No-one can accuse them of not learning from history.
If there was any link to Stalin - surely an avid anti-Zionist such as yourself and your BAZO/Return buddies would have already uncovered it.
Here's J. Otto Pohl...
... expressing his support for the Ukrainian mass murderer Khmelnytsky (Chmielnicki), who massacred tens of thousands of Jewish men, women and children:-
http://groups.google.com/group/a...0fa77525?hl=en&
... raving about Jewish conspiracies to monopolise Nazi victimhood:-
http://groups.google.com/group/s...e5f9996e?hl=en&
... demanding that Israeli Jews be banned from visiting Auschwitz:-
http://groups.google.com/group/a...e=UTF-8&
rnum=58
... wailing that "there are people in the US and Israel that would prefer we concentrate on 50+ year old attrocities [sic] at Auschwitz than dare to look at the Gaza strip":-
http://groups.google.com/group/a...e=UTF-8&
rnum=15
It's certainly true that both Stalin and the Labour Zionist justified their actions with reference to a form of socialism, although i'd be careful about therefore accepting their own definition of the term. On the same basis, you could assert that 'freedom and democracy' have killed 100'000+ Iraqis given that these are the justifications Bush and Blair have employed. Forgive my pedantry over this issue, it's just as a Trotskyist you get used to having to defend socialism from both the Stalinists and the cold war anti-communists. Chomsky and Finkelstein both refer to the influence of Stalinism on labour Zionism.
Anyway, I think the comparison in the treatment of un-favored nationalities between Stalinist Russia and the Zionist regime are very interesting.
Paul B - I checked your links and I don't see anything that amounts to holocaust denial and to accuse Otto Pohl of antisemitism is tenuous.
I don't know enough about Chmielnicki to comment on the numbers killed but I think you'll find that it was a peasant rebellion. Whether I would describe it as "progressive" I don't know but Pohl's view isn't a million miles from Israel Shahak's on that issue. You need to read some non-zionist sources on it.
This is what he says in the second link:
"The reason Jews get much more attention than these other groups is that Jewish national identity is totally dependent upon the Shoa and the state of Israel. The Shoa is more important since without it there would be no Israel.
Hence Jews devote a lot of effort to publicizing the Shoa in order to retain the last bit of Jewish identity left since the majority stopped believing in God. Polish national identity would not suffer any losses. Neither would Gypsy identity. But, if there had not been the Shoa, Israel would never have been founded and the Jewish diaspora would have assimilated to point of virtually ceasing to exist. Only the handful of Hasidic and other ultra Orthodox would retain any sense of Jewish identity."
Now he shouldn't generalise like that and who can say what would have become of the secular Jewish identity? but it hardly amounts to an antisemitic conspiracy theory. I also don't agree that Israel exists because of the holocaust.
In the third link he says that Israelis should be barred from visiting Auschwitz so long as Israel harbours concentration camp commanders from the Stalin era. This is no different from the effect of sanctions on any state held to be harbouring war criminals though it doesn't usually get enforced. I don't agree with what he suggests but that doesn't make it antisemitic.
In the last link he is saying, as many do, that zionists use the holocaust to justify or distract attention from their own actions.
The guy's got an acid tongue for sure but you've put an unjust and misleading spin on his words.
I think he needs to choose his words more carefully than he has done but that's it. Cetainly not enough to compare him to David Irving.
Actually Finkelstein was one of my inspirations for the article. But, the article is not an attack on socialism as such, but rather a demonstration of how "socialist rhetoric" can be used to justify racism. One of the primary reasons Israel has not been treated like South Africa in the US has been its use of "progressive" rhetoric to avoid the charge of racism. In this matter they were following a strategy already used by the USSR when it changed its nationality policies in the 1930s, but retained their earlier rhetoric.
One other connection which is mentioned in the article is the very strong military and diplomatic support provided to the Zionists from the Soviet bloc in 1948. The Soviets at the time believed that the Labour Zionists were closer to them than either the British or the Arabs. Hence they provided crucial heavy arms necessary to perpetrate Al Nakbah. They also pushed hard early on admission of Israel to the UN.
You're quite right that Shahak was another champion of Chmielnicki. He also wrote that Jews pray to Satan on a daily basis. I assume that you're not about to permit that idea into the realm of legitimate debate.
Shahak didn't write that Jews, pray to Satan on a daily basis he wrote that some Kabbalists pray to Satan on a daily basis.
As for Shahak, here are his precise words: "both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands, uttering a special blessing. On one of these two occasions he is worshipping God... but on the other he is worshipping Satan..." ("Jewish History, Jewish Religion," Pluto Press, 1997, p. 34). NB: "pious Jew" not "Kabbalist."
1) Shahak, in the sentence I quoted, explicitly refers to Jews, not Kabbalists. That he starts the paragraph by discussing Kabbalists no more changes the meaning of that sentence than it would if a vicious racist were to begin a discussion of rap artists and then state that "every day, a black man thinks of ways to rape a white woman." (Incidentally, even if restricted to Kabbalists, Shahak's claim would be a ludicrous fabrication.)
2) As for Nazi-Zionist "collaboration, it is a strange form of "collaboration" that results in the rescue of thousands of Jews from the Nazis (the Ha'avara agreement) or that - had it been accepted or even seriously discussed by the recipient - would have saved millions of Jews from the Holocaust (the Stern proposal). Either you haven't read the Kimche/Bauer books, or you are suppressing their repeated emphasis that the Zionists were trying to save Jews from the Nazis. The implication of the libels about "collaboration" is that anti-Zionists would prefer to have sacrificed the lives of these Jews purely to make a symbolic point against negotiating with the Nazis.
There are many examples of zionist collaboration with the nazis of which the "Transfer agreement" is just one. There is no telling that it saved lives in a way that would not have happened in the absence of the agreement. Also, you have selected only one example of collabroration where you claim that the zionists had an excuse for their collaboration. James O mentioned others and there are still others that he didn't mention, like the predominance of zionists on the Jewish Councils in the ghettoes.
Further, as James says, there are zionist historians and activists who have exposed the collaborations. The most prominent exposé of the Kastzner business in Hungary was Perfidy by Ben Hecht. This story has been recently retold with the passing of Rudolph Vrba. He tried to alert Hungarian Jewry to what was going on in Auschwitz and he was betrayed by Kastzner. That was in the Jewish Chronicle a few weeks ago. As far as I know Lenni Brenner doesn't write for the Jewish Chronicle.
Paul B and Ex Maven, if you have arguments to contribute then go ahead and present them. If all you can do is lie and smear then try the Engage site.
The paragraph ends with the phrase 'several points should be made concerning this system (i.e. the cabbalistic system previously discussed)and it's importance for the proper understanding of Judaism (i.e Shahak discriminates between Judaism as a whole and the specific cabbalistic sub-sect he is referring to here).
This is very standard manner in which to organise a paragraph, and in the same block of text, Shahak refers to other ceremonies e.g. 'the cabbalists believe that some of the sacrifices burnt in the temple were intended for Satan'. however, you haven't chosen this example for the obvious reason that you can't twist Shahak's words into a different meaning.
all references to page 34
2. So now the argument has changed. The Zionist did collaborate with the Nazis, but it was justifiable because this collaboration resulted in saving Jewish lives. However, at all times the aim was not to save Jewish lives in toto but only as colonists for Palestine. as David Ben-Gurion pronounced in 1938:
"If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dav...avid_Ben-
Gurion.
Had the Zionists fought back against the Nazis, would more Jewish lives have been saved? The answer is given by Reszo Kastner's decision to collaborate with the deportations of Hungarian Jews in 1944. He was able to save under 2'000 lives by collaborating with the deportations which led to the deaths of 100'000s
However this time I will keep purely to facts:
1. Kastner did not collaborate with the Nazis - This was proven by the Supreme Court in 1958.
2. Kastner also was rsponsible for rescuing a further 18,000 Jews over and above the 1,685 that were on the rescue train. These 18,000 were sent to farms in Austria and almost all of them survived. This fact has not been mentioned by James O above.
3. Kastner was not solely interested in saving Zionists - a number of virullently anti-Zionists from the Satmar sect were included on the list of passengers for the rescue train.
4. The quote by Ben Gurion was made in 1938 as mentioned which was substianlly earlier than the Final Solution was enunciated. Not mentioned above are the numerous attempts to save Jews made subsequently for example by Weizmann and others.
2.Kasztner betrayed over 400,000 Jews, the question is did he act from the logic of zionism or from the exegencies of the time?
3.Kasztner wasn't accused of only saving zionists but of only saving "notables".
4. There are many other quotes from Ben Gurion with regard to the zionist failure to rescue Jews or seek to have Jews rescued during WWII when the details of the holocaust were known. Remember Vrba alerted the zionist leadership as to what was going on and, according to the Jewish Chronicle, he was betrayed.
Try sources other than Wikipedia and don't waste people's time here.
http://
jewsagainstzionism.blogsp...772823632669023
It's Israel Shahak's Jewish History Jewish Religion and well worth a read.
2. It was ruled by the supreme court that Kastner acted with the intntion of saving as many Jews as he thought possible to be saved.
3. I am aware what Kastner was accused of by Greenwald. I am also aware what th judgemnents were.
4. I mentioned the Vraba report in the post of mine you chose to delete. It is fully dealt with in Martin Gilbert's book "Auschwitz and The Allies"
When people have a gun to their head - It can hardly be called "collaboration".
The judge subsequently regretted his use of the "sold his soul" metaphor, that's all. That was a few words in a lengthy judgment.
If you were aware of the original judgment, why didn't you mention it? And how do you explain Kasztner's support for the SS officer, Becher, after the war?
I should point out that just because a historian has a knighthood it doesn't make him more reliable than one who doesn't. You're a bit too fond of establishment sources.
the original judgement is hardly relevant when it was overturned. I hardly hear of people discussing court judgemnts and using the lower court argument over one of a higher court. The suprem ecourt was very critical of the judgement of halevey.
Regarding Becher - that is an interesting one. The best explanation I have heard is that Kastner used his influence to save one more life.
Regarding Martin Gilbert's book - he quotes dirctly from personal letters from Vrba and that is why I have used that source - I could quote many other sources most notably Professor Braham - surely if you look up his credentials you are not going to argue against him?
If you are not familiar I suggest you check this out
http://www.hungaryemb.org/News%2...ve/
HRBraham.htm
then tell me that you dispute his credentials.Or does the mere fact that he was awarded the Ordr or Merit Officer's Cross of the Hungarian Republic rule him out and make him an "establishment figure"?
If he is not good enough for you I can provide others.
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