Now that I’ve got your attention, I want to offer a shocking and provocative thought first suggested by a Twitter follower who read my tweet featuring a Guardian article about the 30th anniversary of Adolf Eichmann’s hanging. The article focuses on the revelation that Eichmann wrote a letter requesting clemency to Israel’s president, Yitzhak Ben Tzvi. The actual substance of the letter is quite banal and uninteresting. But the fact that he wrote it at all is interesting.
@richards1052 Sounds a lot like what Israelis want to do. Not kill all Palestinians but just create a purely Jewish state.
— GCB (@GhadaChadarevia) January 29, 2016
Here is the operative passage from the Guardian article:
“Eichmann did not grow up a rabid antisemite [sic]. And [sic] nor, it seems, did he harbour any particular personal hatred towards Jews, other than the casual default racism common among Austrians in the 1920s. The US title of Cesarani’s book, Becoming Eichmann, suggests that his willingness to participate in mass murder was not always a given. Before 1941, he wanted to rid Europe of its Jews, but more as a way of making space for pure-bred Germans than because he wanted to eliminate Jews per se. For example, in 1937, Eichmann met with the Jewish Zionist and Haganah agent Feivel Polkes in Berlin to discuss the possibility that the Nazis might supply weapons for the Zionist fight against the British Mandate in Palestine, and that Eichmann might arrange for Germany’s Jews to be deported to Israel. Later in 1937, Eichmann travelled on a steamer to Haifa to assess the possibility – a possibility he eventually realised was impractical.”
In other words, before Hitler decreed the Final Solution at the Wansee Conference in 1942, Eichmann was an ethnic cleanser, not a genocidaire. To put this is an Israeli context, his pre-1941 views were absolutely in accord with those of Lehava, Im Tirzu, and settler rabbis, who wish to rid Israel of Palestinians to create an ethnically pure Jewish state. Contrary to the claims of many on the far-left of the pro-Palestinian cause, none of them advance the notion of mass murder or genocide. But they are certainly willing to kill Palestinians en masse and engage in mass violence in order to achieve an Arab-rein State.
But there’s a bitter irony here as well. It did not take much to transform Eichmann’s more “moderate” views into the killing machine he became. All it took was a strong leader, determined to implement a Final Solution. Once the order was given, Eichmann fell into line and organized the efficient extermination apparatus that enabled the Holocaust.
Think what that could mean in the Israeli context…
Another thought to contemplate is that right up till 1939, both Zionist factions, the Revisionists and the Labor Zionist Yishuv leadership, conducted negotiations with the Nazis, under the rubric that the enemy of my enemy could be my friend. Chaim Arlosoroff, leader of the Labor Zionists, was assassinated in 1933 only days after he returned from a negotiating session with the Nazis in Germany that eventually resulted in the infamous Haavara Agreement. The Nazi-Zionist collaboration lasted until at least 1941 in the case of the Stern Gang, which delivered a proposal to the Nazis in late 1940. What could they possibly have been thinking to make such dirty alliances?
Another bitter irony: the President Yitzhak Ben Tzvi who ordered Eichmann’s execution is the same leader who in 1924 ordered the assassination of Dutch Jew, Jacob de Haan, the leading proponent of the Orthodox anti-Zionism of the era. By what right does a man with Jewish blood on his hands order the execution of an enemy of the Jewish people?
Nor have I ever heard that Ben Zvi repented of his orders. He too, like Eichmann was a killer. Only Ben Tzvi murdered his own, while Eichmann murdered another people and another race.
Ethnic cleansing?
15 billion shekels over five year for Israel’s Arab sector.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4751631,00.html
Israeli government boosts Arab employment rate
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4759117,00.html
Yup.
You should really learn how to read Barbar. Your urge to add a snide comment to each and every one of Richard’s posts appears to impede this ability.
“To put this is an Israeli context, his pre-1941 views were absolutely in accord with those of Lehava, Im Tirzu, and settler rabbis, who wish to rid Israel of Palestinians to create an ethnically pure Jewish state. ”
Now read slowly: “Lehava, Im Tirzu, and settler rabbis”. Got it?
@Elisabeth
You and Richard and focused on the (marginal) extremists, and thus miss the big picture,like the 15 billion shekels budgeted, strictly, to help the Arab sector.
‘The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on’.
Well Barbar, the 15 billion shekels ‘strictly to help’ the Arab sector has to be seen in a context of decades of discrimination and intentional neglect.
Out of over 40,000 construction tenders for new housing units published by the Israel Land Authority in 2014, only 1,844 units (4.6 percent) were in Palestinian towns. Out of 139 Palestinian localities included in Israel’s new national master plan, only 41 of them (29.4 percent) have been given updated plans. Palestinian couples still find that it can take years to acquire a building permit, making it difficult to secure a home by the time they start their new lives.
The state is well aware of the difficult circumstances faced by Palestinian citizens – because it deliberately created them. Combining land confiscations, bureaucratic intransigence, racist laws, and home demolitions, the state has fulfilled its goal of minimizing Arab lands for the purpose of maximizing Jewish lands.
Palestinian citizens make up 20 percent of Israel’s population, but their localities constitute only 3 to 3.5 percent of the state’s territory. No new Arab town has been built since Israel’s establishment, with the exception of seven impoverished townships that were created to concentrate half of the Naqab’s Bedouin citizens and dispossess them of their historic lands. In contrast, hundreds of urban and rural Jewish towns have rapidly proliferated and immediately received basic services – including settlements in the occupied territories.
The discrimination runs even deeper. Over 430 small Jewish towns in the North and South use admissions committees to bar Palestinian citizens from living among them, claiming they are “socially and culturally unsuitable” for the communities. Government funding for the Arab sector remains extremely unequal despite repeated plans to close economic gaps, which exacerbates Arab towns’ poor infrastructure. More alarmingly, dozens of unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Naqab like Umm al-Hiran, which the state has refused to grant legal status for decades, are slated to be destroyed in order to build new towns and farms exclusively for Jewish citizens.
http://972mag.com/israels-housing-policy-for-arabs-is-designed-to-fail/116599/
@ Barbar: We’ve already discussed this subject & as usual you’ve ignored the facts & criticism of the plan. Do NOT repeat arguments already advanced without addressing these facts. First, this is a proposal. It’s not been funded or finalized. It could, & probably will disappear. Second, the localities to be benefited are being asked to offer some sort of loyalty pledge before they receive funding. Third, where villages are being directed to expand are sites of destroyed Palestinian villages. So existing Palestinian communities are being offered the land of destroyed Palestinian communities. It’s something being told you can build a new house on the graves of your ancestors. It’s an insult and the government knows it. And probably knows it’s unacceptable.
@Richard
“First, this is a proposal”
The bill had already been passed, unanimously, and funded.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4746536,00.html
Building on the graves of their ancestors?
“The “decision makers’ proposal” determines that the plan would seek to encourage Multi Residential Buildings – high rise buildings. Netanyahu doesn’t want to encourage that. He wants to make it a condition – those who don’t build high won’t get money.”
The bill is strictly to help Arabs. Jews will not benefit.
“Despite objections from Likud, cities with mixed populations such as Ramle, Lod, and Acre will not benefit from the initiative. ”
Loyalty oath? Not at all.
“If there is a school where teachers incite against the draft, or where they don’t let representatives from the National Civil Service Forum present the program, or if there’s a local council head who refuses to take in people who need to do their civil service in his community – it is inconceivable that this local council enjoys the money from this plan.”
“Contrary to the claims of many on the far-left of the pro-Palestinian cause, none of them advance the notion of mass murder or genocide”
“Netanyahu appoints Ayelet Shaked—who called for genocide of Palestinians—as Justice Minister in new government”
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/netanyahu-palestinians-government
@ Alec: If I were you, I wouldn’t take everything you read at Mondoweiss at face value. MW saying someone advocates genocide is an interpretation, not a fact.
I concede that the declarations of a number on the far-right, including the settler leader she quoted (“the Palestinians are snakes” was a quote from a settler mentor of hers), draw right up to the edge. But so far, they generally haven’t (yet) gone over it. That’s doesn’t mean they won’t. It just means we’re not quite there yet.
@ Richard
Dena Shunra translated the Uri Elitzur text that Ayelet Shaked posted on her FB, and it goes much further than ‘Palestinians are little snakes’
(the Hebrew original is included):
” Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. Actors in the war are those who incite in mosques, who write the murderous curricula for schools, who give shelter, who provide vehicles, and all those who honor and give them their moral support. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.”
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-lawmakers-call-genocide-palestinians-gets-thousands-facebook-likes
@ Deir Yassin: Yes, this does go pretty far down the road to genocide. It reminds me of the incendiary propaganda on Rwandan radio preceding the genocide. These broadcasts incited the murders to come.
I think concerning Israel we’re in a transition period in which we could go in that direction.
If no one has read Lenni Brenner, you should, because he has the definitive book on Zionist collaboration with the Nazis called “Zionism in the Age of Dictators.” It’s breathtaking in its research. http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres/LBzad.pdf