Misrepresenting the Evian Conference of 1938

The Australian Jewish News spins the 1938 Evian Conference:

"A Melbourne rabbi is hopeful the 75th anniversary of the Evian Conference on Jewish refugees will prompt the federal government to formally acknowledge Australia's lack of action at the time. Exactly three-quarters of a century ago this month, representatives of the Western allies met at Evian-les-Bains in France on the initiative of US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an attempt to develop a policy for absorbing Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria. But the Evian Conference turned out to be an abysmal failure, with almost no country making any significant commitment to increase their intake of Hitler's hapless victims... When Britain's notorious White Paper on Palestine emerged in May 1939, virtually closing the gates of the Jewish homeland, the fate of European Jewry was sealed. In July 1938, as country after country remained non-committal to the plight of the Jews, an Australian representative at the conference, Thomas White... stated: 'It will no doubt be appreciated also that as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration.' Australia partly relented and later accepted some 15,000 Jewish refugees." (75 years since the world shut us out, 19/7/13)

Note here how Palestine, then still a country with an overwhelming Arab majority which had just waged a bitter 4-year campaign of armed resistance against the British/Zionist policy of flooding its homeland with East European Jews, is brazenly referred to, in true Zionist style, as "the Jewish homeland".

Note how Britain is claimed to have "closed the gates" of Palestine with its 1939 White Paper when in fact it merely reduced Jewish immigration to 75,000 over the following 5 years in a belated attempt to satisfy the legitimate Arab demand for an end to the kind of mass Jewish immigration designed to convert the Arab majority into a minority in its own homeland.

And note how there is no mention whatever of the key role of the Zionist movement in scuppering the conference because it had no interest in German Jews going anywhere but Palestine. (For the details, just click on the Evian label below and read my 21/11/11 post Laying Siege to German Jews.)

A rare dissenting letter in The Australian Jewish News of July 26 by Professor Bill Rubinstein of Caulfield South, Victoria, refuses to toe the AJN line on this issue:

"Your article and editorial regarding the 75th anniversary of the Evian Conference is seriously misleading. Rather than closing the doors to Jewish refugees, after the Anschluss with Austria (March 1938) and Kristallnacht (November 1938), most of the world allowed in more Jews than before; Evian was irrelevant to this process. Britain let in up to 75,000 Jewish refugees, mainly in 1938-39, the most famous of whom was Sigmund Freud... The United States admitted more than 100,000 Jews as immigrants between 1938 and the end of 1941. Australia's reluctant decision to admit 15,000 refugees from the Reich (when this country's total population was only 6.5 million) was the first time Australia had admitted any refugees. About 72% of Germany's Jews actually left Germany before the Nazis (not the democracies) closed the door. However, more than 95% of the Jews who perished in the Holocaust were not in Germany, but in other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe, especially Poland, the USSR, Hungary, and the Netherlands. Before the war, these Jews were not refugees, not under Nazi rule, and were irrelevant to the Evian Conference, which exclusively concerned Germany. Any Jew in the USSR who expressed a wish to leave Stalin's utopia would have been shot or sent to a gulag. Polish Jewry was divided into 3 main factions: the Zionists, the Bund, and Agudas Israel (the strictly Orthodox party), the latter two being fierce opponents of Zionism. The Bund advised its followers to stay where they were and to fight anti-Semitism through an alliance with the Polish working class. Obviously, they could not have known what the fate would be of Jews trapped under Nazi rule, and neither could the Western democracies."

Was Israel Born of the Holocaust? 2

"I had gone to see Ephraim Sneh, a white-haired veteran Labour Party politician. He points to a picture on the back wall of his office. It is of 2 Israeli F-15 fighters flying over Auschwitz. 'When we didn't have F-15s, we had Auschwitz,' he says." (Deep inside the plucky country, Greg Sheridan, The Australian, 19/1/08)

One of the greatest myths of our time is that, in the words of former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, "the establishment of the state of Israel begins with the unimaginable tragedy of the Holocaust."*

The myth that Israel was born of the Holocaust, a product of Israel's 24/7 propaganda mill, is trotted out again and again to justify robbing the Palestinian people of their homeland and to silence critics of Israel's crimes in Palestine. The simple fact of the matter is that the Zionist movement and its implantation and entrenchment in Palestine predated the Holocaust by decades and was an entirely separate phenomenon  from the campaign of ethnic cleansing unleashed by the Nazis against European Jewry.

Whatever Jews qua Jews felt about the fate of their co-religionists in central and eastern Europe in the 30s and 40s, the issue was far from a major concern of the Zionist leadership in London or the Yishuv.

This particular truth struck home as I was reading Baffy: The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale, 1936-1947 (1973). Blanche - Baffy - was the niece of Lord Balfour and the most devoted of gentile Zionists. So much so that she became one of the members of Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann's London Political Committee, even chairing it at one stage. To describe Baffy as obsessed by the Zionist project and smitten by Weizmann would be a gross understatement. (Those irresistable Zionist pheromones again!) As a key insider and Weizmann confidant, her testimony in regard to this matter deserves to be taken seriously.

The following references are listed in chronological order:

Despite Hitler's persecution of German Jewry beginning in earnest in 1933, the first of Baffy's references was to the fate of 2 Austrian Zionists in the wake of the 1938 Austrian anschluss:

8/4/38: "Walked away with Sir Wyndham Deedes [an old friend of Chaim's], who goes to Vienna for us next week. But he will not be able to get the Zionists Stricker and Friedman out of Dachau. They helped Schuschnigg with money for the plebiscite."* (p 89) [*Kurt Schuschnigg - Federal Chancellor of Austria from July 1934 until the German occupation of Austria in March 1938 Following Hitler's ultimatum to Schuschnigg on 12 February, Schuschnigg decided to hold a plebiscite on 13 March by which the Austrian people would decide whether or not to accept Hitler's terms. This was the act which led to the German occupation of Austria.]

There is only one reference to the US-initiated Evian Conference, convened to find solutions for the German Jewish refugee problem, which was boycotted by the Zionists:

24/6/38: "[Chaim] put several ideas about Evian into [Lord Winterton's*] head - notably to tell the Germans that if they want to get rid of the Jews, they must leave them some of their own money." (p 91) [*Chief British delegate at Evian conference, July 1938.]

Presumably, Weizmann was referring to money for passage to Palestine.

11/10/38: "November 11th... Armistice Day! And the news of the pogrom in Germany, as bad or worse than I dreaded and expected." (p 115)

That pogrom was of course Kristallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, but all Weizmann could think about was funneling young, committed Zionist Pioneers (HeChalutz) into Palestine:

15/11/38: "[W]hen Chaim went to see the PM this afternoon... [he] demanded an immediate Children's Aliyah [immigration] of 1,500, and a large number of the trainees in Germany." (p 116)

For the Zionists, concern for refugees always came second to Zionist designs on Palestine:

2/12/38: "Then I went to lunch, and a long talk, with Mr Ruskin at the Dorchester... His activities are now two-fold. The organizing of a huge Refugee Loan, in conjunction with Wolf, a Dutch Jew new millionaire, is genuine, but a screen for the real thing... Ruskin has arranged for a force of 15 planes - the training of pilots - mostly near his home in Chicago - and other things against The Day." (p 117)

Perhaps the most damning reference is this:

12/12/38: "After lunch to Zionist Office where Chaim reported to us his interview with [Colonial Secretary] Malcolm [MacDonald] this morning. It seems to have been lively! Malcolm offered to take the [10,000 German Jewish] children here, but without a guarantee that they should go on. Chaim refused. He said to Malcolm 'We shall fight you from here to San Francisco and when I say fight I mean fight." (p 118)

Even Baffy couldn't help but object to Weizmann's tunnel vision: 1/2/39:

1/2/39: "Also to try to make Chaim talk of the Jewish people, and not of Zionists." (p 121)

And this, according to Baffy, was Mrs Weizmann's saddest moment: 9/10/41:

9/10/41: "[W]ent to Chaim's room for a cup of tea. Poor Vera terribly sad, the Germans are approaching her home town [of Rostov]." (p 188)

How should we interpret the word 'heavily' here?:

18/12/41: "Chaim spoke heavily today in the Yeshiva [sitting] about the spread of anti-Semitism and the measure of Hitler's success in that sphere. He has shown the humiliations to which man can subject his fellow-men, and the civilized world keeps comparative silence. This is a terrible blow to morality." (p 189)

Here's as succinct and unambiguous a statement as you could possibly ask for of Weizmann's focus at this time:

20/1/42:  "Chaim warned us that effort spent on improving the lot of the Galuth [exile/diaspora] will be more or less wasted. Palestine is the only hope and future. (p 191)

Token gestures were OK though:

28/11/42: "[R]eports received from the Polish Government about the latest atrocities against Jews in Poland. It is an extermination policy now, but what can one do? All protests must be made (Palestine is organizing days of fasts and mourning) but what can be done? One or two small things only." (p 198)

Palestine only!:

15/2/43: "Busy day at Zionist Office mostly the appeal for funds for Youth Aliyah to bring the 25,000 to Palestine (if they can be collected) out of the various Balkan countries and Hungary." (p 201)

Not every Zionist was happy with Weizmann's lack of concern. This was clear at the Zionist Conference in London in August, 1945:

1/8/45: "What I chiefly felt today was the great gulf fixed between the Europeans who have actually suffered and the Americans and British. There is great (and perhaps unreasonable) feeling that the latter have not done enough." (p 223)

I rest my case.

[*See my 14/3/08 post The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 3.]

Fairfax Is All Yours, Gina

That's it! One read of the 'opinion piece' by Fairfax journalist Jonathan Swan, Once a refuge, Israel ignores its real origins (22/6/12), and I frankly couldn't give a toss whether Fairfax gets snapped up by mining magnate Gina Rinehart or not.

If Swan's extraordinary naivete and mind-blowing ignorance is supposed to be a sparkling example of Fairfax's 'quality journalism', vis-a-vis News Limited's relentless, ideologically-driven poison, the field may as well be abandoned to the likes of Rinehart and Murdoch. Too harsh? I don't think so:

With its ridiculous assertion that the creation of Israel was fundamentally about catering for refugees, the very title encapsulates the abysmal ignorance of the piece. Let me make this crystal clear: the political Zionism of Herzl, Wiezmann and Ben-Gurion was first and foremost about the procrustean task of transforming a religious grouping - Jews, in all their diversity - into a racialised, nationalistic entity known as 'the Jewish people' at a time (roughly from the Napoleonic era through to the end of World War II) when ethnically-based nationalism was all the go. Zionism was, like all such European nationalisms of the time, chauvinistic at best, toxic at worst (Nazism). To mistake the rhetoric of 'refuge' and 'rescue' for the substance of the Zionist project, which focused solely on carving out, and shoring up, an ethnically homogeneous Jewish state in Palestine for 'the Jewish people' at the expense of its indigenous inhabitants, is to indicate that you have zero idea of what you're talking about:

"In a museum that exhibits dead children's shoes and photographs of skeletons piled in holes, it was an Australian that angered me most. Printed on a wall inside Yad Vashem, Jerusalem's Holocaust museum, is a quote by the Australian diplomat Thomas W. White, dated 1938. 'As we have no racial problems,' White told a conference of world leaders, 'we are not desirous of importing one.' And with that, Australia joined the United States and almost every wealthy nation in rejecting Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Nazis."

The conference referred to here is the Evian Conference of 1938, about which Swan has obviously not taken the trouble to learn, being content with a mere statement (the propaganda value of which escapes him) tacked on the wall of Israel's pre-eminent Holocaust memorial (the propaganda use of which also escapes him). If he had done a little research, he would be aware that neither the Zionists in Palestine nor those elsewhere supported the wholesale rescue of German Jewry; the former because they wanted only the fit Zionist youth among them as potential Arab fighters; the latter for much the same reasons, paradoxically, as White.

In the words of US scholar, Lenni Brenner: "Since [Palestine's Zionists] did not want the bulk of German Jewry in Palestine, it might be assumed that the Zionist movement, at least in America, tried to find other havens for their brethren, but this is not so. Throughout the world, the Jewish bourgeoisie acted timidly out of fear that 'too many' refugees in any country would unleash local anti-Semitism. Sending the refugees to Palestine seemed to be the perfect answer..." (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, 1983, p 146).

Nor does the United States, which initiated the Evian Conference and the Rublee rescue plan which emerged from it, deserve Swan's stick, given that it was deliberately boycotted and sabotaged by the Zionists who preferred instead to work with the Gestapo to channel into Palestine only youthful German Zionists, as recruits for the coming move against Palestine's majority Arab population. (See my 21/11/11 post Laying Siege to German Jews.)

"White's quote is a reminder of Israel's founding purpose: to be a haven for refugees. Israeli leaders have long said with pride that they have reached out, not only to Holocaust survivors, but to desperate people from places such as Vietnam, Kosovo and Darfur."

Swan seems to be confusing Israel with the Statue of Liberty's famous words: Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to be free;/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore..." If he wishes to establish what it is exactly that constitutes Israel's founding purpose, he should try looking up its Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel, May 14, 1948. If he did, he'd find that Israel's founding purpose is first and foremost about the supposed "right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country," and that the closest it ever gets to his haven for refugees nonsense is this: "The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations." One wonders, what part of for Jews only doesn't Swan understand?

As to Israel's taking aboard Vietnamese, Kosovan and Darfuri refugees, let's look at the facts:

1) Vietnamese: In 1977, 65 Vietnamese boat people were picked up by an Israeli vessel off the Vietnamese coast: "Begin's decision [to admit these people into Israel] was in a way pure theater. Sixty-six Vietnamese were hardly a burden, and in terms of the hundreds of thousands who had fled Vietnam and were looking for a new home, they were less than a drop in a bucket. Nor was Israel threatened with the arrival of more Vietnamese once a first group of them was accepted. The South China seas were far away and their waves were not about to sweep up more boats on Israel's shores." (A shame on Israel, Hillel Halkin, nysun.com, 10/7/07)

2) Kosovans: In 1999, 217 Kosovans received temporary shelter in Israel. (140 Kosovar refugees leave Israel for home, Gil Sedan, jweekly.com, 30/7/99)

3) Darfuris: "Several hundred were granted official refugee status, and with it the right to work." (An open letter to Israel from a Darfur refugee in Tel Aviv, Hamed Sadinden, fugeefridays.blogspot.com, 13/4/09) As for the rest: "[A]ll we ask is the right to live and work in Israel and take care of ourselves while we are here." (ibid)

Whence this feeling of being underwhelmed?

"What to make, then, of the recent vow by Israel's Interior Minister, Eli Yishai, to rid the country of all illegal immigrants within 3 years? Or of the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has branded illegal immigrants 'infiltrators' and said he plans to build 'holding facilities' to store tens of thousands of aliens 'until they can be sent out of the country'?"

What to make? Simple: these illegal immigrants aren't Jews and so can't be tolerated in a Jewish state. What part of Jewish State does Swan not understand?

"The most toxic migrants, we are told, come from Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2005, about 60,000 have crossed the Sinai Desert and through the Egyptian border into Israel. Yishai says these Sudanese and Eritrean immigrants are raising Israel's crime levels, and that their numbers need to be quelled. Netanyahu argues that illegal immigrants burden Israel's economy and threaten its Jewish character. Then there are last month's south Tel Aviv protests. Haaretz reported a crowd of residents waving placards and chanting 'the people want the Sudanese deported' and 'infiltrators, get out of our home.' The Likud politician Miri Regev participated in the protest and said that 'the Sudanese were a cancer in our body'. Africans' shops and apartments were attacked. It's this last image, of broken store-fronts and glass, that will knock the wind out of many Holocaust survivors, some of whom fled Europe after Kristallnact - the Night of Broken Glass - where Nazis ran a series of co-ordinated attacks on Jewish homes, shops and synagogues throughout Germany and parts of Austria. At a park in Neve Shaanan, an area of Tel Aviv inflamed by 'infiltrators', a daughter of Holocaust survivors, Orly Feldheim, told a New York Times reporter: 'I feel I am in a movie in Germany, circa 1933 or 1936.' Netanyahu should be chilled by what Feldheim said. Now that the Prime Minister's word - 'infiltrators' - has reached the mouths of violent xenophobes, he has attached himself to scenes that could alienate even his most rusted-on supporters. Netanyahu knows better than most that the Holocaust is never very far from an Israeli's mind. He should also know that many Israelis believe their country has a special responsibility to help those in need, given it was founded as a refuge for survivors."

Notice here how the link between Israel's exalted Jewish character and Netanyahu, the ideological heir of the Irgun terrorists whose bloody hands and knives* were instrumental in creating that Jewish character (of which more later), is missing? It's as though a hitherto fine and upstanding member of the international community had suddenly, inexplicably, become possessed and begun foaming at the mouth and spitting forth racist curses. Then there's the ludicrous suggestion that this uncharacteristic behaviour will only alienate his hordes of prim and proper supporters who are, of course, gobsmacked at the spectacle. The naivete here is nothing short of astonishing. What part of Benjamin Netanyahu does Swan not understand?

"Such faith has been drained by the Palestinian occupation, and Netanyahu's latest announcements may have turned off life support. He has also crushed a key source of pride for liberal Zionists. Like many moderates, Gil Troy, a history professor at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada, and author of Why I am a Zionist, counts Israel's compassion towards refugees as one of the country's greatest achievements. 'To Israel, today's refugee is tomorrow's citizen,' Troy wrote in a Jerusalem post blog. 'In a clear repudiation of the accusation that Zionism is in any way racist, Israel has accepted black, brown, and white refugees... with nearly 80,000 Ethiopian refugees constituting the only welcome migration I know of involving black Africans to a mostly white country.'"

Incredibly, despite Swan's subject, Israel and its treatment of refugees, this is the first time the word Palestinian has cropped up. But only, you'll note, in reference to the occupation. The standout feature of Swan's vacuous opinion piece is that, in an article about Israel and refugees, he makes no mention whatever of the existence, let alone the history and circumstances, of millions of Palestinian REFUGEES, driven out of their ancestral homeland in 1948 to create the Zionist movement's Holy Grail, a Jewish majority in Palestine. This enables him to suggest, through the example of Gil Troy, that Israel's origins were as pure as the proverbial driven snow. Troy is apparently the kind of bloke who can say without blushing that Israel's compassion towards refugees is one of its greatest achievements; and Swan is the kind of bloke who, again, without blushing, believes and reproduces every word. The man reveals himself here as either a complete ignoramus or a shameless propagandist. Whichever shoe fits, it's a mystery how can he be allowed to get away with this.

It's perhaps instructive at this point to compare Swan's performance with a recent piece by an Israeli journalist commemorating Israel's Vietnamese refugees. While Shoshana Bryen deploys a similar propaganda trope to Swan's - "The experience of Jewish refugees and the hopelessness of statelessness made Israel sensitive to the hopelessness of people from another place, another culture, another war, giving the Vietnamese a place to start over" (Israel & the boat people, timesofisrael.com, 6/6/12) - she is only too aware of Israel's original sin, hurrying to add, parenthetically, "(For those rolling their eyes on behalf of stateless Palestinian refugees..," before attempting to cover up this inconvenient truth by trotting out yet another Zionist talking point: "It is precisely the Jewish experience with statelessness that impels Israel to continue to seek a mechanism by which Palestinians can achieve the state the Arabs declined on their behalf in 1948 - without losing the state of Israel.)" No rolling of the eyes on behalf of stateless Palestinian refugees for Swan, the issue is simply dropped down Orwell's memory hole quicker than you can say, But what about the Palestinian refugees?

"But can Israel still claim this self-image? Vic Alhadaff, the chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, believes it can. Alhadeff defends Israel's immigration policies, arguing that the country has 'absorbed thousands of refugees from Vietnam, Albania, Kosovo and Darfur, and hosts 120,000 illegal foreign workers. Like Australia,' Alhadeff says, 'Israel is attempting to balance humanitarian needs with the need to protect its borders from waves of illegal immigration.'"

Almost 65 years of Palestinians rotting in refugee camps** and Swan is asking, Can Israel still claim this self image? The mind boggles.

"But if Israel genuinely wishes to strike such a balance, it has done a good job in hiding it. It is one thing to have a prime minister who calls illegal migrants 'infiltrators'; it is quite another to have a 'Prevention of Infiltration Law', recently amended to allow Israeli authorities to detain 'infiltrators' for up to 3 years."

OMG! Israel passes laws which discriminate against refugees! Who would have thought?

"While Netanyahu ponders his next assault on illegal immigrants, I hope he pays a visit to Yad Vashem. After he reads the quote by Thomas W. White, Netanyahu will find outside rows of trees honouring the 'righteous among the nations' - those brave souls, Oskar Schindler included, who risked their lives to rescue Jewish refugees."

Oh yes, a simple visit to Yad Vashem (led by Swan?) and Netanyahu will be so overcome by remorse that he'll rush back to the Knesset and deliver a historic and heartfelt speech, softie that he really is, beginning with the words, I don't know what came over me...

Seriously now, could Ms Rinehart do any worse?

[*See my 9/4/12 post Zionism Red in Tooth & Claw; **Take a look at the latest ANERA report (6/12) on Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.]

Laying Siege to German Jews

The following paragraph, from a feature article in the Weekend Australian, conceals a much more nuanced story:

"Questioning the way history is presented is one of [Albrecht] Dumling's chief preoccupations. He was in Canberra to sift through the National Archives, looking into what really happened to [German] Jewish musicians whose flight from Nazi terror brought them to Australia. Today, it is tempting to imagine Australia as a safe haven, where the unjustly persecuted could begin again. The reality was different. Australia was not eager to accept Jewish immigrants. At the Evian Conference of 1938, Australia's trade and customs minister Thomas White, pleading against large-scale Jewish immigration, declared that 'as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one'." (Musicians who kept it quiet, Shirley Apthorp, 19/11/11)

The awful truth of the matter, however, is that it wasn't just the redneckery of hicks like Thomas White which helped seal the fate of German Jewry, as the Wikipedia entry on the Evian Conference shows:

"The Evian Conference was convened at the initiative of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in July 1938 to discuss the issue of increasing numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution... The Jews of Austria and Germany were very hopeful, believing that this international conference would provide a safe haven... With both the US and Britain refusing to take in substantial numbers of Jews, the conference was ultimately seen as a failure by Jews and their sympathizers... Zionist organisations did not take part in the conference. One hisorian describes their attitude as one of 'hostile indifference' since any positive outcome would reduce the numbers of people wishing to migrate to settle in Palestine."

Come again? Zionist organisations boycotted an international conference convened to rescue German Jewry from escalating Nazi brutality because channeling Jews into Palestine for the coming stoush with its indigenous inhabitants took priority? Who would have thought? Let's take a closer look:

Arising out of the Evian Conference, an Intergovernmental Committee for Political Refugees was set up to negotiate with the Nazis an exit strategy for besieged German Jewry. It was headed by Americans Myron Taylor, the Evian Conference chairman, and George Rublee, a friend of President Roosevelt. By January 1939, Rublee had managed to negotiate a plan which would have resulted in Jews under 45 being released from concentration camps on condition they emigrated, with the rest being allowed to remain undisturbed in Germany. This was not, however, to the liking of the Zionist movement, because emigration to Palestine was not an integral part of the deal, and their virulent opposition to the plan was sufficient to ensure that it remained largely on the drawing board until overtaken by the outbreak of World War II.

Israeli scholar S.B. Beit Zvi delivers this measured, but damning, assessment of political Zionism's attitude towards the plight of German Jews:

"In assessing what Zionism did to German Jewry at this stage, we will once more refrain from accusing the Zionists of abandoning the German Jews to a violent death. Even then, in the Spring and Summer of 1939, no one was thinking along the lines of total destruction. Nonetheless, it is no exaggeration to describe what was done as laying siege to a Jewish group which was in terrible distress. The situation of German Jews was thoroughly known from the accounts of visitors and of refugees who managed to get out of the country. The Jewish Agency Executive heard an updated report from Eliahu Dobkin who had just visited Germany and Austria. According to Dobkin, less than 1% of the wage earners were in fact earning a living, and over half of them were employed in community and Zionist institutions. Two-thirds of Austrian Jews and one-third of German Jews were living on charity. Many had been able to manage only by selling jewelry and other valuables... Every Jew in Germany and Austria was thinking about escape. The Nazi authorities were not talking about the liquidation of the Jews within 3 years - their intention was that the majority should leave within one year. Not even Dobkin's shocking account impelled the Jewish Agency leadership to budge from its position. The chairman of the session, Yitzhak Gruenbaum, thanked Dobkin 'for his excellent and exhaustive talk', and that was the end of the matter. Concurrent with its war on the Rublee Plan, the World Zionist Organization pursued the Haavarah deal. Its representatives also made useful deals with the Gestapo in Berlin and Vienna aimed at bringing about the immigration to Palestine of Zionist pioneers, the establishment of training facilities for the pioneers, and the liberation of potential Palestine settlers from concentration camps. When it came to aliyah, deals with the Nazis were not unconscionable and the Jews were not compelled to wait until the collapse of the regime." (Post-Ugandan Zionism On Trial: A Study of the Factors that Caused the Mistakes Made by the Zionist movement during the Holocaust, 1991, pp 198-199)

In sum, writes Beit Zvi:

"These events... exemplify a bitter and persistent truth which is deeply interwoven in the episode of the Rublee Plan. That fact - which cannot be expunged or obliterated from the annals of the Jewish people - is that for nearly a year a group of American non-Jews headed by Myron Taylor under the active auspices of President Roosevelt engaged in considerable efforts to extricate the Jews of Germany. The dedicated activity of the Americans had the vacillating aid of British representatives and, to a lesser degree, of other countries. Throughout this entire period the attitude of the Jewish organizations swung between total opposition on the part of the overwhelming majority and constrained and reluctant cooperation on the part of a few functionaries whose true motivation was opposition to rival Jewish organisations. And on the issue that is of primary concern to us: the Zionist movement vigorously opposed the Rublee Plan and did all it could to thwart its implementation." (p 206)

The Kevin Rudd Road Show 1

MERC first got wind of the bigger-than-Ben Hur KRRS back in October (See my 25/10/10 post Record Rambam) and has been waiting with the proverbial baited breath ever since for this, the third, the largest, and, it has to be said, the steamiest of Melbourne Zionist promoter and publicist Albert Dadon's Ozraeli love-ins.

Those of you who regularly visit this site might remember his first and second Australia Israel Leadership Forum (AILF) shindigs. In these earlier (2009) productions, starring then DPM Julia Gillard, The Australian Jewish News discerned merely a 'shared sense of joy', with Gillard going so far, at the second, as to dance the hora, a sort of Israeli boot scootin (See my posts Gillard Gets a Gong (29/6/09) & Just Do It, Bitch (11/12/09)). Anyway, lest you think steamy a tad over the top, just wait and see.

Now many of you may have been somewhat distracted by Oprah's recent Sydney lovefest, and so overlooked Rudd's galah performance in Jerusalem. Not that I can really blame you, but to tell the truth, it was really only given its due in The Australian Jewish News and its Maxi-Me, Murdoch's Australian. So sit back while I fill you in on this mother-of-all rambammings in a series of posts, beginning with The AJN's coverage, followed by The Australian's, and concluding with Fairfax's far less attentive fare.

The AJN's coverage was, as you'd expect, full-bodied and exceedingly fruity. Its issue of December 17 bore the brunt with a front page shot of a kneeling, kippah-ed Rudd laying a wreath at Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum, his figure illuminated by a flame burning behind him. This was accompanied by the kind of words that tell you all you need to know about the politics of the AJN: "ETERNAL FLAME, ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP: This week, 50 Australian politicians, journalists, and business and community leaders travelled to Israel. From the Kotel to the Knesset, Yad Vashem to Tel Aviv, the special relationship between the two countries was embraced and cemented."

Inside, under the headline Peres spreads the love, we learned that "Israel's President Shimon Peres described the relationship between the Jewish state and Australia as one of love... 'Australia is a beloved country in Israel... Love is the diplomacy that exists from the standpoint towards Australia'."

Did I say steamy? Peres' lust for Kevvie was obviously so great at this point that it quite overpowered his syntax. This was Peres' version of Oprah's 'I love Australia. I love Australia. I LOVE AUSTRALIA'. Fortunately for those assembled, despite the pull of Kevvie's obvious charms, Peres' first and only love reflexively kicked in when he began barking about Israel's "moral superiority" vis a vis a certain "brutal Islamic regime" in Iran: "He accused Iran of trying to turn the Middle East into an 'extremist empire' and 'the centre of terror'. 'They destroyed Lebanon - it was a nice country - they destroyed Yemen, they are entering Sudan and Somalia and they are going to South America because the Middle East is too small for them'."

Iran - IRAN! - I-R-A-N! - destroyed Lebanon (and everything else within cooee it seems), and our assembled pollies, journos, business and community leaders no doubt lapped up every lunatic word, having completely forgotten, if they'd ever known in the first place, that Peres was the Israeli prime minister who presided over the first Qana massacre of 1996 with its 109 Lebanese civilian deaths. Alas, this was not the only occasion when the historical record was sent packing from the room.

In another story, Rudd: Time for peace running out, on Kevvie's keynote speech to the AILF (of which, more later), the AJN's Naomi Levin managed the extraordinary feat of topping Peres' gloriously delusional rant when she asserted that "Rudd's call [for an urgent resolution to the Middle East conflict] stands in contrast to some members of the Israeli Government, who are promoting a slower, nation-building process for the Palestinians and imploring the world to focus efforts first on Iran, then on Israel and the Palestinians."

Yes, that's right, we've been wrong all along, Israel's actually been building Palestine, not destroying it! And boy, did the punters go for that one. How do I know? Why, the AJN's editorial, A beautiful friendship: "Values can seem an abstract concept, but they became concrete to the 50-strong Australian delegation, as they questioned, queried and listened intently to some of Israel's most prominent political minds. The all-comers - from Perth to the Gold Coast to the NSW South Coast and everywhere in between - embraced the new perspectives on the peace process and the Iranian threat in particular."

Building Palestine - slowly. Smashing Iran - now! Brace yourselves as these Israeli talking points start proliferating in the Australian ms media.

But the centrepiece of the AJN's coverage of the KRRS was Kevvie's December 13 "keynote address" to the AILF.

Rudd led off with a perfect pearl, which, when and if a book titled Kevin Rudd: The Complete Joke(s) is ever published, will surely occupy pride of place, and which had The Australian's extremely foreign foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan literally squirming in his seat and led to the production of an equally fine pearl, destined for inclusion in Sheridan's own similarly titled book (of which particular pearl, more in my next post). But here's Kevvie's: "It is an honour to be among Israeli and Australian friends tonight here in Jerusalem, at the King David Hotel. Shimon Peres, Israel's President, who we met earlier today, said some years ago that when you come to the King David, you come not just as a guest, but you come also to a place which has seen almost the complete cast of players across the history of the modern State of Israel, often in this room in which we gather here tonight. From the 1930s, this hotel became the British field headquarters for what was then British Palestine, until Menachem Begin undertook some interior redesign."

Finished pissing yourselves yet? Rudd's referring of course to the blowing up of the King David Hotel by Begin's Irgun terrorists in 1946 at the cost of 88 British, Arab and Jewish (15) lives. And it is telling that our wit refers to it merely as the "British field quarters", when in fact it also housed the civilian wing of Britain's mandate government in Palestine. After all, it wouldn't do to suggest that the King David was as much a civilian as a military target, now would it? Both the 'joke' and the studied omission were a signal to his hosts that all is forgiven, that the only real terrorists in the Middle East are, have always been, and always will be, Arab. Not, of course, that the Australian contingent even knew what he was talking about. What were our Israeli hosts sniggering about at the start of your speech, prime... sorry, foreign minister?

Moving along, Rudd praised the oleaginous Shimon Peres as a "living treasure of Israel" and "one of the world's truly wise men." This assessment, of course, tells one nothing of Peres and everything you ever needed to know about Rudd. For a correct assessment of Peres, whose name graces a Center for Peace and who is always trotted out on these occasions as the smiling face of the Zionist fist in Palestine, I'll quote from Rannie Amiri's counterpunch.org article Israel's Master of Deception: "The international community has long been enamored by current Israeli President and former Prime Minister, Shimon Peres. Regarded as a voice of reason and a dove among hawks, he adroitly assuages fears and reassures critics with soothing, yet empty words advocating dialogue and the creation of a Palestinian state. By duping the world into believing significant differences exist between his 'left-wing' views and those of Israel's far right, he has proved himself a master at deception." (14/5/10)

As a fan of Peres, Rudd is more than happy to parrot his vacuous... sorry, wise words: "Shimon said earlier today that as we deal with the problems of our current age, we should not be trapped by the language of the past, but rather engage in the language of the future; the language of the generation of today. The language of the generation which thinks increasingly beyond that which is national, to that which is truly global." Needless to say, Peres hasn't had a new idea since he smashed his parents' radio when he found them listening to it on the Sabbath back in 1920s Poland.

Inevitably, of course, when Rudd is regaling a Zionist audience, he'll start banging on about Doc Evatt's hand in the destruction of Arab Palestine... sorry, the creation of Israel: "My distinguished predecessor as foreign minister, [Dr HV] Evatt, chaired the UN Commission on Palestine in 1947... This was the commission that recommended the establishment of both an Israeli [sic: Jewish] state and a Palestinian state. And when its recommendations were taken to the UN General Assembly, Australia was the first state to vote in support of the establishment of the modern State of Israel."

Par for Rudd's course, of course. A new element in these ritualised proceedings, however, was injected with some first rate Holocaust breastbeating: "Of course, in the years following the war, Australia also received tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors and other Jewish refugees from Europe as they came to Australia to make their home. Regrettably, history records that we were not always so generous. As I acknowledged last night at Yad Vashem, when Australia met with 31 other nations at the Evian Conference in 1938, we refused to open our hearts and we refused to open our doors to the Jewish people of Europe, despite the unfolding persecution against them. Disgracefully, our representative at the time said we could not help, that Australia had no racial problems at the time, nor did it wish to import any. The ancient scriptures have long enjoined us all never to harden our hearts, and yet still we and the other Christian nations of the world did just that."

This is truly gobsmacking stuff. Here we have the man (?) who, as PM, hardened his heart with a "tough but humane" policy toward the current wave of refugees from wartorn Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, invoking the historical record on the Evian Conference before an audience of Zionists and their sundry Australian dupes and fools, and apologising for supposed Christian complicity (Christian nations) in the Nazis' persecution of German Jews, when the fact of the matter is that the Zionist supremo of the day, David Ben-Gurion, was instrumental in nixing the conference: "The Jews could only have one destination - Eretz Yisrael. So in June 1938, shortly before Allied representative met in Evian, France, to seek ways of rescuing Jews, Ben-Gurion frankly voiced his concern to colleagues in the Jewish Agency Executive. He did 'not know if the conference will open the gates of other countries... But I am afraid [it] might cause tremendous harm to Eretz Yisrael and Zionism... Our main task is to reduce the harm, the danger and the disaster... and the more we emphasize the terrible distress of the Jewish masses in Germany, Poland and Rumania, the more damage we shall cause'. So be silent, Ben-Gurion cautioned his comrades... And in the silence... Evian failed." (Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire, Dan Kurzman, 1983)

After the obligatory references to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and William Cooper (See my 12/12/10 post The ABC of Zionist Propaganda), Mr Guilty asked, "So why do I reflect on these things at some length this evening? To say to our Israeli friends that none of us come to the history of modern Israel with hands that are completely clean. But in Australia, through the actions of successive governments since the war... we have honoured our friendship with Israel in good times and in bad. We have supported you in all the major wars you have fought, because in Australia you are among friends."

In short, because we feel we didn't pull our weight in the 30s by taking in German Jews, even though that was the last thing your founding fathers would have wanted us to do, we will give you now a free pass to grind the faces of the Palestinians, the Arabs, the Iranians, and whoever takes your fancy... in perpetuity.

Then he turned to Israel's much-hyped "security challenges," shamelessly parroting the same old, same old, proven bogus wiping-Israel-off-the-map mantra: "The Iranian leader's proclamation that Israel should be removed from the map of the world was a chilling reminder of the rank anti-semitism from decades past." And ditto for Hezbollah and Hamas, who, of course, cannot possibly be conceived as anything other than Iran's supposed "terrorist" proxies, with nothing better to do than mindlessly launch their rockets and make Israeli lives an absolute misery.

Eventually, we reach the fabled peace process, which had Rudd crying into his beer: "Sometimes it seems as if we have been wandering in the desert for the last 40 years... I am increasingly concerned that the window for peace may be beginning to close." His nightmare vision? "What happens to the security of Israel if the peace process collapses completely?" Remember the dreaded Second Intifada, he enjoins: "I remember touring the Old city then and touring it alone. There was no-one on the streets. People were afraid." Israeli people, that is. Who gives a rat's for Palestinian fear? Certainly not Rudd or his handpicked camp followers. Certainly not the Israeli officials lapping all this up.

"What will happen in Egypt? What will happen in Jordan?" he wailed. "And what dividend would a collapse in the peace process deliver to Iran and its quest for political legitimacy and the expansion of its diplomatic and security footprint across the wider Middle East and beyond." Doesn't bear thinking about, eh?

But, my friends, "there is another scenario to consider": The Israeli lion lieth down with the Palestinian lamb, the Arabs beat their swords into ploughshares, Iran and its proxies vanish in a puff of smoke, and "7.5 million Israelis" get to make a grab for those lucrative Arab markets.

But, hey, don't think I'm trying to impose anything on you blokes, no, these are just "scenarios worthy of careful analysis," cuz always remember, my beloved friends in Zion, "Whatever the future holds through this peace process and beyond, you will forever have strong and reliable friends in Australia."

Yes, you heard it. Forever! As Oprah would say, "Who is feeling the love right now? Do you feel sexy, Australia?"