked to become part of Jewish people in past year bid to receive residence permit and perhaps even Israeli citizenship, Ynet learns.

Kobi Nachshoni

Published: 06.11.14, 00:19 / Israel Jewish Scene

Dozens of Eritrean and Sudanese infiltrators residing in Israel illegally have requested to convert to Judaism in the past year in a bid to receive a residence permit and perhaps even an Israeli citizenship, Ynet has learned.

Their requests were rejected out of hand by the Conversion Authority for failing to meet preconditions.

Refugee Problem

According to figures compiled by the Ministry of Religious of Services, dozens of Africans tried to begin a conversion process, and most requests were made when the infiltrators' problem was at the center of the public and media's attention.

A ministry official estimates that the immediate refusal made the entire community realize that it would not find a solution to its distress that way, and the number of requests soon diminished.

"The government built a fence in the south, on the state's border, and we built one here, at the entrance gate to the Jewish people," Shmuel Jeselsohn, head of the State Conversion Authority, told Ynet. "That's why even when there are infiltrators seeking to convert – it's not a phenomenon."

Rejected without discussion

According to Jeselsohn, until a few years ago there were no precondition for conversion, so that "everyone who was deported or banned entry to Israel would immediately knock on the door, and we had to summon them for an interview and start a process.

"This has been stopped," he added, 'and now foreign nationals are required to fill out a form requesting a conversion, which is discussed together with Justice Ministry representatives. If the request is filed by an illegal resident, it will be denied immediately.'

Yet religious sources have expressed their fear that the state will regularize the status of African infiltrators in the future and allow them to reside in Israel. In such a case, they will have the legal right to convert, despite the fact that they have no halachic affiliation to the Jewish people.

"The stories we hear from the religious courts, that they allegedly abuse converts, will pale in comparison to what we are expected to see with the Africans," a Conversion Authority source told Ynet.

"Today we are still talking about immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who in the worst case are assimilators of Jewish descent, and so we are still lenient with them. But here we are talking about tens of thousands who want to assimilate into us and have no connection to Judaism."

Appeals received from Palestinians too

Jeselsohn says the tension between the civil law and Jewish Law is built into the conversion issue, but is hardly witnessed these days.

Jeselsohn offers one example: "A while ago I met a woman with a head cover, who obviously maintains a very religious lifestyle and really wants to be part of the Jewish people. But then it turned out that several years ago she tried to enter Israel without a permit, and so legally she must not be converted."

Today, the exceptions committee allows the Conversion Authority to begin the process for a person who fails to meet the preconditions only in very rare cases. According to Jeselsohn, "We are occasionally approached by Palestinians who experience problems entering Israel."

He recalls an amusing incident when a Bedouin who began taking Judaism lessons called to inquire why he was not receiving an allowance like any other yeshiva student.