Letter to Richard Medhurst #15

The Question of Zionism Part 1

The Question of Zionism Part 1

According to Thomas Suarez the “conflict” between the Israelis and the Palestinians isn’t a conflict at all. Conflict assumes a degree of equality. What the world is facing is an occupation.[1] His argument is that the “entire tragic history” is “the single story of the political movement known as Zionism and its determination to expropriate all of Palestine for a “Jewish” settler nation...”[2]

Much of the confusion is due to language. “Today, armed Israelis invading Palestinian land, commandeering the homes of non-Jews and expelling or killing their inhabitants, are not terrorists, indeed not even infiltrators, but “settlers”, a term that is particularly benign to the American public…”[3]

It will perhaps come as a surprise that Christian Zionists outnumber all Jews in the world, let alone Jewish Zionists: “The conservative estimate of Christian Zionists in America is around 15 million, a third of the Evangelical population”.[4]

It will also perhaps come as a surprise that many Zionists, such as Arthur Balfour, were and are profoundly anti-Semitic. “In 1905, (Balfour) pushed legislation aimed at preventing Jews fleeing persecution in Russia from entering Britain on the grounds they were “undesirable.”

One reason why Balfour may have been in favor of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine was that he disliked having Jews as neighbors. He once described Zionism as a “serious effort to mitigate the age-old miseries created for western civilization by the presence in its midst of a body which is too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb.”[5] It is Judaism and Zionism that are mutually exclusive and antithetical, not Zionism and anti-Semitism.

By the 1920s the project of creating a “Jewish Ulster” in Palestine looked set to be failing.[6] This might provide part of the explanation for why Britain supported the rise of the Nazis.[7]

An interesting footnote of history is the fact that Britain had an extremely close economic relationship with Nazi Germany.[8] More interesting still is the fact that the British and American economic cooperation with Nazi Germany continued during the war.[9] It’s one of the ironies of history that American companies produced Nazi propaganda films and tanks.[10] This wasn’t the first time American or British companies made a tidy profit from war; they have been doing so ever since.

Very soon after Hitler attained power the framework for what was later to be the “Transfer Agreement” (Haavara) was in place. Interestingly enough the agreement was so important to the British that they were willing to sacrifice their economic interests in Palestine. German products, not British ones, were given preference.

“When on April 5 (1933) the British embassy questioned the various Reich offices, it unexpectedly learned that Jews emigrating to Palestine could remove 1,000 pounds to satisfy the British entry prerequisite.”[11]

A month later, on May 11, the British Ambassador, Sir Horace Rumbold, told Hitler that: “the treatment of German Jews might be described as “internal affairs” by Germany.”[12] This was a green light for the brutal persecution of the Jews in Germany.

The Transfer Agreement facilitated the move of some 60,000 Jews and $100m from Germany to Palestine during the pre-War years.[13]

“During the period of British administration, which lasted about 30 years (1919-1948), the population of Palestine almost trebled itself, passing from some 676,000 at the beginning of 1919 to about 1,970,000 at the end of 1947…the Jewish population…multiplied itself more than eleven times, growing from about 56,000 at the beginning of 1919 to 650,000 in May 1948…the proportion of the Moslems decreased from about 81% in 1919 to 60% in 1947 — while that of the Jews increased from 8% to 32%.”[14]

This dovetailing of interests between the Zionists and the Nazis explains the enthusiasm with which the ascendancy of the Nazis was greeted by Zionists.

On June 21, 1933, the Zionist Federation told the Nazi regime: “Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group. For the Jew, too, origin, religion, community of fate and group consciousness must be of decisive significance in the shaping of his life. This means that the egotistic individualism which arose in the liberal era must be overcome by public spiritedness and by willingness to accept responsibility.”

“Our conception of the nature of Jewry and of our true position among the European peoples allows us to frame proposals on the regulation of the situation of the Jews in the new German state which are not considerations based on accidental constellations of interests, but which pave the way for a real solution of the Jewish question that will satisfy the German state. In this we are not concerned with the interests of individual Jews who have lost their economic and social positions as a result of Germany's profound transformation. What we are concerned with is the creation of an opportunity for the existence for the whole group, while preserving our honor, which is our most precious possession. On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total structure so that for us, too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible.”

“We believe it is precisely the new Germany that can, through bold resoluteness in the handling of the Jewish question, take a decisive step toward overcoming a problem which, in truth, will have to be dealt with by most European peoples—including those whose foreign policy statements today deny the existence of any such problem in their own midst.”

“Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group and reject any trespasses of the cultural domain, we—having been brought up in the German language and German culture—can show an interest in the works and values of German culture with admiration and internal sympathy. Only fidelity to their own kind and their own culture gives Jews the inner strength that prevents insult to the respect for the national sentiments and the imponderables of German nationality; and rootedness in one’s own spirituality protects the Jew from becoming the rootless critic of the national foundations of German essence. The national distancing which the state desires would thus be brought about easily as the result of an organic development.”

“Thus, a self-conscious Jewry here described, in whose name we speak, can find a place in the structure of the German state, because it is inwardly unembarrassed, free from the resentment which assimilated Jews must feel at the determination that they belong to Jewry, to the Jewish race and past. We believe in the possibility of an honest relationship of loyalty between a group-conscious Jewry and the German state.”[15]

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[1] p.17 State of Terror, Thomas Suarez

[2] pp.7-8 State of Terror, Thomas Suarez

[3] p.11 State of Terror, Thomas Suarez

[4]  What Motivates Christian Zionists? Shelley Neese, Jerusalem Post, August 29 2012

[5] The racist worldview of Arthur Balfour, David Cronin, The Electronic Intifada, 18 October 2017

[6] p.135 The Blood Never Dried, John Newsinger

[7] Conjuring Hitler Guido Preparata

[8] p.224 Conjuring Hitler Guido Preparata

[9] Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World Adam LeBor

[10] p.14 Antony Sutton Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler

[11] p.87 The Transfer Agreement, Edwin Black

[12] p.129 The Transfer Agreement, Edwin Black

[13] p.380 The Transfer Agreement, Edwin Black

[14] pp.40-42 The Population of Israel, Roberto Bachi

[15]  p.59-60 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis, Lenni Brenner[1] p.17 State of Terror, Thomas Suarez