The Anglo-Jewish Wars
David Gutmann | 10.11.2006 16:18 | Analysis | Anti-racism | Social Struggles
Addressing the rising tide of British anti-Semitism, the British columnist Nick Cohen recently wrote, "Anti-Semitism isn't a local side effect of a dirty war over a patch of land smaller than Wales. It's everywhere, from Malaysia to Morocco, and it has arrived here. If you challenge liberal orthodoxy, your argument cannot be debated on its merits. You have to be in the pay of global media moguls. You have to be a Jew."
Robert Wistrich, a scholar of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, also examines the history of modern anti-Semitism in Britain, pointing out that "Great Britain is today second only to France in serious anti-Semitic incidents reported among European countries." Wistrich documents the persistence and wide reach of anti-Jewish mainstream prejudice, particularly among the media and the upper echelons of British society - "the same group that supported Hitler in the 1930s."
Thus, the Muslim promotion of anti-Semitism in England has been very successful, perhaps because it has been able to graft onto longstanding, well-established British anti-Semitism. Most disturbing, "anti-Semitic sentiment is a part of mainstream discourse, continually resurfacing among the academic, political, and media elites," often taking the form of unsubstantiated, unreasoning criticism of Israel, while Arab terror is condoned or excused.
We should not be surprised. The Brits have never much liked Jews - their unwritten law being, "no Jew can be a gentleman" - and their greatest writers, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Kipling, even the sainted George Orwell, have all had their innings at Jew-bashing.
And now, the Israeli Jews are taking on, in the eyes of the Brits, and especially the British left, all the grossness that Shakespeare once imputed to Shylock: that they are bloody-minded, implacable killers of their helpless, innocent victims. The only difference between Shakespeare's portrait and that drawn by both the British extreme right and the left is that now Shylock goes armed: now he has his own country and his own army.
As long as the Jews were weak and dispossessed, the Brits limited themselves to well-bred anti-Semitism: snide references to "Sammies," and the like. But with the advent of Zionist pioneering, when Shylock started amassing land and collecting an arsenal, British cultural anti-Semitism escalated: it became politicized, and even militarized. The cycle of British wars against the Jews was initiated.
The British war effort was at the outset ambivalent, indecisive. From '36 to '39, when the Palestinian Arabs, upset by the influx of Jewish refugees from Hitler, started a three-year Intifada, the British Mandate authorities in Palestine alternated between grudging support of the embattled Jews and outright sabotage of their efforts at self-defense. On one hand, they made Jewish arms illegal, and forced the Hagana people to hide their store of antiquated rifles under kibbutz manure piles. On the other hand, they assigned one of their most brilliant field officers, Orde Wingate, to be a kind of T.E. Lawrence of the Jews, and to train them, in his Special Night Squads, in the arts of irregular warfare.
However, as the Brits mobilized for the coming war against Hitler, their policy makers resolved their ambivalence in favor of appeasing the Arabs, and outright hostility to the Jews. Together with Hitler, they acted so as to create the maximum tally of dead European Jews.
Thus, just before Hitler invaded Poland and intensified his own war against the Jews, the Brits - by imposing their strict White paper policy against unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine - became Hitler's de facto collaborators in that war. The Brits, who were about to declare war on Germany for the sake of the Poles, at the same time allied themselves implicitly with Hitler's war aims in regard to the Jews. Even as Hitler turned occupied Poland into a killing ground for trapped Jews, the British White Paper of 1939 restricting Jewish immigration locked them out of Palestine - the one refuge especially created (by the Balfour Declaration of 1921) to take them in. The Brits have never owned up to this, but they bear a responsibility for the Holocaust that is second only to that of Nazi Germany.
The Brits did have a superficially plausible excuse: Facing a desperate war, they needed all the allies they could get, particularly the oil-rich Arabs. In this respect, the curtailment of Jewish immigration to Palestine was a bribe to keep the usually anti-British Arabs, who could have shut down the vital Suez Canal, at least neutral during WWII.
However, despite the large contribution of Zionists to the Allied war effort, the Englishmen's antagonism to Jews persisted even after the war, when they no longer had a pressing need for Arab friends. Thus, when WWII ended, the Brit's war against the Jews - which until then had been masked by Hitler's genocidal fury - declared itself openly, in its own right. The post-war British Labor Government, which had campaigned against the White Paper of '39, now - at a time when their military resources were exhausted by War II - applied that ruling even more stringently against the Jewish Holocaust survivors. Hitler was beaten, but in the British-Jewish relationship, nothing much had changed: The survivors were still trying - now with help of the Zionist underground - to escape to Jewish Palestine from the killing grounds of Europe, and the Brits were still grimly dedicated to keeping them out.
The blockade that the Brits mounted against the Jewish "Illegal Immigration" to Palestine was backed up by 100,000 troops, a thick network of coastal radar stations, a squadron of Royal Navy destroyers, a light cruiser, a wing of long-range patrol aircraft, and an extensive network of prison camps for the captured "illegals" in Palestine, in Kenya and on the island of Cyprus.
I was a sailor on two ships of the Illegal immigration (Hebrew name, "Aliya-Bet"), was captured twice by the Royal navy, and served time in two of their so-called "internment camps." They were not pleasant places - not at all up to Geneva Convention or Guantanamo standards.
This truth was revealed when the Brits drove our captured refugees by convoy from the Cypriot harbor at Famagusta to our prison at Xylotymbou. En route, we did pass through a well-appointed camp - lighted barracks, indoor toilets, the works. Thinking this was our destination, the Jews - who were connoisseurs of camps - perked up: "dus ist a gute lager" ("This is a good camp"), they murmured approvingly. But their happy mood ended when our road suddenly filled up with Germans - undeterred by their British guards - who shouted "Heil Hitler!" and flipped us the Nazi salute.
It seemed that the "Geneva" camp was for Afrika Korps POW's - Hitler's heroes. The muddy, squalid hole that we Jews ended up in was for his victims, including traumatized Jewish pre-adolescents. The orphaned children of the Holocaust should have been cherished by the victorious allies, not penned up, sometimes for years, in His Majesty's fetid keeps. More to the point, they should not have been barred from the Palestinian Jews who were fighting to take them in and heal them.
Though bad enough, Cyprus was only the beginning. Unable to bear the heavy costs in material and moral reputation of their Jewish wars, in 1947 the Brits turned the Palestine problem over to the UN. Their secret hope was that the world body would attempt to partition Palestine between the Jews and Arabs and that the Arabs would reject this settlement and in the ensuing war would easily destroy the nascent Jewish state. As the Arab's senior partner in this scheme, the Brits would hold on to a de facto stake in Palestine, and - as Egypt became troublesome - use the Holy Land for their primary Middle Eastern base. The Brits had once out-sourced their war against the Jews to Hitler; now they subcontracted it to the Palestinian Arabs.
The Brits protected their investment in an Arab victory with political and military aid. During the early, irregular phase of Israel's Independence War, while the Brits were still occupying, I witnessed their soldiers looking the other way during Arab actions, while continuing to confiscate Hagana weapons. The crack Arab force, the Jordanian legion, was officered by Brits, and equipped with state of the art armored equipment and field artillery, which they used to devastating effect against the young Jews - many of them Holocaust survivors just off the boat from the Cyprus camps - who attacked their fortress of latrun. In this and other battles involving survivors, the Brits, if only on a minor scale, continued the work of the Holocaust.
Finally, even after the the Egyptians were routed, and their proxy war was clearly lost, the Brits - worried about their threatened holdings in the Sinai - entered the war openly, and threw the RAF against the advancing Israelis, losing five aircraft.
But that was rare. The Brits don't mind seeing Jews killed, but they are fastidious about it, generally leaving the dirty business to others. Thus, as I charge, they indirectly abetted the Nazi Holocaust, and then stood by while the Palestinians attempted with less success to continue it.
It appears that the game is afoot once again, with the task no longer out-sourced to Palestinians alone, but to the much larger body of radical Islamists now piling into Britain, all eager for the treat. The Brits still limit themselves to talk, but from all accounts, the chatter in the trendiest salons, at party congresses both of the Left and the Right, at A-List dinner parties and scholarly gatherings, has become obsessively, fiercely anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and at times frankly anti-Semitic, to the point where the received and conventional wisdom has it that Israel has no right to exist, and should be eliminated. Again, this genocidal act will presumably be left to radical Islam, or to Iran's nukes, while the British gentlefolk avert their eyes - or in a few cases, feast them.
The Brits tolerated Hitler's anti-Semitism because, out of fear, they wanted to appease him, and because many of them covertly shared his obsession with the Jews. They fostered Arab anti-Semitism as a way of keeping their access to Middle-Eastern oil, and later as a way of holding on to Palestine. But now, when there are fewer, obvious strategic reasons for their Jew-hatred, it appears to be more vigorous than ever. Explaining this, the Brits will cite the Jews' oppression of the Palestinians, and more recently, their punishment of Lebanon. In effect, they might hint, the Palestinians have become the body of Christ, and the Jews are up to their dirty tricks, crucifying him yet again in Palestine.
In effect, the Brits are telling us how compassionate they are, in contrast to those bloody Christ-killers. Bully for them; but as they stress Brit idealism, they avoid any mention of Brit fear - the fear of militant Islam that appears to be gripping all of Europe now, and that - I would suggest - is partially alleviated through anti-Semitism. The Brit's rationales for that anti-Semitism are designed to do them credit, as possessors of superior conscience, but they mask some smelly motives.
We have never truly appreciated the terror inspired by terror tactics - especially suicide bombing, and in particular the destruction of the Twin Towers. As the great towers collapsed into billowing smoke and fire, they called to mind the fearsome imagery of nuclear war, combined with the retributive judgment of Almighty God. Linked to such overwhelming images, the terrorists and their faith have become more terrifying than we are willing to admit.
But denied motives can still drive our acts and our ideas. Along with the rest of what is now being called "Eurabia," the Brits are soothing the Muslims among them by acts of appeasement. In 1938, they bought a year of peace by offering Czechoslovakia to Hitler; now, for a temporary peace, they offer Muslims a piece of the Jews who are like the unlucky passenger tossed from the sled to appease the ravening wolves.
Once again, Albion may have found the cohort that will kill Jews for it, leaving the Brits, temporarily at least, "sans peur et sans reproche" - without fear and without blame.
Robert Wistrich, a scholar of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, also examines the history of modern anti-Semitism in Britain, pointing out that "Great Britain is today second only to France in serious anti-Semitic incidents reported among European countries." Wistrich documents the persistence and wide reach of anti-Jewish mainstream prejudice, particularly among the media and the upper echelons of British society - "the same group that supported Hitler in the 1930s."
Thus, the Muslim promotion of anti-Semitism in England has been very successful, perhaps because it has been able to graft onto longstanding, well-established British anti-Semitism. Most disturbing, "anti-Semitic sentiment is a part of mainstream discourse, continually resurfacing among the academic, political, and media elites," often taking the form of unsubstantiated, unreasoning criticism of Israel, while Arab terror is condoned or excused.
We should not be surprised. The Brits have never much liked Jews - their unwritten law being, "no Jew can be a gentleman" - and their greatest writers, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Kipling, even the sainted George Orwell, have all had their innings at Jew-bashing.
And now, the Israeli Jews are taking on, in the eyes of the Brits, and especially the British left, all the grossness that Shakespeare once imputed to Shylock: that they are bloody-minded, implacable killers of their helpless, innocent victims. The only difference between Shakespeare's portrait and that drawn by both the British extreme right and the left is that now Shylock goes armed: now he has his own country and his own army.
As long as the Jews were weak and dispossessed, the Brits limited themselves to well-bred anti-Semitism: snide references to "Sammies," and the like. But with the advent of Zionist pioneering, when Shylock started amassing land and collecting an arsenal, British cultural anti-Semitism escalated: it became politicized, and even militarized. The cycle of British wars against the Jews was initiated.
The British war effort was at the outset ambivalent, indecisive. From '36 to '39, when the Palestinian Arabs, upset by the influx of Jewish refugees from Hitler, started a three-year Intifada, the British Mandate authorities in Palestine alternated between grudging support of the embattled Jews and outright sabotage of their efforts at self-defense. On one hand, they made Jewish arms illegal, and forced the Hagana people to hide their store of antiquated rifles under kibbutz manure piles. On the other hand, they assigned one of their most brilliant field officers, Orde Wingate, to be a kind of T.E. Lawrence of the Jews, and to train them, in his Special Night Squads, in the arts of irregular warfare.
However, as the Brits mobilized for the coming war against Hitler, their policy makers resolved their ambivalence in favor of appeasing the Arabs, and outright hostility to the Jews. Together with Hitler, they acted so as to create the maximum tally of dead European Jews.
Thus, just before Hitler invaded Poland and intensified his own war against the Jews, the Brits - by imposing their strict White paper policy against unrestricted Jewish immigration to Palestine - became Hitler's de facto collaborators in that war. The Brits, who were about to declare war on Germany for the sake of the Poles, at the same time allied themselves implicitly with Hitler's war aims in regard to the Jews. Even as Hitler turned occupied Poland into a killing ground for trapped Jews, the British White Paper of 1939 restricting Jewish immigration locked them out of Palestine - the one refuge especially created (by the Balfour Declaration of 1921) to take them in. The Brits have never owned up to this, but they bear a responsibility for the Holocaust that is second only to that of Nazi Germany.
The Brits did have a superficially plausible excuse: Facing a desperate war, they needed all the allies they could get, particularly the oil-rich Arabs. In this respect, the curtailment of Jewish immigration to Palestine was a bribe to keep the usually anti-British Arabs, who could have shut down the vital Suez Canal, at least neutral during WWII.
However, despite the large contribution of Zionists to the Allied war effort, the Englishmen's antagonism to Jews persisted even after the war, when they no longer had a pressing need for Arab friends. Thus, when WWII ended, the Brit's war against the Jews - which until then had been masked by Hitler's genocidal fury - declared itself openly, in its own right. The post-war British Labor Government, which had campaigned against the White Paper of '39, now - at a time when their military resources were exhausted by War II - applied that ruling even more stringently against the Jewish Holocaust survivors. Hitler was beaten, but in the British-Jewish relationship, nothing much had changed: The survivors were still trying - now with help of the Zionist underground - to escape to Jewish Palestine from the killing grounds of Europe, and the Brits were still grimly dedicated to keeping them out.
The blockade that the Brits mounted against the Jewish "Illegal Immigration" to Palestine was backed up by 100,000 troops, a thick network of coastal radar stations, a squadron of Royal Navy destroyers, a light cruiser, a wing of long-range patrol aircraft, and an extensive network of prison camps for the captured "illegals" in Palestine, in Kenya and on the island of Cyprus.
I was a sailor on two ships of the Illegal immigration (Hebrew name, "Aliya-Bet"), was captured twice by the Royal navy, and served time in two of their so-called "internment camps." They were not pleasant places - not at all up to Geneva Convention or Guantanamo standards.
This truth was revealed when the Brits drove our captured refugees by convoy from the Cypriot harbor at Famagusta to our prison at Xylotymbou. En route, we did pass through a well-appointed camp - lighted barracks, indoor toilets, the works. Thinking this was our destination, the Jews - who were connoisseurs of camps - perked up: "dus ist a gute lager" ("This is a good camp"), they murmured approvingly. But their happy mood ended when our road suddenly filled up with Germans - undeterred by their British guards - who shouted "Heil Hitler!" and flipped us the Nazi salute.
It seemed that the "Geneva" camp was for Afrika Korps POW's - Hitler's heroes. The muddy, squalid hole that we Jews ended up in was for his victims, including traumatized Jewish pre-adolescents. The orphaned children of the Holocaust should have been cherished by the victorious allies, not penned up, sometimes for years, in His Majesty's fetid keeps. More to the point, they should not have been barred from the Palestinian Jews who were fighting to take them in and heal them.
Though bad enough, Cyprus was only the beginning. Unable to bear the heavy costs in material and moral reputation of their Jewish wars, in 1947 the Brits turned the Palestine problem over to the UN. Their secret hope was that the world body would attempt to partition Palestine between the Jews and Arabs and that the Arabs would reject this settlement and in the ensuing war would easily destroy the nascent Jewish state. As the Arab's senior partner in this scheme, the Brits would hold on to a de facto stake in Palestine, and - as Egypt became troublesome - use the Holy Land for their primary Middle Eastern base. The Brits had once out-sourced their war against the Jews to Hitler; now they subcontracted it to the Palestinian Arabs.
The Brits protected their investment in an Arab victory with political and military aid. During the early, irregular phase of Israel's Independence War, while the Brits were still occupying, I witnessed their soldiers looking the other way during Arab actions, while continuing to confiscate Hagana weapons. The crack Arab force, the Jordanian legion, was officered by Brits, and equipped with state of the art armored equipment and field artillery, which they used to devastating effect against the young Jews - many of them Holocaust survivors just off the boat from the Cyprus camps - who attacked their fortress of latrun. In this and other battles involving survivors, the Brits, if only on a minor scale, continued the work of the Holocaust.
Finally, even after the the Egyptians were routed, and their proxy war was clearly lost, the Brits - worried about their threatened holdings in the Sinai - entered the war openly, and threw the RAF against the advancing Israelis, losing five aircraft.
But that was rare. The Brits don't mind seeing Jews killed, but they are fastidious about it, generally leaving the dirty business to others. Thus, as I charge, they indirectly abetted the Nazi Holocaust, and then stood by while the Palestinians attempted with less success to continue it.
It appears that the game is afoot once again, with the task no longer out-sourced to Palestinians alone, but to the much larger body of radical Islamists now piling into Britain, all eager for the treat. The Brits still limit themselves to talk, but from all accounts, the chatter in the trendiest salons, at party congresses both of the Left and the Right, at A-List dinner parties and scholarly gatherings, has become obsessively, fiercely anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and at times frankly anti-Semitic, to the point where the received and conventional wisdom has it that Israel has no right to exist, and should be eliminated. Again, this genocidal act will presumably be left to radical Islam, or to Iran's nukes, while the British gentlefolk avert their eyes - or in a few cases, feast them.
The Brits tolerated Hitler's anti-Semitism because, out of fear, they wanted to appease him, and because many of them covertly shared his obsession with the Jews. They fostered Arab anti-Semitism as a way of keeping their access to Middle-Eastern oil, and later as a way of holding on to Palestine. But now, when there are fewer, obvious strategic reasons for their Jew-hatred, it appears to be more vigorous than ever. Explaining this, the Brits will cite the Jews' oppression of the Palestinians, and more recently, their punishment of Lebanon. In effect, they might hint, the Palestinians have become the body of Christ, and the Jews are up to their dirty tricks, crucifying him yet again in Palestine.
In effect, the Brits are telling us how compassionate they are, in contrast to those bloody Christ-killers. Bully for them; but as they stress Brit idealism, they avoid any mention of Brit fear - the fear of militant Islam that appears to be gripping all of Europe now, and that - I would suggest - is partially alleviated through anti-Semitism. The Brit's rationales for that anti-Semitism are designed to do them credit, as possessors of superior conscience, but they mask some smelly motives.
We have never truly appreciated the terror inspired by terror tactics - especially suicide bombing, and in particular the destruction of the Twin Towers. As the great towers collapsed into billowing smoke and fire, they called to mind the fearsome imagery of nuclear war, combined with the retributive judgment of Almighty God. Linked to such overwhelming images, the terrorists and their faith have become more terrifying than we are willing to admit.
But denied motives can still drive our acts and our ideas. Along with the rest of what is now being called "Eurabia," the Brits are soothing the Muslims among them by acts of appeasement. In 1938, they bought a year of peace by offering Czechoslovakia to Hitler; now, for a temporary peace, they offer Muslims a piece of the Jews who are like the unlucky passenger tossed from the sled to appease the ravening wolves.
Once again, Albion may have found the cohort that will kill Jews for it, leaving the Brits, temporarily at least, "sans peur et sans reproche" - without fear and without blame.
David Gutmann
Comments
Hide 1 hidden comment or hide all comments
Stop mangling the Language
10.11.2006 18:21
Indeed the most probable action to stop Jews and Arabs fighting each other would be a massive attack on both by anti-semites. Unfortunately few Jews do anything to stop anti semites attacking Arabs, and few Arabs do anything to stop anti semites attacking Jews. But there are some on both sides who do.
Ilyan
Who Is The Victim?
10.11.2006 19:49
Victor Smolinsky
Hiding Propaganda Behind Phony Headlines
11.11.2006 00:21
WSWS replies to charge of anti-Semitism in coverage of US-Israeli war on Lebanon
26 July 2006
To: Van Auken,
You are a despicable anti-Semite as is obvious by the use of your terminology in describing Israel as the Zionist entity. The truth of the matter for morons like you is that the Muslims are tripping over each other to assert their dominance by seeing who can kill and hate more Israelis and Jews. The Shiites under the radical Islamic state of Iran want hegemony in the Middle East and what better way to appear the savior of Islam than by killing Jews. Notice the radical Islamo-fascists never talk only about Israelis, they talk about the murder of all Jews. You are a complete moron who despite your title of Socialist has learned nothing from history. The socialists alligned [sic] themselves with the wrong side during the Nazi days of WWII and now again they align themselves with the moderate Muslims. Where are they when Israeli civilians are being killed for no reason and fronts are attacked when Israel pulled back from both Gaza and Lebanon?
I guess for idiots like you it will take a Katusha rocket in your back yard killing your kids and family before you realize that Israel is the only friend we have in the Middle East that even mildly resembles our values and upholds our fundamental beliefs. Use the proper word, asshole, Islamo-fascists, not terrorists. If Lebanon and its people are too timid to take them out (i.e., Hezbollah), they are responsible for any and all retaliation that takes place. You would obviously have more sympathy for the Germans during the bombing of Dresden in World War II than the six million plus Jews who died while 98 percent of the German population looked on and looked the other way. They too were responsible.
Name: MO
Address: none of your goddamn business, you anti-Semite
* * *
MO,
Before dealing with the substance of your email, it is necessary to consider its tone. The World Socialist Web Site is very familiar with the peculiar characteristics of hate mail from the right. It generally has two defining features: brazen ignorance and vulgar, even obscene language.
Gross insults, coarse language and personal vilification of political opponents are all hallmarks of the extreme right and fascism.
It is one of the tragic effects of Zionism that a section of the Jewish people, who have been historically associated with the struggle for human dignity and social progress against all forms of racism, backwardness and oppression, should now adopt methods and ideologies indistinguishable from those of fascists and anti-Semites in an attempt to intimidate those opposed to Israel’s crimes against the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples.
Your despicable accusation that I am an anti-Semite is based solely on my opposition and that of the Socialist Equality Party to the US-Israeli war against Lebanon, an opposition that is shared, it should be pointed out, by many Jews in the United States and a growing section of the Israeli population itself, not to mention the overwhelming majority of humanity.
The crude attempt to equate such opposition with anti-Semitism is the political stock-in-trade of Zionism in the US and all over the world. This tactic is used to defend and justify any and every act of violence against the people of Palestine and Lebanon and blackguard left-wing opponents of Israeli government policy. It is likewise employed to delegitimize the substantial opposition to these crimes within Israel and among Jewish people internationally as the disoriented opinion of “self-hating Jews.”
This slander lacks both historical foundation and any genuine political logic, outside of the right-wing politics of racial and religious nationalism. Through this prism, any action by Israel against its enemies is irreproachable, while any opposition to these actions is the equivalent of Nazism.
Thus, the fact that we condemn the slaughter of Lebanese civilians, most of them women and children, is presented as evidence that we “would obviously have more sympathy for the Germans during the bombing of Dresden in World War II than the six million plus Jews who died ...”
What is the twisted logic at work here? Were the Lebanese accomplices of the Third Reich? Is the government of Lebanon responsible for a new Holocaust against the Jews? When and where has this taken place?
One of the characteristics of fascist ideology and reactionary thought in general is to heap disparate trends and political tendencies together as a common “enemy.” Rather than seeking to clarify their real objective basis, they are dealt with through the method of amalgam. In this case, totally disparate and opposed forces are lumped together as manifestations of a supposedly universal hatred of Jews.
The fact is that the casualty rate among the Lebanese is ten times that which has been suffered by Israelis, with the former consisting almost entirely of civilians, while the majority of the latter is comprised of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers killed in Israeli incursions across the Lebanese border.
The unequal ratio of Lebanese to Israeli casualties, moreover, repeats the bitter experience of the Lebanese people in the wars of aggression launched by Israel against the country in 1978 and 1982, in which tens of thousands lost their lives.
If one wants to draw historical parallels between the present situation and the Nazi era, the one that clearly suggests itself is between Hitler’s Wehrmacht and the IDF, which is engaged in a massive campaign of “ethnic cleansing”—driving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of impoverished Lebanese Shiites from their homes and villages with bombs and artillery shells.
It is clear that you revel in this military campaign, which by any objective reading of the Geneva Conventions constitutes a war crime. You express the desire “to take them out” in relation to Hezbollah, one of the largest parties in Lebanon, which holds 14 out of the 128 seats in the Lebanese parliament and runs everything from schools and hospitals to garbage collection in the predominantly Shiite areas of Lebanon. This amounts to a call for the extermination of an entire people.
You write that I have “learned nothing from history,” and that, “The socialists aligned themselves with the wrong side during the Nazi days of WWII and now again they align themselves with the moderate Muslims.”
What “sides” are you talking about? In the period following the rise of Nazism in Germany, it was socialists in America, and specifically the Trotskyist movement, who stood alone in waging a political campaign demanding an end to the anti-Semitic exclusion of Jewish refugees fleeing fascism. The Zionists were hostile to this effort, on the grounds that European Jewry should be allowed to go nowhere but Palestine.
In the struggle to defeat fascism, socialists fought for the unity of the working class, including Jews, who, as is well known, have always made up a disproportionate share of both the leadership and rank-and-file of the Marxist movement. On what “side” was the Zionist movement? During this same period it was working with the Nazi regime, and specifically Adolph Eichmann, based on a common belief that the expulsion of German Jews to Palestine could simultaneously facilitate Hitler’s “final solution” for European Jewry and bring about the Jewish state.
As for the ultimate defeat of the Third Reich, it is a historical fact that, despite the crimes of Stalinism and its betrayal of the principles of the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union bore the overwhelming burden of smashing the German military and the Nazi killing machine.
While socialists were the most intransigent opponents of Nazism—as well as its first victims—a substantial section of the American ruling elite, including the forbears of the current US president, who is a great “friend of Israel,” were openly sympathetic to Hitler and saw his policies as both a political inspiration and a source of profit.
What political forces are today on what you would view as the “right side” of history—that is, politically supporting Zionism? In the US, the most prominent and vociferous of these supporters are to be found within the Christian right constituency of the Republican Party, the so-called Christian-Zionist movement. These elements—the Christian Coalition, Moral Majority, etc.—are steeped in anti-Semitism. They see Israel’s wars as the fulfillment of Biblical prophesy and support the gathering of all Jews in Israel as the pre-condition for Armageddon, in which, according to their twisted theology, Jews will either convert or be annihilated.
In Europe, the Israeli government has sought allies among such right-wing and notoriously anti-Semitic elements as the heirs of Mussolini. This is presumably the “right side” which socialists have failed to join.
In Lebanon itself, Israel was allied with the Lebanese fascist movement for years. It solidified the closest relations with the Lebanese Phalange, a movement that drew its inspiration from European fascism of the 1930s. Ariel Sharon, the former defense minister and prime minister, was implicated by an Israeli court in the Phalangists’ massacre of thousands of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982.
Such is the logic of Zionism. Unless you align yourself with the right-wing anti-Semites who support Israel, you are a “despicable anti-Semite.”
Your blanket accusation that all Muslims and Shiites are determined to “kill and hate more Israelis and Jews” smacks of the kind of libel against an entire people that is the hallmark of anti-Semitism.
In point of fact, the opposition of masses of people in the Arab and Muslim world to Israel has its historic roots in the nationalist movement that arose in the region against British and French colonialism. The Zionist project was justifiably seen by the Arab masses as an instrument of imperialism to oppress them and take away their land. Nearly six decades of continuous war and ever harsher levels of oppression against the Palestinian people have only strengthened this conviction.
The frustration of this anti-imperialist sentiment—both by Israeli military force and by the prostration, perfidy and corruption of bourgeois regimes throughout the Arab world—has doubtless paved the way for right-wing Islamic fundamentalists, who promote anti-Semitism as a form of populist agitation aimed at diverting the social struggles of the Arab and Muslim workers and oppressed. The Israeli government, it should be noted, has historically promoted the development of such forces, particularly in the case of Hamas, as a counterweight to secular nationalist movements like the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The present two-front war against these Islamist movements, in which the overwhelming majority of victims are civilians who have done nothing to harm a single Israeli, is a measure of the dead-end of the Zionist project, which has its origins in the violent dispossession of another people and which has been maintained only through a continuous campaign of war and repression against the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, as well as discrimination and social inequality within Israel itself.
The failure of Zionism, notwithstanding its peculiar features, is part of the broader breakdown of all those movements that based themselves on nationalism. In Israel’s case, outright collapse has been staved off largely through massive subsidies provided by Washington, which sees Israel as an instrument of its own imperialist designs on the oil-rich Middle East.
Our perspective, which we advance against both Zionism and the Arab bourgeois regimes, is one of fighting to unite Arab and Jewish working people in a common struggle against imperialism and for the building of a socialist society capable of utilizing the vast resources of the region and the world for the benefit of all. We are firmly convinced that this is the only means of resolving the struggle of the Palestinian people against their historic oppression and avoiding yet another historic calamity for the Jewish people. To brand this perspective as anti-Semitic is an example of political dishonesty and gangsterism.
Sincerely yours,
Bill Van Auken
www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jul2006/lett-j26.shtml
Antisemitism and the Boy Who Cried Wolf
Practically, everyone I know has heard the parable of the boy who cried wolf. Yet, that hasn't stopped some people in particular from routinely making charges of anti-semitism where none exists. Although Iran and Israel are bitter enemies, few know that Iran is home to the largest number of Jews anywhere in the Middle East outside Israel. About 25,000 Jews live in Iran and most are determined to remain no matter what the pressures - as proud of their Iranian culture as of their Jewish roots. It is dawn in the Yusufabad synagogue in Tehran and Iranian Jews bring out the Torah and read the ancient text before making their way to work. It is not a sight you would expect in a revolutionary Islamic state, but there are synagogues dotted all over Iran where Jews discreetly practise their religion. "Because of our long history here we are tolerated," says Jewish community leader Unees Hammami, who organised the prayers. He says the father of Iran's revolution, Imam Khomeini, recognised Jews as a religious minority that should be protected. As a result Jews have one representative in the Iranian parliament. "Imam Khomeini made a distinction between Jews and Zionists and he supported us," says Mr Hammami. 'Anti-Jewish feeling' In the Yusufabad synagogue the announcements are made in Persian - most Iranian Jews don't really speak Hebrew well. Jews have lived in Persia for nearly 3,000 years - the descendants of slaves from Babylon saved by Cyrus the Great. Over the centuries there have been sporadic purges, pogroms and forced conversions to Islam as well as periods of peaceful co-existence. These days anti-Jewish feeling is periodically stirred by the media. Mr Hammami says state-run television confuses Zionism and Judaism so that "ordinary people may think that whatever the Israelis do is supported by all Jews". During the fighting in Lebanon a hardline weekly newspaper, Yalesarat, published two photographs of synagogues on its front page full of people waving Israeli flags celebrating Israeli independence day. The paper falsely said the synagogues were in Iran - even describing one as the Yusufabad synagogue in Tehran and locating another in Shiraz. "This provoked a number of opportunists in Shiraz," explains Iran's Jewish MP, Maurice Mohtamed, "and there was an assault on two synagogues." Mr Mohtamed says the incident was defused by the Iranian security forces, who explained to people that the news was not true. And with the coming to power of an ultra-conservative like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, there has been increased concern internationally about the fate of Iranian Jews. 'Holocaust denial' Mr Ahmedinejad has repeatedly used rabid anti-Israeli rhetoric - slogans like "wipe Israel off the map" - and most controversially he has questioned the number killed in the Holocaust during World War II. Mr Mohtamed has been outspoken in his condemnation of the president's views - in itself a sign that there is some space for Jews in Iran to express themselves. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad President Ahmedinejad has repeatedly used anti-Israeli rhetoric "It's very regrettable to see a horrible tragedy so far reaching as the Holocaust being denied ... it was a very big insult to Jews all around the world," says Mr Mohtamed, who has also strongly condemned the exhibition of cartoons about the Holocaust organised by an Iranian newspaper owned by the Tehran municipality. Despite the offence Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has caused to Jews around the world, his office recently donated money for Tehran's Jewish hospital. It is one of only four Jewish charity hospitals worldwide and is funded with money from the Jewish diaspora - something remarkable in Iran where even local aid organisations have difficulty receiving funds from abroad for fear of being accused of being foreign agents. Most of the patients and staff are Muslim these days, but director Ciamak Morsathegh is Jewish. "Anti-Semitism is not an eastern phenomenon, it's not an Islamic or Iranian phenomenon - anti-Semitism is a European phenomenon," he says, arguing that Jews in Iran even in their worst days never suffered as much as they did in Europe. Israeli family ties But there are legal problems for Jews in Iran - if one member of a Jewish family converts to Islam he can inherit all the family's property. Jews cannot become army officers and the headmasters of the Jewish schools in Tehran are all Muslim, though there is no law that says this should be so. But their greatest vulnerability is their links to Israel - where many Jews have relatives. Seven years ago a group of Jews in the southern city of Shiraz was accused of spying for Israel - eventually they were all released. But today many Iranian Jews travel to and from Iran's enemy Israel. In one of Tehran's six remaining kosher butcher's shops, everyone has relatives in Israel. In between chopping up meat, butcher Hersel Gabriel tells me how he expected problems when he came back from Israel, but in fact the immigration officer didn't say anything to him. "Whatever they say abroad is lies - we are comfortable in Iran - if you're not political and don't bother them then they won't bother you," he explains. His customer, middle-aged housewife Giti agrees, saying she can easily talk to her two sons in Tel Aviv on the telephone and visit them. "It's not a problem coming and going; I went to Israel once through Turkey and once through Cyprus and it was not problem at all," she says. Gone are the early days of the Iranian revolution when Jews - and many Muslims - found it hard to get passports to travel abroad. "In the last five years the government has allowed Iranian Jews to go to Israel freely, meet their families and when they come back they face no problems," says Mr Mohtamed. He says there is also a way for Iranian Jews who emigrated to Israel decades ago to return to Iran and see their families. "They can now go to the Iranian consul general in Istanbul and get Iranian identity documents and freely come to Iran," he says. The exodus of Jews from Iran seems to have slowed down - the first wave was in the 1950s and the second was in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Those Jews who remain in Iran seem to have made a conscious decision to stay put. "We are Iranian and we have been living in Iran for more than 3,000 years," says the Jewish hospital director Ciamak Morsathegh. "I am not going to leave - I will stay in Iran under any conditions," he declares. There is, of course, a moral to this story. If you want to be taken seriously, save accusations of anti-semitism for those who are guilty of it, or risk being abandoned when faced with the Real McCoy.
www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/29
'Antisemitism' As A Good Thing
Written by Andrew Winkler, The Rebel Media Group
Friday, 03 November 2006
'Antisemitism' is no longer what it used to be. Being a dissident activist running an anti-Zionist blog and online encyclopedia, I am used to wholesale accusations of Antisemitism. That comes with the territory. The recent Lobby debate in the US, stirred up by the Walt/Mearsheimer study, made large portions of the public aware of the fact, that an 'Antisemite' in today's use of the term in the media and public debate is no longer someone who hates Jews, but - the otherway round - someone the Jews hate.
Anybody criticising how the IDF is treating Palestinians, the rampant use of torture and extra-judicial killings, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes and orchards, the daily harassment of Palestinian kids on the way to school and Palestinian farmers on their way to their fields by Jewish settlers, the use of army check points and illegal 'security walls' making life in the occupied territories virtually impossible, the conversion of Gaza - one of the world's most populated areas - into a giant concentration camp without food, water, electricity and medications, the killing of hundreds of Palestinians - most of them children and teenagers - each year, the killing of over 1000 civilians and dropping of over a million cluster bombs onto civilian areas in the recent Lebanon assault, is an Antisemite.
Anybody criticising that AIPAC makes sure that any US rep or senator who dares to vote against a bill that provides Apartheid Israel - each and every year - with 6-8 billion dollars of US tax payers' money will be without a job at the next election, is an Antisemite.
Anybody criticising Israel's role in the false-flag September 11 attacks or in America's decision to invade Iraq - and most likely also Iran - is an Antisemite.
Even someone just reporting on those important matters without blindly parroting the Lobby's views, is an Antisemite.
In other words, being Anitsemitic is a good thing. We should all wear this label with pride. In fact, we should all wear badges saying 'I'm Antisemite - All decent people are.'
I am well aware that by writing these lines I give more ammunition to my enemies and possibly shock those readers, who haven't fully overcome 60 years of collective brainwashing, but I am not afraid of any love loss. My aim is to show fellow anti-Zionists a way of how to counter the libel of Antisemitism, one of the most powerful weapons of our enemy, instead of wasting valuable time and energy on defending ourselves against their slurs.
Andrew Winkler is the editor/publisher of Sydney based dissident blogs The Rebel Media Group and ZioPedia. Andrew can be contacted under editor (at) therebel.org This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .
www.ziopedia.org/content/view/2113/1/
On Zionist Slander/Libel of "Antisemitism"
.
11.11.2006 01:54
His Imperial Majesty, Emperor Hybrid Parrot XXVIII
Linkage - an old trick to justify racism
11.11.2006 09:07
Interesting thought and thanks Victor for stating so clearly where you stand on the "Jewish Question"
anti-semitism, irrelevant in a generation
what paranoid nonsense
11.11.2006 18:03
The Palestine/ Israeli question needs to be addressed with reasoned argument and not delusional fantasies.
goodgrief
Hide 1 hidden comment or hide all comments