The faux anti-Semitism epidemic which has infected the UK body politic has been quite interesting. I wrote an article rebutting a widely distributed piece by a German professor professing that Ken Livingstone’s comments about the affinity between Nazism and Zionism were false. Raw Story’s editor, who published that piece, invited me to write a rebuttal, which I did. After completing it, she did what some of the less competent editors around do–she ignored me. So I published that at Mint Press News. I’ve also published another post (and this as well) about Eichmann’s role in forging alliances with the pre-war Zionist leadership and the fraudulence of the UK Israeli Lobby-Tory attack on Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader.
In the past few days, I’ve unearthed two other chestnuts of the genre which are worth reading. Eichmann didn’t just visit Palestine in 1937 to meet with the Zionist leadership. He didn’t just serve as the lead Nazi in implementing the Haavara Agreement. He actually endorsed Zionism and did so with fulsome praise. This New York Times review of In Memory’s Kitchen: A Legacy From the Women of Terezin quotes the memory of a Terezin survivor who met Eichmann:
Anny Stern was one of the lucky ones. In 1939, after months of hassle with the Nazi bureaucracy, the occupying German Army at her heels, she fled Czechoslovakia with her young son and emigrated to Palestine. At the time of Anny’s departure, Nazi policy encouraged emigration. ‘‘Are you a Zionist?” Adolph Eichmann, Hitler’s specialist on Jewish affairs, asked her. ”Jawohl,” she replied. ”Good,” he said, ”I am a Zionist, too. I want every Jew to leave for Palestine.”
As if to prove this anecdote is not an aberration, there is an even more explosive story told of Eichmann’s self-identification with Zionism,. It was published in Life Magazine in 1960 under the title, I Transported Them to the Butcher: Eichmann’s Story:
‘In the years that followed (after 1937) I often said to Jews with whom I had dealings that, had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist. I could not imagine anything else. In fact, I would have been the most ardent Zionist imaginable.’
This quotation is reminiscent of one by Ehud Barak, who said:
“If I were a Palestinian, at the appropriate age I would have joined one of the terrorist organizations.”
But returning to Eichmann, the pro-Israel crowd attempts to argue that Eichmann’s views contradict those of Hitler, who was more virulent in his approach to the Jewish Question. While that may be true, there were elements like Heydrich, Eichmann and others who sought to try the route of emigration to resolve the issue. Until 1939, their approach was the prevailing one among the Nazis. The only reason this approach ended was Hitler’s invasion of Poland. After that, it no longer became very practical to pursue mass emigration as a policy.
There can be no doubt that these Nazis found willing collaborators among the highest levels of the Zionist leadership. Those same pro-Israel advocates argue that the Zionist approach to the Nazis changed after 1939, once there was a realization that the Nazis were exterminating European Jewry. That’s not entirely true. As late as 1944, the Yishuv was willing to discuss the Blood for Goods proposal of Eichmann, which would’ve traded Jewish lives for trucks for the Russian front.
The Zionist approach was one of pure expediency. It was willing to talk to virtually anyone who could help the Zionist cause. Ben Gurion didn’t care if it was the devil himself. This is a purely cynical, amoral approach. One that disturbs us now. But it’s far better to acknowledge historical truth and critique it, than deny its existence or call those who expose it liars or worse, “anti-Semites.”
Richard. This whole exercise is childish.
Eichmann wasn’t a Zionist, he was an exterminational anti-Semite.
Actions speak louder than words.
The Lord Abby hath spoken! Now all mortals be silent.
German Nazism believed in the superiority of the Aryan nation, despised lower races, believed that their assimilation would degrade and undermine the German nation, and advocated the expulsion or transfer of these elements, preferring that Jews go to Palestine. The Germans sought military expansion to achieve a Greater Germany offering breathing space for their population and industry.
Israeli Zionism, proclaims that Jews are a nation, not a religion, often proclaims the superiority of Jews, certainly in comparison with their Moslem and Arab neighbours, proclaims that assimilation is not possible in the diaspora, that Jews should settle in Palestine, and has often asserted that the purity and cultural hegemony of Jews in Palestine necessitates the transfer of non-Jewish elements (e.g. one million in 1948 /1967) outside the borders of an enlarged state or Greater Israel which has room for future Jewish immigration.
I totally agree with you Abby. How could anyone possibly find any parallels in these two thoroughly nasty and ill-conceived ideologies?
I think your irony may be lost on Lord Abby.
In any event, it is not quite true that the Transfer Agreement was supported and endorsed by the German government up to the start of war. Nazis grew nervous about helping to create a nucleus, a state, for Jews as this might extend their presumed world power. and they shifted away from the deal they had only half halfheartedly endorsed to begin with. Furthermore, the Transfer Agreement was a counter to the Jewish BOYCOTT of Germany initiated in 1933 which grew less effective as the German economy grew.
The peculiarity of the Transfer Agreement is underscored by the role of private individuals and companies in its mechanics. I think that someone other than the Germans made some money on the deal.
@ Abby: You can lead a Zio-horse to water but you can’t make her drink (the truth).
Richard. It’s a given that I’m not as intelligent or as well informed as you are, so please, explain to be me how Eichmann could be both an exterminational anti-Semite.and a Zionist at the same time.
Did he….have a change of heart?
@ You didn’t read the post clearly. He was an Organization Man. He followed orders. When Nazism determined Jews should emigrate he pursued that policy. When the War broke out & the Nazis could no longer pursue emigration and switched to extermination, he followed orders.
That’s not a defense of anything he did. It’s purely an observation regarding organizational psychology & how a Eichmann viewed his role.
Unfortunately he was both an ex terminationist and a Zionist, by his own admission. The two were not incompatible
@tony: if that’s not one of the darkest ironies imaginable I don’t know what is.
@hasbarabby:
It’s hilarious to see how desperately you try and keep zionism’s hands, for lack of a better way to put it, clean in the face of this sort of thing.
Nazism isn’t a good ideology. It’s bad.
Zionism isn’t a good ideology. It’s bad.
The end.
“Nasrallah added, “if they (Jews) all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.””
[Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20021024133755/http://www.dailystar.com.lb/23_10_02/art5.asp%5D
Is Nasrallah a Zionist as well, Richard?
@TwoIsrael: it makes Nasrallah a blowhard; and you as well.
Gee how to disagree with that dialectic.
Oh and you made a funny with my nickname! That’s so mature.
And Roosevelt collaborated with Stalin.
One can make this stupid partial historical claims all day long. They are inaccurate and distort history but when someone try to blackwash millions, a bit of nonsense is always great!
Hiding from reality seems to be what you do in these comment threads, “Israel.” Mr. Silverstein is not denying the Holocaust, he is pointing out that Eichmann really wanted to send Germany’s Jews away to Mandate Palestine in the 1930s, and had contacts in the Zionist movement to do so, but Hitler’s war plans made genocide the Nazi option. That history contradicts a political narrative you believe in drives you to denigrate the post and Mr. Silverstein, but the facts will not change. The smearing of Labor in the UK as anti-Semites makes the term more of a snarl word and thus meaningless verbiage.
Strelnikov – when similar statements are made about Muslims these days, extreme liberals point a finger and shout ISLAMOPHOB, ISLAMOPHOB. But somehow, taking an historical facts out of context about Zionists is ‘open season’.
If an Israeli would bring up the fact the Mufti met with Adolf Hitler, then saying “Oh,a few years earlier Zionist leaders met Nazi leaders” (significant few years but not the subject). But just throw it out there, making it sounds like Zionists actively assisted Germans with killing Jews, can easily be regarded and anti-Zionism or even antisemitism.
For example – Richard writes “how do you deal with the attempts at collaboration between the pre-1948 Zionist leadership–including figures like David Ben Gurion–and the Nazis?”
That is completely out of context for that article but HEY, why not throw it in there.
That article links to another article by him where he writes “Their collaboration was not based on shared values or principles, but on mutual self-interest. But that, of course, does not make the partnership less significant.”
Really, no significance??? So Roosevelt collaborated with Stalin, Haniyah collaborates with Bibi etc??? Even if one say ‘Sure’ cause who really cares, why is it so islamophobic to highlight (or even mention) the fact most terrorists in Europe and ME are devoted Muslims who do it because of their religion?
Sure, if you make such a statement with no context, just to bash Muslims, it is islamophobic, but in the right context, and that context comes a lot in this blog, it is nothing but stating facts.
@Israrl: Roosevelt & Stalin is a non sequitur. Roosevelt never condoned Stalinist crimes or collaborated with him to enable him to murder 20 million Russians.
As for my historical analogy. You haven’t offered a single shred of evidence to refute it.
Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Sidney Hook and others about Menachem Begin’s Herut party, the predecessor of Likud in 1948:
“Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.”
Barak in 2016:
“The government is “showing signs of fascism”, Barak charged in an interview with Channel 10 News, adding, “The dismissal of Ya’alon should be a red light to all of us about what is happening in the government.”
…
“I travel a lot around the world,” claimed Barak. “There is no serious leader remaining in the world who believes the Israeli government.”
This deterioration in Israel’s standing is partly covered up by the Israel lobby and part of the MSM.
Major General Yair Golan in 2016:
“In an unusual speech in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday evening, IDF Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen.Yair Golan likened recent developments in Israeli society to processes that unfolded in Europe before the Holocaust.
“If there’s something that frightens me about Holocaust remembrance it’s the recognition of the revolting processes that occurred in Europe in general, and particularly in Germany, back then – 70, 80 and 90 years ago – and finding signs of them here among us today in 2016.””
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.717948
I don’t think there was any love lost between the Nazis and the Zionists but the Eichmanns and the Heydrichs recognised in Zionism a mirror image of their own ideology, only focused on another people and a different territory.
It was an ideology of “racial-territorial exclusivism”. I know no better term for it.
There were other strains in Zionism but this one has survived and is now coming into full bloom.
And now for the good news:
“In a huge blow to Israel, Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders announced Thursday that calls to boycott the Jewish state fall within the limits of free speech, undermining intensive Israeli diplomatic efforts to sway European capitals to outlaw the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment Movement.
“Statements or meetings concerning BDS are protected by freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, as enshrined in the Dutch Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights,” Koenders said Thursday during a debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the Dutch parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee in The Hague.”
(Jerusalem Post 5/26/16)
I understand that this makes collective European action on BDS impossible. Each nation has a veto right.
Here are four facts known to me which illustrate the insane fickleness of the Nazi treatment of German Jews. In 1939 when my father was in Buchenwald both as a Jew and a Political Prisoner efforts were made to release him provided that he would move with us to Bogota (and never return to Europe). I had started learning Spanish. It almost succeeded but was thwarted by the start of WW2 in that year. He survived Auschwitz-Monowitz, then Buchenwald again.
In late 1944 one of the Jewish friends we had saved from arrest in occupied Amsterdam who had managed to escape earlier across the Pyrenees to Spain boarded a ship in Malaga with many other Jews. That unprotected ship sailed unmolested to Haifa because Hitler had promised Franco and the Allies that his navy and air force in the Mediterranean would not try to sink that ship. It was not the only transport to Haifa of that kind. At least one ship came from Greece.
Hitler had authorized himself to “aryanize” persons with up to four Jewish grandparents. He did that if he needed them. Among the new aryans were at least six Generals. Helmut Wilberg (Air Force), Werner Maltzahn (Army), Bernhard Rogge (Navy), Erhard Milch (Air Force; Field Marshal; organized Stalingrad relief), Johannes Zuckertort (Army), Karl Zuckertort (Army).
Until the German stall at Moscow boys with one or two Jewish grandparents were obliged to served in the Wehrmacht even if their mother was a Jewish woman. After “Moscow” they were placed in the reserves. The numbers were not small. Estimated: about 200,000 had served. (B. M. Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers).
Himmler did not agree because he considered all persons with even one Jewish grandparent to be a serious danger to the German “Volk”.
Has anyone read “Eichmann before Jerusalem?”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/17/eichmann-before-jerusalem-bettina-stangneth-review
Anyone who attempts to link Zionism to Naziism by pointing to the circumstances surrounding the Haavara Agreement or the actions of Nazi officials in the 1930s is woefully ignorant of history at best, or intellectually dishonest at worst.
Here are the facts. Beginning almost immediately on their ascent to power in 1933, the Nazis sought to make life so unbearable for Jews in Germany that they would leave the country, thus ridding the master race of their unwanted presence. Being the thugs that they were, however, they undermined their own objective by demanding fleeing Jews relinquish nearly all their financial assets in order to be permitted to emigrate.
The Haavara Agreement attempted to remove this impediment by creating a mechanism whereby the assets of the departing Jews would be applied toward the purchase of German goods rather than be confiscated. As with most agreements, each party got something. The Germans got a boost in much needed hard capital and fewer Jews in their midst. The emigres got their lives.
The agreement split the Jewish community, both in and out of Palestine. One camp found the notion of a cooperative arrangement with the Nazis abhorrent. The other felt that the goal of saving lives outweighed the moral revulsion of dealing with an odious enemy. So divisive was the issue that one of the originators of the Agreement was assassinated on a Tel Aviv beach in 1933, most likely by opposing Jews.
Let’s be clear. Trying to conflate Hitler’s demonic drive to rid Germany of Jews with the aims of the early Zionists is as grotesque as branding Jewish supporters of the Haavara Agreement lovers of Naziism.
That said, one can certainly draw a line between historical Naziism and a nationalist movement rooted in Palestine—only it’s not the one you think. Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and spiritual leader of the world’s Muslims, fled to Berlin in 1941 after inciting numerous Arab uprisings against both Jews and British forces in the country. Hitler greeted him warmly. The Mufti told Hitler that they shared three common enemies: the British, the Jews and the Bolsheviks. He then pledged Arab support of the Nazi regime, stating that a German victory in the war would benefit the Arabs. He followed up on his pledge by, among other things, helping form a brigade of Muslim Croats that fought with the Waffen-SS.
The Mufti spent the rest of the war holed up in Germany. He was branded a war criminal by the Yugoslav government after the collapse of the Third Reich, but escaped to Egypt before he could be brought to trial. He died in Beirut in 1974.
@ The Donald: First, let’s get over the nonsense charges. I’m neither ignorant of history or intellectually dishonest, nor have you proven that in your comment. In fact, except for a few claims in your first point, I don’t disagree with much of what you wrote. Where I do disagree is with the claim the Haavara Agreement was a simple honest exchange between two parties who each wanted something reasonable (or at least the Zionists wanted something reasonable). The Agreement was a horrible decision. It validated the Nazi regime, broke the international boycott organized by U.S. Jews, and offered the Nazis a financial boost at the beginning of their rule, when they needed it most. It is a moral black stain on the Zionist movement. Whatever the Zionists “got” as you put it, it wasn’t worth the getting.
As is usual with pro-Israel apologists like you, you create a strawman and then try feebly to demolish him. I never said what you claimed I did. I neither conflated the Nazi ethnic cleansing with the aims of Zionists, nor did I claim Zionists were “lovers” of Nazism. So listen closely to what I did say and don’t fabricate my views: the Zionists made a rotten deal with the devil; and they were collaborators with the Nazis. Period.
As for Haj Amin, your claims are far overblown. Sure, he made an alliance with Hitler. But Lehi tried to do the same and would have, had they been in Husseini’s shoes. Husseini’s contribution to the Nazi war effort was minimal at best. So we have Zionist collaborators with Nazis and Palestinian sycophants. Husseini perhaps got to implement his support for the Nazis more than Zionists like Lehi did. But that’s only due to an accident of history.