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When anti-Semitism is the wrong term
Rabbi Michael Lerner Beyt Tikkun Temple in San Francisco and editor of Tikkun magazine maintains that guilt is "inappropriately manipulated" to shield Israel from criticism.
Tuesday, December 10, 2002 "ANTI-SEMITISM." These are times of dramatically escalating violence in the Middle East, and tensions over where one stands in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are exquisitely sensitive among Jews and non-Jews alike. In that minefield charges of anti-Semitism are rife, in public life, on university campuses, even at home. "Find me one Jewish family in the Bay Area where somebody under 50 hasn't been called an anti-Semite by someone over 50," said Rabbi Michael Lerner of Beyt Tikkun Temple in San Francisco. "I get this all the time from my congregants -- their families ostracize them if they dare say anything against Israel." Is it possible for both Jews and non-Jews to be critical of Israel these days and not be anti-Semitic? I hope so. I pray so. But Lerner, the conscience of leftist Jews in the Bay Area and editor of Tikkun magazine, says that is becoming more difficult. In fact, he cites "a new McCarthyism" taking hold among Jews. "The surge of violence in Israel has dramatically escalated in the past eight months," he said. "The corresponding response has been a much deeper level of attack against anyone who dares to utter criticism." LERNER SHOULD KNOW. Advocating a "progressive middle path," Lerner is horrified by the suicide bombings. He is also critical of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. He's gotten death threats from those who call him a self-hating Jew out to destroy Israel. True, there are a good number of others -- Jews and non-Jews -- who share his views. But not all voice their thoughts. I asked Lerner why, and he brought up the Holocaust. It is said that as survivors, Jews have the world's longest memories. Jews never forget, and there is plenty to remember because of the Holocaust, the result of state-sponsored anti-Semitism of unimaginable scale. There has also been in the world a long history of questioning anti-Semitism. Those legacies have the effect of silencing criticism when Israel -- the political embodiment of Jewish survival -- commits less than admirable deeds. The guilt driving this silence is entirely appropriate. Even the Catholic Church is trying to explain why it didn't do anything about Nazi atrocities. But Lerner maintains that guilt is "inappropriately manipulated" to shield Israel from criticism. "They say Jews are not ever going to be wiped out again, so every Jew must stand with the state of Israel in its moment of danger," Lerner says. THIS IS SAID as if Israel does not have the most powerful military force in the region and most of the world. But even Israel cannot stop the suicide bombings. Sadly, the bombings have only diverted attention on the Palestinian issue and impressed on Israelis that they must redouble their focus on the existence of Israel. Despite his criticisms, Lerner shares that Israeli obsession. That is why he opposes the Rainbow Grocery ban. "They asked me to come support them. I can't." Disinvestment, he says, delegitimizes Israel, threatens its existence while diverting the focus from the government's immoral actions. "It's an economic boycott of the whole society," Lerner said. "And the economy is ordinary people. Those of us on the Zionist left are very much against this kind of tactic, even though we totally embrace what they were trying to do. To call them anti-Semitic is totally illegitimate." Lerner said he'll keep plumbing the spiritual truths of Jewish tradition, including the notion that Judaism is not the state of Israel. I hope he makes inroads. |
For more information:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...
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11.13.2002 The murder of five Israeli civilians at Kibbutz Metzer (a kibbutz famous for its cooperation with Palestinians and its support for peace) by a group affiliated with the military arm of Fatah (Yassir Arafat's branch of the Palestinian national liberation movement), underscores afresh the position that we at Tikkun and the Tikkun Community have taken from the start: First, we mourn and cry for the victims, and pray for consolation and healing of the Israeli people who have been subjected to this kind of terror for decades. Second, we loudly proclaim that Palestinian acts of terror against Israeli civilians are immoral, outrageous, and cannot be excused away by reference to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. These acts are totally destructive to the Palestinian cause. I am sick with pain, anger, rage at those Palestinians who did it and at the failure of others to stand up publicly and condemn these deeds. And I am filled with grief and sorrow at the terrible suffering of the Israeli people. There are people who say, "Yes, but there is greater violence being done to the Palestinian people by the Occupation--and Palestinian children killed in their beds by Israeli bombs from the sky are no less victims than Israeli children killed by terror." But this is a crazy and sick way to think. I hate it when a similar argument is made by Jews ("the killing of those Palestinian civilians by Israeli planes and bombs is not morally equivalent to the acts of Palestinian terror."). THERE IS NEVER ANY MORAL EQUIVALENCE BETWEEN ONE ACT OF MURDER AND ANOTHER--BECAUSE EACH ONE IS A UNIQUE TRAGEDY IN ITSELF, AND NOT TO BE EXPLAINED AWAY. HUMAN BEINGS ARE CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD, THEIR LIVES ARE SACRED, AND IT IS IMMORAL TO TAKE SOMEONE ELSE'S LIFE TO ACHIEVE YOUR POLITICAL ENDS. So don't tell me about the pain of the Occupation, because I've been spending my full time energies trying to build a political movement to try to end it, at great personal cost, facing abuse and denunciation from others in the Jewish community, losing financial support for Tikkun, enduring threats of violence almost daily, and finding my ideas misrepresented and distorted in disgusting ways. I don't have to be told that the Occupation itself is disgusting, immoral, and outrageous. But that fact is no justification for killing innocent Israelis. The mother at Kibbutz Metzar who threw her body over her two children, only to have the thugs who claim to represent the Palestinian people come closer to her so that the bullets would pass through her body and kill her two children, is the martyr--not the "al Aska Martyrs Brigade" who are simply disgusting criminals. Those who excuse this behavior away are doing no service to the Palestinian people. When Israelis and others hear these excuses, they conclude that the entire Palestinian people have lost their moral compass. That is not true. As Amira Hass explains (see link), many Palestinians abhor what is being done in their name, but feel scared to speak out. Well, those of us who support an immediate and unconditional end to the Occupation and who don't live under the tyranny of Arafat's uncontrolled thugs do have the freedom to speak out--and we must. So I say it as clearly as possible: these acts of murder, and all acts of murder by Palestinians against Israeli civilians (whether inside or outside the Green Line) are immoral, crazy, evil, and we demand that they be stopped by the Palestinian people!!! None of us are doing the Palestinian people any favor by keeping silent on this point. On the contrary, it is critical to reassure the Israeli people that should they agree to end the Occupation they will NOT be empowering a people who are ready to excuse away this kind of immorality and violence. It is particularly we who support peace who must be loud and clear in our condemnation of these hateful and immoral acts. Just as we have been clear in our condemnation of Israeli violence and the hidden but very real violence that is a daily reality of the Occupation, so we unequivocally condemn Palestinian vioilence as well. Rabbi Michael Lerner Editor, Tikkun Magazine org |
For more information:
http://www.tikkun.org/index.cfm/action/cur...
I agree completely with you about your sorrow to see Israeli civilians murdered. But saying that I think that we should not be apologetic and to show sorrow evn for Palestinians as well.
Maybe are two differnt tragedies but they have in common one thing, people are people and killings are just killings and it doesn't matter who is the perpretators of these killings and the reasons for it.
The other important point is this tragedy was let to go on and on.
The solution I may see is that people of Israel and Palestine reject their governments and start to deal and interact with themselves. Fanatism is not the solution, ethnic cleansing is not a solution as well.
Thank you for reading this.
Maybe are two differnt tragedies but they have in common one thing, people are people and killings are just killings and it doesn't matter who is the perpretators of these killings and the reasons for it.
The other important point is this tragedy was let to go on and on.
The solution I may see is that people of Israel and Palestine reject their governments and start to deal and interact with themselves. Fanatism is not the solution, ethnic cleansing is not a solution as well.
Thank you for reading this.
Rabbi Michael Lerner published a letter containing an attempt to attach collective guilt for a single crime to the whole Palestinian people, and to shift the blame for the bloodshed to the victims. The Metzer murder, a revolting crime committed by a deranged individual, is (mis)presented by Michael Lerner as an act of Arafat’s (and Palestinian national) policy. Moreover, it is described as a “Palestinian act of terror”. It is an unacceptable lie. Would we refer to yesterday’s murder of two Palestinian toddlers in Khan Yunes as to “Jewish child-murders”, or even to Mark Rich’s deeds as to “Jewish fraud”, Rabbi Lerner would certainly call it “anti-Semitism”. That is why his letter should be condemned as an incitement to hate.
The deranged criminal from Metzer acted alone, and his action was met with horror by Palestinians and Jews alike. If and when he will be apprehended he will certainly be punished. On the other hand, the murderers of the Palestinian children in Khan Yunes remain at large; they are protected and their crimes condoned by the Jewish state. When a Palestinian girl child was murdered by a Jewish fanatic near Nablous, the witness for defence, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg, claimed a Jew may kill a Goy with impunity. It appears his opinion won the day: practically none of the Jews who murdered three hundred innocent children in Palestine was brought to justice. Hilmi Shusha, a Palestinian child from Husan, was murdered by a settler Naum Korman in the eyesight of the entire village, but the Jewish judge Ruth Orr has sent Nahum Korman, the child murderer, for six months of public service in the old folks house.
Friends of Palestine won’t stoop as low as the late PM Golda Meir, who proclaimed “I can’t forgive the Palestinians that they force us to kill their children”. We won’t lie as the late PM David Ben Gurion who tried to attach blame for the Deir Yassin Massacre to ‘Arab irregulars’, and for Sharon’s massacre in Kibie to the relatives of ‘Arab terror victims’. We won’t try the line of Madeline Albright who thought the murder of Iraqi children was worth its while. Instead, we call to bring to the International Criminal Court every Jewish murderer of Palestinian children.
Rabbi Lerner should pay heed to a recent letter to Haaretz newspaper by Dr Miriam Reik, who wrote:
“Killing kids gets to be routine.
Israel is, in many ways, unique. It is the only country in the world in which a child, throwing a stone, is considered to have committed a capital crime, and a soldier can kill him with a bullet with impunity--no questions asked.
Haaretz reported the death in this fashion yesterday of Mohammed ali Zeiz, a 15 year old, without comment. It is the only country in the world in which the occupying army does not hold its fire when an innocent child is on the scene, much less rush to protect him.
Ibrahim al-Madani, 12 years old, died in this way yesterday, as reported by Haaretz, without comment. We all know of dozens of such incidents, which led Amnesty International to characterize the current conflict as one in which the lives of children are treated with "utter disregard," a charge met with cynical protestations of innocence by the IDF.
However, it is also a sad comment on the general deterioration of standards in Israel, that Haaretz can report such incidents, time and again, without editorial comment. Anything, I suppose, can become routine.
Miriam M. Reik, PhD”
The deranged criminal from Metzer acted alone, and his action was met with horror by Palestinians and Jews alike. If and when he will be apprehended he will certainly be punished. On the other hand, the murderers of the Palestinian children in Khan Yunes remain at large; they are protected and their crimes condoned by the Jewish state. When a Palestinian girl child was murdered by a Jewish fanatic near Nablous, the witness for defence, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginzburg, claimed a Jew may kill a Goy with impunity. It appears his opinion won the day: practically none of the Jews who murdered three hundred innocent children in Palestine was brought to justice. Hilmi Shusha, a Palestinian child from Husan, was murdered by a settler Naum Korman in the eyesight of the entire village, but the Jewish judge Ruth Orr has sent Nahum Korman, the child murderer, for six months of public service in the old folks house.
Friends of Palestine won’t stoop as low as the late PM Golda Meir, who proclaimed “I can’t forgive the Palestinians that they force us to kill their children”. We won’t lie as the late PM David Ben Gurion who tried to attach blame for the Deir Yassin Massacre to ‘Arab irregulars’, and for Sharon’s massacre in Kibie to the relatives of ‘Arab terror victims’. We won’t try the line of Madeline Albright who thought the murder of Iraqi children was worth its while. Instead, we call to bring to the International Criminal Court every Jewish murderer of Palestinian children.
Rabbi Lerner should pay heed to a recent letter to Haaretz newspaper by Dr Miriam Reik, who wrote:
“Killing kids gets to be routine.
Israel is, in many ways, unique. It is the only country in the world in which a child, throwing a stone, is considered to have committed a capital crime, and a soldier can kill him with a bullet with impunity--no questions asked.
Haaretz reported the death in this fashion yesterday of Mohammed ali Zeiz, a 15 year old, without comment. It is the only country in the world in which the occupying army does not hold its fire when an innocent child is on the scene, much less rush to protect him.
Ibrahim al-Madani, 12 years old, died in this way yesterday, as reported by Haaretz, without comment. We all know of dozens of such incidents, which led Amnesty International to characterize the current conflict as one in which the lives of children are treated with "utter disregard," a charge met with cynical protestations of innocence by the IDF.
However, it is also a sad comment on the general deterioration of standards in Israel, that Haaretz can report such incidents, time and again, without editorial comment. Anything, I suppose, can become routine.
Miriam M. Reik, PhD”
If one notes the origin of the term "Semite", it actually includes all Arabs, and therefore Palestinians as well. (See defintions. below)
This is not just academic nitpicking: to use the term "Anti-Semtic" in referring to Palestinians reinforces the racist erasure of the Palestinian people. The denial that there is a distinct Palestinian culture or that there is or ever was a Palestinian society is the cornerstone of Israel's "justification" for the brutal oppression of Palestinians.
There is much hateful rhetoric thrown about by people of all ethnicities in the "Middle East." (A regional name which also bears the racist stamp of Eurocentrism.) Clearly, part of this is anti-Jewish. (I am not saying that the inacurate use of this term is not describing a real thing.) By insisting on making this distinction, however, we challenge the all-too-common racist erasure implicit in calling people Anti--Semitic who are actually Semites themselves.
[from: http://mathforum.org/epigone/calc-reform/hingzoilul]
(**)Main Entry: Sem·ite
Pronunciation: 'se-"mIt, esp British 'sE-"mIt
Function: noun
Etymology: French sémite, from Semitic Shem, from Late Latin, from
Greek SEm, from Hebrew ShEm
Date: 1848
1 a : a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern
Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs b : a
descendant of these peoples
2 : a member of a modern people speaking a Semitic language
[from: http://www.geocities.com/etymonline/s4etym.htm]
Semite - 1847, from Mod.L. Semita, from L.L. Sem "Shem," one of the three sons of Noah (Gen. x), regarded as the ancestor of the Semites (in the days when anthropology was still bound by the Bible), from Heb. Shem. Semitic (1813) is probably from Ger. semitisch, denoting the language group that includes Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, etc.
This is not just academic nitpicking: to use the term "Anti-Semtic" in referring to Palestinians reinforces the racist erasure of the Palestinian people. The denial that there is a distinct Palestinian culture or that there is or ever was a Palestinian society is the cornerstone of Israel's "justification" for the brutal oppression of Palestinians.
There is much hateful rhetoric thrown about by people of all ethnicities in the "Middle East." (A regional name which also bears the racist stamp of Eurocentrism.) Clearly, part of this is anti-Jewish. (I am not saying that the inacurate use of this term is not describing a real thing.) By insisting on making this distinction, however, we challenge the all-too-common racist erasure implicit in calling people Anti--Semitic who are actually Semites themselves.
[from: http://mathforum.org/epigone/calc-reform/hingzoilul]
(**)Main Entry: Sem·ite
Pronunciation: 'se-"mIt, esp British 'sE-"mIt
Function: noun
Etymology: French sémite, from Semitic Shem, from Late Latin, from
Greek SEm, from Hebrew ShEm
Date: 1848
1 a : a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern
Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs b : a
descendant of these peoples
2 : a member of a modern people speaking a Semitic language
[from: http://www.geocities.com/etymonline/s4etym.htm]
Semite - 1847, from Mod.L. Semita, from L.L. Sem "Shem," one of the three sons of Noah (Gen. x), regarded as the ancestor of the Semites (in the days when anthropology was still bound by the Bible), from Heb. Shem. Semitic (1813) is probably from Ger. semitisch, denoting the language group that includes Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Assyrian, etc.
Notice how the poster posts his little explanation about what the writer needs to do for his spiritual and moral betterment at the end of the discourse.
Typical European leftist rhetoric to justify good, old fashioned hatred of Jews.
I have read here about the far left extremists complaining the noxious, far right extremists have taken over this board. Frankly, I can't tell the difference between either of them.
Two sides of the same coin.
Typical European leftist rhetoric to justify good, old fashioned hatred of Jews.
I have read here about the far left extremists complaining the noxious, far right extremists have taken over this board. Frankly, I can't tell the difference between either of them.
Two sides of the same coin.
"Boba Fett",
I am very surprised to see this reply to my post about the use of the term "Anti-Semetic" to describe Palestinians. You have not disagreed with the etymological fact I presented, just claimed that I'm an "extremist" who "hates Jews".
Perhaps you misunderstood my post. I meant to express that anti-Jewish feeling should be called such-- calling it "anti-Semtic" is a) intellectually sloppy, and, further b) racist, because it implicitly denies the existance of an entire people. If you disagree with something here, please be clear.
I am very surprised to see this reply to my post about the use of the term "Anti-Semetic" to describe Palestinians. You have not disagreed with the etymological fact I presented, just claimed that I'm an "extremist" who "hates Jews".
Perhaps you misunderstood my post. I meant to express that anti-Jewish feeling should be called such-- calling it "anti-Semtic" is a) intellectually sloppy, and, further b) racist, because it implicitly denies the existance of an entire people. If you disagree with something here, please be clear.
Wednesday, December 11, 2002
Once again Annie Nakao has produced a column of monumental folly. She’s now decided to take on Israel and the question of anti-Semitism, as it pertains to the Rainbow Grocery boycott. And who do you think she consulted for this important discussion? None other than Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, and as Nakao puts it ''the conscience of leftist Jews in the Bay Area.'' With impressive credentials like that, it’s no wonder that Nakao went straight to Lerner for expert advice on her column ''When anti-Semitism is the wrong term.''
Lerner’s critics, who, Nakao points out, call him a ''self-hating Jew out to destroy Israel,'' are right on target. But this time around, Lerner is correct in being opposed to the Rainbow Grocery ban, because, he says, ''It’s an economic boycott of the whole society.'' His conclusion, however, that calling boycott advocates anti-Semitic ''is totally illegitimate,'' is a ridiculous statement.
Nakao poses the question, ''Is it possible for both Jews and non-Jews to be critical of Israel these days and not be anti-Semitic? I hope so. I pray so.'' Well, she’d better keep praying, because the answer to that question is no. Being critical of Israel in and of itself is not anti-Semitic. However, the left’s fixation on Israel as the root of all evil in the Middle East and indeed, throughout the world, is decidedly anti-Semitic. When countless nations around the world commit atrocities and aggressions against their neighbors, why is it that the left focuses exclusively on democratic Israel? What about China attempting to erase Tibet’s culture, and Syria’s occupation of Lebanon? What, other than anti-Semitism, can this obvious double standard be attributed to?
Nakao points out, with some alarm, that ''charges of anti-Semitism are rife, in public life, on university campuses, even at home'' without any reference to the world events that are a real cause of concern for Jews. Since the attacks of 9/11, anti-Semitic rhetoric from the Muslim world and consequently from the left, has been ratcheted up several notches. It’s not a pleasant experience to open up the newspaper everyday and see that Jews everywhere are under attack. From conspiracy theories that accuse Jews of being behind 9/11, to Palestinian students handing out flyers on campuses that charge Jews with using the blood of Muslims in their food, to Israelis being blown up on a daily basis, this is hardly a great time to be Jewish.
Let’s not forget that Israel is a Jewish state, so to be anti-Israel might just have a little something to do with being anti-Semitic. Many Arabs are up front about their hatred of Jews. But the left tries to disguise their bigotry by couching it in anti-Israel terminology. Why don’t they just come straight out and admit to their prejudices? The fact is, the left isn’t for peace in the Middle East or anywhere for that matter, they’ve simply chosen sides.
Which leads us back to the Rainbow Grocery boycott of Israeli products. I’ll leave the details up to others to explain, but suffice to say that employees in two of the largest departments in the coop health food store have been boycotting Israeli products for about a year now. Nakao seems to feel the need to defend these people from any charges of anti-Semitism. Well, I’ve got news for Ms. Nakao: It isn’t going to work. We know anti-Semitism when we see it, and we’re not going to take it laying down. In fact, some of us are already boycotting Rainbow Grocery and we’re planning a protest at the store to show our opposition to their unfair boycott. Stay tuned for the details...
Once again Annie Nakao has produced a column of monumental folly. She’s now decided to take on Israel and the question of anti-Semitism, as it pertains to the Rainbow Grocery boycott. And who do you think she consulted for this important discussion? None other than Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, and as Nakao puts it ''the conscience of leftist Jews in the Bay Area.'' With impressive credentials like that, it’s no wonder that Nakao went straight to Lerner for expert advice on her column ''When anti-Semitism is the wrong term.''
Lerner’s critics, who, Nakao points out, call him a ''self-hating Jew out to destroy Israel,'' are right on target. But this time around, Lerner is correct in being opposed to the Rainbow Grocery ban, because, he says, ''It’s an economic boycott of the whole society.'' His conclusion, however, that calling boycott advocates anti-Semitic ''is totally illegitimate,'' is a ridiculous statement.
Nakao poses the question, ''Is it possible for both Jews and non-Jews to be critical of Israel these days and not be anti-Semitic? I hope so. I pray so.'' Well, she’d better keep praying, because the answer to that question is no. Being critical of Israel in and of itself is not anti-Semitic. However, the left’s fixation on Israel as the root of all evil in the Middle East and indeed, throughout the world, is decidedly anti-Semitic. When countless nations around the world commit atrocities and aggressions against their neighbors, why is it that the left focuses exclusively on democratic Israel? What about China attempting to erase Tibet’s culture, and Syria’s occupation of Lebanon? What, other than anti-Semitism, can this obvious double standard be attributed to?
Nakao points out, with some alarm, that ''charges of anti-Semitism are rife, in public life, on university campuses, even at home'' without any reference to the world events that are a real cause of concern for Jews. Since the attacks of 9/11, anti-Semitic rhetoric from the Muslim world and consequently from the left, has been ratcheted up several notches. It’s not a pleasant experience to open up the newspaper everyday and see that Jews everywhere are under attack. From conspiracy theories that accuse Jews of being behind 9/11, to Palestinian students handing out flyers on campuses that charge Jews with using the blood of Muslims in their food, to Israelis being blown up on a daily basis, this is hardly a great time to be Jewish.
Let’s not forget that Israel is a Jewish state, so to be anti-Israel might just have a little something to do with being anti-Semitic. Many Arabs are up front about their hatred of Jews. But the left tries to disguise their bigotry by couching it in anti-Israel terminology. Why don’t they just come straight out and admit to their prejudices? The fact is, the left isn’t for peace in the Middle East or anywhere for that matter, they’ve simply chosen sides.
Which leads us back to the Rainbow Grocery boycott of Israeli products. I’ll leave the details up to others to explain, but suffice to say that employees in two of the largest departments in the coop health food store have been boycotting Israeli products for about a year now. Nakao seems to feel the need to defend these people from any charges of anti-Semitism. Well, I’ve got news for Ms. Nakao: It isn’t going to work. We know anti-Semitism when we see it, and we’re not going to take it laying down. In fact, some of us are already boycotting Rainbow Grocery and we’re planning a protest at the store to show our opposition to their unfair boycott. Stay tuned for the details...
For more information:
http://www.chronwatch.com/editorial/conten...
I guess you're right though, if theirs no word for it than it doesn't exist..
And beside the point, calling Zionists or spammers 'Nazis' in no way debases it right, ....? Becaus 'antisemitism' used to mean throwing babies into pit-ovens, as .... says, but all nazism ever meant was cutting olive trees.
And beside the point, calling Zionists or spammers 'Nazis' in no way debases it right, ....? Becaus 'antisemitism' used to mean throwing babies into pit-ovens, as .... says, but all nazism ever meant was cutting olive trees.
Early Nazism - in, say, 1933 - didn't mean concentration camps. That came later. It meant herding people into ghettoes; building walls around them; saying they are less than human and they are oppressing those loyal to the ideology; economically damaging them; and blaming them for all the problems of the nation.
Back then, alot of people didn't know what was going to happen. Now we have the benefit of hindsight.
Back then, alot of people didn't know what was going to happen. Now we have the benefit of hindsight.
Hey Jeff, I'm glad to see you have a dictionary.
Here's my challenge to you.
I want you to flip to to the left. You know? Every letter in the alphabet that comes before, 'S', okay?
Look up the word "Anti-Semite"
And copy what you find there.
Tell us if you find the word Arab.
Okay?
I've addressed this topic a dozen times and no one listens.
Here's my challenge to you.
I want you to flip to to the left. You know? Every letter in the alphabet that comes before, 'S', okay?
Look up the word "Anti-Semite"
And copy what you find there.
Tell us if you find the word Arab.
Okay?
I've addressed this topic a dozen times and no one listens.
The Islamic SS were founded by the fugitive Nazi war criminal and the father of the Palestinians, Haj Amin al Husseini. Like all SS men, Hitler Islamic legions swore an oath of undying loyalty to Adolf Hitler, whose Gestapo funded and armed Jewkilling Palestinian terrorists during the 1930s and the Holocaust.
The Islamic SS combined their hatred for Jews with thier love for Hitler to become one of most lethal killing machines in human history.
Even before there was an israel, Palestinians, Nazis and all other Jew-haters were proud allies in anti-Jewish genocide. Of such stuff is indymedia made.
The Islamic SS combined their hatred for Jews with thier love for Hitler to become one of most lethal killing machines in human history.
Even before there was an israel, Palestinians, Nazis and all other Jew-haters were proud allies in anti-Jewish genocide. Of such stuff is indymedia made.
??
And why should some crazy guy appointed by the British be held against Palestinians today?
"Al-Husseini's appointment as mufti was itself the subject of much controversy. The decision to grant al-Husseini the position was made by Herbert Samuel, the first high commissioner of Palestine."
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/mufti.html
The only sites that seem to promote this guy are proIsrael sites so he seems to only be as important now as you make him...
And why should some crazy guy appointed by the British be held against Palestinians today?
"Al-Husseini's appointment as mufti was itself the subject of much controversy. The decision to grant al-Husseini the position was made by Herbert Samuel, the first high commissioner of Palestine."
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/mufti.html
The only sites that seem to promote this guy are proIsrael sites so he seems to only be as important now as you make him...
"Jews helped the Nazis, too, and vice versa"
So according to Nessie, the Nazis were pro-Jewish and the jews were pro-Nazi, so don't anybody dare bring up the leading role played by palestinians in the creation of Hitler's Islamic Legions or Nazi support for the Jew-hating, Jew-Killing palestinians today. ... Is there no lie so foul or Israel-hater so vile that it will not be embraced with open arms by the Israel-hating Indymedia in the name of annihilating the Jewish state?
So according to Nessie, the Nazis were pro-Jewish and the jews were pro-Nazi, so don't anybody dare bring up the leading role played by palestinians in the creation of Hitler's Islamic Legions or Nazi support for the Jew-hating, Jew-Killing palestinians today. ... Is there no lie so foul or Israel-hater so vile that it will not be embraced with open arms by the Israel-hating Indymedia in the name of annihilating the Jewish state?
No, that's called "Stretching the analogy"
He said Nazis and Jews helped each other.
NOT that they were pro-anything.
Heck, Hitler was an animal lover. Doesn't animal lovers "pro-Nazi", as your stretch puts it, now does it?
Can you deny the fact, or not?
He said Nazis and Jews helped each other.
NOT that they were pro-anything.
Heck, Hitler was an animal lover. Doesn't animal lovers "pro-Nazi", as your stretch puts it, now does it?
Can you deny the fact, or not?
At least have the guts to stand behind your hate. You line up with the Holocaust deniers, who by the way, line up with you as Israel haters, when you claim that the Jews helped the Nazis and the Nazis helped the Jews.
What a pity that you people lack the ability to honestly evaluate your own motives and those of your fellow Israel haters.
What a pity that you people lack the ability to honestly evaluate your own motives and those of your fellow Israel haters.
http://www.jrep.com/Columnists/Article-2.html
December 16, 2002
Not Just Anti-Semitic Lies!
Ehud Ya'ari
The essence of the message is that there is no possibility of making peace with the Jews
"Horseman without a horse," the Egyptian TV hit series being broadcast by 14 Arab TV networks, is not the only anti-Semitic production to be galloping across the screens each evening this Ramadan. For viewers looking for more than the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" can offer, there’s no shortage of alternatives. Anti-Semitism has become the last word in the Arab entertainment industry.
Al-Manar, the Hizballah TV station broadcast from Lebanon, features Dr. Ghazi Hussein, a veteran salaried PLO lackey and a former adviser to the late Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad. Hussein sits in the studio and knowledgeably defines the typical characteristics of the Jew, including "lying, treachery and greed" and goes on at length to describe Jewish baseness. The program, incidentally, is called "The Spider’s House," a reference to the remark by Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah that Israel is doomed to fall apart like a spider’s web. The program’s promo includes video clips promising that "Israel will be obliterated," with appropriate images for illustration.
Syrian TV is running the dramatic locally produced series, "The Collapse of Legends." Its central premise is that there is no archeological evidence to support the stories of the Old Testament; that the Torah we hold holy is nothing but one big forgery made up by rabbis; that it has no connection with the Ten Commandments, but is rather a fabrication of history designed to give the Jews a claim to the Land of Israel. So in the dramatized serial, a group of Syrian archeologists sets out on a campaign to expose a group of Zionists who have infiltrated their party with the aim of tampering with the ancient antiquities at the famous archeological site of Ebla, in order to give some scientific basis to the forged scripture.
And in case you were worrying, Arafat is not being left behind. Palestinian TV is broadcasting a series of documentaries with one single objective: to disprove the "myth" that any Jewish Temple ever stood in Jerusalem, and to present any historical reference to that claim as an act of deception. The message is that the Jews have no business in the Holy City.
And as most of our readers will already know (see pages 28-31 of this magazine), the Egyptian series "Horseman without a Horse" is reviving the "Protocols," albeit in a dreadful, painfully slow-paced production with laughable acting. The Jews in the series look like they’ve jumped straight out of Der Sturmer and behave like devil’s advocates, scheming, sowing corruption and generally encapsulating all that is ugly about humanity.
The inevitable conclusion is that significant numbers, though by no means all, of the young generation of Arab artists, a stratum that usually represents liberal trends and openness, have volunteered their services to sharpen and stylize the message that up until now has been promoted by fundamentalist movements such as Hamas. The essence of the message is that there is no possibility of making peace with the Jews -- not because of any political argument or clash over territory, but because that nation is a priori unfit to be counted among the human race. The Jewish religion is one big, ongoing lie, and Jewish history is the fruit of a consistent distortion of the past. Furthermore, the Jewish people present a future threat to the rest of the world.
For some time now I, along with a few colleagues who lend their ears day by day to the voices coming from the other side, have been asking ourselves: Where is this campaign leading? After all, this is not about withdrawing from the territories or granting Palestinian refugees the "right of return." Rather, it is a far-reaching, dangerous rationale laying the ground for the justification of a mass exile of Jews from Israel -- "ethnic cleansing" in contemporary terms -- and even beyond that, it is gradually building a case for justifying genocide!
At the forefront, of course, are the Muslim holy men and clerics whose poisonous fatwas flood the Internet. According to them, the Jews, by their very nature, corrupt their environment, are "prophet killers" and are the "sons of pigs and monkeys." They point out that there is a promise in Islamic tradition that the stone behind which the Jews seek refuge on Judgment Day will break its silence to give them up.
It is not the approval to fight against Israel that is being sought here, but rather the religious authority and "moral" basis for much more than that. Sure, there are more than a few Arab intellectuals raising their voices in protest against such declarations. But no number of nicely written articles can counterbalance the effect of a dramatic, well-promoted, prime-time TV series screened right after the break-fast meal.
December 16, 2002
Not Just Anti-Semitic Lies!
Ehud Ya'ari
The essence of the message is that there is no possibility of making peace with the Jews
"Horseman without a horse," the Egyptian TV hit series being broadcast by 14 Arab TV networks, is not the only anti-Semitic production to be galloping across the screens each evening this Ramadan. For viewers looking for more than the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" can offer, there’s no shortage of alternatives. Anti-Semitism has become the last word in the Arab entertainment industry.
Al-Manar, the Hizballah TV station broadcast from Lebanon, features Dr. Ghazi Hussein, a veteran salaried PLO lackey and a former adviser to the late Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad. Hussein sits in the studio and knowledgeably defines the typical characteristics of the Jew, including "lying, treachery and greed" and goes on at length to describe Jewish baseness. The program, incidentally, is called "The Spider’s House," a reference to the remark by Hizballah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah that Israel is doomed to fall apart like a spider’s web. The program’s promo includes video clips promising that "Israel will be obliterated," with appropriate images for illustration.
Syrian TV is running the dramatic locally produced series, "The Collapse of Legends." Its central premise is that there is no archeological evidence to support the stories of the Old Testament; that the Torah we hold holy is nothing but one big forgery made up by rabbis; that it has no connection with the Ten Commandments, but is rather a fabrication of history designed to give the Jews a claim to the Land of Israel. So in the dramatized serial, a group of Syrian archeologists sets out on a campaign to expose a group of Zionists who have infiltrated their party with the aim of tampering with the ancient antiquities at the famous archeological site of Ebla, in order to give some scientific basis to the forged scripture.
And in case you were worrying, Arafat is not being left behind. Palestinian TV is broadcasting a series of documentaries with one single objective: to disprove the "myth" that any Jewish Temple ever stood in Jerusalem, and to present any historical reference to that claim as an act of deception. The message is that the Jews have no business in the Holy City.
And as most of our readers will already know (see pages 28-31 of this magazine), the Egyptian series "Horseman without a Horse" is reviving the "Protocols," albeit in a dreadful, painfully slow-paced production with laughable acting. The Jews in the series look like they’ve jumped straight out of Der Sturmer and behave like devil’s advocates, scheming, sowing corruption and generally encapsulating all that is ugly about humanity.
The inevitable conclusion is that significant numbers, though by no means all, of the young generation of Arab artists, a stratum that usually represents liberal trends and openness, have volunteered their services to sharpen and stylize the message that up until now has been promoted by fundamentalist movements such as Hamas. The essence of the message is that there is no possibility of making peace with the Jews -- not because of any political argument or clash over territory, but because that nation is a priori unfit to be counted among the human race. The Jewish religion is one big, ongoing lie, and Jewish history is the fruit of a consistent distortion of the past. Furthermore, the Jewish people present a future threat to the rest of the world.
For some time now I, along with a few colleagues who lend their ears day by day to the voices coming from the other side, have been asking ourselves: Where is this campaign leading? After all, this is not about withdrawing from the territories or granting Palestinian refugees the "right of return." Rather, it is a far-reaching, dangerous rationale laying the ground for the justification of a mass exile of Jews from Israel -- "ethnic cleansing" in contemporary terms -- and even beyond that, it is gradually building a case for justifying genocide!
At the forefront, of course, are the Muslim holy men and clerics whose poisonous fatwas flood the Internet. According to them, the Jews, by their very nature, corrupt their environment, are "prophet killers" and are the "sons of pigs and monkeys." They point out that there is a promise in Islamic tradition that the stone behind which the Jews seek refuge on Judgment Day will break its silence to give them up.
It is not the approval to fight against Israel that is being sought here, but rather the religious authority and "moral" basis for much more than that. Sure, there are more than a few Arab intellectuals raising their voices in protest against such declarations. But no number of nicely written articles can counterbalance the effect of a dramatic, well-promoted, prime-time TV series screened right after the break-fast meal.
fuck you nessie with your nazism-revisionism
There is NO justification for Zionist Israel's ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people of Israel-Palestine, the Palestinians for a Jewish supremacist state! End of discussion.
Arabs and Moslems and Palestinians also produce racists and supremacists. Except they get kudos from you because they prefer to kill Jews and turn down every offer to make a peaceful partition state- from 1948 to 2000.
No people have been offered a state more often than the Palestinians. And no matter what's offered it's never "enough."
Gonna deny this one too?
No people have been offered a state more often than the Palestinians. And no matter what's offered it's never "enough."
Gonna deny this one too?
"If I were a young Palestinian, I would have joined one of the terrorist organizations."
- Ehud Barak - "The Peacemaker"
I never get why we get involved in this. Just pull out entirly. No Israeli aid, no palestian aid. No troops, no nutin. Too much bad blood, not enough our problem.
These desperate attempts to depict the Jewkilling Nazis (who armed and funded palestinian terrorists and whose ranks included palestinian nazi stormtroopers) as patrons and supporters of Jews are proof that you Israel-haters are an immoral, genocidal band of fanatics who regard the truth as a mortal enemy. Why don't you just live the fantasy and strap a bomb around your belly and blow up a Jewish pre-school for Terrorfat?
There IS documented evidence of the Nazis helping the Zionists - not the Jews, atlhough you may try to lie and deceive all you want that that is the point being made. Sorry - it's all documented. Nazis helped to build the Zionist state. Their motives weren't pro-Jewish AT ALL, rather, they probably felt herding all the Jews into one spot was a good idea. Nonetheless - they sent farm equipment and supplies to the region and were among the first to do so.
The other charge against the Zionists in WW2 doesn't involve any action on the part of the Nazis, but rather, is an indictment of the lack of concern on the part of the Zionist movement for Jewish victims in the Holocaust.
IF Zionism was so concerned about the Holocaust, why didn't they try to stop it? Why didn't they use the funds they had available to help build escape routes and to buy freedom for some of the victims? Why didn't they lobby to have the rail bridges leading to the camps bombed? Why have they never shown any solidarity with the other ethnicity victimized by the Nazis, the Gypsies? And why, when this issue comes up, do the supporters of Israel who can always marshal a thousand historical facts for their ideology, resort on this particular issue to simply name-calling?
The other charge against the Zionists in WW2 doesn't involve any action on the part of the Nazis, but rather, is an indictment of the lack of concern on the part of the Zionist movement for Jewish victims in the Holocaust.
IF Zionism was so concerned about the Holocaust, why didn't they try to stop it? Why didn't they use the funds they had available to help build escape routes and to buy freedom for some of the victims? Why didn't they lobby to have the rail bridges leading to the camps bombed? Why have they never shown any solidarity with the other ethnicity victimized by the Nazis, the Gypsies? And why, when this issue comes up, do the supporters of Israel who can always marshal a thousand historical facts for their ideology, resort on this particular issue to simply name-calling?
====================================
"Auschwitz was built by I.G. Farben...
Rockefeller/Standard Oil was the largest stockholder in I.G. Farben and I.G. Farben was-next to Rockefeller-the largest shareholder in Standard Oil. "
====================================
====================================
Herald-Tribune, November 12, 2000
The president of the Florida Holocaust Museum said Saturday that George W. Bush's grandfather derived a portion of his personal fortune through his affiliation with a Nazi-controlled bank.
John Loftus, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department's Nazi War Crimes Unit, said his research found that Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a principal in the Union Banking Corp. in Manhattan in the late 1930s and the 1940s. Leading Nazi industrialists secretly owned the bank at that time, Loftus said, and were moving money into it through a second bank in Holland even after the United States declared war on Germany. The bank was liquidated in 1951, Loftus said, and Bush's grandfather and great-grandfather received $1.5 million from the bank as part of that dissolution.
"That's where the Bush family fortune came from: It came from the Third Reich," Loftus said.
====================================
====================================
THE PRETEXT
====================================
A few days ago, Germany was astonished by the news of arson in the Reichstag. Fires were set in more than twenty places in the building. It was almost completely destroyed. The ringleader is the head of the Communist faction in the Reichstag, Representative Torgler.
At the time time the press brought another unsettling report. In the basement of the "Karl Liebknecht Building" [The Communist Party Headquarters]:
secret passages
and hidden tunnels were discovered. Material that encouraged civil war was found. Detailed plans to murder both individuals and groups of Germans citizens were found. The bloody uprising was supposed to begin throughout Germany in the immediate future. There was to be murder and arson in cities and villages.
These news items had a strong effect throughout Germany. The indifferent citizen who had not wanted to see the enormous danger of Bolshevism looked in horror toward Berlin. He too realized now that Germany faced a terrible threat.
The burning Reichstag building was the signal that brought every German to his senses.
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ds7.htm
====================================
"Auschwitz was built by I.G. Farben...
Rockefeller/Standard Oil was the largest stockholder in I.G. Farben and I.G. Farben was-next to Rockefeller-the largest shareholder in Standard Oil. "
====================================
====================================
Herald-Tribune, November 12, 2000
The president of the Florida Holocaust Museum said Saturday that George W. Bush's grandfather derived a portion of his personal fortune through his affiliation with a Nazi-controlled bank.
John Loftus, a former prosecutor in the Justice Department's Nazi War Crimes Unit, said his research found that Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a principal in the Union Banking Corp. in Manhattan in the late 1930s and the 1940s. Leading Nazi industrialists secretly owned the bank at that time, Loftus said, and were moving money into it through a second bank in Holland even after the United States declared war on Germany. The bank was liquidated in 1951, Loftus said, and Bush's grandfather and great-grandfather received $1.5 million from the bank as part of that dissolution.
"That's where the Bush family fortune came from: It came from the Third Reich," Loftus said.
====================================
====================================
THE PRETEXT
====================================
A few days ago, Germany was astonished by the news of arson in the Reichstag. Fires were set in more than twenty places in the building. It was almost completely destroyed. The ringleader is the head of the Communist faction in the Reichstag, Representative Torgler.
At the time time the press brought another unsettling report. In the basement of the "Karl Liebknecht Building" [The Communist Party Headquarters]:
secret passages
and hidden tunnels were discovered. Material that encouraged civil war was found. Detailed plans to murder both individuals and groups of Germans citizens were found. The bloody uprising was supposed to begin throughout Germany in the immediate future. There was to be murder and arson in cities and villages.
These news items had a strong effect throughout Germany. The indifferent citizen who had not wanted to see the enormous danger of Bolshevism looked in horror toward Berlin. He too realized now that Germany faced a terrible threat.
The burning Reichstag building was the signal that brought every German to his senses.
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ds7.htm
====================================
Bu the way - there was never any Palestinians in the German forces, though there were Bosnian Muslims. The Grand Mufti of Mecca even called a fatwa and jihad against the Germans in 1941.
Why do you call it an "attempt"? The SS paid Polkes a salary. This is a fact. The evidence in unimpeachable. It happened. Are you saying it *didn't* happen? Can you prove it didn't happen? Why don't you?
Guy claims they's "documented" evidence that Zionists didn't help the Jews.... and doesn't document it. Probably more Noam Chumpsky I suppose.
I stand by what I said: The notion that Zionists aided or were aided by the Nazis is just another libelous fabrication by the Anti-Israel, anti-Jewish people.
Again, I repeat that the leaders of the Warsaw uprising were Zionists.
Deny it all you want; I know its important to your world view to be able to hate Jews and Israel somehow. Not sure why. Maybe its genetic.
I stand by what I said: The notion that Zionists aided or were aided by the Nazis is just another libelous fabrication by the Anti-Israel, anti-Jewish people.
Again, I repeat that the leaders of the Warsaw uprising were Zionists.
Deny it all you want; I know its important to your world view to be able to hate Jews and Israel somehow. Not sure why. Maybe its genetic.
You want documentation?
http://www.flamemag.dircon.co.uk/weissmandel_lublin.htm
"The following message about bombing concentration camps and railways, was an exhibit in the Kasztner libel case in Israel during the 1950's. It was sent by Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel, an organizer for rescue activities operating in the quisling Nazi state of Slovakia in 1944. Weissmandel put a small saw into a loaf of bread just before he was put on the train that was taking him and thousands of others to the death camp at Auschwitz. Using the saw, he managed to break out of the train and made his escape to the forests of Slovakia where he linked up with partisans. His letter provides shocking and disturbing evidence of how the Zionist leadership ignored the growing evidence of mass murder and crimes against humanity being perpetrated against Europe's Jews.
One of Weissmandel's letters
During the Kasztner case, Menachem Bader of the Jewish Agency was asked 'Did you receive this letter from Rabbi Weissmandel?" He answered: "Letters like this came to us every day". Weissmandel later published the following letter, which is a literal translation of the letter the Jewish Rescue Committee in Czechoslovakia received from the Zionist "Jewish" Agency Executive Offices in Switzerland. This was in reply to the call of the Jewish Rescue Committee for help, with documentary evidence furnished, concerning the fate of millions of Jewish people in Nazi occupied Europe.
"We are writing to remind you of the one factor of which you must never lose sight: that ultimately, the Allies will win the war. After their victory, territorial boundaries will be reshaped as they were after the First World War. Then, the way will be clear for our purpose at this time, with the war drawing to a close, we must do everything in our power to change Eretz Yisrael to Medinat Yisrael and many steps have already been taken in this regard. Therefore, we must turn a deaf ear to the pleas and cries emanating from Eastern Europe. Remember this: all the allies have suffered many losses, and if we also do not offer human sacrifices, how can we gain the right to sit at the conference table when the territorial boundaries are reshaped? Accordingly, it is foolhardy and brazen for us to negotiate in terms of money or supplies in exchange for Jewish lives. How dare we ask of the allied powers to barter money for lives while they are sustaining heavy casualties daily? So, insofar as the masses are concerned: RAK B'DAM TIHJE LANU HAAREZ, (Eretz Yisroel will be ours only by paying with blood), but as far as our immediate circle is concerned, ATEM TAJLU. The messenger bearing this letter will supply you with funds for this purpose".
Weissmandel says that :
After I accustomed myself to the peculiar writing, I trembled when I realized the import of RAK B'DAM TIHJE LANU HAAREZ. But many weeks passed, and I was still confounded by the meaning of ATEM TAJLU. Until one day, it struck me. ATEM TAJLU meant "You escape", for the word "tiyul" (walking trip) was used by them as a euphemistic code for "escape". They meant to say - you fifteen or twenty "party members", escape from Czechoslovakia and save your hides. The price of Eretz Yisroel is the blood of the men and women, hoary sages, and babes in arms - but not YOUR blood! Let us not spoil this plan by giving the Axis powers to save Jewish lives. But for you, comrades, I have enclosed carfare for your escape. What a nightmare! The Zionist agent "diplomat" comes to Czechoslovakia and says 'Now is a very critical time. But comparatively speaking it is not at all critical for you trapped Jews. For there is an emergency of far greater proportions; namely, BINYAN HA-ARETZ (the prize of Medinat Yisrael). Shed your blood cheerfully, for your blood is cheap. But for your blood, the Land (of Israel) will be ours!
But these were no ordinary letters - the one reproduced below from Rabbi Weissmandel, like the one above were from first- hand witnesses of the holocaust. Note how Rabbi Weissmandel asks that the crematoria in Auschwitz be bombed from the air. How it is "sharply visible" - he clearly gave information that he hoped would be passed on to help Allied air crews bomb the murder camps. Also note that he enclosed a map of the camps - where it that today?"
AND SOME MORE ....
5. German Zionism offers to collaborate with Nazism
Werner Senator, a leading German Zionist, once remarked that Zionism, for all its world Jewish nationalism, always politically assimilates to the countries within which it operates. No better proof of his remark exists than the political adaptation of the ZVfD to the theories and policies of the new Nazi regime. Believing that the ideological similarities between the two movements – their contempt for liberalism, their common volkish racism and, of course, their mutual conviction that Germany could never be the homeland of its Jews – could induce the Nazis to support them, the ZVfD solicited the patronage of Adolf Hitler, not once but repeatedly, after 1933. The goal of the ZVfD became an “orderly retreat”, that is, Nazi backing for emigration of at least the younger generation of Jews to Palestine, and they immediately sought contact with elements in the Nazi apparatus whom they thought would be interested in such an arrangement on the basis of a volkish appreciation of Zionism. Kurt Tuchler, a member of the ZVfD Executive, persuaded Baron Leopold Itz Edler von Mildenstein of the SS to write a pro-Zionist piece for the Nazi press. The Baron agreed on the condition that he visited Palestine first, and two months after Hitler came to power the two men and their wives went to Palestine; von Mildenstein stayed there for six months before he returned to write his articles. [1] Contact with a central figure in the new government came in March 1933, when Hermann Goering summoned the leaders of the major Jewish organisations. In early March, Julius Streicher, the editor of Der Stürmer, had declared that, as of 1 April, all Jewish stores and professionals would be boycotted; however, this campaign ran into an immediate snag. Hitler’s capitalist backers were extremely worried by the announcement by rabbi Wise of a planned counter-demonstration to be held in New York on 27 March, if the Nazis went ahead with their boycott. Jews were prominent throughout the retail trade both in American and Europe and, fearing retaliation against their own companies, Hitler’s wealthy patrons urged him to call off the action. But the Nazis could hardly do that without losing face, and they decided to use German Jewry to head off Wise; thus Hermann Goering called in the Jewish leaders. German Zionism’s influence in Weimar did not merit its leaders’ participation, but because they conceived themselves as the only natural negotiating partner with the Nazis, they secured a late invitation. Martin Rosenbluth, a leading Zionist, later told of the incident in his post-war autobiography, Go Forth and Serve. Four Jews saw Goering: Julius Brodnitz for the CV, Heinrich Stahl for the Berlin Jewish community, Max Naumann, a pro-Nazi fanatic from the Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (VnJ), and Blumenfeld for the Zionists. Goering launched into a tirade: the foreign press was lying about atrocities against Jews; unless the lies stopped, he could not vouch for the safety of German Jewry. Most important, the New York rally had to be called off: “Dr Wise is one of our most dangerous and unscrupulous enemies.” [2] A delegation was to go to London to contact world Jewry. The assimilationists declined, claiming that as Germans they had no influence with foreign Jews. This was false, but they hardly wanted to assist in their own destruction. Only Blumenfeld volunteered, but insisted he be allowed to speak truthfully about the Nazi treatment of Jews. Goering did not care what was said to get the rally called off; perhaps a description of the grim situation might make foreign Jews halt for fear of provoking worse. He did not care who went or what arguments were used as long as the deputation agreed to “report regularly to the German embassy”. [3] The ZVfD finally sent Martin Rosenbluth and Richard Lichtheim. Fearing exclusive responsibility for the outcome of their strange mission, they prevailed upon the CV to let them take along Dr Ludwig Tietz. Although not a Zionist personally, the wealthy businessman was “a good friend of ours”. [4] The trio arrived in London on 27 March and immediately met forty Jewish leaders at a meeting chaired by Nahum Sokolow, then President of the WZO. They later met a battery of British officials. The delegates saw two tasks before them: to use the severity of the situation to promote Palestine as “the logical place of refuge”, and to head off all anti-Nazi efforts abroad. They called Wise in New York. Rosenbluth described the incident thus in his memoirs:
Mindful of Goering’s charges... we conveyed the message ... Getting the cryptic rest of our message across to him was somewhat more difficult, since it was necessary to speak in obscure terms in order to confound any possible monitors. Subsequent events proved we had made clear our hidden plea, and that Dr Wise had understood we wanted him to stand firm and under no circumstances cancel the meeting. [5]
There is no evidence that any effort was made to signal Wise to this effect. Through the research of an Israeli scholar, Shaul Esh, it is now known that the deputation tried to head off demonstrations in New York and Palestine. According to Esh, later that evening they sent cables:
not in their own name, but in the name of the Zionist Executive in London. The telegrams requested that the recipients immediately dispatch to the Chancellery of the Third Reich declarations to the effect that they do not condone an organised anti-German boycott ... the Zionist Executive in London learned of this several hours later, they sent another cable to Jerusalem to delay the dispatch of an official declaration to Hitler. [6]
Later, in his own autobiography, Challenging Years, Stephen Wise mentioned receiving their cable, but he did not record any cryptic message from the delegation. [7] It is reasonable to assume that he would have recorded it, if he had thought any such attempt was made. In reality, Wise repeatedly raged at the ZVfD in the following years for persistently opposing every attempt by foreign Jews to struggle against the Hitler regime. The London proceedings were typical of all further ZVfD behaviour. In 1937, after leaving Berlin for America, Rabbi Joachim Prinz wrote of his experiences in Germany and alluded to a memorandum which, it is now known, was sent to the Nazi Party by the ZVfD on 21 June 1933. Prinz’s article candidly describes the Zionist mood in the first months of 1933:
Everyone in Germany knew that only the Zionists could responsibly represent the Jews in dealings with the Nazi government. We all felt sure that one day the government would arrange a round table conference with the Jews, at which – after the riots and atrocities of the revolution had passed – the new status of German Jewry could be considered. The government announced very solemnly that there was no country in the world which tried to solve the Jewish problem as seriously as did Germany. Solution of the Jewish question? It was our Zionist dream! We never denied the existence of the Jewish question! Dissimilation? It was our own appeal! ... In a statement notable for its pride and dignity, we called for a conference. [8]
The document remained buried until 1962, when it was finally printed, in German, in Israel. “Pride” and “dignity” are words open to interpretation but, it is safe to say, there was not one word that could be so construed today. This extraordinary memorandum demands extensive quotation. The Nazis were asked, very politely:
May we therefore be permitted to present our views, which, in our opinion, make possible a solution in keeping with the principles of the new German State of National Awakening and which at the same time might signify for Jews a new ordering of the conditions of their existence ... Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own tradition ... ... an answer to the Jewish question truly satisfying to the national state can be brought about only with the collaboration of the Jewish movement that aims at a social, cultural, and moral renewal of Jewry ... a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group. For the Jew, too, origin, religion, community of fate and group consciousness must be of decisive significance in the shaping of his life ... On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total structure so that for us too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible ... 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 do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group ... ... fidelity to their own kind and their own culture gives Jews the inner strength that prevents insult to the respect for the national sentiments and the imponderables of German nationality; and rootedness in one’s own spirituality protects the Jew from becoming the rootless critic of the national foundations of German essence. The national distancing which the state desires would thus be brought about easily as the result of an organic development. Thus, a self-conscious Jewry here described, in whose name we speak, can find a place in the structure of the German state, because it is inwardly unembarrassed, free from the resentment which assimilated Jews must feel at the determination that they belong to Jewry, to the Jewish race and past. We believe in the possibility of an honest relationship of loyalty between a group-conscious Jewry and the German state ... For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration even of a government fundamentally hostile to Jews, because in dealing with the Jewish question no sentimentalities are involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples, and at the present moment especially the German people.
The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda – such as is currently being carried on against Germany in many ways – is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build ... Our observations, presented herewith, rest on the conviction that, in solving the Jewish problem according to its own lights, the German Government will have full understanding for a candid and clear Jewish posture that harmonizes with the interests of the state. [9]
This document, a treason to the Jews of Germany, was written in standard Zionist cliches: “abnormal occupational pattern”, “rootless intellectuals greatly in need of moral regeneration”, etc. In it the German Zionists offered calculated collaboration between Zionism and Nazism, hallowed by the goal of a Jewish state: we shall wage no battle against thee, only against those that would resist thee. Obsessed with their strange mission, the ZVfD’s leaders lost all sense of international Jewish perspective and even tried to get the WZO to call off its World Congress, scheduled for August 1933. They sent their world leadership a letter: “It will have to express sharp protests,, their lives could be at stake at a time when “our legal existence has enabled us to organise thousands and to transfer large sums of money to Palestine”. [10] The Congress did take place as we shall see, but the ZVfD had nothing to worry about as the Nazis chose to use the occasion to announce that they had made a deal with world Zionism.
“Seeking its own national idealism in the Nazi spirit”
The Jewish public knew nothing about von Mildenstein’s journey to Palestine in the company of a member of the Zionist Executive, nor about Rosenbluth and Lichtheim’s trip to London; nor did they know about the memorandum, nor the request to call off the Zionist Congress. However, they could not miss what was appearing in the Rundschau, where assimilationalist German Jewry was roundly attacked. The CV complained bitterly of Zionist “siegesfanfaren” as the Rundschau rushed to condemn the guilty Jews. [11] The editor, Robert Weltsch, took the occasion of the 1 April boycott to assail the Jews of Germany in an editorial: “Wear the Yellow Badge with Pride”:
At times of crisis throughout its history, the Jewish people has faced the question of its own guilt. Our most important prayer says, “We were expelled from our country because of our sins” ... Jewry bears a great guilt because it failed to heed Theodor Herzl’s call ... Because the Jews did not display their Jewishness with pride, because they wanted to shirk the Jewish question, they must share the blame for the degradation of Jewry. [12]
Even as the Nazis were in the process of throwing the left into concentration camps, Weltsch attacked the left-wing Jewish journalists:
If today the National Socialist and German patriotic newspapers frequently refer to the type of the Jewish scribbler and the so-called Jewish press ... it must be pointed out ... Upright Jews have always been indignant at the raillery and the caricature directed by Jewish buffoons against Jews to the same extent, or even a greater extent, than they aimed them at Germans and others. [13]
Although the left-wing press had been under attack from the day the Nazis came to power, the Jewish newspapers were still legal. Naturally they were censored; if a journal printed something untoward, it would be closed down, temporarily at least. However, the Nazis did not force the Zionists to denounce their fellow Jews. After the Holocaust Weltsch was quite contrite about the editorial, saying that he should have told the Jews to flee for their lives, but he never claimed that the Nazis made him write the piece. Weltsch was not a Fascist, but he was too much the Zionist sectarian to have really thought through his ideas about the world at large. As were most of the leaders of the ZVfD, he was quite convinced that “egotistical liberalism” and parliamentary democracy were dead at least in Germany. Internationally, they were still for the British in Palestine, but the Rundschau’s correspondent in Italy, Kurt Kornicker, was quite openly pro-Fascist. [14] The ZVfD’s leaders became convinced that Fascism was the wave of the future, certainly in Central Europe, and within that framework they counterposed the “good” Fascism of Mussolini to the “excesses” of Hitlerism, which they thought would diminish, with their assistance, as time went by. Racism was now triumphant and the ZVfD ran with the winner. The talk of blut began to take hold with a statement by Blumenfeld in April 1933 that the Jews had previously been masking their natural blood-sanctioned apartness from the real Germans, but it reached Wagnerian proportions in the 4 August Rundschau with a long essay, “Rasse als Kulturfaktor”, which pondered on the intellectual implications for Jews of the Nazi victory. It argued that Jews should not merely accept silently the dictates of their new masters; they, too, had to realise that race separation was wholly to the good:
We who live here as a “foreign race” have to respect racial consciousness and the racial interest of the German people absolutely. This however does not preclude a peaceful living together of people of different racial membership. The smaller the possibility of an undesirable mixture, so much less is there need for “racial protection” ... There are differentiations that in the last analysis have their root in ancestry. Only rationalist newspapers who have lost feeling for the deeper reasons and profundities of the soul, and for the origins of communal consciousness, could put aside ancestry as simply in the realm of “natural history”.
In the past, the paper continued, it had been hard to get Jews to have an objective evaluation of racism. But now was the time, indeed past time, for a bit of “quiet evaluation”: “Race is undoubtedly a very important, yes, decisive momentum. Out of "blood and soil" really is determined the being of a people and their achievements.” Jews would have to make good for “the last generations when Jewish racial consciousness was largely neglected. The article warned against “bagatellised” race, and also against the CV, who were beginning to abandon their traditional assimilationist ideology in the wake of the disaster, but “without changing basically”. Challenging the racist bona fides of their rivals was not enough. To prove that the “Jewish Renaissance Movement” had always been racist, the Rundschau reprinted two pre-1914 articles under the title “Voices of the Blood”. “Das singende Blut” by Stefan Zweig and “Lied des Blutes” by Hugo Salus rhapsodised about how “the modern Jew... recognizes his Jewishness... through an inner experience which teaches him the special language of his blood in a mystical manner”. But although these mimics of the Nazis were confirmed racists, they were not chauvinists. They did not think they were racially superior to the Arabs. The Zionists were even going to uplift their benighted Semitic cousins. Their volkism was only a warped answer to their own “personality problem”, as they put it: it allowed them to reconcile themselves to the existence of anti-Semitism in Germany without fighting it. They hastened to reassure their readers that many modern nations and states were racially mixed and yet the races could live in harmony. Jews were warned: now that they were to become racists, they should not become chauvinists: “above race is humanity”. [15] Although racism permeated through the ZVfD’s literature, foreign Jewish observers always saw Joachim Prinz as its most strident propagandist. A Social Democratic voter before 1933, Prinz became rabidly volkist in the first years of the Third Reich. Some of the violent hostility towards Jews in his book Wir Juden could have been inserted directly into the Nazis’ own propaganda. To Prinz the Jew was made up of “misplacement, of queerness, of exhibitionism, inferiority, arrogance, self-deceit, sophisticated love of truth, hate, sickly, patriotism and rootless cosmopolitanism ... a psychopathological arsenal of rare abundance”. [16] Prinz was deeply contemptuous of the rational and liberal traditions which had been the common basis of all progressive thought since the American Revolution. For him the harm that liberalism had done was compensated for only by the fact that it was dying:
Parliament and democracy are increasingly shattered. The exaggerated harmful emphasis on the value of the individual is recognised to be mistaken; the concept and reality of the nation and the Volk is gaining, to our happiness, more and more ground. [17]
Prinz believed that an accommodation between Nazis and Jews was possible, but only on the basis of a Zionist-Nazi accord: “A state which is constructed on the principle of the purity of nation and race can only have respect for those Jews who see themselves in the same way. [18] After he came to the United States Prinz realised that nothing he had been saying in Germany sounded rational in a democratic context and he abandoned his bizarre notions, further proof that the German Zionists had simply adapted ideologically to Nazism. [19] But perhaps the best illustration of the Zionists’ Nazification was the curious statement by one of the Rundschau’s editors, Arnold Zweig, made in his Insulted and Exiled, naturally written abroad and published in 1937:
of all the newspapers published in German, the most independent, the most courageous, and the ablest was the Jüdische Rundschau, the official organ of the Zionist Union of Germany. Although it sometimes went too far in its approval of the Nationalist State (seeking its own national idealism in the Nazi spirit), there, nevertheless, issued from it a stream of energy, tranquility, warmth, and confidence of which the German Jews and Jewry the world over stood in urgent need. [20]
“The exclusive control of German Jewish life”
Not even the Nuremberg Laws of 15 September 1935 challenged the basic German Zionist belief in an ultimate modus vivendi with the Nazis. The Hechalutz (Pioneer) Centre, in charge of training youth for the kibbutz movement, concluded that the promulgation of laws making mixed marriage a crime was a suitable occasion for a new approach to the regime. The Pioneers came up with a plan for the emigration of the entire Jewish community over a period of 15-25 years. Abraham Margaliot, a scholar at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Institute, has explained the thinking at the Centre in that fateful year:
The Hechalutz leaders assumed that this underlying goal would prove so alluring to the German authorities that they would agree to extend aid towards further emigration abroad by liberalising the laws governing the transfer of foreign currency abroad, by providing opportunities for vocational training and by “political means”. [21]
The Rundschau published excerpts from a speech in which Hitler announced that his government still hoped to find a basis for “a better attitude towards the Jews”. [22] The paper published a statement by A.I. Brandt, the head of the Nazis’ press association, which informed a doubtlessly somewhat surprised world that the laws were:
both beneficial and regenerative for Judaism as well. By giving the Jewish minority an opportunity to lead its own life and assuring governmental support for this independent existence, Germany is helping Judaism to strengthen its national character and is making a contribution towards improving relations between the two peoples. [23]
The goal of the ZVfD became “national autonomy”. They wanted Hitler to give Jews the right to an economic existence, protection from attacks on their honour, and training to prepare them for migration. The ZVfD became absorbed in trying to utilise the segregated Jewish institutions to develop a Jewish national spirit. The tighter the Nazis turned the screw on the Jews, the more convinced they became that a deal with the Nazis was possible. After all, they reasoned, the more the Nazis excluded the Jews from every aspect of German life, the more they would have need of Zionism to help them get rid of the Jews. By 15 January 1936 the Palestine Post had to make the startling report that: “A bold demand that the German Zionist Federation be given recognition by the government as the only instrument for the exclusive control of German Jewish life was made by the executive of that body in a proclamation today.” [24] German Zionist hopes for an arrangement faded only in the face of the ever-mounting intimidation and terror. Even then there was no sign of any attempts at anti-Nazi activity on the part of the ZVfD leaders. Throughout the entire pre-war period there was only a tiny Zionist involvement in the anti-Nazi underground. Although the Hechalutz and Hashomer youth movements talked socialism, the Nazis were not concerned. Yechiel Greenberg of Hashomer admitted in 1938 that “our socialism was considered merely a philosophy for export”. [25] But almost from the beginning of the dictatorship the underground KPD, always looking for new recruits, sent some of their Jewish cadre into the youth movements and, according to Arnold Paucker – now the editor of London’s Leo Baeck Institute Year Book – some Zionist youth became involved with the resistance at least to the extent of some illegal postering in the early years of the regime. [26] How much of this was due to the influence of the Communist infiltrators, and how much was spontaneous is impossible to estimate. However, the Zionist bureaucracy vigorously attacked the KPD. [27] As in Italy, so in Germany: the Zionist leadership sought the support of the regime for Zionism and resisted Communism; in neither country could it be thought of as part of the anti-Fascist resistance. The interrelationship between the ZVfD and the WZO will be described below. Suffice to say for now, that the WZO leaders approved of the general line of their German affiliate. However, within the ranks of the world movement there were many who refused to remain silent while their German branch not only accepted second-class citizenship as no more than the Jews had a right to expect but, even worse, denounced foreign Jews for boycotting Germany. Boris Smolar, the chief European correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the Zionist wire service, spoke for all these when he wrote angrily, in 1935:
One can understand that a Jewish newspaper which appears in Germany may not be in a position fully to support the demands of World Jewry with regard to the full restoration of Jewish rights. This, however, doesn’t justify any official organ to come out and practically agree to the anti- Jewish limitations which exist in Germany. This last is exactly what the Jüdische Rundschau has done. [28]
Prior to the Nazis, German Zionism was no more than an isolated bourgeois political cult. While the leftists were trying to fight the brownshirts in the streets, the Zionists were busy collecting money for trees in Palestine. Suddenly in 1933 this small group conceived of itself as properly anointed by history to negotiate secretly with the Nazis, to oppose the vast mass of world Jewry who wanted to resist Hitler, all in the hope of obtaining the support of the enemy of their people for the building of their state in Palestine. Smolar and their other Zionist critics saw the ZVfD as merely cowardly, but they were quite wrong. Any surrender theory explains nothing of the pre-Hitler evolution of Zionist racism, nor does it go far in explaining the WZO’s endorsement of their stance. The truth is sadder than cowardice. The plain fact is that Germany’s Zionists did not see themselves as surrendering but, rather, as would-be partners in a most statesmanlike pact. They were wholly deluded. No Jews triumphed over other Jews in Nazi Germany. No modus vivendi was ever even remotely possible between Hitler and the Jews. Once Hitler had triumphed inside Germany, the position of the Jews was hopeless; all that was left for them was to go into exile and continue the fight from there. Many did, but the Zionists continued to dream of winning the patronage of Adolf Hitler for themselves. They did not fight Hitler before he came to power, when there was still a chance to beat him, not out of any degree of cowardice, but out of their deepest conviction, which they had inherited from Herzl, that anti-Semitism could not be fought. Given their failure to resist during Weimar, and given their race theories, it was inevitable that they would end up as the ideological jackals of Nazism.
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Notes
1. Jacob Boas, A Nazi Travels to Palestine, History Today (London, January 1980), p.33.
2. Martin Rosenbluth, Go Forth and Serve, p.253.
3. Ibid., p.254.
4. Ibid., p.255.
5. Ibid., p.258.
6. Yisrael Gutman (in debate), Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust, p.116.
7. Stephen Wise, Challenging Years, p.248.
8. Joachim Prinz, Zionism under the Nazi Government, Young Zionist (London, November 1937), p.18.
9. Lucy Dawidowicz (ed.), A Holocaust Reader, pp.150-5.
10. Ruth Bondy, The Emissary: A Life of Enzo Sereni, pp.118-19.
11. Jacob Boas, The Jews of Germany: Self-Perception in the Nazi Era as Reflected in the German Jewish Press 1933-1938, PhD thesis, University of California, Riverside (1977), p.135.
12. Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, p.148.
13. Ibid., p.149.
14. Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews, p.122.
15. Rasse als Kulturfaktor, Jüdische Rundschau (4 August 1933), p.392.
16. Koppel Pinson, The Jewish Spirit in Nazi Germany, Menorah Journal (Autumn 1936), p.235.
17. Uri Davis, Israel: Utopia Incorporated, p.18.
18. Benyamin Matuvo, The Zionist Wish and the Nazi Deed, Issues (Winter 1966/7), p.12.
19. Author’s interview with Joachim Prinz (8 February 1981).
20. Arnold Zweig, Insulted and Exiled (London, 1937), p.232.
21. Abraham Margaliot, The Reaction of the Jewish Public in Germany to the Nuremberg Laws Yad Vashem Studies, vol.XII, p.89.
22. Ibid., p.85.
23. Ibid., p.86.
24. German Zionists Seek Recognition, Palestine Post (15 January 1936), p.1.
25. Yechiel Greenberg, Hashomer Hatzair in Europe, Hashomer Hatzair (November 1937), p.13.
26. Author’s interview with Arnold Paucker (28 October 1980).
27. Giora Josephthal, The Responsible Attitude, p.88.
28. Boris Smolar, Zionist Overtures to Nazism, Jewish Daily Bulletin (8 March 1935), p.2.
http://www.flamemag.dircon.co.uk/weissmandel_lublin.htm
"The following message about bombing concentration camps and railways, was an exhibit in the Kasztner libel case in Israel during the 1950's. It was sent by Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel, an organizer for rescue activities operating in the quisling Nazi state of Slovakia in 1944. Weissmandel put a small saw into a loaf of bread just before he was put on the train that was taking him and thousands of others to the death camp at Auschwitz. Using the saw, he managed to break out of the train and made his escape to the forests of Slovakia where he linked up with partisans. His letter provides shocking and disturbing evidence of how the Zionist leadership ignored the growing evidence of mass murder and crimes against humanity being perpetrated against Europe's Jews.
One of Weissmandel's letters
During the Kasztner case, Menachem Bader of the Jewish Agency was asked 'Did you receive this letter from Rabbi Weissmandel?" He answered: "Letters like this came to us every day". Weissmandel later published the following letter, which is a literal translation of the letter the Jewish Rescue Committee in Czechoslovakia received from the Zionist "Jewish" Agency Executive Offices in Switzerland. This was in reply to the call of the Jewish Rescue Committee for help, with documentary evidence furnished, concerning the fate of millions of Jewish people in Nazi occupied Europe.
"We are writing to remind you of the one factor of which you must never lose sight: that ultimately, the Allies will win the war. After their victory, territorial boundaries will be reshaped as they were after the First World War. Then, the way will be clear for our purpose at this time, with the war drawing to a close, we must do everything in our power to change Eretz Yisrael to Medinat Yisrael and many steps have already been taken in this regard. Therefore, we must turn a deaf ear to the pleas and cries emanating from Eastern Europe. Remember this: all the allies have suffered many losses, and if we also do not offer human sacrifices, how can we gain the right to sit at the conference table when the territorial boundaries are reshaped? Accordingly, it is foolhardy and brazen for us to negotiate in terms of money or supplies in exchange for Jewish lives. How dare we ask of the allied powers to barter money for lives while they are sustaining heavy casualties daily? So, insofar as the masses are concerned: RAK B'DAM TIHJE LANU HAAREZ, (Eretz Yisroel will be ours only by paying with blood), but as far as our immediate circle is concerned, ATEM TAJLU. The messenger bearing this letter will supply you with funds for this purpose".
Weissmandel says that :
After I accustomed myself to the peculiar writing, I trembled when I realized the import of RAK B'DAM TIHJE LANU HAAREZ. But many weeks passed, and I was still confounded by the meaning of ATEM TAJLU. Until one day, it struck me. ATEM TAJLU meant "You escape", for the word "tiyul" (walking trip) was used by them as a euphemistic code for "escape". They meant to say - you fifteen or twenty "party members", escape from Czechoslovakia and save your hides. The price of Eretz Yisroel is the blood of the men and women, hoary sages, and babes in arms - but not YOUR blood! Let us not spoil this plan by giving the Axis powers to save Jewish lives. But for you, comrades, I have enclosed carfare for your escape. What a nightmare! The Zionist agent "diplomat" comes to Czechoslovakia and says 'Now is a very critical time. But comparatively speaking it is not at all critical for you trapped Jews. For there is an emergency of far greater proportions; namely, BINYAN HA-ARETZ (the prize of Medinat Yisrael). Shed your blood cheerfully, for your blood is cheap. But for your blood, the Land (of Israel) will be ours!
But these were no ordinary letters - the one reproduced below from Rabbi Weissmandel, like the one above were from first- hand witnesses of the holocaust. Note how Rabbi Weissmandel asks that the crematoria in Auschwitz be bombed from the air. How it is "sharply visible" - he clearly gave information that he hoped would be passed on to help Allied air crews bomb the murder camps. Also note that he enclosed a map of the camps - where it that today?"
AND SOME MORE ....
5. German Zionism offers to collaborate with Nazism
Werner Senator, a leading German Zionist, once remarked that Zionism, for all its world Jewish nationalism, always politically assimilates to the countries within which it operates. No better proof of his remark exists than the political adaptation of the ZVfD to the theories and policies of the new Nazi regime. Believing that the ideological similarities between the two movements – their contempt for liberalism, their common volkish racism and, of course, their mutual conviction that Germany could never be the homeland of its Jews – could induce the Nazis to support them, the ZVfD solicited the patronage of Adolf Hitler, not once but repeatedly, after 1933. The goal of the ZVfD became an “orderly retreat”, that is, Nazi backing for emigration of at least the younger generation of Jews to Palestine, and they immediately sought contact with elements in the Nazi apparatus whom they thought would be interested in such an arrangement on the basis of a volkish appreciation of Zionism. Kurt Tuchler, a member of the ZVfD Executive, persuaded Baron Leopold Itz Edler von Mildenstein of the SS to write a pro-Zionist piece for the Nazi press. The Baron agreed on the condition that he visited Palestine first, and two months after Hitler came to power the two men and their wives went to Palestine; von Mildenstein stayed there for six months before he returned to write his articles. [1] Contact with a central figure in the new government came in March 1933, when Hermann Goering summoned the leaders of the major Jewish organisations. In early March, Julius Streicher, the editor of Der Stürmer, had declared that, as of 1 April, all Jewish stores and professionals would be boycotted; however, this campaign ran into an immediate snag. Hitler’s capitalist backers were extremely worried by the announcement by rabbi Wise of a planned counter-demonstration to be held in New York on 27 March, if the Nazis went ahead with their boycott. Jews were prominent throughout the retail trade both in American and Europe and, fearing retaliation against their own companies, Hitler’s wealthy patrons urged him to call off the action. But the Nazis could hardly do that without losing face, and they decided to use German Jewry to head off Wise; thus Hermann Goering called in the Jewish leaders. German Zionism’s influence in Weimar did not merit its leaders’ participation, but because they conceived themselves as the only natural negotiating partner with the Nazis, they secured a late invitation. Martin Rosenbluth, a leading Zionist, later told of the incident in his post-war autobiography, Go Forth and Serve. Four Jews saw Goering: Julius Brodnitz for the CV, Heinrich Stahl for the Berlin Jewish community, Max Naumann, a pro-Nazi fanatic from the Verband nationaldeutscher Juden (VnJ), and Blumenfeld for the Zionists. Goering launched into a tirade: the foreign press was lying about atrocities against Jews; unless the lies stopped, he could not vouch for the safety of German Jewry. Most important, the New York rally had to be called off: “Dr Wise is one of our most dangerous and unscrupulous enemies.” [2] A delegation was to go to London to contact world Jewry. The assimilationists declined, claiming that as Germans they had no influence with foreign Jews. This was false, but they hardly wanted to assist in their own destruction. Only Blumenfeld volunteered, but insisted he be allowed to speak truthfully about the Nazi treatment of Jews. Goering did not care what was said to get the rally called off; perhaps a description of the grim situation might make foreign Jews halt for fear of provoking worse. He did not care who went or what arguments were used as long as the deputation agreed to “report regularly to the German embassy”. [3] The ZVfD finally sent Martin Rosenbluth and Richard Lichtheim. Fearing exclusive responsibility for the outcome of their strange mission, they prevailed upon the CV to let them take along Dr Ludwig Tietz. Although not a Zionist personally, the wealthy businessman was “a good friend of ours”. [4] The trio arrived in London on 27 March and immediately met forty Jewish leaders at a meeting chaired by Nahum Sokolow, then President of the WZO. They later met a battery of British officials. The delegates saw two tasks before them: to use the severity of the situation to promote Palestine as “the logical place of refuge”, and to head off all anti-Nazi efforts abroad. They called Wise in New York. Rosenbluth described the incident thus in his memoirs:
Mindful of Goering’s charges... we conveyed the message ... Getting the cryptic rest of our message across to him was somewhat more difficult, since it was necessary to speak in obscure terms in order to confound any possible monitors. Subsequent events proved we had made clear our hidden plea, and that Dr Wise had understood we wanted him to stand firm and under no circumstances cancel the meeting. [5]
There is no evidence that any effort was made to signal Wise to this effect. Through the research of an Israeli scholar, Shaul Esh, it is now known that the deputation tried to head off demonstrations in New York and Palestine. According to Esh, later that evening they sent cables:
not in their own name, but in the name of the Zionist Executive in London. The telegrams requested that the recipients immediately dispatch to the Chancellery of the Third Reich declarations to the effect that they do not condone an organised anti-German boycott ... the Zionist Executive in London learned of this several hours later, they sent another cable to Jerusalem to delay the dispatch of an official declaration to Hitler. [6]
Later, in his own autobiography, Challenging Years, Stephen Wise mentioned receiving their cable, but he did not record any cryptic message from the delegation. [7] It is reasonable to assume that he would have recorded it, if he had thought any such attempt was made. In reality, Wise repeatedly raged at the ZVfD in the following years for persistently opposing every attempt by foreign Jews to struggle against the Hitler regime. The London proceedings were typical of all further ZVfD behaviour. In 1937, after leaving Berlin for America, Rabbi Joachim Prinz wrote of his experiences in Germany and alluded to a memorandum which, it is now known, was sent to the Nazi Party by the ZVfD on 21 June 1933. Prinz’s article candidly describes the Zionist mood in the first months of 1933:
Everyone in Germany knew that only the Zionists could responsibly represent the Jews in dealings with the Nazi government. We all felt sure that one day the government would arrange a round table conference with the Jews, at which – after the riots and atrocities of the revolution had passed – the new status of German Jewry could be considered. The government announced very solemnly that there was no country in the world which tried to solve the Jewish problem as seriously as did Germany. Solution of the Jewish question? It was our Zionist dream! We never denied the existence of the Jewish question! Dissimilation? It was our own appeal! ... In a statement notable for its pride and dignity, we called for a conference. [8]
The document remained buried until 1962, when it was finally printed, in German, in Israel. “Pride” and “dignity” are words open to interpretation but, it is safe to say, there was not one word that could be so construed today. This extraordinary memorandum demands extensive quotation. The Nazis were asked, very politely:
May we therefore be permitted to present our views, which, in our opinion, make possible a solution in keeping with the principles of the new German State of National Awakening and which at the same time might signify for Jews a new ordering of the conditions of their existence ... Zionism has no illusions about the difficulty of the Jewish condition, which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own tradition ... ... an answer to the Jewish question truly satisfying to the national state can be brought about only with the collaboration of the Jewish movement that aims at a social, cultural, and moral renewal of Jewry ... a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group. For the Jew, too, origin, religion, community of fate and group consciousness must be of decisive significance in the shaping of his life ... On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total structure so that for us too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible ... 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 do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group ... ... fidelity to their own kind and their own culture gives Jews the inner strength that prevents insult to the respect for the national sentiments and the imponderables of German nationality; and rootedness in one’s own spirituality protects the Jew from becoming the rootless critic of the national foundations of German essence. The national distancing which the state desires would thus be brought about easily as the result of an organic development. Thus, a self-conscious Jewry here described, in whose name we speak, can find a place in the structure of the German state, because it is inwardly unembarrassed, free from the resentment which assimilated Jews must feel at the determination that they belong to Jewry, to the Jewish race and past. We believe in the possibility of an honest relationship of loyalty between a group-conscious Jewry and the German state ... For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration even of a government fundamentally hostile to Jews, because in dealing with the Jewish question no sentimentalities are involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples, and at the present moment especially the German people.
The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda – such as is currently being carried on against Germany in many ways – is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build ... Our observations, presented herewith, rest on the conviction that, in solving the Jewish problem according to its own lights, the German Government will have full understanding for a candid and clear Jewish posture that harmonizes with the interests of the state. [9]
This document, a treason to the Jews of Germany, was written in standard Zionist cliches: “abnormal occupational pattern”, “rootless intellectuals greatly in need of moral regeneration”, etc. In it the German Zionists offered calculated collaboration between Zionism and Nazism, hallowed by the goal of a Jewish state: we shall wage no battle against thee, only against those that would resist thee. Obsessed with their strange mission, the ZVfD’s leaders lost all sense of international Jewish perspective and even tried to get the WZO to call off its World Congress, scheduled for August 1933. They sent their world leadership a letter: “It will have to express sharp protests,, their lives could be at stake at a time when “our legal existence has enabled us to organise thousands and to transfer large sums of money to Palestine”. [10] The Congress did take place as we shall see, but the ZVfD had nothing to worry about as the Nazis chose to use the occasion to announce that they had made a deal with world Zionism.
“Seeking its own national idealism in the Nazi spirit”
The Jewish public knew nothing about von Mildenstein’s journey to Palestine in the company of a member of the Zionist Executive, nor about Rosenbluth and Lichtheim’s trip to London; nor did they know about the memorandum, nor the request to call off the Zionist Congress. However, they could not miss what was appearing in the Rundschau, where assimilationalist German Jewry was roundly attacked. The CV complained bitterly of Zionist “siegesfanfaren” as the Rundschau rushed to condemn the guilty Jews. [11] The editor, Robert Weltsch, took the occasion of the 1 April boycott to assail the Jews of Germany in an editorial: “Wear the Yellow Badge with Pride”:
At times of crisis throughout its history, the Jewish people has faced the question of its own guilt. Our most important prayer says, “We were expelled from our country because of our sins” ... Jewry bears a great guilt because it failed to heed Theodor Herzl’s call ... Because the Jews did not display their Jewishness with pride, because they wanted to shirk the Jewish question, they must share the blame for the degradation of Jewry. [12]
Even as the Nazis were in the process of throwing the left into concentration camps, Weltsch attacked the left-wing Jewish journalists:
If today the National Socialist and German patriotic newspapers frequently refer to the type of the Jewish scribbler and the so-called Jewish press ... it must be pointed out ... Upright Jews have always been indignant at the raillery and the caricature directed by Jewish buffoons against Jews to the same extent, or even a greater extent, than they aimed them at Germans and others. [13]
Although the left-wing press had been under attack from the day the Nazis came to power, the Jewish newspapers were still legal. Naturally they were censored; if a journal printed something untoward, it would be closed down, temporarily at least. However, the Nazis did not force the Zionists to denounce their fellow Jews. After the Holocaust Weltsch was quite contrite about the editorial, saying that he should have told the Jews to flee for their lives, but he never claimed that the Nazis made him write the piece. Weltsch was not a Fascist, but he was too much the Zionist sectarian to have really thought through his ideas about the world at large. As were most of the leaders of the ZVfD, he was quite convinced that “egotistical liberalism” and parliamentary democracy were dead at least in Germany. Internationally, they were still for the British in Palestine, but the Rundschau’s correspondent in Italy, Kurt Kornicker, was quite openly pro-Fascist. [14] The ZVfD’s leaders became convinced that Fascism was the wave of the future, certainly in Central Europe, and within that framework they counterposed the “good” Fascism of Mussolini to the “excesses” of Hitlerism, which they thought would diminish, with their assistance, as time went by. Racism was now triumphant and the ZVfD ran with the winner. The talk of blut began to take hold with a statement by Blumenfeld in April 1933 that the Jews had previously been masking their natural blood-sanctioned apartness from the real Germans, but it reached Wagnerian proportions in the 4 August Rundschau with a long essay, “Rasse als Kulturfaktor”, which pondered on the intellectual implications for Jews of the Nazi victory. It argued that Jews should not merely accept silently the dictates of their new masters; they, too, had to realise that race separation was wholly to the good:
We who live here as a “foreign race” have to respect racial consciousness and the racial interest of the German people absolutely. This however does not preclude a peaceful living together of people of different racial membership. The smaller the possibility of an undesirable mixture, so much less is there need for “racial protection” ... There are differentiations that in the last analysis have their root in ancestry. Only rationalist newspapers who have lost feeling for the deeper reasons and profundities of the soul, and for the origins of communal consciousness, could put aside ancestry as simply in the realm of “natural history”.
In the past, the paper continued, it had been hard to get Jews to have an objective evaluation of racism. But now was the time, indeed past time, for a bit of “quiet evaluation”: “Race is undoubtedly a very important, yes, decisive momentum. Out of "blood and soil" really is determined the being of a people and their achievements.” Jews would have to make good for “the last generations when Jewish racial consciousness was largely neglected. The article warned against “bagatellised” race, and also against the CV, who were beginning to abandon their traditional assimilationist ideology in the wake of the disaster, but “without changing basically”. Challenging the racist bona fides of their rivals was not enough. To prove that the “Jewish Renaissance Movement” had always been racist, the Rundschau reprinted two pre-1914 articles under the title “Voices of the Blood”. “Das singende Blut” by Stefan Zweig and “Lied des Blutes” by Hugo Salus rhapsodised about how “the modern Jew... recognizes his Jewishness... through an inner experience which teaches him the special language of his blood in a mystical manner”. But although these mimics of the Nazis were confirmed racists, they were not chauvinists. They did not think they were racially superior to the Arabs. The Zionists were even going to uplift their benighted Semitic cousins. Their volkism was only a warped answer to their own “personality problem”, as they put it: it allowed them to reconcile themselves to the existence of anti-Semitism in Germany without fighting it. They hastened to reassure their readers that many modern nations and states were racially mixed and yet the races could live in harmony. Jews were warned: now that they were to become racists, they should not become chauvinists: “above race is humanity”. [15] Although racism permeated through the ZVfD’s literature, foreign Jewish observers always saw Joachim Prinz as its most strident propagandist. A Social Democratic voter before 1933, Prinz became rabidly volkist in the first years of the Third Reich. Some of the violent hostility towards Jews in his book Wir Juden could have been inserted directly into the Nazis’ own propaganda. To Prinz the Jew was made up of “misplacement, of queerness, of exhibitionism, inferiority, arrogance, self-deceit, sophisticated love of truth, hate, sickly, patriotism and rootless cosmopolitanism ... a psychopathological arsenal of rare abundance”. [16] Prinz was deeply contemptuous of the rational and liberal traditions which had been the common basis of all progressive thought since the American Revolution. For him the harm that liberalism had done was compensated for only by the fact that it was dying:
Parliament and democracy are increasingly shattered. The exaggerated harmful emphasis on the value of the individual is recognised to be mistaken; the concept and reality of the nation and the Volk is gaining, to our happiness, more and more ground. [17]
Prinz believed that an accommodation between Nazis and Jews was possible, but only on the basis of a Zionist-Nazi accord: “A state which is constructed on the principle of the purity of nation and race can only have respect for those Jews who see themselves in the same way. [18] After he came to the United States Prinz realised that nothing he had been saying in Germany sounded rational in a democratic context and he abandoned his bizarre notions, further proof that the German Zionists had simply adapted ideologically to Nazism. [19] But perhaps the best illustration of the Zionists’ Nazification was the curious statement by one of the Rundschau’s editors, Arnold Zweig, made in his Insulted and Exiled, naturally written abroad and published in 1937:
of all the newspapers published in German, the most independent, the most courageous, and the ablest was the Jüdische Rundschau, the official organ of the Zionist Union of Germany. Although it sometimes went too far in its approval of the Nationalist State (seeking its own national idealism in the Nazi spirit), there, nevertheless, issued from it a stream of energy, tranquility, warmth, and confidence of which the German Jews and Jewry the world over stood in urgent need. [20]
“The exclusive control of German Jewish life”
Not even the Nuremberg Laws of 15 September 1935 challenged the basic German Zionist belief in an ultimate modus vivendi with the Nazis. The Hechalutz (Pioneer) Centre, in charge of training youth for the kibbutz movement, concluded that the promulgation of laws making mixed marriage a crime was a suitable occasion for a new approach to the regime. The Pioneers came up with a plan for the emigration of the entire Jewish community over a period of 15-25 years. Abraham Margaliot, a scholar at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Institute, has explained the thinking at the Centre in that fateful year:
The Hechalutz leaders assumed that this underlying goal would prove so alluring to the German authorities that they would agree to extend aid towards further emigration abroad by liberalising the laws governing the transfer of foreign currency abroad, by providing opportunities for vocational training and by “political means”. [21]
The Rundschau published excerpts from a speech in which Hitler announced that his government still hoped to find a basis for “a better attitude towards the Jews”. [22] The paper published a statement by A.I. Brandt, the head of the Nazis’ press association, which informed a doubtlessly somewhat surprised world that the laws were:
both beneficial and regenerative for Judaism as well. By giving the Jewish minority an opportunity to lead its own life and assuring governmental support for this independent existence, Germany is helping Judaism to strengthen its national character and is making a contribution towards improving relations between the two peoples. [23]
The goal of the ZVfD became “national autonomy”. They wanted Hitler to give Jews the right to an economic existence, protection from attacks on their honour, and training to prepare them for migration. The ZVfD became absorbed in trying to utilise the segregated Jewish institutions to develop a Jewish national spirit. The tighter the Nazis turned the screw on the Jews, the more convinced they became that a deal with the Nazis was possible. After all, they reasoned, the more the Nazis excluded the Jews from every aspect of German life, the more they would have need of Zionism to help them get rid of the Jews. By 15 January 1936 the Palestine Post had to make the startling report that: “A bold demand that the German Zionist Federation be given recognition by the government as the only instrument for the exclusive control of German Jewish life was made by the executive of that body in a proclamation today.” [24] German Zionist hopes for an arrangement faded only in the face of the ever-mounting intimidation and terror. Even then there was no sign of any attempts at anti-Nazi activity on the part of the ZVfD leaders. Throughout the entire pre-war period there was only a tiny Zionist involvement in the anti-Nazi underground. Although the Hechalutz and Hashomer youth movements talked socialism, the Nazis were not concerned. Yechiel Greenberg of Hashomer admitted in 1938 that “our socialism was considered merely a philosophy for export”. [25] But almost from the beginning of the dictatorship the underground KPD, always looking for new recruits, sent some of their Jewish cadre into the youth movements and, according to Arnold Paucker – now the editor of London’s Leo Baeck Institute Year Book – some Zionist youth became involved with the resistance at least to the extent of some illegal postering in the early years of the regime. [26] How much of this was due to the influence of the Communist infiltrators, and how much was spontaneous is impossible to estimate. However, the Zionist bureaucracy vigorously attacked the KPD. [27] As in Italy, so in Germany: the Zionist leadership sought the support of the regime for Zionism and resisted Communism; in neither country could it be thought of as part of the anti-Fascist resistance. The interrelationship between the ZVfD and the WZO will be described below. Suffice to say for now, that the WZO leaders approved of the general line of their German affiliate. However, within the ranks of the world movement there were many who refused to remain silent while their German branch not only accepted second-class citizenship as no more than the Jews had a right to expect but, even worse, denounced foreign Jews for boycotting Germany. Boris Smolar, the chief European correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the Zionist wire service, spoke for all these when he wrote angrily, in 1935:
One can understand that a Jewish newspaper which appears in Germany may not be in a position fully to support the demands of World Jewry with regard to the full restoration of Jewish rights. This, however, doesn’t justify any official organ to come out and practically agree to the anti- Jewish limitations which exist in Germany. This last is exactly what the Jüdische Rundschau has done. [28]
Prior to the Nazis, German Zionism was no more than an isolated bourgeois political cult. While the leftists were trying to fight the brownshirts in the streets, the Zionists were busy collecting money for trees in Palestine. Suddenly in 1933 this small group conceived of itself as properly anointed by history to negotiate secretly with the Nazis, to oppose the vast mass of world Jewry who wanted to resist Hitler, all in the hope of obtaining the support of the enemy of their people for the building of their state in Palestine. Smolar and their other Zionist critics saw the ZVfD as merely cowardly, but they were quite wrong. Any surrender theory explains nothing of the pre-Hitler evolution of Zionist racism, nor does it go far in explaining the WZO’s endorsement of their stance. The truth is sadder than cowardice. The plain fact is that Germany’s Zionists did not see themselves as surrendering but, rather, as would-be partners in a most statesmanlike pact. They were wholly deluded. No Jews triumphed over other Jews in Nazi Germany. No modus vivendi was ever even remotely possible between Hitler and the Jews. Once Hitler had triumphed inside Germany, the position of the Jews was hopeless; all that was left for them was to go into exile and continue the fight from there. Many did, but the Zionists continued to dream of winning the patronage of Adolf Hitler for themselves. They did not fight Hitler before he came to power, when there was still a chance to beat him, not out of any degree of cowardice, but out of their deepest conviction, which they had inherited from Herzl, that anti-Semitism could not be fought. Given their failure to resist during Weimar, and given their race theories, it was inevitable that they would end up as the ideological jackals of Nazism.
Top of the page
Notes
1. Jacob Boas, A Nazi Travels to Palestine, History Today (London, January 1980), p.33.
2. Martin Rosenbluth, Go Forth and Serve, p.253.
3. Ibid., p.254.
4. Ibid., p.255.
5. Ibid., p.258.
6. Yisrael Gutman (in debate), Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust, p.116.
7. Stephen Wise, Challenging Years, p.248.
8. Joachim Prinz, Zionism under the Nazi Government, Young Zionist (London, November 1937), p.18.
9. Lucy Dawidowicz (ed.), A Holocaust Reader, pp.150-5.
10. Ruth Bondy, The Emissary: A Life of Enzo Sereni, pp.118-19.
11. Jacob Boas, The Jews of Germany: Self-Perception in the Nazi Era as Reflected in the German Jewish Press 1933-1938, PhD thesis, University of California, Riverside (1977), p.135.
12. Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, p.148.
13. Ibid., p.149.
14. Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews, p.122.
15. Rasse als Kulturfaktor, Jüdische Rundschau (4 August 1933), p.392.
16. Koppel Pinson, The Jewish Spirit in Nazi Germany, Menorah Journal (Autumn 1936), p.235.
17. Uri Davis, Israel: Utopia Incorporated, p.18.
18. Benyamin Matuvo, The Zionist Wish and the Nazi Deed, Issues (Winter 1966/7), p.12.
19. Author’s interview with Joachim Prinz (8 February 1981).
20. Arnold Zweig, Insulted and Exiled (London, 1937), p.232.
21. Abraham Margaliot, The Reaction of the Jewish Public in Germany to the Nuremberg Laws Yad Vashem Studies, vol.XII, p.89.
22. Ibid., p.85.
23. Ibid., p.86.
24. German Zionists Seek Recognition, Palestine Post (15 January 1936), p.1.
25. Yechiel Greenberg, Hashomer Hatzair in Europe, Hashomer Hatzair (November 1937), p.13.
26. Author’s interview with Arnold Paucker (28 October 1980).
27. Giora Josephthal, The Responsible Attitude, p.88.
28. Boris Smolar, Zionist Overtures to Nazism, Jewish Daily Bulletin (8 March 1935), p.2.
Hey says:
"Maybe its genetic."
Maybe your superior genes have foiled us killers again, Hey!
Can I some of those superior genes if I become a born again Jew?
================
How 90 Peruvians became the latest Jewish settlers
When a delegation of rabbis travelled to Lima to convert a group of South American Indians to Judaism, they added just one condition: come and live with us in Israel. As soon as these new Jews arrived in the country, they were bussed straight to settlements in the disputed territories. So how are they coping? Neri Livneh tracks them down [...]
Ben-Haim says that after he finishes the Hebrew course, he may join the army, "because I wasn't in the army in Peru and that is something I lack, and also because I want to defend the country and if there is no choice, I will kill Arabs. But I am sure that Jews kill Arabs only for self-defence and justice, but Arabs do it because they like to kill."
He bases this belief on his scientific view of Judaism: "The Arab has the instinct of murder and killing like all gentiles, and only Jews do not have that instinct - that is a GNENTIC FACT."
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,770315,00.html">The Guardian>
==================================
Who taught them, Hey?
"Maybe its genetic."
Maybe your superior genes have foiled us killers again, Hey!
Can I some of those superior genes if I become a born again Jew?
================
How 90 Peruvians became the latest Jewish settlers
When a delegation of rabbis travelled to Lima to convert a group of South American Indians to Judaism, they added just one condition: come and live with us in Israel. As soon as these new Jews arrived in the country, they were bussed straight to settlements in the disputed territories. So how are they coping? Neri Livneh tracks them down [...]
Ben-Haim says that after he finishes the Hebrew course, he may join the army, "because I wasn't in the army in Peru and that is something I lack, and also because I want to defend the country and if there is no choice, I will kill Arabs. But I am sure that Jews kill Arabs only for self-defence and justice, but Arabs do it because they like to kill."
He bases this belief on his scientific view of Judaism: "The Arab has the instinct of murder and killing like all gentiles, and only Jews do not have that instinct - that is a GNENTIC FACT."
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,770315,00.html">The Guardian>
==================================
Who taught them, Hey?
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