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ZIONISM DURING THE HOLOCAUST:
The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation.
Tony Greenstein
Greenstein had to crowd-fund to self-publish. He kicked off his
campaign on a Saturday to give it at least a day’s grace. In no time
it was taken down. The Israeli State never sleeps in its
determination to prevent free discussion of its policies. Of course,
this book will be subject to the calumny of anti-Semitism and the
wider public will likely never know of its existence; but it’s the
long game that matters. Moshé Machover remarks in the introduction
that much of the material presented here has appeared elsewhere.
Greenstein’s genius is to have absorbed it, amassed it and organised
it into a convincing argument: Zionists of the stripe of those who
founded and have governed Israeli were always more interested in a
Jewish State than Jews. To put it another way, always more
interested in the State than people. All States, Noam Chomsky says,
are horrible. The world is not short of nasty States and Israel’s
may not be the worst, but it operates apartheid, was established on
myths (as Flapan and Pappé have brilliantly shown), is armed to the
teeth, including with nuclear weapons, and now in the hands of
neo-fascists. All the same, the propaganda system ensures that
people in the democracies believe the Jewish State is the only way
to keep Jews safe, that the Middle East “conflict” is six of one and
half a dozen of the other. Greenstein’s study, meticulously based on
the evidence, demolishes the lies, manipulations and false thinking
which justify a State whose behaviour towards the Palestinians has,
tragically, much in common with the Nazi’s treatment of Jews, the
disabled, communists, socialists, trade unionists, Romanies,
homosexuals, anyone who diverged from their impossibly narrow
conception of who could be considered worthy.
Has Zionism always been the unitary doctrine of Jewish nationalism?
Chomsky points out that when he was growing up a Jewish State wasn’t
the official position of the Zionists. That came about only in
December 1942 with the Biltmore programme. Chomsky’s parents were,
more or less, in the tradition of Asha Ginsberg, a peripheral figure
of course. The notion of a
Jewish State was advanced definitively by Herzl in his Der
Judenstaat (1895); but Herzl embodies the contradiction at the
heart of the Zionist project: theocracy
and democracy are oil and water. His 1902 novel Der Altneuland,
depicts a very different form of society from that embodied in the
earlier work: a liberal, bourgeois democracy of the kind he admired
where religion would play no part in public life and all citizens
would enjoy equality before the law. Herzl was a very confused man.
In his theoretical work, he dissolved the terrible mental conflict
between theocracy and democracy by dismissing democracy, in the
novel by side-lining theocracy. All
the same, Der Judenstaat has had a significant influence on
Zionist ambitions.
It’s interesting that Greenstein uses the term “The Holocaust”,
though it’s a more inclusive term than Shoah.
In Part Three, Zionism
After the Holocaust, sub-section Why Did the Holocaust
Grow in Importance as Time Elapsed? he discusses the
well-commented suppression of the Nazi Genocide in US and European
circles after 1945. The Soviets had good propaganda reasons to
highlight fascism and the death camps, but as the Germans were now
allies of the US and the so-called “West” discretion was called for.
Prior to 1967, The Holocaust, capitalised, virtually didn’t exist.
The Six-Day War brought the change. The Nazi death machine was a
quarter of a century in the past, Israel had proven itself. The US
saw it as the chief means of defending its interests in the region,
and its interest was oil. If the Middle East produced only olives
and oranges, Israel wouldn’t have soaked up dollars. The Holocaust
has been hi-jacked by what Finkelstein correctly terms an industry.
Children in UK schools learn on memorial day about the death of 5.1
million Jews (the figure is Hilberg’s) but seldom about the 2.5
million Polish Catholics who perished. Maybe the Nazi Genocide is a
less loaded term than The Holocaust. There is no International Nazi
Genocide Remembrance Association, nor any floppy putative definition
of what Nazi Genocide might mean which is applied to anyone who
thinks Palestinians are human.
The book is divided into three parts, eighteen chapters and each
chapter into a number of subsections (161). It’s very competently
organised. If you’re interested in the Kasztner Trial or the boycott
of Nazi Germany, the page numbers are at your fingertips. It might
be recommended to read the conclusion first. It’s an excellent
summary of the book’s arguments and with it fresh in your mind, the
evidence serves as confirmation. In the same way, it might not be a
bad idea to take a look at the index and look up some of the less
familiar names. There is a remarkably large cast of characters. The
book works both as a readable set of arguments and as a reference.
Part One looks at Zionism prior to the Nazi Genocide. Greenstein’s
technique is, principally, to make his argument through citation. On
the first few pages, for example, there are footnotes referring to
Yehoshua, Abram Leon, Robert Silverberg, Alan Taylor, Stuart Cohen,
Francis Nicosia and so on. In response to Dreyfus, Herzl wrote in
his diary: “…I achieved a freer attitude towards
anti-Semitism…which I now began to understand historically
and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of
trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.” There is much in the book to
confirm the long and disreputable history of Zionist anti-Semitism.
Herzl admired the fiercely anti-Semitic Drumont who worked hard to
discredit Dreyfus. What this points up is the curious mentality
which establishes a distinction between diaspora Jews, seen by
Bardichevsky and others as “not human” and a putative reconstituted
Jew, returned to humanity through nationalism. Greenstein is
clear-eyed about the sources of German fascism and anti-Semitism and
of Zionist nationalism. He understands that looking for an
explanation of the former in Hitler’s psychopathology is a fool’s
errand. Hitler’s desire for Lebensraum was traditional
capitalist colonialism; his fascism, ie veneration of power and
denigration of law, democracy and consensus, the logic of the
centralising capitalist State. He comprehends the phenomena as
political and identifies the essential culprit as capitalism. In the
same way, Zionism is a political doctrine which derives much of its
content and force from capitalism’s ideology.
In this regard, his discussion of Labour Zionism, recognises the
misnomer: it was never a movement of international labour
solidarity. On the contrary, it sought collusion between Israeli
workers and capitalists and enmity between Israeli workers and
Arabs. Golda Meir described Histadrut as a “colonising agency”. Ben
Gurion originated the gorgeous slogan “from class to nation”. Class
struggle was distorted into struggle against Arab workers. This
links to the notion of Israel as a Jewish Democratic State. It can’t
be both. As Israel since 1948 has shown, whenever the nationalism
and democracy come into conflict, it’s nationalism which prevails.
Universalism isn’t a denial of the nation but the aspiration to
equality among nations. Nationalism, in its extreme form, which is
what prevails in Israel, is nothing less than a denial of common
humanity.
Greenstein argues that Israel is “destined to become the home of a
large majority of the world’s Jews.” There are reasons to believe
so. The population growth is something like 1.7%. Immigration is
steady. Yet according to the Berman Jewish Data Bank at Stanford
University, in 2020 the respective eligible Jewish populations of
Israel and the U.S. were 6,778,000 and 12,000,000. The national
official populations, on the other hand, are claimed to be 6,980,000
and 6,543, 820. Disputes about how to calculate are entrenched, but
it’s worth wondering how many of the Jews in America are likely to
move to Israel. Why would they as they are flourishing? Of course,
assimilation will do some of the work as the marriage figures for
the U.S reveal; but making Israel the home for most of the world’s
Jews has always been a problem for Zionism, as it should be. Why
shouldn’t Jews live where they like? It’s a much re-iterated and
obvious point that wanting all Jews to be in one place is
anti-Semitic.
On two occasions in 1941 Lehi (The Stern Gang) approached the Nazis
offering to fight on
their side in return for help in establishing a Jewish State. Lehi
also made overtures to Mussolini, as did Weizmann. The Jerusalem
Agreement of 1940, between Lehi and the Italian fascists, asked for
help in defeating the British in Palestine, the pay-off being that
the terrorist organisation would employ “all the means in its power
to liquidate the Jewish
Diaspora” though the scheme was scuppered by rivalry between Lehi
and the Irgun. These facts are not disputed by serious historians,
yet how many people have the least idea about this kind of
collusion?
Any comparison between Zionism and Nazism is dismissed by Israel’s
apologists as anti-Semitism. Alan Cunningham, High Commissioner in
Palestine for three years from 1945, wrote in 1948 “Jewish
broadcasts .both in content and in manner of delivery, are
remarkably like those of Nazi Germany.” After the Wadi Araba
incident, Philip Toynbee published an account in The Observer
( June 1950) in which he compared the Israeli government to the
Nazis. Ken Livingstone was right about the Ha’avara Transfer
Agreement which broke the boycott crippling the Nazi economy, though
Hitler didn’t know about it till after it was signed. Livingstone,
like thousands of others, has been repulsed by the Labour Party on
spurious grounds of anti-Semitism. Yet the evidence is plain:
Zionists openly colluded with the Nazis and their overriding
interest was the Jewish State. If Jewish lives had to be sacrificed,
so be it. The extreme nationalism of the Zionist project is passed
off as religious freedom, ethnic convergence, the right to live free
from persecution and the propaganda so effective, a foreign power
can effectively intervene decisively in UK politics without the
public being outraged.
Part Two is the meat of the book. Greenstein argues against those
pseudo-explanations of the Nazi Genocide which refuse to see its
roots in fascism and imperialism. One of the most ridiculous is
Goldhagen’s thesis (1996) that the German people were Hitler’s
willing helpers, as if there was some inexplicable genocidal intent
intrinsic to being German. Of course, for Zionist nationalists who
want to excuse the ethnic cleansing of nearly a million Arabs, the
illegal occupation of the West Bank, the prison that is Gaza, it
makes sense to divert attention from capitalism, colonialism and
fascism. Claiming the
Nazi Genocide was a result of hatred of Jews is, as Greenstein
points out, a circular argument. The Nazis weren’t intent on
extermination from the start. Thousands of Jews were permitted to
leave Germany. In May 1940 Himmler was advising Hitler against
extermination. Hitler moved against the organisations of the left as
early as 1933 and the first victims of the of Dachau, the first
concentration camp, were the Nazi’s political enemies. |Poles were
sent to Auschwitz before Jews. Twenty million Russians died fighting
fascism. Why aren’t they commemorated on memorial day? The essential
point is that Hitler’s enemies were social democrats and communists,
especially the latter. It was political doctrine which roused his
irrational hatred. That he conflated communism and Jewishness may be
a feature of his disordered thinking, but Nazism, as a political
movement, couldn’t have succeeded by being principally a doctrine of
hating Jews. It was above all a defence of capitalism and the
colonialism on which the wealth of Europe rested.
Colonialism had always relied on depicting its victims as
less than human, which is part of the reason Hitler was praised by
so-called democrats like Churchill and Lloyd George.
Writing in 1934 Joachim Prinz said the Zionists wanted to replace
assimilation by the Jewish nation and the Jewish race. Zionists
welcomed the Nuremberg Laws (1935) which deprived Jews of their
citizenship and forbade marriage between Jews and Gentiles on the
grounds that the Nazis were properly recognising the Jews as a
people apart, a race apart. Today’s Zionists deny the Jews are a
race (at least publicly) because if they are, then Israel is a
racist State. Just what it means to be Jewish is moot. If it’s a
religious definition, how could Freud call himself “a godless Jew”?
If it’s an ethnic-cultural definition, then why do some Ashkenazi
Jews lay claim to purity? And if the Jews aren’t a race, then hatred
of Jews isn’t racism, but irrational prejudice on either religious
or ethnic-cultural grounds. These confusions are helpful to the
Zionists. The slippery definition of “Jew” assists the catch-all
definition of anti-Semitism. Greenstein dissolves this by focussing
on politics. Prejudice on the grounds of pigmentation was necessary
to colonialism. Columbus, in spite of finding the Tainos decorous,
polite, friendly and trusting, had to dehumanize them in order to
slaughter them for their treasure. It is the pursuit of material
wealth at cost of denying common humanity which is the problem. In
short, capitalism, and its fetishism of lucre.
In November 1941 5,000 Jews were murdered in Kaunas. On 8th
December 1941 the first extermination camp, Chelmno, began
operating. All the same, in April 1944 Hitler was contacting Himmler
seeking 100,000 Jews to help solve the labour shortage. It was
between June and September 1941, not at the later Wansee Conference,
that Nazi policy descended from persecution of the Jews to
annihilation. A.D. Moses called it “an economically driven plan.”
Zionists try to mystify by claiming Nazism was messianic and
therefore essentially inexplicable. Once again, convenient for a
political movement intent on settler-colonialism.
The economic boycott of Nazi Germany began in 1933. It gained wide
international support. Germany’s export surplus fell from £28.4m in
1932 to £11.8m in 1933. In the first half of 1933 exports declined
by 51%. IG Farben complained of a slump. The Nazi regime was in
serious trouble. Sober economists predicted its collapse by the end
of the year. It was this desperation which impelled the Nazis to
sign the Ha’avara Transfer Agreement. The initiative came from the
Zionists. Building Palestine was more important than “the struggle
to preserve Jewish civil rights in the Diaspora”. Once again, the
State took precedence over people. Further, the Revisionists were
unapologetic supporters of Hitler. They conceived Nazism as a kernel
and a shell: the shell of anti-Semitism could be discarded but the
kernel of anti-Marxism was to be valued. The lawyer defending
Revisionists who disrupted a speech at the Hebrew University said:
“Yes, we Revisionists have a great admiration for Hitler.” It’s
remarkable how many people did, before the death camps were exposed.
After ratification of the agreement on 7th August 1933,
German Jews liquidated their assets which were frozen in accounts in
Germany. Ha’avara Palestine placed orders for German goods which
were paid for from those accounts. In return, Jews were allowed to
leave for Palestine. Almost certainly, Ha’avara saved the Hitler
regime. As Edwin Black put it: “If the Hitler economy fell, both
sides would be ruined.”
The claim is now made by the Zionists that the agreement was
intended to save Jewish lives. History moves quickly, memories are
short, the propaganda system is never silent. When Livingstone
mentioned Ha’avara, most people had no notion of what he was talking
about. As Greenstein points out, the Zionists took the opportunity
to stage a confrontation: an aggressive John Mann, not only a
concrete-headed supporter of Israeli apartheid but also a man who
characterises gypsies and travellers as anti-social, and a defensive
Livingstone, caught off-guard. For most television viewers this
looks like a principled anti-racist blasting a man who has engaged
in anti-Semitism. The usual media superficiality permits the
impression to remain and a long-standing egalitarian is marginalised
while a defender of gross injustice is promoted by the Tories.
The Biltmore Conference was held while the Nazi Genocide was in full
swing. Its focus was the creation of a Jewish State. Did attendees
know what was happening? In February 1940 the Jewish Agency was
informed by reliable sources that Polish Jews were being wiped out.
Zionist eyes were fixed on the prize of Statehood, what the Nazis
were up to was a side-show. What Greenstein’s chapter When and
Whey Did They Know , one of the book’s most disturbing,
establishes is the collusion through neglect, indifference and sheer
cynicism of multiple States, agencies and individuals who had the
means to do something. We are led to believe Britain knew the nature
of the genocide only at the end of the war. In fact, in August 1941
mass shooting of Polish Jews was known about. In November of that
year the British Minister in Berne was told 1.5 million had
disappeared. What could have been done? The bombing of the railway
lines to Auschwitz for example. The last exterminations in Aushwitz
took place on 30th October 1944. In May Rabbi Weissmandel
had pleaded for the lines to be bombed. By then, the Lancaster
bomber was in service and comfortably capable of the task. Churchill
was opposed. The leaders of Zionism showed no interest.
Interestingly, one of the most effective rescuers of Jews from the
Nazi camps was Count Bernadotte who helped organise the famous white
buses. He was assassinated by Lehi in September 1948.
There was brave resistance, but not from the Judenrate. Hannah
Arendt remarked that the Jewish leadership, almost always,
co-operated with the Nazis ( an observation that would ensure her
expulsion from the Labour Party). Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler
escaped from Auschwitz on 10th April 1944. They wrote independent
accounts of the death camp which came to be known as the Auschwitz
Protocols. Vrba and Wetzler wanted to warn Hungary’s Jews of what
awaited them. Rudolf Kasztner ,head of Hungary’s Zionists,
suppressed the report and struck a deal with Eichmann to get a small
number of prominent Hungarian Jews to safety. In 1954, the Israeli
government, on Kasztner’s behalf, sued Malchiel Grunewald who had
accused the Zionist leader of collusion. The State lost. Kasztner
was assassinated in 1957. Greenstein refers to Perfidy , Ben
Hecht’s book on the matter. Hecht, of course, was a Zionist and
author of one of the worst plays ever written, A Flag is Born,
supported by Marlon Brando who, like many others, imagined that by
rallying to the creation of the State of Israel he was helping the
cause of justice and peace.
There is also a play about the Kasztner trial: Perdition by
Jim Allen. It was due to be staged at the Royal Court Upstairs in
1987 but was scuppered by Zionist pressure. It was given a short run
at Conway Hall and also shown at the Edinburgh Fringe, raising much
blood pressure and filling many column inches in the letters pages
of the more educated press; but that it was pulled in the first
place is indicative of the contempt for free expression of the
Israeli lobby. Interestingly, Arnold Wesker initially supported the
ban but at length returned to his writer’s instincts and changed his
mind. Writers often fiercely attack one another’s work, but no real
writer would ever want creative work banned. Argument is the way to
defeat bad ideas and bad writing.
Across Nazi occupied or influenced Europe, much of the work done to
save Jews was undertaken by non-Jews. It’s often been observed that
Zionism needs anti-Semitism. According to Zionist doctrine, all
non-Jews are anti-Semites. Jews can depend only on themselves. If
the evidence of selfless, courageous rescue actions by non-Jews is
admitted, Zionism loses much of its traction. It requires a hostile
world. It thrives on the fiction that the rest of humanity is
against it. “…no Jew” wrote Begin, “should forget….Thanks to the
Soviet Union hundreds of thousands of Jews were saved…” He was
virulently anti-egalitarian. If even the Stalinist Soviet Union
could give refuge to thousands of Jews (according to Hilberg the
figure is some 2.5 million) where was the evidence the Jews couldn’t
expect succour from anyone but themselves?
Country upon country failed
or refused to help Jewish refugees. Greenstein is very thorough on
this despicable record. In the final part of the book he moves on to
post-Nazi Genocide Zionism. He makes the vital point that The
Holocaust was allied to a Jewish victim identity at the moment
anti-Semitism was in serious decline. The Shoah has been misused to
depict Israel as the victim and the Palestinians as the aggressors.
The Shoah is not the same as either The Holocaust or the Nazi
Genocide. The latter includes all the non-Jews who perished, the
first has to shift attention from them. The Israeli State itself is
portrayed as coterminous with Holocaust awareness. Thus, to
criticize the State, in even the slightest particular, is to deny
The Holocaust, and therefore to be anti-Semitic. For a time, the
Israeli view of holocaust survivors was negative. They were the
“survival of the worst”. A shameful reminder. At length, that was
tempered as resistance gained more credence; but sleight-of-hand was
at work: the fight against the Palestinians was the continuation of
the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The Mufti was corralled in the Eichmann
trial and the insinuation begun that the Arabs bore responsibility
for The Holocaust. The world had to expiate the near-genocide of the
Jews by supporting uncritically Israel’s settler-colonialism. Which
has brought us to where we are now.
Hannah Arendt recognised that Nazism was essentially an attack on
what it means to be human, rather than a focussed desire to wipe out
the Jews. The irony of human diversity is that it’s a product of the
rigid limits of our nature. Breathe in and out of a paper bag and
you’ll faint. The time it takes varies, but no one escapes it. The
exchange of gases in the blood deprives the brain of oxygen. Such is
our nature. Some people are much taller than others, but no one is
ten metres, nor will they ever be; regression to the mean will see
to that. Some people can run much faster
than others, but no one can run at a thousand kilometres an
hour and never will. Serena Williams is an astonishingly good tennis
player, but the difference between her and the people playing
pat-ball on the local park is very small.
Slightly better hand eye co-ordination, upper body strength,
speed, anticipation and you’ve got a champion. There is no need to
fear or be anxious about diversity because our common humanity is a
fact. Fascists are anxious because they try to deny our common
humanity. They arrogate superiority and are then thrown into
terrible fear of anything which diverges from their view of
themselves. Arendt recognised our common humanity which is why the
Zionists despised her.
According to Zionism, writes Greenstein, “Jews were cardboard cutout
victims with no agency of their own.” The visits of Israeli children
to Auschwitz today are not teach them about Nazism’s roots in
capitalist colonialism. Rather they are encouraged to see Israeli
militarism as the key to security and Palestinian demands for
equality as a threat to the lives of Jews. Holocaust Memorial, Day,
Yad Vashem, the IHRA non-definition of anti-Semitism, the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum are means of perpetuating nationalistic
myths and of denigrating the Nazi’s victims. The extent of
resistance is exaggerated in keeping with a myth of national
heroism. The victims and Jews in the diaspora are characterised and
weak and submissive, unworthy of the strength represented by the
Israeli State. Yad Vashem refused to publish Hilberg’s The
Destruction of the European Jews, widely held to be the
most authoritative work on the subject. It failed to correspond to
the Zionist myth of the heroic establishment of the Jewish State.
Yad Vashem, Greenstein argues, is not a sombre memorial to those who
died and reminder of the evil of fascism, but an appropriation of
The Holocaust by the Zionist movement. The Holocaust is used to
justify the creation of the Jewish State; that is, memorials to the
victims of extreme nationalism and irrational hatred are employed to
exculpate a regime of extreme nationalism and irrational hatred of
Palestinians.
What happened in Nazi Germany could happen anywhere; but for
Zionists, it has to be unique. Jews have to be the only victims.
Then the Jewish State and its persecution of the Palestinians gains
a perverse justification. Anti-fascist, pro-egalitarian lessons are
being lost. What matters is only justification of the Jewish State
and all its actions. Claude Lanzman’s Shoah, broadcast to
hundreds of millions, effectively blamed the common folk of Poland
for The Holocaust. Israel has one of the biggest military budgets,
yet many survivors of the Nazis live in poverty. Even Anne Frank is
suspect for the Zionists because she represents universal values and
expressed to desire to take Dutch citizenship.
The final chapters explore how specious anti-racism (we should say
anti hatred of Jews as race is a fiction) has been used to give
succour to the right, in some cases the extreme right. The ironies
pile up: the slaughter of millions by the extreme right is employed
to defend today’s extreme right. Greenstein points out that
“Anti-Semitism today is largely a marginal prejudice.” The evidence
is convincing. Jews in the UK are flourishing. Their educational
attainment is above average, as are their earnings. The proportion
of Jews in prison is low. They are well-represented in positions of
influence. It’s for exactly this reason that a new definition of
anti-Semitism has been necessary. Finkelstein touches on this in
Beyond Chutzpah: on the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse
of History. The Perlmutters recognised the serious decline in
anti-Semitism in the US: “…the very fact of whispered anti-Semitism
is witness to its low estate.” What was to be done? After all, if
the world was not anti-Semitic what was the justification for an
exclusively Jewish State? The Perlmutters found the answer in their
book The Real Anti-Semitism: “Essentially, this book’s thesis
is that today the interests of Jews are not so much threatened by
their familiar nemesis, crude anti-Semitism, as by a-Semitic
governmental policies, the proponents of which my be free of
anti-Semitism and indeed may well – literally- count Jews as some of
their best friends.” The elision from anti-Semitic to a-Semitic is
stunning: now it is not reprehensible to hate Jews but merely to
uphold any policy or attitude which does not further their
interests. Of course, those interests, in the Perlmutter’s view, are
coterminous with the those of the State of Israel. Thus, by the
deletion of three letters we have moved from Nazi totalitarianism to
Israeli State totalitarianism. What the Perlmutters demand is
absolute adherence to the needs of the Israeli State. Anything else
is “the new anti-Semitism.” That this is infantile nonsense is
obvious, yet is has wide and deep reach.
Anti-Zionists are routinely called anti-Semites, tantamount to
calling critics of the State of Iran Islamophobes. Greenstein argues
that the Zionist “logic” is that those who criticise Israel are
exercised not by its actions but by its Jewishness. There is truth
in this, but Zionists understand perfectly well that most
anti-Zionists seek equality for the Palestinians and equality before
the law for all citizens. Zionists are dissembling. Did any Zionist
truly believe Corbyn was a Jew hater? The notion is too ridiculous.
When people are defending an emotional position, they deny the
evidence.
We are now in the context that anyone who defends Palestinian
rights, which must entail criticism of Israeli policy, will be
called an anti-Semite and as soon as that accusation is made, we are
in Kafka’s world: accusation is guilt. Another wonderful irony:
Kafka was Jewish. The media will crucify anyone who is accused. This
is an astonishing success of Zionist propaganda. One the Nazis would
have been proud of.
Along with the propaganda comes “lawfare” and biased reporting
masquerading as objective research. In 2015 the Campaign Against
Anti-Semitism (ie motherhood and apple pie) produced
a report which claimed 45% of Britons have negative attitudes
towards Jewish people. The Institute of Jewish Policy Research said
the report was “littered with flaws”. Yet what gets listened to, the
sober, evidenced-based response, or the tendentious, slipshod paper?
Zionists claim anti-Semitism in the UK today mirrors that of Nazi
Germany. Where are the yellow stars, the brown shirts, the Jewish
businesses being closed down? The claim is unhinged, but taken
seriously by an Establishment whose interest tallies with those of
the State of Israel. Greenstein calls this hysteria. Yet behind it
is a cold, considered, conscious policy.
There is evidence of serious Islamophobia among some British Jews.
Gary Mond a senior official of the BOD was suspended in 2022 for
“liking” Twitter posts by Pamela Geller regretting the French hadn’t
voted for Le Pen. Any media fuss? In the midst of the furore over
anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, Audrey White, a member of the
Riverside Branch, Liverpool, took the Jewish Chronicle to the
press complaints body over allegations she was an anti-Semite. She
won. Any fuss in the media? Greenstein quotes the Head of Hillel
House Jewish School in London: “I find it very disturbing to hear of
Jewish parents..refusing to send their children to mix with those of
coloured immigrants.” Any fuss in the media?
Greenstein writes that the claim of the “new anti-Semitism” that
Israel is the “Jew among nations” is fascistic because it grants a
State the status of a human being. He takes issue with the much
repeated claim that “Israel has the right to exist.” No State enjoys
such an abstract right. States are recognised as functioning by the
international order. That is the basis of their legitimacy. North
Korea, therefore, has the right to exist. Does anyone suggest we
stop criticising its leadership?
Israel is comfortable in its relations to far-right regimes.
Netanyahu praises and likes Trump whose speeches are littered with
anti-Semitic hints. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem was
a reactionary, who helped the Nazis . By associating him with The
Holocaust, in which he wasn’t a partner, the myth can be inflated
that Arab resistance to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, the
confinement of Arabs in Gaza and so on, are tantamount to what the
Nazis did. Blame for The Holocaust can be shifted to the Arabs. Any
fuss in the media?
The final chapter explores the relationship of Zionists to
Argentina’s fascist dictatorship under Videla. Greenstein observes
that Argentina shows the way to defeat genocide and the prejudices
which fuel it is to oppose fascism. The Zionist claim that only an
exclusively Jewish State can provide safety for Jews is belied by
the evidence. “Zionism” writes Greenstein, “reproduces European
anti-Semitism as anti-Palestinian racism.” This is where we have
arrived.
The pusillanimity of so-called democracies across the globe, and in
particular the willingness of the US to support Israel through thick
and thin, emboldens the Zionists to promulgate the kind of vacuity
elaborated by the Perlmutters. It would be merely laughable if it
wasn’t undermining democracy and granting credence to the
viciousness which holds the Palestinians in oppression. Neo-fascists
are in the Israeli government. Greenstein argues that “amongst all
oppressed peoples a section of the petite-bourgeoisie comes to
accept the terms of reference and the ideological framing of their
oppressors.” He cites Marcus Garvey and Elija Mohammed as examples.
Just how this works is something of mystery; but Greenstein is
right: Zionism made the same compromise but was also able to ally
itself with a colonial power. Thus, it took control of the Jewish
establishment in the diaspora.
People feel sympathy for the Jews because of what they have
suffered. They tend to believe that Israel is their reward and
protection. Hence, they are easily prey to the delusion that
criticising the State of Israel is being nasty to Jews. Deploring
the Israeli persecution of the Palestinians sets up a mental
conflict: on the one hand sympathy for the Jews on the other
opposition to the actions of the State of Israel. If the mental
conflict becomes too great, something has to be denied.
The media and the education
system ensure people understand so little of the history, their
genuine and gracious sympathy can be manipulated. Surely it must be
right to sympathise with the Jews and a Israel is their State,
surely it must be right to support it. In this way, the negative
response to Israeli viciousness is pushed out of mind to preserve
the positive feeling of sympathy. But
in whose interest? Greenstein is right: in the interests of the rich
who rule the world. His book is a weighty contribution to the
campaign for equality and democracy. Only by defeating those who put
the pursuit of lucre above all priorities will we create societies
in which fascism can’t take root. Fascism is on the march across the
world, not least in Israel. A society which genuinely believed in
democracy and freedom of expression would ensure this book is widely
available. That won’t happen. For obvious reasons.
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