Tony Greenstein – More Errors than Paragraphs
Guest post by Mikey
Tony Greenstein is a notorious radical left-wing anti-Zionist demagogue who is happy to play fast and loose with the facts, if it promotes his ideological cause.
This week the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign is not only staging the play Perdition but is also hosting Lenni Brenner. To do this in Holocaust Memorial Week is to say the least distasteful. The play Perdition was vilified in 1987 for historical inaccuracy and antisemitism. At that time Tony Greenstein was a proponent of the play and to judge by his recent comments, he still is.
On January 21, Greenstein appeared in the comments section of Harry’s Place and wrote the following (insults, spelling and grammar as in the original):
One of the ‘strengths’ of Stalinist discourse was its ability to distort the positions and ideas of its opponents in order to discredit them. Hence social democrats were social fascists. Jews were Zionists etc. Harry’s Place shares this in abundance.
Brenner is a trotskyists. He has nothign to do with Stalinism. It’s people like Oliver Kamm, who believes a war in Iraq which has killed at latest estimates about 3/4 million people in order to secure oil supplies is justified who owe their methodology to Stalinism.
In fact, the future Police State manipulators of HH deliberately ignore that Perdition and much of what Brenner writes is based on the Israeli trial of israel Kastner between 1953 and 1956 in Israel, when he was accused of gross collaboration, including pleading for the life of SS COl. Becher and saying he was a rescuer of Jews. Kastner was found guilty of collaboration as a Jewish Agency official and in the case of Becher by both the Supreme and Jerusalem District Courts. Now I may be mistaken but I don’t think either of the above bodies was a sub committee of the Politburo!
So the freedoms that HH devotees talk about is based upon keeping its own audience in ignorance. The fact is that the behaviour of Israel today and its occupation of the West Bank and the means of terror to keep it there are taken from the book of anti-Semitism including the Nazis. Take my word for it? Perish the thought. Read Tommy Lapid in Ha’aretz!!
Oh and all the allegations in Perdition are made by the 2/3rd Jewish escapee from Auschwitz, the non-Zionist Rudolph Vrba who was a non-personality (again shades of Stalin) in Israel because he didn’t go along with the Zionised version of the Holocaust and how it justifies Israel. No doubt Vrba, who escaped with Wetzler to warn Hungarian Jewry of what was coming was also an anti-Semite for accusing the Zionists of suppressing his Auschwitz Protocols to save the Zionist elite.
But the only problem is that even Prof. Yehuda Bauer of Yad Vashem has had to admit Vrba is correct.
I thought it might be helpful to list Greenstein’s factual errors in full.
1. Lenni Brenner’s line on Zionist-Nazi collaboration comes straight out of Stalinist antisemitic propaganda. In his book Zionism in the Age of the Dictators he even invokes Stalinist literature by citing the East German propagandist Klaus Polkehn.
2. The Kasztner trial commenced in January 1954 and the lower court’s verdict was given in June 1955. The appeal hearings commenced in 1957 and concluded in January 1958.
3. Kasztner was not the accused in the trial. He was a witness for the prosecution. It was Malkiel Grunwald who was accused of libel.
4. The lower court’s verdict against Kasztner – regarded by many as a result of his unreliability in the witness box and a political vendetta by the judge – was posthumously overturned by the Supreme Court.
5. Although Kasztner claimed that he testified for Becher as a Jewish Agency official, he had absolutely no authorisation to do so. This was made clear at the Kasztner trial by Jewish Agency witness Eliahu Dobkin.
6. Kasztner was at Nuremberg as an aide to the American prosecutors. He testified for Becher because he believed that Becher had assisted his rescue efforts at the end of the war.
7. The allegations in Perdition were not made by Vrba. Perdition claims that Zionism “worked hand in glove” with Nazi Germany and refers to “the Zionist knife in the Nazi fist.” Vrba blamed Kasztner for negotiating with Eichmann rather than publicising information about Auschwitz.
8. Vrba is not a non-person in the State of Israel. Many scholarly books on the Holocaust discuss his actions and Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, praises him as “one of the authentic Jewish heroes from the period.”
In fact, and ironically, Greenstein treats as “non-persons”, the countless Zionists who fought against Nazism, either in the Allied armies or the Jewish resistance, and the Zionists who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. These heroes are never mentioned by Greenstein and his fellow anti-Zionists.
9. No one has made the ridiculous suggestion claim that Vrba was an antisemite. Historians do, however, reject his unfounded belief that anyone who tried to negotiate with the Nazis to save Jews – including not only Zionists like Kasztner but also anti-Zionists like Rabbi Weissmandel – was a Nazi collaborator.
10. Yehuda Bauer does not accuse “the Zionists of suppressing his Auschwitz Protocols to save the Zionist elite.” In fact, Bauer has written extensively about Zionist efforts to save Jews, which included calls for the bombing of Auschwitz. He also describes the Hungarian Zionist Kasztner as a “a real-life hero” who rescued thousands of Jews and tried to save many more.
11. The “Zionised version of the Holocaust” is not the justification for Israel’s existence. Jews have wanted to return to their homeland for centuries. The Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine were issued decades before the Holocaust.
12. Israel’s policies are not taken “from the book of anti-Semitism including the Nazis” but from the internationally recognised right of the Jewish people to their own homeland – a right that was affirmed by the League of Nations and the United Nations, although it is denied by anti-Zionists such as Brenner and Greenstein.
13. Ha’aretz reported that Lapid compared the illegal actions of “some Hebron settlers” to the treatment of Jews in Yugoslavia just prior to World War II. Readers may wish to compare this Ha’aretz report to Greenstein’s version of it. As this example shows, Greenstein cannot be trusted to cite sources accurately.
Greenstein’s lengthy outburst includes more errors than paragraphs. That is quite an achievement. The above comments exclude his erroneous claims about the war in Iraq and I also have not commented on his ad-hominem attacks on Oliver Kamm and Harry’s Place. Greenstein was prepared in 1987 to support erroneous claims about the Holocaust in the play Perdition and twenty years on he is making erroneous statements himself. What is even more amazing than his errors is that he expected to get away with them.
Comments
| 24 January 2007, 7:04 pm |
Tony Greenstein is among the thickest people I’ve ever met. The last time he cropped up on this blog, so far as I recall, was in an early discussion about the antisemite Gilad Atzmon. Someone mentioned Greenstein’s opposition to Atzmon, so I pointed out that Greenstein is a crank of the first order who welcomed the Brighton bombing of 1984 and the attempted assassination of the Prime Minister. Greenstein then posted an indignant comment here that confirmed my recollection (the indignation was on account of my suggesting there was anything wrong with his position on the issue). He then insulted another commenter who had referred to the notion of Jewish “self-hatred” (which is not a term I ever use, as I consider it illegitimate to invoke psychological explanations for political opinions). Greenstein claimed that “self-hatred” was a concept first used by the Nazis against their domestic opponents. He was talking rubbish, of course: the term certainly dates from before WW1, and was popularised (though not coined) by the Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing in his book Der jüdische Selbsthaß. (Lessing was murdered by the Nazis in 1933.) When I pointed out Greenstein’s error on this site, he responded by sending me numerous emails comprising several thousand words of semi-literate abuse, and judging by this post he still hasn’t composed himself.
| 24 January 2007, 7:05 pm |
Last time I checked, it was still showing at St Augustine’s. No, I’m not going.
| 24 January 2007, 7:56 pm |
Mikey,
Wow! You sure studied the issue. Lots of interesting facts. Great job!
| 24 January 2007, 9:47 pm |
Not meaning to hurt Mikey’s no doubt overweaning longing for reassurrance and cripling self-doubt, but in depth research isn’t always necessary when combating such poisonous arguments. I do not have a detailed knowledge of the AI issue; what I do have is a wide knowledge of the standard arguments used against Israel. They really are not difficult to combat.
| 24 January 2007, 9:49 pm |
Mikey,
Good job.
| 24 January 2007, 10:02 pm |
alec wrote:
but in depth research isn’t always necessary when combating such poisonous arguments.
on the contrary, I found that some people treat Lenni Brenner as if he is a rarefied, scholarly expert on this topic, whereas it is nearer the truth to say that he’s a political crank with an axe to grind, so under those circumstances Mikey’s right to demolish Greenstein and Brenner’s utterances with history, logic and reason.
admiration for Brenner’s runs fairly far and wide on the far Left, noticeably among the SWP, etc and their historical misconceptions of period and outright lies need to be stopped dead in their tracks
| 24 January 2007, 11:42 pm |
So fascinating a topic that the first comment is by Pope Ollie.
‘Night, all.
| 24 January 2007, 11:46 pm |
Mr Phillips. We don’t blame you for being an anti-semite. We know that you are only motivated by concern for a just peace in the Middle East.
| 24 January 2007, 11:57 pm |
Tony Greenstein is a notorious radical left-wing anti-Zionist demagogue who is happy to play fast and loose with the facts, if it promotes his ideological cause
Shocking news. Is one supposed to get worked up about all this? Notorious? Is Mr. Greenstein a demagogue and notorious only in his own home, one wonders? Because very few have heard of him.
| 25 January 2007, 12:05 am |
Now now, Benji, don’t go pricking the bubble. This sort of hyperminuscularia is all the HP Saucers have got to get their rocks off about nowadays.
| 25 January 2007, 12:08 am |
You may actually have a point there Benjamin. Greenstein did manage to obtain 188 votes out of a possible 68,000 when he stood as a candidate at the last general election. A clear indication of his massive popularity.
| 25 January 2007, 12:19 am |
Blimey, the Greens did well in that seat.
| 25 January 2007, 12:42 am |
Tony Greenstein - the Tommy Cooper of the anti-zionist lobby !
| 25 January 2007, 1:25 am |
Well done Mikey. I see as well that the ‘chronically bored with HP’ regulars are here yet again to remind anyone with a brain that they stand for nothing while proving that HP obviously doesn’t bore them at all.
| 25 January 2007, 1:30 am |
Mr. Left, but not antizionist
I approach HP with the crooked smile and twinkling eyes of someone dryly amused by proceedings.
| 25 January 2007, 2:17 am |
You wish, Benji. Your fanatical obsession with HP is well documented.
HP is very important to you, which is why you come here every day to make predictable comments.
| 25 January 2007, 2:19 am |
The most hackneyed commentor on the web.
| 25 January 2007, 3:07 am |
Ah, the irony. That’s the great thing about HP: there’s irony in bucketloads.
| 25 January 2007, 7:47 am |
that’s the second time Lapid has invoked WW2 in relation to the OT: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/05/23/israel040523.html
| 25 January 2007, 10:02 am |
I’m afraid I may have worked Tony Greestein up enough for him to post in the Harry’s Place Comments Box. We had a sharp exchange on the UKLN a few days ago on the delightful decision of the PSC to indulge in little snide anti-Semitism on Holocaust Memorial weekend. I mentioned Harry’s Place at one point. Unfortunately I was unable to supply the references disproving the outrageous claim that the ‘Zionists’ were themselves guilty of the Shoah. I’m very grateful to you for doing this.
Benjamin, Greenstein is well known on the left (which I suppose counts for ‘hardly anybody’), largely for the reasons that Oliver Kamm cites. Tobias Abse in a recent issue of New Interventions called him one of the most distrusted people on the left (there is strong competition), and the Alliance for Workers’ Libery have had, when needed, a good time in poking fun at him. I have had a variety of terms for him, the most recent being ‘bilious old grunter’.
| 25 January 2007, 10:19 am |
This probably the place to find an answer to my query on the Hamas thread, so I repeat it here:
I googled One Cow in Palestine’s nickname to see what this pointedly attention- seeking name was about, and it comes up on sites such as Neturei Karta and this one:http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/antisemitism/holocaust/index.cfm
They cite a quote:
“One Cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Poland” ….Izaak Greenbaum
If the other poisonous lies and distortions on the neturei karta etc sites are anything to go by, this quote is probably in that category- anyone know anything more? What it does confirm is where commenter Onecow is coming from.
| 25 January 2007, 10:29 am |
Ah yes, the Alliance for Workers Liberty. Could their membership fill a pub?
| 25 January 2007, 10:54 am |
Benjamin, do you mean the AWL ever leave the pub?
| 25 January 2007, 10:57 am |
If you search for Ytzhak Greenbaum, cow, Jewish Agency in Hebrew (יצחק גרינבאום סוכנות היהודית פרה) in Google you get only one relevant link.
http://sf.tapuz.co.il/shirshur-570-90599318.htm
It is an open discussion site (Tapuz) in which a neonazi called Anatoliu (אנטוליו) copy pastes and then “discusses” the “Jewish-Nazi alliance”. (which you can see, because he took the time to translate from English the same paragraphs that are posted all over neonazi places.
He says that he is quoting from a book by Beit Tzvi “that worked all his life in the Jewish Agency”. That is it. No actual quotes. And he signs with an emoticon that looks like a Hitler-Smile with a fringe.
You couldn’t have a line like this without any more discussions in Hebrew. All points to be a fabricated quote.
| 25 January 2007, 10:59 am |
Israeli Arabs know how to write in Hebrew. So if the quote had really originated in a Jewish Agency archive you could bet your life that there would be more links and discussions in Hebrew.
| 25 January 2007, 11:02 am |
I’m puzzled as to why these dogged expectations that the play should be historically accurate are so wide-spread.
When it comes to ‘Perdition’, the only people who conveniently forget that works of art aren’t meant to be 100% accurate are the Zionist community. Or their fellow travellers.
The play is a work of fiction. Sure it’s based on fact, but by no means loosely. From all accounts, there does undeniably appear to be a broadly close following of the original court case that the play is based on. But considerable dramatic license has been taken. There’s no denying that.
Remember the play doesn’t purport to be a verbatim performance of original court transcripts. Neither ‘Perdition’, the playwright or those putting on performances of the play have ever tried to pretend otherwise.
It it were, we would of course have quite reasonable and substantive grounds to expect - particularly given the sensitive subject matter - meticulous accuracy, but we don’t.
In blurring and merging the lines between fact and fiction about historically important holocaust events, Jim Allen has left us an interesting legacy, one that will surely be a hot-bed of debate.
| 25 January 2007, 11:03 am |
Ah yes, the Alliance for Workers Liberty. Could their membership fill a pub?
Yes I could. And I like filling pubs.
(BTW, did you know that between 1939 and 1941 the CPGB was objectively fascist because it opposed war with Nazi Germany? I know that. And I never stop letting people know that I know that.)
| 25 January 2007, 11:39 am |
Tam
The point about Perdition is this.
Let’s say that somebody wrote a play about the O.J.Simpson trial, in which O.J.Simpson is encouraged to murder his ex-wife by prominent civil rights leaders, who then cover up for him and secure his acquittal. Imagine that the person who wrote the play was involved in far right politics, and based his play on a book about the O.J.Simpson trial, written by somebody else on the far right.
Then imagine that a member of a far right political group decided to stage the O.J.Simpson play on - say - Martin Luther King Day, and demanded that the event was listed on the Martin Luther King Day programme of events.
Imagine also that, when it was suggested that this was improper, it responded that it was staging the play because it felt that it was important for black people to face up to the responsibility of the black civil rights movement for crime, and that it also felt that this event was a very important part of celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King.
Do you see?
| 25 January 2007, 11:45 am |
The Play Perdition is not really about the Kasztner case. That is just used as a backdrop. To quote Jim Allen from Time Out January 21 1987, he argued that “privileged Jewish leaders collaborated in the extermination of their own kind in order to help bring about a Zionist State, Israel.” This is what the play is really about and this is why opponents of the play took so much offence. No one has a problem discussing the Kasztner case itself. It is one individual. Motti Lerner wrote a play in Israel that was staged in Tel Aviv in 1985 and then made into a minis series in 1994 for Israeli State television all about the Kasztner case. In that dramatization – you have people calling Kasztner a murderer etc from the gallery of the court room. No one suggests that the issues should not be discussed and all plays of the genre “faction” use dramatic license, but the users should have some form of responsibility with that.
The Kasztner case was not about arguing that Zionists positively desired the slaughter of Jews to bring about the State of Israel. That is what Perdition was about and that is why people object.
Do not get me wrong, I am not arguing for censorship. I am in favour of a free and open state and press. For that reason whilst I am in favour of freedom of speech, I am also in favour of people using that freedom to correct the lies and distortions in the play and from supporters of the play.
| 25 January 2007, 11:45 am |
It would be more effective to stage a play about Martin Luther King Jr on MLK Day– the real Martin Luther King.
However, why bother? MLK Day is becoming a dead letter in the States, just as Compulsory Selective Sorrow Day (aka Holocaust Memorial) is a non-starter in Britain. The British don’t see why what one particular set of wartime atrocities, committed by the side we were fighting 60 or 70 years ago, means that we have to go into penitential mourning every year by order of the government.
| 25 January 2007, 12:15 pm |
Isn’t your actual point that Holocaust Memorial Day should be an occasion for rejoicing and general celebration, WJ?
| 25 January 2007, 12:50 pm |
Saw the movie and don’t remember any of this stuff – just Jude Law pretending a 1930s gangster.
| 25 January 2007, 12:55 pm |
haha not the ROAD to Perdition !
| 25 January 2007, 1:29 pm |
“the only people who conveniently forget that works of art aren’t meant to be 100% accurate are the Zionist community.”
If I find out that “Fiddler On The Roof” isn’t 100% historically accurate, I’ll be devastated.
“correct the lies and distortions in the play”
Yes, it’s important not to allow prejudice to shape works of fiction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi1ZNEjEarw
| 25 January 2007, 1:51 pm |
zzzzzzzzzzzzz … been hearing this rubbish from the SWP for years.
The Arab world’s myth of the holocaust typically seems to take three forms:
- the holocaust didn’t happen,
- the Jews did it to themselves, and
- if only brother Adolf had finished the job.
Jim Allen’s hopeless scribblings were designed to promote the second point: “the Zionist knife within the Nazi fist”. Nice metaphor, shame about the facts not providing any support as Mikey has pointed out.
The allegation is in fact so bizarre that I wonder if it’s made to cover not only for the Palestinian leader, Haj Amin Al Husseini’s, own war record (Husseini was resident in Berlin throughout the war, among other things, recruiting Muslim SS units and planning death camps for Palestine), but also for the extent of his own responsibility for the Palestinian naqba.
As slogans go, “The anti-zionist knife within the nazi fist” would at least be accurate. And thinking back to the Netura Karta’s presence at Ahmedinejad’s recent neo-nazi congress, it might even work for them too.
| 25 January 2007, 1:55 pm |
Just to balance the comments about Husseini, see this also from Ha’Aretz - http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/816506.html
Holocaust researcher asks Yad Vashem to recognize first Arab Righteous Gentile
By Amiram Barkat
Khaled Abd al-Wahab, a well-to-do Tunisian farmer who died in 1997, is the first Arab to be named as a candidate for a Righteous Gentile award from Yad Vashem. The request to award him such recognition was submitted by Dr. Robert Satloff, an American Jewish expert on Arab and Islamic politics, following his research on Arabs who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem officials declined to speculate on the chances of the request being approved, but did note that it meets all the formal requirements, at the heart of which is testimony given before her death by a Jewish woman who was saved by al-Wahab.
In an interview with Haaretz, Satloff said he hopes that his research will help break the “conspiracy of silence” in the Arab world surrounding the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. Satloff, a Middle East expert and the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, started his research in 2001, following the attack on the World Trade Center.
| 25 January 2007, 1:55 pm |
I think you’re missing the point.
If Luniversal did write and put on a play on the “real Martin Luther King” on MLK Day, what would your reaction to that be?
And if you don’t know what he means by the “real Martin Luther King”, try googling that phrase.
If Luniversal then said
“Well, it is just a play, and although it might not be 100% historically accurate, it is based on the truth. And anyhow, it raises some important issues about the propensity of black people to promiscuity and sexual misconduct, and also the fact that MLK was the front man for international communist conspiracy designed to destroy white society in America, and now, 40 years on, we can see the damage that the Civil Rights movement did to American society. So it is important for us to commemorate MLK Day by staging this important play, which dares to tell the truth about the Civil Rights movement.”
what would you say?
| 25 January 2007, 2:05 pm |
It was instructive to see Brenner’s apologists shrug off this inconvenient news from last spring.
| 25 January 2007, 2:06 pm |
(the above was to The Male Nurse)
Somebody suggested to me a couple of days ago that the promotion of Perdition and the “The Zionists conspired with the Nazis to Cause the Holocaust” lie, was inspired by the Iranian Holocaust conference.
My guess is that it was. The extreme left can’t quite get away with the Holocaust revisionism stuff that is prevalent on the far green and far right. But give them time. This is where people like Atzmon are, at the moment, and we know that when the likes of Greenstein - or even the nice, inoffensive, line-towing Mike Rosen - object, they’re told to fuck off, and consider where the priorities lie.
| 25 January 2007, 2:45 pm |
David, a real life MLK day celebration. At least those responsible have apologised rather than try to contextualise it.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=state&id=4969610
“Pictures posted on Facebook.com showed partygoers wearing afro wigs and fake gold and silver teeth. One photo showed students “mocking how African-Americans do step shows,” Elder said. In another picture, a student is dressed as Aunt Jemima and carries a gun.”
| 25 January 2007, 2:55 pm |
Martin Luther King’s tireless opposition to the Vietnam War would, of course, have to be highlighted in any such play. Then we could read across from that to his likely reaction to the invasion of Iraq.
| 25 January 2007, 2:59 pm |
Yes, but in Luniversals version of the play, MLK would be played by Nick Griffin, blacked up, hunting rallies for white women with with to miscegenate.
So I think that lesson would be lost.
| 25 January 2007, 3:13 pm |
Jim Allen did in fact harbour traditional anti-semitic views. I’ve heard it said in Manchester that Allen had a problem with Jews and subscirbed to the anti-semitic theory of powerful Jewish landlords exploiting the masses. And this came from an old IMG member who is certainly not sympathetic to zionism ! Great post Mikey !
| 25 January 2007, 3:18 pm |
Gene,
You have a fair point. In fact if you would like to see who really was collaborating with the Nazis, I bring to your attention the following document. I specifically bring to your attention the letter on pages 24 and 25 of 25 from The Grand Mufti to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Hungary in 1943.
In relation to that letter, what I find quite amusing is that it was submitted to the United Nations by Nation Associates. That was clearly in the days when Nation Associates was stil a credible organisation….
| 25 January 2007, 3:24 pm |
David t: “Jews have wanted to return to their homeland for centuries.”
The desire to return to Zion was a spiritual concept deeply rooted in Jewish theology, always linked to the concept of a Messiah redeeming all the nations of the world, who will also “return” (as a metaphor for the victory of the Lord Yahweh).
Zionism: is a white colonialist movement that manipulated this Jewish theocratic concept in the service of European imperial conquest of the Middle East.
Zionism introduced modern theocratic fundamentalism to the Arab world. Like its modern Islamist cousin ideology, Zionism is also a modern distortion of the original religious scriptures.
And David t: had it not been for the Holocaust and anti Semitism, millions of young Jewish people would not have flocked to Palestine in order to fight and die for this Zionist Jihad.
| 25 January 2007, 3:32 pm |
Mikey, your excellent post on TG’s demagoguery brought back distant memories.
Way back in the late 70s my girlfriend and I arrived at the Brighton Resource Centre (the old one, eventually burned down by neo-Nazis) to help organise an anti-fascist event. On arrival we were confronted by the sight of an unprepossessing individual in a moth-eaten pullover (guess who?) haranguing a 14-year old schoolgirl, also a volunteer organiser, for having the temerity to wear a pro-Israel badge. The schoolgirl, who had been reduced to a distressed state, was led away by my girlfriend who commented in a stage whisper: “don’t mind Tony, he’s just an arsehole”. This subsequently became something of a catch-phrase amongst Brighton anti-fascists.
| 25 January 2007, 3:38 pm |
Zionism is just another nationalism.
Unlike its “cousin”, Islamism it is compatable with democracy and gender equality, and has extremely limited aims.
I’d prefer any mild nationalism, for example, to a theocratic apocalyptic millenialism
| 25 January 2007, 3:44 pm |
As Greenstein said of his Socialist Unity candidature for Brighton Pavilion in the 2005 General Election:
Q: What kind of vote are you expecting on May 5th?
A. 500 or 1%
It didn’t quite turn out that way.
| 25 January 2007, 3:47 pm |
Sorry, my mistake: the Socialist Unity network was the organ through which he ventured this prediction. Greenstein’s campaign was actually the Alliance for Green Socialism, and most impressive it was too.
| 25 January 2007, 3:49 pm |
Really, don’t delete this racist. I don’t want people to be in any doubt as to his politics.
| 25 January 2007, 3:51 pm |
Uri (if that is your real name which I doubt),
With respect, you are talking nonsense. If you would like to see a rabbinical interpretation of the Jewish religious view is, I suggest you read the following book available free on line. I suspect that you will not bother and I also suspect that you do not have much grounding, if any, in Jewish theological matters.
You state “Zionism: is a white colonialist movement.” This ignores all the sephardic Jews who would not call themselves “white colonialist” that emigrated to Palestine and now Israel from countries such as Yemen, Iraq, Iran, etc etc.
You state “Zionism introduced modern theocratic fundamentalism to the Arab world.” This completely ignores the fatc that the early Zionist pioneers were not religious. David Ben-Gurion said “We will know we have become a normal country when Jewish thieves and Jewish prostitutes conduct their business in Hebrew.” That sort of comment is hardly the comment of someone who wants a theocratic state.
Your comment that had it not been for antisemtism etc that there would not have been such significant immigration to Palestine is undoubtedly correct - but what does it prove? If it wasn’t for the behaviour of Tsars there would not have been Russian Revolutions in 1905 and 1917. If it was not for the fact that woman were not treated equally to men, the United Kingdom would not have had the Suffragettes. So what?
Quite frankly your use of the absurd term “Zionist Jihad” shows how little you understand.
| 25 January 2007, 4:15 pm |
I think that it’s absurd to define the politics of David Ben-Gurion in secular, rational or liberal terms. He was a racist towards the Arab workers peasants and insisted on sacking all Arabs from Zionist enterprises. He was always fond of using and distorting religious concepts in his struggle to conquer Palestine from its native population.
And David t: Hamas is as nationalist as Netanyahu. In the mean time you go on funning the flames of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with your pseudo-religious dogmas that you never question. No wonder, young Jews from all the corners of the world are being lured to go and fight for a colonial totalitarian ideology. No one is going to peacefully resolve the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict until individuals on both sides start questioning dogmatic concepts. When they do just that, we may be able to move towards a democratic inclusive state and society in Palestine.
| 25 January 2007, 4:15 pm |
Mikey,
“You state “Zionism: is a white colonialist movement.” This ignores all the sephardic Jews who would not call themselves “white colonialist” that emigrated to Palestine and now Israel from countries such as Yemen, Iraq, Iran, etc etc.”
True, but don’t forget that there were Jews from the Middle East (Yemenite Jews, for example) that also set up communities in “Palestine” before the “white” Ashkenazim Jews came there as “colonizers.”
Jews from all over were always migrating in small numbers to Eretz Yisrael throughout the centuries, especially orthodox Jews.
| 25 January 2007, 4:22 pm |
Uri,
“a colonial totalitarian ideology”!! Now you are making me laugh. Not only do you lack an understanding of both Judaism and Zionism but you are also clueless about totalitarianism.
Is there anything you know anything about?
I suggest you resist the tempatation to continue writing posts on any of these subjects, you will only further expose your ignorance.
Shriber, you are of course correct.
| 25 January 2007, 4:23 pm |
The one thing that really did surprise me was quite how multi-ethnic Israel was. I mean, I’d be walking down the street and see a white looking guy with a black girlfriend, like you would in London, and then you’d think - “hang on - she’s probably from an ethiopian family”
Or you’d be in a hotel, and there would be loads or dark skinned people, and some would be muslim and others jews, and the only way you could tell them apart was that some of the women were wearing hijabs and some of the men were wearing skull caps.
I think that was one of the things that surprised me most about the place.
| 25 January 2007, 4:27 pm |
“Hamas is as nationalist as Netanyahu”
Er. Netanyahu is pretty right wing, but do you have any evidence that he believes that:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Jews fight the Moslems (killing the Moslems), when the Moslemwill hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Jew, O Uri, there is a Moslem behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Moslems.”
| 25 January 2007, 4:32 pm |
“”We will know we have become a normal country when Jewish thieves and Jewish prostitutes conduct their business in Hebrew.”"
“We will know we have become a normal country when Catholic thieves and Catholic prostitutes conduct their business in Gaelic.”
| 25 January 2007, 4:35 pm |
I dunno what Netanyahu “believes”, but I know what he’s been responsible for while in Government.
| 25 January 2007, 4:39 pm |
Colonial means: Illegal settlement on lands that have been violently stolen from the Palestinians. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinian town and villages and deportations. Shale I go on?
Totalitarian means: Making colonial decisions by force, without asking for the consent the Palestinian population.
Mickey, I think you should start thinking rather than piling on stupid insults.
| 25 January 2007, 4:50 pm |
Oh dear Uri, you just don’t know when to give in do you?
Let us ignore your flawed definiations of colonialism and totalitarianism as anyone who understands anything about these concepts will know you are talking utter garbage -
So moving rapidly on
“Illegal settlement on lands that have been violently stolen from the Palestinians.” The State of Israel was created by the United Nations - it was not “Violently stolen” or created by “illegal” means. You just cannot acccept it and that is why you want the destruction of the State of Israel. Now don’t start talking to me about the West Bank because you fail to accept even Tel-Aviv as part of a State of Israel.
“Making colonial decisions by force.” Since when has the United Nations that created the State beeen a colonoial body?
I was beginning to think that Greenstein was at the limit with the amount of his errors, but you are making Greenstein look a genius and that takes some doing I tell you.
| 25 January 2007, 5:01 pm |
Mickey, you are obviously a bigot who doesn’t care about displacing another ethnic group from their homes through violence, as long as it fits your militant agenda.
Debating with you is as useful as debating with the BNP.
| 25 January 2007, 5:06 pm |
Yes Uri, or whatever your real name is - you fail to accept anything I say. You are not interested in historical truth - so feel free to leave this thread. You will not be missed. Bye!
| 25 January 2007, 5:19 pm |
Oh, one last thing Mickey: you keep implying that Uri Cohen is not my real name.
Is it because your totalitarian notion of Judaism can not tolerate the fact that a Jewish man like myself can disagree with Zionist ideology? This is really my final lesson for you today.
| 25 January 2007, 5:26 pm |
I thought you had gone. But oh no - there are a number of Jews who disagree with Zionist ideology - Tony Greenstein is one of them - But quite frankly they don’t use terms like you do “Lord Yahweh”??? It is phrases like that that suggest to me that you have not got a clue what you are talking about.
I can spot fakes likes you a mile off.
I’m glad that was your last thing - Bye!
| 25 January 2007, 5:59 pm |
bill wrote:
David, a real life MLK day celebration. At least those responsible have apologised rather than try to contextualise it.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=state&id=4969610
We’ve only got 21 years to wait until we can read the FBI files on Dr King which were sealed shortly before he was given the unique accolade of a Federal public holiday. (Washington and Lincoln get lumped together on “Presidents’ Day”.)
Meanwhile we can pass the time reading encomiums such as this one by Marcus Epstein:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/epstein9.html
“I have the reservations you have, but here the perception of too many people is based on an image, not reality. Indeed, to them the perception is reality.” (Pres. Ronald Reagan, to a governor having conniptions about King’s canonisation)
As the newspaperman said in one of the cowboy movies the Gipper wasn’t in: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Indeed, the Reverend became so legendary that today’s most prominent negro huckster, Je$$e Jack$on, shot to fame by claiming he’d cradled the assassinated King as the Blessed Martin lay a-dying. In fact Je$$e wasn’t there, but he rushed to the scene and smeared his shirt in King’s blood. Kind of a quasi-religious rite of self-consecration, which launched him on a longer and more lucrative career than the previous Good Shepherd of the African Americans. Seems nobody thinks it’s worth wasting good lead on Je$$e!
| 25 January 2007, 6:18 pm |
Ah such invective, so few little facts, not least from our aristocratic banker Kamm. As for thick, well I’m sure he’s an expert in such things.
As for Mikey’s ‘guest post’ (is he that special that he has to be a guest?):
Yes in some quarters I’m no doubt a ‘notorious radical left-wing anti-Zionist demagogue’. If such quarters include the racist warmongers of Harry’s Place then that is an added compliment.
i. Brenner’s research is his own, not from Stalinist sources. If he quotes Klaus Polkehn it’s because the latter’s article, which if I remember correctly appeared in History Today around 1980, regarding the trip to Palestine of the head of the Jewish Office of the SS, Count Mildenstein, was courtesy of the Labour Zionist Hagannah. of course mere facts like that don’t get a look in at Mickey’s when ad hominem attacks and lies are so much more interesting.
ii. I’m aware of when the Kastner trial started, who was accusing who etc. But as in many libel trials, e.g. Irving v Penguin, the accuser becomes the accused and so it was in the Kastner trial. The Attorney General took over the case personally and asked whether all Zionists are guilty of collaboration because it was Zionist policy to select the few, the Zionist elite, out of the many.
iii. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision, by 3-2, BUT upheld the facts found by the lower court and also the finding that Kastner had collaborated by seeking to exonerate Nazi SS war criminals, something Mickey finds perfectly ok and acceptable - not just Becher, but Krumey and Wisliceny and also I understand another 4.
iv. Dobkin may have testfied that Kastner had no authority to testify on behalf of the Jewish Agency, but that does mean it is true. Fact is that the Israeli State, fully aware of what Kastner did, had at no time prosecuted him for this act. On the contrary Mapai, Israeli Labour Party, put him high on the list for the next Knesset elections before the trial.
v. Kastner wasn’t at Nuremburg other than to help get SS war criminals avoid the gallows. The Americans complained about this Zionist official whose only interest seemed to be in exonerating such criminals. And why if it was all kosher did Kastner not admit from the start what he was doing? And if he was at Nuremburg as an aide to the Americans, presumably he was there as a representative of the Jewish Agency? In what other capacity would he have been there?
vi. No the allegations in Perdition were not made by Vrba. Nor did I say they were. But Perdition covers the same ground and therefore presumably, by the same guilt by association techniques loved by HP, he is also an anti-Semite! Vrba blamed Kastner for far more than not publicing Auschwitz but for covering up, suppressing the news, doing a deal in exchange for help in rounding up and pacifying the Jews of Hungary.
vii. Vrba was indeed a non-person in Israel, where he briefly settled before making his way, via the London Medical Research Council to a professorship in Canada. His book, ‘I Escaped from Auschwitz’ was not translated into Hebrew, the Auschwitz Protocols which he and Wetzler had provided the material for, concerning the whereabouts of Auschwitz and its layout etc. were not translated at Yad Vashem into English or Hebrew and were virtually hidden away from all but the most persistent and knowledgeable of academics. Likewise Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem was also not translated for years into Hebrew. When Arendt wrote ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ she was subject to bitter attack by an Israeli Professor at Oxford. Vrba leapt to her defence against this forerunner of Harry’s Place propaganda.
viii. The full story of the attack on Vrba by the Zionists’ official historians of Yad Vashem, Bauer et al. is told in the remarkable little book by Ruth Linn, herself a Professor at Haifa University, ‘ESCAPING AUSCHWITZ - A Culture of Forgetting’ which I reviewed earlier this year for Tribune.
ix. In fact Bauer and co. after many attacks on Vrba, whose name was wholly unknown in Israel to all except a few experts in the area, e.g. the fact that he was the 2nd and 3rd Jewish escapee with Alfred Wetzler is not to be found in the normal school syllabus on the Holocaust, realised that their attacks had rebounded. But Bauer called Vrba many other things besides the comment Mickey quotes.
x. It is asserted that I have nothing to say about Zionists who fought the Nazis. Not true. I am not a biological determinist. Zionists, given the right set of circumstances, will of course fight like others. But I’m not going to take the hasbarah of Israeli propagandists at their word. Noone doubts the bravery of Mordechai Anielwicz, commander of ZOB in the Warsaw Ghetto. But Anielwicz himself said that the Zionist activities of the Zionist youth groups in Poland was an utter waste of time and a distraction, things like running kibbutzim to replace Polish labour deported to the slave factories of France (which Skif, the Bundist paper vigorously condemned as collaboration incidentally). But what I do say is that when Zionists fought, they did not do so as Zionists, be it in the allied armies or as Partisans, but as individuals organised in groups, despite the politics of those groups. Hashomer Hatzair and left PZ in the Warsaw Ghetto had effectively abandoned Zionism and had one though and one alone - retribution against the Nazi beasts. Likewise incidentally the Revisionist fighters who, in Warsaw almost alone of anywhere, also fought (and more effectively given their heavier weaponry) than ZOB.
xi. Vrba doesn’t label anyone who negotiated with the Nazis as a collaborator. Show me the quote. He certainly doesn’t accuse Rabbi Weissmandel, who certainly does accuse the Zionists of collaboration e.g. Holocaust Victims Accuse or Min Hamitzair. What Vrba says, and on this I agree with him though Lenni Brenner doesn’t agree, is that his belief that deportations from Slovaki stopped in 1942 because of the payment of a £50,000 ransom negotiated with Wisliceny and the idea of the Europa Plan that for a $2m dollar ransom the Final Solution could be ended were utterly futile pipe dreams. The idea that the Nazis were susceptible to this bribery was absurd, not least because there was an economic and political incentive to murder the Jews of occupied Europe. But these subtleties the war mongers of HP will never understand.
xii. Yes Bauer is on record that Kastner is a hero (& elswhere that he was a collaborator). Vrba has always been crystal clear, as he wrote in the Daily Herald of February 1961:
‘I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr Kastner. I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks notice that Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers. Kasztner went to Eichmann and told him, I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.? Eichmann not only agreed, but dressed Kasztner up in SS uniform and took him to Belsen to trace some of his friends.’
Both Bauer and Israel Gutmann, both of the Israeli propaganda institute, Yad Vashem, accept that the Auschwitz Protocols were not disseminated by those who received them, 2 weeks before the deportations in Hungary began, in order to save the negotiations for the Jewish and Zionist elite. That is where the sympathies of Mickey and his war monger friends on HH place lie, with the Jewish bourgeoisie and their Zionist friends. Ours is with the Jewish working class who were sacrificed in Hungary and elsewhere.
And incidentally, Yad Vashem also refused to print Raul Hilberg’s monumental ‘Destruction of European Jewry’ because again it didn’t fit into the ideological purposes of Yad Vashem.
xiii. As for the centuries longing of Jews to ‘return’ to Palestine, strange they chose the imperial era to do it, under the protecton of British bayonets. Even stranger that the first Zionist Congress had to be transferred in 1897 from Munich to Basle. Presumably this longing had temporarily waned?
xiv. Likewis the Zionist nonsense about the ‘internationally recognised right of Jews to their own homeland’ etc. The anti-Semites certainly recognised the ‘right’ of Jews to ‘return’ since they didn’t recognise rights of Jews where they were. But who cares? As Herzl said in his Diaries, the anti-Semites will be our friends and allies (pp.83/4 from memory). The fact is that those who saw the Jews as a separate nation apart from those who lived there were either anti-Semites or Zionists and in the case of HH I suspect both.
xiv. Yes Lapid compared the actions of settlers to the Nazis harassment of Jews. Mickey, being an apologist for the settlers and settlements of course chooses to query whether it refers to all or some settlers. The fact is that the pogroms and harassment, the stone throwing and the encouragement these scum have from the army and police can be found in the actions of anti-Semitic regimes in Europe. This is something that Mickey, Kamm and all the other trash of Harry’s Place are more than happy to applaud.
xv. In fact there is a direct ideological link between Nazi Germany and Israel. Whether it is the actions of the Judeo-Nazi settlers (Israel Shahak and Leibowitz’s words - not mine!) in the occupied territories, the Rabbis consulting the Black Book of who is and is not a Jew (including Nazi sources of who is a Jew) or the welcome given by Zionist groups to the Nuremburg Laws, whose very preamble paid tribute to this Zionist welcome is a matter of record.
As for Perdition, it is a play and as such should be allowed poetic licence. But I welcome the Zionists’ continued attempts to ban this play by the excellent socialist and Trostkyist playwright, the late Jim Allen (not a Stalinist you fools). The more you scum ban, the more people want to know!!!
Tony Greenstein
1. Lenni Brenner’s line on Zionist-Nazi collaboration comes straight out of Stalinist antisemitic propaganda. In his book Zionism in the Age of the Dictators he even invokes Stalinist literature by citing the East German propagandist Klaus Polkehn.
2. The Kasztner trial commenced in January 1954 and the lower court’s verdict was given in June 1955. The appeal hearings commenced in 1957 and concluded in January 1958.
3. Kasztner was not the accused in the trial. He was a witness for the prosecution. It was Malkiel Grunwald who was accused of libel.
4. The lower court’s verdict against Kasztner – regarded by many as a result of his unreliability in the witness box and a political vendetta by the judge – was posthumously overturned by the Supreme Court.
5. Although Kasztner claimed that he testified for Becher as a Jewish Agency official, he had absolutely no authorisation to do so. This was made clear at the Kasztner trial by Jewish Agency witness Eliahu Dobkin.
6. Kasztner was at Nuremberg as an aide to the American prosecutors. He testified for Becher because he believed that Becher had assisted his rescue efforts at the end of the war.
7. The allegations in Perdition were not made by Vrba. Perdition claims that Zionism “worked hand in glove” with Nazi Germany and refers to “the Zionist knife in the Nazi fist.” Vrba blamed Kasztner for negotiating with Eichmann rather than publicising information about Auschwitz.
8. Vrba is not a non-person in the State of Israel. Many scholarly books on the Holocaust discuss his actions and Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, praises him as “one of the authentic Jewish heroes from the period.”
In fact, and ironically, Greenstein treats as “non-persons”, the countless Zionists who fought against Nazism, either in the Allied armies or the Jewish resistance, and the Zionists who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. These heroes are never mentioned by Greenstein and his fellow anti-Zionists.
9. No one has made the ridiculous suggestion claim that Vrba was an antisemite. Historians do, however, reject his unfounded belief that anyone who tried to negotiate with the Nazis to save Jews – including not only Zionists like Kasztner but also anti-Zionists like Rabbi Weissmandel – was a Nazi collaborator.
10. Yehuda Bauer does not accuse “the Zionists of suppressing his Auschwitz Protocols to save the Zionist elite.” In fact, Bauer has written extensively about Zionist efforts to save Jews, which included calls for the bombing of Auschwitz. He also describes the Hungarian Zionist Kasztner as a “a real-life hero” who rescued thousands of Jews and tried to save many more.
11. The “Zionised version of the Holocaust” is not the justification for Israel’s existence. Jews have wanted to return to their homeland for centuries. The Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine were issued decades before the Holocaust.
12. Israel’s policies are not taken “from the book of anti-Semitism including the Nazis” but from the internationally recognised right of the Jewish people to their own homeland – a right that was affirmed by the League of Nations and the United Nations, although it is denied by anti-Zionists such as Brenner and Greenstein.
13. Ha’aretz reported that Lapid compared the illegal actions of “some Hebron settlers” to the treatment of Jews in Yugoslavia just prior to World War II. Readers may wish to compare this Ha’aretz report to Greenstein’s version of it. As this example shows, Greenstein cannot be trusted to cite sources accurately.
Greenstein’s lengthy outburst includes more errors than paragraphs. That is quite an achievement. The above comments exclude his erroneous claims about the war in Iraq and I also have not commented on his ad-hominem attacks on Oliver Kamm and Harry’s Place. Greenstein was prepared in 1987 to support erroneous claims about the Holocaust in the play Perdition and twenty years on he is making erroneous statements himself. What is even more amazing than his errors is that he expected to get away with them.
| 25 January 2007, 6:25 pm |
I’m not an aristocratic banker, I’m a toilet cleaner on the West Pier, Mr Snobby.
| 25 January 2007, 6:32 pm |
Not that this is a site for political pedants with logorrhoea to scratch each other’s eyes out.
| 25 January 2007, 7:04 pm |
Hey Tony. I remember you from 20 years ago in the student movement. I remember when you were banned from NUS conference for hitting a Jewish student. You’re the freak who used to parade his Jewish credentials by saying “my father was a reverend you know”.
Most people just used to take the piss out of you ! However i remeber a few people were angry when you bought shares in Rolls Roytce when it was privatised by Thatcher.
It’s good to see you have achieved nothing over the last 20 years !
Your’re epitaph will read “Tony Greenstein - the Tommy Cooper of the Anti-zionist movement”.
| 25 January 2007, 7:33 pm |
Buying shares in Roll Royce, and he calls himself a socialist? Hmm
| 25 January 2007, 8:12 pm |
Um, I’m not really following this, but why is the rebuttal to Tony Greenstei’s post within his own post? It makes it confusing. Perhaps whomever responded to him could make it a bit clearer.
| 25 January 2007, 10:50 pm |
Yes but I don’t remember you Fred, because you obviously were an anonymous squirt then as now.
And the fact that I acted in self-defence 20 years ago against fascists, be they in the NF or amongst Zionists, has nothing to do with their religion.
As for epitaphs, I care little once I’m dead but I suspect my achievements will outweigh yours, which will probably consist of having met me!
Tony G
>>Hey Tony. I remember you from 20 years ago in the student movement. I remember when you were banned from NUS conference for hitting a Jewish student. You’re the freak who used to parade his Jewish credentials by saying “my father was a reverend you know”.
Most people just used to take the piss out of you ! However i remeber a few people were angry when you bought shares in Rolls Roytce when it was privatised by Thatcher.
It’s good to see you have achieved nothing over the last 20 years !
Your’re epitaph will read “Tony Greenstein - the Tommy Cooper of the Anti-zionist movement”.
| 25 January 2007, 10:56 pm |
Tony. “As for epitaphs, I care little once I’m dead but I suspect my achievements will outweigh yours, which will probably consist of having met me!”
I take back what i said about you being the Tommy Cooper of the anti-zionist movement - you’re more the Napoleon of the anti-zionist movement.
Tony you were banned from NUS conference for hitting a Jewish student. That’s why they banned you. TONY GREENSTEIN HITS JEWS.
Face it Tony - even the anti-zionists in Brighton got fed up of your antics and obsession with Israel.
Did you make much from your Rolls Royce shares Tony.
| 25 January 2007, 10:57 pm |
Tony. “As for epitaphs, I care little once I’m dead but I suspect my achievements will outweigh yours, which will probably consist of having met me!”
I take back what i said about you being the Tommy Cooper of the anti-zionist movement - you’re more the Napoleon of the anti-zionist movement.
Tony you were banned from NUS conference for hitting a Jewish student. That’s why they banned you. TONY GREENSTEIN HITS JEWS. Atzmon would be proud of you. Maybe a double act ? Like Tyndal and Evans ?
Face it Tony - even the anti-zionists in Brighton got fed up of your antics and obsession with Israel.
Did you make much from your Rolls Royce shares Tony.
| 25 January 2007, 11:03 pm |
Although the thickos on this list wouldn’t have spotted it, I did in fact confuse Klaus Polkehn, who wrote of the Secret Contacts between the Zionists and Nazis 1933-41 with Jacob Boas who wrote the January 1980 article in History Today on a Nazi’s travels to Palestine.
Re Yehuda Bauer. As Ruth Linn, no anti-Zionist she, writes in ‘Escaping Auschwitz - A Culture of Silence’ p.123:
‘When they [the Slovakian Judenrat/Jewish Council/Working Group]were told to ask the Jews of Bratislava to report for deportation to Sered, they obeyed. When their community list was taken the [local Slovak] police, they complained to the SS but did not spread the word to the community to hide… THe month of September [1944] the last period of the Working Group activity, casts a dark shadow over all of them and on Gizi as their leader. They could have no illusions by then, but they acted just like many of the Jewish Councils in Poland.’
Bauer, Gizi Fleischmann, 262.
As Linn notes, Vrba’s voice was first given academic legitimacy not by the Israelis but rather by the Germans. (p.112) and in his reply to Vrba’s 1996 article in Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte Bbauer accepts that the Hungarian Jews who were deported to Auschwitz were ignorant of their fate. Yet the ‘prominents’ in the elite train did know. And in his ‘Rethinking the Holocaust’ Bauer also accepts that Vrba’s Auschwitz Protocols were an important factor in stopping the deportations. [238] Gutmann and Bauer also have no doubt that Kastner and the Hungarian Zionists had the Protocols, i.e. knew about Auschwitz over 2 weeks before the deportations began. The conclusion is obvious.
Tony Greenstein
>>Ah such invective, so few little facts, not least from our aristocratic banker Kamm. As for thick, well I’m sure he’s an expert in such things.
As for Mikey’s ‘guest post’ (is he that special that he has to be a guest?):
Yes in some quarters I’m no doubt a ‘notorious radical left-wing anti-Zionist demagogue’. If such quarters include the racist warmongers of Harry’s Place then that is an added compliment.
i. Brenner’s research is his own, not from Stalinist sources. If he quotes Klaus Polkehn it’s because the latter’s article, which if I remember correctly appeared in History Today around 1980, regarding the trip to Palestine of the head of the Jewish Office of the SS, Count Mildenstein, was courtesy of the Labour Zionist Hagannah. of course mere facts like that don’t get a look in at Mickey’s when ad hominem attacks and lies are so much more interesting.
ii. I’m aware of when the Kastner trial started, who was accusing who etc. But as in many libel trials, e.g. Irving v Penguin, the accuser becomes the accused and so it was in the Kastner trial. The Attorney General took over the case personally and asked whether all Zionists are guilty of collaboration because it was Zionist policy to select the few, the Zionist elite, out of the many.
iii. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision, by 3-2, BUT upheld the facts found by the lower court and also the finding that Kastner had collaborated by seeking to exonerate Nazi SS war criminals, something Mickey finds perfectly ok and acceptable - not just Becher, but Krumey and Wisliceny and also I understand another 4.
iv. Dobkin may have testfied that Kastner had no authority to testify on behalf of the Jewish Agency, but that does mean it is true. Fact is that the Israeli State, fully aware of what Kastner did, had at no time prosecuted him for this act. On the contrary Mapai, Israeli Labour Party, put him high on the list for the next Knesset elections before the trial.
v. Kastner wasn’t at Nuremburg other than to help get SS war criminals avoid the gallows. The Americans complained about this Zionist official whose only interest seemed to be in exonerating such criminals. And why if it was all kosher did Kastner not admit from the start what he was doing? And if he was at Nuremburg as an aide to the Americans, presumably he was there as a representative of the Jewish Agency? In what other capacity would he have been there?
vi. No the allegations in Perdition were not made by Vrba. Nor did I say they were. But Perdition covers the same ground and therefore presumably, by the same guilt by association techniques loved by HP, he is also an anti-Semite! Vrba blamed Kastner for far more than not publicing Auschwitz but for covering up, suppressing the news, doing a deal in exchange for help in rounding up and pacifying the Jews of Hungary.
vii. Vrba was indeed a non-person in Israel, where he briefly settled before making his way, via the London Medical Research Council to a professorship in Canada. His book, ‘I Escaped from Auschwitz’ was not translated into Hebrew, the Auschwitz Protocols which he and Wetzler had provided the material for, concerning the whereabouts of Auschwitz and its layout etc. were not translated at Yad Vashem into English or Hebrew and were virtually hidden away from all but the most persistent and knowledgeable of academics. Likewise Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem was also not translated for years into Hebrew. When Arendt wrote ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ she was subject to bitter attack by an Israeli Professor at Oxford. Vrba leapt to her defence against this forerunner of Harry’s Place propaganda.
viii. The full story of the attack on Vrba by the Zionists’ official historians of Yad Vashem, Bauer et al. is told in the remarkable little book by Ruth Linn, herself a Professor at Haifa University, ‘ESCAPING AUSCHWITZ - A Culture of Forgetting’ which I reviewed earlier this year for Tribune.
ix. In fact Bauer and co. after many attacks on Vrba, whose name was wholly unknown in Israel to all except a few experts in the area, e.g. the fact that he was the 2nd and 3rd Jewish escapee with Alfred Wetzler is not to be found in the normal school syllabus on the Holocaust, realised that their attacks had rebounded. But Bauer called Vrba many other things besides the comment Mickey quotes.
x. It is asserted that I have nothing to say about Zionists who fought the Nazis. Not true. I am not a biological determinist. Zionists, given the right set of circumstances, will of course fight like others. But I’m not going to take the hasbarah of Israeli propagandists at their word. Noone doubts the bravery of Mordechai Anielwicz, commander of ZOB in the Warsaw Ghetto. But Anielwicz himself said that the Zionist activities of the Zionist youth groups in Poland was an utter waste of time and a distraction, things like running kibbutzim to replace Polish labour deported to the slave factories of France (which Skif, the Bundist paper vigorously condemned as collaboration incidentally). But what I do say is that when Zionists fought, they did not do so as Zionists, be it in the allied armies or as Partisans, but as individuals organised in groups, despite the politics of those groups. Hashomer Hatzair and left PZ in the Warsaw Ghetto had effectively abandoned Zionism and had one though and one alone - retribution against the Nazi beasts. Likewise incidentally the Revisionist fighters who, in Warsaw almost alone of anywhere, also fought (and more effectively given their heavier weaponry) than ZOB.
xi. Vrba doesn’t label anyone who negotiated with the Nazis as a collaborator. Show me the quote. He certainly doesn’t accuse Rabbi Weissmandel, who certainly does accuse the Zionists of collaboration e.g. Holocaust Victims Accuse or Min Hamitzair. What Vrba says, and on this I agree with him though Lenni Brenner doesn’t agree, is that his belief that deportations from Slovaki stopped in 1942 because of the payment of a £50,000 ransom negotiated with Wisliceny and the idea of the Europa Plan that for a $2m dollar ransom the Final Solution could be ended were utterly futile pipe dreams. The idea that the Nazis were susceptible to this bribery was absurd, not least because there was an economic and political incentive to murder the Jews of occupied Europe. But these subtleties the war mongers of HP will never understand.
xii. Yes Bauer is on record that Kastner is a hero (& elswhere that he was a collaborator). Vrba has always been crystal clear, as he wrote in the Daily Herald of February 1961:
‘I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr Kastner. I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks notice that Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers. Kasztner went to Eichmann and told him, I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.? Eichmann not only agreed, but dressed Kasztner up in SS uniform and took him to Belsen to trace some of his friends.’
Both Bauer and Israel Gutmann, both of the Israeli propaganda institute, Yad Vashem, accept that the Auschwitz Protocols were not disseminated by those who received them, 2 weeks before the deportations in Hungary began, in order to save the negotiations for the Jewish and Zionist elite. That is where the sympathies of Mickey and his war monger friends on HH place lie, with the Jewish bourgeoisie and their Zionist friends. Ours is with the Jewish working class who were sacrificed in Hungary and elsewhere.
And incidentally, Yad Vashem also refused to print Raul Hilberg’s monumental ‘Destruction of European Jewry’ because again it didn’t fit into the ideological purposes of Yad Vashem.
xiii. As for the centuries longing of Jews to ‘return’ to Palestine, strange they chose the imperial era to do it, under the protecton of British bayonets. Even stranger that the first Zionist Congress had to be transferred in 1897 from Munich to Basle. Presumably this longing had temporarily waned?
xiv. Likewis the Zionist nonsense about the ‘internationally recognised right of Jews to their own homeland’ etc. The anti-Semites certainly recognised the ‘right’ of Jews to ‘return’ since they didn’t recognise rights of Jews where they were. But who cares? As Herzl said in his Diaries, the anti-Semites will be our friends and allies (pp.83/4 from memory). The fact is that those who saw the Jews as a separate nation apart from those who lived there were either anti-Semites or Zionists and in the case of HH I suspect both.
xiv. Yes Lapid compared the actions of settlers to the Nazis harassment of Jews. Mickey, being an apologist for the settlers and settlements of course chooses to query whether it refers to all or some settlers. The fact is that the pogroms and harassment, the stone throwing and the encouragement these scum have from the army and police can be found in the actions of anti-Semitic regimes in Europe. This is something that Mickey, Kamm and all the other trash of Harry’s Place are more than happy to applaud.
xv. In fact there is a direct ideological link between Nazi Germany and Israel. Whether it is the actions of the Judeo-Nazi settlers (Israel Shahak and Leibowitz’s words - not mine!) in the occupied territories, the Rabbis consulting the Black Book of who is and is not a Jew (including Nazi sources of who is a Jew) or the welcome given by Zionist groups to the Nuremburg Laws, whose very preamble paid tribute to this Zionist welcome is a matter of record.
As for Perdition, it is a play and as such should be allowed poetic licence. But I welcome the Zionists’ continued attempts to ban this play by the excellent socialist and Trostkyist playwright, the late Jim Allen (not a Stalinist you fools). The more you scum ban, the more people want to know!!!
Tony Greenstein
1. Lenni Brenner’s line on Zionist-Nazi collaboration comes straight out of Stalinist antisemitic propaganda. In his book Zionism in the Age of the Dictators he even invokes Stalinist literature by citing the East German propagandist Klaus Polkehn.
2. The Kasztner trial commenced in January 1954 and the lower court’s verdict was given in June 1955. The appeal hearings commenced in 1957 and concluded in January 1958.
3. Kasztner was not the accused in the trial. He was a witness for the prosecution. It was Malkiel Grunwald who was accused of libel.
4. The lower court’s verdict against Kasztner – regarded by many as a result of his unreliability in the witness box and a political vendetta by the judge – was posthumously overturned by the Supreme Court.
5. Although Kasztner claimed that he testified for Becher as a Jewish Agency official, he had absolutely no authorisation to do so. This was made clear at the Kasztner trial by Jewish Agency witness Eliahu Dobkin.
6. Kasztner was at Nuremberg as an aide to the American prosecutors. He testified for Becher because he believed that Becher had assisted his rescue efforts at the end of the war.
7. The allegations in Perdition were not made by Vrba. Perdition claims that Zionism “worked hand in glove” with Nazi Germany and refers to “the Zionist knife in the Nazi fist.” Vrba blamed Kasztner for negotiating with Eichmann rather than publicising information about Auschwitz.
8. Vrba is not a non-person in the State of Israel. Many scholarly books on the Holocaust discuss his actions and Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, praises him as “one of the authentic Jewish heroes from the period.”
In fact, and ironically, Greenstein treats as “non-persons”, the countless Zionists who fought against Nazism, either in the Allied armies or the Jewish resistance, and the Zionists who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. These heroes are never mentioned by Greenstein and his fellow anti-Zionists.
9. No one has made the ridiculous suggestion claim that Vrba was an antisemite. Historians do, however, reject his unfounded belief that anyone who tried to negotiate with the Nazis to save Jews – including not only Zionists like Kasztner but also anti-Zionists like Rabbi Weissmandel – was a Nazi collaborator.
10. Yehuda Bauer does not accuse “the Zionists of suppressing his Auschwitz Protocols to save the Zionist elite.” In fact, Bauer has written extensively about Zionist efforts to save Jews, which included calls for the bombing of Auschwitz. He also describes the Hungarian Zionist Kasztner as a “a real-life hero” who rescued thousands of Jews and tried to save many more.
11. The “Zionised version of the Holocaust” is not the justification for Israel’s existence. Jews have wanted to return to their homeland for centuries. The Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine were issued decades before the Holocaust.
12. Israel’s policies are not taken “from the book of anti-Semitism including the Nazis” but from the internationally recognised right of the Jewish people to their own homeland – a right that was affirmed by the League of Nations and the United Nations, although it is denied by anti-Zionists such as Brenner and Greenstein.
13. Ha’aretz reported that Lapid compared the illegal actions of “some Hebron settlers” to the treatment of Jews in Yugoslavia just prior to World War II. Readers may wish to compare this Ha’aretz report to Greenstein’s version of it. As this example shows, Greenstein cannot be trusted to cite sources accurately.
Greenstein’s lengthy outburst includes more errors than paragraphs. That is quite an achievement. The above comments exclude his erroneous claims about the war in Iraq and I also have not commented on his ad-hominem attacks on Oliver Kamm and Harry’s Place. Greenstein was prepared in 1987 to support erroneous claims about the Holocaust in the play Perdition and twenty years on he is making erroneous statements himself. What is even more amazing than his errors is that he expected to get away with them.
| 25 January 2007, 11:15 pm |
It’s probably not the only thing you’d like to take back Fred. But until they effect a brain transplant that’s one thing you can’t take back.
If I was banned from NUS COnference by racists like Aaronovitch, the far-right Trevver Phillips and all the other racist New Labour scum it was because my politics were anti-racist, unlike most of this list.
If someone attacks is physicall attacked and defends themself, it is unlikely that they are responding to the attackers’ religion! I realise that the ever thick Fred probably has difficulties with the logic of that one. So once again Fred - if you defend yourself against someone who attacks you then it is unlikely that you are guilty of a racist attack. Simple isn’t it. Now try repeating it. Who knows they might major you in logic.
Mind the BNP has a few Jewish members now Fred, so why don’t you toddle off and get an application form? They even supported Israel’s blitzkrieg on Lebanon in the summer. Should make you feel at home!
Tony Greenstein
>>Tony. “As for epitaphs, I care little once I’m dead but I suspect my achievements will outweigh yours, which will probably consist of having met me!”
I take back what i said about you being the Tommy Cooper of the anti-zionist movement - you’re more the Napoleon of the anti-zionist movement.
Tony you were banned from NUS conference for hitting a Jewish student. That’s why they banned you. TONY GREENSTEIN HITS JEWS.
Face it Tony - even the anti-zionists in Brighton got fed up of your antics and obsession with Israel.
Did you make much from your Rolls Royce shares Tony.
| 25 January 2007, 11:26 pm |
Is it just me who thinks it, but isn’t this a little, erm, odd?
| 25 January 2007, 11:42 pm |
Can someone sort out with Mr Greenstein his odd mode of responding by incorporating wholesale previous comments at the foot of his new comment. It’s most confusing.
And Fabian if you are still around, thanks for the sleuthing on the Hebrew Google about the one cow thing. Your conclusions seem most logical.
| 25 January 2007, 11:50 pm |
Tony “Mind the BNP has a few Jewish members now Fred, so why don’t you toddle off and get an application form? They even supported Israel’s blitzkrieg on Lebanon in the summer. Should make you feel at home!”
Tony you’re the one who hit a Jewish student so i’m sure the BNP would welcome you with open arms. After all like the BNP you’re only an anti-zionist and not an anti-semite !
| 26 January 2007, 12:11 am |
The more you scum ban…
This Tony fellow is a caricature! I wonder how many Jews stole his lunch money.
| 26 January 2007, 1:02 am |
I apologize that this is such a long post, but I wish to deal with all Greenstein’s points. Yet again he makes numerous errors. Assuming this has worked correctly Greenstein’s paragraphs should appear in italics and those in normal font should be my responses.
i. Brenner’s research is his own, not from Stalinist sources. If he quotes Klaus Polkehn it’s because the latter’s article, which if I remember correctly appeared in History Today around 1980, regarding the trip to Palestine of the head of the Jewish Office of the SS, Count Mildenstein, was courtesy of the Labour Zionist Hagannah. of course mere facts like that don’t get a look in at Mickey’s when ad hominem attacks and lies are so much more interesting.
Greenstein is wrong – Polkehn’s article comes from the Journal of Palestine Studies in 1976. Greenstein is also wrong that it was the Hagannah that invited Mildenstein to Palestine, but it was a Zionist – Kurt Tuchler of the German ZVfD. What you fail to accept or acknowledge is that trip was made in 1933, numerous years before the Final Solution commenced and moreover had the Jews dome what the Zionists wanted and emigrated to Palestine, they would not have been murdered by the Nazi regime. This clear fact does not fit in with your logic.
ii. I’m aware of when the Kastner trial started, who was accusing who etc. But as in many libel trials, e.g. Irving v Penguin, the accuser becomes the accused and so it was in the Kastner trial. The Attorney General took over the case personally and asked whether all Zionists are guilty of collaboration because it was Zionist policy to select the few, the Zionist elite, out of the many.
If Greenstein is aware when the Kasztner trial started, then why did he get the dates wrong in your post? Clearly, the truth is not something he feels the need to report on. Regarding the Zionist policy of selecting the few out of the many, this relates to immigration to Palestine in the period up and until the mid 1930s – Greenstein confuses policy in the mid 1930s – before the Holocaust with that in the 1940s.. By 1939 Ben-Gurion had done away with the policy of selective immigration and changed it to a policy of “immigration revolt.” He wanted Jews to move to Palestine en masse. This change of attitude was confirmed by Golda Meir in 1943 when she said:
“…[W]e cannot talk about immigration in the same way that we spoke about it ten years ago. We cannot deal with immigration and pioneering training as we did in the past. Now it is the question of bringing every Jew, not because he is a farmer, but because he is a Jew and in the ghetto…”
The comments by Golda Meir also show what was actually meant by selective immigration – they wanted farmers – in short workers for the land – these are what Greenstein refers to as the “Zionist elite, when discussing selective immigration.
Greenstein’s use of selective quotation when quoting the Attorney General shows that he leaves out the following statement from the same Attorney General : “There is not one iota of proof that Rudolf Kasztner became such a collaborator. His honourable intentions never left him to the end.”
iii. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision, by 3-2, BUT upheld the facts found by the lower court and also the finding that Kastner had collaborated by seeking to exonerate Nazi SS war criminals, something Mickey finds perfectly ok and acceptable - not just Becher, but Krumey and Wisliceny and also I understand another 4.
Greenstein is wrong on this point. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision on the point of collaboration by 4:1 and on the point of preparing the ground for murder by 5:0. Kasztner did testify on behalf of Becher – that is true. He also testified on behalf of Krumey and Juttner. He did not testify on behalf of Wisliceny but did provide a memorandum requesting Wisliceny was transferred from Slovak to American custody. He did not testify on behalf of anyone else but he did testify against other Nazis. It is not known exactly why Kasztner made those testimonies although there are numerous theories – but what we do know is what exactly Kasztner said in his testimonies.
On behalf of Becher, Kasztner credited him Becher with allowing the 1,685 Jews on the rescue train to escape, 75 Jews hiding in Bratislava, preventing the deportation of 85,000 Jews in the Budapest ghetto and rescuing some 50,000 survivors at concentration camps – notably at Mauthausen and Flossenberg. Kasztner believed that at the end of the war Becher had done all that he could to prevent the killing of innocent civilians including an intervention with Himmler aimed at preventing Slovakian Jews near the city of Serad being concentrated prior to deportation. Kasztner thought it “equitable” that these facts should be taken into consideration by the Allied authorities.
Kasztner argued on behalf of Krumey that he had acted “in a comparatively humane way” to the 15,000 Jews sent to Austria and deserved some credit that the majority of them survived the war. Kastzner also argued that Krumey had rescued 29 Jews in Bratislava and 30,000 Jews in Theresienstadt but undermining orders to destroy them. On behalf of Juttner he argued that Juttner’s and Becher’s interventions with Himmler had stopped the “death march.”
On behalf of Becher – the most famous of these testimonies – Yehuda Bauer comments
“He [Becher] was a convinced if superficial and opportunist Nazi, the stuff so many mass murderers were made of. Becher was a killer probably, a mass murderer probably, a robber and a blackmailer most certainly – and a saviour of maybe hundreds of thousands of lives. He saved those lives to benefit himself.”
iv. Dobkin may have testfied that Kastner had no authority to testify on behalf of the Jewish Agency, but that does mean it is true. Fact is that the Israeli State, fully aware of what Kastner did, had at no time prosecuted him for this act. On the contrary Mapai, Israeli Labour Party, put him high on the list for the next Knesset elections before the trial.
Regarding Dobkin’s claim – Greenstein is correct – it does not mean it is true, Dobkin could have lied in court – but it does not mean that it was false either. Regarding the Israeli Labour Party – you are correct – they did not prosecute him – the overriding point was that many saw Kasztner as a hero – a rescuer of Jews. How many others saved as many as Kasztner?
v. Kastner wasn’t at Nuremburg other than to help get SS war criminals avoid the gallows. The Americans complained about this Zionist official whose only interest seemed to be in exonerating such criminals. And why if it was all kosher did Kastner not admit from the start what he was doing? And if he was at Nuremburg as an aide to the Americans, presumably he was there as a representative of the Jewish Agency? In what other capacity would he have been there?
I have no idea where Greenstein gets some of this information from – He must have made it up. Kastzner testified against many Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. For example Kasztner stated in his report that Eichmann was determined that not a single Jew should survive. Kasztner was at Nuremberg because he was the head of Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest during the war.
vi. No the allegations in Perdition were not made by Vrba. Nor did I say they were. But Perdition covers the same ground and therefore presumably, by the same guilt by association techniques loved by HP, he is also an anti-Semite! Vrba blamed Kastner for far more than not publicing Auschwitz but for covering up, suppressing the news, doing a deal in exchange for help in rounding up and pacifying the Jews of Hungary.
Greenstein is denying what he said when it is there in print for everyone to see “all the allegations in Perdition are made by the 2/3rd Jewish escapee from Auschwitz, the non-Zionist Rudolph Vrba.” Vrba does deal with some of the same issues, but he does not come to the same conclusions as Jim Allen did in his play. It seems that Greenstein is the only person I have seen suggest that Vrba was or might be an antisemite. Vrba did not argue that the Zionists positively desired the slaughter of Jews in order to establish a state – a claim that Jim Allen made.
vii. Vrba was indeed a non-person in Israel, where he briefly settled before making his way, via the London Medical Research Council to a professorship in Canada. His book, ‘I Escaped from Auschwitz’ was not translated into Hebrew, the Auschwitz Protocols which he and Wetzler had provided the material for, concerning the whereabouts of Auschwitz and its layout etc. were not translated at Yad Vashem into English or Hebrew and were virtually hidden away from all but the most persistent and knowledgeable of academics. Likewise Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem was also not translated for years into Hebrew. When Arendt wrote ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ she was subject to bitter attack by an Israeli Professor at Oxford. Vrba leapt to her defence against this forerunner of Harry’s Place propaganda.
The case of Vrba and his Auschwitz Protocols have been discussed by numerous scholars of the Holocaust inside and outside of Israel – For example Martin Gilbert in his book Auschwitz and the Allies or Yehuda Bauer in Jews for Sale?. Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem was correctly attacked. As Jacob Robinson showed in his excellent And the crooked shall be made straight all of her major contentions were wrong and a great many of her minor ones also needed to be tossed out.
viii. The full story of the attack on Vrba by the Zionists’ official historians of Yad Vashem, Bauer et al. is told in the remarkable little book by Ruth Linn, herself a Professor at Haifa University, ‘ESCAPING AUSCHWITZ - A Culture of Forgetting’ which I reviewed earlier this year for Tribune.
Greenstein fails to answer my claim that Bauer called Vrba a “hero.” He just chooses to ignore it. Bauer also sent a letter of recommendation to Haifa University for Vrba to receive an honorary doctorate. Greenstein clearly fails to acknowledge this.
ix. In fact Bauer and co. after many attacks on Vrba, whose name was wholly unknown in Israel to all except a few experts in the area, e.g. the fact that he was the 2nd and 3rd Jewish escapee with Alfred Wetzler is not to be found in the normal school syllabus on the Holocaust, realised that their attacks had rebounded. But Bauer called Vrba many other things besides the comment Mickey quotes.
As I have said – Bauer has praised Vrba – In fact Bauer responds very well to the allegations of Vrba and Linn in his article “The Protocol of Auschwitz” published in Yalkut Moroshet Vol 3 Winter 2005 pp. 125-136
x. It is asserted that I have nothing to say about Zionists who fought the Nazis. Not true. I am not a biological determinist. Zionists, given the right set of circumstances, will of course fight like others. But I’m not going to take the hasbarah of Israeli propagandists at their word. Noone doubts the bravery of Mordechai Anielwicz, commander of ZOB in the Warsaw Ghetto. But Anielwicz himself said that the Zionist activities of the Zionist youth groups in Poland was an utter waste of time and a distraction, things like running kibbutzim to replace Polish labour deported to the slave factories of France (which Skif, the Bundist paper vigorously condemned as collaboration incidentally). But what I do say is that when Zionists fought, they did not do so as Zionists, be it in the allied armies or as Partisans, but as individuals organised in groups, despite the politics of those groups. Hashomer Hatzair and left PZ in the Warsaw Ghetto had effectively abandoned Zionism and had one though and one alone - retribution against the Nazi beasts. Likewise incidentally the Revisionist fighters who, in Warsaw almost alone of anywhere, also fought (and more effectively given their heavier weaponry) than ZOB.
Jim Allen in his play that you supported did deny that that the Zionists fought Hitlers army. I am glad Greenstein recognizes some did – but here he tries to argue that they were fighting independent of any Zionist ideology. As to the main point or argument by Greenstein that the Zionists were not interested in fighting Hitler, even if we ignore the Warsaw ghetto uprising for a moment, we can see what the Zionist leaders wanted to do. In May 1942 at the Biltmore Conference, the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs approved a programme, much of which had been laid down previously by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, where amongst other points they called for the formation of “Jewish military fighting force under their own flag and under the high command of the United Nations” against Hitler. Indeed that particular point in the Biltmore Programme was actually written by Ben-Gurion.
Greenstein is either not aware or fails to acknowledge the socialist Zionists, some of whom were strongly influenced by Marxist movements. An example is Yitzhak Tabenkin, the leader of Hakibbutz Hamme’uhad, (the Labour Movement’s kibbutz organization) whose reservations about the willingness of the Allied powers to act led him to comment “the whole world is our enemy. Our only hope lies with the world’s revolutionary forces, in China, India. World Revolution – this is our ally….” He argued that the Yishuv [Jewish community in Palestine] had to follow a policy that was not only Zionist, but also Jewish “Jews must fight for the rescue of other Jews.” This socialist tradition was strong in the Zionist leadership at the time. Ben-Gurion said in March 1944 “We are one hundred percent Zionists and one hundred percent socialists.” Greenstein of course does not mention that by the end of 1942, 20,000 Jews in Palestine had joined the British Army and by the end of the war that number had increased to close to 30,000 representing approximately fifteen percent of all Jewish bread winners in Palestine. Consequently it can be seen that the whole Zionist ethos as espoused by Greenstein, that when the Zionists did fight, they did not fight as Zionists, has no basis in fact.
xi. Vrba doesn’t label anyone who negotiated with the Nazis as a collaborator. Show me the quote. He certainly doesn’t accuse Rabbi Weissmandel, who certainly does accuse the Zionists of collaboration e.g. Holocaust Victims Accuse or Min Hamitzair. What Vrba says, and on this I agree with him though Lenni Brenner doesn’t agree, is that his belief that deportations from Slovaki stopped in 1942 because of the payment of a £50,000 ransom negotiated with Wisliceny and the idea of the Europa Plan that for a $2m dollar ransom the Final Solution could be ended were utterly futile pipe dreams. The idea that the Nazis were susceptible to this bribery was absurd, not least because there was an economic and political incentive to murder the Jews of occupied Europe. But these subtleties the war mongers of HP will never understand.
The original bribe to Wisliceny was $50,000 not £50,000 – I tend to agree based on the work of scholars – including Yehuda Bauer, Dina Porat and Hannah Yablonka that the Europa Plan was unworkable and Weissmandel was incorrect in his belief that it would have worked. You are correct – Vrba does not specifically call either Weissmandel or Kasztner a collaborator and thank you pointing that out. Vrba did not write Holocaust Victims Accuse it was written by Schonfeld. Regarding Min Hametzar as it was published posthumously, it is unclear what parts of the book were written by Weissmandel and what parts were written by his followers. Notably the allegations in the book -that of the text of a letter by Nathan Schwalb subsequently destroyed in the war- is hotly disputed by numerous scholars.
xii. Yes Bauer is on record that Kastner is a hero (& elswhere that he was a collaborator). Vrba has always been crystal clear, as he wrote in the Daily Herald of February 1961: ‘I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr Kastner. I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks notice that Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers. Kasztner went to Eichmann and told him, I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.? Eichmann not only agreed, but dressed Kasztner up in SS uniform and took him to Belsen to trace some of his friends.’
Both Bauer and Israel Gutmann, both of the Israeli propaganda institute, Yad Vashem, accept that the Auschwitz Protocols were not disseminated by those who received them, 2 weeks before the deportations in Hungary began, in order to save the negotiations for the Jewish and Zionist elite. That is where the sympathies of Mickey and his war monger friends on HH place lie, with the Jewish bourgeoisie and their Zionist friends. Ours is with the Jewish working class who were sacrificed in Hungary and elsewhere. And incidentally, Yad Vashem also refused to print Raul Hilberg’s monumental ‘Destruction of European Jewry’ because again it didn’t fit into the ideological purposes of Yad Vashem.
Here we should be clear as to what Vrba did, what he claimed and what he has guessed. Vrba did not go to Hungary – the claim that Kasztner dressed in a SS Uniform is denied. Vrba was not in a position to know first hand if it was true – he may have been relying on rumours put out by the anti-Kasztner types such as Tamir. The claims of what Kasztner said to Eichmann again seems to be guesswork by Vrba – He was not at the meetings with Eichmann. Bauer does not claim that the Aushwitz Protocols was not disseminated in order to save negotiations for the Jewish and Zionist elite. The Auschwitz Protocol was completed on April 27 1944. There is clear contradictory evidence as to when Kasztner received the Protocol. Vrba and Wetzler claimed Kasztner received it on April 26 1944, but we know it were not finished until April 27 1944. In Palestine Krasniansky claimed Kasztner received them on April 28 1944 – however Hanzi Brand (Joel’s wife) who was very close to Kasztner at the time claimed that Kasztner did not travel to Bratislava until August 1944 – According to Bauer the Protocol actually reached Hungary on the same day it reached Switzerland – June 10 1944 – What exactly happened between April 27 and June 10 is not clear. There does seem to be a question mark around this matter.
Yad Vashem is not an “Israeli propaganda institute.” It is a Holocaust Memorial center. Re Yad Vashem and Raul Hilberg’s book, Greenstein is wrong. Yad Vashem did not want to publish the book but they were happy to print it. It was rejected for publication due to deficiencies notably because it “rested almost entirely on the authority of German sources and [did] not utilize primary sources in the languages of the occupied states, or in Yiddish and Hebrew.” However despite this Yad Vashem noted the book “possessed numerous merits” and as such they stated “we are prepared to act as mediator between the University of Columbia and the printer here in order to make the possible the book’s appearance under the auspices of the Columbia University.”
xiii. As for the centuries longing of Jews to ‘return’ to Palestine, strange they chose the imperial era to do it, under the protection of British bayonets. Even stranger that the first Zionist Congress had to be transferred in 1897 from Munich to Basle. Presumably this longing had temporarily waned?
Tony Greenstein is well aware from his Jewish upbringing that the prayers for the festival of Passover which predate the First Zionist Congress by numerous centuries plea for “Next Year in Jerusalem.” Greenstein is also aware that one of the most important prayers for Jews commences “Hear O Israel.” Greenstein is very aware of the centrality of Eretz Yisrael [the land of Israel] to Jewish life, but he chooses to ignore it.
xiv. Likewis the Zionist nonsense about the ‘internationally recognised right of Jews to their own homeland’ etc. The anti-Semites certainly recognised the ‘right’ of Jews to ‘return’ since they didn’t recognise rights of Jews where they were. But who cares? As Herzl said in his Diaries, the anti-Semites will be our friends and allies (pp.83/4 from memory). The fact is that those who saw the Jews as a separate nation apart from those who lived there were either anti-Semites or Zionists and in the case of HH I suspect both.
The United Nations is an internationally recognized body - whether or not Greenstein accepts is another matter entirely. Greenstein here is using an argument that he published around 1982 (maybe earlier) in a pamphlet entitled Zionism – anti-semitism’s twin in Jewish Garb. This has false logic – It is based on the claim that Zionists wanted Jews out Europe and so did antisemites so Zionists are antisemites or even Nazis. The logic is as false as the old claim – Socrates is mortal, all cats are mortal, hence Socrates is cat. It makes no sense whatsoever, but making sense is not a requirement for Greenstein – as someone else has referred to him rather aptly I think - “the Tommy Cooper of the anti-Zionist lobby.”
xiv. Yes Lapid compared the actions of settlers to the Nazis harassment of Jews. Mickey, being an apologist for the settlers and settlements of course chooses to query whether it refers to all or some settlers. The fact is that the pogroms and harassment, the stone throwing and the encouragement these scum have from the army and police can be found in the actions of anti-Semitic regimes in Europe. This is something that Mickey, Kamm and all the other trash of Harry’s Place are more than happy to applaud.
I am not an apologist for the settler movement – By this I am clear by settlers I refer to those Jews in the West Bank. Greenstein is unclear – given he does not recognize the State of Israel – he thinks all Jews in Israel are settlers so I am not sure to what he is referring. In any event I am not in favour of harassment of the Palestinians.
xv. In fact there is a direct ideological link between Nazi Germany and Israel. Whether it is the actions of the Judeo-Nazi settlers (Israel Shahak and Leibowitz’s words - not mine!) in the occupied territories, the Rabbis consulting the Black Book of who is and is not a Jew (including Nazi sources of who is a Jew) or the welcome given by Zionist groups to the Nuremburg Laws, whose very preamble paid tribute to this Zionist welcome is a matter of record.
To argue that there is an ideological link between Nazi Germany and Israel is not only hogwash but it also offensive and I do not care if it comes from Tony Greenstein or Israel Shahak. Rabbis use Talmudic methods to determine who is a Jew not Nazi methods. As Greenstein well knows – someone is Jewish by religious law if they have a Jewish mother.
As for Perdition, it is a play and as such should be allowed poetic licence. But I welcome the Zionists’ continued attempts to ban this play by the excellent socialist and Trostkyist playwright, the late Jim Allen (not a Stalinist you fools). The more you scum ban, the more people want to know!!!
I do not know of Zionist organization that tried to “ban” the play – there were many not happy with it being performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1987 – but not ban it – In fact in the spirit of democracy and demonstration – they would have organized a picket against the play as they did in Edinburgh in 1987 and London in 1988 and 1999 – but not “ban” it. The late Jim Allen politically identified with Gerry Healy who went on to form the Workers Revolutionary party that ultimately decided to take money from Libya to spy on British Jews. See for example http://libsoc.blogspot.com/2004/07/saddams-british-admirers-5-paul.html”> this website for more information.
| 26 January 2007, 1:14 am |
more “antisemitism” here:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/architecture/story/0,,1998965,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1
| 26 January 2007, 2:12 am |
The website link for the WRP and spying on British Jews does not seem to have come out. It is this one.
| 26 January 2007, 2:30 am |
Not much has changed :(
“This agreement includes providing of intelligence information on the “activities, names and positions held in finance, politics, business, the communications media and elsewhere” by “Zionists”. It has strongly anti-Semitic undertones, as no distinction is made between Jews and Zionists and the term Zionist could actually include every Jew in a leading position.”
[taken from THE CORRUPTION OF THE WORKERS REVOLUTIONARY PARTY, Extract from the Interim Report of the International Committee Commission, December 16 1985,From Solidarity, issue 16 (new series), spring 1988 ]
PS: Mikey, great historical work there
| 26 January 2007, 5:12 am |
Here are just a few of the ludicrous falsehoods in Tony Greenstein’s outburst:-
Lenni Brenner’s research is “not from Stalinist sources” because Klaus Polkehn’s article “appeared in History Today around 1980…”
As Greenstein has now admitted, Brenner cited Polkehn’s article in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1976. There Polkehn was clearly identified as “a prominent journalist in the German Democratic Republic,” i.e., a paid Stalinist propagandist. And the Journal of Palestine Studies is a PLO-sponsored propaganda organ.
This is the kind of source that Greenstein uses when blaming Zionist Jews for the Holocaust.
Kastner was at at Nuremberg solely “to help get SS war criminals avoid the gallows. The Americans complained about this Zionist official whose only interest seemed to be in exonerating such criminals.”
Kastner’s testimony was a key source of the evidence on the Holocaust used at Nuremberg. Kastner’s testimony, combined with that of the second-tier criminals he had exonerated, was directly responsible for the hanging of Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann’s superior and a major perpetrator of the Holocaust.
The American lawyers criticised Kastner to divert attention from their own refusal to pursue second-tier murderers such as Becher, who should have been put to death. By testifying for criminals who had no prospect of being punished, Kastner secured their evidence against Kaltenbrunner and Eichmann and their cooperation in finding the stolen assets of Holocaust victims.
Source: Shlomo Arondon, Hitler, the Allies and the Jews (Cambridge, 2004), pp322-6.
When Zionists fought the Nazis, “they did not do so as Zionists, be it in the allied armies or as Partisans, but as individuals organised in groups, despite the politics of those groups.”
As Bernard Wasserstein documents, “The most elaborate scheme for promoting a distinctive Jewish military role during the Second World War was the project for the establishment of a Jewish Army. The idea was one which had a natural attraction for the Zionists.” This demand was raised “immediately upon the outbreak of war” by both the Jewish Agency and the Revisionists.
Other demands included Allied broadcasts to warn Europe’s Jews and threaten retaliation against the Nazis and their collaborators; Allied bombing of German cities in reprisal for the murder of Jews; and Allied bombing of the Auschwitz and Treblinka death camps.
Source: Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945 (Oxford, 1979), pp271-320.
“Vrba doesn’t label anyone who negotiated with the Nazis as a collaborator. Show me the quote. He certainly doesn’t accuse Rabbi Weissmandel…”
Quoting Vrba, “Further evidence of the collaboration between the Nazis and certain favoured groups of Jews” includes the fact that through Becher’s efforts a small group of Jews escaped to Switzerland: “One of them was Rabbi Weissmandel. The Becher referred to is the same SS Colonel Becher mentioned above. Res ipsa loquitur [The thing speaks for itself].”
Source: Rudolf Vrba, I Escaped From Auschwitz (Robson Books, 2006), p419.
Either Greenstein has not read Vrba and does not know what he is talking about, or he is simply lying.
Vrba “has always been crystal clear” in his view that Kastner “went to Eichmann and told him, I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet. Eichmann not only agreed, but dressed Kasztner up in SS uniform and took him to Belsen to trace some of his friends.”
As Vrba’s baseless accusation of the anti-Zionist Weissmandel demonstrates, he is not reliable on matters he did not personally witness. Vrba had no way of knowing what Kastner did or did not say to Eichmann and his story about the SS uniform has no foundation whatsoever.
Kastner’s rescue efforts included:-
- an attempt to bribe the SS to stop ghettoisation of Hungary’s Jews;
- negotiations for the Brand mission to save a million Jewish lives;
- a plan to bribe the SS not to deport 100,000 Jews from Budapest;
- a rescue scheme for 30,000 Jews who were incapable of working;
- the Marton/Kastner proposal to exchange Hungary’s Jewish survivors for Germans in Romania;
- using Becher and his SS colleagues to secure the peaceful surrender of the Belsen, Neuengamme and Theresienstadt concentration camps.
Source: Aronson, pp241-3, 258-61, 318.
Greenstein’s critics are on the side of “the Jewish bourgeoisie and their Zionist friends” whereas his sympathies are “with the Jewish working class who were sacrificed in Hungary and elsewhere.”
Recall that while the Zionist leaders were demanding the formation of a Jewish Army, reprisals against Germany and the bombing of the death camps, and while countless Zionists were sacrificing their lives to defeat Nazism, Greenstein’s beloved Trotskyists were busy denouncing the “imperialist” war effort and inciting the overthrow of the democratic governments that were the only line of defence against the Final Solution.
And then they appropriated Stalinist propaganda accusing the Zionists of murdering millions of Jews.
| 26 January 2007, 5:15 am |
i. Brenner’s research is his own, not from Stalinist sources. If he quotes Klaus Polkehn it’s because the latter’s article, which if I remember correctly appeared in History Today around 1980, regarding the trip to Palestine of the head of the Jewish Office of the SS, Count Mildenstein, was courtesy of the Labour Zionist Hagannah. of course mere facts like that don’t get a look in at Mickey’s when ad hominem attacks and lies are so much more interesting.
Greenstein is wrong – Polkehn’s article comes from the Journal of Palestine Studies in 1976. Greenstein is also wrong that it was the Hagannah that invited Mildenstein to Palestine, but it was a Zionist – Kurt Tuchler of the German ZVfD. What you fail to accept or acknowledge is that trip was made in 1933, numerous years before the Final Solution commenced and moreover had the Jews dome what the Zionists wanted and emigrated to Palestine, they would not have been murdered by the Nazi regime. This clear fact does not fit in with your logic.
And hopefully the reply to the reply will be in bold!
Firstly I have already acknowledged that Polkenh’s article, an excellent one I might add, is from the Journal of Palestinian Studies and I was confusing it with Jacob Boas’s ‘A Nazi Travels to Palestine’ in History Today of January 1980. That’s what happens when you reply off the cuff.
But I am pleased to see that there is no continuation of the cold war McCarthyism of – ‘oh it’s all the fault of the Soviets’. Less guilt by association and more dealing with the argument.
The personnel involved in Mildestein’s trip is unimportant. Tuchler from the German Zionist Federation organised or commissioned the trip, but the invitation to stay and tour in Palestine was from the Labour Zionists, which is why Mildenstein stayed primarily on kibbutzim and kvutzah such as Givat Brenner.
The idea that all the Jews had to do was to colonise Palestine for the Zionist movement, all 6-8 million of them is absurd. Leave aside the question why Palestine, the fact is that the indigenous population didn’t want to be colonised, not surprisingly. It would not have been possible, still less desirable. What was possible was mass emigration to the West, as after the Russian pogroms, but the Zionists in the USA were implacably opposed to such immigration. The Zionist answer was no answer at all. The tragedy was that Zionism acted as an obstacle
ii. I’m aware of when the Kastner trial started, who was accusing who etc. But as in many libel trials, e.g. Irving v Penguin, the accuser becomes the accused and so it was in the Kastner trial. The Attorney General took over the case personally and asked whether all Zionists are guilty of collaboration because it was Zionist policy to select the few, the Zionist elite, out of the many.
If Greenstein is aware when the Kasztner trial started, then why did he get the dates wrong in your post? Clearly, the truth is not something he feels the need to report on.
Yes, it’s 1953-8. Is this an issue?
Regarding the Zionist policy of selecting the few out of the many, this relates to immigration to Palestine in the period up and until the mid 1930s – Greenstein confuses policy in the mid 1930s – before the Holocaust with that in the 1940s.. By 1939 Ben-Gurion had done away with the policy of selective immigration and changed it to a policy of “immigration revolt.” He wanted Jews to move to Palestine en masse. This change of attitude was confirmed by Golda Meir in 1943 when she said:
“…[W]e cannot talk about immigration in the same way that we spoke about it ten years ago. We cannot deal with immigration and pioneering training as we did in the past. Now it is the question of bringing every Jew, not because he is a farmer, but because he is a Jew and in the ghetto…”
The comments by Golda Meir also show what was actually meant by selective immigration – they wanted farmers – in short workers for the land – these are what Greenstein refers to as the “Zionist elite, when discussing selective immigration.
Greenstein’s use of selective quotation when quoting the Attorney General shows that he leaves out the following statement from the same Attorney General : “There is not one iota of proof that Rudolf Kasztner became such a collaborator. His honourable intentions never left him to the end.”
There is no confusion at all my dear Mikey, except in your own mind. Selectivity was an unchanged policy, up to and including the war. Of course I haven’t quoted the whole of Chaim Cohen’s speeches to the lower and higher courts. Naturally I haven’t included his opinions as to the essential goodness of Kastner (which I actually think irrelevant). But let me cite just a few passages:
‘Kastner did nothing more and nothing less than was done by us in rescuing the Jews and bringing them to Palestine…. You are allowed – in fact it is your duty – to risk losing the many in order to save the few.’ ‘If in Kastner’s opinion, rightly or wrongly, he believed that one million Jews were hopelessly doomed, he was allowed not to inform them of their fate; and to concentrate on the saving of the few. He was entitled to make a deal with the Nazis for the saving of a few hundred and entitled not to warn the millioins. In fact if that’s how he saw it, righly or wrongly, that was his duty…. It has always been our Zionist tradition to selected the few out of many in arranging the immigration to Palestine.’ (Hecht pp. 194-5)
In fact this had been one of the key differences between Labour Zionism and Revisionism, the latter of which did believe that Palestine could accommodate the millions in Europe.
So oh yes, Golda Meir in a fine, rhetorical speech in Palestine, whilst doing nothing concrete re the saving of Europe’s Jews (she had been particularly insistent at Evian that Palestine must not be lost sight of when talk of rescuing Jews was on the agenda to the point that the Zionists actively. All serious commentators like Christopher Sykes agree that the Zionists were pleased at the failure of Evian and S Beit Zvi (a Zionist and Israeli historian) argues in great detail that they took active steps to prevent the offer of 100,000 places in Santo Domingo coming to fruition.
iii. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision, by 3-2, BUT upheld the facts found by the lower court and also the finding that Kastner had collaborated by seeking to exonerate Nazi SS war criminals, something Mickey finds perfectly ok and acceptable - not just Becher, but Krumey and Wisliceny and also I understand another 4.
Greenstein is wrong on this point. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision on the point of collaboration by 4:1 and on the point of preparing the ground for murder by 5:0. Kasztner did testify on behalf of Becher – that is true. He also testified on behalf of Krumey and Juttner. He did not testify on behalf of Wisliceny but did provide a memorandum requesting Wisliceny was transferred from Slovak to American custody. He did not testify on behalf of anyone else but he did testify against other Nazis. It is not known exactly why Kasztner made those testimonies although there are numerous theories – but what we do know is what exactly Kasztner said in his testimonies.
On behalf of Becher, Kasztner credited him Becher with allowing the 1,685 Jews on the rescue train to escape, 75 Jews hiding in Bratislava, preventing the deportation of 85,000 Jews in the Budapest ghetto and rescuing some 50,000 survivors at concentration camps – notably at Mauthausen and Flossenberg. Kasztner believed that at the end of the war Becher had done all that he could to prevent the killing of innocent civilians including an intervention with Himmler aimed at preventing Slovakian Jews near the city of Serad being concentrated prior to deportation. Kasztner thought it “equitable” that these facts should be taken into consideration by the Allied authorities.
Kasztner argued on behalf of Krumey that he had acted “in a comparatively humane way” to the 15,000 Jews sent to Austria and deserved some credit that the majority of them survived the war. Kastzner also argued that Krumey had rescued 29 Jews in Bratislava and 30,000 Jews in Theresienstadt but undermining orders to destroy them. On behalf of Juttner he argued that Juttner’s and Becher’s interventions with Himmler had stopped the “death march.”
On behalf of Becher – the most famous of these testimonies – Yehuda Bauer comments
“He [Becher] was a convinced if superficial and opportunist Nazi, the stuff so many mass murderers were made of. Becher was a killer probably, a mass murderer probably, a robber and a blackmailer most certainly – and a saviour of maybe hundreds of thousands of lives. He saved those lives to benefit himself.”
Disagree. It is quite clear from their speeches that the Supreme (or High) Court of Israel voted 3-2 in overturning the decision of the lower court. And as Judge Shlomo Chesin, for the majority, wrote: ‘As I said, I am not arguing with the basic factual findings of the learned President of the Jewish Disstrict Court.’ He goes on to say that the findings do not, of necessity, therefore mean Kastner was guilty of collaboration.
Moshe Silberg for the minority was quite explicit. Kastner was ‘a collaborator with the angel of death.’. The 5 judges were unanimous in holding that Kastner ‘in a perjurious and criminal way’ saved Becher, a major German war criminal.
iv. Dobkin may have testfied that Kastner had no authority to testify on behalf of the Jewish Agency, but that does mean it is true. Fact is that the Israeli State, fully aware of what Kastner did, had at no time prosecuted him for this act. On the contrary Mapai, Israeli Labour Party, put him high on the list for the next Knesset elections before the trial.
Regarding Dobkin’s claim – Greenstein is correct – it does not mean it is true, Dobkin could have lied in court – but it does not mean that it was false either. Regarding the Israeli Labour Party – you are correct – they did not prosecute him – the overriding point was that many saw Kasztner as a hero – a rescuer of Jews. How many others saved as many as Kasztner?
In fact to this day the Jewish Agency has not withdrawn its name from Becher’s affidavits testimony and lobbying on behalf of the cream of the Jewish Department of the SS and Waffen SS. You ask how many others saved as many as Kastner. It’s rather a strange question. You could equally ask how many people died because of Kastner who might otherwise have survived?
Let me quote Supreme Court Justice Moshe Silberg again, albeit not someone known as an anti-Zionist (nor Ben Hecht who cites him in Perfidy p.274).
‘The charge emanating from the testimony of the witnesses against Kastner is that had they known of the Auschwitz secret, then thousands or tens of thousands would have been able to save their lives by local, partial, specific or indirect rescue operations…. How can he examine the tens of thousands of possibilities? Does he decide instead of God? The point is that Kastner acted, not as an individual but as a Jewish Agency representative throughout. And if SS General Walter Schellenburg, Chief of Himmler’s Intelligence is correct, he also acted as an SS agent as well.
v. Kastner wasn’t at Nuremburg other than to help get SS war criminals avoid the gallows. The Americans complained about this Zionist official whose only interest seemed to be in exonerating such criminals. And why if it was all kosher did Kastner not admit from the start what he was doing? And if he was at Nuremburg as an aide to the Americans, presumably he was there as a representative of the Jewish Agency? In what other capacity would he have been there?
I have no idea where Greenstein gets some of this information from – He must have made it up. Kastzner testified against many Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. For example Kasztner stated in his report that Eichmann was determined that not a single Jew should survive. Kasztner was at Nuremberg because he was the head of Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest during the war.
Yes but Eichmann wasn’t at Nuremburg so it would have been very easy to testify against him! The point is that he testified in favour of those who were there. Not that Kastner’s own Report should be accepted uncritically or at all. But as Mikey says, he was there on behalf of the Vadah, the Jewish Agency Relief and Rescue Committee, the Hungarian Judenverrat and much else besides.
Vrba himself writes, in his book ‘I Escaped From Auschwitz’ that ‘It is of interest to know that Eichmann’s cronies from Budapest, SS officers Krumey and Hunsche, were protected from prosecution after the war because Dr. Kasztner, in the name of the World Zionist Congress, issued them protective affidavits. Citing K Muller-Tupath’s Richsfuhrers etc. 1982. In 1969-70 Vrba testified at their trial in Frankfurt and is therefore in a better position to know the truth than Mikey.
Or as Robert Kempner, a senior US official at Nuremburg described it: Kasztner was running around at Nuremburg looking for Nazis he could save.’ (Linn 51).
vi. No the allegations in Perdition were not made by Vrba. Nor did I say they were. But Perdition covers the same ground and therefore presumably, by the same guilt by association techniques loved by HP, he is also an anti-Semite! Vrba blamed Kastner for far more than not publicing Auschwitz but for covering up, suppressing the news, doing a deal in exchange for help in rounding up and pacifying the Jews of Hungary.
Greenstein is denying what he said when it is there in print for everyone to see “all the allegations in Perdition are made by the 2/3rd Jewish escapee from Auschwitz, the non-Zionist Rudolph Vrba.” Vrba does deal with some of the same issues, but he does not come to the same conclusions as Jim Allen did in his play. It seems that Greenstein is the only person I have seen suggest that Vrba was or might be an antisemite. Vrba did not argue that the Zionists positively desired the slaughter of Jews in order to establish a state – a claim that Jim Allen made.
Yes you are correct. Grammatically! I should have made it explicit by putting ‘also’ in i.e ‘are ALSO made by the 2/3rd…’ Oh I think that Vrba comes to much the same conclusons, to wit:
‘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 instance Dr. R. Kasztner – bartrered their own lives and the lives of 1684 other “prominent” Jews directly from Eichmann.’ (Linn p.12, citing a debate with Prof. Talmon in The Observer 22.9.63).
conclusions as Jim Allen. Of course there will be differences. And it is childish to say that I consider Vrba an anti-Semite. I say, and it is quite clear, that by the guilt by association technique of Mikey (everything is a Soviet plot) and his Zionist friends, then Vrba is an anti-Semite. A difference that is quite easy to understand.
vii. Vrba was indeed a non-person in Israel, where he briefly settled before making his way, via the London Medical Research Council to a professorship in Canada. His book, ‘I Escaped from Auschwitz’ was not translated into Hebrew, the Auschwitz Protocols which he and Wetzler had provided the material for, concerning the whereabouts of Auschwitz and its layout etc. were not translated at Yad Vashem into English or Hebrew and were virtually hidden away from all but the most persistent and knowledgeable of academics. Likewise Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem was also not translated for years into Hebrew. When Arendt wrote ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’ she was subject to bitter attack by an Israeli Professor at Oxford. Vrba leapt to her defence against this forerunner of Harry’s Place propaganda.
The case of Vrba and his Auschwitz Protocols have been discussed by numerous scholars of the Holocaust inside and outside of Israel – For example Martin Gilbert in his book Auschwitz and the Allies or Yehuda Bauer in Jews for Sale?. Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem was correctly attacked. As Jacob Robinson showed in his excellent And the crooked shall be made straight all of her major contentions were wrong and a great many of her minor ones also needed to be tossed out.
Mikey tells us that Arendt’s book was ‘correctly attacked’, but doesn’t say why. Like any book it has its deficiencies, not least a lack of footnoting, but its general conclusions, viz. that the existence of the Judenrat could not but be of help to the Nazi exterminators cannot be faulted, nor her observations on why there was a differential rate of survival in the different countries, i.e. that not all countries were anti-Semitic to the same extent and opposition to anti-Semitism in countries like Bulgaria and France were far more important than the pie in the sky schemes of the Zionists. Arendet courted the wrath of the Zionist establishment and the Mikeys of the day because she stumbled on some of the issues that the Eichmann trial had been intent on avoiding, such as Hungary and Kastner. That was why neither Vrba nor Marek Edelman (the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance) were called. They were not Zionists and did not sing to the tune of the establishment in Israel and its intention to mould the story of the Holocaust to their political purposes, not least by whitewashing their own role.
But unlike the servile account of Mikey, who is in a long tradition of bowing and scraping at the feet of the Jewish establishment, Ruth Linn’s questions are more profound. She writes of Vrba ‘Could a narrative of an individualistic escape, by a non-Zionist Jew, critical of his Jewish leaders, ever be made to harmonize with the “collective aura” that dominated the state of Israel.” The same of course is true of the 4th and 5th escapees, Rosin and Mordowicz. Given that the first escapee was barely such, though he did bring out the first news of Auschwitz (he was passported out by a renegade SS officer who was murdered on his return), one has to make the point that the escapees were typical of the non/anti-Zionist East European Jews. Zionism likes to claim these Jews but only in so far as they keep their distance. In reality, the life of ghetto Jewry in Eastern Europe is as distant as it is impossible to imagine from Israel, the US’s murderous client state.
viii. The full story of the attack on Vrba by the Zionists’ official historians of Yad Vashem, Bauer et al. is told in the remarkable little book by Ruth Linn, herself a Professor at Haifa University, ‘ESCAPING AUSCHWITZ - A Culture of Forgetting’ which I reviewed earlier this year for Tribune.
Greenstein fails to answer my claim that Bauer called Vrba a “hero.” He just chooses to ignore it. Bauer also sent a letter of recommendation to Haifa University for Vrba to receive an honorary doctorate. Greenstein clearly fails to acknowledge this.
Oh yes, I certainly failed to answer Mikey’s comment about Bauer calling Vrba a ‘hero’. I assumed I didn’t need to. It was so obviously a sham, like me calling Mikey a discerning and astute critic! In his Rethinking the Holocaust Bauer calls him a ‘bitter Auschwitz survivor’ ‘not credible’ ‘embittered and furious’ his ‘despair and bitterness are overdone’. And referring to Vrba’s Haifa honorary doctorate (nothing to do with Bauer incidentally) , in ‘Leadership under Duress: The Working Group in Slovakia, 1942-44, Bauer and other of the Zionist Establishment Historians (Fatran, Rothkirken etc.) write of the criticism of the Slovakian Judenrat that ‘Regretfully, it was given legitimacy [lit. “was made kosher”] when Haifa University awarded a honorary doctorate to the head of these mockers Peter ]sic] Vrba…. Just because he was an Auschwitz prisoner endowed with personal heroism, he has crowned himself as knowledgeable to judge all those….’ [Linn 109/110] Yes I realise I shouldn’t have left out the reference to heroism, but in the circumstances…. As Linn asks, what if Hungarian Jews had read the Vrba-Wetzler report and believed it? What if Israeli high-school students had been given a chance to read Vrba’s memoirs and drawn their own conclusions? Quite. But Bauer too had his regrets. ‘I truly regret that Yad Vashem did not publish the book [Vrba’s memoirs] in Hebrew. On the other hand Vrba’s wild attacks on Kastner and on the Slovak underground are all a-historical…’ So there we have it. Bauer regrets, basically having been found out.
Vrba’s main point in his debate with Bauer etc. is that he and those who experienced what happened are the better historians, not those who write about it later from a particular partisan and political perspective in Israel. In fact we can judge Bauer from what he wrote in his ‘The Holocaust: Some Historical asepcts’ his best known Hebrew book. The only reference to Vrba is a sentence ‘Detailed reports about the death camp in Auschwitz and the gas chambers there were received in Slovakia from 2 Slovak Jews who escaped from Auschwitz on April 7.’ True to form even the names of the escapees were not mentioned in any, bar one, Israeli account until a hue and cry was raised by Linn among others. In 1998 Vrba’s memoirs were published in Hebrew and finally included in Gutman’s Hebrew writings on the Holocaust for high school studnets. ‘Kasztner was given a copy of the report on 29 April 1944… but tat 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.’ Quite. (Linn p.72)
ix. In fact Bauer and co. after many attacks on Vrba, whose name was wholly unknown in Israel to all except a few experts in the area, e.g. the fact that he was the 2nd and 3rd Jewish escapee with Alfred Wetzler is not to be found in the normal school syllabus on the Holocaust, realised that their attacks had rebounded. But Bauer called Vrba many other things besides the comment Mickey quotes.
As I have said – Bauer has praised Vrba – In fact Bauer responds very well to the allegations of Vrba and Linn in his article “The Protocol of Auschwitz” published in Yalkut Moroshet Vol 3 Winter 2005 pp. 125-136
I think I have covered this nonsense. Bauer praises when he has no options left. But when he could have praised Vrba and mentioned and published him he chose to do nothing other than refer to him obliquely. Bauer’s and Gutman’s 1994 publications in English do mention the escape, it is not given the same treatment in the Hebrew editions. As Linn observes, Erich Kuka ‘after he joined the Israeli establishment’ also joined in this ‘long-term tradition of discrediting’ Vrba, to the extent of changing his name to Rosenberg-Vrba! His student, Ruth Davis, wrote to Vrba that ‘Kulka never mentioned to me that you are still living, or that you are in Canada.’ (Linn p.68)
x. It is asserted that I have nothing to say about Zionists who fought the Nazis. Not true. I am not a biological determinist. Zionists, given the right set of circumstances, will of course fight like others. But I’m not going to take the hasbarah of Israeli propagandists at their word. Noone doubts the bravery of Mordechai Anielwicz, commander of ZOB in the Warsaw Ghetto. But Anielwicz himself said that the Zionist activities of the Zionist youth groups in Poland was an utter waste of time and a distraction, things like running kibbutzim to replace Polish labour deported to the slave factories of France (which Skif, the Bundist paper vigorously condemned as collaboration incidentally). But what I do say is that when Zionists fought, they did not do so as Zionists, be it in the allied armies or as Partisans, but as individuals organised in groups, despite the politics of those groups. Hashomer Hatzair and left PZ in the Warsaw Ghetto had effectively abandoned Zionism and had one though and one alone - retribution against the Nazi beasts. Likewise incidentally the Revisionist fighters who, in Warsaw almost alone of anywhere, also fought (and more effectively given their heavier weaponry) than ZOB.
Jim Allen in his play that you supported did deny that that the Zionists fought Hitlers army. I am glad Greenstein recognizes some did – but here he tries to argue that they were fighting independent of any Zionist ideology. As to the main point or argument by Greenstein that the Zionists were not interested in fighting Hitler, even if we ignore the Warsaw ghetto uprising for a moment, we can see what the Zionist leaders wanted to do. In May 1942 at the Biltmore Conference, the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs approved a programme, much of which had been laid down previously by David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, where amongst other points they called for the formation of “Jewish military fighting force under their own flag and under the high command of the United Nations” against Hitler. Indeed that particular point in the Biltmore Programme was actually written by Ben-Gurion.
Oh yes, the Zionists wanted their army or Jewish Legion or Zion Mule Corps as per the first world war. But that was as part of an imperialist war that did not have the objective of rescuing Jews. That was why the concentration camps were not bombed, refugees not admitted to the UK or USA, why Hitler was welcomed to power by most western leaders etc. The Zionists did want an army, because they wished to develop Hagannah as quickly as possible into a proper army. But that had nothing to do with fighting Hitler and his extermination of the Jews. In any case it was sheer tokenism. It was the Soviet Army which tore the guts out of the Wehrmacht and thereby saved hundreds of thousands of Jews, not counting the million plus who managed to escape into Russia from Poland and the Ukraine.
Greenstein is either not aware or fails to acknowledge the socialist Zionists, some of whom were strongly influenced by Marxist movements. An example is Yitzhak Tabenkin, the leader of Hakibbutz Hamme’uhad, (the Labour Movement’s kibbutz organization) whose reservations about the willingness of the Allied powers to act led him to comment “the whole world is our enemy. Our only hope lies with the world’s revolutionary forces, in China, India. World Revolution – this is our ally….” He argued that the Yishuv [Jewish community in Palestine] had to follow a policy that was not only Zionist, but also Jewish “Jews must fight for the rescue of other Jews.” This socialist tradition was strong in the Zionist leadership at the time. Ben-Gurion said in March 1944 “We are one hundred percent Zionists and one hundred percent socialists.” Greenstein of course does not mention that by the end of 1942, 20,000 Jews in Palestine had joined the British Army and by the end of the war that number had increased to close to 30,000 representing approximately fifteen percent of all Jewish bread winners in Palestine. Consequently it can be seen that the whole Zionist ethos as espoused by Greenstein, that when the Zionists did fight, they did not fight as Zionists, has no basis in fact.
Oh yes, I am aware of Tabenkin. I believe he ended up politically in Tehiha, the far-right settlers party with Geula Cohen, wanting to ‘transfer’ the Palestinians. I don’t doubt that Ben Gurion said something once about socialism. But the problem with being 100% Zionist and socialist is that this is a contradiction. Ben Gurion sought to harness the capital of the Jewish bourgeoisie to financing his proto-state. He didn’t challenge capital or the alliance with the West, he sought it out. What was no part of Ben Gurion’s strategy was an alliance with the Arab workers. How could he when Histadrut campaigned on Jewish Labour, Land & Produce – i.e. a boycott of Arab Labour, Land & Produce. An apartheid state within a state? Class unity? Hardly, this was Zionism. What is more relevant is the admission of Prinz, in his interview with Brenner (51 documents) that Zionism never fought Hitler in Germany. Which is the same conclusion as Niewycks’s in his book on German Jews in Weimar Germany.
xi. Vrba doesn’t label anyone who negotiated with the Nazis as a collaborator. Show me the quote. He certainly doesn’t accuse Rabbi Weissmandel, who certainly does accuse the Zionists of collaboration e.g. Holocaust Victims Accuse or Min Hamitzair. What Vrba says, and on this I agree with him though Lenni Brenner doesn’t agree, is that his belief that deportations from Slovaki stopped in 1942 because of the payment of a £50,000 ransom negotiated with Wisliceny and the idea of the Europa Plan that for a $2m dollar ransom the Final Solution could be ended were utterly futile pipe dreams. The idea that the Nazis were susceptible to this bribery was absurd, not least because there was an economic and political incentive to murder the Jews of occupied Europe. But these subtleties the war mongers of HP will never understand.
The original bribe to Wisliceny was $50,000 not £50,000 – I tend to agree based on the work of scholars – including Yehuda Bauer, Dina Porat and Hannah Yablonka that the Europa Plan was unworkable and Weissmandel was incorrect in his belief that it would have worked. You are correct – Vrba does not specifically call either Weissmandel or Kasztner a collaborator and thank you pointing that out.
Although he is highly critical of Weismmandel, not least for giving a personal letter to Wisliceny stating that he, Wisliceny could be trusted, by Hungarian Jewish leaders. (Vrba 417). Vrba certainly believed that Kastner was a collaborator.
Vrba did not write Holocaust Victims Accuse it was written by Schonfeld. Regarding Min Hametzar as it was published posthumously, it is unclear what parts of the book were written by Weissmandel and what parts were written by his followers. Notably the allegations in the book -that of the text of a letter by Nathan Schwalb subsequently destroyed in the war- is hotly disputed by numerous scholars.
I’m aware Vrba didn’t write HVA. It was based on Min Hamitzair however, but it has to be treated with caution where it doesn’t document facts by explicit reference or photostat and omits all mention of the fact that Weismmandel was a member of the Jewish Council in Slovakia and Bratislava.
xii. Yes Bauer is on record that Kastner is a hero (& elswhere that he was a collaborator). Vrba has always been crystal clear, as he wrote in the Daily Herald of February 1961: ‘I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr Kastner. I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks notice that Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers. Kasztner went to Eichmann and told him, I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.? Eichmann not only agreed, but dressed Kasztner up in SS uniform and took him to Belsen to trace some of his friends.’
Both Bauer and Israel Gutmann, both of the Israeli propaganda institute, Yad Vashem, accept that the Auschwitz Protocols were not disseminated by those who received them, 2 weeks before the deportations in Hungary began, in order to save the negotiations for the Jewish and Zionist elite. That is where the sympathies of Mickey and his war monger friends on HH place lie, with the Jewish bourgeoisie and their Zionist friends. Ours is with the Jewish working class who were sacrificed in Hungary and elsewhere. And incidentally, Yad Vashem also refused to print Raul Hilberg’s monumental ‘Destruction of European Jewry’ because again it didn’t fit into the ideological purposes of Yad Vashem.
Here we should be clear as to what Vrba did, what he claimed and what he has guessed. Vrba did not go to Hungary – the claim that Kasztner dressed in a SS Uniform is denied. Vrba was not in a position to know first hand if it was true – he may have been relying on rumours put out by the anti-Kasztner types such as Tamir. The claims of what Kasztner said to Eichmann again seems to be guesswork by Vrba – He was not at the meetings with Eichmann. Bauer does not claim that the Aushwitz Protocols was not disseminated in order to save negotiations for the Jewish and Zionist elite. The Auschwitz Protocol was completed on April 27 1944. There is clear contradictory evidence as to when Kasztner received the Protocol. Vrba and Wetzler claimed Kasztner received it on April 26 1944, but we know it were not finished until April 27 1944. In Palestine Krasniansky claimed Kasztner received them on April 28 1944 – however Hanzi Brand (Joel’s wife) who was very close to Kasztner at the time claimed that Kasztner did not travel to Bratislava until August 1944 – According to Bauer the Protocol actually reached Hungary on the same day it reached Switzerland – June 10 1944 – What exactly happened between April 27 and June 10 is not clear. There does seem to be a question mark around this matter.
It cannot be proved beyond doubt that Kastner dressed up in SS uniform. He admitted at the trial that he went with Becher to Bergen-Belsen, so it stands to reason that he wore a uniform. Likewise he stayed in the dying embers of the Nazi regime as a guest of the SS and Becher in Berlin. I don’t know why you try and defend this person, who by any stretch of imagination was a collaborator. Of course Vrba cannot know what was actually said to Eichmann but he had a pretty good idea of their relationship, something Eichmann confirmed in his interview with a Dutch Nazi journalist printed in Life Magazine of 28.11.60 and 5.12.60. In this entirely unforced interview, sometime in 1955, Eichmann describes Kastner so: ‘As a matter of fact there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist ldaers… I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thouisand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal. He was not interested in old Jews or those who had become assimilated into Hungarian society. But he was incredibly persistent in trying to save biologically valuable Jewish blood…’ (Brenner, 51 Documents pp. 280/1).
Mikey is simply wrong when he claims that Vrba claims that the Protocols were given to Kastner on 26 April. Vrba states that ‘the final version was typed by Thursday, April 27, 1944.’ (Vrba, I Escaped p. 403). He too is unclear when Kastner received it but he was told by May 1st that Kastner had already been given a copy. Krasniansky of the Slovak Council is clear that Kastner had the Report before the end of the month, as is Bauer incidentally. (Linn 27).
Yad Vashem is not an “Israeli propaganda institute.” It is a Holocaust Memorial center. Re Yad Vashem and Raul Hilberg’s book, Greenstein is wrong. Yad Vashem did not want to publish the book but they were happy to print it. It was rejected for publication due to deficiencies notably because it “rested almost entirely on the authority of German sources and [did] not utilize primary sources in the languages of the occupied states, or in Yiddish and Hebrew.” However despite this Yad Vashem noted the book “possessed numerous merits” and as such they stated “we are prepared to act as mediator between the University of Columbia and the printer here in order to make the possible the book’s appearance under the auspices of the Columbia University.”
Yes well as Israel Shahak, noted, a Holocaust memorial centre that can welcome Nazi supporter and South African Premier, John Vorster, isn’t worth a candle politically. The ‘explanation’ for not publishing it is without merit as is the distinction without a difference between publishing and printing. In fact Yad Vashem withdrew a promise to co-publish with Columbia and the reason given is absurd. Anyone who wishes to understand the mechanics of the Holocaust has to base themselves on German documentation for obvious reasons. Hebrew was not a language spoken by most of the Jews in Europe incidentally! And if there’s any doubt about Hilberg Bauer admits himself, in his Rethinking the Holocaust, that Hilberg’s book was a ‘monumental, brilliant and, in my view, unsurpassed analysis of the Nazi bureaucracy.’ Wen can understand the decision not to publish because it focussed on the destruction, those who died, rather than the attempt by the Zionist Historians to seek out those who resisted and magnify and glorify those relatively few incidents in order to maintain the myth that there is some kind of continuity between resistance in the ghettos and what Israel does militarily today. Hence why Hilberg’s book is translated into virtually every language bar Hebrew! Remember that the question asked of the Holocaust survivors above all by Prosecutor Hausner at the Eichmann trial was ‘why did you not resist’. An unfair question put by a nationalist to those whose circumstances he could not even conceive of.
xiii. As for the centuries longing of Jews to ‘return’ to Palestine, strange they chose the imperial era to do it, under the protection of British bayonets. Even stranger that the first Zionist Congress had to be transferred in 1897 from Munich to Basle. Presumably this longing had temporarily waned?
Tony Greenstein is well aware from his Jewish upbringing that the prayers for the festival of Passover which predate the First Zionist Congress by numerous centuries plea for “Next Year in Jerusalem.” Greenstein is also aware that one of the most important prayers for Jews commences “Hear O Israel.” Greenstein is very aware of the centrality of Eretz Yisrael [the land of Israel] to Jewish life, but he chooses to ignore it.
I am indeed aware of all the above prayers. Strange that these prayers, which of course predate, as Mikey says, the 1st Zionist Congress, did not lead to mass emigration to Palestine. Even stranger that the Orthodox were so bitterly opposed to the Zionist political project, so much so that the 1st Zionist Congress that Mikey refers to had to be transferred to Basle because Rabbi Gudeman and others were so opposed to it. What became then of their prayers? The reality is that they had no political significance. Zion was the idea of the Messiah’s return and of course that couldn’t be rushed or hurried along.
xiv. Likewis the Zionist nonsense about the ‘internationally recognised right of Jews to their own homeland’ etc. The anti-Semites certainly recognised the ‘right’ of Jews to ‘return’ since they didn’t recognise rights of Jews where they were. But who cares? As Herzl said in his Diaries, the anti-Semites will be our friends and allies (pp.83/4 from memory). The fact is that those who saw the Jews as a separate nation apart from those who lived there were either anti-Semites or Zionists and in the case of HH I suspect both.
The United Nations is an internationally recognized body - whether or not Greenstein accepts is another matter entirely. Greenstein here is using an argument that he published around 1982 (maybe earlier) in a pamphlet entitled Zionism – anti-semitism’s twin in Jewish Garb. This has false logic – It is based on the claim that Zionists wanted Jews out Europe and so did antisemites so Zionists are antisemites or even Nazis. The logic is as false as the old claim – Socrates is mortal, all cats are mortal, hence Socrates is cat. It makes no sense whatsoever, but making sense is not a requirement for Greenstein – as someone else has referred to him rather aptly I think - “the Tommy Cooper of the anti-Zionist lobby.”
Well I’m not aware that Socrates got most of his ideas from his cat. But Zionism did more than share a taste for pets or whatever with anti-Semitism. We are not talking about coincidences but joint work, praise, quoting by people like Heinrich Class from the Zionists. Of Herzl seeking out Drumont to get a favourable review for Der Judenstaat in his anti-Semitic daily, La Libre Parole. About the witterings of Nordau, Herzl’s deputy about racial theories and eugenics. About Herzl’s promise to the Czar’s anti-Semitic ministers that Zionism was an anti-dote to Socialism (thus how ‘socialist’ Zionism came about – an attempt to bridge the gap between reality and rhetoric).
The fact is that unlike Socrates’ cat, both Zionists and anti-Semites had a common objective. Herzl saw, in his own metaphor, anti-Semitism as the equivalent of steam in an engine. His task was to channel it in the right direction.
xiv. Yes Lapid compared the actions of settlers to the Nazis harassment of Jews. Mickey, being an apologist for the settlers and settlements of course chooses to query whether it refers to all or some settlers. The fact is that the pogroms and harassment, the stone throwing and the encouragement these scum have from the army and police can be found in the actions of anti-Semitic regimes in Europe. This is something that Mickey, Kamm and all the other trash of Harry’s Place are more than happy to applaud.
I am not an apologist for the settler movement – By this I am clear by settlers I refer to those Jews in the West Bank. Greenstein is unclear – given he does not recognize the State of Israel – he thinks all Jews in Israel are settlers so I am not sure to what he is referring. In any event I am not in favour of harassment of the Palestinians.
I guess we should be grateful for small mercies. Mikey is wrong. I recognise the existence of the Israeli State, but like the Apartheid State I want to see it destroyed or deZionised, changed from a racial state seeking to privilege one section of the populace to a State that makes no distinction between those of different nationality or religion.
xv. In fact there is a direct ideological link between Nazi Germany and Israel. Whether it is the actions of the Judeo-Nazi settlers (Israel Shahak and Leibowitz’s words - not mine!) in the occupied territories, the Rabbis consulting the Black Book of who is and is not a Jew (including Nazi sources of who is a Jew) or the welcome given by Zionist groups to the Nuremburg Laws, whose very preamble paid tribute to this Zionist welcome is a matter of record.
To argue that there is an ideological link between Nazi Germany and Israel is not only hogwash but it also offensive and I do not care if it comes from Tony Greenstein or Israel Shahak. Rabbis use Talmudic methods to determine who is a Jew not Nazi methods. As Greenstein well knows – someone is Jewish by religious law if they have a Jewish mother.
The truth is often offensive. In Israel there are essentially group rights, not equal individual rights. That was the purpose of the 1935 Nuremburg Laws. Arab villages are not recognised, Arabs cannot access 93% of Israeli land. Where does this come from if not European anti-Semitism? Yes a Jew is by virtue of the mother but who determines whether the mother is Jewish and how? The information includes that derived from Nazi sources. I mention Shahak because of course he was a childhood survivor of the Belsen camp and the Warsaw Ghetto. If the comparison was offensive he nonetheless found it accurate.
As for Perdition, it is a play and as such should be allowed poetic licence. But I welcome the Zionists’ continued attempts to ban this play by the excellent socialist and Trostkyist playwright, the late Jim Allen (not a Stalinist you fools). The more you scum ban, the more people want to know!!!
I do not know of Zionist organization that tried to “ban” the play – there were many not happy with it being performed at the Royal Court Theatre in 1987 – but not ban it – In fact in the spirit of democracy and demonstration – they would have organized a picket against the play as they did in Edinburgh in 1987 and London in 1988 and 1999 – but not “ban” it. The late Jim Allen politically identified with Gerry Healy who went on to form the Workers Revolutionary party that ultimately decided to take money from Libya to spy on British Jews. See for example this website for more information.
Well the Union of Jewish Students has tried to ban anything anti-Zionist. I have reams of their leaflets trying to ban me from speaking on campuses! When news of Perdition spread the leaders of the Zionist groups in Britain, including the Zionist Federation, lobbied for it to be banned. I welcome these attempts because they always rebound. I always found that the Zionists would build the meetings I spoke at in their attempts to deny the basic right of free speech.
No Healey’s WRP took money from Iraq to spy on Iraqi dissidents. I haven’t heard of spying on British Jews. Surely that is Israel? And I wouldn’t trust Harry’s Place for anything to do with information. Allen broke from the WRP and was a brilliant socialist playwright. It is that rather than these absurd guilt by association techniques that matter. And I note that Mikey hasn’t attempted to defend the ludicrous Stalinist charge against Jim Allen. Quite right too!
Tony Greenstein
Posted by: Mikey at January 26, 2007 01:02 AM
| 26 January 2007, 5:31 am |
I could be bothered replying to son of Vernon Bognador, the boring constituionalist. Like father like son, obviously, except the son is even more reactionary!
I think Vrba comes close to accusing Weissmandel of collaboration, but in the end he settles on him being a fool, but a brave fool. The quote which I have read and reread, before Bognador thought was a first, doesn’t say what Bognador thinks it says and I suggest he contextualises it. Ironically Bognador takes the same position as Lenni Brenner on these matters. I tend to believe that despite his secular education, Weissmandel fell into the pattern of parlying and bribing that was a rabbinical tradition. I note that Mikey agrees with me on this!
The rest of the stuff is just typical McCarthyite rubbish interspersed with a few good Zionist quotes that prove nothing except that Zionists put the best interpretation possible on things, including Kastner’s exoneration of a major war criminal. In fact not just one, since he also tried to get Krumey and Wisliceny off too and of course SS General Juttner.
I haven’t of course mentioned Ha’avarah, the welcome for Nuremburg, the role of Zionists in the Jewish Councils (Judenrat - of which Trunk estimates that 80% were Zionists). It was of course in their attitude to the Judenrat that Yad Vashem decided their stance towards Hilberg etc. Zionism was a movement of collaboration and therefore saw in the Judenrat their own kind.
Now I’ve spent too much time on the warmongers list so you’ll have to debate among yourselves my children.
| 26 January 2007, 7:36 am |
Greenstein is guilty of putrid, and totally unfounded, accusations.
That the Judenrat usually ‘played for time’, with the Nazis, prefered to believe that the Nazis did not intend to slaughter all, believed that the storm would pass, or maybe that G-d would save them, is true. That Judenrat rarely if ever gave orders for a community to commit suicide by attacking the Nazis does not mean that they were collaborating with the enemy, does not mean that they were traitors as Greenasshole states.
Vile, it the only word to describe Greenblabla, a vile humanbeing, absolute scum.
| 26 January 2007, 8:50 am |
I don’t know who this Greenstein is, but he has no answer to anything that Bogdanor or Mikey have stated and proved, as it is clear in his last message where he runs for cover.
Truly a deranged individual.
Try not to apply to aliah, Greenstein, I don’t want to see you here.
| 26 January 2007, 10:02 am |
I don’t know who this Greenstein is
Fabian, to you Tony Greenstein might just be a stupid unlikeable nonentity, but at the last General Election he very nearly became an MP. Out of 43,437 votes cast in the Brighton Pavilion constituency he got 188 of them. So you can treat him with contempt if you like, and say that he’s a waste of space, but not everyone agrees. Only 99.6% of people agree.
| 26 January 2007, 11:00 am |
That’s the beauty of British democracy.
If you can raise a few signatures and a deposit, you too can totally humiliate yourself and bring laughter raining down on the causes you support.
| 26 January 2007, 11:14 am |
I voted Tory and thwarted Greenstein’s evil scheme!
| 26 January 2007, 11:45 am |
That is the beauty of Israel, “One Cow”. We have a country with -among other things- several newspapers. While you have nothing to show for yourself, and are forced to post links anonymously to the websites of my country’s newspapers.
| 26 January 2007, 12:08 pm |
Greenstein’s arguments on this page are so preposterous, so utterly illogical and breathtakingly absurd, that one starts to question whether his real inspiration is Trotsky or Orwell. Consider the most egregious example.
According to Greenstein, if Zionists fought the Nazis “they did not do so as Zionists.” But if “Zionists did want an army” to fight the Nazis, it was “part of an imperialist war that did not have the objective of rescuing Jews.” In his opinion, the Soviet army deserves great credit because it “tore the guts out of the Wehrmacht” and saved the Jewish people. No mention that the Soviet army’s alliance with the Wehrmacht enabled the Nazis to annihilate the Jewish people in the first place.
Of course Greenstein doesn’t explain how the Soviet Union’s alliance with Nazi Germany was part of an anti-imperialist war with the objective of rescuing Jews. According to Greenstein, Jews should be thankful for the “million plus who managed to escape into Russia from Poland and the Ukraine.” So what if the “escape” was a mass deportation carried out by the NKVD in collaboration with the Gestapo, in which “old people, cripples, mothers of children were sent with their children” to “die of hunger, cold and disease”?
Source: Yosef Litvak, “The Plight of Refugees From the German-Occupied Territories,” in Keith Sword, ed., The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces, 1939-41 (St. Martin’s Press, 1991), pp67-9.
Greenstein deplores the Zionist struggle for a Jewish army to fight Nazism while celebrating the mass deportation of Jews to the Gulag as a result of the Soviet alliance with Nazism. But that’s only logical for a Trotskyist who feels free to ignore the Zionist demand to bomb the Nazi death camps because it didn’t involve a class war against the Jewish bourgeoisie.
Let’s take another example. According to Greenstein, “It cannot be proved beyond doubt that Kastner dressed up in SS uniform,” but since he went with Becher to arrange the surrender of Belsen, saving a great many Jewish lives, “it stands to reason that he wore a uniform.” By Greenstein’s standards of evidence, since Red Cross workers visited concentration camps with Nazi permission, “it stands to reason” that they too wore SS uniforms. Or since Greenstein’s anti-Zionist agitprop regularly appears in the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, “it stands to reason” that he likes to dress up as a Cheka torturer or a Gulag camp guard.
I could go on. According to Greenstein, Vrba doesn’t call Weissmandel a collaborator. If he described Weissmandel’s escape as “evidence of the collaboration,” that only “comes close to accusing Weissmandel of collaboration.” According to Greenstein, Dobkin is not a reliable source on Kastner because he was a Zionist. But Eichmann is a totally reliable source on Kastner because he was a Nazi. According to Greenstein, Kastner the Zionist is contemptible because he testified for Becher in order to hang Kaltenbrunner. But Kempner the American is admirable when it was his decision to release Becher who testified against Kaltenbrunner.
And on. According to Greenstein, my post, which contained no Zionist quotes, didn’t deserve an answer because it contained Zionist quotes. But his arguments are conclusive because he cites Hecht with his far-right Zionist quotes. According to Greenstein, Gutman the Warsaw Ghetto survivor is part of a propaganda outfit that declined to publish Hilberg. But Arendt the philosopher is a great historian although she tried to prevent publication of Hilberg. According to Greenstein, Yad Vashem should be ignored because of a visit from Vorster who liked the Nazis. But Arendt should be read despite her relationship with Heidegger who was in fact a Nazi.
According to Greenstein, Hausner’s “why did you not resist” was an “unfair question put by a nationalist to those whose circumstances he could not even conceive of.” But Vrba’s “why did you not warn them so that they would resist” is a perfectly fair question when put by a non-nationalist to people in exactly the same circumstances. And don’t forget that “Zionism was a movement of collaboration and therefore saw in the Judenrat their own kind.” After all, it was “unfair” for Zionists to advocate resistance, but it was “collaboration” if Zionists attempted compliance.
According to Greenstein, the “parlying [sic] and bribing that was a rabbinical tradition” was nothing to admire. Of course, he wants to destroy its antithesis, the “Judeo-Nazi settlers” of Israel. And according to Greenstein, it is Zionist Jews, not those who blame them for the Holocaust, who are guilty of antisemitism.
As for Greenstein’s gratuitous attack on a member of my family, what is there to say? What else can you expect from someone who worships the murderer of the Tsar’s children?
| 26 January 2007, 12:34 pm |
So much leftist treason. So few gallows….
| 26 January 2007, 1:29 pm |
“The point about Perdition is this. Let’s say that somebody wrote a play about the O.J.Simpson trial, in which O.J.Simpson is encouraged to murder his ex-wife by prominent civil rights leaders, who then cover up for him and secure his acquittal. Imagine that the person who wrote the play was involved in far right politics, and based his play on a book about the O.J.Simpson trial, written by somebody else on the far right.
Then imagine that a member of a far right political group decided to stage the O.J.Simpson play on - say - Martin Luther King Day, and demanded that the event was listed on the Martin Luther King Day programme of events.
Imagine also that, when it was suggested that this was improper, it responded that it was staging the play because it felt that it was important for black people to face up to the responsibility of the black civil rights movement for crime, and that it also felt that this event was a very important part of celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King. Do you see?”
Posted by: David T at January 25, 2007 11:39 AM
As I rule I keep clear of getting involved in discussing diversionary analogies such as this. They only serve to try and steer discussion away from the matter at hand (aren’t the waters muddied enough without trying to draw tangential comparisons with other, entirely separate points of potential discussion!?).
To remind you this discussion is supposed to be about the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Perdition, Tony Greenstein etc. Not the black civil rights movement.
As for the opening comments on this blog that:
“Tony Greenstein is a notorious radical left-wing anti-Zionist demagogue who is happy to play fast and loose with the facts, if it promotes his ideological cause.”
From what I’ve seen of his writing, I would concur that Tony Greenstein does undeniably seem a “radical left-wing anti-Zionist” (and personally I only see compliment rather than criticism in that) but as for being a “demagogue who is happy to play fast and loose with the facts” I don’t see that at all. It is a rather subjective jibe and a bit below the belt. An IDEALOGUE, rather than a demagogue, TG’s writing shine out in my opinion as some of the most informed, well-researched and objective points of view out there.
| 26 January 2007, 2:30 pm |
“TG’s writing shine out in my opinion as some of the most informed, well-researched and objective points of view out there”
Thewn you should lay off the crack for a few weeks. Srsly.
| 26 January 2007, 5:34 pm |
It is quite clear that Greenstein has not bothered to deal with the substance of my arguments – so what he has done in his latest post is invent new charges – many of which wholly irrelevant to the wider matter of Perdition etc such as Linn on Vrba. Nevertheless, Greenstein has bothered irresponsibly to make his claims hear on Harry’s Place where they can be refuted.
Rather than copying all of his previous message and added quotes, I have just copied his additions which can be seen in italics below and added some facts in normal font below them.
Firstly I have already acknowledged that Polkenh’s article, an excellent one I might add, is from the Journal of Palestinian Studies and I was confusing it with Jacob Boas’s ‘A Nazi Travels to Palestine’ in History Today of January 1980. That’s what happens when you reply off the cuff. But I am pleased to see that there is no continuation of the cold war McCarthyism of – ‘oh it’s all the fault of the Soviets’. Less guilt by association and more dealing with the argument. The personnel involved in Mildestein’s trip is unimportant. Tuchler from the German Zionist Federation organised or commissioned the trip, but the invitation to stay and tour in Palestine was from the Labour Zionists, which is why Mildenstein stayed primarily on kibbutzim and kvutzah such as Givat Brenner. The idea that all the Jews had to do was to colonise Palestine for the Zionist movement, all 6-8 million of them is absurd. Leave aside the question why Palestine, the fact is that the indigenous population didn’t want to be colonised, not surprisingly. It would not have been possible, still less desirable. What was possible was mass emigration to the West, as after the Russian pogroms, but the Zionists in the USA were implacably opposed to such immigration. The Zionist answer was no answer at all. The tragedy was that Zionism acted as an obstacle
Regarding Mildenstein’s trip and the Zionists aim Greenstein is very confused. Firstly he does not want Jews to emigrate to Palestine, because he claims the indigenous population did not want them. He assumes that a) places in the West were open and b) that the Zionists were opposed to such emigration. He is wrong on both counts. Firstly . The official view of the Jewish Agency in so far as Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany was defined, in the 19th January 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.” Ben-Gurion himself In April 1936, Gurion told the high commissioner, General Sir Arthur Wauchope:
“Our weightiest concern is the ‘no-exit’ situation of our people … the Jewish situation that was never good has now become desperate…. Had there been the possibility of bringing Poland’s Jews to the United States or Argentina, we would have done so regardless of our Zionist beliefs. But the world was closed to us.”
Source Shabtai Teveth Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust (Harcourt Brace & Co, New York, 1996)
Regarding his comments that it was possible for “mass immigration to the West,” this is a sheer fantasy of Greenstein. The following facts can be mentioned: At the 1938 Evian conference international delegates discussed the future of Jewish refugees. The Australian delegate, as an example, told the conference, “that as we have no racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one.” Whilst the conference agreed to set up an intergovernmental agency to see what could be done, the restrictions against immigration of Jews grew. Britain, Palestine, and the United States tightened their rules of admission. Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Mexico severely restricted the number of Jews that could enter; in the case of Mexico to one hundred a year. In this context on August 13th 1938, fifty-three Austrian Jews who had reached Finland by sea were refused permission to disembark and the boat was ordered to return to Germany. Three of the rejected refugees were so desperate that they threw themselves overboard and were drowned.
Source Martin Gilbert The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (Collins, London 1986) pp. 64-5
Yes, it’s 1953-8. Is this an issue?
Here Greenstein continues to get dates wrong despite the fact that he claimed he knew them. He first commented that the dates of the Kasztner trial was 1953-1956 and I pointed out that he was wrong, it was 1954-1958 yet he still cannot get even the simplest thing as a date correct.
There is no confusion at all my dear Mikey, except in your own mind. Selectivity was an unchanged policy, up to and including the war. Of course I haven’t quoted the whole of Chaim Cohen’s speeches to the lower and higher courts. Naturally I haven’t included his opinions as to the essential goodness of Kastner (which I actually think irrelevant). But let me cite just a few passages: ‘Kastner did nothing more and nothing less than was done by us in rescuing the Jews and bringing them to Palestine…. You are allowed – in fact it is your duty – to risk losing the many in order to save the few.’ ‘If in Kastner’s opinion, rightly or wrongly, he believed that one million Jews were hopelessly doomed, he was allowed not to inform them of their fate; and to concentrate on the saving of the few. He was entitled to make a deal with the Nazis for the saving of a few hundred and entitled not to warn the millioins. In fact if that’s how he saw it, righly or wrongly, that was his duty…. It has always been our Zionist tradition to selected the few out of many in arranging the immigration to Palestine.’ (Hecht pp. 194-5) In fact this had been one of the key differences between Labour Zionism and Revisionism, the latter of which did believe that Palestine could accommodate the millions in Europe. So oh yes, Golda Meir in a fine, rhetorical speech in Palestine, whilst doing nothing concrete re the saving of Europe’s Jews (she had been particularly insistent at Evian that Palestine must not be lost sight of when talk of rescuing Jews was on the agenda to the point that the Zionists actively. All serious commentators like Christopher Sykes agree that the Zionists were pleased at the failure of Evian and S Beit Zvi (a Zionist and Israeli historian) argues in great detail that they took active steps to prevent the offer of 100,000 places in Santo Domingo coming to fruition.
As stated in my previous post the policy selective immigration to Palestine was done away with by the time of the war. Greenstein ignores all of this. To comment further on this matter we can see what the exact situation is by looking at the ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court in the case of Hirsh Bernblat v. The Attorney General. In this case, the Supreme Court declared that it was justified to sacrifice the few in order to save the many. The Supreme Court argued that it would have been justified to choose to save the few from immediate death at the price of subjecting the many to possible death in the future.
Source: Asher Maoz “Historical Adjudication: Courts of Law, Commissions of Enquiry and ‘Historical Truth’” Law and History Review Vol 18 No. 3 Fall 2000 pp. 559-607
Judge Ha’levi even summarised ancient law on the matter in the actual Kasztner trial:- “It is … forbidden to save one man or even many by turning another innocent man over to a murderer….Even to save the majority of the community, it is forbidden to hand over an innocent minority…to murderers.”
Quoted by Tom Segev The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (Owl Books, Henrey Holt and Co. New York, 2000) p283
In the appeal of the Kasztner case Judge Agranat argued that a leader owes a duty to the community as a whole. He specifically stated “if a leader is to choose between two opposing ways of action, one likely to save the majority, but not all, of the community, the other geared to save each and every one but likely to only save a few – then his public office requires – and this is also his moral duty -…. that he follow the first way”
Quoted by Pnina Lahav Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century (University of California Press, 1997) p.140
Disagree. It is quite clear from their speeches that the Supreme (or High) Court of Israel voted 3-2 in overturning the decision of the lower court. And as Judge Shlomo Chesin, for the majority, wrote: ‘As I said, I am not arguing with the basic factual findings of the learned President of the Jewish Disstrict Court.’ He goes on to say that the findings do not, of necessity, therefore mean Kastner was guilty of collaboration. Moshe Silberg for the minority was quite explicit. Kastner was ‘a collaborator with the angel of death.’. The 5 judges were unanimous in holding that Kastner ‘in a perjurious and criminal way’ saved Becher, a major German war criminal.
Here Greenstein is referring to the Appeal of the Kastzner trial and what the majority decision was.Greenstein is very wrong indeed and does not accept straight facts even when pointed out to him. Let it be known that serious commentators on the Kasztner trial are very aware that the decision was overturned by a 4:1 majority on the point of collaboration and 5:0 on preparing the ground for murder. Without even bothering to locate what Greenstein might dismiss as a “Zionist source” he need only look at the anti-Zionist Akiva Orr’s book Israel: Politics Myths and Identity Crisis (Pluto Press 1994) p.108
In fact to this day the Jewish Agency has not withdrawn its name from Becher’s affidavits testimony and lobbying on behalf of the cream of the Jewish Department of the SS and Waffen SS. You ask how many others saved as many as Kastner. It’s rather a strange question. You could equally ask how many people died because of Kastner who might otherwise have survived?
It is not the job of the Jewish Agency to alter historical documents!!! Regarding Kasztner the opinion of the majority in the Supreme Court was as follows:
“1 During that period Kasztner was motivated by the sole motive of saving Hungary’s Jews as a whole, that is, the largest possible number under the circumstances of time and place as he estimated could be saved; 2 This motive fitted the moral duty of rescue to which he was subordinated as a leader of the relief and rescue committee in Budapest; 3 Influenced by this motive he adopted the method of financial or economic negotiation with the Nazis; 4 Kasztner’s behaviour stands the test of plausibility and reasonableness; 5 His behaviour during his visit to Cluj (On May 3rd) and afterwards, both its active aspect (the plan of the ‘prominents’) and its passive aspect (withholding the ‘Auschwitz news’ and lack of encouragement for acts of resistance and escape on a large scale) – is in line with his loyalty to the method which he considered, at all important times, to be the only chance of rescue; 6 Therefore one cannot find a moral fault in his behaviour, one cannot discover a casual connection between it and the easing of the concentration and deportation, one cannot see it as becoming a collaboration with the Nazis.”
Source Akiva Orr ibid. pp.109-10
Let me quote Supreme Court Justice Moshe Silberg again, albeit not someone known as an anti-Zionist (nor Ben Hecht who cites him in Perfidy p.274). ‘The charge emanating from the testimony of the witnesses against Kastner is that had they known of the Auschwitz secret, then thousands or tens of thousands would have been able to save their lives by local, partial, specific or indirect rescue operations…. How can he examine the tens of thousands of possibilities? Does he decide instead of God? The point is that Kastner acted, not as an individual but as a Jewish Agency representative throughout. And if SS General Walter Schellenburg, Chief of Himmler’s Intelligence is correct, he also acted as an SS agent as well.
Here Greenstein is providing the minority opinion of 1 out of 5 judges at the Supreme Court. The accusation as implied is that the Jews did not know about Auschwitz. I enclose some facts to counteract that charge:
5,000 Hungarian Jews, who had been deported in the labour battalions to the Ukraine, returned to Hungary in the summer of 1943 and presumably told their stories back to their families and their communities. A number of Polish Jews who escaped to Hungary also are likely to have told Jews in their new communities about the horrors they had witnessed. There were also thousands of Slovakian Jews in Hungary who are likely to have told their Jewish Hungarian friends news from their own families. In June, July and December 1942, the Hungarian language service of BBC radio, which was widely listened to in Hungary, broadcast information about the mass murder of Jews. As the anti-Nazi German author Thomas Mann put it, “No Hungarian Jews, not even in the remote village, could be unaware of the menace.”
Source Yehuda Bauer Jews for Sale? Nazi-Jewish Negotiations 1933-1945 (Yale University Press, 1994) pp. 150-1
The view of Professor J. L. Talmon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was that by the time those associated the Jewish Councils “grasped the real aim of the Nazis was they were no more than helpless and benumbed hostages.”
Quoted by Randolph Brahman The Politics of Genocide-The Holocaust in Hungary Vol 2. Revised edition (Columbia University Press, 1994) p.836
When Joel Brand was in Aleppo, his meeting with Shertok for about 2 days from 11th June 1944 was recorded. Brand specifically stated “Hungarian Jews are now aware of the meaning of ‘expulsion’. It is clear to them that it means annihilation.”
Source: Dina Porat “Historical Document: The Protocol of the Meeting between Represntatives of the Yishuv and Joel Brand in Aleppo, Syria, June 1944” Yalkut Moreshet 3 Winter 2005 pp. 147-160
Yes but Eichmann wasn’t at Nuremburg so it would have been very easy to testify against him! The point is that he testified in favour of those who were there. Not that Kastner’s own Report should be accepted uncritically or at all. But as Mikey says, he was there on behalf of the Vadah, the Jewish Agency Relief and Rescue Committee, the Hungarian Judenverrat and much else besides. Vrba himself writes, in his book ‘I Escaped From Auschwitz’ that ‘It is of interest to know that Eichmann’s cronies from Budapest, SS officers Krumey and Hunsche, were protected from prosecution after the war because Dr. Kasztner, in the name of the World Zionist Congress, issued them protective affidavits. Citing K Muller-Tupath’s Richsfuhrers etc. 1982. In 1969-70 Vrba testified at their trial in Frankfurt and is therefore in a better position to know the truth than Mikey. Or as Robert Kempner, a senior US official at Nuremburg described it: Kasztner was running around at Nuremburg looking for Nazis he could save.’ (Linn 51).
I certainly did not say that Kastzner was a member of the Hungarian Judenrat as he was not. This confusion between the Judenrat and the Relief and Rescue Committee (Vaada) is made not just by Greenstein but also by Jim Allen in his play Perdition. It is simply false. I have dealt with Kasztner’s testimonies in previous post, Greenstein simply ignores the facts. I have never implied that Kasztner’s own report should be accepted uncritically. It does contain some inconsistencies. For full details on the testimonies see the following reference where I took my information from
Shoshana Barri (Ishoni) “The Question of Kasztner’s Testimonies on Behalf of Nazi War Criminals” The Journal of Israeli History Vol 18. No 2 and 3 1997 pp. 139-165
Yes you are correct. Grammatically! I should have made it explicit by putting ‘also’ in i.e ‘are ALSO made by the 2/3rd…’ Oh I think that Vrba comes to much the same conclusons, to wit: ‘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 instance Dr. R. Kasztner – bartrered their own lives and the lives of 1684 other “prominent” Jews directly from Eichmann.’ (Linn p.12, citing a debate with Prof. Talmon in The Observer 22.9.63). conclusions as Jim Allen. Of course there will be differences. And it is childish to say that I consider Vrba an anti-Semite. I say, and it is quite clear, that by the guilt by association technique of Mikey (everything is a Soviet plot) and his Zionist friends, then Vrba is an anti-Semite. A difference that is quite easy to understand.
Here Greenstein makes a classic error in relation to the Kasztner rescue train by stating that Kasztner “bartered.” This suggests that a deal was done. This whole matter was dealt with eloquently by the Supreme Court. Kasztner was in no position to “barter” anything. As was made clear in the Supreme Court, Justice Agranat cited the words of Eichmann to Kasztner during one of their meetings: “You seem extremely tense, Kasztner. I am sending you to Teresienstadt for recovery; or would you prefer Auschwitz?” (Quoted by Pnina Lahav op. cit. P. 135) Consequently Kasztner could hardly be in position to barter anything.
For a more detailed explanation of this see Leora Bilsky Transformative Justice: Israeli Identity on Trial (University of Michigan Press, 2004) pp 41-66
Regarding Vrba being an antisemite, I have never said it and nor would I. In fact, as stated above, you are the first person I have ever seen comment that anyone might think Vrba is an antisemite.
Mikey tells us that Arendt’s book was ‘correctly attacked’, but doesn’t say why. Like any book it has its deficiencies, not least a lack of footnoting, but its general conclusions, viz. that the existence of the Judenrat could not but be of help to the Nazi exterminators cannot be faulted, nor her observations on why there was a differential rate of survival in the different countries, i.e. that not all countries were anti-Semitic to the same extent and opposition to anti-Semitism in countries like Bulgaria and France were far more important than the pie in the sky schemes of the Zionists. Arendet courted the wrath of the Zionist establishment and the Mikeys of the day because she stumbled on some of the issues that the Eichmann trial had been intent on avoiding, such as Hungary and Kastner. That was why neither Vrba nor Marek Edelman (the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance) were called. They were not Zionists and did not sing to the tune of the establishment in Israel and its intention to mould the story of the Holocaust to their political purposes, not least by whitewashing their own role. But unlike the servile account of Mikey, who is in a long tradition of bowing and scraping at the feet of the Jewish establishment, Ruth Linn’s questions are more profound. She writes of Vrba ‘Could a narrative of an individualistic escape, by a non-Zionist Jew, critical of his Jewish leaders, ever be made to harmonize with the “collective aura” that dominated the state of Israel.” The same of course is true of the 4th and 5th escapees, Rosin and Mordowicz. Given that the first escapee was barely such, though he did bring out the first news of Auschwitz (he was passported out by a renegade SS officer who was murdered on his return), one has to make the point that the escapees were typical of the non/anti-Zionist East European Jews. Zionism likes to claim these Jews but only in so far as they keep their distance. In reality, the life of ghetto Jewry in Eastern Europe is as distant as it is impossible to imagine from Israel, the US’s murderous client state.
Regarding Arendt and Greensteins view that her general conclusions in Eichmann in Jerusalem “cannot be faulted.” This is laughable. The main argument of Arendt was that Eichmann was just an ordinary man caught up in the totalitarian regime – hence the subtitle of her book “A report on the Banality of Evil” makes clear. The author and director of the Yad Vashem archives, Yaacov Lozowick, comments:
“When I embarked upon my own research of Eichmann and his colleagues, I had no doubts about the validity of Arendt’s position…. As I delved ever deeper into the documents, however, my unease grew, until at last I reluctantly had no choice but admit that Hannah Arendt was wrong. There was very little that was banal about Eichmann or any of his accomplices, and the little that could be found was not relevant to what they had done. Arendt’s point of departure was wrong. Although she was primarily a philosopher, she had written a historical analysis - and without checking her facts. Moreover, she had refrained from taking into account much potentially relevant information. Above all, her position was the result of ideological considerations, not careful scholarship. This was even more true of most of her followers.”
Source: Yaacov Lozowick “Malicious Clerks” contained in ed. Steven E. Aschheim Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem (University of California Press, 2001) pp. 214-23
Arendt did not believe that Eichmann was a fanatical antisemite. This is absurd. At the trial, one of the judges asked Eichmann if it was true that “at the time it was considered a glorious act to destroy the Jews? The Jews were looked upon as a germ that had to be destroyed, just like any other disease? And pitilessness was considered a virtue?” The response from Eichmann was, “Yes, that is correct, that I must admit.”
Source: The Trial of Adolf Eichmann. Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem, (Jerusalem, 1992-1995) Vol 4. P. 1,816 as quoted by David Cesarani Eichmann: His Life and Crimes (Vintage, 2005) P. 157
The person that Arendt did not think was a fanatical anti-Semite, as late as 1957 in an interview said he was only sorry that he had succeeded in exterminating all eleven million European Jews.
Source: Jacob Robinson And the crooked shall be made straight: The Eichmann trial, the Jewish catastrophe and Hannah Arrendt’s narrative (Macmillan, 1965) p.52
Arendt’s view on the Jewish Councils was deeply flawed. As Steven Katz comments in his introduction to a later edition of Trunk’s book – Judenrat
“What Trunk’s detailed researches show is, first, the inescapability, of Jewish ‘cooperation’ with the Nazi overlord. Subjugated, separated from the general population, and ghettoized in quick order following the defeat of Poland - without help from either local Poles or the distant Allied nations - there was, ultimately, no alternative to such interaction – all Arendt-like fantasies of an anarchic Jewish response to the contrary. Second, all solutions that the Jewish Councils might have pursued or did pursue in their attempt to save Jewish lives, given the Nazi created situation in which they found themselves and from which there was no general escape, involved profound moral (and practical) uncertainties and ambiguities.”
Source Steven T. Katz “Introduction to the Bison Books Edition” of Isaiah Trunk Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation ( Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, 1996) p. xii
In fact Arendt was wrong on many things. As Gertrude Ezorsky summed up “She [Arendt] was wrong about Eichmann, she was wrong about international law, she was wrong about Jewish leaders, she was wrong about Jewish resistance, she was wrong about Jewish “cooperation” with the Nazis…. She was wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Source: Gertrude Ezorsky “Hannah Arendt Answered” Dissent March-April 1966 pp. 172-182
To make a further point about Greenstein’s inconsistencies, whilst praising Arendt he is complaining that Marek Edelman was not called to the witness stand – yet Arendt specifically argued against the ghetto fighters being called. She thought the temptation should be resisted. Inconsistencies is nothing new with Greenstein.
Oh yes, I certainly failed to answer Mikey’s comment about Bauer calling Vrba a ‘hero’. I assumed I didn’t need to. It was so obviously a sham, like me calling Mikey a discerning and astute critic! In his Rethinking the Holocaust Bauer calls him a ‘bitter Auschwitz survivor’ ‘not credible’ ‘embittered and furious’ his ‘despair and bitterness are overdone’. And referring to Vrba’s Haifa honorary doctorate (nothing to do with Bauer incidentally) , in ‘Leadership under Duress: The Working Group in Slovakia, 1942-44, Bauer and other of the Zionist Establishment Historians (Fatran, Rothkirken etc.) write of the criticism of the Slovakian Judenrat that ‘Regretfully, it was given legitimacy [lit. “was made kosher”] when Haifa University awarded a honorary doctorate to the head of these mockers Peter ]sic] Vrba…. Just because he was an Auschwitz prisoner endowed with personal heroism, he has crowned himself as knowledgeable to judge all those….’ [Linn 109/110] Yes I realise I shouldn’t have left out the reference to heroism, but in the circumstances…. As Linn asks, what if Hungarian Jews had read the Vrba-Wetzler report and believed it? What if Israeli high-school students had been given a chance to read Vrba’s memoirs and drawn their own conclusions? Quite. But Bauer too had his regrets. ‘I truly regret that Yad Vashem did not publish the book [Vrba’s memoirs] in Hebrew. On the other hand Vrba’s wild attacks on Kastner and on the Slovak underground are all a-historical…’ So there we have it. Bauer regrets, basically having been found out. Vrba’s main point in his debate with Bauer etc. is that he and those who experienced what happened are the better historians, not those who write about it later from a particular partisan and political perspective in Israel. In fact we can judge Bauer from what he wrote in his ‘The Holocaust: Some Historical asepcts’ his best known Hebrew book. The only reference to Vrba is a sentence ‘Detailed reports about the death camp in Auschwitz and the gas chambers there were received in Slovakia from 2 Slovak Jews who escaped from Auschwitz on April 7.’ True to form even the names of the escapees were not mentioned in any, bar one, Israeli account until a hue and cry was raised by Linn among others. In 1998 Vrba’s memoirs were published in Hebrew and finally included in Gutman’s Hebrew writings on the Holocaust for high school studnets. ‘Kasztner was given a copy of the report on 29 April 1944… but tat 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.’ Quite. (Linn p.72)
I really fail to see what Linn’s attack on Bauer has to do with Perdition however as Greenstein discusses it – I have already mentioned that Bauer refers to Vrba as a hero and as a matter of fact Bauer does discuss Vrba quite frequently. For example in 2005 as mentioned previously in Yalkut Moroshet in 2005 Bauer had a whole paper devoted to the Auschwitz Protocol and in his 1994 book Jews for Sale?. - see pages 70, 72, 156-157 for further discussions. Regarding Vrba’s honorary doctorate that you state had nothing to do with Bauer – Again you are wrong – Bauer was told that his letter of recommendation influenced the decision to award the honorary doctorate. (see Bauer “The ‘Protocol of Auschwitz’” Yalkut Moroshet 3 Winter 2005
As I have stated there is a substantial amount of contradictory evidence as the date that Kasztner received the Auschwitz Protocol. You fail to accept it .
I think I have covered this nonsense. Bauer praises when he has no options left. But when he could have praised Vrba and mentioned and published him he chose to do nothing other than refer to him obliquely. Bauer’s and Gutman’s 1994 publications in English do mention the escape, it is not given the same treatment in the Hebrew editions. As Linn observes, Erich Kuka ‘after he joined the Israeli establishment’ also joined in this ‘long-term tradition of discrediting’ Vrba, to the extent of changing his name to Rosenberg-Vrba! His student, Ruth Davis, wrote to Vrba that ‘Kulka never mentioned to me that you are still living, or that you are in Canada.’ (Linn p.68)
More of the same from Greenstein – He continues arguing that Bauer and/or Zionist historians do not recognize Vrba – Greenstein should be aware that for example on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2004, a study day was held under the joint auspices of Tel Aviv university, Moroshet, the Diaspora Museum, the Museum of Heritage of Hungarian Jewry and the Society of Research of the Zionist Youth Movements in Hungary. This day devoted to commemorating 60 years since the destruction of Hungarian Jewry. There were numerous speakers including Yehuda Bauer, Dina Porat, Shlomo Aronson and Yitzhak Kashti amongst them. Vrba and the Auschwitz Protocol was discussed in detail.
Oh yes, I am aware of Tabenkin. I believe he ended up politically in Tehiha, the far-right settlers party with Geula Cohen, wanting to ‘transfer’ the Palestinians. I don’t doubt that Ben Gurion said something once about socialism. But the problem with being 100% Zionist and socialist is that this is a contradiction. Ben Gurion sought to harness the capital of the Jewish bourgeoisie to financing his proto-state. He didn’t challenge capital or the alliance with the West, he sought it out. What was no part of Ben Gurion’s strategy was an alliance with the Arab workers. How could he when Histadrut campaigned on Jewish Labour, Land & Produce – i.e. a boycott of Arab Labour, Land & Produce. An apartheid state within a state? Class unity? Hardly, this was Zionism. What is more relevant is the admission of Prinz, in his interview with Brenner (51 documents) that Zionism never fought Hitler in Germany. Which is the same conclusion as Niewycks’s in his book on German Jews in Weimar Germany.
Ben-Gurion said something much more than “once” about Socialism. Being 100% Socialist and Zionist is not a contradiction. Consider organizations such as Mapai, Poalei Zion etc etc – they all fit into that category. If you also note the setting up of the State of Israel ands the Kibbutz movement – The whole concept of the Kibbutz and community was a very socialist idea. Greenstein chooses to ignore the fact that Moses Hess an early Socialist Zionist thinker wrote the first draft of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto!!
Regarding the German Zionists not fighting Hitler. Firstly they were a minority of Jews there and secondly but more importantly the Nazi permanently harassed Jews - They were hardly in a position to obtain arms and overthrow the might of Hitler’s army. In fact on that point where was the left???
As Conan Fischer points out by September 1930, the communist KPD dropped its campaign of Anti-Fascist Action and replaced it with United Action. Fischer states “Before long, United Action posters appeared, showing Communist, Nazi and Socialist workers standing shoulder to shoulder against the bourgeoisie.” To borrow the same apt Latin phrase that Paul Bogdanor quotes from Vrba above Res ipsa loquitur [The thing speaks for itself]
Source: Conan Fischer “Class Enemies or Class Brothers? Communist-Nazi Relations in Germany 1929-33” European History Quarterly Vol 15 1985 pp. 259-79
I’m aware Vrba didn’t write HVA. It was based on Min Hamitzair however, but it has to be treated with caution where it doesn’t document facts by explicit reference or photostat and omits all mention of the fact that Weismmandel was a member of the Jewish Council in Slovakia and Bratislava.
I am relived that you realize that Shonfeld’s Holocaust Victims Accuse is not a reliable book.
It cannot be proved beyond doubt that Kastner dressed up in SS uniform. He admitted at the trial that he went with Becher to Bergen-Belsen, so it stands to reason that he wore a uniform. Likewise he stayed in the dying embers of the Nazi regime as a guest of the SS and Becher in Berlin. I don’t know why you try and defend this person, who by any stretch of imagination was a collaborator. Of course Vrba cannot know what was actually said to Eichmann but he had a pretty good idea of their relationship, something Eichmann confirmed in his interview with a Dutch Nazi journalist printed in Life Magazine of 28.11.60 and 5.12.60. In this entirely unforced interview, sometime in 1955, Eichmann describes Kastner so: ‘As a matter of fact there was a very strong similarity between our attitudes in the SS and the viewpoint of these immensely idealistic Zionist ldaers… I believe that Kastner would have sacrificed a thouisand or a hundred thousand of his blood to achieve his political goal. He was not interested in old Jews or those who had become assimilated into Hungarian society. But he was incredibly persistent in trying to save biologically valuable Jewish blood…’ (Brenner, 51 Documents pp. 280/1). Mikey is simply wrong when he claims that Vrba claims that the Protocols were given to Kastner on 26 April. Vrba states that ‘the final version was typed by Thursday, April 27, 1944.’ (Vrba, I Escaped p. 403). He too is unclear when Kastner received it but he was told by May 1st that Kastner had already been given a copy. Krasniansky of the Slovak Council is clear that Kastner had the Report before the end of the month, as is Bauer incidentally. (Linn 27).
More absurdity from Greenstein on Kasztner dressing in a SS uniform. Paul Bogdanor above put it perfectly “By Greenstein’s standards of evidence, since Red Cross workers visited concentration camps with Nazi permission, ‘it stands to reason’ that they too wore SS uniforms. Or since Greenstein’s anti-Zionist agitprop regularly appears in the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, ‘it stands to reason’ that he likes to dress up as a Cheka torturer or a Gulag camp guard.”
On the use of the Eichmann quote. This shows exactly how morally bankrupt Greenstein and others such as Brenner and Allen who use the same tactic really are. What next from these people – will they quote Myra Hindley on children’s behaviour? What about quoting the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe on why woman liked to be raped? The depths Greenstein is prepared to seek to knows no bounds.
As I have now repeatedly said there is contradictory evidence as to the date Kasztner received the Auschwitz Protocols. Krasnianski who wrote the protocol did claim in a testimony that Kasztner received the Protocol on April 26 – In another testimony he said Kasztner saw it on April 28 – Hansi Brand however claims that Kasztner was not in Bratislava in April and as such there is confusion. Greenstein being irresponsible makes bold statements as facts without checking contradictions between different accounts.
Source: Yehuda Bauer “The ‘Protocol of Auschwitz’” op. cit.
Yes well as Israel Shahak, noted, a Holocaust memorial centre that can welcome Nazi supporter and South African Premier, John Vorster, isn’t worth a candle politically. The ‘explanation’ for not publishing it is without merit as is the distinction without a difference between publishing and printing. In fact Yad Vashem withdrew a promise to co-publish with Columbia and the reason given is absurd. Anyone who wishes to understand the mechanics of the Holocaust has to base themselves on German documentation for obvious reasons. Hebrew was not a language spoken by most of the Jews in Europe incidentally! And if there’s any doubt about Hilberg Bauer admits himself, in his Rethinking the Holocaust, that Hilberg’s book was a ‘monumental, brilliant and, in my view, unsurpassed analysis of the Nazi bureaucracy.’ Wen can understand the decision not to publish because it focussed on the destruction, those who died, rather than the attempt by the Zionist Historians to seek out those who resisted and magnify and glorify those relatively few incidents in order to maintain the myth that there is some kind of continuity between resistance in the ghettos and what Israel does militarily today. Hence why Hilberg’s book is translated into virtually every language bar Hebrew! Remember that the question asked of the Holocaust survivors above all by Prosecutor Hausner at the Eichmann trial was ‘why did you not resist’. An unfair question put by a nationalist to those whose circumstances he could not even conceive of.
Regarding Greenstein’s comments on Yad Vashem, I am inclined to believe that he should visit the place himself. If he did, he might be less willing to come back and distort so many facts.
On Hilberg – It is generally accepted that his book is monumental - and whilst German sources are completely necessary when writing about the Holocaust, so is the language of countries such as Poland, Hungary, Holland etc etc as well as Yiddish which was spoken by large segments of the European Jewish community. Greenstein ignores these points – like he ignores many other points that do not fit in with his thesis.
I am indeed aware of all the above prayers. Strange that these prayers, which of course predate, as Mikey says, the 1st Zionist Congress, did not lead to mass emigration to Palestine. Even stranger that the Orthodox were so bitterly opposed to the Zionist political project, so much so that the 1st Zionist Congress that Mikey refers to had to be transferred to Basle because Rabbi Gudeman and others were so opposed to it. What became then of their prayers? The reality is that they had no political significance. Zion was the idea of the Messiah’s return and of course that couldn’t be rushed or hurried along.
Greenstein fails to mention that there has been a Jewish community in Palestine dating back centuries and Jews did emigrate there prior to the founding of modern day Zionism. Regarding Greenstein’s comment “Zion was the idea of the Messiah’s return and of course that couldn’t be rushed or hurried along.” Greenstein knows that that is one view and that there are other views. In fact Greenstein would have been taught a different view as he was previously a member of B’nei Akiva – a religious Zionist youth movement.
Well I’m not aware that Socrates got most of his ideas from his cat. But Zionism did more than share a taste for pets or whatever with anti-Semitism. We are not talking about coincidences but joint work, praise, quoting by people like Heinrich Class from the Zionists. Of Herzl seeking out Drumont to get a favourable review for Der Judenstaat in his anti-Semitic daily, La Libre Parole. About the witterings of Nordau, Herzl’s deputy about racial theories and eugenics. About Herzl’s promise to the Czar’s anti-Semitic ministers that Zionism was an anti-dote to Socialism (thus how ‘socialist’ Zionism came about – an attempt to bridge the gap between reality and rhetoric). The fact is that unlike Socrates’ cat, both Zionists and anti-Semites had a common objective. Herzl saw, in his own metaphor, anti-Semitism as the equivalent of steam in an engine. His task was to channel it in the right direction.
I have tried to use an analogy of Socrates, but this is clearly above Greenstein so I will resort to a simpler analogy he may understand. Nazis hate Stalinists and Trotskyists hate Stalinists ergo Trotskyists and Nazis are similar. This argument has a similar logic to the one Greenstein makes above.
I guess we should be grateful for small mercies. Mikey is wrong. I recognise the existence of the Israeli State, but like the Apartheid State I want to see it destroyed or deZionised, changed from a racial state seeking to privilege one section of the populace to a State that makes no distinction between those of different nationality or religion.
Readers should be under no illusions – the whole point of Greenstein’s focus on the Holocaust and his distortions of facts are for the reason he states above – He wants to see the state of Israel “destroyed.” Well he has that in common with the president of Iran who also distorts the Holocaust – although via other methods.
The truth is often offensive. In Israel there are essentially group rights, not equal individual rights. That was the purpose of the 1935 Nuremburg Laws. Arab villages are not recognised, Arabs cannot access 93% of Israeli land. Where does this come from if not European anti-Semitism? Yes a Jew is by virtue of the mother but who determines whether the mother is Jewish and how? The information includes that derived from Nazi sources. I mention Shahak because of course he was a childhood survivor of the Belsen camp and the Warsaw Ghetto. If the comparison was offensive he nonetheless found it accurate.
More anti-Zionist falsities from Greenstein here. “Arabs cannot access 93% of Israeli land.” A load of nonsense. What this refers to is that 93% of the land is owned by the State trust – Neither Jews nor Arabs can purchase it. The argument makes as much sense as saying that a black person cannot in England purchase land belonging to the National Trust in England hence the UK is racist. National Trust Land of course cannot be purchased by white people either and so it is with the land in Israel that Greenstein refers to.
Greenstein continues to falsely and offensively claim that who is a Jew is determined by Nazi sources. I am going to let Greenstein in a little known secret. The Jewish religion is rather old – In fact in the Jewish calendar it is now the year 5,767. The question of who is a Jew and how it is determined and how it is determined how someone’s mother is Jew and how it is answered somewhat predates the Nuremberg laws of 1935 A.D. To use the phrase again: Res ipsa loquitur
Well the Union of Jewish Students has tried to ban anything anti-Zionist. I have reams of their leaflets trying to ban me from speaking on campuses! When news of Perdition spread the leaders of the Zionist groups in Britain, including the Zionist Federation, lobbied for it to be banned. I welcome these attempts because they always rebound. I always found that the Zionists would build the meetings I spoke at in their attempts to deny the basic right of free speech. No Healey’s WRP took money from Iraq to spy on Iraqi dissidents. I haven’t heard of spying on British Jews. Surely that is Israel? And I wouldn’t trust Harry’s Place for anything to do with information. Allen broke from the WRP and was a brilliant socialist playwright. It is that rather than these absurd guilt by association techniques that matter. And I note that Mikey hasn’t attempted to defend the ludicrous Stalinist charge against Jim Allen. Quite right too!
I am not particularly in favour of the policy, but the National Union of Students had a policy of no platform for racists and fascists. If that policy is to be upheld then it is quite clear that it should be applied to Holocaust deniers such as David Irving and Holocaust falsifiers such as Greenstein.
Regarding the WRP and spying on British Jews, I suggest Greenstein looks up the article by Richard Ellis, John Craig and Andrew Weir “ Far left party paid to spy by Gadaffi” Sunday Times February 7 1988. A WRP source told the newspaper, that the list of those “spied on” by the party included members of parliament such as Leon Brittan and Sir Keith Joseph, Lord Young, then head of the Manpower Services Commission, his brother, Stuart Young, the former chairman of the BBC, and several other unidentified businessmen.
Regarding Jim Allen breaking with the WRP, according to Brian Behan, a former chairman of the SLL, a forerunner to the WRP, Allen’s views on Zionism were influenced by the Gerry Healy’s WRP.
Source: Brian Behan: “Obituary: Jim Allen” The Independent July 16 1999
| 26 January 2007, 6:26 pm |
In other words, Greenstein, you are a potz.
| 26 January 2007, 6:46 pm |
By the way, Greenstein, you aren’t the ‘Tony’ who presented Alan Hart to MPACUK at The Great Debate, are you?
The ‘conspiracy’ between Zionists and Nazis is that that exists between all victims and victimizers -the ‘understanding’ that the former are best off as far from the latter as possible.
The Zionists, arguably, best of all groups, were most pessimistic about the viability of Jewish life in Europe. At the time of the Nazis, they preferred to make their stand in Palestine, where they stood a chance, rather than in Europe, where they stood none.
Once a Yishuv existed it had a dual obligation: to preserve itself and do what it could for Jews elsewhere. During the Holocaust, not a lot.
Greenstein criticizes Zionists for not ‘fighting’ the Nazis in Germany. Which Jews did? The Communists?
The only other militant Jewish group, the Jewish nationalist Socialist Bund (how exactly did they find Jewish nationalism and Socialism incompatible, Greenstein?) was no more successful in protecting, defending or finding refuge for Jews.
It was they who last of all deigned to fight alongside Zionists in the Warsaw ghetto, not vice versa. They are now extinct -Anglo-Jewish aristocratic Trotskiites like Greenstein notwithstanding. Most of their descendants are either dead or Israeli.
Long term Jewish life was not viable in the former European Jewish heartlands. The Zionists were entirely right about that, the Bund entirely wrong. Why Greenstein still finds it necessary to rewrite history is the province of psycho-analysis.
The surviving Jews of Poland, where once had lived the largest Jewish community in the world, after the war, were effectively ethnically cleansed by the ‘anti-Zionist’ Soviet regime. Let Greenstein preach to them about anti-Zionism. I suspect they (along with most Arab Jews and their now largely Israeli descendants) would tell him (in the privileged, imperial seat of English liberal democracy) what he could do with it.
Zionism in Britain was, from the beginning, a popular grassroots affair, at first vigorously resisted by the Anglo-Jewish court elite.
Greenstein is nothing if not true to form.
So, Zionists were prepared to negotiate with anti-Semites. So what? What were they supposed to do? Overthrow them with non-existent armies?
Join the international revolution? The Bund tried to do that, as Jewish (as opposed to Trotskiite non-Jewish) Jews. They were effectively dismantled for their troubles -as the Zionists predicted, correctly, they would be.
And now, as I said, they are extinct.
So, 80% of Judenrat were Zionist, were they? Well, Greenstein, I have news for you. Over 10 percent of all European Jews in 1939 were subscribing members of Zionist organizations -in Eastern Europe, obviously, much higher. The largest single grouping of Jewish political subscription in Jewish history heretofore.
Has it never occurred to Greenstein that Zionists were simply the better organized, precisely because they were nationalist?
As to Kasner. In my view, he may (I repeat, may) have failed to warn Hungarian Jewry of its fate, and, if that is the case, is culpable, at least, of failing to give them the opportunity to take measures to defend themselves.
There are other issues: the timing of the report, ongoing negotiations etc.
But, in the end, he acted to save his own skin, his family and those close to him. Eichman stipulated, of course, that no Jews go to Palestine -so as not to upset, inter alios, the Mufti of Jerusalem.
If Kasner claimed he was doing this for Zion, he was rationalising his own self-preservation.
As to Zionist policy before the nature of the Holocaust was known: sure, they wanted young Jews, and capital.
Not unreasonable, given they were trying to build a Jewish state that could preserve itself. An in monstrous times, sometimes monstrous decisions have to be made.
So Zionists broke the Jewish embargo? So what? They were buying Jewish lives.
They entertained a SS officer in Palestine? So, what? Again, to save Jewish lives, such a crime? At least they didn’t endorse the final solution, unlike Haj Amin Al Husseini.
As to Zionists and Jewish refuge in the rest of the world. No one wanted to take in Jews. The tiny programs Zionists allegedly thwarted were just that, tiny.
The Jews who found ‘refuge’ in Mauritius were first of all deported from Palestine.
The Yishuv had a duty to protect itself. And to ensure its long term viability, especially with the prospect of the extinction of European Jewry.
It did that in the only way it could: by siding with Great Britain, which was also the only way to defeat the Nazis.
There would be inevitably difficult choices for Zionists to make in such monstrous circumstances. Some were cynical about Jewish survival in Europe -unsurprising, really, since they were the only ones who had predicted anything like it.
But Allen is doing more than that. He is systematising that conundrum into an old fashioned, Christian blood libel, in much the same way you, Greenstein, systematise individual opponents into conspiratorial movements.
You have a lot in common with the Church Fathers, did you know that?
But that is not the realm of rational argument. It the psychopathology of the paranoiac.
As to Zionists and imperialism. I have news for you, Greenstein: by Roman imperialism were Jews originally dispossessed, and Palestine created.
By Roman Christian, then Arab and other Islamic empire was that dispossession enshrined in both Christianity and Islam as Jews’ just punishment for their rejection of Jesus and the prophets.
It was only in 1917, when, for the first in 2000 years, a power, necessarily imperial, since only empires have the power to do that kind of thing, conquered The Land that was sympathetic to a Jewish restoration at precisely the time, it turned out, when Jews would have most need of a refuge.
Jews could never have returned to The Land in any large numbers as they had neither the convergence of opportunity or such desperate need.
The last time Jews had been invited to return to The Land en masse was under Julian the Apostate in 361-3, to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. According to the source, Jews flocked from across the Diaspora. But Julian’s early death and the vigorous ‘resistance’ of Palestinian Christians soon scotched that.
As to the moronic criticism of Zionists’ siding with imperial powers. They sided with the only power that would win the war they could. And only that power, with the US, could stop the Nazis.
Yes the Soviets ‘tore the guts out the werhmacht’ etc. But, without the Allies’ bombing the heart out of German industry, and opening the second from in southern and western Europe, the Soviets would have taken a year longer, at least, and may have ended up right where they started, in the middle of Poland. Nor is there any evidence they would have been especially keen to intervene before Nazis had finished the business of killing Jews.
With all due respect, Greenstein, you don’t sound too bright.
As to the ‘poet’ Jim Allen. I haven’t read the play, but I’d like to. I have never been able to find a copy. If you’d like to send, or email, me a copy, Greenstein, I’ll happily provide an address or email. Or just click on the link beneath my ‘handle’,
The first version undoubtedly contained antisemitisms: ‘The road to Golgotha runs past Park avenue’.
‘The Zionist knife in the Nazi fist’ is redolent of traditional European Christian motifs. Firstly it generalizes from the specific, as if even Kasner’s actions represented all, or most Zionists. The imagery of Jewish sacrifice of the innocent, Jewish cooperation with evil, even to slaughter their own, is derived from the blackest chambers of the heart of mediaeval Christian darkness. If you think this is poetry, Greenstein, they didn’t teach you much in literary appreciation at school (or were they imperialists too?).
That is who you have chosen to associate with, promote and represent, Greenstein.
More fool you.
| 26 January 2007, 6:57 pm |
Achtung, Trivia: “Not that this is a site for political pedants with logorrhoea to scratch each other’s eyes out.”
Oh yeah?
| 26 January 2007, 11:12 pm |
And David t: had it not been for the Holocaust and anti Semitism, millions of young Jewish people would not have flocked to Palestine in order to fight and die for this Zionist Jihad.
Posted by Uri at January 25, 2007 03:24 PM
Belated Message To Uri: what do you mean ‘had it not been for the holocaust’??? There was a fucking holocaust, and that’s why your mates need to blame it on Zionism…You must grieve over the fact that Britain didn’t establish Israel far earlier: then it really would have been an imperialist project, rather than one voted for by the UN, inclduing the USSR. But of course…then there really would have been no holocaust, and no Perdition either.
You’d love that, wouldn’t you Uri. Direct imperialist responsibility for Israel, and no six million murdered Jews to justify its existence. Never mind imagining Zionism if there had been no holocaust: imagine anti-Zionism if there had been no holocaust. Now there’s a thought…
| 26 January 2007, 11:59 pm |
it is very noticeable how Greenstein’s absurd, erratic and irrational assertions have been comprehensively demolished by the use of historical facts and reason by Mikey, Paul Bogdanor and Cormac.
we can only hope that Greenstein tries to read even half of the books suggested by Mikey, it certainly would be an improvement on his current form.
| 27 January 2007, 12:35 am |
mikey, paul and cormac- salute you. cormac’s zolaesque post- superb.
| 27 January 2007, 2:53 am |
There have been 385 mentions of Zion or Zionist (or variations) in this thread. And not a Rastafari in sight. Considering the ridiculous nature of all this, being on the Rastafari!
| 27 January 2007, 8:32 am |
I ignored little Tony G. when he shared a platform with Brenner and the Hovavei - Fascism in 1982/83. The Brenner “faecis” was demolished before the ink was dry all those years ago. TG clearly remains either an insignificant politico or a hallucinatory visionary in Brighton. While the critique of the Stalinist poison is worth re-stating, I still believe it is best to ignore little Tony G.
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