A letter from an Israeli History Professor Shlomo Sand to the President of France

Why I Cannot be a Zionist: an Open Letter to Emmanuel Macron

 Photo by OFFICIAL LEWEB PHOTOS | CC BY 2.0

This is a powerful open letter to the French President Macron by Israeli Professor Shlomo Sand.  Macron a few weeks ago made a particularly stupid statement, even for a French Blairite, when he declared that anti-Zionism was the new anti-Semitism.  This of course has been the message of Zionism for the last 30 years.

You wonder why people who are, at least on the surface, superficially intelligent, repeat this vacuous nonsense.  Anyone with any understanding of Zionism would know that it was Jewish people who were always its fiercest opponents.  Jews saw in Zionism the validation of anti-Semitism.  It was a Jewish form of anti-Semitism.  Anti-Zionism rejected the idea that Jews could not live with non-Jews, that anti-Semitism was part of the non-Jewish psyche and could never be eradicated.  Zionism was racist even in its attitude to Jews.  It was no wonder that an ideology that was transfixed by the racist nostrums of its day should, in turn, treat the Palestinians in the same way as the Jews of Europe were treated.

Please read!

Tony Greenstein

France's increasingly unpopular and intellectually lightweight President Macron

To President Macron

As I began reading your speech on the commemoration of the Vel d’Hiv round-up, I felt grateful toward you. Indeed, in the light of the long tradition of political leaders, both Left and Right, past and present, who have denied France’s participation and responsibility in the deportation of Jewish-origin people to the death camps, I was grateful that you instead took a clear position, without any ambiguity: yes, France is responsible for the deportation, yes there was anti-Semitism in France before and after the Second World War. Yes, we must continue to fight all forms of racism. I saw these positions as standing in continuity with the courageous statement you made in Algeria, saying that colonialism constitutes a crime against humanity.

But to be wholly frank, I was rather annoyed by the fact that you invited Benjamin Netanyahu. He should without doubt be ranked in the category of oppressors, and so he cannot parade himself as a representative of the victims of yesteryear. Of course, I have long known the impossibility of separating memory from politics. Perhaps you were deploying a sophisticated strategy, still yet to be revealed, aimed at contributing to the realisation of an equitable compromise in the Middle East?

Shlomo Sand - history professor at Tel Aviv University

I stopped being able to understand you when, in the course of your speech, you stated that “Anti-Zionism … is the reinvented form of anti-Semitism.” Was this statement intended to please your guest, or is it purely and simply a marker of a lack of political culture? Has this former student of philosophy, Paul Ricoeur’s assistant, read so few history books that he does not know that many Jews or descendants of Jewish heritage have always opposed Zionism, without this making them anti-Semites? Here I am referring to almost all the old grand rabbis, but also the stances taken by a section of contemporary orthodox Judaism. And I also remember figures like Marek Edelman, one of the escaped leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, or the communists of Jewish background who took part in the French Resistance in the Manouchian group, in which they perished. I also think of my friend and teacher Pierre Vidal-Naquet and of other great historians and sociologists like Eric Hobsbawm and Maxime Rodinson, whose writings and whose memory are so dear to me, or indeed Edgar Morin. And finally I wonder if you seriously expect of the Palestinians that they should not be anti-Zionists!

Nonetheless, I suppose that you do not particularly appreciate people on the Left, or, perhaps, the Palestinians. But knowing that you worked at Rothschild Bank, I will here provide a quote from Nathan Rothschild. President of the union of synagogues in Britain, he was the first Jew to be named a lord in the United Kingdom, where he also became the bank’s governor. In a 1903 letter to Theodor Herzl, the talented banker wrote that he was anxious about plan to establish a “Jewish colony”; it “would be a ghetto within a ghetto with all the prejudices of a ghetto.” A Jewish state “would be small and petty, Orthodox and illiberal, and keep out non-Jews and the Christians.” We might conclude that Rothschild’s prophecy was mistaken. But one thing is for sure: he was no anti-Semite!

Of course, there have been, and there are, some anti-Zionists who are also anti-Semites, but I am also certain that we could find anti-Semites among the sycophants of Zionism. I can also assure you that a number of Zionists are racists whose mental structure does not differ from that of utter Judeophobes: they relentlessly search for a Jewish DNA (even at the university that I teach at).

But to clarify what an anti-Zionist point of view is, it is important to begin by agreeing on the definition of the concept “Zionism,” or at the very least, a series of characteristics proper to this ter. I will endeavor to do so as briefly as possible.

First of all, Zionism is not Judaism. It even constitutes a radical revolt against it. Across the centuries, pious Jews nurtured a deep ardour for their holy land, and more particularly for Jerusalem. But they held to the Talmudic precept intimating that they should not collectively emigrate there before the coming of the Messiah. Indeed, the land does not belong to the Jews, but to God. God gave and God took away again; and he would send the Messiah to restore it, when he wanted to. When Zionism appeared it removed the “All Powerful” from his place, substituting the active human subject in his stead.

We can each give our own view on the question of whether the project of creating an exclusive Jewish state on a slice of land with a very large Arab-majority population is a moral idea. In 1917 Palestine counted 700,000 Arab Muslims and Christians and around 60,000 Jews, half of whom were opposed to Zionism. Up till that point, the mass of the Yiddish-speaking people who wanted to flee the pogroms of the Russian Empire preferred to migrate to the American continent. Indeed, two million made it there, thus escaping Nazi persecution (and the persecution under the Vichy regime).

In 1948 in Palestine there were 650,000 Jews and 1.3 million Arab Muslims and Christians, 700,000 of whom became refugees. It was on this demographic basis that the State of Israel was born. Despite that, and against the backdrop of the extermination of the European Jews, a number of anti-Zionists reached the conclusion that in the name of avoiding the creation of fresh tragedies it was best to consider the State of Israel as an irreversible fait accompli. A child born as the result of a rape does indeed have the right to live. But what happens if this child follows in the footsteps of his father?

And then came 1967. Since then Israel has ruled over 5.5 million Palestinians, who are denied civil, political and social rights. Israel subjects them to military control: for part of them a sort of “Indian reservation” in the West Bank, while others are locked up in a “barbed wire holding pen” in Gaza (70% of the population there are refugees or their descendants). Israel, which constantly proclaims its desire for peace, considers the territories conquered in 1967 as an integral part of the “land of Israel,” and it behaves there as it sees fit. Thus far 600,000 Jewish-Israeli settlers have been moved in there… and this has still not ended!

Is that today’s Zionism? No!, reply my friends on the Zionist Left — which is constantly shrinking. They tell me that we have to put an end to the dynamic of Zionist colonisation, that a narrow little Palestinian state should be created next to the State of Israel, and that Zionism’s objective was to establish a state where the Jews would be sovereign over themselves, and not to conquer “the ancient homeland” in its entirety. And the most dangerous thing in all this, in their eyes, is that annexing territory threatens Israel’s character as a Jewish state.

So here we reach the proper moment for me to explain to you why I am writing to you, and why I define myself as non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, without thereby becoming anti-Jewish. Your political party has put the words “La République” in its name. So I presume that you are a fervent republican. And, at the risk of surprising you: I am, too. So being a democrat and a republican I cannot — as all Zionists do, Left and Right, without exception — support a Jewish State. The Israeli Interior Ministry counts 75% of the country’s citizens as Jewish, 21% as Arab Muslims and Christians and 4% as “others” (sic). Yet according to the spirit of its laws, Israel does not belong to Israelis as a whole, whereas it does belong even to all those Jews worldwide who have no intention of coming to live there. So for example, Israel belongs a lot more to Bernard Henri-Lévy or to Alain Finkielkraut than it does to my Palestinian-Israeli students, Hebrew speakers who sometimes speak it better than I do! Israel hopes that the day will come when all the people of the CRIF (“Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France”) and their “supporters” emigrate there! I even know some French anti-Semites who are delighted by such a prospect. On the other hand, we could find two Israeli ministers close to Netanyahu putting out the idea that it is necessary to encourage the “transfer” of Israeli Arabs, without that meaning that anyone demanded their resignations.

That, Mr. President, is why I cannot be a Zionist. I am a citizen who desires that the state he lives in should be an Israeli Republic, and not a Jewish-communalist state. As a descendant of Jews who suffered so much discrimination, I do not want to live in a state that, according to its own self-definition, makes me a privileged class of citizen. Mr. President, do you think that that makes me an anti-Semite?

More Fake News – Zionist Claims that Anti-Semitism has increased by 30% in one year

Despite the headlines - Anti-Semitism in Britain is DECLINING not increasing

A decline in anti-Semitism doesn't serve Zionist interests

Update

A very useful comment by Alan Maddison below.  The salient points are:

1. Anti-Semitism represents around 1.5% of reported Hate Crimes in the UK.
2. Evidence of the inflated and tendetious nature of the CST report is that only 8% of claimed incidents are violent compared to the normal ratio for hate crimes of one-third.
3. One in four hate crime assaults lead to injury compared to none, either this year or last year, in the CST reports.  It clearly suggests that what is counted as an assault is trivial.

This suggests that in comparison with other hate crime incidents, the actual level of incidents in the CST Report are about one-quarter of those claimed.  To include social media posts is absurd, as the CST itself recognises when it counts as a single incident multiple broadcasts by the same outlet.  Social media attacks if actually counted would simply swamp any meaningful statistics given the level of racist tweets and FB comments and posts.  They are on a completely different level from actual verbal abuse or assault.

Anti-semitism is a marginal prejudice compared to racism against Muslims and Roma in most countries

More fake news from Stephen Pollard's Jewish Chronicle

Pollard replies to Jonathan Freedland defending Michal Kaminski

The Community Security Trust, an overtly Zionist organisation, that works closely with Mossad, Israel’s MI6, compiles annual and 6 monthly reports of the incidence of anti-Semitism.  Its figures often differ widely from those of the Police and are subjective.  They are based to a large extent on self-reporting, social media posts and an ingrained Zionist political assumptions that opposition to Israel is inherently anti-Semitic.

The Zionist Communist Security Trust's latest bogus offerings - complete with two helpfully placed display boards

Their latest Report  ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS - January–June 2017, comes with a photo in some junkyard in Suffolk with a Star of David and the word ‘Die’ underneath side by side with a swastika.  Presumably the purpose behind this photo is to persuade us that this is a common phenomenon in most junkyards and industrial wasteyards in Britain!

We are breathlessly told that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain from January to June 2016 compared to the previous period has leapt from 589 to 767.  Anti-Semitism, like all forms of racism, should be condemned.  But the deliberate inflating of anti-Semitism, the political use of false accusations of anti-Semitism in order to deflect criticism of Israel, are equally appalling.  Zionism redefines anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism at the same time as ignoring genuine anti-Semitism.

A government poster in Hungary attacking George Soros - graffiti says 'stinking Jew'

We are told in the 2017 report that CST recorded 425 antisemitic incidents in Greater London, a rise of 10 per cent from the 387 incidents recorded in Greater London during the same period in 2016.  There are no comparisons with Police statistics but given the wide disparity between recorded crime incidents and the CST figures in previous years we should take the CST statistics with a hefty pinch of salt. 

An example of Zionist anti-Semitism directed at anti-Zionist Jews - CST won't record any such incidents

In the Independent of 29.12.15. we learn that Anti-Semitic attacks in London soar by 60 per cent in 2015.  ‘Between November 2014 and November 2015, a total of 483 such crimes were committed, up from 299 during the same period in the previous year.’  Although they say crimes were committed we are not told what the number of convictions are.

Compare this to the 2014 CST Incident Report the CST recorded 583 antisemitic incidents in Greater London in 2014.  Compare this to the Police figures of 299, almost double.

The Independent goes from bad to worse as it accepts the CST Report uncritically

According to the 2015 CST Incidents Report there were 472 incidents compared to 483 police recorded crimes so it would appear that the 2015 figures bore some relationship to the facts.  (in the 2016 CST Incidents Report the figure jumps from 472 to 494).

In 2016 the CST record the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Greater London as 813, a significant increase but how reliable are they?  The comparable Police figures are not available but I suggest that they are a mixed bag consisting of some anti-Semitic incidents coupled with a lot of padding to make the figures look good (in Zionist parlance an increase in anti-Semitism is always good because it demonstrates that the only place Jews aren’t under attack is Israel). 

The true face of  Zionist anti-Semitism

However let us pretend that the CST figures are true.  Then the question is how many of the incidents arise from the actions of Israel?  After all Zionist and Jewish organisations in Britain go out of their way to say that British Jews support the actions of Israel against the Palestinians.  They spend their time defending the indefensible in the name of British Jews.  Is it any wonder that some people take them at their word? 

It is ironic that the main cause of what is termed anti-Semitism in Britain today is the so-called Jewish state.  This is not anti-Semitism, it consists is mainly of stupid reactions to the claims of Zionist organisations that British Jews fully supports Israel’s criminal  actions.  Since the CST fully supports the idea that British Jews are fully behind Israel’s crimes what they are effectively measuring is the efficacy of their and their fellow Zionists actions.  Israel claims it represents all Jews, not just its own Jewish citizens but all Jews worldwide.  Netanyahu describes himself as the Prime Minister of all Jews.  Why shouldn’t some people take what the Zionists say to be true?  Israel is, after all a Jewish State.

To the Zionists, the CST including, anything to do with support of the Palestinians or opposition to Zionism is automatically ‘anti-Semitic’.  The attacks on Palestine Expo 2017 this month described it as a ‘Jewish hate fest’ – a massive gathering of some 17,000 people that included numerous Jewish speakers as well as people like John Pilger. 

The Community Security Organisation, which changed its name to the CST, also sees as one of its tasks the removal of anti-Zionist Jews from communal functions - in this case they went to far removing members of Mapam, the fake Zionist leftists

Dave Rich, the CST’s Deputy Director of Communications, brought out a book last year entitled ‘The Left’s Jewish Problem’.  As Wikpedia describes it ‘Rich traces the origin of contemporary left-wing anti-Semitic anti-Israel rhetoric to the early 1970s, when Peter Hain and Louis Eakes of the Young Liberals wing of the British Liberal Party reconceptualized the national liberation movement of the Jewish people as an imperialist project imposing apartheid on an indigenous people.

The fact that a senior officer of the CST can seriously describe a settler colonial movement (which is how historically Zionism described itself) as a ‘national liberation movement of the Jewish people’ (when did change of description occur) is illustrative of the CST’s political problems.  Historically anti-fascist and socialists Jews always rejected the Zionist alliance with British imperialism.

To the Zionists anything smacking of the term Palestine is automatically anti-Semitic.  The fact is that most ‘anti-Semitism’ in Britain is a reaction to solidarity with the victims of Zionist settler colonialism and that is the main purpose of these fake news figures.

Those who cry ‘anti-Semitism’ at the drop of a hat are not only legitimising genuine anti-Semitism (because people find it difficult to distinguish between genuine anti-Semitism and the false Zionist variety) but they display their contempt for Jews who were the real victims of anti-Semitism. 

If you want to know what anti-Semitism really was like you could do worse than read ‘The Crime and the Silence’ by Anna Bikont.  This was a book about what happened in the town of Jedwabne on July 10 1941 in a town made up of 40% Jews.  Some of their Polish neighbours herded up to 1600 Jews into a barn which was then set ablaze.  It wasn’t even done at the instigation of the Nazis but by their own neighbours and activists in the Polish Nationalist Party (Endeks).

The Polish anti-Semite Michal Kaminski speaking at Israel's security conference in Herzliya

Nor was this the only such crime of this nature.  In nearby Radzilow, three days before Jedwabne, the whole population was rounded up and burned.  In 2001, a book by Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbours, revealed what had happened in Jedwabne.  The Polish government under President Aleksander Kwasniewski reacted by apologising and under much criticism held a memorial meeting in Jedwabne and erected a monument to those murdered on the 60^th anniversary of the massacre. 

At the same time, in Jedwabne itself, led by its Catholic priest Father Orlowski and Bishop Stefanek, there was formed a Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne.  Its purpose being to defend those who took part in the murder of its Jews.  They pretended that it was the Nazis who carried out the massacre and also claimed that in any event the Jews had brought it on themselves by collaborating with the Russian troops when they invaded Western Poland and Jedwabne between 1939 and 1941.

To cite on typical incident from the book:

‘In August 1937, 65 violent anti-Jewish incidents were noted in the Bialystock region.... on August 19 during a market in the hamlet of Sniadowo a crowd shouting ‘Jews to Palestine’ and ‘There’s no room for you in Poland’ drove away tradesmen.  The fleeing Jews were thrashed with whips and one of them was hit on the head with a post.’ (p.44) 

Marek Edelman ‘the last living leader off the Warsaw Ghetto uprising’ and a leader of the socialist  and anti-Zionist Bund described how ‘Jedwabne was not the first case nor was it an isolated one.  In Poland at that time the mood was ripe for killing Jews.’ (p.9)   It wasn’t all Poles by any means, even in the Endek dominated Jedwabne.  Many Poles were horrified by what happened.  Edelman describes how in Warsaw maybe 100,000 Poles were involved in hiding and protecting the Jews, but nonetheless there was real murderous anti-Semitism even before the Nazi invasion, driven by the anti-communism of the Nationalist Right.

Polish anti-Semite Michal Kaminski having a friendly chat with Israel's Ambassador to the UK Ron Prossor

In 2001 the far-Right Law and Justice Party, a racist and often anti-Semitic party, which is now in government in Poland opposed a national apology for Jedwabne.  Dr Rafal Pankowski, a member of the Never Again Association and author of The Populist Radical Right in Poland described the role played by Law and Justice Party MP for  the area of Jedwabne, Michal Kaminski

"As a local MP, Kaminski played a key role in the campaign questioning the Polish responsibility for the Jedwabne massacre. The campaign had strongly antisemitic overtones,"

In an interview with the nationalist Nasza Polska newspaper in March 2001 Kaminski argued that, ‘while the massacre could not be defended, Poles should not apologise for what they did until Jews apologised to them for their actions which had included "murdering Poles".’  Is Michal Kaminski fit to lead the Tories in Europe?  Can you imagine?  Kaminski said that those Polish Jews, the perhaps 5% out of 3.3 million who survived the Holocaust should apologise to those who had acted as their executioners?

Not only did Kaminski chair the European Conservative Reform group in the European parliament, which the Tories had just joined, he was defended by people such as the current Chair of Conservative Friends of Israel, Eric Pickles.  He was also defended by leading Zionists in the Jewish Leadership Council and not least by Stephen Pollard, the racist who editor of the Jewish Chronicle.  Pollard is another who is very hot on ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party.

Pollard, penned an article for the Guardian (9.10.09.) titled ‘Poland’s Kaminski is not an anti-Semite – he’s a friend to Jews.’  Even Pollard had to admit that Kaminski as a 15 year old joined The National Rebirth of Poland which was ‘virulently anti-Semitic and neofascist’.  Nonetheless Kaminski was a ‘friend to the Jews’.  why?  Because he was a supporter of Israel in Brussels where ‘visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’  In other words his support of Israel and Zionism excused his virulent anti-Semitism.  In the same article Pollard defended the Latvian MEP Robert Zile who every goesMarch on a march with the veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS.

None of this should be of any surprise.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has just returned from a visit to Hungary to greet his friend Viktor Orban, who when not demonising Muslim immigrants is busy rehabilitating the pro-Nazi leader of war-time Hungary who presided over the deportation of 437,000 Jews to Auschwitz.  See Israel’s love-in with Hungary’s anti-Semites exposes the ugly core of Zionism.  Indeed Netanyahu and the Zionists joined in with Orban’s anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros, who is held by the fascist and racist Right to be the archetypal figure of the International Jewish Financier. 

Even some liberal Zionists began to find out with the ascent to power of Donald Trump and his chief aide, Steve Bannon, ex-CEO of Breitbart News, that being an anti-Semite and a Zionist are quite compatible.  Naomi Zeveloff in Forward 15.11.16 How Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel — and Anti-Semitic at the Same Time described how ‘Breitbart News, ‘is widely known as a platform for white nationalism and anti-Semitism. It is also brazenly Zionist…’

This is the context in which the CST’s Report on Anti-Semitism should be treated.  23% of the anti-Semitic incidents were held to be politically motivated of which 49, some 28% were ‘anti-Zionist’.  This in itself is proof of where the CST is coming from.  Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-racism.  It opposes the Jewish Supremacist State of Israel.  If someone is anti-Semitic then they are not anti-Zionist.   It is Zionism which is happy to work with and co-exist with anti-Semitism. 

I get from time to time virulent anti-Semitic tweets from Zionists, like ‘shame your family survived world can do without cunts line (sic!) you.’  It is a common insult to use the Nazi term of ‘self hater’ against Jews with a conscience.  It is also logical.  Zionism holds that the only way to avoid anti-Semitism is to go to Israel.  Those Jews who don’t do this and even worse oppose Israel and Zionism deserve everything they get.  So anti-Zionist Jews are often told that it was a pity that Hitler didn’t get them.  Far from having a section for anti-Zionism if the CST were honest they would have a section reserved for Zionist anti-Semitism.  But here is the catch.  According to the spokesman for the CST Mark Gardener ‘CST does not classify clashes between Jews as antisemitic incidents.’  Zionist attacks on Jews, even if they are virulently anti-Semitic, don’t count as anti-Semitism! 

In a message sent to my blog, a Zionist posted ‘Greenstein, you traitorous bastard, you leftist liberal Jew.’  (in Israel these days there is no greater insult than being a ‘leftist’) went on to explain how ‘It's a shame that either Hitler or the Angel of Death, missed your family's house. Or Neturei Karta's.’  finishing up with ‘Don't even call yourself a Jew,traitor.’  According to the CST this is a ‘conflict’ between Jews rather than Zionist anti-Semitism!

It would be easy to take apart CST’s 2017 Report on Anti-Semitism.  19% of it consists of social media posts, which may be anti-Semitic but hardly constitute a threat to someone’s life and limb. They document 80 physical attacks but we have no way of knowing what these consist of. What we do know is that none of them were what they describe as ‘Extreme Violence’ i.e. GBH.  Of course any attack should be taken seriously, but when Muslims have to put up with arson attacks on Mosques and at Finsbury Park Mosque a racist driving a van onto the pavement killing one worshipper and injuring several others, we can put this into context. The attacks on Muslims are much more serious, much of the CST’s incidents consist of twitter posts and anti-Israel chants.  Yet the government has spent millions of pounds defending Jewish institutions from a non-existent threat but has done nothing similar to protect mosques and Muslim institutions.  Why?  Because the Government’s anti-terrorist strategy Prevent is based on a racist perception of Muslims as a problem.  Defending Jewish property is a way of defending support for Israel and Zionism – an essential requirement of British foreign policy.

We are told that there were ‘51 incidents of Damage & Desecration of Jewish property’ but we are not told exactly what these consist of.  Almost certainly they are trivial and minor instances of criminal damage, if that.  Indeed the CST doesn’t bother to outline what ‘Jewish property’ consists of.  There is no means of independently verifying the CST’s incidents except to say that there is a marked disparity, as I’ve noted before, between their reports and those of the Police.  For example how many of the assaults resulted in Police prosecutions?  What was the context?  At the Ecostream demonstrations in British four years ago I defended myself against an extremely racist Israeli AShaike Rozanski who attacked me. Yet I was the one who was charged with assault.  But perhaps this was too was recorded as an anti-Semitic incident?  Who knows except that the Police dropped charges.  Indeed there were a whole number of wholly bogus allegations made at the demonstrations against Palestine supporters, all of which led to acquittals in the courts.  Were they anti-Semitic incidents?

Until there is proper verification and independent oversight of how the CST works and records incidents everything they say and report should be treated sceptically.

Of course there are anti-Semitic attacks, in particular on ultra-orthodox Jews in Stamford Hill who are easily recognised as Jews by their garb.  Such attacks were completely ignored by the Home Affairs Select Committee Report on Anti-Semitism of October 2016 which recommended adoption of the bogus IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

Like South Africa's Apartheid Prime Minister John Vorster before him, Kaminski is happy to pay homage to Zionism at the Yad Vashem propaganda museum

What we are seeing with the CST Report on Anti-Semitism, which has been taken up avidly by a press determined to defend and support the Israeli state, is the political weaponisation of anti-Semitism.  For the Zionists the encouragement of the belief that the British Jewish community is facing a tsunami of anti-Semitism is useful, not least in order to encourage the emigration of British Jews to Israel.

In the Pew Research Centre’s Global Attitudes Survey 2016 just 7% of British people are shown as having unfavourable attitudes to Jews compared to 45% for Roma and 28% for Muslims.  In other words racism against Muslims is measured as 4 times higher than anti-Semitism and anti-Roma hatred is over 6 times worse in Britain.  In Hungary which Netanyahu praises so highly a third of respondents (32%) harbour anti-Jewish feelings, again less than the 72% hostility to Muslims.  In other words, despite the best efforts of Zionism to create fake news about anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews in most countries, especially in Western Europe is all but non-existent.   To even attempt to compare it with the Nazi era, as the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism does, is to belittle and diminish the very real anti-Semitism that Jews in the 1930s experienced.

Lying in the cause of Zionism - Defending Zionism’s Abandonment of the Jews during the Holocaust

A reply to Jamie Robert’s When is Holocaust Revisionism OK?

My attention has been drawn to a typically dishonest Zionist response to my article by one Jamie Roberts.  

I recently posted an article The anti-Zionist Bund led the Jewish Resistance in Poland whilst the Zionist Movement abandoned the Jews.  It described the heroic role of the anti-Zionist Jewish Bund in leading the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance against the Nazis.  The fact that Zionists feel the need to blatantly lie, when the evidence is there for all to see, not least from Zionist historians themselves, demonstrates that the Zionist movement has a lot to hide.

The Bund were a mass Jewish party in Poland before the war.  Half of the Jewish dead in the Holocaust, some 3 million people, came from Poland.  As the fight against anti-Semitism in Poland grew, and anti-Semitism was rife in Poland in the pre-war years amongst the middle class and petit bourgeoisie, the Bund marginalised the Zionists.  

In the last free municipal elections in 1938, in Warsaw of the 20 Jewish council seats, the Bund gained 17.  The Zionists gained precisely one.  In Lodz, Poland’s second city, the Bund gained 11 out of 17 seats. The Bund received 61% of the Jewish vote in Warsaw.  This pattern was repeated throughout Poland and together with the Polish Socialist Party gained a majority in one-third of Poland’s towns and cities.

The Zionists who, in the 1920’s had had a mass base in Poland, withered away and split into Right and Left Poale Zion.  Left Poale Zion formed the majority group and they were barely Zionists at all as they prioritised the fight against the fascists over and above the cause of Palestine.  The most well-known figure in LPZ was Emmanuel Ringleblum, the Chronicler of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Why did the Jews of Poland abandon the Zionists?  Isaac Deutscher in his Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays (pp. 66/7) provides a clue:

‘It should be remembered that the great majority of East European Jews were, up to the outbreak of the second world war, opposed to Zionism... The most fanatical enemies of Zionism were precisely the workers, those who spoke Yiddish... they were the most determined opponents of the idea of an emigration from Eastern Europe to Palestine... in the idea of an exodus, from the countries in which they had their home and in which their ancestors had lived for centuries, the anti-Zionists saw an abdication of their rights, a surrender to anti-Semitism. To them anti-Semitism seemed to triumph in Zionism which recognised the legitimacy and the validity of the old cry ‘Jews get out’. The Zionists were agreeing to get out.’

In my article I quoted from the speech of Irena Klepfisz, the daughter of a Bundist who was killed in the Warsaw Jewish resistance.  Irena was born in the Warsaw Ghetto.  It was a moving speech in New York on the 74^th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance.

Marek Edelman, Bundist and last Commander of the Jewish Resistance in Warsaw

In my article, I showed how the Zionist youth, to whom I paid tribute to for their heroism, were abandoned by the Zionist movement in Palestine.  I wrote that the:

Zionist youth certainly fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance but they did it, not as Zionists but despite their Zionism.  Their political parties were opposed to resistance and most of the Jewish collaborators in the Jewish Council (Judenrat) were Zionists.  

Clearly this was painful for Zionism’s youthful liar Jamie Roberts.  Instead of refuting what I said he asked the stupid question ‘when is Holocaust Revisionism ok’.  Of course the answer is that it is never ok, but what I wrote didn’t ‘revise’ history it painted an alternative to the nonsense parroted by the bourgeois media and the Zionists, which is that the only Jews who fought were the Zionists and that all Jews in Europe dreamed of nothing but going to Palestine.

Zivia Lubetkin - a Zionist member of the Jewish Resistance who escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto with Bundist Marek Edelman

Holocaust Revisionism is the series of lies peddled by neo-Nazis and their friends, the kind of people who today can often be found in bed with the Zionists, because both share a hatred of Muslims and Arabs, which pretends that the Holocaust never happened.  It is ironic that Holocaust denying parties like the British National Party are, at one and the same time, avid supporters of Israel.  The examples are legion of anti-Semites supporting Israel and Zionism from Poland’s Michal Kaminski to Donald Trump’s adviser Stephen Bannon.

Jamie Roberts is forced to reply to an article which I didn’t write because he finds it impossible to respond to the article I did write.  The question I posed was a very simple one.  Why did the Zionist movement abandon its own youth in the Warsaw Ghetto and why did it instruct them not to participate in the Resistance?

You needn’t hold your breath for an answer because it is highly doubtful that Jamie Roberts has a clue as to the answer.  That is why the fool accuses me of having ‘ignored the fact that the leader of Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB) was Mordechai Anielewicz, who was also leader of the Zionist-socialist youth organisation, Hashomer Hatzair.’

I ignored nothing.  Quite the contrary.  I specifically referred to the Zionist youth who, despite opposition from their parent Zionist parties, fought side by side with the Communists and the Bund.  I pay tribute to them.  Mordechai Anielewicz was chosen as the first Commander of ZOB because he was the only one who had military training.  Although Roberts is clearly unfamiliar with anything but a Hollywood version of what happened in the Warsaw ghetto, it is quite clear that the Zionist youth fought, not because of Zionism but despite it.

Anielewicz however, expressed his regret over the “wasted time” undergoing Zionist educational work. [Gutman p.143. The Jews of Warsaw 1939-1943, The Harvester Press, Brighton, 1982)  Yitzhak Zuckerman told the Council of Kibbutz Ha Meuchad in May 1947 that “had the fate of the Jews in 1942 lain in the hands only of the political parties (Zionist - TG), the revolt would never have taken place.” [Gutman, p. 441 fn. 23]

I also described how Anielewicz’s successor as Commander of ZOB, the Bundist Marek Edelman, was written out of the Zionist version of the Warsaw ghetto resistance because he was not a Zionist and because he had compared the Palestinian resistance to that of the Jewish Resistance in Warsaw.  When he died a few years ago, although he received a state funeral in Poland, with the President attending and a 15 gun salute, there was not one  person, not even the lowest clerk, from the Israeli Embassy.  Zionism wrote Edelman out of the history records.

It is a measure of the desperation of Zionism’s poisonous little propagandists that they have to resort to lies and inventions because they know in their heart of hearts that when the Jews of Europe were fighting for their lives and dying, the Zionist movement outside Europe was more concerned with building their bastard racial state than in supporting those who were still alive.

Don’t take my word for it.  Let me quote the eminently respectable Saul Friedlander’s Nazi Germany and the Jews 1933-1945.  Friedlander is an American/Israeli Emeritus Professor History and a Zionist, but unlike Jamie Roberts he isn’t a hack and he also knows something about the Holocaust which is why he was extremely critical for example of David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister for his refusal to lend assistance to attempts to save the Jews of Europe unless it was tied to the Zionist movement’s priority of building for a Jewish state.   This is what Friedlander had to say:

Whereas Bundist youth stayed in close contact with a senior leadership that remained in occupied Poland, the Zionist youth movements gradually lost touch with party headquarters in Palestine.  The ideological fervor of this Zionist youth did not falter – it was possibly even heightened by the surrounding circumstance; the response from Palestine, however, soon dwindled to increasingly unrealistic and perfunctory advice and instructions and often it lapsed into silence.    Such indifference created a growing rift and soon turned into a desperate sense of independence among the local youth leaders, the oldest of whom were in their early twenties at most.’

Perhaps Saul Friedlander is a Holocaust Revisionist too?  Or maybe anyone telling the truth about the Zionist role during the Nazi era is a revisionist?  Given that the Zionist movement during the war all but refused to acknowledge that there was a Holocaust taking place (& for this I suggest people read the 2 volume Post Ugandan Zionism by another Zionist, Shabtai Beit Zvi for details) it is the Zionist ideologues like Roberts who share most in common with holocaust deniers.

Roberts refers to the lies and half truths of Ken Livingstone.  If this were the case then the Labour Right would have expelled him for those lies.  Instead they chose not to contest what Livingstone said.  The reason is clear – what he said about the Nazis supporting Zionism before the Final Solution is, unfortunately, only too true.

Tony Greenstein 

Ken Livingstone’s Fainthearted Friends at the Morning Star, Socialist Worker & the Jewish Socialists Group

Lansman & Owen Jones Attacks on Livingstone Only Helps Tom Watson

The Right has begun to smell blood.  Corbyn was himself originally accused of anti-Semitism by consorting with holocaust deniers such as Paul Eisen.  He has been under attack by the Zionist lobby since day one.  See for example Jeremy Corbyn's 'long-standing links' with notorious Holocaust denier  ‘Anti-Semitism’ has been the Right’s chosen weapon. 

Letters in Morning Star objecting to their editorial

No one of course could point to anything actually ‘anti-Semitic’ that Corbyn said hence why they have directed their attention on to the one person who best exemplifies the fight against racism in the Labour Party.  Noone did more, at the Greater London Council to support and fund anti-racist initiatives than Ken Livingstone, as David Rosenburg of the JSG admits in his flabby and shallow article for the Morning Star. A Row With Its Roots in the Thatcher Years

Under relentless attack from the Right and the Zionists, Corbyn has abandoned the Palestinian cause and 30 years of support for the Palestinians which included at least 6 visits to Palestine.  At a Jewish Labour Movement debate last summer between Corbyn and Owen Smith when asked what he liked most about Israel, Corbyn could have mentioned child torture, mobs who chant ‘Death to the Arabs’, banning of Arabs from 93% of the land in Israel, a starvation siege of Gaza etc. etc.  He was spoilt for choice.  Instead he said:

I admire the verve and spirit of the towns and cities in Israel – the life and the way people conduct themselves, I admire the separation of legal and political powers and the system of democratic government that is there and I admire many of the technical and industrial achievements that Israel has made and its very advanced technology in so many way that it has developed in medical and telecommunications technology.  

Dave Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialists Group article in the Morning Star attacking Ken Livingstone whilst purporting to support him

Why has there been this political collapse?  Because in supporting a 2 state solution, Corbyn was also supporting Israel as it is.  Support for Israel is support for the Right of the Labour Party in the UK.  Why?  Because Israel is the United States racist rotweiller in the Middle East.  If your foreign policy is based on the alliance with the US then it must involve uncritical support for Israel.

Given that Corbyn was himself originally attacked as an anti-Semite, not only by the Daily Mail but by The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem it is sad that he cannot see that bogus allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ are a weapon of the Right.  The bigger a lie and the more often it is repeated the more it is likely to be believed.

The Right is quite open about what they desire.   A crowd-funding appeal has now been launched under the title ‘Expel Ken #Corbyn Out’.   These are supporters of the only apartheid state in the world, Israel.  When Tom Watson calls for the expulsion of Livingstone that is code for the removal of Corbyn.  

It is therefore to be regretted that the Morning Star, the only Left daily, has equivocated in its support.  In Fresh bid to attack the left it speaks of the ‘real offence’ caused when the Nazis ‘are compared to or associated with their victims’.  Except of course that Livingstone didn’t compare the Nazis to their victims.  What he did was say that the Nazi state and Hitler supported Zionism, a political movement.  Zionism in Germany was a tiny minority of German Jews.  It is a fact that the Nazis saw the Zionists as volkish (racial) Jews.  

The paper of the German Zionist Federation welcomes the Nuremburg Laws

On September 17^th 1935, the paper of the German Zionist Federation welcomed the Nuremburg Laws which removed German citizenship from Jews and effectively made them stateless.  Judische Rundschau wrote that:

Germany ... is meeting the demands of the International Zionist Congress when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again possible to establish normal relations between the German Nation and Jewry. The new Laws give the Jewish minority in Germany their own cultural life, their own national life. In future they will be able to shape their own schools, their own theater, their own sports associations; in short, they can create their own future in all aspects of national life.

On the other hand, it is evident that from now on and for the future there can be no interference in questions connected with the Government of the German people... for Jewry in Germany itself, as for the Germans. Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for itself and is offering State protection for this separate life of the Jewish minority: Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable relations between the two nations.

Francis Nicosia's Zionism and anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany

The German Zionists, as was the case with the rest of the Zionist movement, believed that Jews were not part of the German people.  They were part of a separate Jewish nation.  It was therefore quite reasonable for the Nazis to say that Jews should play no part in German society.  It was a position rejected by the overwhelming majority of German Jews but it was music to the ears of the Nazis.  Alfred Rosenberg, the principal Nazi theoretician, who was hanged at Nuremburg, was fond of quoting the Zionists to support what the Nazis said.  As Francis Nicosia, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University noted, Rosenberg

 ‘intended to use Zionism as a legal justification for depriving German Jews of their civil rights.’  He ‘sanctioned the use of the Zionist movement in the future drive to eliminate Jewish rights, Jewish influence and eventually the Jewish presence in Germany.’ [Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, pp. 25-26.  See also Edwin Black p. 173, The Transfer Agreement]

In his book The Final Solution (Pan Macmillan) 2016 (p.96) Professor David Cesarani quotes from a 1934 Gestapo report: “The efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending support to its efforts to further emigration.” 

Having made one blunder, the Morning Star went on to concede the Right’s case when it said that ‘Livingstone should have acknowledged this and apologised’.   Why should anyone apologise because telling the truth has offended them?  It is a fact that the Zionists played a quisling role in the Jewish community in Germany (& elsewhere) during the Holocaust.

Having made this concession to the Right the Morning Star then concluded that ‘It is outrageous that the most consistent and principled anti-racist ever to lead the Labour Party has been constantly harassed by bogus accusations of anti-semitism — which are clearly inspired by fear of the effect a supporter of the rights of the dispossessed Palestinian people could have on British foreign policy if he becomes prime minister.’

That is of course correct – these are bogus accusations which is why it is even more stupid of the Morning Star to give the time of day to their validity.

The real problem for the Morning Star is that it follows in the traditions of Stalinism, which in 1948 supported the establishment of the Israeli state and thus the legitimacy of the Nakba.  The Morning Star might be a supporter of the Palestinians but it refuses to oppose Zionism, the movement and ideology which created a settler-colonial state in the Middle East.

Jewish Socialist Group’s David Rosenberg Damns Livingstone with Feint Praise

It took a long campaign by this blog before the JSG finally came off the fence and in support of Jackie Walker [The Strange Silence of the Jewish Socialists Group] , the Black-Jewish woman who was suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’. [The lynching of Jackie Walker]. 

David Rosenberg has now done a wobble on Ken Livingstone too, in the Morning Star.  Whilst welcoming the fact that Livingstone wasn’t expelled, Rosenberg says that he ‘ought to have avoided a sorry affair which hasn’t helped Corbyn’ thus missing the whole point of the affair which was that Livingstone’s unremarkable opinions were deliberately blown up by the right-wing in the Labour Party.  Whatever he said would have been magnified. 

As Kipling’s poem Dane-geld put it ‘"once you have paid him the Danegeld/ You never get rid of the Dane."  In other words when you pay off a blackmailer you just encourage them to continue.  The more the Zionists and the Labour Right have been appeased over ‘anti-Semitism’ the greater the incentive for them to continue.

Rosenberg accepts that ‘Under Ken Livingstone’s visionary leadership from 1981, the GLC railed against both discriminatory practices and the mindset supporting them — racist, sexist, homophobic and disablist.’  Despite vociferous opposition from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the very body that is now campaigning loudest about ‘anti-Semitism’, Livingstone’s Greater London Council funded the Jewish Cultural and Anti-Racist Project, set up by the JSG, of which Rosenberg was the co‑ordinator.

Rosenberg asks ‘How is it possible that, three decades on, the person who played such a pivotal role in these fights for equality is facing demands for expulsion by the Labour Party after making dubious comments about Hitler and zionism, and defending another MP’s comments about Jews, which she herself apologised for?’

Well there is a simple answer.  Unfortunately it is one which escapes Rosenberg.  It is that far from being ‘dubious’ Livingstone’s comment that the Nazis supported Zionism was a simple statement of fact.  He also asks why Livingstone was defending Naz Shah when she herself admitted her comments were anti-Semitic?

Again there is a very simple answer.  Naz Shah, in the middle of the slaughter of 2,200 people in Gaza, including 551 children, remarked by way of a tongue-in-cheek joke how much better things would be if the United State’s racist rotweiller in the Middle East were transplanted to the USA, which helps fund it.  There was nothing anti-Semitic about this joke at all.  The cartoon which Naz Shah used came originally from Yad Vashem’s Jewish Virtual Library. 

Why did she admit to anti-Semitism?  The same reason that the victims of Stalin’s purges admitted their ‘guilt’.  It is quite possible to intimidate people, who know little about anti-Semitism, into admitting their guilt because they are guilt-tripped.

I have read a number of things by David Rosenberg over the years and this is hardly his finest hour.  He says that he is reticent to come to Livingstone’s defence.  Why?  Because ‘his controversial and completely unnecessary intervention has undermined Corbyn, been detrimental to the Palestinian cause.’  This is what is known as political cowardice.  Anything that Corbyn said would, like Jackie Walker, have been twisted and distorted as ‘anti-Semitism’.  Jackie said that she hadn’t heard a definition of anti-Semitism that she could agree with.  This too is ‘evidence’ of her anti-Semitism.  Apparently Livingstone has ‘handed a free gift’  to the Labour Right and assorted Tories and Zionists. 

These are the politics of timidity and cowardice.  What David should be doing is calling out a politics of denunciation by misquoting people.  Instead of going on the defensive about every word we say, Dave should be calling out those who defend the Israeli state right or wrong.

For example the Jewish Labour Movement, which Rosenberg has become quite sympathetic too, calls itself the ‘sister’ party of the racist Israeli Labour Party.  A party that ethnically cleansed ¾ million Palestinians in 1948 and which has been every bit as racist as its Likud equivalents.  A party whose current leader, Isaac Herzog can say that his nightmare is waking up to a Palestinian Prime Minister and 61 Palestinian MKs.  A man who declares that he doesn’t want the ILP to be seen as an Arab lover’s party.  Yet Rosenberg remains silent about the ILP.

It is the failure of the Left, Rosenberg and Jon Lansman included, to call out the ILP and the witch-hunters, that has led to the situation of people cowering lest they say the wrong word.  One does not need to know any more about the JLM than that it voted by 92-4% in favour of Owen Smith in the summer.  Corbyn was stupid for even having agreed to allow the JLM to host a debate.  What did he think he gained?  He didn’t allow Progress to become a host why the JLM? 

As  an indication of the political collapse of the JSG, Rosenberg says that it was ‘beyond me’ why Tories such as Board of Deputies President Jonathan Arkush or Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis ‘feel entitled to comment on Labour’s internal disciplinary processes’.  The answer is obvious.  They are batting for Israel and attacking the Left in the Labour Party is part of that defence.  As Rosenberg pointed out, Arkush ‘rushed to congratulate Donald Trump on winning the US election’ and Ephraim Mirvis attacked Labour in the Daily Telegraph, a paper that openly supported the Tories’ ‘openly Islamophobic campaign against Sadiq Khan.’  So it should be obvious that the Zionists’ concern is neither racism nor anti-Semitism.

Surely it isn’t beyond the ken of Rosenberg to work out why Jewish racists oppose Livingstone?  Rosenberg  provides the answer to his own question,  He describes how the GLC’s Ethnic Minorities Unit provided a grant to the JSG despite what he calls the Board’s ‘unsolicited “reference” on the JSG which was ‘full of lies and unfounded smears and allegations linking us to organisations described as “terrorist.” Dave was grateful that ‘the GLC disregarded it, but it revealed the BoD’s methods.’  So grateful that he takes to the Morning Star to make what amounts to a thinly veiled attack on Livingstone.

Livingstone is hated by the Zionists because he wasn’t prepared to treat the BOD, which is based on synagogue going Jews only, as Corbyn and McDonnell do, the sole legitimate representative of Jews in Britain. 

Rosenberg harks back to a cartoon in the Daily Herald, which Livingstone was involved in in the early 1980’s, ‘which published crude denunciations of Israel and cartoons of prime minister Menachem Begin dressed in nazi uniform’.  There was nothing that was anti-Semitic in this.  It was making the point that those who claimed they were the heirs of the Holocaust victims were behaving in ways similar to the Nazis.  These cartoons occurred at the same time as Israel’s invasion of the Lebanon, whose purpose was to defeat the PLO and install as President Bashir Gemayel of the fascist Phalange.  When Gemayel was assassinated by the Syrians, the Israelis let loose the Phalange’s militias on the unarmed and defenceless refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla.  Some 2,000 mainly women and children were massacred.  This and the death of 20,000 Lebanese richly deserves the title of ‘Nazi’. 

Letter from Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt compares the party of future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to that of the Nazis

If Rosenberg is still cowering at the thought of comparing an Israeli Prime Minister as a Nazi he should remember that no less than Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt amongst other prominent Jews made this comparison on the occasion of Begin’s visit to the USA in 1948. 

 ‘Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.

David Rosenberg really goes off the edge when he refers to the source of Livingstone’s quote about Hitler ‘supporting zionism’, the  book ‘Zionism in the Age of the Dictators’ by Lenni Brenner.  Rosenberg argues that Brenner makes ‘crude allegations of zionist-nazi collaboration, treats the actions of some zionists as representing all zionists, and utterly distorts the power relations between zionists and nazis.’ 

Rosenberg admits that ‘There were attempts by some zionist Jews in Germany in 1933 to make deals with the nazi dictatorship’ but  says that they were criticised by other Jews, including many zionists.

Yes most Jews did criticise the collaboration with the Nazis by the Zionist leadership.  This included individual Zionists but it is a fact that the Zionist movement, including its leadership, were wholly in favour of collaborating with the Nazis over Ha'avara. 

Rosenberg cites a meeting in 1983 when Brenner spoke to a JSG meeting and says that ‘When audience members labelled some of his comments anti-semitic’, he responded that he couldn’t be anti-Semitic because his wife was Black . Apocryphal or not, this is hardly a serious critique of Brenner, with whom I have certain differences in terms of his analysis.  However it is a fact that even Zionist historians such as Lucy Dawidowicz, Francis Nicosia and David Cesarani came to the conclusion that the Nazis had supported Zionism.  There is no need to reference Brenner’s book to reach this conclusion.   As it happens the book is a good one even it is limited in its analysis and on occasions wrong.

Rosenberg references other examples of Zionist collaboration with anti-Semites such as the talks that the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl held with von Plehve, the Czarist Interior Minister in August 1903.  Herzl promised that ‘Jewish revolutionaries would cease their struggles against tsarism for 15 years if he would grant a charter for Palestine.’  Dave however misses out the salient point that it was von Plehve who had personally organised, some 4 months earlier, the pogrom at Kishinev when 50 Jews were murdered and hundreds were injured. 

Rosenberg concludes that ‘this whole effort to dig out evidence of zionists behaving badly in the 1930s in order to expose the way zionism behaves today is such a shoddy way of supporting the just demands of Palestinians and rests on crude generalisations.’

It is true that one doesn’t have to reference what Zionism did in the 1930’s to challenge what Israel does today to the Palestinians.  However the refusal of the Zionists to oppose genuine anti-Semitism, whether it was in the 1900’s when they supported the Tory anti-alienists who opposed the immigration of Jewish refugees into this country or the 1930’s, when they sabotaged the boycott of Nazi Germany, is relevant.  The Zionist idea that Jews did not belong in the countries of their birth is the mirror image of the idea that the Palestinians have no right to live in the land of their birth.  It is blood and soil nationalism, a Jewish form of German volkism The racism of Zionism towards Jewish people is mirrored in its treatment of the Palestinians today. 

Because Rosenberg doesn’t understand the racist nature of Zionism he believes that it is sufficient to “use the modern universal language of human rights’.  Citing Shami Chakrabarti, Rosenberg would rather that we talked of ‘dispossession, discrimination, segregation, occupation, persecution and … leave Hitler, the nazis and the Holocaust out of it.”

This is the major problem of Rosenberg’s analysis.  If the Palestinian Question and Zionism is merely one of human rights, then there are other places in the world where human rights are far worse – South Sudan, Syria, the Congo, Burma – the list is endless.  In terms of straightforward abuses of human rights Israel is not the worst offender by any measure.

What makes Israel unique though is the fact that it is the world’s only Apartheid state.  Coupled with that, Israel is the central pillar of US foreign policy in the Middle East.  It is the primary agent of counter-revolution in the Arab East.  That is why the United States gives it $4 billion a year, more than every other country put together.  Israel is the bastion of imperialist domination in the Middle East and that is why allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ are made in this country.  It is Rosenberg’s inability to understand the political nature of Zionism and the ruling class’s attack on anti-Zionists and the Palestinians which explains his reduction of support for the Palestinians to one of human rights.  It is this lack of any class or political analysis which led him and the JSG in 1993 to support the disastrous Oslo Accords. 

Socialist Workers Party Cowardice

What is more remarkable is that the Socialist Workers Party, which used to consider itself a revolutionary party, also criticised Livingstone’s references to Nazi support for Zionism.

Charlie Kimber, their National Secretary wrote that Livingstone ‘has made life easier for the supporters of Israel.’  In what is little more than an echo of what David Rosenberg wrote, he cites the SWP’s Middle East ‘expert’ John Rose as saying that Livingstone walked into a trap set by his opponents.  ‘The argument about Zionist collaboration with the Nazis has been around for a long time. It is rightly ignored by solidarity activists with Palestine.’

This is what they call a lie.  The evidence is overwhelming.  The agreement over Ha'avara for example is extremely well documented by Zionist historians.  There are many other examples of Zionist Nazi collaboration such as the suppression of the Auschwitz Protocols by two Auschwitz escapees Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler.  The Protocols revealed, for the first time in April 1944, that Auschwitz was an extermination not merely a labour camp.  The subsequent deportation of nearly ½ million Hungarian Jews in May 1944 as Germany was collapsing militarily, occurred because Kasztner reached an agreement with Eichmann for a train out of Hungary for the Zionist elite.  In return he not only suppressed the Protocols but his ‘Rescue Committee’ and the Judenrat actively deceived those boarding the trains as to where they were heading.  This was the subject of a four year long trial in Israel itself.  The findings of the Jerusalem District Court in 1955 that Kasztner was a collaborator have stood the test of time.

Rose suggests that the Ha'avara agreement ‘’bitterly divided the Zionist movement.’  No it didn’t.  It was supported by all except the Revisionist (fascist) wing.  His argument that “Many young Zionists, in particular, were outraged” is unsupported by anything in the way of evidence.  This is in contrast to when Tony Cliff, who had experience of Zionism in the second world war was the leader of the SWP.  When in 1977 the Zionists attacked the Anti-Nazi League, which was then a mass movement set up to fight the National Front, Socialist Worker had a double page spread about Nazi-Zionist collaboration in WW2 as an explanation for why they attacked anti-fascists whilst leaving the fascists alone.

Rose considers himself a historian and bowled over by having met and reprinted The Ghetto Fights by the Bundist leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance, Marek Edelman, he is unable to understand that the Zionists who fought in the Jewish Fighting Organisation did so not because of Zionism but in spite of it.  In short the SWP is peddling junk history.

Unfortunately, lacking all internal democracy, these things are not debated in the SWP but handed down from on high by the leadership.  As with the affair of the rape allegations that nearly destroyed the organisation, there is no effective way of people inside the SWP challenging their own leadership.

At a time when Livingstone is under attack for making statements of fact about Zionism, it is incumbent upon us to defend him because if we don’t do so then we actually leave the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party even more vulnerable to attack.

Unlike the Morning Star, the SWP and the JSG/Dave Rosenberg the Right understands this simple concept.

Tony Greenstein