In my
previous post to this blog it may seen that the moderator of Socialist Unity deleted post number 75 as they claimed it was libellous, without specifying what part was libellous. In actual fact, I have full references for all the claims I made in that long post and I copy it below for anyone interested.
(NB if there is anything wrong - I said that Tony Greenstein "sends friendly emails" to Atzmon when, to my knowledge there was only one email. I hardly think that in the grand scheme of things a judge will get hugely worked up about this minor matter.)
Tony Greenstein : The Man, The Distortions, The Omissions and The Lies.
1.
PerfidyZeev is completely correct to attack Tony Greenstein for the use of Ben Hecht's
Perfidy.This is the same Ben Hecht who in 1931 wrote the novel
A Jew in Love. Within four lines of the first page of that novel he states, “The Jews now and then hatch a face which for Jewishness surpasses the caricatures of the entire anti-Semitic press. These Jew faces in which race leers and burns like some biologic disease are rather shocking to a mongrelized world." Hecht continues on his first page “People dislike being reminded of their origins. They shudder a bit mystically at the sight of anyone who looks too much like a fish, a lizard, a chimpanzee or a Jew.” [1] Hecht continues in this vain but I think I have made my point and it is not necessary for me to quote further from that book.
At the very beginning of his 1961 polemic,
Perfidy, Hecht admits that he is not objective: “For though I write a history I am not a historian; that is if an historian is a man full of facts and with an objective attitude. Facts I have, but I am not objective” [2] As Zeev states, the case presented by Hecht is that of Tamir. If anyone is any doubt of this, Hecht dedicated
Perfidy to Tamir.
To get an idea of how distorted
Perfidy is without going into specific examples – we can see some of the major reviews of the book:
A. The most authoritative destruction was published by The American Section of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency in 1962 and reproduced as an appendix in later editions of
Perfidy by Juian Messner Inc, the original publishers of the book. The review states that “The method used by Hecht would not put to shame the most notorious falsifiers of history, past or present.” Before providing examples to back up the case the, review accuses Hecht of
i. “the invention of Big Lies, of such scope and nature that they defy any brief denial”
ii. “the distortion of facts, sometimes subtle, sometimes not-so-subtle”
iii. “the ‘selective’ quotations – out of context – of sentences and half-sentences, giving them a meaning quite opposite to the statement as a whole”
iv. “the invention of small lies, of minor importance but intended to give an impression of detailed documentation and veracity to the major lies, distortions and misquotations.” [3]
B. Chaim Lieberman, a member of the editorial staff of the
Jewish Daily Forward, went so far as to write a 103 page booklet, both ridiculing Ben Hecht and commenting on the distortions of history that Hecht published in
Perfidy. Lieberman states that
Perfidy was “Written with spittle and venom, it is a book in which the great Jewish tragedy is turned into a cheap shocker.” Lieberman goes on to say that “Hecht really has no conception of the true significance either of Zionism of the holocaust [sic]. He is woefully unqualified, morally and spiritually, to penetrate their meaning and mystery.” [4]
C. A review of
Perfidy in the
New York Times said that Hecht “indulges in some crude distortions of history.” [5]
D. Lucy Dawidowicz reviewed Hecht’s polemic for
Commentary: “Hecht is neither a historian nor a chronicler, he has little respect for the accuracy of a date, a name, or a quotation: it is too much to expect that he should have placed Kasztner in historical context.” Dawidowicz was scathing in her attack: “He [Hecht] has converted ideological differences into savage personal defamation, and equated Zionist mistakes and expediency with German murder.” [6]
E. In
Jewish Frontier Marie Syrkin slated the “unsavory” book. She accused Hecht of “Falsification of facts,” of using material “out of context,” of “sleight-of-hand,” “omission,” “confusion,” “venom” and of “the revolting aspect” of exploiting “the martyrdom of European Jewry for his partisan ends.” [7]
F. A review in
Midstream referred to
Perfidy as “a fistful of pages concocted of half truths, outright falsehoods, misrepresentations, quotations out of context, surmises and innuendos, name calling, flight of fancy dressed up to sound like fact and huge glaring omissions of crucial facts and events which can be ascribed either to abysmal ignorance or to equally abysmal cynical disregard of truth.” Shlomo Katz who wrote the review said “It is an evil book in every sense of the word …. The first reaction to reading
Perfidy is one of loathing. ‘Trash!’ one is inclined to exclaim and to fling Ben Hecht’s opus into the nearest garbage can.” Katz concluded “Ben Hecht’s
Perfidy … is unique – when one reads it, one feels soiled.” [8]
This is the book that Tony Greenstein relies upon – One that is completely and utterly discredited.
2. Joel Brand : Rather than relying on the discredited Hecht to try and justify his erroneous claim that Brand testified against Kasztner, Greenstein could have read some of the contemporaneously written trial reports. Had he bothered to do so, he would know that Brand testified for the prosecution and against Gruenwald and not the other way round. [9] When Brand was recalled to the witness stand by Benjamin Halevi, Brand denied that he ever had any important differences with Kasztner.[10]
3. It is simply ludicrous for Greenstein to say Kasztner’s committee was a Jewish Agency committee. It was not and Zeev above is correct in his comment on the matter. I have already provided a good source – Martin Gilbert to show that Moshe Krausz’s organization was the representative body in Hungary of the Jewish Agency. For a further source, Randolph Braham also stated categorically that Moshe Krausz, as the Executive Secretary of the Palestine Office, represented the Jewish Agency in Budapest. [11] So Greenstein is completely wrong, Krausz was not a “dissident” Zionist.
Whilst it is true that Kasztner signed in the name of the Jewish Agency, as I pointed out earlier witness Eliahu Dobkin denied that Kasztner had such authorisation. We simply do not know who was telling the truth here, but Greenstein assumes it is Kasztner. It can be noted that Kasztner was prone to exaggeration as Greenstein also points out that Kasztner signed as “Former Chairman of Zionist Organization in Hungary.” This was a lie as that was not his title. Kasztner’s title was in fact executive vice president. [12] Given it is clear that kasztner lied about one part of his title, I do not see how Greenstein can be sure he was not lying about the other!
4. Greenstein tries to make excuses as to why, according to Nigel Savage’s letter, Brian Conn may have left his Jewish Society stall in tears and afraid. Greenstein suggests that it may have been because Conn simply had to listen to an argument different from his own. This stretches credibility too far. People do not normally break down in tears and are afraid simply by listening to an argument they do not agree with. The truth is that Greenstein’s history shows him to have been a nasty piece of work.
Greenstein should explain why he was so heavily involved in the British Anti-Zionist Organisation (BAZ0) – an organization that was even denounced by many left-wing organizations as being anti-Semitic. [13] This was the same BAZO that was backed by the Saddam Hussein supporting National Union of Iraqi Students (NUIS) – an organization, according to a report by the National Union of Students (NUS), that intimidated, spied on, beat up and even stabbed other students. [14] BAZO itself is an organisation whose President George Mitchell, attended a Jewish Society meeting at Strathclyde University, took photographs of those present and threatened to send the pictures to Beirut. [15]
BAZO was also an organisation where such blatantly anti-Semitic points as the following were made. In 1979, trade unionist speaker Joseph Monaghan asked: “Why did the Jews not bomb the ovens at Auschwitz and so stop the killings in the last war? With all the money they have, they could have got an air force. The Holocaust – the killing of six million Jews in Europe – was done by Nazis working with the Jews.” [16] It is instructive to note that the same literature that was distributed by BAZO was also advertised by the neo-Nazi British Movement? [17]
It was therefore no surprise that NUS publicly condemned a BAZO leaflet entitled Against Zionism as antisemitic, and why its conference noted that BAZO literature was not dissimilar to that of the fascist National Front and therefore called upon NUS to ban BAZO activities “from its base in Strathclyde Union and any other campus in the United Kingdom.” [18]
By the Spring 1981 NUS Conference BAZO were advertising that they were selling Alfred Lilienthal’s book – a book by an author who questioned the authenticity of The Diary of Anne Frank, who had signed a petition supporting a known Holocaust denier, and who was promoted by the National Front. The then President of NUS called the book “antisemitic,” warning delegates: “I don’t want to see this book at conference.” The NUS executive put out a statement at that conference, saying that “the actions of BAZO help antisemites in their activities,” and went on to add: “We are not willing to allow BAZO to have stalls at our conferences, or publicise their material through our publications.”[19] Despite all of this, Greenstein specifically referred to Lilienthal as a “reputable historian.” [20] Given Greenstein’s views on Lilienthal, it may be understandable as to why Greenstein spends time denouncing
Searchlight, the leading anti-fascist magazine. [21]
The NUS executive put out a statement at that Spring 1981 conference saying that “the actions of Bazo help antisemites in their activities” and went on to add “We are not willing to allow Bazo to have stalls at our conferences, or publicise their material through our publications.” [22]
Tony Greenstein admitted that he was involved in a “physical confrontation”with another student and also admitted that David Aaronovitch, the then President of the National Union of Students, had him banned from attending the NUS conference? [23]
I am not the only one to think that Tony Greenstein is disreputable as in 1986,Vicky Phillips, the then President of the National Union of Students urged people to write to Anti-Fascist Action expressing concern about Greenstein’s involvement in its steering committee because she thought that he being involved “brings the whole organization into disrepute?” [24]
But this was not all, because by the late 1980’s Tony Greenstein was on the founding editorial committee of, and went on to become the editor for, a magazine entitled
RETURN. This magazine was banned in 1990 by the National Union of Students by its then President Maeve Sherlock, in a decision actively supported by Steven Twigg, the next President of NUS (Steven Twigg went on to become a Labour Party Member of Parliament.) Other leading NUS members, including its Womens’ Officer also supported the decision of the President. Maeve Sherlock specifically ruled that RETURN was “anti-Semitic.” [25]
Jewish students may join their Jewish Society for all manner of reasons – religious, cultural or social – but why did
RETURN magazine hold the Union of Jewish Students in complete contempt, calling them, in an editorial, “a wing of Israel’s propaganda network”? And why did Tony Greenstein argue that UJS “act as paid and unpaid informers for Mossad”? [26]
But what can we expect from Tony Greenstein, a person who wrote a pamphlet entitled
Zionism: antisemitism’s twin in Jewish garb that he had published by Brighton Labour Briefing? That pamphlet was praised by the far right wing and antisemitic National Front who commented on his “painstaking researches” and referred to it as “a seminal work, as important in its own way as was [Holocaust Denier Richard] Harwood’s ‘Did Six Million Really Die.’” The effusive praise from the National Front continued: “fascinating and vital reading for the student of modern history,” “his booklet is good. Read it and see!” [27]
Some may consider that all these activities in the 1980s and 1990s are in the past, but they can also consider his actions in more recent years, Tony Greenstein opposed Holocaust Memorial Day and went so far as to call it “obscene.”[28]
Asghar Bhukari, a spokesman for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACuk) was exposed for financing the Holocaust denier David Irving. [29] Despite this, in 2006, Greenstein went to Bhukari’s web site and sent him a very friendly message praising him for writing “a very excellent” article and for being “honest.” [30] Even more recently, this month, Greenstein has been making excuses for Jenna Delich. Delich is a member of the University and Colleges Union (UCU) and contributes to their activist list. Recently, and in order to attack “Zionists,” she linked to the web site of David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. This disgraceful act was exposed on Harry’s Place, a popular UK based political blog. [31] If Greenstein was a real campaigner against racism and fascism, he would be making a big fuss about Delich and would have congratulated Harry’s Place on their scoop. But no, not only does Greenstein not try and organise a campaign against Delich, he goes out of his way to defend her and at the same time he accuses the posters to Harry’s Place of being “hypocrites.” [32]
Tony Greenstein uses his blog, in part, to attack Gilad Atzmon. He refers to him as an “Open Holocaust Denier.” [33] This is all very well but he does not mention that in June 2006 he sent Atzmon a friendly email saying “I shall be more than happy to hear you play the sax! ” and went on to continue that some of Atzmon’s “remarks re the holocaust were spot on.” [34] This is despite the fact that as this thread shows clearly, Tony Greenstein cannot get the fact right about the Holocaust himself. Not that sending friendly emails to Atzmon should be a surprise given the same Tony Greenstein admits to have consorted with Stephen Brady, a leader of the fascist National Front! [35]
5. The Real Collaborators with Nazis – The Communists
Tony Greenstein is a Marxist and Marxists have a long and not so glorious history of collaborating with Nazis. There was for example, Hermann Remmele, a speaker from the German Communist Party, the KPD who went along to a debate by the Nazi Party. He said, “At the very beginning, I wish to make one thing clear. The National Socialist Party, like all other socialist organisations, has within its ranks a number of convinced and honest people.” He went on to say, “This courage and bravery we honour and respect.” [36] Or there was a different Communist speaker at a political rally in Germany in 1924 who said, “The time is not far off when
Völkische and Communists will be able to unite.” [37] Or we can look to Heinz Neumann a young KPD party leader who said, “Young Socialists! Brave fighters for the nation: the Communists do not want to engage in fraternal strife with the National Socialists.” [38] The actions of the KPD were completely shameful. As Conan Fischer points out, In 1932 the KPD proposed United Action and posters appeared in Germany “showing Communist, Nazi and Socialist workers standing shoulder to shoulder in class solidarity against the bourgeoisie.” In fact, the term United Action was used because the Communists did not want to use the term Anti-Fascist Action as it would alienate the Nazis! [39] The KPD backed by Russia ensured that Hitler could finally take power. One former German Communist commented that Zinoviev said to him in 1933, “Apart from the German Social Democrats, Stalin bears the main responsibility to history for Hitler’s victory.” [40]
Of course, in August 1939, the Russian Communists and the German Nazis cemented their friendship with the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Communists such as Sean O’Casey who was on the editorial board of the
Daily Worker demanded peace with Hitler. [41]
And it was not just those Communists who supported Stalin that were making pacts with Hitler - those Communists who supported Trotsky did not want “Imperialist” countries such as Britain or America to fight Hitler either. In America, the Trotskyist
Labor Action took the position that World War II, like World War I, is “a war between two great imperialist camps ... to decide ... which ... shall dominate the world.” It is “a war of finance capital ... a war for stocks and bonds and profits ... a war conceived and bred by world capitalism.”
Labor Action went so far as to attack the trade unions who supported Roosevelt’s decision to go to war. Max Shachtman used the paper to launch an assault on another socialist for jumping “into the War Camp.” [42]
The conclusion of all this is clear: The Stalinists made a pact with the Nazis and the Trotskyists did not want America or Britain fighting the Nazis. None of this was obviously any help to the Jews, Zionist, non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, in Nazi occupied Europe.
6. Contrary to the claim of Greenstein, I do not “disregard” the testimony of Katherine Senesh (Szenes). What I did say was that Mrs. Senesh claimed that she tried to see Kasztner on a number of occasions but was turned away by others who claimed Kasztner was not there or was busy etc. I commented that Kasztner “claimed that he was not aware that Hannah’s mother had tried to see him.” This does not disregard the testimony of Mrs Senesh.
7. Regarding Ruth Smeed of the Board of Deputies and her comments about the BNP, I do not know why she said what she did. If Greenstein is so interested to find out why, maybe he should email or write to her and ask for clarification.
Irrespective of why Ms. Smeed made her comments, it was clearly not in line with the policy of the Board of Deputies. Even the article that Greenstein links to where he read Ms. Smeed’s comments explains: “The Board of Deputies, the London Jewish Forum and the Community Security Trust have launched a campaign with other ethnic minority and cultural groups and the Hope Not Hate campaign to combat the BNP threat.” Moreover, as the article makes very clear, Henry Grunwald, president of the Board of Deputies said “Despite all its attempts to portray itself differently we know [the BNP] is still the same antisemitic, racist party it always was.” He added: “We, in the Jewish community, will not tolerate any form of racism or prejudice ... I would be thoroughly ashamed if any member of the Jewish community voted for them.” [43]
8. Greenstein states, “Mikey believes it is a ‘lie’ that Kastner testified on behalf of Wisliceny. Then presumably he is accusing Barri of lying?” The points made by the poster by the name of “Correction” are completely correct. I am not accusing Barri of lying as Barri does not say anywhere in her article that Kasztner testified on behalf of Wisliceny. What Barri says is that Kasztner appealed on behalf of Wisliceny. Kasztner wanted him transferred to American custody. [44] An appeal is not the same as a testimony but Greenstein clearly does not understand this.
9. Greenstein has harped on this thread about Gilad Atzmon. He has suggested that I am “willing to work” with him and that he is my “friend.” Both of these comments accusations are absurd but Greenstein persists. The basis of this accusation seems to come from a thread on the comments section of PeacePalestine blog that can be seen on the following link: http://www.haloscan.com/comments/thecutter/117192641046077827/
I urge everyone to read all the comments by myself and if they wish also the relevant comments by Tony Greenstein, Gilad Atzmon and Paul Eisen. In my first contribution to the thread, I ridicule the debate that was occurring: “this thread is a farce. We have Tony Greenstein being accused of being a Zionist by Gilad Atzmon and Gilad Atzmon accusing Tony Greenstein of being a Zionist.” I also stated that Paul Eisen “thinks no Jews were killed at Auschwitz.” Eisen decided to enter into a debate with me but all I wanted to know was one thing that I asked him in that thread: “does Paul Eisen believe Jews were killed by gas in gas chambers at Auschwitz. A simple yes/no will do.” Despite earlier trying to evade the question, he finally gave his answer: “I am not sure but the evidence for the use of homicidal gas-chambers is not good at all. The evidence against it is much, much stronger.” I had achieved what I wanted to do: getting Paul Eisen to admit on the Internet in very clear language what his position on the Holocaust actually was.
Away from that matter with Eisen, readers of the thread can see that I had brought up many past activities of Tony Greenstein. I have interest in attacking anti-Zionists of all shades – whether they are those like Atzmon and Eisen, whether they are those like Greenstein and Rance or even like Bhukari or Delich. It just so happens that as Greenstein was a frequent poster in that thread, I decided to take my opportunity to attack him there. (If It did not do it there, I would do it elsewhere – like here for example.) I did not attack Greenstein there because I was asked to, but because I wanted to. I would also attack Roland Rance if he contributed to the comments boxes of blogs I view and can post at. Greenstein and Atzmon are enemies of each other and as I have mentioned earlier they use the worst insult they can each imagine– they accuse each other of being Zionists.
Greenstein claims that Atzmon wanted information on Roland Rance and that I replied on the thread on March 12, 2007 at 8.53pm that I said “‘I have been very busy digging up stuff on Tony Greenstein - Roland Rance will have to wait for another day.” Now, if anyone bothers to click on the link, they will see that no such contribution exists on the thread that Greenstein gave! Despite this detail, it is not the point I wish to make. The point is that I am happy to dig up information on Roland Rance irrespective of Atzmon, but I have no desire to assist Atzmon himself.
It is also true that I have met Atzmon. Over many years I have met many anti-Zionists. I have attended their meetings and heard them speak. Greenstein is aware of this as he has referred to the meeting I attended organised by Jews Against Zionism when Lenni Brenner spoke and I attended his own meeting by Green Left on anti-Zionism to which this thread relates. I have been for a drink, had dinner, visited them at their homes, had short or long conversations in person with or spent hours on the phone with a number of anti-Zionists including some of whom Greenstein would consider his own ideological comrades. I do not do this because I view them as my friends or to assist them , but for my own research into anti-Zionism. I will not mention specific names here but I have referred to in this thread to different examples of articles in various issues of
RETURN magazine. If Greenstein does his own research he might find out who provided them to me at a discounted price! Whilst I do not need to mention names – I can assure him that it was one of his own anti-Zionist comrades. Does that make his anti-Zionist comrade, a Zionist collaborator in the eyes of Greenstein?
This is of course very different from Tony Greenstein who sends friendly emails to Atzmon advising him on matters of the Holocaust and Zionism. The fact that Greenstein was very wrong in his analysis in that email to Atzmon is beside the point. [45] The only explanation that I can think of as to why Greenstein continues to suggest that I am a friend of Atzmon and assist Atzmon is because he is embarrassed as to his own assistance to him and this is the way he deals with his own psychological issues.
10. Randolph Braham on Kasztner
Greenstein uses Lenni Brenner’s discredited 1983 book,
Zionism in the Age of Dictators: A Reappraisal [46] for Braham’s view as opposed to looking at the source itself. Greenstein writes the following:
“’History and historians have not been kind to the leaders of Hungarian Jewry in the Holocaust era.’ [Randolph Braham, The Official Jewish Leadership of Wartime Hungary, (unpublished manuscript), p.1.] As Braham admits, many ‘tried to obtain special protection and favours for their families’. [Randolph Braham, The Role of the Jewish Council in Hungary: A Tentative Assessment, Yad Vashem Studies, vol.X, p.78.]”
The first example is an unpublished manuscript and hence we cannot check it to see how out of context Brenner has taken that quote but knowing how Brenner distorts information . Given Brenner quoted it in his book published by 1983, Braham must have written that sentence prior to that time. The title of the first essay suggests that Braham was writing about the Jewish Council and in the second essay (which I have) Braham was certainly writing about the Jewish Council. A discussion about the role of the Jewish Council in Hungary would be a separate exercise but Greenstein has no real interest attacking that body as it was not a Zionist body. All Greenstein wants to do is attack Kasztner. Rather than quoting Braham on the Hungarian Jewish Council, if Greenstein wants Braham’s view on Kasztner he should look it up. If he did so, he would see that Braham says the following:
“An ardent Zionist by conviction, and an idealistic but opportunist politician by inclination….A man of unbounded political ambitions with some inclinations toward a bohemian lifestyle, Kasztner had a large number of faithful friends, as well as many bitter enemies who conspired against him. Dictatorial and jealous by nature (he could not gracefully acknowledge the success of others) Kasztner unwisely monopolized the negotiations with the SS. He may have been guided by an SS-imposed directive for secrecy ‘in order not to jeopardize the success of the deal,’ and therefore contacted the traditional leaders of Hungarian Jewry only when he needed their financial assistance. It is likely that, motivated by a strong subconscious drive for grandeur, he hoped to emerge as virtually the sole rescuer of close to one million Jews…. He had a sharp analytic mind but gifted as he was, he did not possess the strength of character which ultimately distinguishes the great from the average man. Nevertheless, in his dealings with the SS…he often displayed great skill and courage in championing the cause of rescue.” [47]
11. On Public Debates
Greenstein suggests that I am a coward because I did not raise any points either at the Lenni Brenner talk or at his own talk. The truth is that I did not do so, not because I am a coward and am afraid to debate Greenstein but because in the normal course at such “debates” contributors from the floor in the question time are not given an equal amount of time to the main speakers. Let us say that the meeting is 1 hour and a half – with speakers for 50 minutes, questions and points from the floor for 20 minutes and responses by the panel for 20 minutes. (I Just use these figures as an example). Given there may be a number of different contributors from the floor, any individual contributor is not given much time. Moreover, that contributor does not have the ability to come back to the speakers retorts. i.e the format is massively loaded in favour of the speaker. I am prepared to debate in a fair debate and that is why I proposed an internet debate on a forum acceptable to both of us. (Personally, I have no objection to Socialist Unity hosting it assuming we were given equal space for our points.) Greenstein turned the idea down. It is him that is chicken – not me.
12. I am pleased that Greenstein will accept my contributions to the comments boxes of his own blog. I assume this one will also be published.
13. Zionists and Fighting Nazis
Greenstein uses his post to try and imply that the Zionists never fought the Nazis or if individual Zionists did, they did not do so because they were Zionists. This is a long running theme of Greenstein’s poisonous writings and it is of course, like most of what he writes about Zionism, Zionists or the Holocaust complete hogwash.
Let us consider some facts. On July 28, 1942, the Jewish Fighting Organisation (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa or ZOB) was founded. This was founded by three Zionist youth movements, Hashomer Hatzair, Dror and Akiva. Initially the Socialist Bund opposed creating a Jewish fighting force because it believed in an alliance between Poles of the same class rather than an alliance between Jews with different political convictions. Mordecai Anielewicz, an activist in Hashomer Hatzair, was one of the founders of the ZOB. The organisation that was set up on 24th October 1942 and was the organisation that Mordecai Anielewicz, a Zionist, was elected the Chief Commander. The ZOB contained 22 combat units, each with between twelve and twenty members. Fourteen of those units contained Zionist pioneers who were preparing for eventual emigration to Palestine. Away from the ZOB was the Jewish Military Organisation, (Zydowski Zwiazek Wojskowy or ZZW) led primarily by Revisionist Zionists and those from the Betar, the Revisionist youth movement, who had political sympathies with the Irgun. ZZW members also put up a very courageous fight against the Nazis in Warsaw. It therefore can be seen, far from Zionist organisations either not fighting, or Zionists only acting as individuals, the Zionist organisations were central in the Warsaw ghetto uprising one of the major acts of resistance during the Holocaust. [48]
The above was in Europe, we can now consider the view from the
Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine). Y. Tabenkin had said at a meeting of the Histradut Council in December 1942, “It is impossible to understand why these Jews…do not raise up their spades against their enemies.” It should be understand that at this time, there was a lack of information in Palestine about what exactly was occurring and the possibilities of resistance. An editorial in
Davur in October 1942 headlined “The Zionist Underground” mentioned “There is also quiet bravery…the defense of honour….There is dedication to the people fighting.” [49] The uprising in the Warsaw changed much of the poor perception. In April 1943 an editorial in one paper commented on the Jewish resistance “An eternal symbol of a people which refuses to be destroyed by the Gentile – the symbol of life. The honour and the glory of this heroism, enacted on the front line of the war against Nazism, has perhaps no parallel.”[50] A further note of pride of the Warsaw ghetto uprising was expressed in
Hapoel Hatzair in an article entitled “Defence Filled With Glory.” As far as the editor, who wrote the article, was concerned it proved “Jews are not always led like sheep to the slaughter.” [51]
It can therefore be seen that not only did Zionists in Nazi occupied Europe fight and try and resist the Nazis, but in Palestine the Zionists were immensely proud of the ghetto fighters.
In any event, Greenstein knew he was lying with his claim about Zionists not fighting Nazis as he himself quotes Dawidowicz as saying, “the socialist Zionist youth movements succeeded in transforming their pre-war apparatus into functioning underground organisations.”
14. Zionism and Nazism
This really is Greenstein’s favourite accusation. He tries to make out that the Nazi party was a Zionist party. Incredible as it sounds Greenstein not only says it, he claims he has read Francis R. Nicosia’s recently published book,
Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and he claims that the evidence presented in it supports his thesis. Specifically Greenstein states
“It produces further evidence of the close symbiosis between the Nazi Party and Zionism. Far from the Nazi Party being anti-Zionist, ludicrous, it specifically differentiated between the ‘good’ Jews – the Zionists and the bad ones.”
Well let us consider some of the passages in that book:
“lest the reader imagine that the purpose of study such as this to somehow equate Zionism with National Socialism, Zionists with Nazis, or to portray their relationship as a willing and collaborative one between moral and political equals. The research, analysis and conclusions, do not in any way support such notions. The existence of certain common assumptions on the part of Zionists on the one hand, and nationalist and anti-Semitic Germans on the other, does not in any way connote moral and/or political equivalency.” (pp. 2-3)
Nicosia continues:
“The dominant Zionist approach, like that of most non-Jews at the time, shared a reliance on the idea of an ethno-nationalist state, an idea that was the societal norm in Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Their embrace of that norm does not make the Zionists the moral equivalent of the Nazis. Nor does the willingness of the Zionist or any other Jewish organisation in the Third Reich to cooperate with the state make them willing collaborators in the Nazi destruction of Jewish life in Germany; to suppose that any Jewish organisation in Hitler’s Germany prior to the ‘final solution’ had the option of refusing to work on some level with the state is fantasy.” (p. 3)
Nicosia specifically states that it is a-historical and simplistic to “dismiss Zionism as yet another of racism, the substance of which has not been very different from German National Socialism.” (P. 8)
“Most anti-Semites could never embrace Zionism and its institutions as partners in a common quest because Zionists were, after all, still part of what they believed to be a monolithic world Jewry.” (P. 9)
“For most anti-Semites in Germany, therefore, including the Nazis prior to 1941, their willingness to use Zionism and the Zionist movement was never based on an acceptance of the Zionist view itself.” (p. 10)
“the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Zionist movement in general recognized the critical link between its own survival and the survival and well-being of all Jews in the Diaspora. Even on a practical level, the Zionist view was that if the Nazis succeeded in murdering the great majority of Jews in Europe, a Jewish majority and state in Palestine might never be achieved.” (pp.8-9n15)
I trust I have made my point. I do not believe it is necessary for me to go further, but I cannot fail but to add one final quote from that book: “Of Course, the Nazis opposed a Jewish state, in any form, in any part of Palestine or anywhere else in the world.” (P. 197)
In all likelihood, despite his claim, Greenstein has not read Nicosia’s latest book, but if he had, it is simply another example of one Greenstein’s lies, in this instance, about its contents.
Despite the fact that Greenstein contends that the Nazis thought the Zionists were “good” Jews, here is what Hitler thought about Zionists: "For while the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks." [52]
Adolf Hitler delivered his first major speech on the Jewish question on August 1920, stating: “the whole notion of the Zionist state and its establishment is nothing more than a comedy.” The following year Alfred Rosenberg, who influenced Hitler, published an essay with the title "Zionism Hostile to the State” which called Zionism “the powerless effort of an incapable people to engage in productive activity… a means for ambitious speculators to establish a new area for receiving usurious interests on a global scale.” This was reissued by the main Nazi publishing house in 1938. A year after that the Nazi Propaganda Ministry distributed a book with the title
Palestine: Jewish State? which exposed “the real line of Jewish politics, namely the striving for a new, perhaps decisive base for Jewish world power” in a Jewish state. They also issued a book entitled
The English, Jews and Arabs in Palestine, warning that the Zionist goal in Palestine was the “establishment of a Vatican of world Jewry. A firm base is to be built, on which, in later years, Jewish world policy can rest.” During the war the Nazis published a book protesting “the exploitation of the Arabs by the Jews” and “the clear bond between the English government and the Zionists.” The Nazis were aware that Weizmann was aligning himself with the British and as such they saw an “English-Jewish alliance” against Germany. [53]
The German Foreign Minister and leading Nazi, Joachim von Ribbentrop sent a letter to the Arab leader, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1942 where he had said “Germany is …ready to give all her support …for the destruction of the Jewish National Home in Palestine.” [54] Far From being Zionist, the Nazis were anti-Zionist. Below is the full text of a letter sent in 1943 from Heinrich Himmler to the Grand Mufti:
“To the Grand Mufti: The National Socialist Movement of Greater Germany has, since its beginning, inscribed upon its flag the fight against world Jewry. It has, therefore, followed with particular sympathy the struggle of the freedom-loving Arabians, especially in Palestine, against the Jewish interlopers. It is in the recognition of this enemy and of the common struggle against him that lies the firm foundation of the natural alliance that exists between National-Socialist-Greater Germany and the freedom-loving Muslims of the whole world. In this spirit I am sending you on the anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration my hearty greetings and wishes for the successful pursuit of your struggle until the certain final victory.”[55]
And so on and so on. As Jeffrey Herf makes perfectly clear, for the Nazis, there was a convergence between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. [56]
Mikey
Endnotes
[1] Ben Hecht,
A Jew in Love (Fortune Press, n.d.) p. 5
[2] Ben Hecht
Perfidy (Milah Press/Gefen Books, 1999) p. 2
[3] “Ben Hecht’s
Perfidy: An Analysis of His Rewriting of History,” (The American Section of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, 1962) and reproduced on line at http://www.paulbogdanor.com/hecht.html
[4] Chaim Lieberman,
The Man and His “Perfidy”: A Rejoinder to Ben Hecht’s Vitriolic Attack Upon the Government and Leaders of Israel (Bloch Publishing, 1964) pp. 99-101
[5] Homer Bigart, “A Matter of Personalities”
New York Times Book Review January 28, 1962 P. 20
[6] Lucy S. Dawidowicz, “Ben Hecht’s ‘Perfidy’”
Commentary, Vol. 33. No. 3 (March 1962) pp. 260-264
[7] Marie Syrkin, “Perfidy and Stale Venom,”
Jewish Frontier January 1962 pp. 13-17
[8] Shlomo Katz, “Ben Hecht’s Kampf,”
Midstream Winter 1962 pp. 92-101
[9] “The Strange Case of Yoel Brandt: As told in Jerusalem District Court,”
Jewish Observer and Middle East Review April 9, 1954 pp. 3-4
[10] “’Blood For Goods’ Trial: The Drama of Kastner and Brandt,”
Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, June 18, 1954 pp. 11-12
[11] . Randolph L. Braham
The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (Columbia University Press, Revised and Enlarged edition 1994), Vol. 2. pp. 1,070-1,071
[12] Ibid. Vol. 1 pp. 108-109
[13] Anne Sofer, “The South Bank shows its bias,”
The Times October 1, 1984 p. 12
[14] Tim Jones, “Iraqi role in clashes questioned,”
The Times July 28, 1983 p. 3
[15] “BAZO Leader to Appeal,”
Jewish Chronicle, August 24, 1979
[16] “Little Southern Comfort,”
Jewish Chronicle, March 23, 1979
[17] “Stuermer’ British style,”
Jewish Chronicle, April 3, 1981
[18] Jenni Frazer, “UJS Learns to Push and Pull,”
Jewish Chronicle, January 2, 1981
[19] “Students Ban BAZO,”
Jewish Chronicle, April 10, 1981. The diary of Anne Frank was questioned by Alfred Lilienthal is his book,
The Zionist Connection II: What Price Peace (North American Inc, 1982). The pages references are P. 481 and P. 849n71 The known Holocaust Denier that Lilienthal gave support to was Robert Faurisson. In 1980 Lilienthal had was one of the first signatories to a petition supporting him. Source: Werner Cohn “Chomsky and Holocaust Denial” in Peter Hollier and David Horowitz eds.
The Anti-Chomsky Reader (Encounter Books, 2004) P 125 and P. 154n17
[20] Tony Greenstein “Antisemitism Through the Looking Glass: The UJS Thought Police,”
RETURN No. 3 June 1990 pp. 21-25
[21] Ibid.
[22] “Students ban BAZO,”
Jewish Chronicle April 10, 1981
[23] “Letters,”
Jewish Chronicle, July 24, 1981.
[24] Simon Rocker “Phillips waves the flag,”
Jewish Chronicle December 26 1986
[25] See Unsigned Editorial, “NUS Attack on Freedom of Speech,”
RETURN, No. 2, March 1990, pp. 4-5; Unsigned Editorial, “More Hypocrisy,”
RETURN, No. 4, September 1990.
[26] Editorial, “Lies, Damn Lies and the UJS,”
RETURN, No. 3, June 1990; Tony Greenstein, “The Fossilisation of Identity,”
RETURN, No. 4, September, 1990.
[27] Philip Drax, “Book Review,”
Sussex Front January 1983 p. 9
[28] “Letters,”
The Observer, February 6, 2000
[29] Jamie Doward, “Muslim leader sent funds to Irving,”
The Observer November 19, 2006
[30] http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/3047/1/
[31] http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/08/22/ucu-and-the-david-duke-fan/
[32] http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/09/witch-hunt-of-jenna-delich-pro-boycott.html
[33] http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/01/gilad-atzmon-now-open-holocaust-denier.html
[34] http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/tony%27semail.htm
[35] http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/comment.php?id=934
[36]Abraham Ascher and Guenter Lewy, “National Bolshevism in Weimer Germany: Alliance of Political Extremes Against Democracy,”
Social Research 23:1/4 (1956) p. 468
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid. pp. 477-478
[39] Conan Fischer, “Class Enemies or Class Brothers? Communist Nazi Relations in Germany 1929-33,”
European History Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 3, July 1985 p. 271
[40] Robert C. Tucker, “The Emergence of Stalin’s Foreign Policy,”
Slavic Review Vol. 36. No. 4. (December 1977) p.584
[41] George Watson, “The Eye-Opener of 1939 or How the World Saw the Nazi-Soviet Pact,”
History Today Vol 54. No. 8. August 2004, pp. 48-53
[42] Edward Alexander,
Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew (Indiana University Press, 1998) p. 13
[43] Matthew Taylor, “BNP seeks to bury antisemitism and gain Jewish votes in Islamophobic campaign,”
The Guardian April 10, 2008 p. 17 available on line at http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/10/thefarright.race
[44] Shoshana Barri (Ishoni), “The Question of Kasztner’s Testimonies on behalf of Nazi War Criminals,”
The Journal of Israeli History, Vol 18, nos. 2 and 3 1997 pp. 139-165.
[45]
The full text of the email from Greenstein to Atzmon was as follows:
“Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 9:52 PM
Subject: Re: Gilad Atzmon @ The Vortex for 3 Nights
“I shall be more than happy to hear you play the sax! Was going to drop you a line re your spat with Shamir. He referred you to Beit Zvi's book and argued that the Zionists couldn't foresee the Holocaust. He is wrong on that. Both Ben Gurion and Weizmann did exactly that, with Weizmann at the 20th Zionist Congress in 1937 saying, as you may be aware, that the old and feeble will pass, 'economic and moral dust' if my memory serves right.
“Dare I say it, some of your remarks re the holocaust were spot on re the Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. And that is the point anti-Zionists should make rather than flirting with holocaust denial, or in Shamir's case being a full blooded exponent.
regards
Tony Greenstein”
http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/tony%27semail.htm
The actual speech by Weizmann that Greenstein was referring to in his email to Atzmon was the one Weizmann gave to the Zionist Congress in 1937. The part of the speech that Greenstein was referring to was quoted by Ben Hecht in
Perfidy pp. 19-20
“I told the British Royal Commission that the hopes of Europe’s six million Jews were centered on emigration. I was asked, ‘Can you bring the six million to Palestine?’ I replied, ‘No.’ … 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 a branch will survive.”
Both Hecht and Greenstein make the same mistake with this speech. As The American Section of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency make clear in text approved by Moshe Sharett who, during the period involved, was head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency and subsequently Israel’s first Minister of Foreign Affairs and later Prime Minister:
“The implication is that Weizmann, foreseeing the murder of Europe’s six million Jews, decided that they were expendable. If it were not self-evident that this was not the case, it could be easily proved by a further passage in the same speech, so selectively quoted by Hecht, in which Weizmann expounds his plan of accelerating the rate of immigration to Palestine by some 150 percent, so as to make it possible for two million Jews to come to Palestine. Obviously, what Weizmann meant when he said ‘the old ones will pass,’ was that they would live out their lives in the places of their abode in Europe.” (The American Section of the Executive of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, “Ben Hecht’s
Perfidy: An Analysis of His Rewriting of History,” Op. Cit.)
[46] For examples of where it can be seen that Brenner’s work is discredited, see the following:
Louis Harap, “’Zionist-Nazi collaboration’ Refuted – Lenni Brenner’s Trickery Exposed,”
Jewish Currents May 1984 pp. 4-9, pp. 28-30 available on line at http://www.paulbogdanor.com/brenner/harap.pdf
C.C. Aronsfeld, “Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal,”
International Affairs Vol. 60. No.1 (Winter 1983-1984) pp. 138-139 available on line at http://www.paulbogdanor.com/brenner/aronsfeld.pdf
Bryan Cheyette, “Pathological anti-Zionism and the ‘revisionism’ of the left,”
Patterns of Prejudice Vol. 17 No. 3 (July 1983) pp. 49-51
Walter Laqueur, “The Anti-Zionism of Fools”
New Republic November 2, 1987 pp 33-39
[47] Randolph L. Braham
The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (Columbia University Press, Revised and Enlarged edition 1994), Vol. 2. pp. 1,071-1,072
[48] Moshe Arens, “ The Jewish Military Organisation (ZZW) in the Warsaw Ghetto,”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol 19. No. 2 (Fall 2005) pp. 201-225, Martin Gilbert The Holocaust – The Jewish Tragedy op. cit., P565, See also following on-line sites http://warsawghetto.epixtech.co.uk/HistVI.htm , http://warsawghetto.epixtech.co.uk/HistV.htm , http://warsawghetto.epixtech.co.uk/Anielwcz.htm , http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Anielevich.html
[49] Yechiam Weitz, “The Yishuv’s Response to the Destruction of European Jewry, 1942-1943,”
Studies in Zionism, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Autumn 1987) P. 216. Weitz cites
Davar October 5, 1942
[50] Yoav Gelber, “Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry, 1943-1944”
Studies in Zionism, Vol. 7 (Spring 1983) p. 141. Gelber quotes Y Tabenkin at the meeting of the Histradut Council on December 3, 1942 and the editorial (Hebrew) in
Zror Michtavim No. 135, April 30, 1943
[51] Yechiam Weitz, “The Yishuv’s Response to the Destruction of European Jewry, 1942-1943,” op.cit., P. 214
Weitz cites Yitzhak Laufbahn, “Defence Filled With Glory” (Hebrew)
Hapoel Hatzair March 25, 1943
[52] Jeffrey Herf,
Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 2006) p. 75
[53] Jeffrey Herf, “Convergence: The Classic Case: Nazi Germany, Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism during World War II,”
Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 25, No. 1 (March 2006) pp. 63-83
[54] Letter from Ribbentrop to Grand Mufti of Jerusalem April 28, 1942 quoted by,
A Backgrounder of the Nazi Activities in North Africa and the Middle East During the Era of the Holocaust; Including an Overview of the Arab World Leader, Amin Al-Hussein, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and his Connection with the Third Reich. (New York: International Sephardic leadership Council, April 2006) P. 20
[55] Message from Heinrich Himmler to an anti-Balfour Declaration meeting November, 2 1943 quoted by ibid. p. 22
[56] Jeffrey Herf, “Convergence: The Classic Case: Nazi Germany, Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism during World War II,”
Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 25, No. 1 (March 2006) pp. 63-83
Details of the Greening Latin America fringe can be found here: http://studentmedic.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/pre-conference-meeting-greening-latin-america/
I look forward to both!
Comment by studentmedic — 29 August, 2008 @ 10:51 am
On what grounds are either Simon Lynn or Tony Greenstein ideal candidates to speak about a Jewish perspective on anti-Zionism?
Imagine if the following event to take place was billed:
Racism: A British Perspective
Nick Griffin, British National Party
David Irving, Author
Reasonably minded people would say that neither Griffin nor Irving represented mainstream British views. They would be accurate. Likewise, for this event, neither Lynn nor Greenstein represent mainstream Jewish thought on the subject of anti-Zionism.
I do not know who Green Left are and nor do I care, what I do know is that by organising this meeting with such speakers they have acted in a shameful way.
Comment by Mikey — 29 August, 2008 @ 3:08 pm
Mikey,
I don’t think that anyone (least of all themsellves) would claim that Simon Lynn or Tony Greenstein represent mainstream Jewish opinion.
They do however represent a coherent tradition within the Jewish community that can be traced back a century or more.
And it is a tradition that many other people find interesting and useful.
To equate Lynn or Greenstein with NIck Griffin really is a shameful deceit on your part.
Comment by Andy Newman — 29 August, 2008 @ 3:49 pm
Mikey, I do not think that the meeting is intended to convey “mainstream views”, whatever they may be. (I think the secret lies in the ‘anti’ bit of the “anti-Zionism”.)
(Incidentally, I think you may well find Griffin and Irving speaking on “Racism: A British Perspective”. Although I doubt whether they use that title.)
Comment by Lobby Ludd — 29 August, 2008 @ 3:53 pm
“Reasonably minded people would say that neither Griffin nor Irving represented mainstream British views. They would be accurate. Likewise, for this event, neither Lynn nor Greenstein represent mainstream Jewish thought on the subject of anti-Zionism.”
Idiotic fucking HP Sauce scum. Typical behaviour one would expect from the trash and vermin that infest that shit hole. The real tragedy is that Socialist Unity are now not only apologists for these infectious human waste but also stand in “solidarity” with them. WTF? Just tell them to go fuck themselves and stop being so fucking soft!
Comment by Joepolitix — 29 August, 2008 @ 4:36 pm
@Joepolitix: please do not use this kind of fascist language (”trash”, “vermin”, “infectious human waste”) for labelling other human beings!
Comment by Entdinglichung — 29 August, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
I can heartily commend the following article by Tony Greenstein.
Please take time to read it as it is brilliant showcase for TG’s talents - it also happens to be a superb demolition of this psuedo-itellectual charlatan ‘Mikey’ (Mike Ezra) who supports racism, racist violence and violently racists regimes
ie he’s a zionist -
Zionist Collaboration in Hungary - Mike Ezra attempts to Defend the Indefensible
Anti-Zionists Against Anti-Semitism aka ‘azvas’
12 Jun 2008
all the best!
Comment by joe90 — 29 August, 2008 @ 6:21 pm
I did forget to say,
that atzmon employs Mikey here to dig up dirt on effective and prominent anti-zionist Palestinian solidarity campaigners such as Tony Greenstein, as well as menbers of the Yahoo messege group JustPeaceUK -
Search Results - Mike Eazra
JPUK
So when atzmon says he supports Palestinian solidarity and the like, he doesn’t.
He empoys anti-Palestinian zionists to attack and undermine Palestinian solidarity, here in the UK, and openly associates with anti-Hamas blogs such as ‘Harry’s Place’ and its contributers (for want of a better description of these open racists).
all 5the best SU!
Comment by joe90 — 29 August, 2008 @ 6:33 pm
The point Mikey is making, albeit in dramatic language and with unfair innuendo, is that you would not necessarily expect practitioners of anti-Zionism to be presenting the Jewish perspective session, in the same way you wouldn’t expect practitioners of racism to present the British perspective on it.
The session is perhaps misleadingly-titled; it might be better called “Jewish anti-Zionism” or something similar.
Comment by unseen — 29 August, 2008 @ 6:56 pm
Looks to me like Mikey tore Greenstein’s argument to pieces. Why do you think different Joe ?
Still been a bad week inspite of your efforts
Jerusalem Quartet will perform to full house in Edinburgh
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/08/28/jerusalem-quartet-will-perform-to-full-house-in-edinburgh/
All the best !
Comment by Bennett — 29 August, 2008 @ 7:03 pm
Jenna Delich links to David Duke’s website and Andy rightly condemns it.
However when his mate and occasional contributor to Socialist Unity John Wight links to a holocaust denial site and uses the language of far right traditional antisemites Andy denies Wight is an antisemite.
Andy , it’s good that you condemen Delich but you are in denial over Wight. You say this has been discussed before but that doesn’t make your defense of Wight the antisemite correct.
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1627
Hope you won’t delete this Andy.
Comment by Bennett — 29 August, 2008 @ 7:07 pm
Unseen “The session is perhaps misleadingly-titled; it might be better called “Jewish anti-Zionism” or something similar.”
Or perhaps just “anti-zionism”. Greenstein is a useful toekn Jew for the hardcore antizionist campaigners and he is simply used to Kosherize their campaign.
Comment by Bennett — 29 August, 2008 @ 7:11 pm
…that you would not necessarily expect practitioners of anti-Zionism to be presenting the Jewish perspective session…
- There are many arguments against zionism as it is currently practiced, one of the best being when Jewish anti-zionists stand out publicly against zionism and the crimes it perpetrates in the supposed name of Judaism and Jewish people everywhere.
So when Jewish people speak out aginst zionsim, people will see that zionism itself is carrying out crimes, not just against Palestinians for instance, but also againt Judiasm and Jewish people because it is obviously making false claims that its crimes are somehow representative of the wishes of Jewish people and are, therefore, Jewish crimes.
Also this way, when Jewish people criticise and oppose zionism then zionists can’t accuse their opponents of antisemitism.
Of course,
when the likes of Atzmon uses Palestine solidarity to pedddle his antisemitism, then accusations by zionists that Palestinians, and their friends, are antisemitic won’t be because they are trying to silence legitimate criticism of zionism, but will be answering their critics because it will be true.
On what grounds are either Simon Lynn or Tony Greenstein ideal candidates to speak about a Jewish perspective on anti-Zionism?
- On the grounds they are Jewish and anti-zionist.
Also, this is a democracy and people are perfectly entitled to make their views known to a wider public. You don’t have to listen to what they have to say nor are you being forced to.
If you have any objections to their views then feel free to present your own intellectual arguments against them.
I know, for instance, the likes of Mikey here doesn’t have any intellectual arguments, which is why he is stuck with the usual zionist ad hominum argument, as accusations of antisemitism can’t be deployed.
Comment by joe90 — 29 August, 2008 @ 7:29 pm
Comment 10 -
Looks to me like Mikey tore Greenstein’s argument to pieces. Why do you think different Joe ?
- How sweet!
One zionist supports the lies of another zionist regarding the mass-murder of 200,000 innocent defenceless Hungarian-Jewish people in WWII.
You don’t have to go to openly antisemitic websites such as David Dukes to come across lies about Nazi atrocities - just visit zionist blogs and websites.
From the Tony Greenstein blog article quoted above -
In April 1944 we handed to a high representrative of the Zionist movement, Dr Oskar Neumann, a 60 page detailed report on the fact that extermination of 1,760,000 Jews had taken place in Auschwitz…. Did the Judenrat (or the Judenverrat) in Hungary tell their Jews what was awaiting them? No, they remained silent and for this silence some of their leaders – for example Dr. R. Kasztner – bartered their own lives and the lives of 1684 other ‘prominent’ Jews directly from Eichmann…’.
Scratch a zionist and you’ll find an antisemite underneath.
Comment by joe90 — 29 August, 2008 @ 7:50 pm
” know, for instance, the likes of Mikey here doesn’t have any intellectual arguments, which is why he is stuck with the usual zionist ad hominum argument, as accusations of antisemitism can’t be deployed.”
Joe , bearing in mind your abusive comments you’re hardly one to accuse people of adhominem arguments.
Not you haven’t answered my question of why you see Greenstein as having demolished Mikey ?
Good to see you failed at Edinburgh. Perhaps if you put as much effort into helping Palestinains as you did in your obsessive and abusive antizionist posting then you might do something positive for once.
All the best !
Comment by Bennett — 29 August, 2008 @ 7:50 pm
Joe 90 “Scratch a zionist and you’ll find an antisemite underneath.”
Sicko.
Comment by Bennett — 29 August, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
Joe 90. In your case and in the case of SPSC you don’t even need to scratch.
What is it with the Scottish PSC and antisemites?
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1752
All the best folks !
Comment by Bennett — 29 August, 2008 @ 7:58 pm
Good idea; line up the Uncle Toms and all accusations of anti-Semitism will go away. As if.
Comment by Charles Dexter Ward — 29 August, 2008 @ 9:07 pm
Charles, I think people know full well that your false accusations of antisemitism won’t go away. Everyone is aware that you have no actual arguments to defend your racism, so throwing around crappy charges of antisemitism is all you have.
Comment by christian h. — 29 August, 2008 @ 9:27 pm
Mikey asks: “On what grounds are either Simon Lynn or Tony Greenstein ideal candidates to speak about a Jewish perspective on anti-Zionism?”
Well, like me, Tony spends far too long reading blogs so he will answer for himself. As a fellow editor of Jewish Socialist magazine I happen to know Simon doesn’t spend his time reading blogs, so I will answer for him.
Simon is a longstanding anti-zionist from a zionist family. He has been active in specifically Jewish left politics since the mid-80s, and has been involved with the magazine almost since the beginning - the mag has been running for 23 years)
He also has a fine record of activism in anti-racist, anti-deportation campaigns, anti-fascist campaigning (for which he had harassment from fascists) and as a trade union activist, especially in Hackney.
He has visited Israel/Palestine through his trade union work and written both about Palestinian struggle and the activities of the Israeli peace movement. So go and listen to him Mikey - you might learn something.
He’s also a longstanding campaigner on anti-nukes - so good Green credentials too.
And he’s a West Ham fan too and a true mentsh (good human being for the non-Yiddishists out there)!
To compare him with Griffin et al is really beneath contempt and disappointing, even for you, Mikey
Unfortunately I can’t be at the meeting but hope it goes well and gets a better and more intellectually stimulating discussion going than on this thread so far!
Comment by David Rosenberg — 29 August, 2008 @ 11:27 pm
David,
I read a comment of yours that I thought was important in this debate,at Lenins Tomb.
You made the point that the left,or at least parts of it,changed its perspective on Israel in 1982 with the Lebanese invasion.
You then argued (paraphrasing here) that a part of the left, through accomodating anti semitism,alienated natural supporters.
Does the recent Delich debate back up your argument?
Comment by tim — 29 August, 2008 @ 11:35 pm
David. After the Jewish Socialist Group has been ignored by 99.9% of Jewish socialists i guess it’s nice to have an audience that respects your views. It’s a shame because there used to be some good articles in Jewish Socialist. There may still be , but i stopped reading it after the disgusting treatment Steve Cohen received a couple of years ago when he submitted an article critical of people who supported Hizbolla. The abusive emails he received from Charlie Pottins were a disgrace. As you know Steve Cohen has been an activist for many years. Luckily he now understands the problem of antisemitism. It’s a disgrace how your magazine treated him. JSG always talks about being abused by zionists and yet you turn on one of your own in a vile hostile way. I mentioned this before and you claimed not to know about it. Ask Charlie.
Comment by Bennett — 29 August, 2008 @ 11:39 pm
Tim “You made the point that the left,or at least parts of it,changed its perspective on Israel in 1982 with the Lebanese invasion.
You then argued (paraphrasing here) that a part of the left, through accomodating anti semitism,alienated natural supporters.”
Tim , one person who did start to take antisemitism on the left seriously was Steve Cohen. Steve started writing a book from a Marxist perspective on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. He used far left newspapers and articles for research. However what he found shocked him. While still disgusted by the Israeli invasion he also became disgusted by the way that sections of the far left were using antisemitic themes that belonged to conventional non left antisemites. Amazingly Jewish Socialist Group refused to publish it (they didn’t take antisemitism on the left seriously enough) and it was published by a collective.
You can read it here : http://www.engageonline.org.uk/ressources/funny/
Comment by Bennett — 29 August, 2008 @ 11:45 pm
Steve Cohen was way ahead of this stuff.
Threee years after the Lebanon invasion he spotted what a part of the left would become he.
David Rosenbergs contribution reflected that.
Sadly, the reflex action of those parts of the left that Cohen,and now Rosenberg,clearly saw has raised its head again over Delich.
To his credit Andy Newman has been unbending in his stubborness on this.Apologists for anti semitism generally get given a hard time in Swindon.
Comment by tim — 30 August, 2008 @ 12:13 am
Joe90 wrote:
“The mass-murder of 200,000 innocent defenceless Hungarian-Jewish people in WWII.”
Actually it was 500,000. Joe90 diminishes the Holocaust in Hungary by 60%.
“Did the Judenrat… tell their Jews what was awaiting them? No, they remained silent and for this silence some of their leaders - for example Dr. R. Kasztner - bartered their own lives…”
Kasztner was never on the Judenrat, which was run by anti-Zionists.
Playing down the Holocaust and repeating lies about famous Jews: hardly a good way for joe90 to disprove charges of anti-Semitism!
Comment by Correction — 30 August, 2008 @ 12:36 am
and on and on and on and on and on and on and on it goes…is there some sort of weapon that could put all these half wits out of their misery?
Maybe the looming war between Russia and America might sort it out. I doubt it. Even in the post-nuclear wasteland everyone here will be going ‘we’ll I told you so’ or…’I said yakkety yak on a blog…’ ‘…well you said…’ ‘oh! what a snidey remark’
…..looming global war; credit crunch…oh, dear; ye that have not read (and understood) your Marx and Engels are in for a real f*cking shock.
..the only good thing that’s coming is the return of the working class. And when that class speaks….well, hopefully, most of the pratts here will stop their squeaking….actually; you will have to…good night!
Comment by RC — 30 August, 2008 @ 12:46 am
re 21: the point I made on lenin’s tomb that you referred to was this:
“Particularly since the Lebanon War of 82, support for Zionism has been in decline in many diaspora communities including Britain, but fear of antisemitism and a sense that the left doesn’t take it very seriously has helped keep a lid on this rebellion to some extent.”
On this blog I mainly see people on the left taking it seriously. But this not necessarily generalised on the left. And as most people know, but evidently not Bennett, the Jewish Socialists’ Group has a good record of taking it up antisemitism when it is expresed by people of the right or the left, eg when Tam Dalyell goes on about jewish cabals or Atzmon comes up with his tripe etc.
My view on the Delich case was that even if she really didn’t know about the person behind the site, she should have recognised the antisemitic arguments. And some comments I’ve seen seem a little to understanding of her ignorance of these. The justified anti-zionist cause is not helped at all by borrowing antisemitic arguments. Palestinians need friends but antisemitism is no friend to them -quite the opposite.
Bennett seems to think the only Jewish Socialist in the world ever to confront antisemitism from leftists is Steve Cohen and is still peddling some rubbish about Steve Cohen and the magazine. This is bollox, of course.
BTW Steve has never had any issue with the magazine and has written for it many times. He had a heated issue with Charlie P about an internal JSG paper and unfortunately went outside the JSG to seek support over an internal matter.
But it was resolved (only Bennet seems to want to prolong it) and, after that was resolved, Steve continued to write for the magazine. What the internal stuff from the JSG has to do with Bennett I don’t know, but he just seems to like to stir.
He seems also to conflate this with a decision by the JSG 20 years ago or more not to publish a book by Steve Cohen (which many years later Steve put on the Engage website though with a new and unfortunately dishonest introduction). The content of the book covered an area the JSG has always been very much engaged in, but we didn’t share it’s analysis enough to agree to it being an official JSG publication. That was a democratic decision by the JSG committee at the time.
That decision didn’t stop the book coming out by other means nor did it prevent the JSG from continuing its work with its analysis over such matters.
One thing Bennett might ask Steve is: who actually supplied him with examples of antisemitism on the left when he was writing his book. It wasn’t mainly his own research. The answer might surprise him - it was other JSG members largely.
Comment by David Rosenberg — 30 August, 2008 @ 1:09 am
David. It was not an internal JSG paper but a piece for the magazine. Charlie did eventualy apologise to Steve but only after he received complaints from people. People were disgusted.
Can you tell me why JSG refused to publish “It’s Funny , You Don’t Look Antisemitc” ?
And David , you know that there was a split in JSG on whether to publish Steve’s book. I might be wrong but weren’t you in favour of publishing it ?
Comment by Bennett — 30 August, 2008 @ 1:21 am
Going over old and very old JSG history is boring for me, so god knows how boring it is for others reading this…but in the interests of historical accuracy:
Jewish Socialist magazine has an editorial collective of 6 people. No single editor can accept/reject articles. We make collective decisions. Like all serious mags we accept good pieces but reject inferior pieces. Most, but not all the pieces Steve C has submitted over the years have been accepted.the item by Steve you are going on and on about was NOT submitted to the magazine collective. It had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MAGAZINE.
And even if Steve would have submitted that piece to the mag, (which he didn’t, whatever it’s merits, we would not have wanted to print something that was freely available already on the web, (on the Engage Website).
Bennett, if you want to continue to waste people’s time by telling lies about it, I can’t stop you, but as someone who has been an editor of JS since its inception all I can say to anyone else who can be bothered to read this tiresome discussion, is that I think those who are on the mag collective (ie me) know more about this than someone who isn’t (ie you).
Charlie is one of the magazine editors but cannot make individual decisions relating to the magazine.
Charlie also edits an internal bulletin of the group. For that he has editorial responsibility to publish/not publish. That’s what this matter was about. it got heated and was then resolved.
Steve continued to be a member of the JSG and to submit other stuff for JS that has been published, for example a piece on white slavery around the turn of the 20th century in Issue 53, Spring 2007 - well after the incident Bennett is still obsessed with.
Going a bit further back to the early 1980s, yes the JSG decided after a long drawn out debate, not to publish Steve’s book as an official JSG publication, representing the JSG’s analysis of left wing antisemitism (see comment 27). I was initially more favourable to publishing it, but was eventually convinced to support the majority concensus of the committee against publication. Nobody left the committee because thy were in a minority. Possibly 2 or 3 members close to Steve in the wider group were disppointed and left.
Every year we have new membrs and some members who don’t rejoin. The only significant split the JSG had in its 34 year history occurred two or three years before that. It was over three issues - inner party democracy, attitudes to the Jewish establishment over how to campaign over antisemitism (some founding members had gone soft on the establishment’s cautious approach) and attitudes to the Israel/Palestine conflict and the PLO.
In that split Steve was on the same side as me, the same side as the overwhelming majority of the group. The members who split formed a group called Jewish Socialist Action which folded soon afterwards. I’ve got other bits of my life to get on with now, rather than continue the fight for a better past…
Comment by David Rosenberg — 30 August, 2008 @ 9:23 am
David , the reason i’ve brought it up is to show that inspite of the JSG’s claims to being intimidated by the Jewish establishment the JSG is hardly innocent itself.
Comment by Bennett — 30 August, 2008 @ 9:39 am
“I’ve got other bits of my life to get on with now, rather than continue the fight for a better past…”
Said The Bundist !
Comment by Bennett — 30 August, 2008 @ 9:42 am
joe90 (post # 7) accuses me of being an “psuedo-itellectual [sic] charlatan,” and of supporting “violently racists [sic] regimes.” Before joe90 criticises other for their views, he should learn both how to spell and the correct use of plurals in the English language. As joe 90 has not mastered the English language, he should certainly not Latin phrases that have become part of our language, something he did in post #13 where he wrote “ad hominum [sic].”
Far worse than this is joe90’s comments in post #14. The person under the name of “correction” in post #25 is accurate in his observations. By joe90 playing down the amount of innocent Jewish deaths in Hungary from approximately 500,000 to 200,000, he has acted as Holocaust minimiser.
joe90 has quoted the notoriously unreliable Tony Greenstein to imply that Rudolf Kasztner was a member of the Judenrat. This is clearly nonsense as not only was Kasztner not a member of the Judenrat, the majority of the Judenrat in Budapest was made up of those who were not Zionists. The quote from Greenstein also suggests that those on the train were all “prominent” Jews. This is simply not the case. Had either Greenstein or joe90 read, for example, Ladislaus Lob’s book Dealing With Satan: Rezso Kasztner’s Daring Rescue Mission, they would have seen an analysis of the passengers on the train and realised that by no means were all the passengers prominent. It never ceases to amaze me how Greenstein can distort so much about the Holocaust in such a short passage.
In this post, joe90 also accuse Zionist blogs of antisemitism. I should remind joe90 that it was Zionist bloggers who recently linked to the web site of a former Ku Klux Klan leader to make their point. (http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/08/22/ucu-and-the-david-duke-fan/)
I think it is quite clear: joe90 should go back to school and pay a bit more attention in English and history lessons.
Comment by Mikey — 30 August, 2008 @ 10:57 am
Error.
The relevant sentence in my above post should of course read “I should remind joe90 that it was not Zionist bloggers who recently linked to the web site of a former Ku Klux Klan leader to make their point.”
Comment by Mikey — 30 August, 2008 @ 10:59 am
Can this be right?
On what issue can Tony Greenstein speak for PSC?
Although a member of PSC, he doesn’t speak for PSC - certainly in relation to dealing with anti-semitism.
As he has called PSC anti-semetic, how can it be consistent for him to speak for PSC?
Comment by Stuart G — 30 August, 2008 @ 11:55 am
Brilliant,
Mikey shoots himself in the foot as usual.
Criticing others with regards to trivia about spelling and grammer in comments and then commits the same crime himself - you couldn’t make it up.
Zionists are antisemites Mikey - why else would they go around accusing Judaism and Jewish people everywhere of crimes they have never committed and object to?
I’m talking about the racist crimes committed by the current Israeli regime?
Most Jewish people don’t live in Israel, don’t take part in its phoney racist elections and (if opinion polls are believed) don’t agree with the policies of the Israeli government. Yet this violent racist regime and its zionist supporters claim Israeli crimes are committed for the benefit of Judaism and Jewish people everywhere.
Indeed, crazed zionist lunatics go further and describe the zionist entity of Israel as ‘the Jewish state’.
Isn’t this what the old nazis used to do, for instance - accuse Jewish people, and Judaism, of crimes they didn’t commit and hold them all collectively responsible?
And thanks for the correction Mikey,
less than 2,000 zionists saved at the cost of a mere 500,000 innocent defenceless Jewish-Hungarians during WWII. Zionist crimes get worse.
Trouble with you Mikley is, you don’t know when to shut up. At least David t only pretends he’s thick and stupid, you actually are.
On what issue can Tony Greenstein speak for PSC?
- As far as I’m aware, TG doesn’t.
Palestinian solidarity doesn’t necessarily refer to the organisation of the PSM.
It’s just a shorthand generic way of describing the multi-various manifestations of people and organisations devoted to peace and justice for everyone in former Mandate Palestine, but especially for Palestinians.
Palestinians happen to be the priority because they are the victims of a violently racist regime at the moment, as well as crazed racist bogs such as ‘Harry Place’.
Comment by joe90 — 30 August, 2008 @ 6:09 pm
Comment 10 -
Jerusalem Quartet will perform to full house in Edinburgh
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/08/28/jerusalem-quartet-will-perform-to-full-house-in-edinburgh/
Here’s the latest from the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Please notice the beer-keller bully-boy tactics inside the hall -
1. Five arrested at Scottish protest of visit by Israeli military musicians,
the Jerusalem Quartet to Edinburgh International Festival:
Five protestors were arrested at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall today and charged with disrupting the performance of the Israeli Jerusalem Quartet, musicians, who enjoy a double status as ‘Cultural Ambassadors of Israel’ as well as ‘Distinguished IDF Musicians’.
While the siege of Gaza continues, Israel should not be allowed to conduct ‘business as normal’ and musicians associated with the murderous Israeli Army, its state, or its illegal occupation should be denied any platform.
About a dozen music-lovers returned their tickets at the gates after realizing the concert was a means for Israel to legitimise its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Gratifyingly, a further small but significant number of the audience left and expressed their support, one couple thanking the demonstrators inside and out ‘for awakening our consciences’. One music-lover who had complained about the harsh ejection of a demonstrator from the hall was told to leave as well!
Earlier this week, local Jewish writer and journalist, Marion Woolfson had written to festival organisers asking that they rescind their invitation to “the representatives of a country that practices ethnic cleansing and a form of apartheid which even those who have lived in South Africa have said is worse than anything thought up by the former rulers of their country.”
Police prevented protesters outside the venue from setting up a simulated checkpoint. Graham McVitie, spokesman for the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign that organised the protest said that the checkpoint was designed to mimic one of around 600 Israeli controls scattered throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories: “These checkpoints are designed to restrict movement within Palestine and strangle its economy.”
Mick Napier, Chair of the Scottish PSC, said: ‘Everyone loves music, but Israel’s mountain of crimes against the Palestinians weighs more in the scales than some Scots enjoying a piece of music, or a cricket game, or a film, indifferent to the crimes their government supports. People stopped games by the old South Africa’s apartheid sports teams; we can do no less with the cultural ambassadors of Israel’s apartheid and ethnic cleansing.’
Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
The ethnic cleansing of zionists continues!
all the best!
Comment by joe90 — 30 August, 2008 @ 7:03 pm
My apologies for repition,
but here is the relevent SPSC webpage regarding ethic cleansers trying to infect the world’s biggest arts festival with their racist plague bacilli -
What they say: ‘A rifle in one hand and a violin in the other is the ultimate Zionist statement.’
SPSC
last update 29 Aug 2008
The ethnic cleansing of zionists continues!
all the best!
Comment by joe90 — 30 August, 2008 @ 7:40 pm
Joe 90 writes:
“less than 2,000 zionists saved at the cost of a mere 500,000 innocent defenceless Jewish-Hungarians during WWII. Zionist crimes get worse.”
Joe90 lowered the Holocaust in Hungary from 500,000 to 200,000.
That’s no different from lowering the Holocaust in Europe from 6 million to 2.4 million.
First joe90 plays down the Holocaust. When that doesn’t work he calls it a Zionist crime.
I’m sure the Jewish community is really grateful to joe90 for playing down the Holocaust and blaming Zionists for it.
Thank goodness joe90 is here to fight vicious racists who deny the Holocaust and use “Zionists” as a code word for Jews.
Comment by Correction — 31 August, 2008 @ 1:51 am
I’ve only just come across this now, though for reasons I won’t explain it’s a good job I did.
As a matter of fact about 450,000 Jews were exterminated in Hungary. Those who survived, about 200,000, were those in Budapest or the labour brigades. But yes there’s no doubt that Rudolph Kaztner, the leader of Hungarian Zionism was a collaborator of the worst sort and it is no surprise that Mikey, who imitates him in his own way with his friendship with Gilad Atzmon, should defend Kasztner.
Kasztner was given the Auschwitz Protocols, exposing Auschwitz and all its works on April 29th by the Hungarian Judenrat or Judenverrat. He kept it quiet. Fortunately it was given to many others including the Vatican and Auschwitz and the deportation programme, no thanks to the Zionist movement, was soon exposed and on July 8th Horthy the Hungarian Regent, stopped the deportations. The Auschwitz Protocls had been drawn up from the testimony of 2 Jewish escapees, Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wexler, who had had an almost miraculous escape from that hell hole.
What did Kasztner do? According to Vrba in the Observer on 22.9.63., replying to an attack on Hanna Arendt by Zionist academic, Jacob Talmon, he described how:
‘In April 1944 we handed to a high representrative of the Zionist movement, Dr Oskar Neumann, a 60 page detailed report on the fact that extermination of 1,760,000 Jews had taken place in Auschwitz…. Did the Judenrat (or the Judenverrat) in Hungary tell their Jews what was awaiting them? No, they remained silent and for this silence some of their leaders – for example Dr. R. Kasztner – bartered their own lives and the lives of 1684 other ‘prominent’ Jews directly from Eichmann…’.
The facts are clear, but Mikey, as a pale imitator of a collaborator (see http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/06/zionist-collaboration-in-hungary-mike.html) fails to see it. The fact is that the whole train of Prominents was described as exactly that by Kasztner himself, in a 300+ page report to the Jewish Agency that I’ve read. AND NOT ONCE IN THE REPORT DOES HE MENTION THE AUSCHWITZ PROTOCOLS. Zionist historian, Randolph Braham in the Politics of Genocide - The Holocaust in Hungary, describes this as ’self-serving’. Of course Prof. Loeb excuses Kasztner -he was on the train!
And the same Kasztner gave evidence in SUPPORT of at least 4 Nazi war criminals at Nuremburg - Lt. Col Becher, Kurt Wisliceny, responsible for the deportation of Slovakian Jewry who was hanged in Czechoslovakia after the war, Krumey, Eichmann’s henchman and SS Lt. General Hans Juttner. The fact that Mikey even tries to excuse this demonstrates just who is the anti-Semite. The fact that Kasztner was a member of the Zionist Rescue & Relief Committee rather than the Judenrat, which barely functioned till the Nazi’s refounded it, is neither here nor there. They both came from the same political well, except that the Judenrat were the elite of Hungarian Jewry (not anti-Zionist) whereas the Zionists were more petit-bourgeois!
As I’m not a member of the JSG I don’t wish to comment on things that I know little about. I have had many disagreements with them but I also have great respect for them and their record. Steve Cohen’s book ‘That’s Funny You Don’t Look anti-Semitic’ is one I profoundly disagree with, not least its criticism of me! I suspect Steve might have written things differently if he had written it a decade or so later. But I have a great respect for Steve because he is a genuine and dedicated anti-racist who I only met about 5 years ago in Oxford at a Barbed Wire Europe conference. I consider him a comrade and a friend and those who would use his writings to attack the JSG are despicable.
The fact is that until the Nazi holocaust, anti-Zionism was the majority political strand amongst European Jews gaining 17 of the 20 Jewish Council seats in Poland in 1938. As Isaac Deutscher noted, the anti-Semites shouted ‘jews go to Palestine’ and the Zionists agreed. Hitler wiped out the reserves of anti-Zionist Jewry in Poland and the Ukraine. The Zionists were more concerned about statehood than saving the remnant. All that is well documented.
Yes it is true that anti-Zionism is a minority now among Jews. But so what? The greatest Jews - Marx, Spinoza, Heine, Arendt etc. were pilloried in their time and still are by the middle class no marks such as Mikey. Those advocating resistance in the Jewish ghettoes were a minority, but they were still right!
It is no surprise that Mikey seeks to compare Simon Lynn and myself with Nick Griffin and David Irving. This is always the way with Zionist propagandists who are unable to address the argument and instead resort to libellous and defamatory attacks which have no basis in fact. However as Mikey is also aware, there is no more dedicated Zionist than Nick Griffin!!
As Ruth Smeed of the Board of Deputies expalained in the Guardian of April 10th 2008, ‘The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web - it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel’.
Brilliant analogy Mikey. Any others?
Tony Greenstein
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 1 September, 2008 @ 1:24 am
It becomes tiresome correcting Greenstein’s errors that he regularly makes on numerous matters concerning Zionism and especially about the Holocaust. It is quite clear that he is trying to make a political point and by doing so has no objecting to distorting the truth in a heinous way.
1. Joe90 initially claimed that 200,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in WWII. The person aptly named as “Correction” corrects this outrageous statement to a figure of 500,000. Now Greenstein lies and tells us “As a matter of fact about 450,000 Jews were exterminated in Hungary.” He should have listened to “Correction” who was basically accurate. In fact, as the Holocaust Encyclopedia tells us, “Under German occupation, just over 500,000 [Hungarian Jews] died from maltreatment or were murdered.” http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005458
2. Tony Greenstein claims that “about 200,000” Hungarian Jews survived the Holocaust. The actual figure was closer to 255,000. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005458
3. Tony Greenstein claims that “there’s no doubt” that Kasztner was “a collaborator of the worst sort.” This is a deliberate lie. Greenstein is well aware that the accusation that Kasztner was a collaborator reached the Supreme Court in Israel who ruled, “one cannot find moral defects in [Kastzner’s] behaviour, one cannot find any causation between it and the expediting of the deportation and the extermination and one cannot see it amounting to the degree of collaboration with the Nazis.” (Ben Hecht, Perfidy Jerusalem: Milah press, 1999 p. 275)
4. Tony Greenstein claims that I imitate Kasztner in my own way. This is nonsense, he has simply made it up.
5. Tony Greenstein claims that I am a friend of Gilad Atzmon. This is again a pathetic lie. Far from being a friend, I have attacked and ridiculed Atzmon on numerous occasions on the internet and it is there for anyone to verify. http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/05/08/jews-and-jew-haters-ii-from-cranks-to-clowns/
6. Tony Greenstein claims that Kastzner was given the Auschwitz Protocols on April 29. This is not known for certain. For more information of the uncertainties surrounding this, see Yehuda Bauer, “The ‘Protocol of Auschwitz,’” Yalkut Moroshet, No. 3, Winter 2005.
7. To suggest what Kastzner did with the Auschwitz Protocols, Greenstein relies upon Vrba, but Vrba was not in Hungary and as such would not have known. In any event, Vrba is notoriously unreliable. For example, even in the very short passage by Vrba that Greenstein quotes, Vrba makes a big error by suggesting that Kasztner was a member of the Hungarian Judenrat. Not only is this wrong, Greenstein knows it is wrong as he admits that Kasztner was not on the Judenrat later in his own post! One may well wonder why Greenstein relies upon the work of someone he knows to be unreliable?
8. Vrba also makes the error that Greenstein repeats that the train full of Jews that Kasztner managed to save from the Nazis were all “prominent.” This is nonsense, as an analysis of the passengers shows. An analysis of the occupations of passengers carried out Ann Pasternak Slater from the passenger list shows for example there to have been 40 workmen or labourers, 27 teachers, 25 tailors, 18 nurses, 12 gardeners, 3 shoe makers, 2 bakers, 2 cooks and the list goes on with 10 secretaries, 7 locksmiths, 7 mechanics, 7 hairdressers etc etc. (Ann Pasternak Slater, “Kasztner’s Ark” Areté 15 Autumn 2004, pp. 5-40
9. Greenstein claims that he has read kastzner’s report and goes on to say using capitals for greater emphasis: “NOT ONCE IN THE REPORT DOES HE [Kastzner] MENTION THE AUSCHWITZ PROTOCOLS.” This is a blatant lie. I direct Greenstein to section II:18 of the report where Kasztner clearly states:
“According to these reports, the SS was ready to repair and renovate the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz… one of the guards was overheard saying, ‘Soon we’ll eat good Hungarian salami,’ referring to the provisions the Jews took with them..”
10. Whilst it is true that Kasztner gave testimonies or evidence in support of certain Nazi criminals, he also gave evidence against others. Kasztner made other statements leading to the conviction of other Nazi War Criminals. For example Kasztner stated in his report that Eichmann was determined that not a single Jew should survive. For more information on these testimonies see Shoshana Barri (Ishoni), “The Question of Kasztner’s Testimonies on behalf of Nazi War Criminals,” The Journal of Israeli History, Vol 18, nos. 2 and 3 1997 pp. 139-165.
11. Greenstein makes the following disgusting statement: “Hitler wiped out the reserves of anti-Zionist Jewry in Poland and the Ukraine.” What Greenstein does not mention is that Hitler also wiped out Zionist Jews in Poland and Ukraine. It was not as if they got to the gates of Auschwitz and the Nazis said All Zionists to the left for safety and all anti-Zionists to the right for gas chambers. Maybe Greenstein simply does not care that Hitler killed Zionist Jews, after all Greenstein has admitted elsewhere he would not lose any sleep if thousands of Jews who work for AIPAC were vaporised.
12. Greenstein says that it is “well documented” that “Zionists were more concerned about statehood than saving the remnant.” The official view of the Zionist Jewish Agency in so far as Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany was defined the following month, in the January 19, 1939 edition of London’s Zionist Review, “Zionists are anxious to find any place under the sun which will afford Jewish refugees the prospect of escape.” (Quoted by S. Levenberg, Guardian “Letters,” January 29, 1987) To complete refute Greenstein’s argument, This is what Ben-Gurion stated very clearly in September 1943:
“We must do whatever is humanly possible, whatever a human being of flesh and blood is capable of doing, in order to render material assistance to those on the forefront of rescue, in order to save those who can still be saved, to delay the disaster to the extent that it can be delayed. We must do it now, to the best of our will and ability.” ( quoted by Tuvia Frieling, “Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust of European Jewry 1939-1945: A Stereotype Reexamined,” Yad Vashem Studies XVIII 1987 pp. 199-232)
13. I have no idea if Greenstein thinks that I, or the Zionists in the Holocaust were against advocating resistance in the ghettos. Unlike Greenstein, I remember the activities of Mordecai Anielewicz, an activist within the Zionist youth movement, Hashomer Hatzair and other Zionist youth including those active within the socialist Zionist Dror and religious Zionist Akiva youth movements who were part of the ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organisation) in the Warsaw Ghetto. Given Greenstein has admitted elsewhere that he used to be a member of Bnei Akiva (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/12510) he should know this.
14. The use of the David Irving and Nick Griffin analogy was to show that that they do not represent mainstream British Jews. In a similar way Greenstein does not represent mainstream Jewish views. The views he holds would be agreed with by a tiny tiny minority of Jews in the country. The talk at SOAS is billed as, “Anti-Zionism. A Jewish Perspective.” Not a single spokesperson from mainstream Jewish body is billed. I am in favour of freedom of speech and I am not against Greenstein exercising his right to it. The title of the talk is misleading. Tony Greenstein is a self declared Marxist and I am sure readers of this blog do not need me to remind them that Marx viewed religion to be an opiate of the masses. Marxists reject religion. The title of the speech might be better as “Anti-Zionism: An anti-Zionist perspective.” I can make a further observation and that is that this speech by Greenstein is being held on a Friday night and as such, no religious Jew would be able to attend. Does it show even the slightest sensitivity the concerns of the Jewish community in Britain when a talk is held offering a Jewish perspective on a Friday night by someone who has rejected the religion he claims to speaking from the perspective of! It is a farrago of nonsense.
Finally, on this point, given Greenstein makes so many errors about Zionism and Jewish history as can be seen in this response to his nonsense, if anyone takes him seriously and considers him some form of authority, they are seriously deluded.
15. Far from the BNP being Zionist as Greenstein alleges, as the Jewish Chronicle reported a few months ago, a senior BNP spokesman said that paper was the mouthpiece of a “clique of Zionist parasites and crooks.” http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11&SecId=11&AId=59132&ATypeId=1 In fact, the view of the organised Jewish community was elaborated by Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust in a letter to the Guardian on April 14, 2008 where he said that the message from the Jewish community was “whoever you vote for, use your vote to stop the BNP.”
Comment by Mikey — 1 September, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
joe90
I see you refer to Zionists as a “plague bacilli” and argue that they are “trying to infect the world.”
The language of Nazi propagandists is not lost on you either.
Comment by Mikey — 1 September, 2008 @ 5:07 pm
I see you refer to Zionists as a “plague bacilli” and argue that they are “trying to infect the world.”
The language of Nazi propagandists is not lost on you either.
- Says Mikey,
Especialy when its found such a welcoming warm home amongst you zionists who continue to spread lies about Jewish People and Judaism claiming they are responsible for decades of Israeli racist crimes.
Murkey in comment 32 -
- claims my figure of 200,000 Jewish-Hungary deaths is minimising the Holocaust -
Mikey in comment 40 -
- now admits my figure was actually was quite close to the mark of 255,000.
Comment by joe90 — 1 September, 2008 @ 10:44 pm
joe90 you are simply an idiot. You clearly do not understand the difference between the amount of Jews killed and the amount of Jews who survived. Learn how to read you complete fool.
Comment by Mikey — 1 September, 2008 @ 11:25 pm
Sorry I’m getting confused here,
How many Hungarian Jews did you zionists forget to tell what was about to happen to them at the hands of the Nazis, Murkey?
atzmon is never done attacking you zionists but that doesn’t stop zionists, like you, and antisemites, like him, collaborating -
- after all, it didn’t stop zionist collaboration with the their antisemite nazi pals.
I love your Point 3 - where you quote an Israeli court, of all institutions, of exonorating a fellow zionist of collaboration with the Nazis, and of also giving the collaborator Kastner a sparkling character reference as well!
Brilliant hasbara scholarship!
Comment by joe90 — 2 September, 2008 @ 12:00 am
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 to Eretz Yisrael [“Israel”], then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children but also the history of the people of Israel.
- David Ben Gurion,
Quoted in Lenni Brenner Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (Beckenham, Kent, 1983) p.149.
Try chapter 25 -
25. Hungary, the Crime within a Crime
…the view of the organised Jewish community was elaborated by Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust in a letter..
- Who voted these well known racist fear-mongers spokepersons for the ‘organised Jewish community’ Mikey?
Don’t tell me ‘Harry’s Place’ bog is representative of British Jewish opinion - that would be sad indeed.
Comment by joe90 — 2 September, 2008 @ 2:48 am
Regarding the BNP and zionism / Anti Semitism, one thing that is certain is that there will be plenty of real anti-semites in the Party, but with the focus of the Griffin leadership being Anti-Muslim, there has recently been a more pro Israel line from the leadership of the BNP at least.
There is a BNP Councillor, Patricia Richardson (nee Feldman) who is Jewish in Epping Forest.
Perhaps if people wish to attack other jewish people for their political opinions then she might be a more appropriate target than the Jewish Socialist Group or other Anti Zionist Jews.
Having said that we are getting the same arguments again and again from the same people and as usual it is becoming rather heated, insulting and unconstructive, nobody is changing their opinions just ranting and raving at each other.
Comment by Green Socialist — 2 September, 2008 @ 9:22 am
Well it was an excellent meeting tonight at SOAS. And Mikey and a couple of friends turned up, but although one of his friends had the courage to tackle me strangely Mikey was totally silent, fiddling with his mobile (or something anyway!). Although quite brave on the internet, Mikey is quite gutless at a public meeting clearly being afraid to tackle his opponents. He did the same at a Lenni Brenner meeting 18 months ago and when he tried to speak to Lenni afterwards was told to get lost because he’d badmouthed Lenni for not having gone to a university!! Elitism doesn’t die it just takes on the jaded colours of ‘left’ Zionism.
Apparently I disort the truth, so much so that it makes Mikey tired!
>>It becomes tiresome correcting Greenstein’s errors that he regularly makes on numerous matters concerning Zionism and especially about the Holocaust. It is quite clear that he is trying to make a political point and by doing so has no objecting to distorting the truth in a heinous way.
1. Mikey accuses me of ‘lying’ i.e. deliberately telling an untruth, because .5 million rather than .45 million Hungarian Jews died. But there are all sorts of people, Hilberg, Browning etc. who differ on figures because the truth is noone can know exactly how many died. But if Mikey wants to say that the Zionists betrayed 1/2 million rather than 450,000 I’m inclined to accept his word.
2. Yes I claimed that about 200,000 Hungarian Jews survived. Some 50,000 from the Labour Brigades and also those who fled, despite Zionist advice, over the Romanian border and about 150,000 in Budapest itself (where the Nyilas fascists killed about 50,000). Mikey being his usual dishonest, i.e. lying self, gives us a link to http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005458 to ‘prove’ that 255,000 survived. Well again this is, and has to be a matter of conjecture. But I went to the link. And guess what? Mad Mikey Ezra has lied again. Sure it mentions that 255,000 survived but the article also says that ‘About 190,000 of these were residents of Hungary in its 1920 borders.’ But maybe Mikey isn’t lying. Maybe it’s just ignorance. In fact the article says that 10,000 less Hungarian Jews than I estimated survived. The difference? Until 1944 Hungary had been a sanctuary for Jews who managed to escape from all over Europe - Austria and Slovakia in particular. It is widely accepted that the pre-war population of Hungary was about 700,000 so if .5 million died then 200,000 survived.
Of course this is all irrelevant because what matters is the fact that anyone was annihilated in the gas chambers. But when your whole political project depends on exploiting the holocaust to provide you with reparations, which you then deny to the intended recipients - the Jews who survived the Holocaust - then numbers are important. See http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999787.html ‘Just 10 of 66,000 Holocaust survivors’ heirs get assets back’ relating to the assets of holocaust victims held in Israel. Or try http://web.israelinsider.com/views/11331.htm or how about Yediot Aharanot on-line, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3488389,00.html entitled ‘Struggling Survivors - Holocaust survivors accuse State of stealing their welfare funds’. This is the real scandal that sycophants like Mikey try to defend.
3. Yes the trial of Kasztner reached the Israeli Supreme Court and 2 of the 5 judges found the arguments of Kasztner’s opponents quite persuasive, but the other 3 Judges found for the State. The arguments of Kastner’s lawyer, Attorney General Chaim Cohen were quite persuasive - ‘if you find Kastner guilty of collaboration then you find the founders of the State likewise guilty’ sums up the argumentation. In fact on one charge the Supreme Court did find the accusation of collaboration proved - Kastner had gone to the Nuremburg trial to exonerate his old friend, Waffen SS Col. Becher, which he did. In fact it later turned out that not only had he given testimony in favour of Becher, but he had also given testimony in favour of his Dieter Wisliceny, the butcher of Slovalian Jewry, who was hanged in Bratislava after the war and his deputy Krumey - another SS henchmen and Waffen SS General Hans Juttner. If Mikey doesn’t think this is collaboration, regardless of what the paid stooges of the Israeli Supreme Court say, then it just goes to show his mettle.
In fact we all, i.e. all socialists, know that courts are not neutral and in times danger to the state will act accordingly. But nonetheless the Israeli Supreme Court upheld all the findings of the Jeruslame District Court, which under Judge Benjamin Halevi had upheld all but one of the accusations of collaboration against Kastner. As Judge Goiten of the minority stated:
‘It is enough that he (Kastner’s accuser - Greenwald) has managed to convince the lower court, who fulfilled the task of jury and judge alike… However the facts which were revealed substantiate the findings of the lower court and prevent us as a court of appeal from interveneing. I should add also that the evidence that was brought and which is not argued against by anybody on the Kastner-Becher relations after the war and the collboration of kastner by rescuing Becher from the gallows do not coincide with viewing Kastner as a National Jewish Zionist personality; and conincide with the findings of the lower court - that the acts committed during the war were acts of collaboration with the Nazis.’ Judge Moshe Silberg was even more forthright:
‘We can sum up with these 3 facts:
A. That the Nazis didn’t want to have a great revolt - ‘Second Warsaw’…. [which Eichmann later confirmed in an interview]
B. That the most efficient means to paralyze the resistance wheel or the escape of a victim is to conceal from him the plot of the coming murder….
C. That he, Mastner, in order to carry out the rescue plan for the few prominents, fulfilled knowingly and without good faith the said desire of the Nazis, thus expediting the work of exterminating the masses.’
In fact Judge Goiten, although he believe and stated that Kastner was a collaborator, nonetheless voted for his acquittal on technical grounds essentially that since the Defendant, Malchiel Greenwald had not proved the truth of all his allegations, that Kastner had dressed up in SS uniform to visit Auschwitz and had personally benefitted from his collaboration, it would be artificial to split up the charges of libel. This was also the opoinion of Justice Olshan, President of the Court.
More importantly than Israeli judges, who have distinguished themselves by their support for the actions of the Israeli military in the occupation of the last 40 years or who endorsed the position of their fellow Judge Landau in accepting the use of ‘moderate physical’ pressure, i.e. torture by the Israeli military, was the fact that numerous witnesses who testified in the trial were themselves Hungarian holocaust survivors. They had no doubt about Kastner’s guilt. People like Levi Blum, from Kastner’s own birthplace of Cluj (Kolosvar).
4&5. Mikey denies he is good friends with Gilad Atzmon and a minor collaborator, thus his defence of Kastner. But he is caught on his own petard, to wit, when asked to dig up information on a fellow anti-Zionist comrade, Roland Rance, what does Mikey say to Atzmon? Piss off? Get lost? Do your own dirty work? This is what he actually wrote:
‘I have been very busy digging up stuff on Tony Greenstein - Roland Rance will have to wait for another day.
Mikey | 03.12.07 - 8:53 pm | #
‘Mikey, I hope you do not mind me saying that, but your contribution for the pls solidarity movement is priceless. It is crucial that we all know about the racist record of this Greenpiss, a man who was banned time after time for being a racist and an anti Semite!…
However, Good luck with Greenie and thanks for all the info you gave us about this low being.’
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/thecutter/117192641046077827/
However much Mikey wriggles he’s caught on the hook of his own words.
And we learn from David Taube that ‘Last week, Mikey invited me for a drink with Gilad Atzmon. Mikey’s thoughts on Gilad and his worldview follow, below….’ http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/03/19/gilad_atzmon_and_jewishness.php
I’ll spare people the gory details.
6. Yehuda Bauer is not reliable on when the Auschwitz Protocols, definitively revealing the existence of Auschwitz, were handed to Kastner, representative of the Zionists and the Jewish Agency in Hungary. According to Zionist and Yad Vashem historian, Yisrael Guttman, ‘Kasztner was given a copy of the report on 29 April 1944… but at that time he had already made a decision, together with other Jewish leaders, choosing not to disseminate the report in order not to harm the negotiations with the Nazis.’ Shoah Vezikaron, cited in Ruth Linn’s ‘Escaping Auschwitz – A Culture of Forgetting’ p.72. Incidentally even Bauer, dedicated Zionist historian though he is, makes the same estimation in his ‘Jews for Sale?’ pp. 156-7.
The reality is that, as even Guttman acknowledges, news of Auschwitz was suppressed in order that the Zionist and Jewish elite could escape whilst half a million were burnt and gassed. And Mikey considers this is not collaboration?
7. Rudolph Vrba, a member of the Auschwitz Underground, the 2nd/3rd Jewish escapees from Auschwitz, someone who received the highest medal for bravery when fighting in the Slovakian Uprising is unreliable. That is why all mention of Vrba was suppressed in Israel, why the Hungarian translation of the Protocols was hidden away at Yad Vashem and not catalogued separately, why Vrba was deliberately not invited (along with the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance, Marek Edelman). And why? Because these Jewish heroes were not Zionists, were not collaborators, unlike Kasztner and in his own, trivial way, Mikey.
The Hungarian Zionist Rescue & Relief Committee worked hand in hand with the Nazi appointed Judenrat. To most Hungarians it would have been indistinguishable. The Judenrat helped with the round up of Jews to the concentration areas, brickyards mainly, prior to deportation. The Rescue & Relief Committee likewise worked together, keeping the Jews in ignorance of their fate and thus ensuring they did not escape. It is a technical ‘mistake’ of no consequence. Vrba’s Report is credited with the saving of 200,000 Jews. Kasztner ‘saved’ 1,684 at the expense of half a million, yet Mikey considers his collaborator hero ‘reliable’.
8. The term ‘Prominents’ to describe the passengers of the Zionist train out of Hungary is that of Kasztner himself in his Report to his employers, the Jewish Agency. Some of the Zionists, being a petit-bourgeois movement were undoubtedly cooks, bakers and candlestick makers. That didn’t debar them from leadership since the big capitalists like the Manfred Weisses negotiated their own rescue via the aforesaid Kurt Becher.
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/06/zionist-collaboration-in-hungary-mike.html
9. Mikey claims that it is a blatant lie that ‘Kastzner does not mention the auschwitz Protocols.” Yes he paraphrases from the Report, but doesn’t mention the Report itself, viz. in its references to ‘Hungarian salami’ which was or should have been in the Auschwitz Protocols but which the Slovakian Zionist leaders omitted.
But let us see what the acknowledged historian of the Hungarian holocaust, Randolph Braham in the Politics of Genocide has to say:
‘Shortly after liberation, Kasztner brought out a detailed though self-serving report on the wartime activities of the Budapest Rescue Committee. In it, he provides both direct and indirect evidence that he and his colleagues on the Committee were fully aware of the draconic measures that had been adopted against the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. He is basically silent about their failure to inform Hungarian Jewry.’ p. 706. And Braham, who is himself a critical Zionist, asks a little further on:
‘Why were the Protocols not forwarded to these leaders of the world soon after they were completed on April 26? Why were the Hungarian Jewish masses not alerted about their content? What would have been the consequence had they been alerted before the deportations?… It is safe to assume that Krasznyansky’s recollection about Kasztner’s visit to Bratislava late in April 1944 and about his receiving a copy of the original German text there is correct…. Given the evidence that at the time of the German occupation of Hungary both Kasztner and the official leaders of Hungarian Jewry were awre of the Nazis’ extermination program, how can one explain their silence?’ pp. 718-9.
And this, of course, not Mikey’s pathological nitpicking, is the real question. Why were the Zionist leaders in Hungary, representatives of the Jewish Agency, silent? What did they hope to gain? The answer is all too obvious.
10. Mikey tells us that ‘Whilst it is true that Kasztner gave testimonies or evidence in support of certain Nazi criminals, he also gave evidence against others.’ Well that makes it ok then!! He alleges that Kasztner made other statements leading to the conviction of other Nazi War Criminals. Not so. Mikey argues that ‘Kasztner stated in his report that Eichmann was determined that not a single Jew should survive.’ Yes but Eichmann was not on trial at Nuremburg so this was a safe statement to make!! There is incidentally evidence that more than the 4 war criminals above, murderers of hundreds of thousands of Jews, were given supportive testimony by Kasztner e.g. Kettlitz, the purchasing agent for Becher. As Dr Robert Kempner, an American prosecutor at Nuremburg explained vs Kasztner:
‘Yes, I invited Kastner from Tel-Aviv to Nuremburg as a witness for the prosecution. Immediately after his arrival I regretted this invitation. Apart from the fact that he turned out to be a very expensive witness… a curious situation developed. We were, after all, the authorities of the prosecution. I consider it my duty to state explicitly that Kastner roamed the Nazi prison camp for Nazi Officers searching for those he could help by testimony or intervention on their behalf. In the end we were very glad when he left Nurenberg.’ Hansi and Joel Brand, Satan and the Soul, Tel Aviv 1960 p.107. cited by Akiva Orr ‘The Kastner Case, Jerusalem 1955’ pp. 97-8, Perdition – A Play in 2 Acts by Jim Allen.
11. Mad Mikey infers that I distinguish between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews who were exterminated. Nonsense of course, I merely point out that the Jews of Ukraine and Poland were in their overwhelming majority opponents of Zionism. That was certainly one reason why the Zionists leaders in the West felt little compunction in playing down, or on occasion denying that the Jews of Eastern Europe were being exterminated (see S Beit Zvi, Post Ugandan Zionist in the Crucible of the Holocaust). Mikey thinks there’s something wrong in saying I’d be happy if those who are responsibility for the murder organisation called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee were vaporised. Why? Their whole mission is supporting war crimes. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if the White House and its occupants were also wiped out or if the Christian Zionist movements were likewise obliterated. It has nothing to do with who is Jewish or non-Jewish. There is nothing morally wrong in wiping out organisations dedicated to murder – the only objection is that there will be other cretins to take their place.
12. Mikey quotes Zionist propagandist S. Levenberg to the effect that “Zionists are anxious to find any place under the sun which will afford Jewish refugees the prospect of escape.” Well of course they would say that! Mikey cites Ben Gurion’s public speech but his private letter as President to the Zionist Executive (17. 12. 38) makes their attitude to Jewish refugees quite explicit:
‘If the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and aid for the national museum on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail…. We are risking Zionism’s very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem.’ Y Elam, ‘Introduction to Zionist History’ Tel Aviv 1972 ppl25/6 cited in Machover/Offenburg Khamsin 6 see also ‘Ot, organ of the Youth cadre of the Israeli Labour Party, no 2 Winter 1967.
There are too many other quotations and incidents I could cite but the fact is that Ben Gurion, made one or 2 speeches during the war about the Holocaust and that was it. All Zionist activity had one aim – statehood. All else was secondary.
13. Mikey wonders whether I think that Zionists in the Holocaust ‘were against advocating resistance in the ghettos.’ and cites Mordecai Anielewicz, of Hashomer Hatzair and commander of ZOB, the Warsaw Ghetto Fighting Organisation. Mikey misunderstands. Zionism is a political movement which opposed fighting anti-Semitism. In Warsaw some of the worst collaborators and Gestapo agents were Zionists such as the Abraham Gancawajch, also of Hashomer Hatzair. But it isn’t a question of individuals but of politics. Many Zionists did resist, not because they were Zionists but despite that fact. But there is no recorded example, for example in Reuben Ainsztein’s ‘Jewish Resistance in Nazi Occupied Eastern Europe’ of outside help from the Zionist movement, the best organised political current in world Jewry, to the ghetto resistance. And Anielwicz himself expressed his regret over the “wasted time” undergoing Zionist educational work. [Gutmann p.143 citing Yitzhak Zuckerman and Counci1 of Kibbutz Hi Meuhad 4/1945.] He went on to say that “had the fate of the Jews in 1942 lain in the hands only of the political parties (Zionist - TG), the revolt would never have taken place.” Y. Guttman, ‘The Jews of Warsaw - 1939-1943, Ghetto Underground Revolt’, Harvester Press, 1982 p. 441 fn. 23
14. Mikey complains that I spoke on a Jewish perspective on anti-Zionist on a Friday night! The tradition of Jewish socialism and Marxism was always to reject the babble and mysticism of the rabbis. However I note that the silent Mikey was not prevented from attending!
15. Mikey claims that ‘Far from the BNP being Zionist… a senior BNP spokesman said that paper was the mouthpiece of a “clique of Zionist parasites and crooks.” Err yes. That’s exactly my point. The BNP manage to combine both anti-Semitism and Zionism. But come to think of it, so does Mikey.
Tony Greenstein
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 6 September, 2008 @ 4:52 am
The above post without a few typos!
TG
Well it was an excellent meeting held by Green Left at SOAS on the subject ‘Jewish Perspectives on anti-Zionism’. A couple of Zionists, including one ‘Mad’ Mikey Ezra and a couple of friends turned up, but although one of his friends had the courage to tackle me strangely Mikey, was totally silent, fiddling with his mobile (or something anyway!).
Although quite brave on the internet, Mikey is quite a coward at public meetings clearly being afraid to be shown up. He did the same at a Lenni Brenner meeting 18 months ago and when he tried to speak to Lenni afterwards was told to get lost because he’d badmouthed Lenni for not having gone to a university (whilst at the same time asking for help!). Elitism doesn’t die it just takes on the jaded colours of ‘left’ Zionism. However Mikey is on the periphery of the ‘Trotskyist’ Zionist group, Alliance for Workers Liberty in Britain which probably says something about that group.
I am accused of distorting the truth, well I shall leave it to others to judge!
1. Mikey accuses me of ‘lying’ i.e. deliberately telling an untruth, because .5 million rather than .45 million Hungarian Jews died. But historians of the Holocaust cannot be exact because numbers were never recorded, either of those murdered or of those who escaped. Hilberg believes 5.1 millions died, the figure quoted as if it were sacred by the Zionists is 6 million. The truth is noone can know exactly how many died. Indeed Mikey gives a good demonstration of why this only plays into the hands of the Holocaust deniers who are quite able to notice the different totals given by different historians and then use those discrepancies to ‘prove’ how the Holocaust never happened, because they can’t even get the numbers of those murdered right. In fact it is a totally irrelevant point, what matters is that anyone died in the gas chambers or on the steppes of Russia. But if Mikey wants to say that the Zionists betrayed half a million rather than 450,000 I’m inclined to accept his word.
2. Yes I claimed that about 200,000 Hungarian Jews survived. Some 50,000 from the Labour Brigades and also those who fled, despite Zionist advice, over the Romanian border and about 150,000 in Budapest itself (where the Nyilas fascists killed about 50,000). Mikey being his usual dishonest self, gives us a link to http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005458 to ‘prove’ that 255,000 survived. Well again this is, and has to be a matter of conjecture. But having gone to the link, guess what? Mikey Ezra has either lied again or can’t read or it’s a bit of both. Sure it mentions that 255,000 survived but the article also says that ‘About 190,000 of these were residents of Hungary in its 1920 borders.’ That is ten thousand less than I said survived of Hungary’s Jewish inhabitants! It would help if Mikey could read what he quotes! And the difference? Until 1944 Hungary had been a sanctuary for Jews who managed to escape from all over Europe – Austria, Bohemia and Moravia and Slovakia in particular. It is widely accepted that the pre-war Jewish population of Hungary was about 700,000 so if .5 million died then 200,000 survived.
Of course this is all irrelevant because what matters is the fact that anyone was annihilated in the gas chambers. But when your whole political project depends on exploiting the holocaust to provide you with reparations, which you then deny to the intended recipients - the Jews who survived the Holocaust - then numbers are important. See http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999787.html ‘Just 10 of 66,000 Holocaust survivors’ heirs get assets back’ relating to the assets of holocaust victims held in Israel. Or try http://web.israelinsider.com/views/11331.htm or how about Yediot Aharanot on-line, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3488389,00.html entitled ‘Struggling Survivors - Holocaust survivors accuse State of stealing their welfare funds’. This is the real scandal that sycophants like Mikey try to defend.
3. Yes the trial of Kasztner reached the Israeli Supreme Court and 2 of the 5 judges found the arguments of Kasztner’s opponents quite persuasive, but the other 3 Judges found for the State. The argument of Kastner’s lawyer, Attorney General Chaim Cohen was to the effect that ‘if you find Kastner guilty of collaboration then you find the founders of the State likewise guilty’. In fact on one charge the Supreme Court did find the accusation of collaboration proven - Kastner had gone to the Nuremburg trial to exonerate his old friend, Waffen SS Col. Becher, which he did. In fact it later turned out that not only had he given testimony in favour of Becher, but he had also given testimony in favour of his Dieter Wisliceny, the butcher of Slovakian Jewry, who was hanged in Bratislava after the war and his deputy Krumey - another SS henchmen and Waffen SS General Hans Juttner. If Mikey doesn’t think this is collaboration, regardless of what the placemen of the Israeli Supreme Court say, then it just goes to show that his loyalty to the institutions of the Zionist State are higher than his alleged concerns for the victims of the Holocaust.
In fact we all, i.e. all socialists, know that courts are not neutral and in times danger to the state will act accordingly. But nonetheless the Israeli Supreme Court upheld all the findings of the Jerusalem District Court, which in turn, under Judge Benjamin Halevi, had held that all but one of the accusations of collaboration against Kastner by Malchiel Greenwald were proved. As Judge Goiten stated:
‘It is enough that he (Kastner’s accuser - Greenwald) has managed to convince the lower court, who fulfilled the task of jury and judge alike… However the facts which were revealed substantiate the findings of the lower court and prevent us as a court of appeal from intervening. I should add also that the evidence that was brought and which is not argued against by anybody on the Kastner-Becher relations after the war and the collaboration of Kastner by rescuing Becher from the gallows do not coincide with viewing Kastner as a National Jewish Zionist personality; and coincide with the findings of the lower court - that the acts committed during the war were acts of collaboration with the Nazis.’
Judge Moshe Silberg was even more forthright:
‘We can sum up with these 3 facts:
A. That the Nazis didn’t want to have a great revolt - ‘Second Warsaw’…. [which Eichmann later confirmed in an interview]
B. That the most efficient means to paralyse the resistance wheel or the escape of a victim is to conceal from him the plot of the coming murder….
C. That he, Kastner, in order to carry out the rescue plan for the few prominents, fulfilled knowingly and without good faith the said desire of the Nazis, thus expediting the work of exterminating the masses.’
In fact Judge Goiten, although he believed and stated that Kastner was a collaborator, nonetheless voted for his acquittal on technical grounds essentially that since the Defendant, Malchiel Greenwald had not proved the truth of all his allegations, that Kastner had dressed up in SS uniform to visit Auschwitz and had financially benefited from his collaboration, it would be artificial to split up the charges of libel. This was also the opinion of Justice Olshan, President of the Court.
More importantly than Israeli judges, who have distinguished themselves by their support for the actions of the Israeli military in the occupation of the last 40 years or who endorsed the position of their fellow Judge Landau in accepting the use of ‘moderate physical’ pressure, i.e. torture by the Israeli military, who have accepted every human rights abuse against the Palestinians, systematic discrimination against Israeli Palestinians etc. was the fact that numerous witnesses who testified in the trial were themselves Hungarian holocaust survivors. They had no doubt about Kastner’s guilt. People like Levi Blum, from Kastner’s own birthplace of Cluj (Kolosvar). So when it comes to a choice between a collaborator and the Jewish survivors of the Hungarian holocaust Mikey chooses the former.
4&5. Mikey denies he is good friends with Gilad Atzmon and a minor collaborator. But he is caught on his own petard, to wit, when asked to dig up information on a fellow anti-Zionist comrade, Roland Rance, what does Mikey say to Atzmon? Piss off? Get lost? Do your own dirty work? This is what he actually wrote:
‘I have been very busy digging up stuff on Tony Greenstein - Roland Rance will have to wait for another day.
Mikey | 03.12.07 - 8:53 pm | #
‘Mikey, I hope you do not mind me saying that, but your contribution for the pls solidarity movement is priceless. It is crucial that we all know about the racist record of this Greenpiss, a man who was banned time after time for being a racist and an anti Semite!…
However, Good luck with Greenie and thanks for all the info you gave us about this low being.’
Gilad Atzmon | 03.04.07 - 10:46 am | #
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/thecutter/117192641046077827/
However much Mikey wriggles he’s caught on the hook of his own words.
And we learn from David Taube that ‘Last week, Mikey invited me for a drink with Gilad Atzmon. Mikey’s thoughts on Gilad and his worldview follow, below….’ http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2007/03/19/gilad_atzmon_and_jewishness.php
I’ll spare people the gory details.
6. Yehuda Bauer is not reliable on when the Auschwitz Protocols, definitively revealing the existence of Auschwitz, were handed to Kastner, representative of the Zionists and the Jewish Agency in Hungary. According to Zionist and Yad Vashem historian, Yisrael Guttman, ‘Kasztner was given a copy of the report on 29 April 1944… but at that time he had already made a decision, together with other Jewish leaders, choosing not to disseminate the report in order not to harm the negotiations with the Nazis.’ Shoah Vezikaron, cited in Ruth Linn’s ‘Escaping Auschwitz – A Culture of Forgetting’ p.72. Incidentally even Bauer, dedicated Zionist historian though he is, makes the same estimation in his ‘Jews for Sale?’ pp. 156-7.
The reality is that, as even Guttman acknowledges, news of Auschwitz was suppressed in order that the Zionist and Jewish elite could escape whilst half a million were burnt and gassed. And Mikey considers this is not collaboration? Perhaps he would enlighten us as to what he does consider collaboration?
7. Rudolph Vrba, a member of the Auschwitz Underground, who together with Alfred Wetzler, was the 2nd/3rd Jewish escapees from Auschwitz, someone who received the highest medal for bravery when fighting in the Slovakian Uprising against the Nazis, is apparently ‘unreliable’ – unlike Mikey. That is why all mention of Vrba was suppressed in Israel from high school holocaust texts, why Vrba and Wetzler were referred to as the 2 Jewish Slovak escapees rather than by name, why the Hungarian translation of the Protocols was hidden away at Yad Vashem and not catalogued separately, why Vrba was deliberately not invited (along with the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance, Marek Edelman) to testify at the Eichmann trial. And why? Because these Jewish heroes were not Zionists, were not collaborators, unlike Kasztner and in his own, trivial and pathetic way, Mikey.
The Hungarian Zionist Rescue & Relief Committee worked hand in hand with the Nazi appointed Judenrat. To most Hungarians it would have been indistinguishable. The Judenrat helped with the round up of Jews to the concentration areas, brickyards mainly, prior to deportation. The Rescue & Relief Committee likewise worked with them, ensuring that Jews were kept ignorant of their fate, and threatening the leaderships of those communities if they didn’t accept the central control of the Judenrat. It is a technical ‘mistake’ of no consequence. Vrba’s Report is credited with the saving of 200,000 Jews. Kasztner ‘saved’ 1,684 at the expense of half a million, yet Mikey considers his collaborator hero ‘reliable’.
8. The term ‘Prominents’ to describe the passengers of the Zionist train out of Hungary is that of Kasztner himself in his Report to his employers, the Jewish Agency. Some of the Zionists, being a petit-bourgeois movement were undoubtedly cooks, bakers, butchers and candlestick makers. We are talking about the political elite of Hungarian Jewry. That didn’t debar them from leadership since the big capitalists like the Manfred Weisses negotiated their own rescue via the aforesaid Kurt Becher.
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/06/zionist-collaboration-in-hungary-mike.html
9. Mikey claims that it is a blatant lie that ‘Kasztner does not mention the Auschwitz Protocols.” Yes he paraphrases from the Report, but doesn’t mention the Report itself, viz. in its references to ‘Hungarian salami’ which was or should have been in the Auschwitz Protocols but which the Slovakian Zionist leaders omitted.
But let us see what the acknowledged historian of the Hungarian holocaust, Randolph Braham in the Politics of Genocide has to say:
‘Shortly after liberation, Kasztner brought out a detailed though self-serving report on the wartime activities of the Budapest Rescue Committee. In it, he provides both direct and indirect evidence that he and his colleagues on the Committee were fully aware of the draconic measures that had been adopted against the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. He is basically silent about their failure to inform Hungarian Jewry.’ (my emphasis) p. 706. And Braham, who is himself a critical Zionist, asks a little further on:
‘Why were the Protocols not forwarded to these leaders of the world soon after they were completed on April 26? Why were the Hungarian Jewish masses not alerted about their content? What would have been the consequence had they been alerted before the deportations?… It is safe to assume that Krasznyansky’s recollection about Kasztner’s visit to Bratislava late in April 1944 and about his receiving a copy of the original German text there is correct…. Given the evidence that at the time of the German occupation of Hungary both Kasztner and the official leaders of Hungarian Jewry were aware of the Nazis’ extermination program, how can one explain their silence?’ pp. 718-9.
And this, of course, not Mikey’s pathological nitpicking, is the real question. Why were the Zionist leaders in Hungary, representatives of the Jewish Agency, silent? What did they hope to gain? The answer is all too obvious.
And let us also be clear. Whilst Kasztner was the big shot, the representative of the Jewish Agency, the Palestinian wing of the World Zionist Organisation, there were dissident Zionists, Moshe Krausz and Joel Brand, who desperately wanted to save their fellow Jews. Not because they were Zionists, if anything despite it. The reality is that Raoul Wallenberg and the other diplomats, including the Papal Nuncio, saved far more than the Zionists and they didn’t in the process help the Nazis in the destruction process.
10. Mikey tells us that ‘Whilst it is true that Kasztner gave testimonies or evidence in support of certain Nazi criminals, he also gave evidence against others.’ Well that makes it ok then!! He alleges that Kasztner made other statements leading to the conviction of other Nazi War Criminals. Not so. Mikey argues that ‘Kasztner stated in his report that Eichmann was determined that not a single Jew should survive.’ And so? Eichmann was not on trial at Nuremburg so this was a safe statement to make!! In fact it is not true because Eichmann was quite happy to help Kasztner ‘save’ a few Jews at the expense of the thousands. Kasztner was able to travel around Hungary, didn’t have to wear a yellow star and ended up sojourning in Berlin in a hotel. There is incidentally evidence that more than the 4 war criminals above, murderers of hundreds of thousands of Jews, were given supportive testimony by Kasztner e.g. Kettlitz, the purchasing agent for Becher. As Dr Robert Kempner, an American prosecutor at Nuremburg explained vs Kasztner:
‘Yes, I invited Kastner from Tel-Aviv to Nuremburg as a witness for the prosecution. Immediately after his arrival I regretted this invitation. Apart from the fact that he turned out to be a very expensive witness… a curious situation developed. We were, after all, the authorities of the prosecution. I consider it my duty to state explicitly that Kastner roamed the Nazi prison camp for Nazi Officers searching for those he could help by testimony or intervention on their behalf. In the end we were very glad when he left Nurenberg.’ Hansi and Joel Brand, Satan and the Soul, Tel Aviv 1960 p.107. cited by Akiva Orr ‘The Kastner Case, Jerusalem 1955’ pp. 97-8, Perdition – A Play in 2 Acts by Jim Allen.
11. Mikey infers that I distinguish between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews who were exterminated. Nonsense of course, I merely point out that the Jews of Ukraine and Poland were in their overwhelming majority opponents of Zionism. That was certainly one reason why the Zionists leaders in the West felt little compunction in playing down, or on occasion denying that the Jews of Eastern Europe were being exterminated (see S Beit Zvi, Post Ugandan Zionist in the Crucible of the Holocaust). Mikey thinks there’s something wrong in saying I’d be happy if those who are responsibility for the murder organisation called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee were vaporised. Why? Their whole mission is supporting, aiding and abetting war crimes. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if the White House and its occupants were also wiped out or if the Christian Zionist movements were likewise obliterated. It has nothing to do with who is Jewish or non-Jewish. You see Mikey, I’m not a racist. It isn’t only Jewish blood that is important. There is nothing morally wrong in wiping out organisations dedicated to murder – the only objection is that there will be other cretins to take their place.
12. Mikey quotes Zionist propagandist S. Levenberg to the effect that “Zionists are anxious to find any place under the sun which will afford Jewish refugees the prospect of escape.” Well of course they would say that! Mikey cites Ben Gurion’s public speech but such words are easy. But in his private letter, as President to the Zionist Executive, (17. 12. 38) he make his real attitude to Jewish refugees quite explicit:
‘If the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and aid for the national museum on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail…. We are risking Zionism’s very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem.’ Y Elam, ‘Introduction to Zionist History’ Tel Aviv 1972 ppl25/6 cited in Machover/Offenburg Khamsin 6 see also ‘Ot, organ of the Youth cadre of the Israeli Labour Party, no 2 Winter 1967.
There are too many other quotations and incidents I could cite but the fact is that Ben Gurion, made one or 2 speeches during the war about the Holocaust and that was it. All Zionist activity had one aim – statehood. All else was secondary.
13. Mikey wonders whether I think that Zionists in the Holocaust ‘were against advocating resistance in the ghettos.’ and cites Mordechai Anielewicz, of Hashomer Hatzair and commander of ZOB, the Warsaw Ghetto Fighting Organisation. Mikey misunderstands. Zionism is a political movement which opposed fighting anti-Semitism. In Warsaw some of the worst collaborators and Gestapo agents were Zionists such as the Abraham Gancawajch, also of Hashomer Hatzair. But it isn’t a question of individuals but of politics. Many Zionists did resist, not because they were Zionists but despite that fact. But there is no recorded example, for example in Reuben Ainsztein’s ‘Jewish Resistance in Nazi Occupied Eastern Europe’ of outside help from the Zionist movement, the best organised political current in world Jewry, to the ghetto resistance. Anielewicz himself expressed his regret over the “wasted time” undergoing Zionist educational work. [Gutmann p.143] He went on to say that “had the fate of the Jews in 1942 lain in the hands only of the political parties (Zionist - TG), the revolt would never have taken place.” Y. Guttman, ‘The Jews of Warsaw - 1939-1943, Ghetto Underground Revolt’, Harvester Press, 1982 p. 441 fn. 23. Likewise Emanuel Ringleblum, the historian of the Warsaw Ghetto, wrote of Anielewicz of Hashomer, the commander of the JFO:
The Mordechai who had matured so rapidly and risen so quickly to the most responsible post as commander of the Fighters Organisation now greatly regretted that his fellows and he had wasted three war years on cultural and educational work. We had not understood that new side of Hitler that is emerging, Mordechai lamented. We should have trained the youth in the use of live and cold ammunition. We should have raised them in the spirit of revenge against the greatest enemy of the Jews, of all mankind, and of all times. [Emmanuel Ringelblum, Comrade Mordechai in Yuri Suhl (ed.), They Fought Back, p.102], cited in Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Ch. 21.
14. Mikey complains that I spoke on a Jewish perspective on anti-Zionist on a Friday night! The tradition of Jewish socialism and Marxism was always to reject the babble and mysticism of the rabbis. However I note that the silent Mikey was not prevented from attending!
15. Mikey claims that ‘Far from the BNP being Zionist… a senior BNP spokesman said that paper was the mouthpiece of a “clique of Zionist parasites and crooks.” Err yes. That’s exactly my point. The BNP manage to combine both anti-Semitism and Zionism. But come to think of it, so does Mikey.
Tony Greenstein
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/09/kasztner-debating-with-zionist.html
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 6 September, 2008 @ 8:39 pm
Clueless Greenstein
I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Every time that Tony Greenstein decides to write something about Zionism or the Holocaust, he makes a mess of things. He really should not bother.
1. Greenstein shows that he does not know that the borders of Hungary changed as a result of the Treaty signed at Trianon Palace in Versailles in 1920. Otherwise he would not make his preposterous claim about the reasons for the differing population of Jews at the time. [1]
2. Greenstein states: “the pre-war Jewish population of Hungary was about 700,000.” Had he actually bothered to check, he would know that the last census in Hungary prior to the Holocaust showed 725,005 Jews. He would also be aware that a further 100,000 claimed to be Christian but were treated as Jews under the anti-Semitic laws passed after 1938. [2]
3. Greenstein links to an article that shows that Holocaust survivors have been slow to receive restitution funds. If he had read the article he would realise that the survivors are being championed by Members of the Israeli Knesset. [3]
4. Greenstein claims that Kasztner testified “in favour of Dieter Wisliceny.” This is a nonsense. Kasztner testified against Wisliceny in September 1945 and in July 1947 Kastzner appealed for Wisliceny to be transferred from Slovak to American custody for interrogation about Eichmann’s whereabouts. Greenstein also says that Kasztner testified in favour of Krumey. Had Greenstein bothered to read Kastzner’s 1946 report, he would know that Kastzner explained Krumey’s role in the destruction of Hungarian Jewry extensively. In December 1944 Kastzner could have stayed in Switzerland, but instead he risked his own life to travel back to the Reich. There were approximately 15,000 Jews in Vienna who had been sent from Hungary and Krumey was in charge of them. In the final months of the war Krumey did kill them but, according to Kastzner, acted “in a comparatively humane way” towards them. There is no question that Krumey was a war criminal but the 15,000 Hungarian Jews in the Strasshof labour camp were no doubt relieved not to be murdered. Juttner had intervened with Hitler to stop the death march. Kastzner’s testimony for Becher is well known. It is discussed in detail by Shoshana Barri. [4]
5. Greenstein states that in the Supreme Court verdict of the Kasztner trial. “2 of the 5 judges found the arguments of Kasztner’s opponents quite persuasive, but the other 3 Judges found for the State.” In fact, 4 out of the 5 judges voted to overturn the charge that Kastzner was a collaborator. I have told him this numerous times. Greenstein knows his information is incorrect from his own sources. Greenstein has mentioned Orr’s essay which states quite clearly that 4 of the 5 judges found that the charge of collaboration libellous. [5]
6. Greenstein suggests that I am a friend of Atzmon. Greenstein is well aware that I have attacked and ridiculed Atzmon and his Marxist supporters in the SWP. I attack all those I view as rabid anti-Zionists: Atzmon, Greenstein his fellow fanatics such as Rance. In my article on Harry’s Place, I attack and ridicule Atzmon, Greenstein and Rance. [6]
7. Greenstein, who has no academic position and has never published a scholarly article, has the chutzpah to attack Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the world’s greatest living Holocaust historians. [7] Greenstein shows no evidence that he has read Professor Bauer’s essay in Yalkut Moroshet. I suggest he does so before commenting further.
8. Greenstein lies outright about pages 156-7 of Bauer’s book Jews for Sale? Bauer does not state there that Kastzner received the Auschwitz Protocols on April 29. All he says was that “according to one version” Kasztner received the document “in late April.” Moreover Bauer does not imply that the Auschwitz Protocols were not distributed. In fact Bauer states very clearly on those pages that six copies of the document were prepared and distributed to people including Horthy’s daughter-in-law, a Cardinal and two Bishops. Moreover, Bauer states explicitly on page 157: “They certainly did not keep the information to themselves.” [8] Greenstein can’t help telling lies - even when he knows that will be caught by anyone checking his source!
9. Greenstein complains that Vrba and Wetzler “were referred to as the 2 Jewish Slovak escapees rather than by name” in Israeli high school text books. But he does not criticise his anti-Zionist comrade Haim Bresheeth’s book Holocaust For Beginners, which also refers to them as “two Czech Jews.” [9]
10. The Hungarian Zionist Relief and Rescue Committee (Vaada) was very different from the Judenrat. The Vaada was created by Jews to rescue Jews. The Judenrat was created by Nazis to control Jews. The Vaada was Zionist. The Judenrat was run by anti-Zionists. Greenstein has no basis for saying that the Vaada threatened the leadership of Jewish communities. He simply made it up. [10]
11. Greenstein suggests that those on the train were “the political elite of Hungarian Jewry.” How then does Greenstein account for passengers such as Ladislaus Lob and his father who were neither wealthy, prominent nor Zionist? Greenstein refers to the train as a “Zionist train” but the passengers included non-Zionists and virulent anti-Zionists such as the Satmar rabbi, Joel Teitelbaum. [11]
12. Greenstein should learn not to use out-of-date editions of books. Had Greenstein used the latest and full edition of Randolph Braham’s Politics of Genocide rather than an out of date version he would know that Braham specifically states that Kasztner mentions the Protocols of Auschwitz in his report. [12]
13. Greenstein refers to Joel Brand and Moshe Krausz as “dissident Zionists.” He argues that they “desperately wanted to save their fellow Jews. Not because they were Zionists, if anything despite it.” Greenstein wants to separate their behaviour from Kasztner’s behaviour which he believes to be Zionist behaviour. But it is ludicrous. Brand was Kastzner’s partner on the Zionist Vaada. In fact, the blood for goods negotiations with the Nazis started as a result of a meeting between Eichmann and Brand. The discussions with Kasztner came later. [13]
Far from being a “dissident” Zionist, Krausz joined the Zionist Federation in Hungary in 1929; he became Secretary-General of the Palestine Office of the Jewish Agency in Budapest in 1932, ran it from 1937-1944 and was a delegate to the 22nd Zionist Congress in Switzerland in 1946, moved to Israel in 1948 and lived there until his death. [14]
14. I stated that “Kasztner made … statements leading to the conviction of other Nazi War Criminals.” Greenstein responds: “Not so.” Well it is very much so. Kasztner’s affidavit accused Veesenmayer of giving an ultimatum to the Hungarian government “demanding the deportation of the Budapest Jews.” Kasztner also accused Eichmann’s boss Kaltenbrunner of commissioning “the plan of the gas chambers.” [15] As a result, Veesenmayer received a 20-year prison sentence and Kaltenbrunner was executed.
15. Greenstein doesn’t understand what is wrong with the murder of thousands of Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of AIPAC. Greenstein says he would not care if they were “vaporised” and if the whole of the White House and its occupants were “wiped out” and thousands of pro-Israel Christians were “obliterated.” The logic of Greenstein’s position is genocide.
16. Greenstein shows his dishonesty in the use of ellipses in his quotation from Ben-Gurion. Greenstein quotes as follows:
“If the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and aid for the national museum on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail…. We are risking Zionism’s very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem.”
The full quotation is as follows:
“if the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand and aid for the national museum in Palestine on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail and our people’s entire strength will be directed at aid for the refugees in the various countries”
Interestingly, even Jim Allen’s play Perdition did twist that particular quotation. [16] Cesarani points out:
“Ben Gurion is saying that if the Jews have to choose between sending aid to the doomed ‘national museum’ that the British were administering and giving assistance to Jews seeking refuge in other countries, of course Palestine would lose out.” [17]
17. Greenstein claims: “Ben Gurion, made one or 2 speeches during the war about the Holocaust and that was it. All Zionist activity had one aim – statehood. All else was secondary.” This is complete rubbish. Ben Gurion made many speeches referring to the destruction of the Jews. Shabtai Teveth’s book, Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust has numerous quotations. As Teveth points out, after reading Mein Kampf in August 1933, “the major – even the only – meaning of Zionism for Ben-Gurion became the rescue of the Jewish people.” [18]
18. Greenstein tries to defend his ridiculous claim that Zionists in the Holocaust “were against advocating resistance in the ghettos.” Even other anti-Zionists know this claim is ludicrous. For example, the Marxist anti-Zionist John Rose in his atrocious book, The Myths of Zionism states, “Zionism was perfectly capable of inspiring resistance to the Nazis.” [19]
19. Greenstein has a severe problem with logic. He states:
“Mikey claims that ‘Far from the BNP being Zionist… a senior BNP spokesman said that paper was the mouthpiece of a “clique of Zionist parasites and crooks.” Err yes. That’s exactly my point. The BNP manage to combine both anti-Semitism and Zionism.”
The quotation from the BNP attacked The Jewish Chronicle as a “clique of Zionist parasites and crooks.” Greenstein infers that the BNP is Zionist. Even his anti-Zionist comrades should see that as an insult to their intelligence.
Mary McCarthy famously said that “every word Lillian Hellman writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’” I would say the same about Tony Greenstein.
Mikey
[1] Randolph L. Braham The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (Columbia University Press, 1994) Vol 1. pp. 23-28
[2] Ibid. P. 78
[3] Anshel Pfeffer, “Just 10 of 66,000 Holocaust survivors heirs’ get their assets back,” Haaretz.com July 7, 2008 available on line at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999787.html
[4] Shoshana Barri (Ishoni) “The Question of Kasztner’s Testimonies on Behalf of Nazi War Criminals,” Journal of Israeli History Summer/Autumn 1997.
[5] Akiva Orr, “The Kastner Case, Jerusalem 1955,” in Jim Allen Perdition (Ithaca Press, 1987) p. 99
[6] See http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/05/08/jews-and-jew-haters-ii-from-cranks-to-clowns/
[7] See for example Yad Vashem : http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_yad/departments/institute/bauer.html
[8] Yehuda Bauer, Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations, 1933-1945 (Yale University Press, 1994) pp. 156-157
[9]Haim Bresheeth, Stuart Hood and Litza Jansz, The Holocaust for Beginners (Icon Books, 1994) p. 156
[10] For a detailed examination of the activities of the Relief and Rescue committee see Szabolcs Szita, Trading in Lives? Operations of the Jewish Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest, 1944—1945 (Central European Press, 2005)
[11] Ladislaus Lob Dealing With Satan (Jonathan Cape, 2008) p. 270
[12] Randolph L. Braham The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (Columbia University Press, 1994) Vol 2. P. 826
[13] Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz & The Allies (Hamlyn, 1983) pp. 201-202
[14] Ibid., p. 348
[15] “Affidavit of Dr. Rezso (Rudolph) Kastner, 13 September 1945″ contained in Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal Nuremberg 14 November 1945- 1 October 1946 Volume XXXI Official Text English Edition(Nuremberg, Germany: International Military Tribunal Nuremberg, 1948) Document 2605-PS
[16] Jim Allen Perdition (Ithaca Press, 1987) p. 32
[17] “Letters,” Guardian, January 21, 1987
[18] Shabtai Teveth Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1996) p. xxxv
[19] John Rose, The Myths of Zionism (Pluto Press, 2004) p. 212n5. Rose also provides in that note two examples of books where this resistance can be seen: ‘Antek’ Zuckerman’s autobiography, A Surplus of Memory and Primo Levi’s If Not Now When?
Comment by Mikey — 9 September, 2008 @ 9:56 pm
Erratum: my paragraph 4 should read:
There were approximately 15,000 Jews in Vienna who had been sent from Hungary and Krumey was in charge of them. In the final months of the war Krumey did NOT kill them [my emphasis] but, according to Kastzner, acted “in a comparatively humane way” towards them. There is no question that Krumey was a war criminal but the 15,000 Hungarian Jews in the Strasshof labour camp were no doubt relieved not to be murdered.
Comment by Mikey — 9 September, 2008 @ 10:41 pm
Another erratum: paragraph 16 should say:
even Jim Allen’s play Perdition did NOT twist that particular quotation [unlike Tony Greenstein!]
Comment by Mikey — 9 September, 2008 @ 11:09 pm
Yes there were many erratums.
There isn’t a great deal of point in replying to this garbage, so I won’t waste a lot of time or space.
i. The BNP are anti-Semitic. According to the Board of Deputies of British Jews spokesperson, they also have the most pro-Zionist website of anyone. (10.4.08 - The Guardian). Is Mikey suggesting that this isn’t the case? In which case they are supportive of Zionism, i.e. hate all Muslims including Palestinians, but don’t like Jews a lot, hence why Zionism is such a fine thing as it means Jews can go to Israel. Even someone as stupid as Mikey should understand that.
ii. I’m well aware that Hungary suffered a massive loss of territory under the Treaty of Trianon. That was, again, the point I was making silly boy. I also note that the late Zionist historian, Lucy Dawidowicz, gives some figures about those murdered in Hungary. According to her 450,000 died, 200,00 survived. I seem to recall these were the figures I gave!! But of course Mikey knows different. The fact is, as I also said, there can be no definitive figure because it is not possible to know exactly how many died and how many survived.
Normally this is a question that only obsesses holocaust deniers looking for any ‘error’ to try and trip people up and thereby ‘prove’ that there was no holocaust. It is not surprising that Mikey has the same mindset as these people.
The question of Christian Jews is a different question, but in general they were not deported (most lived in Budapest anyway). Their position in Hungary changed as the definition changed but I doubt there were anywhere near as many as 100,000 who were affected. As in Germany and most of western Europe, Christian Jews and the Mishlinge had the greatest chance of survival and the Rosenstrasse protest in Berlin, outside Gestapo hq, was an example of how integration of Jews and non-Jews was the surest guarantee of survival.
iii. It is irrelevant whether Mikey has written articles criticising Atzmon. The fact is that he has show himself willing to work with him when it comes to attacking anti-Zionist Jews. He conveniently omits to explain the quotations I have cited!
iv. Mikey shows that he is not only incapable of telling the truth, but he deliberately distorts it as well. His habit of accusing others of lying would appear to be a reflection of his own methodology.
Mikey states that ‘Greenstein claims that Kasztner testified “in favour of Dieter Wisliceny.” This is a nonsense. Kasztner testified against Wisliceny in September 1945 and in July 1947 Kastzner appealed for Wisliceny to be transferred from Slovak to American custody for interrogation about Eichmann’s whereabouts.’
The article by Shoshana Barri that he quotes has a somewhat different take on this, to wit:
‘In all, then, there was a total of 7 interventions by Kastner on behalf of Nazi war criminals. Three testimonies were on behalf of Becher, two were on behalf of Krumey, one was on behalf of Juttner and there was an appeal that had the potential to deliver Wisliceny from the threat of executionin Slovakia…. Kastner’s testimonies were foreful enough to aid the Nazi war criminals.’
So here we have a truly David Irving style distortion of historical sources. Far from wanting Wisliceny transferred in order to aid the hunt against Eichmann, the intention was obviously clear - to try and save his neck as Barri, writing in that well-known anti-Zionist magazine The Journal of Israeli History, makes clear. Note the interventions ‘on behalf of’ Nazi war criminals - interventions that Mikey makes clear he supports. It would seem that Mikey now sees nothing wrong in Kastner’s behaviour and lies about it when he can’t justify it.
The idea incidentally that anything Kastner said had any influence on the conviction and execution of Kaltenbrunner, Heydrich’s successor, is a figment of Mikey’s imagination. Kastner was a minor fish in this whole episode. His only influence was in helping to exonerate, because having a representative of the Jewish Agency in your favour was clearly going to be advantageous. When it came to conviction there were far more powerful voices than Kastner.
As to the other points such as the position of the judges of the Israeli Supreme Court in the K appeal, I suggest Mikey try rereading what I wrote. It is often a good idea, if you can stop spluttering long enough, because then he will see that I make it clear that Judge Goiten spoke one way and voted another.
It’s not much wonder that Mikey attends anti-Zionist meetings but never has the courage to make an intervention!
TG
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 10 September, 2008 @ 1:47 am
Just in case Mikey has difficulty locating the quote in Barri’s article it’s on page 145 (para. 3). And he might look at the paragraph beneath it which cites Kastner himself as saying that testimony on behalf of Wisliceny and Krumey was impermissible since they were actively involved in the destruction process.
At the end of the war all sorts of Nazi war criminals ’saved’ Jews, including Krumey and Juttner. Indeed by this measure, Himmler too ’saved’ Jews and indeed at one point in his trial Kastner virtually said as much.
TG
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 10 September, 2008 @ 1:53 am
Tony Greenstein writes:
“So here we have a truly David Irving style distortion of historical sources. Far from wanting Wisliceny transferred in order to aid the hunt against Eichmann, the intention was obviously clear - to try and save his neck as Barri, writing in that well-known anti-Zionist magazine The Journal of Israeli History, makes clear.”
Shoshana Barri wrote:
It is the author’s view that Kastner’s appeal… was but a continuation of the Jewish Agency’s attempts to locate Eichmann. Kastner, after all, presents reasons similar to theirs in his memorandum: “It should be noted that Wisliceny is the only available member of Eichmann’s staff who can give a complete and thorough picture of the extermination program and the people involved in the execution of this program. He will probably be hanged by the Slovakian officials where he is interned unless he is extradited and we would thereby lose all the proof he may be expected to give.”
(Shoshana Barri, “The Question of Kastner’s Testimonies on Behalf of Nazi War Criminals,” The Journal of Israeli History, Vol. 8, No. 2-3, 1997, p. 156)
Shoshana Barri wrote the opposite of what Tony Greenstein claims she wrote.
It’s obvious who is guilty of “a truly David Irving style distortion of historical sources.”
Comment by Correction — 10 September, 2008 @ 2:37 am
Greenstein should Keep Quiet
1. I would like to thank the poster by the name of “Correction” above, who has clearly bothered to check the source. I would advise anyone to check Greenstein’s sources as he regularly distorts them. Adding to the point by Correction, we can see that Greenstein does not know the difference between a testimony and an appeal. Even in the quote that Greenstein uses from Shoshana Barri, she does not say that Kasztner testified for Wisliceny.
2. Greenstein states: “The BNP are anti-Semitic. According to the Board of Deputies of British Jews spokesperson, they also have the most pro-Zionist website of anyone. (10.4.08 - The Guardian). Is Mikey suggesting that this isn’t the case?”
This matter has come up in a previous debate with Greenstein that occurred on the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty website and reproduced on the following link:
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/greenstein-awlscreenshot.html
At one stage it can be seen that Greenstein went to the trouble of linking to the BNP web site to try and prove his point. Paul Bogdanor, went to the trouble of reading that web page and he noted that on that very page, the BNP were :
“- raving about the neocon plot to ‘make the world safe for the Zionist state of Israel’
- attacking ‘the power of the Zionist lobby in American politics’
- denouncing the ‘overseas agitprop department of Israel’s ruling Likud party’
- vilifying their ‘Christian-Zionist and plutocrat allies.’”
For completeness, the BNP web page that Greenstein linked to in his posting of 10 June, 2008 at 03:09 was the following
http://www.bnp.org.uk/2007/11/by-their-fruits-or-lack-of-them-shall-you-know-them/
3. Greenstein writes: “Lucy Dawidowicz, gives some figures about those murdered in Hungary. According to her 450,000 died, 200,00 [sic] survived.” What Dawidowicz actually stated was “Over 450,000 Jews, 70 percent of the Jews of Greater Hungary, were deported [to Auschwitz], were murdered or died under German occupation (The War Against the Jews 1933-45, (Bantam, 1986,) pp382-3). Her pre-war figure of 650,000 Jews excludes “some 100,000 Christians, who were regarded as ‘racial’ Jews and subject to anti-Jewish laws.” (p381) The destruction of these Jewish converts is not counted in her 450,000 German occupation death toll. And as Randolph Braham notes:
“Hungary instituted a series of increasingly severe anti-Jewish measures that not only curtailed the basic civil and socioeconomic rights of the Jews but also claimed approximately 64,000 Jewish lives by early 1944.”
i.e. These 64,000 Jewish lives were taken before the German occupation.
(Randolph L. Braham, “Assault on Historical Memory: Hungarian Nationalists and the Holocaust” available on line at http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/DownloadTrackPreview/ushmm.org.1434846455.01447111387.1446957713.pdf )
Comment by Mikey — 10 September, 2008 @ 10:21 am
Sorry Mikey whats this all about? An endless attempt to prove that anti-Zionists are liars?
Comment by johng — 10 September, 2008 @ 10:54 am
johng, this is not an attempt “to prove that anti-Zionists are liars.” It is an attemmpt to prove that Tony Greenstein habitually lies and distorts the historical record in an effort to try and make a political case.
My instinct is that he got away with it for a number of years because nobody bothered to check his sorurces. Having spent time reading about those very subjects that Greenstein focusses upon, particularly his fascination with the actions of Zionists during the Holocaust, I realised that he spoke total garbage. As I have reliable sources at my fingertips on the matter, it is not difficult for me to expose his distortions. By doing so, those readers that may not be familiar with the source material will not be taken in by the rubbish that he spews. That is what this is about.
I trust that is reasonable or do you feel that it is wrong to point out blantant distortions of the historical record by others?
Comment by Mikey — 10 September, 2008 @ 11:15 am
1. Mikey can witter on all he likes, the reason Kastner tried to have Wisliceny moved to US jurisdiction was to save his neck, not to locate Eichmann. After all if it was locating Nazi war criminals then Israel could have prosecuted the saviour of Mussolini, Otto Skorzeny. In any case there is no dispute that this would have been the effect, if Kastner’s efforts had been successful. The speculation as to motive is just that, speculation. But Mikey has already defended Kastner’s testimony on behalf of all 4 Nazi war criminals so the real reason for Mikey’s defence of Kastner is not hard to guage.
2. It was Barri who described Kastner’s testimony as being ‘on behalf of’ Nazi war criminals, not me. Barri of course is entitled to his opinion, that the purpose was to locate Eichmann, but that is merely speculative. What is clear is that had it succeeded then Wisliceny would have escaped with his life and given Kastner’s record of collaboration, including his silence over Auschwitz (other than to the select 1,684 on the train) it is clear what his motive was. Barri incidentally quotes the effective prosecutor of Kastner, Shmuel Tamir, later a Justice Minister in Israel who in his attempt to have a retrial argued that the purpose of Kastner, to obtain a lighter sentence, was but further evidence of the fact that Kastner collaborated. There is another reason that has been given by Shraga Elam for the behaviour of the Jewish Agency in this regard (& it is clear that the JA knew of and approved of Kastner’s testimony - Elam believes that Kastner was merely their pawn) and that was money.
3. I note that Mikey has not given any explanation of his e-mail conversation with Atzmon, which he doesn’t and can’t dispute. Merely referencing to an article he wrote in which, for the sake of form, he criticises the man is irrelevant. The fact is that for Zionists it is anti-Zionists not anti-Semites who are the main enemy hence Mikey’s offer to ‘research’ his and Atzmon’s opponents.
4. The only distortion in the historical record is by those who seek to exonerate the representative of the Jewish Agency in Hungary, who is acknowledged by all as having obtained the rescue of the Prominents (his description!) by keeping silent over the fact of Auschwitz’s existence. What makes this worse was this was the fag end of Nazi rule, which enabled Wallenburg, Lutz, the Red Cross and the Vatican representative, to shelter and save thousands of Jews in Budapest and elsewhere (as Eugene Levai details in his Black Book on Hungarian Jewry). Mikey and his anti-communist friend Bogdanor are in the business of trying to rehabilitate someone who was effectively a war criminal.
5. I took the Dawidowicz figures from Appendix 2 in her book, to demonstrate that the original figures I gave are as accurate as any can be. The Jews who died before 1944 were primarily murdered on account of the deportation of Jews into the hands of the Nazis under Prime Minister Bardossi. There was no extermination as such of Jews under the anti-semitic Hungarian regimes and these Jews were not in any case Christian Jews. This is just a deliberate attempt to conflate different categories.
I’m not sure where the 64,000 Jews massacred prior to the Nazi occupation comes from, as the main atrocity was the deportation of ‘alien’ Jews into the hands of the Nazis at Kaments-Podelsk when according to the Nazi SS leader Jecklyn some 23,000 died and Dawidowicz cites a figure of 17,000 and about 3,000 died in the Ujvidek massacres. However even assuming that this figure is true, what is not true is that Dawidowicz’s figures for 450,000 Jews murdered excludes Christian or racial Jews.
I suggest Mikey and his alter-ego Correction, read pp.456/7 of Dawidowicz’s War Against the Jews.
‘Over 450,000 Jews, 70% of the Jews of Greater Hungary [i.e. not Trianon Hungary] were deported, were murdered or died under German occupation. Within the boundaries of lesser (pre-1938) Hungary about half the Jews were annihilated. Some 144,000 survived in Budapest, INCLUDING 50,000 ‘racial’ Jews, and about 50,000 to 60,000 survived in the provinces.’ (my emphasis)
So when Mikey writes that ‘Her pre-war figure of 650,000 Jews excludes “some 100,000 Christians, who were regarded as ‘racial’ Jews and subject to anti-Jewish laws.” (p381) he is, in his own words, lying.
Whether or not Dawidowicz is correct is another matter. It is arguable that he overestimates those who survived in the provinces and underestimates those who survived in Budapest but it is no excuse for Mikey doing a David Irving again.
It’s no surprise that when push comes to shove, Mikey feels unable to contradict or make a contribution to the debate when anti-Zionist Jews speak. For all his internet posturing, Mikey is a coward when it comes to arguing his corner face to face. Hence why he kept silent in Lenni Brenner’s and my own meeting.
It’s no wonder that The Times sent me a letter citing Mikey as saying I had traumatised him when he was younger because I put forward anti-Zionist politics. Instead of coming to terms with the fact that Zionism has never fought fascism or anti-Semitism he seeks to posture as an expert in order to try and exonerate not merely Kastner, who was merely the represntative of the Jewish Agency, but the role of the Zionist movement in ensuring that most Hungarian Jews went to their deaths ignorant of their fate. That is the crime and nothing Mikey or any other Zionist apologist says can change that fact. The Auschwitz Protocols of Rudolph Vrba were deliberately kept under wraps by kastner and that, incidentally is why Brand and Krausz were dissidents ie. they disagreed with what he was doing, so much so that Brand testified AGAINST Kastner at the famous trial in Israel. Strange behaviour if Brand was in agreement with kastner.
Likewise the mother of the Zionist parachutist, Hanna Senesh, who was captured and tortured by the Gestapo before being executed, testified as to how Kastner refused to lift a finger to help her.
Mikey’s devotion to Kastner is no surprise, because like birds of a feather, collaborators also stick together. Even when one partner is dead!
Re the BNP’s Zionism. Presumably Mikey believes his stupidity is some form of virtue. It is irrelevant what the anti-communist Bogdanor, who believes there was no difference between the Soviet and Nazi regimes. The fact is that even the Board of Deputies of British Jews concedes that the BNP is the most pro-Zionist of political parties. To wit:
‘Ruth Smeed, of the Board of Deputies, said: “The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web - it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel and at the same time demonises Islam and the Muslim world.’ ‘BNP seeks to bury antisemitism and gain Jewish votes in Islamophobic campaign.’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/10/thefarright.race
As the article is publicly available I don’t know why Mikey is even attempting to argue the toss, other than the fact that he is a dishonest prick. Yes of course the BNP is anti-Semitic, but why is that relevant? Anti-semitism and Zionism go hand in hand. Or to use one of my favourite quotes from Israeli novellist, A B Yehoshua:
‘Anti-Zionism is not the product of the non-Jews. On the contrary, the Gentiles have always encouraged Zionism, hoping that it would help to rid them of the Jews in their midst. Even today, in a perverse way, a real anti-Semite must be a Zionist.’ Jewish Chronicle 22.1.82. Even Mikey, despite his deliberate stupidity, should be able to understand that one!
TG
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 11 September, 2008 @ 2:00 am
Quick reminder.
Greenstein wrote:
“Far from wanting Wisliceny transferred in order to aid the hunt against Eichmann, the intention was obviously clear - to try and save his neck as Barri, writing in that well-known anti-Zionist magazine The Journal of Israeli History, makes clear.”
In fact Barri wrote:
“It is the author’s view that Kastner’s appeal… was but a continuation of the Jewish Agency’s attempts to locate Eichmann.”
She quoted his memorandum:
“It should be noted that Wisliceny is the only available member of Eichmann’s staff who can give a complete and thorough picture of the extermination program and the people involved in the execution of this program. He will probably be hanged by the Slovakian officials where he is interned unless he is extradited and we would thereby lose all the proof he may be expected to give.”
Now Greenstein writes:
“the reason Kastner tried to have Wisliceny moved to US jurisdiction was to save his neck, not to locate Eichmann.”
Greenstein was caught out twisting a source to mean the opposite of what it says.
But he just carries on as if nobody noticed.
Comment by Correction — 11 September, 2008 @ 9:59 am
I can’t help being impressed
by Mikey deploying a pseudo-academic apparatus in his spurious efforts to add some kind of legitimacy to his efforts at spreading historical un-truths.
It reminds me of the ‘Institute of Historical Review’ and the way it employs scholastic paraphanalia in its phoney attempts to give the impression it’s a respectable and recognised pillar of historical academia.
In fact, IHR and Mikey both aim at the same object - to cover-up for and exonerate criminals involved in the mass-murder of Nazi victims during World War II.
“Who do you think you are kidding David Irving
If you think mad Mikey’s sane…”
Comment by joe90 — 11 September, 2008 @ 10:25 am
I’ve just checked another of Greenstein’s statements.
Greenstein writes:
“Brand and Krausz were dissidents i.e. they disagreed with what he was doing, so much so that Brand testified AGAINST Kastner at the famous trial in Israel. Strange behaviour if Brand was in agreement with kastner.”
Brand testified FOR Kastner at the trial.
As his memoirs put it:
“About a quarter of the Hungarian Jews survived the war - a percentage greater than that in any other country under German control. This achievement was due in no small measure to the work of the Budapest Waada. If Kastner, as the leader of the Waada after Brand’s departure, must be held responsible for all mistakes and omissions, then it is only right that he should also be credited with the success of this work. And the charge that he collaborated with the Germans solely to insure the departure of the Bergen-Belsen transport, and that by saving a few hundred he sacrificed hundreds of thousands, is a shameless calumny.”
(Desperate Mission, Criterion Books, 1958, p. 230)
Greenstein has again twisted a source who says the opposite of what he claims.
I’m starting to think there’s a pattern here.
Comment by Correction — 11 September, 2008 @ 10:32 am
I would like to thank “Correction” for his/her posts as they are remarkably accurate and expose Tony Greenstein for the scholarly fraud that he is. “Correction” has also saved me time as I do not need to repeat the same information. Points for which Greenstein clearly has no answer for.
To cover some of the points “Correction” does not cover:
1. Despite having a copy of Shoshana Barri’s article (Shoshana is female name not a male one and Greenstein should know that) he repeats the lie that Kasztner testified for Wisliceny. He did not - he put in an appeal to have him transferred to American custody.
2. Greenstein refers to Kasztner as a representative of the Jewish Agency. He was not and nor was his committee. In fact the person who was a representative of the Jewish Agency in Hungary was Moshe Krausz as I mentioned in an earlier post to this thread. This, of course, is the same Moshe Krausz who Greenstein incorrectly argued was a “dissident” Zionist. When Kasztner went to Nuremberg and testified on behalf of Becher, he did sign in the name of the Jewish Agency but at the Gruenwald Court case, witness Eliahu Dobkin from the Jewish Agency was called who denied that Kasztner had the authority to sign in the name of that institution. [Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (Owl Books, 1991)P.270]
3. Greenstein argues that Kastzner was “effectively a war criminal.” Well that is Greenstein’s opinion. Professor Yehuda Bauer, who has published widely on the matter argues differently. He concludes that in his opinion Kasztner is “a real-life hero.” [in David Cesarani ed. Genocide and Rescue: The Holocaust in Hungary 1944(Berg, 1997) p. 206] This view is shared by others as well. For example Anna Porter in her biography of Kastzner published last year by Douglas & McIntyre - the book is entitled: Kasztner’s Train: The True Story of Rezso Kasztner, Unknown Hero of the Holocaust.
4. Greenstein states, “I’m not sure where the 64,000 Jews massacred prior to the Nazi occupation comes from.” This shows Greenstein’s ability to look up anything. I provided a reference. It was an article by Randolph Braham, the widely recognised leading scholar of the Holocaust in Hungary. It was not difficult for him to access as I provided a link where it can be located on line. Had he bothered to read it, he could have seen in note 4 on page 65 the following:
“Approximately 40,000 to 45,000 of these were labor servicemen; 17,000 to 18,000 so called “alien” Jews who were deported in the summer of 1941 and murdered near Kamenets-Podolsk; and the remainder victims of the massacres in and around Újvidék early in 1942.”
5. Greenstein accuses me of being a coward, but I have, on more than one occasion, previously challenged Greenstein to a debate on Kasztner and the Holocaust in Hungary. Greenstein has refused. By and large, across these informal debates in the comments boxes of blogs, Greenstein walks away as he did in the first debate on Harry’s place:
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2007/01/24/tony-greenstein-more-errors-than-paragraphs/
or as he did on a more recent debate on the Alliance from Workers’ Liberty web site (reproduced at http://www.paulbogdanor.com/greenstein-awlscreenshot.html)
Up and until now I have copied my contributions from this thread to Greenstein’s own blog entry on this discussion:
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/09/kasztner-debating-with-zionist.html
But it seems Greenstein has thrown his toys out of the pram one more time as in a more recent blog entry he now claims he will not accept any more of my contributions. http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/09/moderation-apologies.html I will actually try and copy this to his blog, and readers will be able to see if he prefers censor to debate.
6. Greenstein discusses traumatising people. Well, according to Nigel Savage, in a letter to F. Howard who was then an Executive Member of the National Union of Students, Tony Greenstein, “led the intimidation of a Brighton Polytechnic student, Brian Conn, who left his Jewish Society stall at Freshers Fair, in tears and thoroughly afraid.” http://www.paulbogdanor.com/greenstein.pdf
7. Greenstein repeats the lie that “Zionism has never fought fascism or anti-Semitism.” This is despite the fact that as I earlier pointed out even other anti-Zionists such as John Rose disagree with him and provide examples of reliable books that show it was the case. Greenstein also knows that he has told a lie in this statement as in the same post, Greenstein mentions Hannah Senesh. This very same Hannah Senesh was a Zionist who had emigrated from Hungary to Palestine and along with numerous other Zionists parachuted themselves into Europe in order to operate behind Nazi lines. Whilst the book is not completely reliable - a most interesting account of their ventures can be read in the following book: Yoel Palgi, Into the Inferno: The Memoir of a Jewish Paratrooper Behind Enemy Lines (Rutgers University Press, 2003) As Palgi was a mission companion of Sensesh, this book is particularly interesting.
8. It is true that Kasztner did not do anything for Hannah Senesh. According to her mother, she attempted to see Kastzner and was turned away with a number of different excuses about Kastzner being busy or not there. Kasztner claimed that he was not aware that Hannah’s mother had tried to see him. (Judith Tymor Baumer, “‘Parachuting to Their People’ - the Operation of the Parachutist-Emissaries During World War II in Historical Perspective,” Yad Vashem Studies Vol. XXV 1996 p. 152)
9. The poster by the name of “Correction” has already shown that far from testifying against Kasztner, he testified for him. It can be noted that many Israelis know the most about the Kasztner trial from Motti Lerner’s 1994 television drama, Mishpat Kastner. This was a three part mini-series and about the court case. There was a sub plot in this television drama and that was the strange relationship between the Kasztner’s and the Brand’s. Rudolf Kasztner was having an affair with Joel Brand’s wife Hansi and it seemed that both Kastzner’s wife and Joel Brand knew about it. Even despite this, Brand still was in favour of testifying for Kasztner. (I accept that this is a television drama and not necessarily reliable - Brand’s book, Desperate Mission is obviously much more reliable - but the point I wish to make is that Motti Lerner’s drama was broadcast on a major Israeli channel on prime time. If it had been wrong on the point about Brand and Kasztner there would have been uproar in Israel on the matter and there was not.)
10. It is tiresome that Greenstein keeps referring to the BNP as Zionist when they quite clearly are not. I draw Greenstein to the attention of a letter published a few days later (April 14, 2008) in the Guardian by Mark Gardner, spokesperson for the Community Security Trust, the Jewish communal body that is recognised as actually responsible for monitoring antisemitism. The letter showed very clearly that the view from the mainstream Jewish organisations was “whoever you vote for, use your vote bto stop the BNP.” The headline above the letter was “Don’t be fooled by the BNP claims.” It seems that Greenstein has been fooled.
11. Greenstein takes a quote from one Israeli that he has located that says that a real anti-Semite must be a Zionist. This is plainly wrong. The Nazis for example were virulently anti-Semitic and also anti-Zionist. I suggest Greenstein reads Francis R. Nicosia’s new book published this year by Cambridge University Press Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. This should set him right on the point.
Finally, joe90 makes a useless contribution adding nothing but insults to the debate. Greenstein may distort the information he has read but at least he has read something on the matter. joe90 has clearly not even read anything reliable on the subject and it shows.
Comment by Mikey — 11 September, 2008 @ 8:00 pm
Finally, joe90 makes a useless contribution adding nothing but insults to the debate.
- But this isn’t really a debate Murkey.
This is just you, a zionist, trying to exonorate and cover-up for fellow zionists and zionism’s collaboration in World War II Nazi atrocities.
For instance, why would you ignore questions about your involvement with antisemites such as atzmon ?
Comment by joe90 — 11 September, 2008 @ 8:45 pm
1. We can get the measure of Joel Brand’s testimony, he was called by Shmuel Tamir for the Defence i.e. Malchiel Greenwald by his testimony:
‘“Rightly or wrongly, for better or for worse, I have cursed Jewry’s official leaders ever since. All these things shall haunt me until me dying day. It is much more than a man can bear.” [Protocol, C.C. 124/53 in the D.C. Jerusalem] Perfidy p.210.
And at a Histadrut meeting in Tel Aviv after the war, he stated ‘“You were the last hope of hundreds of thousands condemned to death. You have failed them. I was those people’s emissary yet you let me sit in a Cairo prison … You have refused to declare a general strike. If there was no other way, you should have used force.” …
(Alex Weissberg, Desperate Mission, p.210).
2. I note that Mikey has not commented on the fact that I caught him out yet again, with his statement that Lucy Dawidowicz’s estimate of the numbers of Hungarian Jews murdered INCLUDED the racial Jews, which is where this debate originally started. Mikey operates on the basis that if he doesn’t comment when his mistakes/lies are refuted then they didn’t happen. Another example of the David Irving technique.
4. Judge Halevi of the Jerusalem District Court, whose findings of fact were not interfered with by the High Court (not that it would have mattered) ruled:
‘It is clear that the positive recommendation by Kastner, not only in his own name but also in the name of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish World Congress was of decisive importance for Becher.’ Perfidy, Ben Hecht p.ii.
5. I am baffled that Mikey continues to lie, to use his expression and deny that Kastner was head of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee in Hungary or their representative. Barri herself, in an article which is remarkably deficient in many ways, is quite clear. Not only did Kastner testify as a JA representative but she comes to the conclusion that he did it with their knowledge and assent, which they denied via Dobkin. Is she a liar as well as Mikey?
6. Yes Dobkin did deny that Kastner testified on behalf of the Jewish Agency but as Mandy Rice-Davies put it, he would, wouldn’t he? It’s called plausible deniability. The fact is noone believed him, not least the Judge! Being an intelligence operative one wouldn’t expect him to say otherwise.
In fact this is what Kastner himself said (Perfidy pp. 54/5).
“I went to Nuremberg from Switzerland at the beginning of 1947 at the invitation of General Taylor, chief Prosecutor for the International Court. I was the General’s advisor in matters pertaining to Jewish extermination.
“I worked in Nuremberg until August, 1947. Then I returned to Switzerland in order to immigrate to Israel. I received a cable from General Taylor guaranteeing me my expenses and a fee if I would return to Nuremberg to assist him. I showed the cable to Ben-Gurion. He told me to go. After a conference with the top officials of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency, where we discussed how to exploit this trip for various political purposes, it was agreed that I join General Taylor. The Jewish Agency provided me with money for the trip.
“In answer to the defendant’s accusation that I aided Becher after the war, I will state that I gave no testimony in Nuremberg in favor of Becher. I gave it neither to the International Court nor to any of its institutions or officials.
“Greenwald’s statement in his pamphlet that I went to Nuremberg to save Becher is a total lie.
“The German court of de-Nazification of Becher invited me to give them testimony about Becher when I was in Nuremberg. I refused. I had no desire to appear before any Germans. I’d had enough of Germans during the war.
“I agreed, however, to give them a sworn affidavit, which I sent them. It is a total lie that I helped Kurt Becher escape punishment in Nuremberg. I gave no testimony or affidavit in his favor.”
Which even Mikey knows is untrue. But Kastner, Mikey’s hero clearly claimed that he was a representative of the Jewish Agency! To wit:
‘“In my opinion, when his case is judged by Allied or German authorities, Kurt Becher deserves the fullest possible consideration
. . .
“I make this statement not only in my name but also in behalf of the Jewish Agency and the Jewish World Congress. Signed, Dr. Rudolf Kastner, Official Jewish Agency in Geneva. Former Chairman of Zionist Organization in Hungary, 1943–1945. Representative of Joint Distribution Committee in Budapest.” Perfidy p. 68 citing Affidavit before Mr. Benno H. Selcke, Jr., of the American Evidence Division of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg on August 4, 1947.
And Hecht continues:
‘Judge Halevi asks the red-faced Kastner, “Who gave you permission to offer this affidavit in the name of the Jewish Agency?”
Kastner: Dobkin and Barlas gave me permission to speak in the name of the Jewish Agency. And Mr. Perlzweig, chief of the political department of the World Jewish Congress, and Mr. Riegener, European representative of the World Jewish Congress gave me permission.’
In other words the same Dobkin who denied the Jewish Agency had given the authorisation! So here’s a dilemma. Who, I wonder, does the Zionist toe-rag Mikey believe? A difficult dilemma I guess.
7. But let us divert. Another witness at the trial was Professor Aktzin, dean of the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem:
‘Tamir: Is it true that the Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency did suppress the news of the extermination in the United States up to and through 1944?
Professor Aktzin: The Zionists, Jewish Agency and Joint Distribution Committee did refrain from publicizing in the American press the massacre of Jews. [Testimony of Professor Benjamin Aktzin, Dean of the Faculty of Law, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, at C.C. 124/53 in the D.C. Jerusalem, cited in Perfidy].
8. Or let us take another little diversion, the question of why Kastner kept silent. At the trial in Jerusalem, Shmuel Tamir asked:
And you, Rudolf Kastner, head of the Hungarian Jewish Agency Rescue Committee, do not know if any of your assistants tried to warn the Jews of Hungary.
Kastner: I can’t remember.
(Kastner’s voice is a scream. His eyes roll and he looks like a man about to jump out of a window. Prosecutor Tell rushes in with the smelling salts.)
Tell: (jumping to his feet) This is torturing a witness! This man will have to be carried out of here on a stretcher. It is pure torture.
Tamir: If simple questions become torture because the witness is struggling to avoid answering them truthfully, the fault is not mine. (p.100 Perfidy)
And as for the mother of Hannah Senesh, whose testimony Mikey disregards in favour of his collaborator hero:
Tamir: Is it true that Hanna Senesh was a British officer in addition to being an emissary of the Jewish Agency?
Kastner: Yes, that is true.
Tamir: Is it true that British interests in Hungary were represented by the Swiss Consulate?
Kastner: Yes.
Tamir: Did you notify the Swiss Consulate that a British prisoner of war was being held by the Hungarians?
Kastner: No.
Tamir: Why didn’t you?
Kastner: I think I had my reasons. (Hecht, p.113)
Kastner’s cross-examination in C.C. 124/53 in the D.C. Jerusalem.
Mikey even tries to find an excuse for Kastner’s refusal to see Hanna Senesh’s mother in Budapest, who was desperately trying to get food to her and a lawyer. A flavour of what happened was her testimony when she met him by chance in Israel:
‘Dr. Kastner answered, “Believe me, what happened pains me more than it does anyone else.”
I said, “I believe it is painful to you now, Dr. Kastner, but at that time, when something could have been done, I could not find you.” He said, “No we did everything. One day I shall come to you and tell you how much we did.”
I said to him, “I know it is not true. I don’t say that you could have saved my daughter Hanna, but that you didn’t try—it makes it harder for me that nothing was done.”
He said, “Truly, we did everything. Believe me, we did everything and I will call on you and tell you someday.”
I said to him, “I know the contrary to be true. If you wish to tell me, Dr Kastner, that the matter of my daughter Hanna was so dangerous that it was better no to touch it, I’m willing to accept that as an explanation.” Hecht p.116
9. As Hecht testifies re Moshe Kraus, the dissident Zionist in Budapest, ‘Krauss has also filed a court case against the Jewish Agency in Palestine for not paying his salary and for throwing him out of his job without even compensation.’ ‘Only one exception to the do-nothing, say-nothing policy of official Zionism - religious Zionist Moshe Kraus, who left the Jewish-Agency-Zionist Party Line and its ranks of “rescuers,” and, almost single-handed, raised a fairly laudible outcry. Heroic Moshe Kraus enlisted the support of the Swiss consul in Budapest, Charles Lutz, the Swedish Representative, Raoul Valenberg, and representatives of several South American countries. He headed up an Underground that turned the city’s basements into hideaways,…’ (Hecht, p.121)
10. Mikey refers to a letter from Nigel Savage, a right-wing Vice President Finance at Sussex University, who wrote a letter to F. Howard, an Executive Member of the National Union of Students, Tony Greenstein. This is an example of the quality of Mikey’s argument. The complaint was about the fact that I had been able to speak to a successful motion at Sussex University SU’s AGM supporting the Palestinians. Apparently Savage didn’t like the fact that Howard spoke at the same meeting as me. His allegation that I intimidated a Brighton Polytechnic student, Brian Conn, ‘who left his Jewish Society stall at Freshers Fair, in tears and thoroughly afraid.’ is another lie, unless of course listening to an argument different from one’s own opinions constitutes intimidation.
But according to Alistair Brett, solicitor for The Times, Mikey wrote that
‘I was a student myself in the period X-Y and I can assure you that when I heard Greenstein speak, I felt very intimidated - and yes I was a Jewish student. In fact my current fascination with collecting information about Tony Greenstein and trying to deconstruct all of his arguments, psychologists might put down to getting some revenge for the stress he caused me with his pamphlets and speeches as a student.”
Sad really. And lest people forget, it was Mikey’s false allegations that I had intimidated Jewish students on David Aaronovitch’s blog which led to my having to bring a successful libel action against The Times. http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1487 Or maybe Mikey has forgotten the apology that The Times made, as a result of him having lied once again.
11. Yes it must be ‘tiresome’ that I keep referring to the BNP as pro-Zionist but there it is. Even the Board of Deputies of British Jews admits that! The only article the BNP carried re the Lebanon War was in support of Israel’s genocidal bombing. But maybe Mikey can explain Ruth Smeed’s statement in The Guardian that ‘The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web - it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel and at the same time demonises Islam and the Muslim world.’ ‘BNP seeks to bury antisemitism and gain Jewish votes in Islamophobic campaign.’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/apr/10/thefarright.race
12. Mikey believes it is a ‘lie’ that Kastner testified on behalf of Wisliceny. Then presumably he is accusing Barri of lying? The very article he continues to cite states that Kastner testified ‘on behalf of’ Nazi war criminals and included in the list was Wisliceny, whose neck he was trying to save.
13. I also note that Mikey hasn’t yet explained his conversation with Atzmon, as detailed on the blog of Atzmon’s friend – Mary Rizzo. Another inconvenient little story he wishes would go away? So perhaps he would answer a direct question (just for once)? Why did Atzmon say ‘However, Good luck with Greenie and thanks for all the info you gave us about this low being.’ What was he referring to Mikey?
14. Mikey cites Randolph Braham as ‘the widely recognised leading scholar of the Holocaust in Hungary’. This is what he had to say about Kastner:
“History and historians have not been kind to the leaders of Hungarian Jewry in the Holocaust era.” [Randolph Braham, The Official Jewish Leadership of Wartime Hungary, (unpublished manuscript), p.1.] As Braham admits, many “tried to obtain special protection and favours for their families”. [Randolph Braham, The Role of the Jewish Council in Hungary: A Tentative Assessment, Yad Vashem Studies, vol.X, p.78.] cited in Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Ch. 25.
Mikey denies being a coward because I refused to continue debating him on Harry’s Place. Socialist Unity is a better place, although of course Mikey is a complete reactionary. What I was referring to was his inability to challenge either Lenni Brenner or myself at public meetings. But maybe he is shy!!
15. Mike claims that I have said that I will not accept any more of his contributions upon my blog. Again, even over the simplest things Mikey either lies or can’t read (and I suspect it may be a problem of literacy as much as honesty). I have begun to moderate the blog and I made it clear why:
‘I have always opposed the idea of moderating a blog, believing that it inhibits free debate. However, as the number of deleted posts indicates, there has been a regular attempt by the anti-Semitic supporters of Gilad Atzmon and Mad Mikey Ezra to defame other anti-Zionist Jews with puerile abuse.’
I gave as an example the fact that holocaust deniers and Atzmonites, in other words friends of Mikey, have been bombarding the blog with racist and fascistic comments. So yes, I will block those who say there was no holocaust. I will also block those who make disgusting personal attacks on anti-Zionist comrades of mine like Roland Rance, as Mikey’s anti-Semitic friend Atzmon has repeatedly done. However if Mikey posts without abuse it will be carried.
I made this clear when I said: ‘However I shall not block any post simply because I disagree with it. As I explained to Ms Rizzo and her friend Richard Jones, as long as it is not personally offensive it will be posted.’ Let’s see if Mikey can do this!
16. Yes I said that Zionism has never fought anti-Semitism or fascism. It would be tedious to give examples such as the friendly relations between Mussolini and the leaders of the WZO, Sokolow and Weizmann for example. Even Hannah Senesh, whom Mikey cites, was abandoned by the representative of the Jewish Agency Kastner. I also made it clear that I differentiate between individuals, such as Mordechai Anielwicz, the leader of the Jewish Fighting Organisation (ZOB) in Warsaw and the movement. Many Zionists undoubtedly hate anti-Semitism but the movement they are a part of sees and always saw anti-Semitism as having, in Herzl’s words ‘the divine will to the good’ in it. It’s a complicated argument I know so I accept that Mikey finds it difficult to get round the difference between an individual and a movement or organisation.
But there is no doubt that the Zionists, who were busy setting up kibbutzim in Nazi-occupied Poland and Europe, did nothing to prepare for resistance and that they provided the majority of the collaborators and Judenrat (Jewish Councils). As Dawidowicz notes (War Against the Jews, p.321)
‘Only the left wing parties and the socialist Zionist youth movements succeeded in transforming their pre-war apparatus into functioning underground organisations. The largest of these was the Jewish Labour Bund… the Jewish section of the Communist Party had been second in numerical strength before 1939.,. smaller and weaker than the communists were the Labour Zionists split into left and right wings.
And what does Donald Niewyk in his The Jews in Weimar Germany conclude:
‘In so far as the National Socialists succeeded in persuading Germans that their future plans coincided with those of the most active and vocal Jewish group, the Zionists, their anti-Semitism must have been made to appear essentially harmless. Niewyk describes how Liberal Jews referred to the Zionists as ‘Volkisch Jews’. ‘Their exasperation was unbounded when at one Centralverein meeting, Zionist and anti-Semitic hecklers took the same ground.’ Niewyk p. 372.
17. Mikey describes A B Yehoshua as ‘one Israeli’. In fact he is one of the foremost Israeli novelists and the speech where he was reported as saying that even today, ‘in a perverse way’ a real anti-Semite must be a Zionist, was given to the Union of Jewish Students. But I accept that if it was only a question of one Zionist then it would be unfair to label the whole movement with one individual’s quirky opinion. But Yehoshua is mainstream. What did the Editor of Die Welt, Jacob Klatzkin, the Zionist weekly, write:
‘Instead of establishing societies for defence against the anti-Semites who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defence against our friends who desire to defend our rights. J Klatzkin in B Matovu ‘The Zionist Wish and the Nazi Deed’, Issue Winter 1966-7, cited in Uri Davies, Israel: Utopia Incorporated, p.17.
Or the founder of Political Zionism – Theodore Herzl:
‘the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies. We want to emigrate as respected people. Diaries pp. 83/4, Thomas Yosseloff.
I could cite a ream of quotes and still be going!!
I have incidentally read Francis Nicosia’s book and it is very good in terms of source material, but not so good in terms of analysis. It produces further evidence of the close symbiosis between the Nazi Party and Zionism. Far from the Nazi Party being anti-Zionist, ludicrous, it specifically differentiated between the ‘good’ Jews – the Zionists and the bad ones.
Again I quote the good Zionist Dawidowicz in relation to the attitude of the SS. Heydrich laid down that:
‘The activity of the Zionist orientated youth organisations are not to be treated with the strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German Jewish organisations (assimilationists).’ (p.118, War Against the Jews).
18. But the most idiotic of Mikey’s points is where he accuses me of using ellipses in order to change the meaning of Ben Gurion’s letter to the Zionist Executive of December 1938, one month after Krystalnacht, when it was clear to all that the Jews in Germany were in dire peril. Any reasonable person can see that the ellipse doesn’t change the meaning of the quotation, if anything it reinforces it.
“if the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand and aid for the national museum in Palestine on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail [and our people’s entire strength will be directed at aid for the refugees in the various countries].
The Jewish problem now is not what it used to be. The fate of Jews in
Germany is not an end but a beginning. Other anti-Semitic states will learn
from Hitler. Millions of Jews face annihilation, the refugee problem has
assumed world-wide proportions, and urgency. Britain is trying to separate
the issue of the refugees from that of Palestine. It is assisted by anti-Zionist
Jews. The dimensions of the refugee problem demand an immediate, territorial solution; if Palestine will not absorb them another territory will.
Zionism is endangered. All other territorial solutions, certain to fail, will
demand enormous sums of money. If Jews will have to choose between the
refugees, saving Jews from concentration camps, and assisting a national
museum in Palestine, mercy will have the upper hand and the whole energy
of the people will be channelled into saving Jews from various countries.
Zionism will be struck off the agenda not only in world public opinion, in
Britain and the United States, but elsewhere in Jewish public opinion. If we
allow a separation between the refugee problem and the Palestine problem,
we are risking the existence of Zionism.’”
The meaning is crystal clear. Britain, ‘assisted by anti-Zionist Jews is trying to separate off the Palestine problem from the question of rescue of Jews from the Nazis. True because Palestine was no solution. The Arabs had revolted in 1936-9 against Zionist colonisation and the British had introduced immigration quotas. What was Ben Gurion’s fear? ‘if Palestine will not absorb them another territory will. Zionism is endangered.’ Ben Gurion was not concerned about the danger of annihilation, but the fact that Zionism would be endangered by rescue. Mercy will have the upper hand, ‘the whole energy’ of people will be chanelled into saving Jews and ‘Zionism will be struck off the agenda’. His conclusion therefore was that no separation could be allowed ‘between the refugee problem and the Palestine problem.’
Does this sound like someone whose main priority was getting as many Jews out of Nazi Germany? To anyone who can read it is quite clear. He was worried by what was termed ‘refugeeism’ by other Zionists would endanger the Zionist project. And what was the answer? Whenever the question of rescue of Jews came up, the Zionists would cry ‘what about Palestine’. They did this in Britain, the USA and Australia among other countries. They did their best to ensure that the Evian Conference of 1938 was not a success and when San Domingo offered a 100,000 places they did their best to stymie it. This is the record of the organisation that Mikey and his disciplinary friend Correction defend.
As the Israeli Socialist Organization Matzpen commented on this letter:
Saving Jewish lives from Hitler is considered by Ben Gurion a potential
threat to Zionism unless the Jews thus saved are bought to Palestine. When
Zionism had to choose between the Jews and the Jewish state, it
unhesitatingly preferred the latter. (Arie Bober (Ed.), The Other Israel : The Radical Case Against Zionism, Anchor Books, New York, 1972, p. 171).
Or to quote the President of the American Zionist Organisation,
‘I am happy that our movement has finally veered around to the point where we are all, or nearly all, talking about a Jewish State… But I ask, are we again, in moments of distraction going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism which is likely to defeat Zionism… Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is not a product of the second World War, nor of the first. Were there no displaced Jews in Europe… Zionism would still be an imperative necessity.’ 49th Annual Convention of Zionist Organisation of America, New York Times, 27. 10. 1946.
Despite there being many sincere Zionists who, despite their own movement, sincerely wanted to fight fascism, the Zionist movement itself had but one priority and it wasn’t rescuing Jews. The book I’ve quoted above, Ben Hecht’s Perfidy isn’t a book by an anti-Zionist. Hecht was a Revisionist Zionist, as were his friends Bergson and Merlin in the USA, but despite that they moved mountains in forcing the US Government to set up the War Refugee Board, which is credited with the saving of a few hundred thousand Jews. Till the end the Zionists opposed such an organisation.
And losing his rag, Mikey accuses Joe of making personal attacks! Talk about motes and beams.
I know this is lengthy, but as the old saying goes, by the time the truth has got its boots on a lie is 12 leagues round the world.
Tony Greenstein
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 11 September, 2008 @ 11:07 pm
I have read this debate and would like to make some comments.
Mr. Greenstein has taken a lot of his information about the Grunwald-Kasztner libel trial from the book Perfidy. This is a work of right-wing propaganda. Scholars do not take it seriously. I explain why in a moment.
The Grunwald-Kasztner libel case was a political show trial. In Israel everyone knows this. Mr. Greenstein could be unfamiliar with the facts. He should know:
1) The defense attorney, Shmuel Tamir, was a leadership candidate in the right-wing opposition Herut party.
2) The judge, Binyamin Halevy, had been denied promotion by the Mapai government. He was about to join Herut. His judgment in the libel trial was timed for the Israeli election season. I believe Herut doubled its seats after the judgment. Halevy was later a Herut politician in the Knesset.
3) Ben Hecht, who wrote Perfidy, was an American Herut propagandist who observed and reported the trial for Shmuel Tamir’s defense team. When you read his book, basically you are reading the defense case.
4) Moshe Krausz, the defense witness and one of Rezsoe Kasztner’s loudest accusers, was in the right-wing religious Mizrachi party. They were political competitors in Hungary and this did not stop in Israel.
5) Joel Brand, who has been subject to debate on this page, was by then a former terrorist in the extreme right-wing Lehi or Stern Gang. His objective after the Holocaust was to paint himself as a martyr and discredit the Mapai leaders.
6) Benjamin Akzin, another witness quoted here, was a right-wing Revisionist Zionist from America and an important political ally of Ben Hecht, Peter Bergson and Shmuel Tamir.
A cosy ideological family! They were simply political activists who wanted power for their movement. This was also true of the other side: they were from the Mapai establishment. As I said, it was a political show trial.
Now back to Perfidy. Mr. Greenstein quotes a famous passage: “his eyes roll and he looks like a man about to jump out of a window” etc. It is a case study of Hecht’s technique. The incident is well known. Tamir was simply shouting at Kasztner on the witness stand for hours on end. Judge Halevy did nothing to stop it. Kasztner collapsed and it looked like a heart attack. But Hecht, who was after all from Hollywood, writes as if Kasztner was almost confessing his guilt!
That is typical of Perfidy’s distortions. The book is full of selective quotes, mistranslations, facts which aren’t true. I can give Mr. Greenstein more examples if he wants. Mr. Greenstein, as a socialist, has a healthy distrust of right-wing propaganda. Does he make an exception for the Grunwald-Kasztner trial?
After Halevy’s politically aimed verdict, which destroyed the socialist government and doubled the right-wing opposition vote, Tamir naturally had Kasztner charged with perjury in relation to Becher. Kasztner was acquitted because he did not testify for Becher at Nuremberg after all. He made his statements at Becher’s denazification hearing. I don’t blame Mr. Greenstein for repeating this common mistake, but here is a predictable result of using a right-wing propaganda source.
I can solve Mr. Greenstein’s confusion about the Jewish Agency. Krausz at the Palestine Office was the Jewish Agency official in Hungary. Kasztner’s Relief and Rescue Comittee was a different body. (Mr. Greenstein’s mistake is natural because Krausz was Mizrachi and Kasztner was in Ihud, Hungary’s Mapai.) Kasztner was paid by the Jewish Agency after the war — not in Nazi-occupied Hungary.
In general Holocaust scholars inside and outside Israel see the Grunwald-Kasztner libel case for what it was, a political show trial. Maybe they are wrong. But in today’s Holocaust scholarship, as in the Supreme Court judgment, Kasztner is nearly everywhere rehabilitated.
Comment by Zeev — 12 September, 2008 @ 3:52 am
I can’t believe my eyes: Greenstein has done it again!
Less than 48 hours ago he wrote:
“Far from wanting Wisliceny transferred in order to aid the hunt against Eichmann, the intention was obviously clear - to try and save his neck as Barri, writing in that well-known anti-Zionist magazine The Journal of Israeli History, makes clear.”
In fact Barri wrote the opposite:
“It is the author’s view that Kastner’s appeal… was but a continuation of the Jewish Agency’s attempts to locate Eichmann.”
Then she quoted his appeal:
“Wisliceny is the only available member of Eichmann’s staff who can give a complete and thorough picture of the extermination program and the people involved in the execution of this program. He will probably be hanged by the Slovakian officials where he is interned unless he is extradited and we would thereby lose all the proof he may be expected to give.”
I showed how Greenstein twisted his source to mean the opposite of what it said. Not only did he refuse to admit what he’d done, he repeated himself:
“the reason Kastner tried to have Wisliceny moved to US jurisdiction was to save his neck, not to locate Eichmann.”
I posted a reminder of his distortion, but that doesn’t matter, he just carries on as if he was never caught:
“[Barri] states that Kastner testified ‘on behalf of’ Nazi war criminals and included in the list was Wisliceny, whose neck he was trying to save.”
To sum up, Greenstein twists a source to mean the opposite of what it says, he’s caught out but he decides to keep doing it, thinking nobody will notice!
Yes it’s clearly deliberate. But why on earth does he think he’s going to get away with it?
Comment by Correction — 12 September, 2008 @ 7:37 am
In general Holocaust scholars inside and outside Israel see the Grunwald-Kasztner libel case for what it was, a political show trial. Maybe they are wrong. But in today’s Holocaust scholarship, as in the Supreme Court judgment, Kasztner is nearly everywhere rehabilitated.
- So that’s all right then.
A Zionist Israeli court exonorates a zionist for collaborating with the nazis.
Murkey has already tried that ploy. However, it would be hard to spot as Murkey likes to pile on the waffle, using detail to try and hide the fact he is a zionist apologist for nazis collaborators and nazi crimes.
Using the opinion of an Isreali court, when it comes to zionists and zionism, is utterly worthless as a defence.
And I am not throwing insults about when I say that Mikey’s efforts at trying to pass himself of as a respectable scholar reminds me of the ‘intellectual’ trash to be found at the Institute for Historical Review - they both attempt to mimic the outward forms of serious schlarship with the same ends in mind, to white-wash nazi-dom and its collaborators.
Comment by joe90 — 12 September, 2008 @ 7:44 am
Zeev’s comments are the first serious intervention by a Zionist in this debate which merit serious consideration. Having said that I will comment on them in another post, suffice to say I disagree with him and I am aware of the political affiliations of the main actors!
The only other thing I should say about them in this post is that the motives of those involved in doing what they did is not important. People often spill the beans and tell the truth for reasons that are frankly appalling or distasteful. E.g. Geoffrey Archer, the Tory Lord and ex-candidate for London Mayor was brought down by a chum and a colleague who had been party to his conspiracy to obtain large damages in a libel trial against the Daily Star and who resented the idea that he could become mayor. Nonetheless, despite the personal pique and jealousy, he did a notable service in nailing Archer. There are many more such examples of people doing the right thing for the wrong reason.
First a little unfinished business.
“This, of course, is the same Moshe Krausz who Greenstein incorrectly argued was a “dissident” Zionist. When Kasztner went to Nuremberg and testified on behalf of Becher, he did sign in the name of the Jewish Agency but at the Gruenwald Court case, witness Eliahu Dobkin from the Jewish Agency was called who denied that Kasztner had the authority to sign in the name of that institution. [Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (Owl Books, 1991)P.270]”
I don’t have time to produce the quotes but people can read for themselves pp. 976-82 of Rudolph Braham’s Politics of Genocide. Even Mikey describes Braham as an authoritative author on the Hungarian holocaust, which he is. He speaks of the ‘long standing conflict between Krausz and the Vaada’, the latter of which Kastner headed. (p.982) To therefore suggest that Krauss was not a dissident Zionist, within the context of Hungarian Zionism, is to behave as the lapdog commentator Mikey is.
And yes Eliahu Dobkin claimed that Kastner no authority to sign affidavits for Nazi war criminals on behalf of the Jewish Agency The question of course is whether or not he was telling the truth. As a relatively unsophisticated propagandist, because Mikey is unable to read and contrast historical documents or accounts, then the voice of officialdom is enough.
The only problem is that Shoshana Barri’s article on ‘Kastner’s Testimonies on Behalf of Nazi War Criminals’ examines this in some depth and reaches the opposite conclusion, with which I agree. Dobkin claimed not even to have heard of the name Becher. This was clearly absurd. Even Chaim Cohen, the representative of Kastner and the Attorney General, accepted when Barri interviewed him, that if the evidence of Dobkin’s and the Jewish Agency’s dealings had been known at the time, ‘it would have believed Kastner rather than Dobkin.’ (p.161) citing an interview with Cohen of 7.10.91.
But to Mikey, officialdom is all!
I don’t however agree with Barri’s interpretations or analysis, especially on the motivation of the Jewish Agency in all this. But she herself describes the change in Kastner’s testimonies on behalf of (her words, not mine!) Krumey, Wisliceny et al.
‘Th change in Kastner’s testimonies was the result not only of a psychological change, but was coordinated w ith the Jewish Agency’s efforts to capture Eichmann and the Mufti on the one hand and to reclaim the property of Hungarian Jewry on the other hand.’ Barri describes Kastner’s efforts on behalf of Wisliceny and co. as ‘unaccompanied by consideration as to their morality.’ (p.159)
The reference to Kastner’s psychological state is interesting. She cites a quite remarkable cable that Kastner sent to the Jewish Agency ‘in which he mentions that the end of the war has frustrate the continuation of his rescue activities.’ But for Mikey & his disciplinary friend, Correction, Kastner is a hero!!
Mikey, who is to the Zionist movement what a poodle is to its lady owner, splutters in outrage at the fact that i have ‘the chutzpah to attack Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the world’s greatest living Holocaust historians.’ Subservience and deference mark him out as a potential scholar himself, except that even Bauer knows when to retreat. And of course Bauer does understand the basic requirements of an academic, which is at least to pretend to understand opposing viewpoints.
But Bauer, with his attacks on one of the true Jewish heroes of this period, Rudolph Vrba, though he later comes round to adopt much of his argument, albeit sullenly (he also regretted, so he says anyway, the refusal to publish Raul Hilbergs Destruction of European Jews)is a somewhat more intelligent and sophisticated Zionist historian than Mad Mikey. However his loyalties are not in doubt and nor is he consistent over e.g the Goldhagen controversy (’Hitler’s Willing Executioners).
But Bauer’s defence and praise of Saly Mayer, the Joint Distribution Committee man in Switzerland, who even Kastner criticises for having obstructed rescue ‘a philanthropic gangster’ mark him out as an unwavering Zionist loyalist. Yad Vashem which he heads is dedicated to the use of the Holocaust as part of the construction of Israeli national consciousness, rather than a lesson to the world in respect of genocide and war crimes.
Mikey’s partner, Madam Correction, seems to be going apopleptic. Barri does indeed make clear, during the course of her article, that the intention behind Kastner’s testimony was the saving of Wisliceny’s life. This the person who was instrumental both in destroying 80,000 Slovakian Jews and also in organising the round up of Hungary’s Jews. HOWEVER, since Correction seems to be even more stupid than her quirky partner Mikey, Barri having presented the evidence (strange it is true for a Zionist) backs off the obvious explanation, or rather conflates them.
Indeed Barri becomes inarticulate and illogical in parts of her article and it can only be explained by her political loyalties. She does indeed believe herself that the reason for trying to save W is the question of Eichmann BUT at the same time she also makes clear that the Americans weren’t interested in Eichmann or other ‘low level’ Nazis (her description). So why then transfer W to the Americans if they would have released him soon? one reason is filthy lucre, the ‘Becher Deposit’ which I’ll leave people to read up about. The other is clearl the part W played in the negotiations with K.
Mikey is determined to prove that Zionism is a collaborationist movement. According to him ‘There is no question that Krumey was a war criminal but the 15,000 Hungarian Jews in the Strasshof labour camp were no doubt relieved not to be murdered. Juttner had intervened with Hitler to stop the death march.’ He therefore defends the Kastner testimony on behalf of not just Krumey but the Higher SS Leader Hans Juttner. No doubt he too was a saviour of Jews!
The number of Strasshoff deportees incidentally was over 18,000 and some figures quote 30,000. Krumey’s role is best described by Braham’s who notes that ‘an indeterminate number were ordered deported by Krumey to Auschwitz as punishment for infractions, including the possession of money, the use of barbers or going to the movies.’ At Strasshoff, up to 30,000 (Braham cites 20,000) Jews were ‘laid on ice’, diverted from being deported to Auschwitz, as a result of severe labour shortages in Vienna and Austria. They worked on farms, estates and in digging anti-tank ditches. 75% survived thanks to the Soviet invasion. As Braham describes it (p. 650) ‘The chief of the RHSA [Kaltenbrunner] was besieged by the Austrian entrepreneurs operating war industries and by government officials… with requests to provide them with desperately needed slave labor.’ Not that that stopped both Kastner and his sidekick, Andre Biss, claiming credit.
As I said, I will respond to Zeev’s post, which unlike Mikey, Mme Correction et al, is a serious contribution later.
Tony G
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 13 September, 2008 @ 6:48 am
What reminds me of the intellectual trash at the Institute for Historical Review is joe90 denying 60% of the Holocaust in Hungary and then calling it a Zionist crime.
What reminds me of the street trash of the British National Party is joe90’s habit of throwing insults about because he can’t think of any facts to defend his opinions.
Why not try proving Zeev wrong about the consensus of Holocaust scholars or proving me wrong about Greenstein twisting sources to mean the opposite of what they say.
Comment by Correction — 13 September, 2008 @ 6:55 am
A review of the state of play. A couple of days ago Greenstein wrote:
“Far from wanting Wisliceny transferred in order to aid the hunt against Eichmann, the intention was obviously clear - to try and save his neck as Barri, writing in that well-known anti-Zionist magazine The Journal of Israeli History, makes clear.”
Barri’s article said the opposite:
“Kastner’s appeal… was but a continuation of the Jewish Agency’s attempts to locate Eichmann.”
She also quoted Kastner:
“Wisliceny is the only available member of Eichmann’s staff who can give a complete and thorough picture of the extermination program and the people involved in the execution of this program. He will probably be hanged by the Slovakian officials where he is interned unless he is extradited and we would thereby lose all the proof he may be expected to give.”
Instead of apologising for twisting his source, Greenstein did it again:
“the reason Kastner tried to have Wisliceny moved to US jurisdiction was to save his neck, not to locate Eichmann.”
I reminded everyone that Greenstein’s source said the opposite of what he was claiming. But Greenstein posted his blatant distortion for the third time:
“[Barri] states that Kastner testified ‘on behalf of’ Nazi war criminals and included in the list was Wisliceny, whose neck he was trying to save.”
Obviously he thought people wouldn’t notice what he was doing. In his latest post he does it for the fourth tine:
“Barri does indeed make clear, during the course of her article, that the intention behind Kastner’s testimony was the saving of Wisliceny’s life.”
But then he apparenty sees that people have noticed. So he reverses course, admits his source said the opposite of what he claimed, ignores his own repeated lies, even in the very same post, and tries arguing that the source didn’t really say what she plainly said:
“She does indeed believe herself that the reason for trying to save W is the question of Eichmann BUT at the same time she also makes clear that the Americans weren’t interested in Eichmann or other ‘low level’ Nazis (her description)”
Amazing.
I wonder what Greenstein will try now. Something as impressive as boasting about his mastery of historical documents when he can’t even get Randolph Braham’s name right?
As for Greenstein’s harping on S&M, it’s a bit too Freudian. By twisting sources and getting names wrong when they’re on the same page, he does make it easy for people to humiliate him. Now it seems this was his plan all along!
Comment by Correction — 13 September, 2008 @ 7:47 am
What reminds me of the intellectual trash at the Institute for Historical Review is joe90 denying 60% of the Holocaust in Hungary and then calling it a Zionist crime.
- I thought I was just a ‘holocaust minimiser’ as well.
Now I’ve been upgraded to a ‘holocaust denier.
That didn’t take long.
Of course, I’m not the one distorting the historical record in order to defend nazi war criminals and their zionist collaborators - I leave that to zionists such as Mikey and Correction here.
It shows how much they actually care about Jewish People in contrast to how much they care about their racist war crime utopia of Isreal.
Why not try proving Zeev wrong about the consensus of Holocaust scholars….
- Why don’t you try proving this first instead of just asserting it?
I mean, if you are keen on others proving their case then why don’t you prove yours first?
…or proving me wrong about Greenstein twisting sources to mean the opposite of what they say.
- I don’t want to cramp TG’s style.
He’s far more knowledgeable about these matters than I’ll probably ever be. He doesn’t need me to do what he can do far better himself especially as it’s only a pair of fanatical zionists trying to whitewash nazi criminals and their zionist collaborators.
I’m looking forward to what TG has to say about Zeev, which is more than can be said about the Orwellian named ‘Correction’ or Mikey.
It tickles me to hear claims that issues to do with the Holocaust have been used, amongst other things, as a basis for political show trials inside Israel. I think you’ll find the Holocaust has been used for more than just that by Israel and its apologists.
Comment by joe90 — 13 September, 2008 @ 8:03 am
“Of course, I’m not the one distorting the historical record in order to defend nazi war criminals,” writes joe90.
“Of course” not: joe90 just denies 60% of the Holocaust in Hungary, claims the Zionists did it, and worships Greenstein who distorts historical sources to mean the opposite of what they say.
Denying parts of the Holocaust and blaming a group of Jews for the rest of it: that’s how much the likes of joe90 “care about Jewish People.” Thanks joe90! We Jews need more friends like you!
If joe90 was honest he’d admit he couldn’t care less about my relatives who died in the gas chambers. He wants to use their suffering to hurt the Jews who are still around. That’s what he’s about.
I never had a chance to meet those relatives. But it’s clear what they’d think of joe90.
Comment by Correction — 13 September, 2008 @ 4:18 pm
I don’t deny I quoted incorrect figures and haven’t disputed the fact that I did.
If you can find any evidence that I have consistently assert incorrect figures be my guest and present your evidence.
The fact you provide no supporting evidence for your assertion has to be put down to the fact you are a zionist smear merchant exploiting the suffering of Jewish People in order to silence your critics.
Zionists exploiting Judaism and the victims of the nazis as human shields to hide your crimes behind doesn’t suprise me. Exploiting the Holocaust to justify zionism and Israeli racist war crimes has a long and sordid history.
After all, you have no answer to the fact of zionist collaboration with the nazis - so the only tactic left to you, as you have no arguments and evidence to prove your case, is to throw mud and hope it sticks.
The zionist arguments against their opponents can be categorised thus -
1. antisemitism with various flavours such as holocaust minimiser, holocaust denier etc etc
1. ad hominum
Comment by joe90 — 13 September, 2008 @ 5:13 pm
How ridiculous we have a tireless critic of Gilad Atzmon, that is Joe90, being accused of holocaust denial by a supporter of Mikey, in turn a supporter of Kastner and a collaborator with Atzmon. No wonder “Correction” prefers to remain anonymous. Meanwhile, Joe is on record condemning the holocaust and never taking issue with the overall numbers and condemning those who really do deny the holocaust or support and distribute the writings of those that do deny it.
The issue here is not how many hundreds of thousands of Jews were betrayed by Kastner out of the millions that died but that they were betrayed by Kastner. That’s it. Quibble about numbers and places but when the zionists lose every humanist argument over their nasty racist project they resort to “it’s good for Jews”. Mikey and Kastner, generations apart, are proof that they even lose that argument as well.
Comment by Mark Elf — 13 September, 2008 @ 10:05 pm
[This comment was deleted as it contained a libel. This same libel was published previously by the Times Newspaper, who retracted it and apologised. Andy]
Comment by Mikey — 14 September, 2008 @ 2:41 am
Erratum,
The page reference for the following comment from Francis R. Nicosia’s book Zionism and anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (Cambridge University Press, 2008) has not come out:
Nicosia specifically states that it is a-historical and simplistic to “dismiss Zionism as yet another of racism, the substance of which has not been very different from German National Socialism.”
The relevant reference is page 8 of that book.
Comment by Mikey — 14 September, 2008 @ 2:46 am
It is interesting that having been the cause of The Times conceding a libel action, because of his lies - yes lies - which Aaronovitch put on his blog, the freak known as Mikey now dares to repeat his libels WITHOUT even having the honesty to acknowledge that even a major right-wing newspaper wasn’t prepared to defend them when push comes to shove because it realises that Mikey’s traumas at hearing me speak weren’t a defence!
No Mikey you are not a coward you just failed to intervene. Yes you wouldn’t have had as long as me, that is usually the case with guest speakers, but I have never hesitated to intervene for 1-2 minutes in a meeting, what is your fear? You can’t say anything succinctly? Well you intervened, not that anyone noticed, at the IJV meeting on Boycott, so you can clearly do it but were also clearly afraid of being humiliated by Lenni Brenner and me.
i. Having scanned it it is libellous and repeats the same lies, and yes even the Jewish Chronicle can and does print lies, that led to the successful libel action against David Aaronovitch and The Times. Being an activist and an employment lawyer in particular, I don’t have time to waste on human freaks like Mikey in search of an identity.
I can only briefly comment on Mikey’s reply, not only because as I have a life and kids, but because it is a waste of time rebutting him since Mikey still believes that if he can get any quote, however propagandistic or polemical, even if it has no substance or is taken from a plagiarist even, then that is a rebuttal. E.g. he cites as proof that Perfidy is the worst book since sliced bread that fact that ‘ A review of Perfidy in the New York Times said that Hecht “indulges in some crude distortions of history.”
Well that clinches it doesn’t it. But the New York Times isn’t a source of neutral, value-free facts and comment. It is a player and it has been pro-Zionist, absurdly so, and pro-war since its beginnings. Maybe the name Judith Miller means nothing to him but it certainly does to those who oppose the Iraqi war, because she was the columnist who took the claims of the Pentagon and CIA about weapons of mass destruction at face value and her ‘news’ stories were little more than the formers’ press releases. http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/9226/
Likewise it ran a veritable campaign in favour of the notorious forgery by Joan Peters ‘From Time Immemorial’ alleging that the Palestinians refugees were in fact recent immigrants caused by the Zionist presence. Problem was that she borrowed her ‘facts’ from a plagiarist and then that other plagiarist, Alan Dershowitz borrowed them from her. http://www.serendipity.li/zionism/joan_peters.htm
But shock horror. Mikey has turned up a terrible quote from Hecht, which is clearly anti-Semitic. And? We know he was a Zionist and a revisionist Zionist to boot. But were quotes about ‘Jew faces in which race leers and burns like some biologic disease are rather shocking to a mongrelized world.’ any worse than those from the editor of the Zionist die Welt, Jacob Klatzkin, that ‘Galut can only drag out the disgrace of our people and sustain the existence of a people disfigured in both body and soul - in a word, of a horror. At the very worst it can maintain us in a state of national impurity and breed some sort of outlandish creature in an environment of disintegration of cultures and of darkening spiritual horizons.’ (A Hertzberg, the Zionist Idea, pp. 222/3) or Moses Hess in Rome & Jerusalem that ‘Jewish noses can’t be reshaped and black curly hair can’t be changed into blond hair or combed straight by christening. The Jewish race is a basic one and reproduces itself in its integrity… the Jewish type has itself always remained the same throughout the course of the centuries… the Jewish type can’t be exterminated Hess, Rome & Jerusalem - The Last Nationality Question’, 1862, pp. 85/6.
However it’s good that Mikey has been provoked beyond endurance! Hence he retails a number of lies himself:
i. I send friendly e-mails to Atzmon. Not so. When Atzmon got into an argument with Israel Shamir, over the question of Lenni Brenner’s book that Mikey thinks discredited and, at that time, took a position that the railway lines to Auschwitz should be bombed, I took this as a change of his position and wrote him an e-mail welcoming his change of heart. I was wrong, he hadn’t changed. And that was the first and only such e-mail.
ii. Mikey lies about the National Front and myself. It is a lie because I have pointed this out to before to him. I was one of the founders of the Brighton & Hove anti-fascist committee and Secretary of the local ANL, which at that time believed in physically confronting the fascists. Mikey by way of contrast has never involved himself in anti-fascist activity or taken the associated risks - your home address being publicised, being physically attacked by gangs of goons etc. We were successful in driving them off the streets (and at Sussex University the Chair of the Zionist ‘J’ Soc OPPOSED no platform for them because it might be used against them! This was the kind of right-wing shit that Nigel Savage was.
The NF discovered that I was anti-Zionist and therefore deliberately wrote a fake review of a pamphlet I wrote comparing it to the holocaust denial pamphlet ‘Did 6 Million Really Die’ by Richard Harwood/Verall. They did this, quite clearly, in order to give ammunition to quislings and Zionists like Mikey and of course Mikey swallowed the bait. But without having the ‘review’ to hand it also mentions that fact that I had helped hospitalise the bastards and their indifference to my personal fate. Strange things to mention in a ‘review’ but in fact they mentioned that their ‘review’ would provide ammunition for the more brain dead Zionists like MME. In fact Mikey even quotes selectively from the NF ‘review’.
5. Mikey believes the real collaborators with the Nazis are the communists. Well right-wing scum like would believe that but some of us understand that despite Stalin’s pact with Hitler the Russian people, and the system created by the Bolsheviks, however deformed, were responsible, at terrible cost for the destruction of the Nazi armies. It certainly wasn’t the West whose firms like IBM were doing trade in the middle of the war (or Bush’s grandfather’s oil firm). Trotskyists like Abram Leon paid with the life whilst fighting fascism so a toe rag like Mikey, who even collaborates with ex-Jewish anti-Semites should hang his head with shame.
6. Mikey at last concedes that Ruth Smeed on behalf of the Board of Deputies acknowledged that the BNP web site was the pro-Zionist of all. He says he doesn’t understand but suggests I ask her. But I don’t need to because it is quite clear, as the reference from Joe proved, that the site is both pro-Zionist and anti-Semitic.
7. Mike says that ‘Barri does not say anywhere in her article that Kasztner testified on behalf of Wisliceny. What Barri says is that Kasztner appealed on behalf of Wisliceny. Kasztner wanted him transferred to American custody. [44] An appeal is not the same as a testimony’. This is what is called splitting hairs. No K didn’t testify on W’s behalf he merely appealed on his behalf!! Please, give us a break. And he merely wanted him transferred to American custody because those damn Czechs were in the habit of hanging Nazi war criminals. Quite.
8. Mikey still wishes to argue that 1+1=1. Ok Mikey you didn’t work with Atzmon, with whom you admit to having met, you merely collaborated with him. Fact is that he thanked you for the information dug up on me and you think it is legitimate to go around ferretting around for information on people whose politics you find difficult to oppose, showing what a low-life you are. Fine, but why did Atzmon thank for having passed on that info?
9. I have on this threat criticised the behaviour of the Jewish Council (Judenrat) in Hungary which was as bad as any. It consisted of Zionists and well-connected businessmen and other such types. There was nothing progressive about it but it didn’t keep the news of Auschwitz secret like Kastner. It wasn’t handed by the Slovakian Judenverrat a copy of the Auschwitz Protocols but certainly it should be very heavily criticised as a quisling group.
I have read the Braham’s quote on Kastner. It is of course an opinion, though an important one, but in fact Braham veered in different directions re Kastner and also raises the allegation that he saved the 1684 Prominents in exchange for the rest of Hungarian Jewry, something Mikey has no problem with.
10. It is not true that I claim that the Nazi Party is a Zionist party. That is absurd. It was pro-Zionist, a very different thing.
11. The book of Francis Nicosia which I have read is ‘The Third Reich and the Palestine Question’ which makes the pro-Zionist orientation of the Nazi Party quite clear. Nor do I doubt that Zionists like the racist Tabenkin were ‘proud’ of Jewish resistance fighters in Poland, that is not the point. They were unwilling to do anything to help them and indeed they were part of the effort to close the doors to all escapees unless their destination was Palestine. Perhaps Mikey should read S Beit Zvi’s monumeanl ‘Post Ugandan Zionism on Trial’ in which he details just how the Zionist movement in Palestine resisted doing anything.
12. I note how Mikey has ignored the 1938 memorandum of Ben Gurion to the Zionist Executive (and his falsification of Dawidowicz’s figures on the Hungarian Jewish dead) so let us pile up the agony even more. The Chair of the Rescue Dept. of the Jewish Agency Executive was none other than a Yitzhak Greenbaum. When asked to actually do something this was his response:
‘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 own people, the greater the minimisation of our efforts to strengthen and promote the Hebraisation of the land….
And when I was asked but could you donate from the resources of the United Jewish Appeal (Foundation Fund) for the rescue of Jews in Europe, I said no. And I say again no. I know that people wonder why I found it necessary to say that. Friends tell me that even if these things are true, I should not reveal them in public at a moment of such sorrow and anxiety… I cannot agree. In my opinion one should resist this wave which relegates the Zionist activities to secondary importance. And because of that I was called anti-Semitic and was judged to be responsible for the fact that we do not absorb ourselves completely in the rescue activity.’
Statement to Zionist Executive Council on the Holocaust and On the Reaction. (18.2.1943) published in Beeyemei Khurban Veshoah, (In Days of Holocaust and Destruction) Tel Aviv, 1946, pp. 68/9, cited U Davies p.25 and Shonfield. Also Hecht, p. 50.
No doubt Mikey can explain this quote. But rather than just quote Zionist politicians, what was the view of an objective, indeed pro-Zionist writer such as Christopher Sykes, the British imperial historian and son of Government Minister Sir Mark Sykes, who writes of the 1938 Evian Conference
‘which was held purportedly in order to try and find places of refuge for Europe’s Jews, but more as a face saving exercise, that:
The Zionists who played no part in the (Evian) Conference were not worried by its failure… From the start they regarded the whole enterprise with hostile indifference. Zionist writers scarcely mentioned it…
If the 31 nations had done their duty and shown hospitality to those in dire need, then the pressure on the National Home and the heightened enthusiasm of Jews with Palestine would both have been relaxed. THIS WAS THE LAST THING THE ZIONIST LEADERS WISHED FOR… Even in the more terrible days ahead they made no secret of the fact, even when talking to Gentiles, that they did not want Jewish settlements outside Palestine. To be successful… the Zionists wanted to do something more for Jews than merely help them to escape dangers. They wanted to make them the object of respect, not the object of pity… If their policy entailed suffering, then that was the price that had to be paid for the rescue of the Jewish soul. It is hard, perhaps impossible to find a parallel in history to this particular Zionist idea.. That such was the basic Zionist idea is not a matter of opinion but a fact abundantly provable by evidence… There can be no doubt that here again one is confronted with an idea which even if judged as morally wrong is such as could only be conceived by a great people. As time went on it grew rather than diminished in strength. It formed another crossroads.’ pp. 188-91.
I have read this debate and would like to make some comments.
Mr. Greenstein has taken a lot of his information about the Grunwald-Kasztner libel trial from the book Perfidy. This is a work of right-wing propaganda. Scholars do not take it seriously. I explain why in a moment.
The Grunwald-Kasztner libel case was a political show trial. In Israel everyone knows this. Mr. Greenstein could be unfamiliar with the facts. He should know:
1) The defense attorney, Shmuel Tamir, was a leadership candidate in the right-wing opposition Herut party.
2) The judge, Binyamin Halevy, had been denied promotion by the Mapai government. He was about to join Herut. His judgment in the libel trial was timed for the Israeli election season. I believe Herut doubled its seats after the judgment. Halevy was later a Herut politician in the Knesset.
3) Ben Hecht, who wrote Perfidy, was an American Herut propagandist who observed and reported the trial for Shmuel Tamir’s defense team. When you read his book, basically you are reading the defense case.
4) Moshe Krausz, the defense witness and one of Rezsoe Kasztner’s loudest accusers, was in the right-wing religious Mizrachi party. They were political competitors in Hungary and this did not stop in Israel.
5) Joel Brand, who has been subject to debate on this page, was by then a former terrorist in the extreme right-wing Lehi or Stern Gang. His objective after the Holocaust was to paint himself as a martyr and discredit the Mapai leaders.
6) Benjamin Akzin, another witness quoted here, was a right-wing Revisionist Zionist from America and an important political ally of Ben Hecht, Peter Bergson and Shmuel Tamir.
A cosy ideological family! They were simply political activists who wanted power for their movement. This was also true of the other side: they were from the Mapai establishment. As I said, it was a political show trial.
Now back to Perfidy. Mr. Greenstein quotes a famous passage: “his eyes roll and he looks like a man about to jump out of a window” etc. It is a case study of Hecht’s technique. The incident is well known. Tamir was simply shouting at Kasztner on the witness stand for hours on end. Judge Halevy did nothing to stop it. Kasztner collapsed and it looked like a heart attack. But Hecht, who was after all from Hollywood, writes as if Kasztner was almost confessing his guilt!
That is typical of Perfidy’s distortions. The book is full of selective quotes, mistranslations, facts which aren’t true. I can give Mr. Greenstein more examples if he wants. Mr. Greenstein, as a socialist, has a healthy distrust of right-wing propaganda. Does he make an exception for the Grunwald-Kasztner trial?
After Halevy’s politically aimed verdict, which destroyed the socialist government and doubled the right-wing opposition vote, Tamir naturally had Kasztner charged with perjury in relation to Becher. Kasztner was acquitted because he did not testify for Becher at Nuremberg after all. He made his statements at Becher’s denazification hearing. I don’t blame Mr. Greenstein for repeating this common mistake, but here is a predictable result of using a right-wing propaganda source.
I can solve Mr. Greenstein’s confusion about the Jewish Agency. Krausz at the Palestine Office was the Jewish Agency official in Hungary. Kasztner’s Relief and Rescue Comittee was a different body. (Mr. Greenstein’s mistake is natural because Krausz was Mizrachi and Kasztner was in Ihud, Hungary’s Mapai.) Kasztner was paid by the Jewish Agency after the war — not in Nazi-occupied Hungary.
In general Holocaust scholars inside and outside Israel see the Grunwald-Kasztner libel case for what it was, a political show trial. Maybe they are wrong. But in today’s Holocaust scholarship, as in the Supreme Court judgment, Kasztner is nearly everywhere rehabilitated.
Comment by Zeev — 12 September, 2008 @ 3:52 am
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 14 September, 2008 @ 11:40 pm
Zeev posted a comment re Perfidy, which I want to take up and reply to:
1. I am aware that Perfidy was a book by a right-wing, revisionist historian. However his book is still, nearly 50 years on, regularly cited by scholars. E.g. I had a dispute with Mikey about whether or not Braham had cited him in his Politics of Genocide. he stated he had twice whereas I made some 9 counts (from memory). Braham is one of many.
2. If the Kastner-Grunwald libel case was a political show trial that is because Kastner and those behind him, the Government made it so. They pressed charges, they got the Attorney General himself, Chaim Cohen to appear. They decided that they could no longer ignore the attacks on Kastner, not just from Grunwald but from the survivors of the Hungarian holocaust.
3. I am aware that defense attorney, Shmuel Tamir, was a leadership candidate in Herut. Though in 1977 when he became part of the Begin coalition government he was in Yigael Yadin’s Democratic Movement for Change. This has disappeared because israel, being a bogus ‘democracy’ has very few stable political formations.
4. I am also aware that Judge Binyamin Halevy was close to Herut, though at first he was extremely hostile to Grunwald, asking him at the beginnign if he’d like to reconsider his plea. The fact is that he was convinced by the evidence brought forth.
5. Of course Ben Hecht’s was, as you say, essentially the case for the defense. But it was a good case!! But Hecht was someone contacted by these dissident Zionists, he was originally just a Hollywood producer/playwright.
6. Or put it another way, out of all the Zionist groups and individuals in the USA, only the dissident Zionists around Peter Bergson and Shmuel Merlin wanted to do something to rescue the Jews of Europe. They met obstruction from the leaders of American Zionism, including Stephen Wise who had at the State Department’s request suppressed news of the Holocaust for 3 months in the autumn of 1942. That even they too were held back by their Zionism I would accept but they were the only ones, not the tame establishment friends of Roosevelt, the Labour Zionists.
7) I am aware that Moshe Krausz, who you rightly accept was ‘one of Rezsoe Kasztner’s loudest accusers’ (Mikey cannot accept that even among Zionists there can be differences) was in ‘the right-wing religious Mizrachi party’. Well being ‘right-wing’ did not stop Ben Gurion insisting on having a government alliance wih their party, the National Religious Party in Israel, even when the ‘left’ Zionist Mapam and themselves had an absolute majority in 1949.
8. Likewise I realise that Joel Brand was likewise attracted to the ‘right-wing of Zionism’ and not just be, but the deputy commander of the Jewish resistance in the Vilna Ghetto, Chaim Lazar. That is a fact, because of course ‘left’ and ‘right’ in Zionist terms is meaningless. So too Benjaim Atzkin. But it was because of these differences, tactical differences in many cases, that we came to learn something of what happened when Hungarian Zionism betrayed the Jews they purported to represent.
I accept also that Hecht’s writing technique was very much at one with his Hollywood writing, not least when describing Kastner’s reactions.
Zeev asks if I ‘as a socialist, has a healthy distrust of right-wing propaganda. Does he make an exception for the Grunwald-Kasztner trial?’ Yes I have a healthy distrust of all propaganda but I note that the attacks on Perfidy, which Mikey details below, are all of the ‘tut tut, how dare he wash our laundry in public’.
No Halvey’s verdict never ‘destroyed the socialist government’ because there never was one. These socialists were the ones who expelled the refugees, demolished their villages, perpetrated massacres e.g. Rabin at Lydda/Ramleh.
Let me describe the reaction of Pinhas Ruttenberg, founder of the Israeli national electric company. He was ‘a great hater of trade unions’ yet during the conflict with the workers there, the Histadrut ‘decided not to call for a work stoppage, even if it meant harming the workers and their rights.’ Why? Because ‘this integral nationalist, who believed only in force and loathed organized labor in all its manifestations, such as the celebration of the First of May, also described himself as a socialist.’ p.239.
Labour Zionism in all its manifestations (bar the minority around Gdud Avodah - the work brigades) rejected socialism, quite explicitly. Socialism, the unity of the working class against the capitalists, was abhorrent. Zionism was in favour of a national form of socialism or as Zeev Sternhall described it, ‘nationalist socialism’ (& only because of the connotations of ‘national socialism’).
Sternhell, in his Founding Myths of Israel, describes laboriously and meticulously, how Labour Zionism was never socialist, never believed in class struggle but did believe in the slogan ‘from class to nation’ in other words it was the role of the working class to bring the nation state into being and that meant excluding the Arab workers.
Re where the Budapest Rescue Committee was a Jewish Agency body. Formally it might not have been, but in practice it was. It is no accident that Kastner wrote his 300+ report on its activities to the JA after the war, embellishing it along the way. Clearly it linked up and worked with the JA in such a way, including its main offices in Switzerland and Istanbul in such a way that I stand by my description.
Yes Krauss worked at the Palestine Office of the JA. But that was concerned soley with emigration whereas the JA was the Palestine wing of the WZO and was concerned with more than just that.
I don’t accept that Kastner has been rehabilitated. What is true is that there have been concerted attempts to rehabilitate Kastner but this is impossible given the formidable evidence of his collaboration, including testifying on behalf of 4 Nazi war criminals (at least) and deliberately ensuring that news of their destination was not leaked to the Hungarian Jews, who were entitled to that information, which had been conveyed by Vrba and Wetzler precisely in order that they might have the opportunity to escape. Elie Wiesel describes in his memoir Night how the Hungarian Jews who were deported did not believe they were being taken to destruction but to settlement in a fictitious place called Kenyermeze.
One particularly moving and tragic account of what this meant is in Helen Fein’s Accounting for Genocide, a story about a little girl Eva’s Story. The family’s non-Jewish cleaner wanted to take her away and keep her safe until the war’s end. Her parents and family, not believing anything untoward would happen to her, and with a hysterical grandmother going mad, refuses to allow her to be taken away. Eva died in Auschwitz. That was what Kastner’s behaviour meant and that fact that he belonged to Ihud in Hungary and the ’socialist’ Mapai in Israel is irrelevant.
Tony Greenstein
Comment by Tony Greenstein — 15 September, 2008 @ 12:51 am