The Question of Zionism Part 2
Perhaps it should surprise nobody that Wolfgang Eggert should make the startling assertion that many key players in the Holocaust, such as Hans Frank, Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann had Jewish backgrounds.[1]
That the Zionists were both close allies of the Nazis and the main beneficiaries of the Holocaust remains beyond dispute. Without the Zionists the Nazis couldn’t have remained in power and without the Holocaust Israel couldn’t have been created.
Indeed, the Holocaust seems eerily in keeping with Theodor Herzl’s apocalyptic vision: “Whoever can, will, and must perish, let him perish. But the distinctive nationality of the Jews neither can, will, nor must be destroyed…Whole branches of Judaism may whither and fall, but the trunk remains…”[2]
Herzl noted in his journal: “Anti-Semitism has grown and continues to grow — and so do I. I can still recall two different conceptions of the Question and its solution, which I had in the course of those years. About two years ago I wanted to solve the Jewish Question, at least in Austria, with the help of the Catholic Church. I wished to gain access to the Pope (not without first assuring myself of the support of the Austrian church dignitaries) and say to him: Help us against the anti-Semites and I will start a great movement for the free and honorable conversion of Jews to Christianity. Free and honorable by virtue of the fact that the leaders of this movement — myself in particular — would remain Jews and as such would propagate conversion to the faith of the majority. The conversion was to take place in broad daylight, Sundays at noon, in Saint Stephen’s Cathedral, with festive processions and amidst the pealing of bells. Not in shame, as individuals have converted up to now, but with proud gestures. And because the Jewish leaders would remain Jews, escorting the people only to the threshold of the church and themselves staying outside, the whole performance was to be elevated by a touch of great candor. We would still have adhered to the faith of our fathers. But we would have made Christians of our young sons before they reached the age of independent decision, after which conversion looks like an act of cowardice or careerism.”[3]
Later he wrote: “It would be an excellent idea to call in respectable, accredited anti-Semites as liquidators of property. To the people they would vouch for the fact that we do not wish to bring about the impoverishment of the countries that we leave. At first, they must not be given large fees for this; otherwise we shall spoil our instruments and make them despicable as “stooges of the Jews.” Later their fees will increase, and in the end, we shall have only Gentile officials in the countries from which we have emigrated. The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies. We want to emigrate as respected people.”[4]
This seems to be very much in keeping with what happened later. The Zionists acted on these ideas: “In 1921, Jabotinsky signed an agreement with Symon Petliura, a Ukrainian anti-Semite whose soldiers had carried out pogroms with tens of thousands of Jewish victims.”[5]
Not only did the Zionists act on these ideas before the war they also acted on them after the foundation of Israel. Thus, the Zionists helped foster anti-Semitism in the Middle East as a means of forcing the Sephardi or Mizrahim Jews to come to the “promised land”.[6]
Ella Habiba Shohat points out that: “Zionism claims to be a liberation movement for all Jews, and Zionist ideologists have spared no effort in their attempt to make the two terms “Jewish” and “Zionist” virtually synonymous. In fact, however, Zionism has been primarily a liberation movement for European Jews (and that, as we know, problematically) and more precisely for that tiny minority of European Jews actually settled in Israel. Although Zionism claims to provide a homeland for all Jews, that homeland was not offered to all with the same largess. Sephardi Jews were first brought to Israel for specific European-Zionist reasons, and once there they were systematically discriminated against by a Zionism which deployed its energies and material resources differentially, to the consistent advantage of European Jews and to the consistent detriment of Oriental Jews.”[7]
As she and Naeim Giladi make clear Ben Gurion, following Herzl’s concept adumbrated above, implemented the same strategy he’d implemented in Nazi Germany, and with equal success. Of course, some of the Mizrahi emigrated to Israel willingly but many didn’t. Judaism is not a nation, as Shlomo Sand states unequivocally; nor can it ever be one. It is a religion.[8]
The fact that a “Jewish” national consciousness needed to be formed and that the army has always been the prime means of doing so, has meant that the IDF has always played a key role in Israeli society. It literally helps mold Israel. It also helps facilitate the discrimination against the Mizrahi by putting a lid on social tensions. This has been especially important in the last thirty years, as Israel has gone from being a country with a high degree of income equality to one with a great degree of income inequality.[9]
War has made this possible and war is, indeed, perhaps the essential glue that holds the country together. Without it Israel would most probably fall apart.
As everyone who has followed politics in the Middle East knows, Israel facilitated the rise of Hamas, and it did so quite openly.[10] What Hamas does, by virtue of its tactics and statements, is to provide a justification for huge military expenditure and legitimizes the state of interminable war. Hamas is the bogeyman used to frighten the children of Israel and that particular fear has long been the principle means of governing the country. When it wasn’t Hamas it was the PLO or the PLFP or some other terrorist organization. Without terror Israel could never have been created and without terror it couldn’t exist.
In the same way that the Zionists made use of Palestinian terror after the war so they made use of Nazi terror before it.
“In 1935, Jewish existence continued to contract as fewer Jewish people could even survive in the Reich. Getting out was the only alternative to inevitable starvation.”
“As Jewish existence was dismantling in Germany, however it was reconstructed in Jewish Palestine. The Haavara brought in many of the fundamentals: coal, iron, cement, fertilizer, seed, hammers, saws and cultivators. Haavara also brought in the capital: cash, loans, mortgages, deposits, and credits. All this produced an economic explosion in Jewish Palestine, requiring companies to be formed, investments to be made, and most of all, jobs to be filled.”
“Palestine’s economic absorptiveness tripled, perhaps quadrupled, within a year or so of the Transfer Agreement. Economic opportunity translated into a dramatic increase in immigration certificates under the twice-yearly “worker quota”. Most of these certificates were awarded to Mapai’s halutzim, the young worker pioneers eager to plant the seed, dig the ditches, and trowel the cement. As more buildings were erected, more kibbutzim established, and more small factories founded, ever more job openings were created for halutzim. The spiral of economic expansion increased the flow of worker immigrants from just a few thousand yearly before the Transfer Agreement to more than 50,000 during the two years following. Most were Mapai halutzim, and only about 20 percent of them were from Germany.”[11]
The worker pioneer camps in Nazi Germany played a key role in this system. “The occupational retraining of German Jews going to Palestine was taken up seriously by German Zionists almost immediately after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933. By 1936, an extensive system of retraining centers, run by Hechaluz and sponsored by various Zionist groups and relief agencies, was functioning throughout Germany.”[12] (62)
This was very much welcomed by the British: “Zionist retraining efforts also enjoyed the encouragement of the British Embassy in Berlin. A British Embassy memorandum of April 3, 1936, asserted that the Umschulungslager run by Hechaluz enabled the Jewish Agency to select suitable candidates for admission to Palestine, better prepared for absorption into the economic life of the country.”[13]
Neither the British nor the Germans seemed interested in the boycott movement, which, as Edwin Black’s “The Transfer Agreement” makes abundantly clear, was the only hope of saving the German Jews from annihilation. Again, as Edwin Black shows: it was the Zionists who saved Nazi Germany. This was one reason for German cooperation: “The anti-boycott success of the German delegation and its allies at the Lucerne Congress strengthened the relatively positive attitude of cooperation with Zionism on the part of the SD.”[14] German support included providing the Hagana with weaponry.[15]
One thing should become slowly, but surely plain: Zionism has not really been a friend of the Jews. Nor was nor are the Anglo-American Empire friends of either Jews or Israelis[16]. It shouldn’t be forgotten for example that neither Britain nor America did anything to save the German Jews; on the contrary. When a conference was held in Bermuda in April 1943 it was decided to leave them to their fate. And this was at a point in time when their suffering was perfectly well known.[17]
Other Zionists, such as Moses Hess, writing in the 1860s, were more explicit in their desire to see the religion of Judaism abolished: “Judaism, in fact, like Christianity, would have to dissolve in consequence of the Enlightenment, if it were no more than a dogmatic religion, if it were not a national worship. The Jewish reformers, who still give their theatrical performances in some German communities, know so little about the importance of Judaism, that they are careful to eliminate everything that is reminiscent of the Jewish nationality from teaching and worship.”[18]
Instead of being a religion, Judaism was, for Hess, the starting point of a nationality: “As a matter of fact, Judaism, as a nationality, has a natural basis which cannot be supplanted by another as a creed. A Jew, according to his descent, always belongs to Judaism, regardless of whether he or his ancestors became apostates. – That may seem paradoxical to modern concepts of religion. In practice, at least, I have found this view proven. Even the baptized Jew remains a Jew, no matter how much he resists it. Today there is hardly any difference between the enlightened and the baptized.”[19] That many, such as Victor Klemperer, saw no difference between the Zionists and the Nazis should hardly surprise.
The key point of course is that Judaism always was a religion and never a nation. After all: how could it be? Judaism and Christianity, like Islam, are to be found in many nations spread across the globe. What is well worth mentioning however is the fact that Zionism was mentioned in the Pike letter to Manzini of 1871. In fact, it plays a leading role in it.
“The Second World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences between the Fascists and the political Zionists. This war must be brought about so that Nazism is destroyed and that the political Zionism be strong enough to institute a sovereign state of Israel in Palestine. During the Second World War, International Communism must become strong enough in order to balance Christendom, which would be then restrained and held in check until the time when we would need it for the final social cataclysm.”
“The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the “agentur” of the “Illuminati” between the political Zionists and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam (the Moslem Arabic World) and political Zionism (the State of Israel) mutually destroy each other.”
[1] pp.304-306 Israels Geheim-Vatikan Wolfgang Eggert
[2] p.74 The Transfer Agreement, Edwin Black
[3] p.7 The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl Translated by Harry Zohn 1960
[4] pp.83-84 The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl Translated by Harry Zohn 1960
[5] Lehi.org. Foreign Relations during World War II
[6] Ben-Gurion’s Scandals, Naeim Giladi
[7] The Mizrahim in Israel, Zionism from the perspective of its Jewish victims, Ella Habiba Shohat
[8] The Invention of the Jewish People, Shlomo Sand
[9] The Origins of Income Inequality in Israel, Ofer Cornfeld and Oren Danieli, Israel Economic Review Vol 12, No.2 (2015), 51-95
[11] p.373 The Transfer Agreement Edwin Black
[12] p.58 The Third Reich and the Palestine Question Francis R. Nicosia
[13] p.59 The Third Reich and the Palestine Question Francis R. Nicosia
[14] p.61 The Third Reich and the Palestine Question Francis R. Nicosia
[15] p. 63 The Third Reich and the Palestine Question Francis R. Nicosia
[17] Auschwitz and the Allies, Martin Gilbert
[18] p.38 Rom und Jerusalem – Die letzte Nationalitaetenfrage, Ausgabe von 1899, Moses Hess
[19] p.40 Rom und Jerusalem – Die letzte Nationalitaetenfrage, Ausgabe von 1899, Moses Hess