This is a series of posts to an e-community calling itself Weird Jews:

"Hi there

I'm not quite sure of how this all works but here is a piece I posted to two threads yesterday. There is an argument going on about Zionism, Judaism and Jewishness.

Zionism is a political ideology that arose in the mid to late 19th century. There were various Zionist thinkers but the one who matched thought to activism and diplomacy was Theodor Herzl. He made it very clear that the Zionist idea was "colonial" and that its implementation - ie the establishment of a Jewish State - would involve ethnic cleansing. It is not enough simply to look at the territory for Jews aspect, you have to look at the cost to non-Jews.

Judaism is a religion. For 1,900 years there was no Jewish state and no demand for one among Jews and yet the religion was practiced by a higher proportion of Jews during that time when compared to now and the Talmud expressly forbade Jews from seeking statehood. The chosen people may or may not be a superiority notion depending on interpretation. Zionism however is most definitely sectarian, or indeed racist. Under Israel's laws whilst non-refugees from what was Palestine are not allowed to return there, those of us who are born Jewish can "return" there even though we don't come from there. It is not enough to say that people can convert. Under Israeli law you have to convert to orthodox Judaism (hahalacha) in order to be accepted and why should the natives of the country have to do that?

Jewishness is the ethnic background of the descendants of people who have practiced Judaism. This means that you can be a Jew even if you do not believe in Judaism. You can be a Jewish athiest for example.

From the late 19th century to the 1940s it seems that the majority of Jews opposed Zionism. The first Zionist congress was held in Basle in Switzerland because Theodor Herzl feared the reaction of the local Jewish community if he held the congress in his native Vienna in Austria. When The British Lord Balfour issued his notorious declaration that the UK would look favourably on the establishment of a "Jewish national home in Palestine" the only Jewish member of the UK government at the time denounced the declaration as "anti-Semitic".

Some people compare Zionism to other movements for national liberation but this is wrong. For example the demand for statehood for, say, Palestinians is a demand for a state to be governed for and by the people of Palestine (aka Israel and the occupied territories) or the demand for French statehood is a demand for a government for and by the people of France. The demand for Jewish statehood is a demand for governance for and by the people of...where? Not the people of Israel, many of them are not Jewish. And Israel is not a state for non-Jews. The Jews, of course, are not the people of Israel. The demand for Jewish statehood is a demand for a state where the rights of citizens is based on ethnic descent or conversion. Even apartheid South Africa had honorary whites. And of course in order to give anywhere in the world a Jewish majority ethnic cleansing has to be used. This certainly happened in Palestine. So Israel is a state based on ethnic cleansing and apartheid laws. I would gladly condemn any other state with the same characteristics but there ain't one. Many states can be said to have some apartheid trappings and many have ethnic cleansing in their history but only Israel owes its existence to those two things together: ethnic cleansing and apartheid laws.

Therefore Israel is an apartheid state based on ethnic cleansing and Zionism is a form of racism.

Mark Elf
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com"

Reply 1 from "Arpad"

"We do not welcome spammers here

Go spread your thoughts to some other place."

I should point out that whilst I have the responses on email, they have deleted my responses to the responses. Thank god Israel's a democracy!

Reply 2 from Ilex011

"Troll elsewhere."

Reply 3 from Arpad (again)

"You have no entries in your journal. It created 11.Sep.2004

I assume you created it for spamming your propaganda.

What your did is plain violation of Live Journal etiquette. Please don't bother with reply."

Reply 4 from Benjamin (BenBlack)

"Go peddle your bullshit somewhere else. No one here is interested in your blog."

Reply 5 from otakushan

"This has a lot of holes in it and draws conclusions that are easily disproven.

Zionism is not racism in any way, shape or form. Israel has airlifted Ethiopians and Indians to become citizens. All citizens in Israel have the same rights. Arabs serve in the Knesset and an Arab was even voted Ms. Israel in 2000.

Ethnic cleansing is a joke. The only ethnic cleansing over the past few hundred years has been the ethnic cleansing of Jews. All you have to do is walk through ARab East Jerusalem and you will see marks on the doors of Arab homes. Those marks are imprints left from when Jordanian forces tore off the mezzuzot and forced the Jews out. The Jordanians and Egyptians forced the Jews out of Gaza and the West Bank in 1948/49. When Jordan controlled E. Jerusalem, they would not allow a single Jew to visit the Western Wall.

Also, when Jordan and Egypt controlled the territories, there wasn't a single effort to declare an independent Palestine in those areas. Not by the Jordanians, not by the Egyptians and certainly not by the Palestinians. All you have to do is look at the charter of the PLO from 1964 and you will read that the PLO considered the West Bank and Gaza to be sovereign property of Jordan and Egypt. The PLO laid no claim to the West Bank or Gaza until after Israel won them in a war it did not start. "

Reply 6 from Ilex011

"Oh give us a break with that wide-eyed innocence crap." (I think that was a reponse to me asking why I had been called a troll.)

Reply 7 from Daniel Faigin - California Highway Guy

"Quoting from the S.C.J FAQ, which I [he] maintain[s]:

Question 14.9:
Is Zionism racist?

Answer:

No. Zionism is a process with the ultimate goal of a Jewish homeland. Participation in this process is not restricted to Jews alone. Furthermore, the question is an example of how even simple questions can use inflammatory terminology, as "racist" has a pejoritive sense and is an imprecise term.

A central tenet of Zionism is that there should exist a place in the world where Jews have sovereignty. This is no different from the ethnic desires of other minority and ethnic groups; I'm sure you can name numerous examples. Recent history has demonstrated the need for such a homeland; alas, humanity doesn't appear to be moving in a direction that would eliminate that need.

Is the desire for a Jewish homeland "racist"? No. Racism is a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Judaism is not a race--adherents come from multiple ethnic backgrounds. More importantly, there is no notion in Zionism that Jews are superior to other races (unlike, for example, the Nazis, who held that the Aryan race was superior).

Please remember that Zionism is distinct from the state of Israel; if you look at the history of Zionism, you will see that for some of the zionistic movements, Israel was not the target homeland (in fact, you'll discover that at one time, Uganda was an option). Israel is modern political state that strives to provide a pluralistic and open society, comprising many ethnic and religious groups. It doesn't always succeed in this goal, but neither do other democratic states. As a modern state, Israel is subject to various political realities that dictate its laws and regulations. Discussion of these laws and regulations is less germane to the focus of S.C.J and is more appropriate for talk.politics.mideast. However, the primacy of Jewish law in Israel is no more "racist" than the primacy of Catholic law in Vatican City, the primacy of the Church of England in Great Britain, or the primacy of Islam in many Arabic countries.

So what is the connection between Zionism and Israel? Zionism helped found the state, and provided the underlying zeal for many of Israel's leaders. The Zionist zeal still helps provide funding for the state, as many Jews outside of Israel support Zionist organizations operating in Israel. "

Reply 8 from Aurora Celeste

"Subject: Re: Troll?
Troll:

An outrageous message posted to a newsgroup or mailing list or message board to bait people to answer. Trolling is a form of harassment that can take over a discussion. Well meaning defenders can create chaos by responding to trolls. The best response is to ignore it. Also, the person who posts such messages.
www.walthowe.com/glossary/t.html


A purposely stupid, inflammatory, or downright wrong article (closely related to flamebait). Its purpose is to get people mad and make them look stupid and gullible
www.aol.com/netfind/newsgroup/glossary.html

Deliberately post an offensive or contentious message in a public message base, with the specific intent of provoking flames.
associate.com/camsoc/ctt/gloss-t.html


A post that is intentionally inflammatory and which is typically an attempt to start a flamewar. One who posts trolls.
www.sff.net/people/lucy-snyder/gloss.html


An annoyance usually on Messageboards who posts for the purpose of causing a disturbance. Often by making comments of a slanderous nature, accusatory, or just general pain-in-the-assness.
www.sanguinarius.org/~sarasvati/terms.htm


A term used to define a public message (either on a USENET newsgroup or other public message board on an online service) that is posted for the sole purpose of offending people and/or generating an enormous flood of non-topic replies. (submitted by Brett Palmer)
www.cyberalaska.com/alaska/webpage/dictionary.html


You didn't post your essay in an open discussion forum about the war, you posted an article negative about Zionism in a community of Jews, where most people will obviously be pro-Zionism. Since you didn't post in any of the anti-Zionism communities, we can only assume you posted here to upset people and provoke them into posting in disagreement. That makes you a troll. Here are a few communities where your post would be more appropriate, and you may get the debate you claim to want.

http://www.livejournal.com/community/anti_zionists/
http://www.livejournal.com/community/antizionism/
http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=dear_jews
http://www.livejournal.com/community/israel_arab/"

Reply 9 from The Prodigal Son

"Don't feed the trolls."

Reply 10 from

""If you didn't like what you read why didn't you stay away?"* * [that's me but cut I think]

Why the hell should I?

What kind of stupid-ass logic is that? "

Reply 11 from Aurora Celeste

"You keep mentioning ethnic cleansing and stating that Isreael is guilty of using it on occassions. I am wondering if you can name times and places for this. I've personally never heard of any instances, but if you can prove me wrong I'll admit being mistaken.

Noun 1. ethnic cleansing - the mass expulsion and killing of one ethic or religious group in an area by another ethnic or religious group in that area "

[I think I sent her a link to the nasty Benny Morris.]

Reply 12 from Aurora Celeste

LOL, depends on the subject. I'll write pages and pages on teaching someone to sew ;)

Reply 13 from Princess Anika (pradagirl)

"Go away Troll!!!"

Reply 14 from Daniel Faigin - California Highway Guy (cahwyguy)

"In addition to the FAQ words, I'd like to add some comments of my own.

Judaism is a religion.

Actually, this is imprecise. It is simultaneous a relgion, a nation, and a culture. However, it is not an ethnicity, which would imply there are certain ethnic characteristics common to all Jews.

The chosen people may or may not be a superiority notion depending on interpretation.

It is not a superiority notion. Chosen refers to "chosen to carry the burden of following Torah".

Zionism however is most definitely sectarian, or indeed racist.

Neither. It is not sectarian, as Zionism is simply the desire for a state. It is not racism, for Judaism is not a race (except, perhaps, in certain WWII military leaders' mindsets).

Under Israel's laws whilst non-refugees from what was Palestine are not allowed to return there, those of us who are born Jewish can "return" there even though we don't come from there.

Israel's laws are distinct from Judaism. I don't think the wierdjews forum is the place to discuss the secular issue that is Israel's laws: that's for a mid-east politics discussion.

Under Israeli law you have to convert to orthodox Judaism (hahalacha) in order to be accepted...

That's not 100% true. Conversions performs internal to the state are subject to that restriction, simply because of the legal power of the Chief Rabbi. Conversions performed outside of the state are accepted for the law of return; other purposes are less clear.

Jewishness is the ethnic background of the descendants of people who have practiced Judaism. This means that you can be a Jew even if you do not believe in Judaism. You can be a Jewish athiest for example.

Although one can be a Jewish athetist, it is not ethnic, for there are multiple ethnicities that make up the rainbow of Judaism, be they eastern European, southern European, African, Asian, Russian, Yemini, etc. "Culture" might be a more precise term than ethnicity.

Further, by going into the "descendants of people who have practiced Judaism", you are falling into the genetic Judaism trap that was used during WWII by the Nazis to classify people as ¼ Jewish, ½ Jewish, etc. That's bull, and has been scientifically proven as bull.

Some people compare Zionism to other movements for national liberation but this is wrong. For example the demand for statehood for, say, Palestinians is a demand for a state to be governed for and by the people of Palestine (aka Israel and the occupied territories) or the demand for French statehood is a demand for a government for and by the people of France.

NPR recently had a reasonably good series on this. The key point is that there wasn't a formally governed nation of Palestine either. There was no desire express for statehood by the nomadic peoples of the area, except as a reaction to the state of Israel. IIRC, the other nations in the area, in fact, were viewed as the outlets for Arab nationalism, but where ursurpped by the leaders of those nations.

An interesting question to ask with respect to this, which is rarely asked, is: Why shouldn't the Jews have their own state?". After all, the Catholics have a state (Vatican City); the Anglicans have a state (England), and there are many, many Muslim states. Irrespective of the location, why shouldn't there be a state?

If you believe there should, then the question of location arises. Any location chosen will displace someone, so the question is how to do it equitably. So, again, your dispute is not with Zionism, but with the legal policies of the state and how they handled the displacement. That's not a discussion for wierdjews.

but only Israel owes its existence to those two things together: ethnic cleansing and apartheid laws.

If there is to be a reasoned discussion of this, one must move away from pejorative terminiology, that is, terms that have judgement already applied to them. Terrorist is one. So is "ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid".

Zionism is a form of racism.

I have previously rebutted this point."

Reply 15 from otakushan (otakushan)

"From Israel's declaration of independence:

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions."

Reply 16 from Princess Anika (pradagirl)

Boo freaking hoo....
cry me a river

Reply 17 from The Prodigal Son... returns? (angel_thane)

"In fairness, Israel currently does have plans to engage in ethnic cleansing.

Of course, this ethnic cleansing consists of ethnically cleansing the gaza strip of all jewish residents, which probably isn't what he meant."

Reply 18 Daniel Faigin - California Highway Guy (cahwyguy)

"Now that's what I call a fairly fair comment except having said that racism is an imprecise term you then go on to offer a precise definition so as to exclude Zionism from it.

Quoting from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

Main Entry: rac·ism
Pronunciation: 'rA-"si-z&m also -"shi-

Function: noun

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

So, it is not my definition. It is the generally accepted definition. Judaism is not a race. Therefore, Zionism, cannot, be definition, be racism.

The desire of Zionists to have a space for Jewish sovereignty ignores the fact that when the movement arose, no such space was available.

This is also not true. If you know your zionist history, you should know that Hertzl (at least I recall it was Hertzl) originally proposed Uganda as the Jewish state. I believe it was Britain that moved it to the middle-east.

So ethnic cleansing was required, as Benny Morris has discovered and now, enthusiastically advocates.

Ethnic Cleansing is a pejorative term, and shouldn't be used. It typically refers to ethnic genocide, as was performed in Germany, Turkey, and the Balkins, and has decidedly NOT been performed in Israel.

Whenever a new state is formed, there are often relocations of indiginous populations. Good or bad, this is what happens. Look at the treatment of Native Americans. The question is whether it was done equitablly, and that is neither a zionist nor Jewish question: it is a political question made by the new state of Israel.

The Jews are not a race it's true, but the who is? We are, however, mostly a descent group, and that descent confers rights on those who are born Jewish more rights in Israel than people who come from there.

Again, a political question, independent from both Zionism and Judaism. Sounds like you have a political dispute with the state of Israel. Such discussions belong elsewhere." [this might get confusing - he is quoting me in parts and responding to the quotes]

Reply 19 from Daniel Faigin - California Highway Guy (cahwyguy)

"[I did notice you suggesting that I somehow came close to a Nazi definition of who is a Jew. I think you'll find that the Law of Return goes for people with one Jewish grandparent just as the Nuremberg Laws did. Though of course for different reasons.] [that's me]

Actually, quite likely for similar reasons, as one of the reasons for that law was to establish Israel as a haven for folks fleeing such cleansing as occurred in Germany."

Reply 20 from Daniel Faigin - California Highway Guy (cahwyguy)

"But who is native? After all, go back 2000 years, and the Jews were native."

Reply 21 from Daniel Faigin - California Highway Guy (cahwyguy)

"The vast majority of Jews are native to Israel.

All Hebrews (ie those of the hebraic half of the semitic race) are derived from the area of Israel. They are the native people of the land.

It doesn't matter how long you take an Aboriginal Canadian out of Canada, he (and his decendants) are still the native people of Canada.

It doesn't matter how long some blacks have been living in the carribbean or north america,they are still the native people of Africa.

It doesn't matter how long ssome Hebraic people have been in exile from their homeland, they are still the native people of Israel."

Reply 22 from Ilex011

"Gee, and all the while you claim to take the moral high road, you do the same thing as your detractors!

BRILLIANT!!!"

Reply 23 from Daniel Faigin - California Highway Guy (cahwyguy)

"That's bias. Not racism. I don't think you'll get as many arguments if you use the term "biased".

if someone told me I couldn't buy my house in Dagenham (UK) because I am Jewish I would call them a racist. Similarly people who apply that same principle to non-Jews I call racist.

And you would be wrong in your terms. The correct term is "discriminatory"."

Reply 24 from Daniel Faigin - California Highway Guy (cahwyguy)

""The Zionist movement was formalised in the 19th century, the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Nazi occupied territory happened in the 20th and please don't say you didn't know about Zionist collaboration with the Nazis and other anti-Semitic groups." [me again]

I've heard the stories of which you mention. In any case, although Zionism was the product of the 19th century, the Law of Return is from the State of Israel, which is the product of post-WWII 20th Century. "

Reply 25 from Poof (tigeress52)

"it's sad that your views of your own people are so warped. hopefully you'll wake up one day and realize how horribly, horribly wrong you are. good luck."

Reply 26 from ilex011

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!

Man, go tighten the tin foil around your head- that's the BEST conspiracy theory I've heard in a long time!

ps- your weak seams are showing. when in doubt, *don't* rely on attempting to be condescending! that trick is tired and played-out like... like an old conspiracy theory! bwahahaha! "minutiae"- bwhahahahaaa!! the "professor" persona *never* works anymore. everyone has seen it. time to put your tin-foiled thinking cap on and come up with something a bit more surruptitious, no?

*snort*"

Reply 27 from Daniel Faigin - California Highway Guy (cahwyguy)

"You were referring to the removal of the native inhabitants. My point is that Jews were native inhabitants of that area at one time; they were forcibly removed by the Babylonians, Romans, Ottomans, etc.

"Jews", in general, are made up of different ethnicities. But this is a different issue than the fact that Jews did, provably, live in the middle east in the past"

Reply 28 from ilex011

Here take this slowly now."

HAHAHAHAHAHA! When in doubt, resort to condenscension! Good call! Overused and tired, albeit.

" I ASKED you why you stick around. You TOLD me to go. Very different."

...another troll tactic- divert from the original point by attempting to get the responder entangled in useless MINUTIAE!

"You seem to have lost the plot."

Nope. It's crystal-clear to me, pal.

That's all the replies to my "free" (well now unfree) standing post but here is a nice reponse to the originator of the thread I originally responded to. Unfortunately I cannot thank her because I am banned from the Weird Jews site.

slayer of the poon perpetrators (ill_esha) said:

"Interesting points. I don't necessarily agree with them, but I appreciate them - your logic is pretty sound.

Thank you for understanding what I should have written explicitly - that I meant "debate" where I wrote "argue"." [cor if only the rest were like her]

THE SILENCING OF DISSENT - How do they get away with it?

By Paul Eisen


As the onslaught on the Palestinian people continues and the hundred-year conquest of Palestine enters what may be its final stages, efforts by the Israeli, Zionist and Jewish establishments to silence any remaining criticism of Israel and Zionism intensify. At the centre of these efforts is the claim that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. Critics of Israel are warned that whilst like any other democratic state, Israel is open to criticism of its policies, any criticism of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is, by definition, anti-Semitic.

As the onslaught on the Palestinian people continues and the hundred-year conquest of Palestine enters what may be its final stages, efforts by the Israeli, Zionist and Jewish establishments to silence any remaining criticism of Israel and Zionism intensify. At the centre of these efforts is the claim that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. Critics of Israel are warned that whilst like any other democratic state, Israel is open to criticism of its policies, any criticism of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is, by definition, anti-Semitic.

First, it is not true that we are free to criticize Israeli policies since so many perfectly legitimate criticisms of Israeli policy are blanketed as attacks on Israel's right to self-defense and therefore as attacks on Israel's right to exist and, therefore themselves as anti-Semitic. But what of the core argument that, since all other peoples are entitled to statehood, to deny to Jews that which is granted to everyone else is discriminatory and, therefore, anti-Semitic?

There are of course some who really do want to "push the Jews into the sea", and there are certainly those who say that Jews are not a nation, but a religious group. There are others who undoubtedly would deny the right of Jews to establish a state anywhere. These people can fight their own battles. For my part, if Jews say they are a nation, that's fine and if Jews want to wear blue-and-white, wave flags and set up a state on some piece of uninhabited and unclaimed land, although I won't be joining them, that's also fine. The problem is when this state is established on someone else's land and maintained at someone else's expense.

So what is this state of Israel, this Jewish state, whose existence we are forbidden to question? Founded on the expulsion and exile of another people, and defining itself as for Jews alone, Israel officially and unofficially, overtly and covertly, discriminates against non-Jews. Is denying Jews such a state denying them that which is granted to all others? One may agree or disagree with any of this. One may argue for or against Jewish nationhood, the need for a Jewish state, the right of Jews to have a state in Palestine, and even, post-Holocaust, the justification for Jews to establish that state at the expense of another people. One can agree or disagree with any of this, but is such agreement or disagreement necessarily anti-Semitic?

ANTI-ZIONISM EQUAL ANTI-SEMITISM?

The anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism argument amounts to this: If you do not agree with the right of Jews to go to Palestine, settle there en masse against the wishes of the indigenous population, expel this population from 75% of their land and then, for the next fifty years and more, continue this assault on the remaining land and population, then you are an anti-Semite. Similarly, if you do not support the existence of an ethnically based state which defines itself as being for Jews only and discriminates officially both inside and outside its borders against non-Jews, then, again, you are an anti-Semite.

This would be laughable if it came from any other group of people, yet coming from Jews, even though not always agreed with, it is still seen as legitimate. So how do they get away with it? No-one else does, so what's special about Jews?

Whether there is anything special about Jews is not really relevant. What is relevant is that a large part of the Western world, even the most secular part, seems to believe that there is, or, if they don't believe it, are not confident enough in their disbelief to say so. The Western world seems at times almost obsessed with Jews and Jewish life. Stories of struggle from the Hebrew Bible, such as the Exodus from Egypt, have become paradigms for other people's struggles and aspirations. The emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe into their Golden Land in America has become as American a legend as the Wild West. Jewish folklore and myth, stereotypes of Jewish humour, food and family life-all are deeply woven into the fabric of Western, particularly American, life. Yet these preoccupations are complicated and often ambivalent Despite our present secularity, Christianity still occupies a central place in Western culture and experience, and Jews occupy a central place in the Christian narrative, so it is no surprise that Jews and Jewish concerns receive a lot of attention. But Christian attitudes towards Jews are themselves complex and contradictory: Jesus was born a Jew and died a Jew, and yet, traditionally, His teachings supersede those of Judaism. Jesus lived amongst Jews, His message was shaped by Jews yet He was rejected by Jews and, it has been widely believed, died at the behest of Jews. So, for many Christians, Jews are both the people of God and the people who rejected God, and are objects of both great veneration and great loathing. This ambivalence is reflected in the secular world too where Jews are widely admired for their history and traditions and for their creativity and success yet are also held in some suspicion and dislike for their exclusivity and supposed feelings of 'specialness'. Jews seem either loved or hated and, now since the Holocaust, publicly at least, they seem loved or at least if not loved, then certainly, indulged.

IS JEWISH SUFFERING UNIQUE?

The establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948, coming just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945, marks, for Jews, the transition from enslavement to empowerment. This empowerment of Jews took place not only with the establishment of Israel, but also continuously, from the mass emigration of Jews to the West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to the present day. Today in the West Jews enjoy unparalleled political, economic and social power and influence. Jews are represented way beyond their numbers in the upper echelons of all areas of public and professional life-politics, academia, the arts, the media and business. But even more than the political and economic power which Jews possess, is the social power. Jews have a moral prestige derived from their history and traditions as a chosen and as a suffering people. In these more secular times, however, especially since the Holocaust, it is as a suffering people that Jews occupy their special place in Western culture.

That Jews have suffered is undeniable. But acknowledgement of this suffering is rarely enough. Jews and others have demanded that not only should Jewish suffering be acknowledged but that it also be accorded special status. Jewish suffering is rarely measured against the sufferings of other groups. Blacks, women, children, gays, workers, peasants, minorities of all kinds, all have suffered, but none as much as Jews. Protestants at the hands of Catholics, Catholics at the hands of Protestants, pagans and heretics, all have suffered religious persecution, but none as relentlessly as Jews. Indians, Armenians, Gypsies and Aborigines, all have been targeted for elimination, but none as murderously and as premeditatedly as Jews

Jewish suffering is held to be mysterious and beyond explanation. Context is rarely examined. The place and role of Jews in society - their historical relationships with Church and state, landlords and peasantry - is hardly ever subject to scrutiny, and, whilst non-Jewish attitudes to Jews are the subject of intense interest, Jewish attitudes to non-Jews are rarely mentioned. Attempts to confront these issues are met with suspicion, and sometimes hostility, because of a fear that explanation may lead to rationalization, which may lead to exculpation, and then even to justification.

The stakes in this already fraught game have been raised so much higher by the Holocaust. Is the Holocaust "The ultimate mystery, never to be comprehended or transmitted" as Elie Wiesel would have us believe? Are attempts to question the Holocaust narrative just a cover for denial or even justification? Was Jewish suffering in the Holocaust greater and of more significance than that of anyone else? Were the three million Polish Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis more important than the three million Polish non-Jews who also died? Twenty million black Africans, a million Ibos, a million Kampucheans, Armenians, Aborigines, all have perished in genocides, but none as meaningfully as the six million Jews slaughtered in the only genocide to be theologically named and now perceived by Jews and the rest of the Western world to be an event of near religious significance.

Jews have not been just passive recipients of all this special treatment and consideration. The special status accorded to Israel's behaviour in Palestine, and Jewish support for it, is not something that the Jewish establishment has accepted reluctantly. On the contrary, Jews and Jewish organisations have demanded it. And at the heart of this demand for special consideration is the demand that the whole world, recognising the uniqueness of Jewish suffering, should join with Jews in their fears about anti-Semitism and of its resurgence.

Anti-Semitism in its historic, virulent and eliminationist form did exist and could certainly exist again, but it does not currently exist in the West in any significantly observable form. Jews have never been so secure or empowered, yet many Jews feel and act as if they are a hair's breadth away from Auschwitz. And not only this, but they require that everybody else feel the same. So soon after the Holocaust this is perhaps understandable, but less so when it is used to silence dissent and criticism of Israel and Zionism. Jews, individually and collectively use their political, economic, social, and moral power in support of Israel and Zionism. In their defense of Israel and Zionism, Jews brandish their suffering at the world, accusing it of reverting to its old anti-Semitic ways.

THE SILENCING OF DISSENT.

Is a Jewish state acceptable in this day and age? Are the Jews a people who qualify for national self-determination, or are Jews a religious group only? Post-Holocaust, does the Jewish need for a state of their own perhaps even justify the displacement of the Palestinians? Are Jews who wield power to serve what they perceive as their own ethnic interests and to support Israel, to be held politically accountable? What is anti-Semitism? Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism? All this and a great deal more could and should be debated. What need not be debated is this: that every complexity and ambiguity of Jewish identity and history, every example of Jewish suffering, every instance of anti-Jewish prejudice, however inconsequential, is used to justify the crimes of Israel and Zionism. Every possible interpretation or misinterpretation of language, and every kind of intellectual sophistry is used by Zionists to muddy the waters and label the critic of Israel and Zionism an anti-Semite. Words and phrases become loaded with hidden meanings, so that even the most honest critic of Israel has to twist and turn and jump through hoops to ensure that he or she is not perceived as anti-Semitic.

And the penalties for transgression are terrible. For those who do not manage to pick their way through this minefield, the charge of anti-Semite awaits, with all its possibilities of political, religious and social exclusion. No longer a descriptive term for someone who hates Jews simply for being Jews, 'anti-Semite' is now a curse to hurl against anyone who dares to criticise Jews and, increasingly against anyone who dares, too trenchantly, to criticize Israel and Zionism. And for those Jews of conscience who dare speak out, for them there is reserved the special penalty of exclusion from Jewish life and exile.

Marc Ellis's 'ecumenical deal' which translates also into a political deal, says it all. It goes like this: To the Christian and to the entire non-Jewish world, Jews say this: 'You will apologise for Jewish suffering again and again and again. And, when you have finished apologising, you will then apologise some more. When you have apologised sufficiently we will forgive you, provided you let us do what we want in Palestine.'

As hard as it may be, for the sake of us all - Jew and non-Jew alike, do we not now have to break free?

Paul Eisen is a director of Deir Yassin Remembered and is on the Executive Committee of Sabeel UK. dyr@eisen.demon.co.uk

This article is based on "Speaking the Truth to Jews" which will appear in a forthcoming book, "Speaking the Truth about Israel and Zionism", edited by Michael Prior and published by Melisende in March 2004.

PAUL EISEN

Holocaust Analogies: Repaying the Mortgage
By Tony Greenstein, in RETURN, March 1990

"Although theoretical differences can be drawn between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism", noted Jacob Gewirtz of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, at a symposium on anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, "these are distinctions without a difference...In this respect the fascists - odious as they are - have at least the virtue of candour" (1). The conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism has been a primary component of Zionism's ideological armoury for over 40 years.

As a self-styled 'national' movement, Zionism claims to represent all Jews, irrespective of their wishes and wherever they live. Support for the Palestinian national struggle and opposition to Zionism, and its concept of a 'Jewish people', is interpreted as hatred of Jews as Jews, i.e.. anti-Semitism. Jewish anti-Zionists are dismissed as 'self-haters' (2). For example, when Dundee Council twinned with Nablus on the West Bank, a massive campaign was waged to associate the Council's actions with anti-Semitic daubings and activity in the town (3).

It is a conjuring trick which has mesmerized many an audience, but as with all such illusions has gradually lost its effectiveness. The problem for the Zionist movement is whether the equation of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism can still be useful in intimidating its opponents.

Some, like Walter Goldsmith, the then Director General of the Institute of Directors doubted it. Speaking at the annual luncheon of the Friends of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem he ventured that "the Holocaust mortgage has now been settled and should be used less frequently as a justification for revenge and sympathy" (4). The cynicism of this ardent Thatcherite, in describing the Holocaust as a 'mortgage' - an asset to be disposed of and traded on the political market as needs dictate - would in anybody else, especially non-Jewish, be termed anti-Semitic.

Indeed the fascists too draw attention to the use of the Holocaust as a 'mortgage' by the Zionists, using this as the political basis for their assertion that the Holocaust is a myth.

This hasn't prevented some from trying to have it both ways. Gill Seidel, a prominent Zionist Feminist believes that "Whereas the Nazis and the Third Reich referred to 'Jews' and alleged 'Jewish plots', contemporary Nazis refer to 'Zionists' and 'international Zionism'...this strategic shift is a feature of post-war fascist movements. The equation of 'Jews' and 'Zionist' is not just a facile and misleading formula but part of a well-planned strategy which attracts the allegiance of non-fascists including uncritical section of the far-left" (5)

Zionisation of the Holocaust

For over 40 years, Zionism has had a monopoly on the history of the Holocaust and its interpretation. The Holocaust has been used to prove the historical necessity of Zionism; which argues that if there had been a Jewish state in 1939, then there would have been no Holocaust. The Holocaust is portrayed as a consequence, not of the social, political and economic factors that led to the rise of fascism in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, but of the 'national homelessness' of Jews.

The Zionist movement used the plight of European Jewry in order to batter open the gates of Palestine. At no time did they call for immigration barriers to be lowered in the West, on the contrary they opposed lowering them and their attitude to the Evian Conference, called in 1938 to discuss the refugee question, is best described by a Zionist historian:

They realised that a conference whose primary purpose was to find alternatives to Jewish immigration to Palestine was not going to do their cause any good, and it would not be excessive to say that the truly dedicated Zionists hoped for the failure of the Evian talks. How disastrous it would be for Zionism if Australia say were to agree to admit a million Jews at once! They did not want a Jewish colony in Australia, they wanted Europe's suffering Jews to go only to Palestine, and if getting them there meant a prolongation of their suffering until the political climate was right, so be it. No better means of winning Palestine for Jews could be imagined than the existence of hundreds of thousands of displaced European Jews whom no other land would accept (6)

The Zionist movement in America, where imperialism's political center of gravity, and hence Zionism, had shifted, held its most important conference at the Biltmore Hotel in April 1943 and a larger, all-American conference the following year, at which the call for a Jewish state was first explicitly expounded. When Auschwitz was burning 12,000 Jews a day, and a possible future Jewish state was irrelevant to the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe, the priorities of Zionism were on future state-building. Some, like Nathan Schwalb, Jewish Agency representative in Switzerland, went so far as to state that

All the nations of the Allies are spilling much blood and if we do not bring sacrifices, with what will we achieve the right to sit at the table when they make the division of nations and territories after the war? (7)

Another Zionist historian reaches similar conclusions:

As the European holocaust erupted, Ben-Gurion saw it as a decisive opportunity for Zionism. Just as Weizmann in the first war had realised the opportunities presented by the fluid political situation, so now Ben-Gurion above all others sensed chaos and carnage in Europe...In conditions of peace, it was clear, Zionism could not move the massed of world Jewry. The forces unleashed by Hitler in all their horror must therefore be harnessed to the advantage of Zionism...By the end of 1942 little doubt remained about the enormity of the Nazi purpose. By this time the Zionist movement itself was transformed. While hopes and efforts for the rescue of Europe's Jews continued, the struggle for a Jewish state became the primary concern of the movement (8)

Morris Ernst, a non-Zionist lawyer, wrote that he was amazed "when active Jewish leaders decried, sneered and then attacked me as if I were a traitor. At one dinner party I was openly accused of furthering this plan of free immigration in order to undermine political Zionism..." (9)

Abba Hillel Silver, Reform Rabbi and militant leader of American Zionism declared:

Are we again, in moments of desperation going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism, which is likely to defeat Zionism. Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is not a product of the second World War, nor of the first. Were there no displaced Jews in Europe and were there free opportunities for Jewish immigration in other parts of the world at this time, Zionism would still be an imperative necessity (10)

Yet the Holocaust was a most powerful ideological justification for the creation and survival of the Israeli state. Having politically conquered the post-war western Jewish communities, when a mood of despair arose as a result of the Nazi extermination, Zionism rewrote the history of the Jewish Diaspora from its own perspective, including of course the myth of a 2000 years longing to 'return' to Zion (11).

Yet Zionism's attitude to the Holocaust was a contradictory one. On the one hand it used the Holocaust as its legitimation, on the other hand the ideological and political framework it operated within concerning the need for 'national/racial' separation from other nations, and the obsession with demography and purity of the national entity, was no different from that of the anti-Semitic movements whose activities led directly to the Holocaust. For example the 'loss' to the Jewish nation/volk because of abortion in Israel was compared by the British Chief Rabbi, Immanuel Jackobovitz and others, to the losses sustained in the Holocaust. Similarly the 'loss' of Jews through assimilation to the non-Jews amongst whom they live, is also compared to the losses of the Holocaust (12).

The Holocaust Analogy Inverted

Although Zionists consistently brand their anti-Zionist opponents as anti-Semitic, little different from Nazis (13), it (sic) has reacted with a mixture of fury and impotence when its main ideological weapon is turned against it.

During the Lebanon war, the Israeli embassy printed a pamphlet which referred to "the atrocities of the bloodthirsty depraved and evil criminal organisation called the PLO (which) should be compared to those of the Nazis", and even while Beirut was being bombed, the PLO fighters were equated to the Nazi murderers of Oradour sur Glane (14).

As Chaim Bermant, a weekly columnist of the Jewish Chronicle wrote, in an open letter to Menachem Begin, "I am aware that you have spoken of the PLO and their leaders as Nazis, but to speak in such terms is not to blacken the Palestinians, but to exculpate the Germans" (15).

For socialists, the Holocaust is an example of where racism can lead. Extermination is the ultimate, perverse logic of racism and its imperialist handmaiden. But whereas socialists locate the triumph of fascism and anti-Semitism in the defeat and division of the German working class, and the inertia of reformism, Zionism reduces anti-Semitism to the antagonism of non-Jews to the stranger in their midst.

A variation upon this theme is the (alleged) traditional hostility of Christianity to Judaism. In the publishers' preface to Seidel's book, the Beyond the Pale Collective writes that "Antisemitism can be seen as a product of Christianity. It is an ideology, a world-view, which depicts the Jew as Christ-killer and, therefore the Devil..." (16). Likewise Steve Cohen, at the time a member of the Jewish Socialists Group, argues that although:

the ancient roots of anti-Semitism as an ideology can perhaps be found in the pre-Christian world...the development of anti-Semitism as a theory is a consequence of Christianity...Christianity transformed notions of Jewish disloyalty into a fundamentally demonic view of the entire world: it equated Jewry with a universal satanic influence. Such an equation is probably inherent within Christianity, as a theology, because of the identification of Jews with the crucifixion (17)

Both Seidel and Cohen locate the causes of anti-Semitism, an ideology, in another ideology, Christianity. Apart from an ahistorical and essentialist understanding of Christianity and its changing attitude to Jews (today Christian anti-Semitism is confined to the fundamentalist Protestants - the most pro-Zionist Christians of all - and the most reactionary/anti-liberation theology Catholics) it allows for no strategy in fighting anti-Semitism should it reoccur on a major scale.

Seidel and Cohen are typical of what one might term the new-left, neo-feminist, identity politics Zionists. And they are also at one with traditional Zionist analysis, of the left and the right, in rejecting any materialist or class analysis of anti-Semitism that could explain the origins and changing form of anti-Semitism (e.g. from religious to racial). Cohen tells us that "anti-Semitism as an ideology has nothing to do with the behaviour of even one single Jew, let alone of all Jews. It is a view of the world based on myths and fantasies. To attempt to locate the source of such myths in Jewish life is ultimately a major concession to that ideology" (18). The obvious question that arises is, where in that case do these anti-Semitic myths and stereotypes, for example about Jews and money, arise ? Why the Jews? Why do similar myths about for example the Chinese (termed the 'Jews of Asia') arise? Or the Scots as a 'mean' or 'canny' people? The irony is that Cohen dedicates his book to Abram Leon, the Jewish Trotskyist who wrote the classic materialist analysis of the Jewish question. (19).

Blaming anti-Semitism on Christianity is a favourite theme of right-wing Zionists too. Robert Maxwell funded a major conference on the Holocaust, chaired by his wife Elizabeth, where this was the dominant theme (20). The furore over the Carmelite nunnery at Auschwitz is similarly motivated.

Anti-Semitism is thus seen as above class. Cohen devotes his first chapter to proving how anti-Semitic the British working class were at the turn of the Century, and nothing at all to why those very same workers (especially the Catholic dockers of the East End of London, who should have been drunk on Crucifixion stories) joined with the Jews in the fight against Moseley. Only class, and the consciousness of class, can explain what the Zionist fable of 'eternal anti-Semitism' signally fails to. Also ignored, by Cohen and more generally the generation of Holocaust historians - Gilbert, Lacquer, Bauer et al. - is that the German working class, as election statistics make blindingly clear, remained virtually immune to anti-Semitism and gave virtually no support to Nazism (21).

This typically bourgeois version of history is that which is ladled out to German school-children today, in their American written syllabus. This concentration on the guilt of all Germans for the Holocaust, national collective responsibility, a theme of Zionism too, has allowed Schonhubber and the fascist German Republikaner, to play an extremely strong card in their appeal to the young.

Lessons of the Holocaust

It is no wonder that Zionism fought against any generalisation or universalisation of the lessons of the Holocaust. For Zionism the Holocaust is a Jewish event. Its only message to non-Jews is for them to give uncritical acceptance of Zionism and Israeli expansion out of a feeling of guild. Whereas for socialists the Holocaust is but one example of imperialism's genocidal character - the Amerindians, Aborigines, Armenians, Guatemalan Indians, Kampucheans, Tasmanians - for Zionism there are only Jewish dead and a Jewish Holocaust. "The Holocaust was unique in its barbaric cruelty" wrote Dr. Kurzer, Vice-Chairman of the Polish Jewish Ex-Servicemen's Association in a fairly typical rendition of the Zionist sonata (22).

A good example of this is Zionism's attitude to the genocide of the Armenians.

The involvement of Israeli diplomats and American Jews in the Turkish struggle against a memorial day for the Armenians in the United States is not the first case that (they opposed) the concept 'holocaust' crossing its conventional boundaries in this case with the terrible disasters which befell the Armenian people 75 years ago...The ready answer of the Israeli representatives for such cases is that lending out the concept 'holocaust' to describe the disasters of another nation dwarfs the Nazis' deeds against the Jewish people and erases their terrible exclusiveness...The Foreign Office spokesman explained the objections to including the Armenian genocide (not 'holocaust')....by a concern for not 'harming Jewish humanitarian interests'....Israeli diplomats are ready to erase the vague concept of 'humanitarian' and to replace it with 'Israeli' (23)

Turkey is the only state in the Middle East with a Muslim majority which has always had close diplomatic, intelligence and military relations with Israel. Zionist relations with Turkey go back to the Ottoman Empire when Theodor Herzl wrote favourably in his paper 'Neue Freie Presse', about the Ottoman treatment of the Armenians in return for sympathetic consideration of Zionism (24).

In 1978, following a Turkish protest, Israeli television banned a documentary about the Armenian quarter of Jerusalem which included a passing mention of the slaughter of 1915...Elie Wiesel (Auschwitz survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner who has never once criticised Israeli brutality against the Palestinians - Ed.), Gideon Hausner (prosecutor in the Eichmann trial - Ed.) and others cancelled their participation in an international conference in Tel Aviv entitled 'Holocaust and Genocide'. They surrendered to the combined pressures of the Israeli Foreign Office and the leadership of the Jewish community in Turkey (25)

Lucy Dawidowicz, a right-wing Zionist argues that "By submitting Jewish losses under a universal or ecumenical classification of human suffering, one can blur the distinctiveness of Jewish fate and consequently one can disclaim the presence of anti-Semitism" (26).

But all this came unstuck during the Lebanon invasion. Headlines like 'Belsen comes to Beirut', 'Holocaust: Begin style' (27) cartoons depicting Begin in Nazi uniform standing on a sea of skeletons (28) and other comparisons with the Nazis were common. Those who had remained silent when Zionism compared the Palestinians and anti-Zionists to the Nazis found their tongues.

Steve Cohen led the way in denouncing this threat to the carefully constructed self-identity of the new-left Zionists.

The entire Left described the Lebanon invasion by invoking the language of the 'holocaust' and the 'final solution'. This use of language is itself anti-Semitic...The reason why the use of language such as 'holocaust' and 'final solution', when applied to Zionism, is anti-Jewish is because these words are no longer neutral or objective. They have a particular political significance. They refer to Jewish people. In fact they refer to all Jewish people - because it was the genocide of all Jewish people that was contemplated in the final solution (29(

Similarly Francesca Klug of the Jewish Feminist Group argued that such comparisons mean "By comparison then all the survivors and their descendants become responsible for the horrors of the Israeli government" (30). And during the campaign around Clause 28, the JSG was unhappy at the comparisons with the Nazis' anti-Gay policies (31). Use of Holocaust imagery and analogies is apparently anti-Semitic because they have 'a particular significance'. Not only is Cohen factually wrong - the Nazis also exterminated Gays, Gypsis, the mentally and physically handicapped, and intended exterminating the slave people, the Slavs - but if the Holocaust cannot be used in order to generalise, to warn of the horrors of racism and imperialism (including those of Israel), then the Holocaust as a component of identity becomes mere self-indulgence, a badge of distinction in the hierarchy of oppressions, a weapon against those who are oppressed.

Zionism seeks in the Holocaust a negative identity, an identity of suffering, of pain - not as a lesson for others of the evils of racism - but as a reinforcement of its own message that whatever excesses the Israeli state may perpetuate today, all can be excused by the past. The moral it draws is that Jews cannot rely on non-Jews in the fight against anti-Semitism, we can only trust our own 'kith and kin', and where Jews are a minority, strangers, in 'Exile' (Galut), anti-Semitism will prevail. The answer lies in Jewish strength in its 'own' homeland. Anti-Semitism cannot be fought. This is similar to the way the Afrikaaners use the memory of the Boer War (and British concentration camps) to justify apartheid, in the process reinforcing their siege mentality.

For the Israeli funded Union of Jewish Students (UJS),

linking Zionism to Nazis...abuses the most traumatic period in our history. The use of Shoah (Holocaust) imagery, and the equation of Zionism with Nazism, are based on lies, falsehoods and a distortion of Jewish history, which can only guarantee that the lessons of the Shoah are instantly forgotten. (32)

UJS, which is extremely apt at equating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, neither explains what the 'lessons of the Shoah' are, nor how one can 'abuse a period', traumatic or otherwise.

In SHOAH, Claude Lanzmann's nine hour epic on the Holocaust (33) (Shoah is the Hebrew name for, and a part of the continued Zionisation of, the Holocaust) the conclusions reached are typically racist and reactionary. The Holocaust could not, apparently, have occurred in civilised France; forgetting Drancy concentration camp, the large number of French Jews betrayed to the Gestapo, Vichy anti-Semitism and the deportation of Ost-Juden. Poland however was ready made for the extermination of Jews; in the words of Yitzhak Shamir, Poles "imbibed anti-Semitism with their mother's milk". It is forgotten that Poland suffered more than any other country at the hands of the Nazis, its intelligentsia exterminated, that the Polish working class and a section of the peasantry had opposed anti-Semitism. The Zionist movement inside and outside Poland had close relations with the anti-Semitic governments there, Begin's revisionist militia was even allowed military training facilities (34).

Israel, Zionism and the Holocaust

In Israel, the term applied to refugees from the Holocaust is 'soap' - [sabon]. "The term has since become generic for cowardice and weakness" (35). This attitude is an integral part of Zionism's contempt for Jews, the 'Diaspora', outside Israel. Contempt, and even hatred, spilling over into an attitude that says Jewish communities experiencing anti-Semitism deserve all they get, that anti-Semitism is merely a form of nationalism, the non-Jewish equivalent of Zionism, and therefore equally justified. Israeli novelist, poet and Labour Party supporter, A.B. Yehoshua, articulates this tradition in Zionism. Speaking to a meeting of the British Zionist Youth Council, he described the Jewish Diaspora as a "cancer connected to the mainstream of the Jewish people" (36).

Despite the attempts, not least by left Zionists, to divorce the Holocaust from Zionism and Israel's actions today, within Israel such comparisons are commonplace.

For Zionism, the Holocaust serves not as a unique symbol of the evils of nationalism, but merely the necessity for Jewish nationalism. The trial of Demjanjuck (allegedly 'Ivan the Terrible' of Treblinka) was to reinforce the 'moral' foundation of Israel and ironically its present repressive policies.

Writing of the lessons of the Holocaust, Yehuda Elkan, Head of the Institute of History of the Sciences and Ideas at Tel Aviv University wrote of a

certain interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust, and by the readiness to believe that the whole world is against us and we are eternal victims. I see in this ancient faith, that is shared today by many, Hitler's tragic and paradoxical victory. From Auschwitz came out, to put it into a symbolic phrase, two peoples: a minority which claims 'this will never happen again' and a frightened anxious majority, who claim 'this will never happen to us again' (37)

Outside Israel, 'Never again' is an anti-fascist slogan yet ironically in Israel it is the slogan of the racist right and the title of Meir Kahane's book. Yehiam Weitz wrote

Let us not forget, that the fact that we are survivors of the Holocaust does not grant us even the slightest remission in everything concerning the commitment to the customary rules of morality (38)

One particularly interesting contribution is that of Professor Amos Funkenstein, Head of the Faculty of History and Philosophy of Scientific Ideas at Tel Aviv University. Referring to the controversy over the refusal of soldiers to serve in the Occupied Territories, he described how

some soldiers in the German army refused to serve in concentration camps or in places where they would be forced to accept illegal orders. They refused, for instance, to serve in extermination units or in special units and were sent to the front (39)

And to those who ask how it is possible to compare the actions of the Nazi soldiers with the Israelis, Funkenstein replies

As a historian I know that every comparison is limited. On the other hand, without comparisons, no historiography is possible. Understanding a historical event is a kind of translation into the language of our time. If we would leave every phenomenon in its peculiarity, we could not make this translation. Every translation is an interpretation and every interpretation is also a comparison (40).

It is this which Zionism fights against, any placing of the Holocaust in a historical context. The Holocaust for Zionism, is by definition ahistorical, above and beyond history. Because once it is subject to history, then the rationale for Zionism itself is questioned. Funkenstein describes the comparison that the Revisionist Zionists of Begin and Shamir used to make:

In the leaflets and publications of Etzel and Lehi, and even of the Haganah, they used to talk of the Nazi-British occupation. If so what kind of occupation are we? Sure, the situation of the Arabs in the territories cannot be compared to the situation of the Jews in Poland in 1041, when the Nazis started the policy of extermination. But between the years 1933 and 1940 or at least till 1939, the Nazi policy - the declared as well as the real policy - was to turn the Jews from citizens into subjects only.

In these years, the German government wanted to make the Jews emigrate, and for this purpose it was prepared 'to sign agreements on the transfer of property and money with the Jewish Agency....Moreover, between 1933 and 1938, till the Kristallnacht, the situation of the Jews of Germany was better in some aspects that of the Arabs in the Territories. From other points of view, their condition was, and generally their situation was, very similar to that of the Arabs in the territories. First they, too, were subjects and not citizens. Legal moves on the other hand were more accessible to the Jews of Germany than the inhabitants of the territories. A Jew there, in 1936, did not feel that he is totally outlawed. Only in 1938 did the Nazis break into their homes and stage pogroms, in dimensions similar to ours (41).

Transfer

In Israel today, opinion polls consistently show that up to half of the population support a policy of 'transfer' (42), the expulsion of the Palestinians into the neighboring Arab countries. Moledet [an Israeli right-wing party - ed.], which has two seats in the Knesset, campaigns specifically around the policy of transfer, and this policy is freely compared to the Nazi's transfer in sections of the Israeli press (43). The distinguished Israeli historian, Yigal Elam, wrote that those who sow Transfer will reap Genocide (44).

And there is the phenomenon of "those regular soldiers, who call some of their companions 'Our Nazis' meaning those who like to beat"

But if anti-Semitism was a form of racism, like so many others, that dehumanises the victims and ascribes to them certain characteristics, then is Zionist racism in Israel any different? Further, in what respect, if any, can the contradiction between the *official* ideology of anti-Nazism (46) (but not anti-racism) and repression in the West Bank/Gaza be exploited? The contradiction between a state that is Jewish, that claims the Holocaust as its moral foundation while nonetheless arming neo-Nazi juntas in Central and South America has been resolved in Israel decisively in favour of the Right.

The following extracts were recorded in an Arab restaurant in Acre, with a veteran Labour Zionist, a member of a Moshav and an ex-member of Palmach (left-Zionist shock troops in pre-State period). Referring to the Arabs, our moshavnik tells us:

They take control here of everything...it is all the Arabs' fault. They study and advance. Today the percentage of Arabs who enlist for examinations in mathematics is relatively higher than the percentage of Jews. Look how many lawyers they have here. How many doctors. How many engineers, they seize all the positions and all the jobs in the free professions, and the Jews lose.

"You mean" replies the journalist "there is discrimination in favour of the Arabs in this country?"

Sure, they don't serve in the army. They behave like a Mafia. They help each other

"But...they have thousands of disadvantages, the municipal budget in the Arab sector is perhaps 20% of the budget in the Jewish sector...Child care allowances for ex-soldiers are granted to Jews only...You are talking now like a reverse anti-Semite. Obviously, this is exactly what the gentiles said about the Jewish minority: They are like a Mafia, taking care of each other."

I don't know what the Gentiles said about the Jews (47)

Not only are cries of 'Back to the Gas Chambers' against anti-war/peace activists common in Israel today (48) but the use of Holocaust symbolism and imagery by one group against another is extremely common. Reference to the Holocaust, and the desire to make one's opponents suffer as Jews suffered under the Nazis, seems to mediate virtually all conflict within the Jewish sector of Israel. At times of crisis in the relations between Orthodox and Secular Jews, the latter take to daubing swastikas on the walls of and even arson of synagogues, the defiling of prayer books, scrolls and religious artefacts. Orthodox Jews do likewise to their secular counterparts and religious fascists paint swastikas on Christian churches (ironically the most pro-Zionist ones). And Oriental Jews, for whom the Holocaust was a European affair, paint slogans such as 'Ashkenazim - Back to Auschwitz' on the latters' cars and buildings (49).

In doing their utmost to preserve a monopoly on the Holocaust, Zionism has rendered itself extremely susceptible. And having compared their opponents to the Nazis for so long, in the wake of the Lebanon war, comparisons with the Nazis, especially from within Israel, have become more frequent.

Holocaust Analogies Within Israel

Army reservist Marcus Levin was sent to work as a doctor in the Ansar 2 concentration camp. He asked his fellow doctors what their job consisted of and was told "Our main task is to examine the prisoners before and after interrogation;" "Why after interrogation?" The reply was "It's nothing special, sometimes they have broken limbs...For example yesterday, they brought out one 12 year old with two broken legs". Levin then demanded to speak with the camp commander. Levin told him "I am not serving here. I am called Marcus Levi and not Joseph Mengele, and I am refusing, for conscientious reasons, to serve in a place which reminds me of the South American dictatorships..." One of the doctors tried to calm him down. "Marcus, at the beginning you feel like Mengele but within a few days you get used to it" (50).

Dr. Ilana Hamerman, an Israeli academic who visited Deheisheh refugee camp, remembered afterwards,

how great is the need and the urge to close the eyes and avoid things with which one cannot deal...I fully identify with those descriptions which I have read about the German intellectuals during the Weimar Republic... (I) find many elements which can be compared. She compares in order to warn and sharpen the sensitivities...Kahanism is not only Kahane but a long process...New the 'Transfer' has become a real possibility and everyday someone uses this concept (51).

In a fierce polemic, parodying the President of the Supreme Court, Moshe Landau, who endorsed the use of 'moderate physical pressure' against detainees, Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a Professor of Philosophy, Chemistry and Bible Studies, at the Hebrew University and an Orthodox religious scholar, wrote that "One should distinguish Nazis and moderate Nazis, the former send boys to gas chambers, the latter bury them alive and this, in your eyes, is not a fascist state ?" (52). Leibowitz recently warned:

We have not set up concentration camps and shall not yet do so, but we do have the mentality which makes such an action possible...When the Nation - Volk in the Nazi language - and its state power became supreme values there were no restrictions on the acts of man. We have such a mentality here. We are already behaving in the Occupied Territories, in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon in the same way as the Nazis did in their Occupied Territories in Czechoslovakia and the West. We have not yet set up concentration camps as they did in the East but how terrible is the situation that we have to mention this fact as the thing to differentiate us from the Nazis (53).

College Student: "Kill them, kill them all, even if you have to kill 2 million Arabs" "What's the matter with you ? Do you want to be a Nazi?" "Yes, yes. I am prepared to be a Nazi. Let Kahane take over. A good Arab is a dead Arab. They are going to kill us so we must kill all of them..." The above is one of a number of conversations printed in the wake of an attack on a bus in the Negev. Olek Netser describes the above as part of the 'Kahanist Nazi attitude' and observes that 'the anti-Nazi attitude, in this case, and the rational attitude in every case, do not come from the deep memory, and do not come automatically" (54).

The greatest unspoken subject of all is the chauvinism of the Jewish orthodox religion [this does not include the Neturei Karta group - ED]. Incorporated into state practice, it has been the fount of the most virulent forms of racism. When a group of settlers were recently arrested for the murder of a Palestinian, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg argued that 'one must recognise the fact that Jewish blood and non-Jewish blood are not the same. The people of Israel must rise and declare publicly that a Jew and non-Jew are not equal, God forbid. Any trial based on the assumption that Jews and non-Jews are equal is a total travesty of justice." (55). Rather than recognizing the solid foundations for these Judaeo- Nazi views in the Halachah (oral Jewish law), and eradicating them, Jewish religious authorities in the West pretend that such religious ordinances, if they ever existed, are now obsolete. However amongst themselves there is no such pretence. Rabbi Goren, former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, in a closed meeting of orthodox rabbis, declared in relation to Rabbi Ginsburg's remarks "Not everything that is written in the religious law should be said in public and the man who said that there is a difference between the punishment of a Gentile murderer and a Jewish murderer according to the religious law may be right, but not everything should be said" (56).

And if the Nazi pronouncements of Jewish orthodoxy were not enough, then the final proof of how the Nazi analogy with repression on the West Bank is correct, came with the report that groups of Israeli soldiers had began identifying themselves as Nazis; 'Israeli Soldiers Called Themselves the Mengele Unit' reported various Israeli newspapers last summer (57). "They were called the Auschwitz 10" (58).

Dov Shilansky, far-right Chair of the Knesset and himself an Auschwitz survivor, initially decided to visit the 'Mengele Detachment' and then reconsidered for fear of attracting international publicity.

The attempt of the Israeli army spokesman and factors in the Ministry of Defense to blur the shocking incidents, in which Jewish soldiers, and it makes no difference what is their number, chose for themselves the name of one of the most monstrous of the Nazi criminals is intolerable

wrote the newspaper of the left-Zionist Mapam party (59). "The nickname was given to the soldiers in this unit following claims that they behaved with cruelty or in a specially tough manner, harassing Arab inhabitants during the Intifada" (60).

Yet if the majority of Israelis and the Zionist movement draw conclusions from the Holocaust that are both implicitly and explicitly racist, then a minority of Israelis draw the opposite conclusions. Where some identify with the Mengeles of history, others identify with their victims. Where some despise the Jews who died because of their alleged weakness, others see Palestinians.

History is neither neutral nor impartial. Zionism, with its tame historians and its client Institutes, draws conclusions that reinforce the dominant class and nationalist ideology in society. Conclusions which reproduce themselves in racism, and at certain times and under certain conditions, anti-Semitism. Our job is to ensure that their version of history and their harnessing of the Holocaust to the Zionist wagon does not succeed.

Footnotes

1. Anti-Semitism/Anti-Zionism - The Link. p. 24. Centre for Contemporary Studies, 1984. At this symposium, funded by Robert Maxwell and attended by Conor Cruise O'Brien, William Rodgers of the SDP, Nathan Glaser, an American neo-Conservative and Gerry Gable of Searchlight, among other ideologues of the Right, the participants reassessed the effectiveness of Zionism's tactics in the light of recent events.

2. This term was used by the Nazis against anti-Nazi Germans. It literally meant hating one's race and nation, and because for fascism, the individual is subordinate to the State, which is the embodiment of the nation/race, the individual concerned is considered psychologically, to hate himself/herself.

3. Jewish Chronicle, 27.12.81. 'Swastikas in Dundee follow PLO coup' (see also JC, 16.4.82 and 5.6.81)

4. Jewish Chronicle, 21.1.83

5. Gill Seidel, The Holocaust Denial: Antisemitism, Racism and the New Right, p.107, Beyond the Pale Collective, 1986. Further on she writes that 'Increasingly, anti-Semitism is being coded as 'anti-Zionism', as this is seen as politically more acceptable. This coding is to be found at both ends of the political spectrum. The extreme 'anti-Zionist' refuses to recognise the Jews as a people, the existence of anti-Semitism as a legitimate concern, or Israel as a nation." (p.145). In fact it is precisely the 'recognition' by anti-Semites of Jewish 'peoplehood' i.e.. race, that underpins the Jewish conspiracy theories. And it is not merely anti-Zionists who refuse to recognise Israel as a nation, so do all but a handful of Zionists! These assertions, unsupported by anything as mundane as evidence, are an example of the analytical sloppiness of 'identity politics Zionists' - the non-Zionist-Zionists. Planned as a rebuttal of the neo-Nazi historical revisionists, who allege that the Holocaust was a myth, the book ends up preaching to the converted, mainly quoting from secondary anti-fascist sources. In attempting to link anti-Zionists, who have documented the links between anti-Semitism and Zionism, with anti-Semites, it demonstrates the weakness of a radical/Zionist feminist analysis, juxtaposing arguments that have little relation to each other, sometimes directly contradictory. It lacks on overall conceptual framework, operating in the context of a bewildering array of different 'oppression hierarchies'. For example, while Seidel is arguing that using the terms 'Zionist' and 'Jew' interchangeably is a fascist tactic (which it is) that the left has adopted (which it has not), she fails to notice that the person she invited to provide the Introduction to her book, Michael Billig, writes that "Of course, the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is blurred at the best of times" pp.xxvii/xxviii. Seidel describes the Jewish Chronicle as 'liberal' (p.12) despite its refusal to publish adverts or cover the activities of Jewish gays. In attempting to defend Zionism, Seidel's book is also error-ridden. For example she describes Menachem Begin as the leader of the pro-Nazi Stern Gang from 1943 onwards, whereas he led the Irgun (p.89).

6. R. Silverberg, If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem, p. 175, Pyramid Press, NY, 1972. See also Christopher Sykes, Crossroads to Israel: 1917-48, Indiana University Press, London, 1965, pp.188-9 on the Evian Conference.

7. Holocaust Victims Accuse, 1977, p.27, New York, Neturei Karta

8. N. Lucas, The Modern History of Israel, pp.187-8, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1974, London.

9. Ibid., p.334

10. Ibid. p.335

11. An example is virtually any film about the Holocaust - Escape from Sobibor, The Wall, The Holocaust - where the moral is always the desire of the escapees and the resistance to reach Palestine.

12. Jewish Chronicle, 5 Feb. 1982 'Assimilations' losses now far outweigh Holocaust toll' see letter 19.2.82. The physical death of individual Jews in the Holocaust is conflated with the 'loss' to the Jewish 'nation' through assimilation to the non-Jewish community. Likewise the failure to increase the total numbers of the people/race because of abortion is equated with mass extermination. The attitude that the individual is important only in so far as s/he serves the nation, is a classic facet of fascist ideology, as is the idea of women as breeders for race and nation.

13. See also features such as those by Jacob Gerwitz and David Harounoff, Jewish 'Chronicle, Neo-Nazism and the PLO' in which the PLO is depicted as the hidden hand of international anti-Semitism.

14. 'The PLO in Lebanon', London, 1982, citing Ma'ariv, 16.7.82. Aharon Dolev.

15. Jewish Chronicle, 16 July 1982

16. Seidel op.cit. pp.xviii/xix

17. S. Cohen, That's Funny, You Don't Look Anti-Semite', p.11 (see also pp.15,16,19,76,90). Beyond the Pale Collective, Leeds, 1984

18. Ibid., p.80.

19. Abram Leon, The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1950.

20. See Guardian, 13. 7. 88. 'Holocaust Blamed on Christianity'. Also Jewish Chronicle 15.7.88, where Professor Roy Eckhard "located 'anti-Jewishness' in the essence of Christian belief".

21. See Robert Black, Fascism in Germany, Steyne Publications, 1975.

22. Jewish Chronicle, 19.1.90

23. Holocausts and Politics, Akiva Eldar, Yediot Aharonot, 1975.

24. The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, pp.387, 1201. Herzl and Yosselof Press, ed. Ralph Patai, 1960, NY

25. Eldar, op.cit.

26. The Holocaust and the Historians, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1981, p.17

27. Socialist Worker, 25 Sept. 1982, 26 June 1982.

28. Labour Herald, 25. 6. 82. The Board of Deputies reacted by trying to get the paper prosecuted under the Race Relations Acts. This publicity stunt aimed at Ken Livingstone (who was joint editor) failed.

29. Cohen, op.cit., p.50

30. Shifra, p.15, December 1984

31. Jewish Socialist 14, Autumn 1988, Clause 28...the road to Auschwitz? The Politics of Holocaust analogies.

32. In Search of Dialogue, UJS, no date probably 1989

33. During the making and showing of 'Shoah', Lanzmann was described as a Marxist, an intimate of Sartre. Last year he was one of a minority of Jews who attended Yitzhak Shamir's Solidarity Conference, called to demonstrate Jewish support for not talking to the PLO prior to Shamir's visit to the United States.

34. Walter Lacquer, A History of Zionism, p.376., Holt Rinehart & Winston, NY, 1972. See also Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, p. 197, Croom Helm, London, 1983.

35. Israel: Founders and Sons, Amos Elon, p.209, Weidenfeld, 1971

36. Jewish Chronicle 22.12.1989. The classic Zionist in this respect was Jacob Klatzkin, co-founder of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, editor of the Zionist Organisation paper Die Welt (1909-11) and Director of the Jewish National Fund. In a collection of essays, Boundaries (Tehumim), 1914-21, he wrote that "Galut can only drag out the disgrace of our people and sustain the existence of a people disfigured in both body and soul, in a word, of a horror. At the very most it can maintain us in a state of national impurity and breed some sort of outlandish creature in an environment of disintegration of cultures, of darkening spiritual horizons. The result will be something neither Jewish nor gentile - in any case, 'not a pure national type. Perhaps it is conceivable that, even after the disintegration of our national existence in foreign lands, there will remain for many generations some sort of oddity among the peoples going by the names of Jew". The Zionist Idea, A. Hertzberg, 1959, Atheneum, p. 323, NY.

37. Ha'Aretz, 2.3.88

38. Davar, 19.2.88

39. Ha'Aretz, 9.12.88, Ronit Matalon.

40. ibid.

41. ibid.

42. Observer, 12 June 1988, see also Jewish Chronicle 16.8.85 'Racism gaining ground' where 42% of 18 years olds and 60% of those in religious Zionist schools agree with the view of Meir Kahane.

43. See B. Michael, 29 July 1988, Ha'Aretz.

44. See Kol Ha'ir, 30 Sept. 1988

45. Hotam, 24 June 1988, Sara Ben Hillef.

46. Which didn't prevent the visit of former Nazi supporter and South African Prime Minister, John Vorster, to Israel in 1976 where he was taken to Yad Vashem, the State's official museum-memorial to the Holocaust.

47. Davar, 26 Oct. 1988

48. See 'A State of Danger' (Dir. Jenny Morgan); Committee for Freedom of Expression of Palestinians and Israelis', Open Space Film, BBC-2, 14.3.89

49. Jewish Chronicle, 19.3.82, 'Swastikas in Jerusalem', 31.12.82, 'Swastikas on cars', '20.6.86, 'Israel mourns sacrilege'. Guardian, 18.6.86, 'Synagogues burned in revenge'. Socialist Organiser, 20.1.82, 'Why Zionists are daubing Swastikas in Tel-Aviv'

50. Al HaMishmar, 23.8.88 kibbutz and agriculture supplement Ha'daf Ha'yarok.

51. Kol Ha'Ir 15 Jan. 1988

52. Koteret Rashit, 10 Febr. 1988

53. 'Yeshaayahu Leibowitz On the Whole World', Michael Shesher, Keter, p.78. Hadashot, 5 Febr. 1988

54. Davar, 22 March 1988

55. Jewish Chronicle 9 June 1989

56. Ha'Aretz, 30 June 1989

57. Al HaMishmar 24 July 1989, Ha'Aretz 27 July 1989

58. Ha'Aretz 24 July 1989 and Hadashot 25 July 1989

59. Al HaMishmar 26 July 1989

60. Ha'Aretz 27 July 1989..

Extracts from the Hebrew Press are courtesy of the translations of Professor Israeli Shahak or the Israeli Mirror.

From New Statesman

Stalin's British victims

A new book reveals the extent to which members of Britain's Communist Party knew of Stalin's Terror - and how, even when their families were among the targets of the Soviet leader's bloodthirsty regime, they still defended his actions for the sake of "struggle". By David Aaronovitch
At the end of last year I got an angry letter from an old comrade of my late father's whom I will call "S". They had both been very active in the British Communist Party for most of their lives, and had both been employed by the party. S wanted me to know that he disagreed profoundly with me about Iraq, and added: "Your father would never have tolerated such posturing."

I don't like the invocation of allies from beyond the grave, and this particular political seance struck me as impertinent; I had seen a lot more of my father in his last years than S had. This may be why the name "Stalin" immediately jumped into my mind. British communists like S and my dad fought for civil rights in America, working-class advancement in Britain, and against colonialism, racism and fascism. They also acted as apologists and cheerleaders for one of the most murderous regimes in world history. The unpalatable truth is that - from their teens until their thirties - my father and S both tolerated and supported not posturing, but mass murder. So I was disinclined to be lectured.

But I was still willing to be educated, because, for 20 years, this question has come to bother me more and more. Why did so many on the British left do it? Was it the case that they somehow didn't know that the trials were rigged, the executed comrades were innocent, that the whole thing was a vast, foul set-up, until Nikita Khrushchev gave them permission to know in 1956? Could they really have believed, until the reports of the XX Party Congress came out, that most of the old Bolsheviks and hundreds of thousands of others who had died were British, Japanese or German spies, or else Trotskyist agents bent on sabotage and assassination? And what now should we make of their credulity? Could such wilful blindness be repeated?

No one has done more to answer this question than Francis Beckett, first in Enemy Within, his history of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), and then - more obliquely - in his biography of his father, the fascist leader John Beckett. In his new book, Stalin's British Victims, Beckett researches the stories of four women who suffered under Stalinism. He shows just how far the leadership of the British party was aware of what was going on, and demonstrates the almost indestructible ideological commitment that led communists to deflect, ignore, explain or deny the evidence of their own eyes.

The most poignant story that Beckett tells is of Rose Cohen, co-founder of the CPGB and admired by the party leader, Harry Pollitt, who went to live in Moscow with her Russian husband in the late 1920s. In 1937, first her husband and then Rose herself were arrested. Pollitt, Beckett establishes, interceded for her with the authorities, but to no avail. She was tried, sentenced and quickly executed for being a British spy. Years later her niece Joyce Rathbone set out in search of her lost cousin, born in the same year as herself and brought up in Stalinist orphanages, forbidden to talk about his parents.

Beckett followed Rose's trail through Russian and British archives. He also discovered the stories of Rosa Rust, daughter of the editor of the Daily Worker, who found herself exiled with the Volga Germans to Kazakhstan, and of Pearl Rimel and Freda Utley, whose husbands - one Russian, one Belgian - disappeared into the Gulags, never to return.

So Pollitt and his fellow party leaders knew that old comrades were being despatched by Stalin, and thought some of them innocent enough to want to try and save them. They also experienced the brutal snubs delivered to those foreigners who poked their noses into Stalin's purges. However, as Beckett shows, this did not prevent Pollitt's strenuous public defence of the Moscow trials. In March 1938, three months after Rose received a bullet in the base of her skull, Pollitt declared in the Daily Worker that these trials of "political and moral degenerates" were a "mighty demonstration to the world of the power and strength of the Soviet Union". Did he think Rose had become a "degenerate" and that her dawn extinction in the Lubyanka was a salutary lesson to the world about the revolutionary resolve of the first workers' state?

That was the leader; then there were the followers. When I was a child, I regularly used to go round the corner from our house to see Joyce's mother, old Nellie Rathbone, a comrade and once secretary to Sylvia Pankhurst. It was only when discussing the Cohen case with my mother last year that I found out that Nellie had been Rose's sister. Yes, they knew that Rose had died during the Terror, said my mother (who is much younger), but they thought it was pneumonia.

These were people who were communists in 1937, communists in 1956, communists in 1968. The murder of a close relative at the hands of the world's leading exponent of the faith was insufficient even to cause that system to be questioned. It was probably rarely mentioned, something of a tragic embarrassment, like the relative in the asylum or the long-lost adopted child. It is interesting that Joyce's search for her cousin began only after her mother and stepfather had died.

What Beckett suggests is that - back then - communists, including the family, probably accepted that Rose and the others had somehow brought it upon themselves. It was sad, but these were hard times, full of treachery, and Stalin, heir to the great Lenin, surely knew what he was doing. Rose herself, in the period before her own arrest and that of her husband, was heard to say that the Stalinist leadership conducting the Terror "knew what they were doing".

So thought Pearl Rimel's Lear-like communist sisters, Hetty and Anita, about her innocent husband, George Fles, who became one of 100,000 victims of the Georgian NKVD, and who died in a prison near Smolensk in 1939. As the British communist spouse of one of the sisters asked, hadn't George's movements been "exactly what someone who wanted to spy would do"? That kind of talk was enough to get someone shot in Moscow or Tbilisi. Even years later, following George's "rehabilitation", when Hetty wanted to place an obituary notice in the Morning Star describing George as a "victim of the Stalin Terror", Anita apparently said: "You mustn't do that. It would be wrong for you to put that in the Morning Star." The words were excised.

Why? Partly the masochism of the cadre mentality. In 1956, after her experiences in Kazakhstan, after Hungary and the revelations of the XX Party Congress, Rosa Rust wrote to John Gollan - the new party leader - to "reaffirm [her] belief and loyalty to the cause of communism. What kind of communists," she asked, "are they who fall before the first major onslaught?" Wise ones, it turns out.



What is revealed brilliantly through Beckett's compassionate and well-researched account is this strange state of simultaneously knowing and not knowing. The communists looked at the beast, saw its claws and fangs, and loved it still, as people are required to love their own youth. They excused, explained, justified, denied, ignored, defended and forgot what everyone else knew. They did so on the basis of anti-fascism, the sacrifices of class struggle, the beleaguered position of the first revolutionary state, the lies of the bourgeois press, the need for iron self-discipline, all melded together into an ideological armour that became impenetrable by fact and sentiment.

It is Beckett's one great mistake that he seeks to reassure the reader of Stalin's British Victims that this terrible lack of humanity and its surrounding corruption was the work of Stalin only, and in no way the legacy of his predecessor, Lenin. But this idea of the epistemological break does not survive the files released in Russia since 1991. Those who believe it ought to read Alexander Yakovlev's A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia, to see how the characterisation of any disagreement as sabotage, as "anti-Soviet", and its consequent savage and arbitrary repression, was there right from the beginning. Never mind the "bourgeois parties": from early on all dissent was suppressed, including that from anarchists, socialist revolutionaries, Mensheviks and social democrats.

Lenin was no respecter of even the most rudimentary of human rights. Though he and his comrades had been spared by the tsarist autocracy, he spared no one. Here is just one small taste, in a message sent to local Bolsheviks in Penza in August 1918.

1. Hang (by all means hang, so that people will see) no fewer than 100 known kulaks, fat cats, bloodsuckers. 2. Publish their names. 3. Take all their grain. 4. Select hostages. Do it so that for hundreds of miles around people will see and tremble. Confirm telegram received and acted on.

Yours Lenin.

PS: Find tougher people.

Just take "no fewer than" 100 people and hang them. And what should you do if you found you had got only 95 fat cats and bloodsuckers? Hang a few more, presumably. This was the road to Terror, and there is nothing to be salvaged here for the modern left - though S may not thank me for saying so. We must start with democracy and human rights, or we must give up.

Maybe, had my father been alive today, he, too, would have seen that.

Francis Beckett's Stalin's British Victims is published by Sutton (£20)

In Hebron

Yitzhak Laor writes about an exhibition of soldiers' photographs in Tel
Aviv and introduces some of the soldiers' memories of their military service

Israel's Independence Day fell this year on 27 April. For his homework my nine-year-old son had to interview me about my military past. Before giving out the assignment, his teacher had invited the father of one of the children, an IDF colonel, to give a talk in full military uniform. The children were fascinated. Urged to ask questions, they mostly wanted to know whether he was afraid, though they also asked if he had killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, whose picture and the picture of his destroyed wheelchair were quite a hit on Israeli TV. The colonel said it was another unit, not his, 'but he deserved to die,' and he promised the children that 'we don't kill unless there is a really good reason.' He ended the talk by telling the children he hoped that they too would one day have the chance to become senior officers in the IDF.

Our life worsens, poverty is spreading, education and health services are deteriorating, the middle class is shrinking, and we are ruled by a junta whose money and power have increased to an extent people refuse to believe, even when they are confronted with the figures. A 45-year-old colonel who retires from the army gets a lump sum of close to two million dollars, in addition to a lifetime pension and a second career, usually as an executive of one of the huge corporations, or in arms dealing.

When the average Israeli wants to explain these privileges, he points out that 'throughout his career the colonel has been risking his life.' But that's been a myth for at least two decades now. The colonel hasn't been risking his life because there is no longer a serious enemy. There is only the Palestinian desire to live as a free nation which in the form of the terrorist campaign is represented as an existential threat to the state of Israel. But it doesn't threaten the existence of Israel. It never did, but it sure helps the military ride the wave of panic.

The real struggle in Israeli society today is not between doves and hawks, but between the majority who take for granted the IDF's image as the defender of our nation, with or without biblical quotes, and the minority who no longer buy it. If the army does something bad it is always an exception (harig, in Hebrew). Those who believe that we are fighting for our lives also believe that we do our best to be humane, and more or less succeed. This fragile complex of axioms depends either on foolish optimism ('soon everything will be resolved') or on images. Arguments don't work anymore.

The most effective images are those of dismembered bodies, screaming mothers and mourning fathers. But that is exactly why the BBC World Service is considered 'hostile' here. It isn't because of the Vanunu affair, but because of the images it broadcasts of everyday suffering on the other side of the road, a ten-minute drive from the safety of our homes, our swimming-pools, our happy lives. Even CNN was considered hostile as long as it 'misbehaved', bringing us pictures which contradicted the basic image of our existence. Atrocities are always perpetrated against us, and the more brutal Israel becomes, the more it depends on our image as the eternal victim. Hence the importance of the Holocaust since the end of the 1980s (the first intifada), and its return into Hebrew literature. The Holocaust is part of the victim imagery, hence the madness of state-subsidised school trips to Auschwitz. This has less to do with understanding the past than with reproducing an environment in which we exist in the present tense as victims. Together with that comes the imagery of the healthy, beautiful, sensitive soldiers.

This is the context, at the crossroads between the expanding (slowly, and maybe too little and too late) refusenik movement and the ever growing despair, evident at an exhibition called 'Breaking the Silence' ('Shovrim Shtika') which opened in early June in Tel Aviv College: an exhibition of photographs taken by mostly unnamed conscripts who served in Hebron. (Their brigade commander was the colonel who gave the talk to my son's class.) Sixty of the 90 photos record aspects of the conflict between the Palestinians and the settlers, but 30 show the soldiers at their daily routine - and the routine tells all. Indeed, towards the end of June, the IDF's military police raided the exhibit, 'confiscating', as Haaretz put it, 'a folder containing newspaper clips about the exhibit, as well as a videotape including statements made by 70 soldiers about their experiences in Hebron'. Four of they oung men who organised the exhibition were called in for interrogation. What were they interrogated about? Well, they are suspected of having committed the crimes they documented on their video - abusing Palestinians, destroying property etc.

Every once in a while opposition arises from within the monster. Hence the Courage to Refuse movement, the letter last September signed by 27 pilots who refused to attack civilian populations in the Occupied Territories, the letter in December from an elite commando unit that refused to fight, and so on. A society living in the past as if it were the present is vulnerable: the past/present becomes a double-edged sword. You may be sued if you call anybody here a 'Nazi', but one hears it a lot. It would be more appropriate to compare Israeli brutality with the French in Algeria, or the British in Sudan or Malaysia, but we are taken up with the notion of 'our past turning into our present'.

Moral repulsion isn't the only factor, however. Young men who join the army want to fight in the most sophisticated tanks, to fire the most frightening cannon, to fly the brand new jet fighters, to operate the Apache helicopters, to conquer the most heavily fortified enemy positions, to parachute behind enemy lines. Then, after all their extremely difficult training, after all the suffering and ambition, they find there is no heroism, no glory, no diving as marine commandos under the waters of the Persian Gulf. Instead, all they do is throw families out of their homes in the middle of the night, demolish their houses, bomb a six-storey building in Gaza, starve a town, harass women at checkpoints, watch Shin Bet torture detainees, bring more misery to the refugee camps.

What the Israeli army (like the Israeli state) needs to reproduce in its soldiers is either sheer racism - that is, faith in 'the murderous nature of the Arabs' - or a brand of religious messianism, neo-Nazi ideology wrapped in Judaism. One of the photographs in the exhibition shows a piece of settler graffiti in Hebron which reads: 'Arabs to Gas Chambers'. This kind of discourse has its weakness: it needs soldiers to fight for it. There are a lot who won't.

Right now, the former soldiers who took part in the exhibition - it closed at the beginning of the month - are working on what they call journalistic research, though it looks as if they are collecting evidence for some sort of imaginary trial. The exception incriminates an individual soldier; if you can show that it is the rule you incriminate the true criminals of war, the heads of the IDF and the government. These ex-soldiers are making contact with conscripts and reservists from other brigades, gathering photos, confessions, testimonies for further exhibitions. What they are telling us is common knowledge beyond the hill, across the checkpoints, in every shattered Palestinian kindergarten. They are doing it because they still believe in some sort of Israeli justice. That faith, I fear, has no basis in reality. On the other hand, how else can one become a decent man, if not by believing in some sort of justice, in some sort of place to come to terms with power? The Place is one of the many names of God in Hebrew.

'First week, first time at the checkpoint, at the passage between the Palestinian area and a street where only Jews can go. Those guys have to stop, there's a line, then they hand you their ID cards through the fence, you check them, and let them through. This guy with me yells: "Waqif! Stop!" The man didn't understand and took one more step. Then he yells again, "Waqif!" and the man freezes. So the soldier decided that because the guy took this one extra step he'll be detained. I said to him: "Listen, what are you doing?" He said: "No, no, don't argue, at least not in front of them. I'm not going to trust you anymore, you're not reliable." Eventually one of the patrol commanders came over, and I said: "What's the deal, how long do you want to detain him for?" He said: "You can do whatever you want, whatever you feel like doing. If you feel there's a problem with what he's done, if you feel something's wrong, even the slightest thing, you can detain him for as long as you want." And then I got it, a man who's been in Hebron a week, it has nothing to do with rank, he can do whatever he wants. There are no rules, everything is permissible.'

'Another thing I remember from Hebron is the so-called "grass widow" procedure - the name for a house the army takes over and turns into an observation post, the home of a Palestinian family, not a family of terrorists, just a family whose home made a good observation post. You're in somebody's house, and everything is littered with shit, there are cartridges and glass on the stairs, so you can hear if anyone is approaching. It's a house covered in camouflage netting so people can't see what you're doing inside. You find yourself in a Palestinian neighbourhood, in some family's home, and it's totally surreal, because there you are, sitting in the living-room, listening for people coming to attack you. There was food left behind, and there was a TV, but we weren't allowed to turn it on - to use their electricity, this would be too much, this would be considered "bad occupation".'

'It was Friday night, and the auxiliary company, which was stationed with us in Harsina, eliminated two terrorists. Friday night dinner was, of course, a very happy affair, and the whole base was jumping. As I was leaving dinner, an armoured ambulance arrived with the terrorists' corpses, and the two terrorists' corpses were held up in a standing position by three people who were posing for photographs. Even I was shocked by this sight, I closed my eyes so as not to see and walked away. I really didn't feel like looking at terrorists' corpses.'

'Our job was to stop the Palestinians at the checkpoint and tell them they can't pass this way any more. Maybe a month ago they could, but now they can't. On the other hand there were all these old ladies who had to pass to get to their homes, so we'd point in the direction of the opening through which they could go without us noticing. It was an absurd situation. Our officers also knew about this opening. They told us about it. Nobody really cared about it. It made us wonder what we were doing at the checkpoint. Why was it forbidden to pass? It was really a form of collective punishment. You're not allowed to pass because you're not allowed to pass. If you want to commit a terrorist attack, turn right there and then left.'

'I was ashamed of myself the day I realised that I simply enjoy the feeling of power. Not merely enjoy it, need it. And then, when someone suddenly says no to you, you say: what do you mean no? Where do you get the chutzpah from to say no to me? Forget for a moment that I think that all those Jews are mad, and I actually want peace and believe we should leave the Territories, how dare you say no to me? I am the Law! I am the Law here! Once I was at a checkpoint, a temporary one, a so-called strangulation checkpoint blocking the entrance to a village. On one side a line of cars wanting to get out, and on the other side a line of cars wanting to get in, a huge line, and suddenly you have a mighty force at the tip of your fingers. I stand there, pointing at someone, gesturing to you to do this or that, and you do this or that, the car starts, moves towards me, halts beside me. The next car follows, you signal, it stops. You start playing with them, like a computer game. You come here, you go there, like this. You barely move, you make them obey the tip of your finger. It's a mighty feeling.'

'On patrol in Abu Sneina we make a check post where you stop cars and check them out. We stop a guy we know, who always hangs around, doesn't make trouble. Connections are made, even if we don't speak the same language and even if it's hard to explain. The commander stops him. "You cover the front. You cover the back." So I cover the front. The commander says to him: "Go on, get going. Get out your jack." The guy just stands there and stares. He doesn't understand what they want. So the commander yells at him that he should get out his jack and begin to take the wheels off. I'm standing near a stone wall and the guy comes over and takes a stone to put under the car, and then another stone. At that point, the commander comes over to me and says: "Does this look humane to you?" He has a horrible grin on his face. It's awful. I can't do anything. I don't have enough air to say anything. I take my helmet off and lean on the stone wall, still covering the front, and I cry.'

'Once a little kid, a boy of about six, passed by me at my post. He said to me: "Soldier, listen, don't get annoyed, don't try and stop me, I'm going out to kill some Arabs." I look at the kid and don't quite understand exactly what I'm supposed to do. So he says: "First, I'm going to buy a popsicle at Gotnik's" - that's their grocery store - "then I'm going to kill some Arabs." I had nothing to say to him. Nothing. I went completely blank. And that's not such a simple thing, that a city, that such an experience can silence someone who was an educator, a counsellor, who believed in education, who believed in talking to people, even if their opinions were different. But I had nothing to say to a kid like that. There's nothing to say to him.'

'The very existence of the checkpoint is humiliating. I guard, or enable the existence of, 500 Jewish settlers at the expense of 15,000 people under direct occupation in the H2 area and another 140,000-160,000 in the surrounding areas of Hebron. It makes no difference how pleasant I am to them. I will still be their enemy. As long as you want to keep these 500 people in Hebron alive and enable them to go about their existence in a reasonable manner, you have to destroy the reasonable existence of all the rest. There's no alternative. For the most part, these are real security considerations. They're not imaginary. If you want to protect the settlers from being shot at from above, you have to occupy all the hills around them. There are people living on those hills. They have to be subdued, they have to be detained, they have to be hurt at times. But as long as the government has decided that the settlement in Hebron will remain intact, the cruelty is there, and it doesn't matter whether or not we act nice.'

'Whenever we feel like it, we choose a house on the map, we go on in. "Jaysh, jaysh, iftah al bab" - "army, army, open the door" - and they open the door. We move all the men into one room, all the women into another, and place them under guard. The rest of the unit does whatever they please, except destroy equipment - it goes without saying - and there's no helping yourself to anything: we have to cause as little harm to the people as possible, as little physical damage as possible. If I try to imagine the reverse situation: if they had entered my home, not a police force with a warrant, but a unit of soldiers, if they had burst into my home, shoved my mother and little sister into my bedroom, and forced my father and my younger brother and me into the living-room, pointing their guns at us, laughing, smiling, and we didn't always understand what the soldiers were saying while they emptied the drawers and searched through the things. Oops it fell, broken - all kinds of photos, of my grandmother and grandfather, all kinds of sentimental things that you wouldn't want anyone else to see. There is no justification for this. If there is a suspicion that a terrorist has entered a house, so be it. But just to enter a home, any home: here I've chosen one, look what fun. We go in, we check it out, we cause a bit of injustice, we've asserted our military presence and then we move on.'

'There's a very clear and powerful connection between how much time you serve in the Territories and how fucked in the head you get. If someone is in the Territories half a year, he's a beginner, they don't allow him into the interesting places, he does guard-duty, all he does is just grow more and more bitter, angry. The more shit he eats, from the Jews and the Arabs and the army and the state, they call that numbness but I don't, because serving in the Territories isn't about numbness, it's a high, a sort of negative high: you're always tired, you're always hungry, you always have to go to the bathroom, you're always scared to die, you're always eager to catch that terrorist. It's a life without rest. Even when you sleep, you don't sleep well. I don't remember even once sleeping well in Hebron. It's simply an experience that no human being should have. It fucks with your head. It's the experience of a hunted animal, a hunting animal, of an animal, whatever.'

'When I served in Hebron, for the first time in my life I felt different about being a Jew. I can't explain it. But the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the ancestral city, it did something to me. I don't know if I was defending the State of Israel, but I was defending Jews who were part of the state, and in a city where the controversy is different from other Arab cities. It was the worshippers' route. One day, out of the blue, a group of about six Jewish women with six or seven little girls simply started running around, started kicking stalls and turning them over, and spitting on Arabs and elderly people. One of the women picked up a rock and shattered the window of a barber shop. A man comes out, and I find myself, on the one hand, trying to take the rock away from her, and on the other hand, defending her, so that they won't beat the shit out of her. So on the one hand you say to yourself, fuck it, I'm supposed to guard the Jews that are here. But these Jews don't behave with the same morality or values I was raised on. If they're capable of writing on the Arabs' doors "Arabs Out" or "Death to the Arabs," and drawing a Star of David, which to me is like a swastika when they draw it like that, then somehow the term "Jew" has changed a little for me.'

'Once I was in Hebron, when from a gate near our post that leads to the Kasbah, and from which it is forbidden to enter or exit, came a man in his fifties or sixties with a few women and small children. You walk up to him and say in Arabic: "Stop, there's a curfew, go home." And then he starts to argue with you. And he gets bold, like he believes that he'll get through in the end. He's not trying to weasel his way through, he really believes that he's in the right. And that confuses you. You remember that actually you would like to let him pass, but you're not supposed to let him pass, and how dare he stand there in front of you . . . Finally the patrol shows up, and from an argument between two soldiers and ten people, it becomes an argument between ten soldiers and ten people, with an officer who, naturally, is less inclined to restrain himself. Weapons are cocked, aimed, not straight at him, but at his legs. "Get the hell out of here, enough talk!" I was standing closest to him, about a metre or two. He was all dressed up, wearing a suit and a kaffiyeh, he looked really respectable. And I was standing there with my weapon, close to my chest, trying to defend myself, protect myself. I was afraid that he was going to try something. And the atmosphere was charged, more than usual. Then he sticks out his chest, and both his fists are tightly closed. My finger moves to the safety catch, and then I see his eyes are filled with tears, and he says something in Arabic, turns around, and goes. And his clan follows him. I'm not exactly sure why this incident is engraved in my memory out of all the times I told people to scram when there was a curfew, but there was something so noble about him, and I felt like the scum of the earth. Like, what am I doing here?'

'That morning, a fairly big group arrived in Hebron, around 15 Jews from France. They were all religious Jews. They were in a good mood, really having a great time, and I spent my entire shift following this gang of Jews around and trying to keep them from destroying the town. They just wandered around, picked up every stone they saw, and started throwing them in Arabs' windows, and overturning whatever they came across. There's no horror story here: they didn't catch some Arab and kill him or anything like that, but what bothered me is that maybe someone told them that there's a place in the world where a Jew can take all of his rage out on Arab people, and simply do anything. Come to a Palestinian town, and do whatever he wants, and the soldiers will always be there to back him up. Because that was my job, to protect them and make sure that nothing happened to them.'