Publish to Newswire
Add an EventFrom the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature
Zionism and the Jews
An article detailing Zionist collaboration and support of anti-semitism to further their agenda
Zionism and the Jews
If the colonization of Palestine has been characterized by a series of depredations, we should take a moment to examine the attitude of the Zionist movement not only toward its Palestinian victims (to which we shall return), but toward the Jews themselves.
Herzl himself wrote of the Jews in the following fashion: ''I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism."[76] The youth organization of the Zionists, Hashomer Hatzair (young Guard) published the following: "A Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligations, knows no order nor discipline."[77] "The Jewish people," wrote Jabotinsky in the same vein, "is a very bad people; its neighbors hate it and rightly so ... its only salvation lies in a general immigration to the land of Israel."[78] The founders of Zionism despaired of combatting anti- Semitism and, paradoxically, regarded the anti-Semites themselves as allies, because of a shared desire to remove the Jews from the countries in which they lived. Step by step, they assimilated the values of Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism, as the Zionist movement came to regard the anti-Semites themselves as their most reliable sponsors and protectors.
Theodor Herzl approached none other than Count Von Plehve, the author of the worst pogroms in Russia - the pogroms of Kishinev with the following proposition: "Help me to reach the land [Palestine] sooner and the revolt [against Czarist rule] will end."[79] Von Plehve agreed, and he undertook to finance the Zionist movement. He was later to complain to Herzl: 'The Jews have been joining the revolutionary parties. We were sympathetic to your Zionist movement as long as it worked toward emigration. You don't have to justify the movement to me. You are preaching to a convert."[80] Herzl and Weizmann offered to help guarantee Czarist interests in Palestine and to rid Eastern Europe and Russia of those "noxious and subversive Anarcho-Bolshevik Jews."
As we have noted, the same appeal was made by the Zionists to the Sultan of Turkey, the Kaiser in Germany, to French imperialism and to the British Raj.
Zionism and Fascism
The history of Zionism - largely suppressed - is sordid.
Mussolini set up squadrons of the Revisionist Zionist youth movement, Betar, in black shirts in emulation of his own Fascist bands.
When Menachem Begin became chief of Betar, he preferred the brown shirts of the Hitler gangs, a uniform Begin and Betar members wore to all meetings and rallies - at which they greeted each other and opened and closed meetings with the fascist salute.
Simon Petilura was a Ukranian fascist who personally directed pogroms which killed 28,000 Jews in 897 separate pogroms. Jabotinsky negotiated an alliance with Petilura, proposing a Jewish police force to accompany Petilura's forces in their counter-revolutionary fight against the Red Army and the Bolshevik Revolution - a process involving the murder of peasant, worker and intellectual supporters of the revolution.
Collaborating with the Nazis
This strategy of enlisting Europe's virulent Jew-haters, and of aligning with the most vicious movements and regimes as financial and military patrons of a Zionist colony in Palestine, did not exclude the Nazis.
The Zionist Federation of Germany sent a memorandum of support to the Nazi Party on June 21, 1933. In it the Federation noted:
"...a rebirth of national life such as is occurring in German life ... must also take place in the Jewish national group.
"On the foundation of the new [Nazi] 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...."[81] Far from repudiating this policy, the World Zionist Organization Congress in 1933 defeated a resolution calling for action against Hitler by a vote of 240 to 43.
During this very Congress, Hitler announced a trade agreement with the WZO's Anglo-Palestine Bank, breaking, thereby, the Jewish boycott of the Nazi regime at a time when the German economy was extremely vulnerable. It was the height of the Depression and people were wheeling barrels full of worthless German Marks. The World Zionist Organization broke the Jewish boycott and became the principal distributor of Nazi goods throughout the Middle East and Northern Europe. They established the Ha'avara, which was a bank in Palestine designed to receive monies from the German-Jewish bourgeoisie, with which sums Nazi goods were purchased in very substantial quantity.
Embracing the S.S.
Consequently, the Zionists brought Baron Von Mildenstein of the S.S. Security Service to Palestine for a six-month visit in support of Zionism. This visit led to a twelve-part report by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, in Der Angriff (The Assault) in 1934 praising Zionism. Goebbels ordered a medallion struck with the Swastika on one side, and on the other, the Zionist Star of David. In May 1935, Reinhardt Heydrich, the chief of the S.S. Security Service, wrote an article in which he separated Jews into "two categories." The Jews he favored were the Zionists: "Our good wishes together with our official good will go with them."[82] In 1937, the Labor "socialist" Zionist militia, the Haganah (founded by Jabotinsky) sent an agent (Feivel Polkes) to Berlin offering to spy for the S.S. Security Service in exchange for the release of Jewish wealth for Zionist colonization. Adolf Eichmann was invited to Palestine as the guest of the Haganah.
Feivel Polkes informed Eichmann:
"Jewish nationalist circles were very pleased with the radical German policy, since the strength of the Jewish population in Palestine would be so far increased thereby that in the foreseeable future the Jews could reckon upon numerical superiority over the Arabs."[83] The list of acts of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis goes on and on. What can account for this incredible willingness of Zionist leaders to betray the Jews of Europe? The entire rationale for the state of Israel offered by its apologists has been that it was intended to be the refuge of Jews facing persecution.
The Zionists, to the contrary, saw any effort to rescue Europe's Jews not as the fulfilment of their political purpose but as a threat to their entire movement. If Europe's Jews were saved, they would wish to go elsewhere and the rescue operation would have nothing to do with the Zionist project of conquering Palestine.
Sacrificing Europe's Jews
The correlative to the acts of collaboration with the Nazis throughout the 1930's was that when attempts to change the immigration laws of the United States and Western Europe were contemplated in order to provide token refuge for persecuted Jews of Europe, it was the Zionists who actively organized to stop these efforts.
Ben Gurion informed a meeting of Labor Zionists in Great Britain in 1938: "If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative."[84] This obsession with colonizing Palestine and overwhelming the Arabs led the Zionist movement to oppose any rescue of the Jews facing extermination, because the ability to deflect select manpower to Palestine would be impeded. From 1933 to 1935, the WZO turned down two-thirds of all the German Jews who applied for immigration certificates.
Berel Katznelson, editor of the Labor Zionist Davar, described the "cruel criteria of Zionism:" German Jews were too old to bear children in Palestine, lacked trades for building a Zionist colony, didn't speak Hebrew and weren't Zionists. In place of these Jews facing extermination the WZO brought to Palestine 6,000 trained young Zionists from the United States, Britain and other safe countries. Worse than this, the WZO not merely failed to seek any alternative for the Jews facing the Holocaust, the Zionist leadership opposed belligerently all efforts to find refuge for fleeing Jews.
As late as 1943, while the Jews of Europe were being exterminated in their millions, the U.S. Congress proposed to set up a commission to "study" the problem. Rabbi Stephen Wise, who was the principal American spokesperson for Zionism, came to Washington to testify against the rescue bill because it would divert attention from the colonization of Palestine.
This is the same Rabbi Wise who, in 1938, in his capacity as leader of the American Jewish Congress, wrote a letter in which he opposed any change in U.S. immigration laws which would enable Jews to find refuge. He stated:
"It may interest you to know that some weeks ago the representatives of all the leading Jewish organizations met in conference. ... It was decided that no Jewish organization would, at this time, sponsor a bill which would in any way alter the immigration laws."[85]
Fighting Asylum
The entire Zionist establishment made its position unmistakable in its response to a motion by 227 British members of Parliament calling on the government to provide asylum in British territories for persecuted Jews. The meager undertaking which was prepared was as follows:
"His Majesty's Government issued some hundreds of Mauritius and other immigration permits in favor of threatened Jewish families."[86] But even this token measure was opposed by the Zionist leaders. At a Parliamentary meeting on January 27, 1943, when the next steps were being pursued by over one hundred members of Parliament, a spokesperson for the Zionists announced that they opposed this motion because it did not contain preparations for the colonization of Palestine. This was a consistent stance.
Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader who had arranged the Balfour Declaration and was to become the first president of Israel, made this Zionist policy very explicit:
"The hopes of Europe's six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked: 'Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?' I replied, 'No.' ... From the depths of the tragedy I want to save ... young people [for Palestine]. The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world. ... Only the branch of the young shall survive. They have to accept it."[87] Yitzhak Gruenbaum, the chairperson of the committee set up by the Zionists, nominally to investigate the condition of European Jews, said:
"When they come to us with two plans - the rescue of the masses of Jews in Europe or the redemption of the land - I vote, without a second thought, for the redemption of the land. The more said about the slaughter of our people, the greater the minimization of our efforts to strengthen and promote the Hebraisation of the land. If there would be a possibility today of buying packages of food with the money of the Karen Hayesod [United Jewish Appeal] to send it through Lisbon, would we do such a thing? No. And once again no!"[88]
Betraying the Resistance
In July 1944, the Slovakian Jewish leader Rabbi Dov Michael Weissmandel in a letter to Zionist officials charged with these "rescue organizations," proposed a series of measures to save the Jews scheduled for liquidation at Auschwitz. He offered exact mappings of the railways and urged the bombing of the tracks on which the Hungarian Jews were being transported to the crematoria.
He appealed for the bombing of the furnaces at Auschwitz, for the parachuting of ammunition to 80,000 prisoners, for the parachuting of saboteurs to blow up all the means of annihilation and thus end the cremation of 13,000 Jews every day.
Should the Allies refuse the organized and public demand by the "rescue organizations," Weissmandel proposed that the Zionists, who had funds and organization, obtain airplanes, recruit Jewish volunteers and carry out the sabotage.
Weissmandel was not alone. Throughout the late thirties and forties, Jewish spokespersons in Europe cried out for help, for public campaigns, for organized resistance, for demonstrations to force the hand of allied Govemments - only to be met not merely by Zionist silence but by active Zionist sabotage of the meager efforts which were proposed or prepared in Great Britain and the United States.
Here is the cri-de-coeur of Rabbi Weissmandel. Writing to the Zionists in July 1944 he asked incredulously.
"Why have you done nothing until now? Who is guilty of this frightful negligence? Are you not guilty, our Jewish brothers: you who have the greatest good fortune in the world - liberty?" "We send you," Rabbi Weissmandel wrote again - "this special message: to inform you that yesterday the Germans began the deportation of Jews from Hungary. ... The deported ones go to Auschwitz to be put to death by cyanide gas. This is the schedule, of Auschwitz from yesterday to the end:
"Twelve thousand Jews - men, women and children, old men, infants, healthy and sick ones, are to be suffocated daily.
" And you, our brothers in Palestine, in all the countries of freedom, and you ministers of all the Kingdoms, how do you keep silent in the face of this great murder?
"Silent while thousands upon thousands, reaching now to six million Jews, are murdered? And silent now, while tens of thousands are still being murdered and waiting to be murdered? Their destroyed hearts cry out to you for help as they bewail your cruelty.
"Brutal, you are and murderers, too, you are, because of the coldbloodedness of the silence in which you watch, because you sit with folded arms and do nothing, although you could stop or delay the murder of Jews at this very hour.
"You, our brothers, sons of Israel, are you insane? Don't you know the hell around us? For whom are you saving your money? Murderers! Madmen! Who is it that gives charity: you who toss a few pennies from your safe homes, or we who give our blood in the depths of hell?"[90] No Zionist leader supported his request, nor did the Western capitalist regimes bomb a single concentration camp.
A Pact Against Hungary's Jews
The culmination of Zionist betrayal was the sacrifice of Hungary's Jews in a series of agreements between the Zionist movement and Nazi Germany which first became known in 1953. Dr. Rudolph Kastner of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee in Budapest signed a secret pact with Adolf Eichmann to "settle the Jewish question" in Hungary. This took place in 1944. The pact sealed the fate of 800,000 Jews.
It was to be revealed later that Kastner was under the direction of the Zionist leaders abroad when he made his agreement with Eichmann. The agreement entailed the saving of six hundred prominent Jews on the condition that silence was maintained about the fate of Hungarian Jewry.
When a survivor, Malchiel Greenwald, exposed the pact and denounced Kastner as a Nazi collaborator whose "deeds in Budapest cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews,"[91] Greenwald was sued by the Israeli government, whose leaders had drawn up the terms of the Kastner pact.
The Israeli Court came to the following conclusion:
"The sacrifice of the majority of the Jews, in order to rescue the prominents was the basic element in the agreement between Kastner and the Nazis. This agreement fixed the division of the nation into two unequal camps, a small fragment of prominents, whom the Nazis promised Kastner to save, on the one hand, and the great majority of Hungarian Jews whom the Nazis designated for death, on the other hand."[92] The court declared that the imperative condition of this pact was that neither Kastner nor the Zionist leaders would interfere in the action of the Nazis against the Jews. These leaders undertook not only to eschew interference, but they agreed they would not, in the words of the Israeli court, "hamper them in the extermination." "Collaboration between the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee and the exterminators of the Jews was solidified in Budapest and Vienna.
Kastner's duties were part and parcel of the S.S. In addition to its Extermination Department and Looting Department, the Nazi S.S. opened a Rescue Department headed by Kastner."[93]
Saving Nazis, Not Jews
It is not surprising that it was to be revealed that Kastner intervened to save S.S. General Kurt Becher from being tried for war crimes. Becher was one of the leading negotiators of the deal with the Zionists in 1944. He was also an S.S. Major in Poland, a member of the Death Corps "that worked around the clock killing Jews." "Becher distinguished himself as a Jew slaughterer in Poland and Russia."[94] He was appointed Commissar of all Nazi concentration camps by Heinrich Himmler.
What happened to him? He became president of many corporations and headed up the sale of wheat to Israel. His corporation, the Cologne-Handel Gesselschaft, did extensive business with the Israeli government.
A Military Pact with Nazism
On January 11, 1941, Avraham Stern proposed a formal military pact between the National Military Organization (NMO), of which Yitzhak Shamir, the current Prime Minister of Israel, was a prominent leader, and the Nazi Third Reich. This proposal became known as the Ankara document, having been discovered after the war in the files of the German Embassy in Turkey. It states the following:
"The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question; but this can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historical boundaries. ...
"The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that:
"1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a New Order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.
"2. Cooperation between the new Germany and renewed folkish-national Hebraium would be possible and
"3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.
"Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition that the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany's side."[95]
Zionism's Perfidy
Zionism's perfidy - the betrayal of the victims of the Holocaust - was the culmination of their attempt to identify the interests of the Jews with those of the established order. Today, the Zionists join their state to the enforcement arm of U.S. imperialism - from the death squads of Latin America to the covert operations of the C.I.A. on four continents.
This sordid history is rooted in the demoralization of the founders of Zionism, who rejected the possibility of overcoming anti-Semitism through popular struggle and social revolution. Moses Hess, Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann chose the wrong side of the barricades - that of state power, class domination and exploitative rule. They propounded a putative disjunction between emancipation from persecution and the necessity of social change. They fully understood that the cultivation of anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews were the work of the very ruling class from whom they curried favor.
In seeking the sponsorship of the anti-Semites themselves, they revealed several motives: the worship of power with which they associated strength; a desire to end Jewish "weakness" and vulnerability, ceasing to be perpetual outsiders.
This sensibility was a short step to assimilating the values and ideas of the Jew-haters themselves. The Jews, the Zionists wrote, were indeed an undisciplined, subversive, dissident people, worthy of the scorn they had earned. The Zionists catered shamelessly to racist Jew-hatred. Worshipping power, they appealed to the anti-Semitic desire of the von Plehves and the Himmlers to be rid of a victim people long radicalized by persecution, a people who filled the ranks of revolutionary movements and whose suffering drew their best minds to intellectual ferment offensive to established values.
The dirty secret of Zionist history is that Zionism was threatened by the Jews themselves. Defending the Jewish people from persecution meant organizing resistance to the regimes which menaced them. But these regimes embodied the imperial order which comprised the only social force willing or able to impose a settler colony on the Palestinian people. Hence, the Zionists needed the persecution of the Jews to persuade Jews to become colonizers afar, and they needed the persecutors to sponsor the enterprise.
But European Jewry had never manifested any interest in colonizing Palestine. Zionism remained a fringe movement among the Jews, who aspired to live in the countries of their birth free of discrimination or to escape persecution by emigrating to bourgeois democracies perceived as more tolerant.
Zionism, therefore, could never answer the needs or aspirations of the Jews. The moment of truth came when persecution gave way to physical extermination. Put to the ultimate and sole test of their real relationship to Jewish survival, the Zionists did not merely fail to lead resistance or defend the Jews, they actively sabotaged Jewish efforts to boycott the Nazi economy. They sought, even then, the sponsorship of the mass murderers themselves, not merely because the Third Reich appeared powerful enough to impose a Zionist colony, but because the Nazi practices were consonant with Zionist assumptions.
There was a common ground between the Nazis and the Zionists, expressed not merely in the proposal of Shamir's National Military Organization to form a state in Palestine on a "national totalitarian basis." Vladimir Jabotinsky, in his last work, "The Jewish War Front," (l940) wrote of his plans for the Palestinian people:
"Since we have this great moral authority for calmly envisaging the exodus of Arabs, we need not regard the possible departure of 900,000 with dismay. Herr Hitler has recently been enhancing the popularity of population transfer."[96]
Jabotinsky's remarkable declaration in "The Jewish War Front" synthesizes Zionist thought and its moral bankruptcy. The slaughter of the Jews gave Zionism "great moral authority" - For what? "For calmly envisaging the exodus of Arabs.' The lesson of Nazi destruction of the Jews was that it was permissible now for Zionists to visit the same fate upon the entire Palestinian population.
Seven years later, the Zionists emulated the Nazis, whose backing they sought and even at times achieved, and they covered bleeding Palestine in multiple Lidices,[97] driving 800,000 people into exile.
The Zionists approached the Nazis in the same spirit they had Von Plehve, acting on the perverse notion that Jew-hatred was useful. Their purpose was not rescue, but forced conscription of the select few - the rest to be consigned to their agonizing fate.
Zionism sought bodies with which to colonize Palestine and preferred Jewish corpses in their millions to any rescue that might settle Jews elsewhere.
If ever a people could be expected to grasp the meaning of persecution, the pain of being perpetual refugees and the humiliation of slander, it ought to have been the Jews.
In place of compassion, the Zionists celebrated the persecution of others, even as they first betrayed the Jews and then degraded them. They selected a victim people of their own on whom to inflict a conquering design. They aligned the surviving Jews with a new genocide against the Palestinian people, cloaking themselves, with savage irony, in the collective shroud of the Holocaust.
NOTES
76-Marvin Lowenthal, ed., The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 6. Cited in Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1983) p. 6.
77-From "Our Shomer 'Weltanschauung,"' Hashomer Hatzair, December 1936. Originally published in 1917, Brenner, Zionism, p. 22.
78-Brenner, The Iron Wall.
79-lbid., p. 14.
80-lbid.
81-Brenner, Zionism, p. 48.
82-lbid., p. 85.
83-lbid., p. 99.
84-lbid., p. 149.
85-lbid.
86-Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld, Britain's chief Rabbi during World War II. Faris Yahya, Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany, (Beirut, Lebanon: Palestine Research Center, January 1978), p. 53.
87-Chaim Weizmann reporting to the Zionist Congress in 1937 on his testimony before the Peel Commission in London, July 1937. Cited in Yahya, p. 55.
88- Yitzhak Gruenbaum was chairperson of the Jewish Agency's Rescue Committee. Excerpted from a speech made in 1943. Ibid., p. 56.
89-lbid., p. 53.
90-lbid., pp. 59-60.
91-lbid., p. 58.
92-Judgment given on June 22, 1955, Protocol of Criminal Case 124/53 in District Court, Jerusalem. Ibid., p. 58.
93-Ibid. p. 59.
94-Ben Hecht, Perfidy, (New York: 1961), pp. 58-59. Ibid., p. 60.
95-"Proposal of the National Military Organization - Irgun Zvai Leumi - Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the N.M.O. in the War on the side of Germany." Original text found in David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics. 1889-1945. (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University, 1974), pp. 315-317, Brenner. Zionism, p. 267.
96-Brenner, The Iron Wall, p. 107.
97-Lidice was a Czech village razed to the ground by the S.S. It became a symbol of Nazi brutality and was singled out as a war crime during the Nuremberg Trials
If the colonization of Palestine has been characterized by a series of depredations, we should take a moment to examine the attitude of the Zionist movement not only toward its Palestinian victims (to which we shall return), but toward the Jews themselves.
Herzl himself wrote of the Jews in the following fashion: ''I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism."[76] The youth organization of the Zionists, Hashomer Hatzair (young Guard) published the following: "A Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligations, knows no order nor discipline."[77] "The Jewish people," wrote Jabotinsky in the same vein, "is a very bad people; its neighbors hate it and rightly so ... its only salvation lies in a general immigration to the land of Israel."[78] The founders of Zionism despaired of combatting anti- Semitism and, paradoxically, regarded the anti-Semites themselves as allies, because of a shared desire to remove the Jews from the countries in which they lived. Step by step, they assimilated the values of Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism, as the Zionist movement came to regard the anti-Semites themselves as their most reliable sponsors and protectors.
Theodor Herzl approached none other than Count Von Plehve, the author of the worst pogroms in Russia - the pogroms of Kishinev with the following proposition: "Help me to reach the land [Palestine] sooner and the revolt [against Czarist rule] will end."[79] Von Plehve agreed, and he undertook to finance the Zionist movement. He was later to complain to Herzl: 'The Jews have been joining the revolutionary parties. We were sympathetic to your Zionist movement as long as it worked toward emigration. You don't have to justify the movement to me. You are preaching to a convert."[80] Herzl and Weizmann offered to help guarantee Czarist interests in Palestine and to rid Eastern Europe and Russia of those "noxious and subversive Anarcho-Bolshevik Jews."
As we have noted, the same appeal was made by the Zionists to the Sultan of Turkey, the Kaiser in Germany, to French imperialism and to the British Raj.
Zionism and Fascism
The history of Zionism - largely suppressed - is sordid.
Mussolini set up squadrons of the Revisionist Zionist youth movement, Betar, in black shirts in emulation of his own Fascist bands.
When Menachem Begin became chief of Betar, he preferred the brown shirts of the Hitler gangs, a uniform Begin and Betar members wore to all meetings and rallies - at which they greeted each other and opened and closed meetings with the fascist salute.
Simon Petilura was a Ukranian fascist who personally directed pogroms which killed 28,000 Jews in 897 separate pogroms. Jabotinsky negotiated an alliance with Petilura, proposing a Jewish police force to accompany Petilura's forces in their counter-revolutionary fight against the Red Army and the Bolshevik Revolution - a process involving the murder of peasant, worker and intellectual supporters of the revolution.
Collaborating with the Nazis
This strategy of enlisting Europe's virulent Jew-haters, and of aligning with the most vicious movements and regimes as financial and military patrons of a Zionist colony in Palestine, did not exclude the Nazis.
The Zionist Federation of Germany sent a memorandum of support to the Nazi Party on June 21, 1933. In it the Federation noted:
"...a rebirth of national life such as is occurring in German life ... must also take place in the Jewish national group.
"On the foundation of the new [Nazi] 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...."[81] Far from repudiating this policy, the World Zionist Organization Congress in 1933 defeated a resolution calling for action against Hitler by a vote of 240 to 43.
During this very Congress, Hitler announced a trade agreement with the WZO's Anglo-Palestine Bank, breaking, thereby, the Jewish boycott of the Nazi regime at a time when the German economy was extremely vulnerable. It was the height of the Depression and people were wheeling barrels full of worthless German Marks. The World Zionist Organization broke the Jewish boycott and became the principal distributor of Nazi goods throughout the Middle East and Northern Europe. They established the Ha'avara, which was a bank in Palestine designed to receive monies from the German-Jewish bourgeoisie, with which sums Nazi goods were purchased in very substantial quantity.
Embracing the S.S.
Consequently, the Zionists brought Baron Von Mildenstein of the S.S. Security Service to Palestine for a six-month visit in support of Zionism. This visit led to a twelve-part report by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, in Der Angriff (The Assault) in 1934 praising Zionism. Goebbels ordered a medallion struck with the Swastika on one side, and on the other, the Zionist Star of David. In May 1935, Reinhardt Heydrich, the chief of the S.S. Security Service, wrote an article in which he separated Jews into "two categories." The Jews he favored were the Zionists: "Our good wishes together with our official good will go with them."[82] In 1937, the Labor "socialist" Zionist militia, the Haganah (founded by Jabotinsky) sent an agent (Feivel Polkes) to Berlin offering to spy for the S.S. Security Service in exchange for the release of Jewish wealth for Zionist colonization. Adolf Eichmann was invited to Palestine as the guest of the Haganah.
Feivel Polkes informed Eichmann:
"Jewish nationalist circles were very pleased with the radical German policy, since the strength of the Jewish population in Palestine would be so far increased thereby that in the foreseeable future the Jews could reckon upon numerical superiority over the Arabs."[83] The list of acts of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis goes on and on. What can account for this incredible willingness of Zionist leaders to betray the Jews of Europe? The entire rationale for the state of Israel offered by its apologists has been that it was intended to be the refuge of Jews facing persecution.
The Zionists, to the contrary, saw any effort to rescue Europe's Jews not as the fulfilment of their political purpose but as a threat to their entire movement. If Europe's Jews were saved, they would wish to go elsewhere and the rescue operation would have nothing to do with the Zionist project of conquering Palestine.
Sacrificing Europe's Jews
The correlative to the acts of collaboration with the Nazis throughout the 1930's was that when attempts to change the immigration laws of the United States and Western Europe were contemplated in order to provide token refuge for persecuted Jews of Europe, it was the Zionists who actively organized to stop these efforts.
Ben Gurion informed a meeting of Labor Zionists in Great Britain in 1938: "If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative."[84] This obsession with colonizing Palestine and overwhelming the Arabs led the Zionist movement to oppose any rescue of the Jews facing extermination, because the ability to deflect select manpower to Palestine would be impeded. From 1933 to 1935, the WZO turned down two-thirds of all the German Jews who applied for immigration certificates.
Berel Katznelson, editor of the Labor Zionist Davar, described the "cruel criteria of Zionism:" German Jews were too old to bear children in Palestine, lacked trades for building a Zionist colony, didn't speak Hebrew and weren't Zionists. In place of these Jews facing extermination the WZO brought to Palestine 6,000 trained young Zionists from the United States, Britain and other safe countries. Worse than this, the WZO not merely failed to seek any alternative for the Jews facing the Holocaust, the Zionist leadership opposed belligerently all efforts to find refuge for fleeing Jews.
As late as 1943, while the Jews of Europe were being exterminated in their millions, the U.S. Congress proposed to set up a commission to "study" the problem. Rabbi Stephen Wise, who was the principal American spokesperson for Zionism, came to Washington to testify against the rescue bill because it would divert attention from the colonization of Palestine.
This is the same Rabbi Wise who, in 1938, in his capacity as leader of the American Jewish Congress, wrote a letter in which he opposed any change in U.S. immigration laws which would enable Jews to find refuge. He stated:
"It may interest you to know that some weeks ago the representatives of all the leading Jewish organizations met in conference. ... It was decided that no Jewish organization would, at this time, sponsor a bill which would in any way alter the immigration laws."[85]
Fighting Asylum
The entire Zionist establishment made its position unmistakable in its response to a motion by 227 British members of Parliament calling on the government to provide asylum in British territories for persecuted Jews. The meager undertaking which was prepared was as follows:
"His Majesty's Government issued some hundreds of Mauritius and other immigration permits in favor of threatened Jewish families."[86] But even this token measure was opposed by the Zionist leaders. At a Parliamentary meeting on January 27, 1943, when the next steps were being pursued by over one hundred members of Parliament, a spokesperson for the Zionists announced that they opposed this motion because it did not contain preparations for the colonization of Palestine. This was a consistent stance.
Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader who had arranged the Balfour Declaration and was to become the first president of Israel, made this Zionist policy very explicit:
"The hopes of Europe's six million Jews are centered on emigration. I was asked: 'Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?' I replied, 'No.' ... From the depths of the tragedy I want to save ... young people [for Palestine]. The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world. ... Only the branch of the young shall survive. They have to accept it."[87] Yitzhak Gruenbaum, the chairperson of the committee set up by the Zionists, nominally to investigate the condition of European Jews, said:
"When they come to us with two plans - the rescue of the masses of Jews in Europe or the redemption of the land - I vote, without a second thought, for the redemption of the land. The more said about the slaughter of our people, the greater the minimization of our efforts to strengthen and promote the Hebraisation of the land. If there would be a possibility today of buying packages of food with the money of the Karen Hayesod [United Jewish Appeal] to send it through Lisbon, would we do such a thing? No. And once again no!"[88]
Betraying the Resistance
In July 1944, the Slovakian Jewish leader Rabbi Dov Michael Weissmandel in a letter to Zionist officials charged with these "rescue organizations," proposed a series of measures to save the Jews scheduled for liquidation at Auschwitz. He offered exact mappings of the railways and urged the bombing of the tracks on which the Hungarian Jews were being transported to the crematoria.
He appealed for the bombing of the furnaces at Auschwitz, for the parachuting of ammunition to 80,000 prisoners, for the parachuting of saboteurs to blow up all the means of annihilation and thus end the cremation of 13,000 Jews every day.
Should the Allies refuse the organized and public demand by the "rescue organizations," Weissmandel proposed that the Zionists, who had funds and organization, obtain airplanes, recruit Jewish volunteers and carry out the sabotage.
Weissmandel was not alone. Throughout the late thirties and forties, Jewish spokespersons in Europe cried out for help, for public campaigns, for organized resistance, for demonstrations to force the hand of allied Govemments - only to be met not merely by Zionist silence but by active Zionist sabotage of the meager efforts which were proposed or prepared in Great Britain and the United States.
Here is the cri-de-coeur of Rabbi Weissmandel. Writing to the Zionists in July 1944 he asked incredulously.
"Why have you done nothing until now? Who is guilty of this frightful negligence? Are you not guilty, our Jewish brothers: you who have the greatest good fortune in the world - liberty?" "We send you," Rabbi Weissmandel wrote again - "this special message: to inform you that yesterday the Germans began the deportation of Jews from Hungary. ... The deported ones go to Auschwitz to be put to death by cyanide gas. This is the schedule, of Auschwitz from yesterday to the end:
"Twelve thousand Jews - men, women and children, old men, infants, healthy and sick ones, are to be suffocated daily.
" And you, our brothers in Palestine, in all the countries of freedom, and you ministers of all the Kingdoms, how do you keep silent in the face of this great murder?
"Silent while thousands upon thousands, reaching now to six million Jews, are murdered? And silent now, while tens of thousands are still being murdered and waiting to be murdered? Their destroyed hearts cry out to you for help as they bewail your cruelty.
"Brutal, you are and murderers, too, you are, because of the coldbloodedness of the silence in which you watch, because you sit with folded arms and do nothing, although you could stop or delay the murder of Jews at this very hour.
"You, our brothers, sons of Israel, are you insane? Don't you know the hell around us? For whom are you saving your money? Murderers! Madmen! Who is it that gives charity: you who toss a few pennies from your safe homes, or we who give our blood in the depths of hell?"[90] No Zionist leader supported his request, nor did the Western capitalist regimes bomb a single concentration camp.
A Pact Against Hungary's Jews
The culmination of Zionist betrayal was the sacrifice of Hungary's Jews in a series of agreements between the Zionist movement and Nazi Germany which first became known in 1953. Dr. Rudolph Kastner of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee in Budapest signed a secret pact with Adolf Eichmann to "settle the Jewish question" in Hungary. This took place in 1944. The pact sealed the fate of 800,000 Jews.
It was to be revealed later that Kastner was under the direction of the Zionist leaders abroad when he made his agreement with Eichmann. The agreement entailed the saving of six hundred prominent Jews on the condition that silence was maintained about the fate of Hungarian Jewry.
When a survivor, Malchiel Greenwald, exposed the pact and denounced Kastner as a Nazi collaborator whose "deeds in Budapest cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews,"[91] Greenwald was sued by the Israeli government, whose leaders had drawn up the terms of the Kastner pact.
The Israeli Court came to the following conclusion:
"The sacrifice of the majority of the Jews, in order to rescue the prominents was the basic element in the agreement between Kastner and the Nazis. This agreement fixed the division of the nation into two unequal camps, a small fragment of prominents, whom the Nazis promised Kastner to save, on the one hand, and the great majority of Hungarian Jews whom the Nazis designated for death, on the other hand."[92] The court declared that the imperative condition of this pact was that neither Kastner nor the Zionist leaders would interfere in the action of the Nazis against the Jews. These leaders undertook not only to eschew interference, but they agreed they would not, in the words of the Israeli court, "hamper them in the extermination." "Collaboration between the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee and the exterminators of the Jews was solidified in Budapest and Vienna.
Kastner's duties were part and parcel of the S.S. In addition to its Extermination Department and Looting Department, the Nazi S.S. opened a Rescue Department headed by Kastner."[93]
Saving Nazis, Not Jews
It is not surprising that it was to be revealed that Kastner intervened to save S.S. General Kurt Becher from being tried for war crimes. Becher was one of the leading negotiators of the deal with the Zionists in 1944. He was also an S.S. Major in Poland, a member of the Death Corps "that worked around the clock killing Jews." "Becher distinguished himself as a Jew slaughterer in Poland and Russia."[94] He was appointed Commissar of all Nazi concentration camps by Heinrich Himmler.
What happened to him? He became president of many corporations and headed up the sale of wheat to Israel. His corporation, the Cologne-Handel Gesselschaft, did extensive business with the Israeli government.
A Military Pact with Nazism
On January 11, 1941, Avraham Stern proposed a formal military pact between the National Military Organization (NMO), of which Yitzhak Shamir, the current Prime Minister of Israel, was a prominent leader, and the Nazi Third Reich. This proposal became known as the Ankara document, having been discovered after the war in the files of the German Embassy in Turkey. It states the following:
"The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question; but this can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historical boundaries. ...
"The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that:
"1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a New Order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.
"2. Cooperation between the new Germany and renewed folkish-national Hebraium would be possible and
"3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.
"Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition that the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany's side."[95]
Zionism's Perfidy
Zionism's perfidy - the betrayal of the victims of the Holocaust - was the culmination of their attempt to identify the interests of the Jews with those of the established order. Today, the Zionists join their state to the enforcement arm of U.S. imperialism - from the death squads of Latin America to the covert operations of the C.I.A. on four continents.
This sordid history is rooted in the demoralization of the founders of Zionism, who rejected the possibility of overcoming anti-Semitism through popular struggle and social revolution. Moses Hess, Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann chose the wrong side of the barricades - that of state power, class domination and exploitative rule. They propounded a putative disjunction between emancipation from persecution and the necessity of social change. They fully understood that the cultivation of anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews were the work of the very ruling class from whom they curried favor.
In seeking the sponsorship of the anti-Semites themselves, they revealed several motives: the worship of power with which they associated strength; a desire to end Jewish "weakness" and vulnerability, ceasing to be perpetual outsiders.
This sensibility was a short step to assimilating the values and ideas of the Jew-haters themselves. The Jews, the Zionists wrote, were indeed an undisciplined, subversive, dissident people, worthy of the scorn they had earned. The Zionists catered shamelessly to racist Jew-hatred. Worshipping power, they appealed to the anti-Semitic desire of the von Plehves and the Himmlers to be rid of a victim people long radicalized by persecution, a people who filled the ranks of revolutionary movements and whose suffering drew their best minds to intellectual ferment offensive to established values.
The dirty secret of Zionist history is that Zionism was threatened by the Jews themselves. Defending the Jewish people from persecution meant organizing resistance to the regimes which menaced them. But these regimes embodied the imperial order which comprised the only social force willing or able to impose a settler colony on the Palestinian people. Hence, the Zionists needed the persecution of the Jews to persuade Jews to become colonizers afar, and they needed the persecutors to sponsor the enterprise.
But European Jewry had never manifested any interest in colonizing Palestine. Zionism remained a fringe movement among the Jews, who aspired to live in the countries of their birth free of discrimination or to escape persecution by emigrating to bourgeois democracies perceived as more tolerant.
Zionism, therefore, could never answer the needs or aspirations of the Jews. The moment of truth came when persecution gave way to physical extermination. Put to the ultimate and sole test of their real relationship to Jewish survival, the Zionists did not merely fail to lead resistance or defend the Jews, they actively sabotaged Jewish efforts to boycott the Nazi economy. They sought, even then, the sponsorship of the mass murderers themselves, not merely because the Third Reich appeared powerful enough to impose a Zionist colony, but because the Nazi practices were consonant with Zionist assumptions.
There was a common ground between the Nazis and the Zionists, expressed not merely in the proposal of Shamir's National Military Organization to form a state in Palestine on a "national totalitarian basis." Vladimir Jabotinsky, in his last work, "The Jewish War Front," (l940) wrote of his plans for the Palestinian people:
"Since we have this great moral authority for calmly envisaging the exodus of Arabs, we need not regard the possible departure of 900,000 with dismay. Herr Hitler has recently been enhancing the popularity of population transfer."[96]
Jabotinsky's remarkable declaration in "The Jewish War Front" synthesizes Zionist thought and its moral bankruptcy. The slaughter of the Jews gave Zionism "great moral authority" - For what? "For calmly envisaging the exodus of Arabs.' The lesson of Nazi destruction of the Jews was that it was permissible now for Zionists to visit the same fate upon the entire Palestinian population.
Seven years later, the Zionists emulated the Nazis, whose backing they sought and even at times achieved, and they covered bleeding Palestine in multiple Lidices,[97] driving 800,000 people into exile.
The Zionists approached the Nazis in the same spirit they had Von Plehve, acting on the perverse notion that Jew-hatred was useful. Their purpose was not rescue, but forced conscription of the select few - the rest to be consigned to their agonizing fate.
Zionism sought bodies with which to colonize Palestine and preferred Jewish corpses in their millions to any rescue that might settle Jews elsewhere.
If ever a people could be expected to grasp the meaning of persecution, the pain of being perpetual refugees and the humiliation of slander, it ought to have been the Jews.
In place of compassion, the Zionists celebrated the persecution of others, even as they first betrayed the Jews and then degraded them. They selected a victim people of their own on whom to inflict a conquering design. They aligned the surviving Jews with a new genocide against the Palestinian people, cloaking themselves, with savage irony, in the collective shroud of the Holocaust.
NOTES
76-Marvin Lowenthal, ed., The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 6. Cited in Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, (Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill, 1983) p. 6.
77-From "Our Shomer 'Weltanschauung,"' Hashomer Hatzair, December 1936. Originally published in 1917, Brenner, Zionism, p. 22.
78-Brenner, The Iron Wall.
79-lbid., p. 14.
80-lbid.
81-Brenner, Zionism, p. 48.
82-lbid., p. 85.
83-lbid., p. 99.
84-lbid., p. 149.
85-lbid.
86-Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld, Britain's chief Rabbi during World War II. Faris Yahya, Zionist Relations with Nazi Germany, (Beirut, Lebanon: Palestine Research Center, January 1978), p. 53.
87-Chaim Weizmann reporting to the Zionist Congress in 1937 on his testimony before the Peel Commission in London, July 1937. Cited in Yahya, p. 55.
88- Yitzhak Gruenbaum was chairperson of the Jewish Agency's Rescue Committee. Excerpted from a speech made in 1943. Ibid., p. 56.
89-lbid., p. 53.
90-lbid., pp. 59-60.
91-lbid., p. 58.
92-Judgment given on June 22, 1955, Protocol of Criminal Case 124/53 in District Court, Jerusalem. Ibid., p. 58.
93-Ibid. p. 59.
94-Ben Hecht, Perfidy, (New York: 1961), pp. 58-59. Ibid., p. 60.
95-"Proposal of the National Military Organization - Irgun Zvai Leumi - Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the N.M.O. in the War on the side of Germany." Original text found in David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics. 1889-1945. (Ramat Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University, 1974), pp. 315-317, Brenner. Zionism, p. 267.
96-Brenner, The Iron Wall, p. 107.
97-Lidice was a Czech village razed to the ground by the S.S. It became a symbol of Nazi brutality and was singled out as a war crime during the Nuremberg Trials
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!
Donate
$230.00 donated
in the past month
Get Involved
If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.
Publish
Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.
Topics
More
Search Indybay's Archives
Advanced Search
►
▼
IMC Network
the way Islam is practiced in most of the world is closer to 1940's facism then to what the Koran actually teached
The history of Zionism - largely suppressed - is sordid
yes, and the history of Islam? One of slavery and ignorance... that has not lessened buy increases as time goes on
Zionism is a political programme
Islam is a religion, NOT a political programme
Assad isnt even really a Muslim, Libya is mainly accused of human righst abuses against Fundamentalists, Iraq is a horrible dictatorship but a pretty secular one...
I oppose all racial and religious states, as I have stated numerous times. Don't try to tell me who I support.
http://www.religion-portal.com/ReligionFinder/religions/alawite.htm
For several centuries, the Alawis enjoyed autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, but, in the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottomans imposed direct rule. Regarding the Alawis as infidels, the Ottomans consistently persecuted them and imposed heavy taxation. During the French Mandate, the Alawis briefly gained territorial autonomy, but direct rule was reimposed in 1936.
For centuries, the Alawis constituted Syria's most repressed and exploited minority. Most were indentured servants and tenant farmers or sharecroppers working for Sunni landowners. However, after Alawi President Assad and his retinue came to power in 1970, the well being of the Alawis improved considerably.
Split by sectional rivalries, the Alawis have no single, powerful ruling family, but since independence many individual Alawis have attained power and prestige as military officers. Although they are settled cultivators, Alawis gather into kin groups much like those of pastoral nomads. The four Alawi confederations, each divided into tribes, are Kalbiyah, Khaiyatin, Haddadin, and Matawirah.
Alawis claim they are Muslims, but conservative Sunnis do not always recognize them as such. Like Ismaili Shias, Alawis believe in a system of divine incarnation. Unlike Ismailis, Alawis regard Ali as the incarnation of the deity in the divine triad. As such, Ali is the "Meaning;" Muhammad, whom Ali created of his own light, is the "Name;" and Salman the Persian is the "Gate." Alawi catechesis is expressed in the formula: "I turn to the Gate; I bow before the Name; I adore the Meaning." An Alawi prays in a manner patterned after the shahada: "I testify that there is no God but Ali."
According to Alawi belief, all persons at first were stars in the world of light but fell from the firmament through disobedience. Faithful Alawis believe they must be transformed seven times before returning to take a place among the stars, where Ali is the prince. If blameworthy, they are sometimes reborn as Christians, among whom they remain until atonement is complete. Infidels are reborn as animals.
Because many of the tenets of the faith are secret, Alawis have refused to discuss their faith with outsiders. Only an elect few learn the religion after a lengthy process of initiation; youths are initiated into the secrets of the faith in stages. Their prayer book, the source of religious instruction, is the Kitab al Majmu, believed to be derived from Ismaili writings. Alawis study the Quran and recognize the five pillars of Islam, which they interpret in a wholly allegorical sense to fit community tenets.
Alawis do not set aside a particular building for worship. In the past, Sunni government officials forced them to build mosques, but these were invariably abandoned. Only the men take part in worship
yes, and the history of Islam? One of slavery and ignorance... that has not lessened buy increases as time goes on"
two wrongs don't make a right. Kindergarten education.
Two things are needed here in order to take this seriously, first a source, second some kind of context for the word conflict.
I have found that there are 2 ways to define Zionism, one being the belief in the existence of a homeland for Jewish people, and sustaining the existence of that homeland. The second is the cession of all the "Biblical" Holyland to a Jewish state [Israel].
The reason why I bring this up is because I think there is of course a major distinction between the two, so when two people are arguing for/against zionism they could actually be agreeing. For example, one could be against the occupation and yet at the same time support the existence of Israel. This is pretty much how I stand on the issue kinding making me a zionist in some ways and an anti-zionist in others. I think through our dialogues we should try to make this clear.
What I do support is a multicultural government in that region with guarantees of equal rights for all. Therefore I also oppose an exclusively Palestinian state or any state where one government is controlled by a certain ethnicity, religion, or whatever.
I agree and support the notion that Jews should be allowed to go to their homeland and live there and be in peace there and do as they please there .. as long as the Palestinians can, too. Two things have been tried to bring peace in the region - the creation of a Palestinian government, which flew a few feet and dropped due to violence on both sides, and the occupation. Neither have brought peace or security to the inhabitants and in my mind neither the PA nor the Zionists see peace as a goal - their vision is limited to victory over the other side. There is one option left to try, which is a secular state free of discrimination. It works for the rest of the developed world - maybe not perfectly, and maybe it isn't very radical, but it works.
A two state solution, is the one most professed right now by non radicals. The people on both sides who seem to want peace see the best way to it is through a two state solution. Where everything gets all crazy in the two state system rests on 3 key issues: First, there is Jerusalem, how would you divide it who would you give it to in exchange for what. Second, there are the settlements, which if any can stay. Third, is the Palestinian refugees which I beleive moutn up to around 1.4 million at the moment, who beleive they have a "right of return" to the land they previously lived on in Israel proper [which of course has now had residents on it for almost a half of a century]. Compromises must be made on all these issues in order for there to be peace, but I still think that it is more plausible to do this than a one state solution.
On this point it is worthy to remember the Irish conflict as a case in point. Irish emigrants to America disengaged from sectarian conflict for the most part, although the Fenian movement did survive for a short and relatively unimportant time. The reason for this is that equal opportunity in America made their old conflicts seem silly and pointless.
Given equality, in time - and not all that long - the Palestinian people would not only stop producing terrorists and militants, they would likely hand over existing ones to the authorities.
Israel has an excellent economy and if the benefits of this were shared with Palestinians, well, it is a well known fact that people whose bellies are full are fairly unconcerned with far-fetched causes.
"Thousands of religious Muslims are moving to New York's Haredi [Orthodox Jewish] neighborhoods. The reason - both communities are religious, family-oriented, modest and shun pork"
http://www.indybay.org/news/2002/08/140787.php
Unless they will decide to eliminate the Jewish presence in Israel like the Arabs tried to do before WW2. That is an absurd experiment.
My point again is that under prosperous living conditions and security for all that a more open Israeli/Palestinian state could provide, the radicals would not exist. As I have already posted, Jews and Palestinians are indeed capable of living together as they CHOOSE to do so in New York's Hasidic communities. The radicals may justify their causes with this that and the other, but what really provides them existence is poverty and a lack of security. Eliminate these and you eliminate the radicals.
Two states is a formula for war because there will always be boundary disputes between the states, and they will be more capable of planning, organizing, executing and justifying violence war and terrorism. In a single state a neutral enforcement agency would disrupt and destroy such efforts. It would have authority in all the territory to investigate and enforce laws to prevent organized violence. In two states, a pro-war government would be able to plan and prepare violence without scrutiny.
SOL
snappy one liner
This is a false analogy. Neither feel like they have an exsclusive claim to NYC. I love that city, I was born there and lived there for eighteen years, but it is not the Holy Land.
"The radicals may justify their causes with this that and the other, but what really provides them existence is poverty and a lack of security. "
I think that is far too simplistic of a view to regard the terrorists. It's hardly that simple. hamas does not want Jews on the land at all. The same goes for the staunch right wing zionists as they do not want palestinians on their land. Both sides feel the other's existence in the area cannot be justified.
"Two states is a formula for war because there will always be boundary disputes between the states, and they will be more capable of planning, organizing, executing and justifying violence war and terrorism. "
Border disputes are bound to happen they always have happened whenever a country maps out its borders generally though time will take care of border disputes as it has in the past.
"In a single state a neutral enforcement agency"
The polarity of the people in power at the current moment makes this impossible. I do not believe a neutral person exists on this subject, everyone leans one way or another.
"In two states, a pro-war government would be able to plan and prepare violence without scrutiny."
I know I am one of the only people on this site who beleives in the UN, but that was what the UN was made for and we all have to do our best to help it work. Regardless, that would just be war between states whereas in a one state solution, well let's just say I would be wary of the treatment of the group who is not in power.
dishonesty, spam, same difference.
youre a sick little man nessie. and i am here as long a it takes to see that at least in this tiny part of te US, you dont get your way. why? because its fun.
yes there will always be crackpots. But in order to obtain resources, promote their views on a wide scale, and operate with assistance from the less-nutty, they DO require conditions of poverty and repression. I'm not saying eliminate these and you eliminate all the crackpots in one fell swoop, but you certainly have started the beggining of their end. The key is that you cannot remove all Hamas members by any means short of removing the conditions which generate their support amongst people who, if their bellies were full, could care less. If you try anything else, you may remove a portion of their current membership - but almost undoubtedly you will also give them the tools to generate a new crop.
I'm falling here into the standard definition of 'terrorist' as a person who cannot afford an F-16, but it serves a point for a moment so bear with me.
On the other hand, if you give an oppressed people their own state, you must contend with a variety of factors. Likely resentment will not fade instantly. Likely the new government is inexperienced. You are also depending on a good economy or you will have the same conditions of repression and poverty, those fertile breeding grounds. Those grounds need no preceding generation of terrorists in which to generate their own. They can make an entirely new crop from scratch. Not only that but you are trusting that the new government has no hidden elements from former terrorist groups, and in addition you are hoping that it is not used and influenced as a proxy army by outside forces. Finally - if all your hopes have come true - there is still the inherent profit motive in war which occasionally stirs a non-impoverished governing class to manipulate their people into conflict for their benefit. And this is why I cannot see a feasible two-state solution. Its just a question of one too many "ifs"
This is a pure Marxist view of the situation, and I do not think it is possible to look at the sitiuation like that. hamas did not solely come from economic strife, it came from cultural climates that are independent of economics as well. Probably the most notable characteristic of Hamas is that they are Islamic Fundamenatalists. That source comes from religion, and people from all sorts of socioeconomic classes support them for it, from rich muslim oil barons in Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian who just had his house demolished. Cultural aspects, especially religion, in the current conflict play more of a role than economic one. I would generally say a country fights wars for one of three reasons: money, religion, or self defense. I believe this conflict is more of a holy war, and the names Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa, and Jerusalem should tell you that. Religion is very hard for us to contemplate and it is almost impossible for the average Marxist to really understand its significance in other people's lives in other cultures.
What I guess I am trying to say, is that Hamas would not by any means disappear in a one state. To take the economic problems away, even if you could would not creat harmony because fo the vast cultural differences between them.
As for your "ifs" I see them as being very valid, but all of them would remain true if you took them to a new one state solution because obviously in one state solution you are not asking it to be directly modeled after the Israeli one are you? So then the one state solution would also have to deal with being a brand new state and it would have all the problems that the Palestinian state would have in a two state solution. Only under your paradigm it woul be a bigger state, therefore having bigger problems.
My best answer to those ifs is that obviously the world would need to come up with a massive reconstruction plan for the area, something akin to the Marshall plan that was used in japan after WW2. We would all have to open up our pockets and dish out money to stablize a Palestinian state, but I think we all know this anyway. Close guidence would have to be given to the new government via the UN (that peace keeping organization everyone on here right and left seems to hate). Basically walk hand and hand with them for a while and see what hapens, right now palestinians are begging for international intervention. I say we give it to them.
YES JUDISM IS EVIL CULT SHIT
YES JUDISM IS EVIL AND STINKS LIKEHORSE
TALAMUD=TALABAND
FACE IT judism is a stinking wad of CULT CRAP !!
THAT is why judism is disliked
Judaism teaches its cult followers to lie cheat and steal from the non-"jews" around them
the "anti-semitism" you lie about is justified hatred of the "EVIL JEWISH CULT" if you need a definition of them READ THE TALMUD it is the "blue print of the HOW TO'S of being a jewish evil cult member
the animal and human sacrifices that judism does practice does not help much either!!
!!!DROP THE EVIL CULT OF JUDISM !!! and you guys wont be disliked
Of course, there will always be people who are swayed regardless of circumstance - like I said earlier you always have a few crackpots and yes, some of them are going to be rich oil barons. But for something like Hamas to be truly succesful it needs a populist front. Otherwise what you really have is a fringe radical group, capable of some terrorism but worthy of little concern. I will give here as an example the Order, a militant affiliate of Aryan Nations, which had the support of a few crackpots - some of them even wealthy - but could hardly be construed as a 'threat to the nation'. These terrorists too had a twisted religious message.
Religion is merely used as the justification; the motive lies deeper. I think it's fairly safe to say, that if you took away religion from the conflict somehow, the message would simply switch to an ethnic justification.
YES JUDISM IS EVIL CULT SHIT
YES JUDISM IS EVIL AND STINKS LIKEHORSE SHIT
TALAMUD=TALABAND
FACE IT judism is a stinking wad of CULT CRAP !!
THAT is why judism is disliked
Judaism teaches its cult followers to lie cheat and steal AND muder the non-"jews" around them
the "anti-semitism" you lie about is justified hatred of the "EVIL JEWISH CULT" if you need a definition of them READ THE TALMUD it is the "blue print of the HOW TO'S of being a jewish evil cult member
The animal and human sacrifices that Judaism does practice does not help much either!!
!!!DROP THE EVIL CULT OF JUDISM !!! and you guys wont be disliked
I can also point out that state communism arose in an impoverished war-torn Russia, not in a prosperous England where Marx had theorized it would "evolve"; or I can point out that Hitler's theories went over well in a Depression-era Germany; or that the French Revolution's most famous quote was "let them eat cake." You are free to say that the problem does have at its core, in the core membership I spoke of, a religious origin (or political or whatever as the case may be) BUT - and here is my central point - in order for such a movement to fluorish *amongst a general population* and survive consistently for any length of time, certain conditions must exist which relative poverty provides, namely a sense of frustration and degradation. The Islamic extremists understand this; one of their main media for their ideas is their religious 'schools' which draw students from refugee camps and provide them board and lodging, while indoctrinating them in the extremists interpretation of the religion.
It is pretty useless to try to combat a religion itself. I don't think I need to substantiate that statement. Almost any religion can be interpreted a variety of ways in order to serve or justify a variety of purposes; thus Christianity can be used to incite a Crusade, or to feed the homeless. Instead of trying to fight or point the finger at the religion, you have to look at why it is that certain people interpret it the way they do, and, more importantly, why their message is being accepted on a large scale.
the OCCUPING LIEING jew-BAG THIEVES need to get the hell out of PALESTINE !!
THE AND THE SLIMNY STINKING ASS-TURD jew-tala-muds can move THEIR stinking asses to antartica or HELL where they belong THOSE FUKING BASTARD ASS THIEVIING LOUSY JEWS BELONG
There's a lot of debate on the net. Unfortunately, much of it is of very low quality. The aim of this document is to explain the basics of logical reasoning, and hopefully improve the overall quality of debate.
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines logic as "the science of reasoning, proof, thinking, or inference". Logic will let you analyze an argument or a piece of reasoning, and work out whether it is likely to be correct or not. You don't need to know logic to argue, of course; but if you know even a little, you'll find it easier to spot invalid arguments.
There are many kinds of logic, such as fuzzy logic and constructive logic; they have different rules, and different strengths and weaknesses. This document discusses simple Boolean logic, because it's commonplace and relatively easy to understand. When people talk about something being 'logical', they usually mean the type of logic described here.
What logic isn't
It's worth mentioning a couple of things which logic is not.
Firstly, logical reasoning is not an absolute law which governs the universe. Many times in the past, people have concluded that because something is logically impossible (given the science of the day), it must be impossible, period. It was also believed at one time that Euclidean geometry was a universal law; it is, after all, logically consistent. Again, we now know that the rules of Euclidean geometry are not universal.
Secondly, logic is not a set of rules which govern human behavior. Humans may have logically conflicting goals. For example:
John wishes to speak to whoever is in charge.
The person in charge is Steve.
Therefore John wishes to speak to Steve.
Unfortunately, John may have a conflicting goal of avoiding Steve, meaning that the reasoned answer may be inapplicable to real life.
This document only explains how to use logic; you must decide whether logic is the right tool for the job. There are other ways to communicate, discuss and debate.
Arguments
An argument is, to quote the Monty Python sketch, "a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition".
Many types of argument exist; we will discuss the deductive argument. Deductive arguments are generally viewed as the most precise and the most persuasive; they provide conclusive proof of their conclusion, and are either valid or invalid.
Deductive arguments have three stages: premises, inference, and conclusion. However, before we can consider those stages in detail, we must discuss the building blocks of a deductive argument: propositions.
Propositions
A proposition is a statement which is either true or false. The proposition is the meaning of the statement, not the precise arrangement of words used to convey that meaning.
For example, "There exists an even prime number greater than two" is a proposition. (A false one, in this case.) "An even prime number greater than two exists" is the same proposition, re-worded.
Unfortunately, it's very easy to unintentionally change the meaning of a statement by rephrasing it. It's generally safer to consider the wording of a proposition as significant.
It's possible to use formal linguistics to analyze and re-phrase a statement without changing its meaning; but how to do so is outside the scope of this document.
Premises
A deductive argument always requires a number of core assumptions. These are called premises, and are the assumptions the argument is built on; or to look at it another way, the reasons for accepting the argument. Premises are only premises in the context of a particular argument; they might be conclusions in other arguments, for example.
You should always state the premises of the argument explicitly; this is the principle of audiatur et altera pars. Failing to state your assumptions is often viewed as suspicious, and will likely reduce the acceptance of your argument.
The premises of an argument are often introduced with words such as "Assume...", "Since...", "Obviously..." and "Because...". It's a good idea to get your opponent to agree with the premises of your argument before proceeding any further.
The word "obviously" is also often viewed with suspicion. It occasionally gets used to persuade people to accept false statements, rather than admit that they don't understand why something is 'obvious'. So don't be afraid to question statements which people tell you are 'obvious' -- when you've heard the explanation you can always say something like "You're right, now that I think about it that way, it is obvious."
Inference
Once the premises have been agreed, the argument proceeds via a step-by-step process called inference.
In inference, you start with one or more propositions which have been accepted; you then use those propositions to arrive at a new proposition. If the inference is valid, that proposition should also be accepted. You can use the new proposition for inference later on.
So initially, you can only infer things from the premises of the argument. But as the argument proceeds, the number of statements available for inference increases.
There are various kinds of valid inference - and also some invalid kinds, which we'll look at later in this document. Inference steps are often identified by phrases like "therefore..." or "...implies that..."
Conclusion
Hopefully you will arrive at a proposition which is the conclusion of the argument - the result you are trying to prove. The conclusion is the result of the final step of inference. It's only a conclusion in the context of a particular argument; it could be a premise or assumption in another argument.
The conclusion is said to be affirmed on the basis of the premises, and the inference from them. This is a subtle point which deserves further explanation.
Implication in detail
Clearly you can build a valid argument from true premises, and arrive at a true conclusion. You can also build a valid argument from false premises, and arrive at a false conclusion.
The tricky part is that you can start with false premises, proceed via valid inference, and reach a true conclusion. For example:
Premise: All fish live in the ocean
Premise: Sea otters are fish
Conclusion: Therefore sea otters live in the ocean
There's one thing you can't do, though: start from true premises, proceed via valid deductive inference, and reach a false conclusion.
Spotting arguments
Spotting an argument is harder than spotting premises or a conclusion. Lots of people shower their writing with assertions, without ever producing anything you might reasonably call an argument.
Sometimes arguments don't follow the pattern described above. For example, people may state their conclusions first, and then justify them afterwards. This is valid, but it can be a little confusing.
To make the situation worse, some statements look like arguments but aren't. For example:
"If the Bible is accurate, Jesus must either have been insane, an evil liar, or the Son of God."
That's not an argument; it's a conditional statement. It doesn't state the premises necessary to support its conclusion, and even if you add those assertions it suffers from a number of other flaws which are described in more detail in the Atheist Arguments document.
An argument is also not the same as an explanation. Suppose that you are trying to argue that Albert Einstein believed in God, and say:
"Einstein made his famous statement 'God does not play dice' because of his belief in God."
That may look like a relevant argument, but it's not; it's an explanation of Einstein's statement. To see this, remember that a statement of the form "X because Y" can be re-phrased as an equivalent statement, of the form "Y therefore X". Doing so gives us:
"Einstein believed in God, therefore he made his famous statement 'God does not play dice'.
Now it's clear that the statement, which looked like an argument, is actually assuming the result which it is supposed to be proving, in order to explain the Einstein quote.
Furthermore, Einstein did not believe in a personal God concerned with human affairs.
Fallacies
There are a number of common pitfalls to avoid when constructing a deductive argument; they're known as fallacies. In everyday English, we refer to many kinds of mistaken beliefs as fallacies; but in logic, the term has a more specific meaning: a fallacy is a technical flaw which makes an argument unsound or invalid.
(Note that you can criticize more than just the soundness of an argument. Arguments are almost always presented with some specific purpose in mind -- and the intent of the argument may also be worthy of criticism.)
Arguments which contain fallacies are described as fallacious. They often appear valid and convincing; sometimes only close inspection reveals the logical flaw.
Below is a list of some common fallacies, and also some rhetorical devices often used in debate. The list isn't intended to be exhaustive; the hope is that if you learn to recognize some of the more common fallacies, you'll be able to avoid being fooled by them.
The Nizkor Project at http://www.nizkor.org/ has another excellent list of logical fallacies; Stephen Downes maintains a list too. The reference works mentioned above also all contain fallacy lists.
Sadly, many of the examples below have been taken directly from Usenet, though some have been rephrased for the sake of clarities
Straw man
The straw man fallacy is when you misrepresent someone else's position so that it can be attacked more easily, knock down that misrepresented position, then conclude that the original position has been demolished. It's a fallacy because it fails to deal with the actual arguments that have been made.
Suggestions for Trolls
There is more to moral behavior than mindlessly following rules.
Be especially sceptical of positive claims.
If you want your life to have some sort of meaning, it's up to you to find it.
Search for what is true, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
Make the most of your life, as it's probably the only one you'll have.
It's no good relying on some external power to change you; you must change yourself.
Just because something's popular doesn't mean it's good.
If you must assume something, assume something easy to test.
Don't believe things just because you want them to be true.
--------------------------------------
In the beginning...
The Jewish settlement movement from 1880-1939 was carried out by legal means. They bought land, applied for immigration visas, and some sought (and gained) citizenship of the British Mandate Palestine.
What most don't realize is that the first acts of violence occured in 1920, 1921, and 1929 when Arabs attacked Jews. Even more astonishing is that the first people forcibly evicted from their homes were also the Jews during the terrible Arab revolt starting in 1936..*
After sixteen years of trouble and the eviction of hundreds if not thousands of their people, I think the mainstream Jewish community gave up on cooperation with the "native" Palestinians. Point is there are to many well-meaning folk that are desperately ignorant of the events in the Middle East prior to 1948.
*Documented proof of these sad time are stored on http://www.un.org in the form of annual reports, addendums, etc from the British Administration to the League of Nations. Also of interest is T.E. Lawrence's role in the creation of Trans-Jordan and his assessment that Palestinian self-rule was inappropriate and that the territory should belong to Syria.
--------------------------------------
Wendy, you don't know as much as you think
You're spouting the same tired "Zionist" rhetoric we've all heard before. But if you care to do some research into the origins of Zionism, you will find a truth neither sides wishes you to hear.
Zionism's original intention was the creation of a Jewish homeland (spiritual) in the land of their ancestors and not a Jews-only state. This led to the legal immigration of Jews to Palestine, the legal purchase of lands and the legally sanctioned of the self-governance of all communities (which at the time was referred to as Anarchism). The plain truth is that Jews who wished to become legal citizens of British Mandate Palestine had to go through a deliberately difficult process, but even so thousands of them did just that.
You also seem to be unfamiliar with the nuances of the movement. Like the many sects of Islam, Zionism has two major divisions, secular Zionism and religious Zionism, and each in turn has generated many sects of differing beliefs. And like Islam, some of these sects were/are self-important racist ideologies and others are tolerant and cooperative (see the above mention of B'tselem).
Again, if you read the ACTUAL documents (http://www.un.org) to which everyone quotes, misquotes and most often ignores, you will find that everything I have said is the factual truth http://www.un.org. In fact, consider it my challenge to you.
Don't be afraid to learn the complex , historical depths of this situation -- it doesn't change the need for Israel to end the occupation and pull back to the 1967 borders.
The origins of Zionism go back to 1880 (predating Herzl) and in fact are quite the opposite of "dark" and "grim." Do the research if you doubt me.