Here's the liberal Zionist editor of The Guardian, Jonathan Freedland, pretending that Netanyahu's victory at the polls will be equally bad for Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, and omitting the fact that it was the former who enabled it:
"So Palestinians will have to brace themselves for a Trump 'peace plan' that is likely to deny them the territory they need to build a state of their own. Meanwhile, Netanyahu's victory promises a further assault on democratic norms and the rule of law inside Israel. It surely spells gloom for the long-term prospects of both peoples, but they are used to that by now. It's been this way on and off for most of the last quarter century. For truly this is the age of Netanyahu." (Netanyahu's victory means life is about to get worse for Palestinians, theguardian.com, 10/4/19)
George Orwell would be turning in his grave if he knew Freedland had been awarded a special Orwell Prize in May 2014 for his 'journalism'. Certainly, at least on the subject of Palestine/Israel, he seems incapable of producing anything other than pro-Israel PR.
In a 2012 New Statesman essay, Yearning for the same land, Freedland reveals why.
In it, he argues unconvincingly that, alongside the Zionism we're all familiar with, "the expansionist desire to control the entire biblical land of Israel," there's another "true" Zionism, consisting of "the more modest claim that there should be a Jewish national home within historic Palestine," and that that is the Zionism he, Freedland, professes. IOW, it's two states for two peoples, with the Palestinians getting a mere 22% of their historic homeland at most, contingent on the unlikely event of every soldier and settler pulling up stakes and getting out.
Whatever their imagined difference, both Zionisms, of course, subscribe to the same dogma, namely that Jews constitute not a faith community, but a "people" who, "like every other people, have a right to self-determination in the historic land of their birth." Although the concept of Jewish peoplehood has no basis in fact (and has been exploded most recently by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand in his 2009 book The Invention of the Jewish People), Freedland accepts it uncritically. Nor does he acknowledge the absurdity of this fictional people's achieving its fictional right of self-determination at the expense of another.
Sensing he's on shaky ground here, he attempts to bolster his case by shamelessly playing the Holocaust card: "The Jewish people, scythed by the Holocaust and after centuries of persecution, were gasping for breath in 1948; their need for a home was as great as that of any people in history. They had the right to act, even though the cost for another people, the Palestinians, was immense." Overlooked, of course, is the bleeding obvious that it was Germany, not the Palestinians, who perpetrated the Holocaust, not to mention the fact that the majority of Jews displaced by the war would have preferred to migrate to the United States and elsewhere than to Palestine.
Freedland goes on to claim that there was no "logical" connection between the pre-1967 Zionist colonisation of Palestine and the post-1967 Zionist colonisation of its West Bank and Gaza remnants. The Israeli settlement of the occupied territories was not, he asserts, "the ineluctable consequence of Zionism - as the Israeli right argued then and now." Presumably, for Freedland, those responsible for settling pre-1967 Palestine, his "true," Labor, Zionists, were more than content with their "national home" in 78% of historic Palestine. How strange then that their behaviour after 1967 belies this:
"The authorized, 'legal' settlements began in the era of the Labor-led governments, from 1967 to 1977. They flourished in the days of the Likud governments that followed and during the subsequent period of the Labor, Likud, and unity governments. In the course of the negotiations that engendered the September 1993 Oslo agreement, and in the period following it, the settlements saw an unprecedented building boom. All the the subsequent governments have made a point of approving new construction, ostensibly only within the boundaries of the existing settlements, but they have always supported - by political and budgetary deed and by failing to enforce the law and deter violations - the establishment of new settlements in the guise of new neighborhoods and 'illegal' outposts." (Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007, Idith Zertal & Akiva Eldar, 2007, pp xvii - xviii)
Freedland, of course, overlooks entirely the colonial-settler roots of the Zionist project and the trampling of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs' right to national self-determination following World War I; the fact that political Zionism, from its inception, was focused exclusively, as one of its early slogans put it, on 'a land without a people'; and that Zionist colonisation, like every other form of colonisation, has only ever trampled underfoot the rights of those it has dispossessed.
Freedland may try to fool us with his airy talk of Zionist "dreamers" and "two peoples, fated to seek their dreams in the same land," but in truth he's only fooling himself.
Showing posts with label Idith Zertal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Idith Zertal. Show all posts
Monday, April 15, 2019
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
The Airbrushing of Frank Lowy
Take a look at the opening paragraph of this Sydney Morning Herald report on Frank Lowy, Australian billionaire and generous donor to such deserving 'charities' as Israel's Jewish National Fund (JNF) and Australia's LibLab:
"The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and one of Australia's greatest refugee success stories, Frank Lowy, joined forces last night to defend multiculturalism against criticisms prompted by the riots in Sydney on Saturday... Giving the inaugural Australian Multicultural Council, Mr Lowy said it was time to move the discussion about multiculturalism to a new phase, 'beyond the recognition that it makes for a more vibrant community, or that we now have a wider choice of restaurants'." (Gillard, Lowy defend multiculturalism, Phillip Coorey, 20/9/12)
What a man, we're expected to exclaim. From refugee rags to riches beyond the dreams of avarice and on to multicultural icon. Bring on the musical!
Reality, however, cannot so easily be (air)brushed aside.
I dedicate this post, therefore, to a critical examination of the two key propositions that underpin Coorey's report: 1) that Lowy was a refugee; and 2) that Lowy is such a paragon of multiculturalism that we, the public, should sit up and take notice of what he says on the subject.
Not that I haven't already animadverted on these matters before - namely in the two posts, Frank Lowy: Arab Fighter (14/11/10) and Refugees (19/7/10) - however, in this post I'll be drawing on a new (for me) source: Jill Margo's 2000 biography of Lowy: Frank Lowy: Pushing the Limits.
Firstly, was Lowy a refugee or an immigrant?
After the war, Lowy and other members of his family returned from Russian-occupied Budapest to their home town, Filakovo, in Czechoslovakia:
"The Holocaust was finally over," writes Margo. "Frank locked away the experience and did not revisit it for 40 years. Throughout 1945 his family began to pick up the pieces of their shattered life. Alex established his own business and opened a shop. John found a new interest: Zionism. Frank was sent to nearby Kosice and a Zionist-funded camp for youngsters, where he was taught primarily about Palestine and Zionism... the Zionist Youth Group [there] was encouraging young people to emigrate to Palestine. Frank understood that this was an opportunity for a new start: There was nothing for me in Czechoslovakia, memories were terrible and I felt enormous inner pressure to leave. I had missed so many years at school, was not motivated to catch up and had no desire to create roots there. Joining the group to go to Palestine was like going to a school camp. This offered a new beginning, a new country, a new identity, a chance to be part of the Jewish drive to create a homeland. The Jewish Agency sent emissaries, collecting strays and displaced persons, and moving them clandestinely to Palestine. I felt I was leaving a place to which I did not belong for a much brighter future." (pp 32-33)
So the reason why Lowy left Czechoslovakia was because he'd been bitten by the Zionist bug. And yet, in his address to the AMC, in which he portrays himself as a refugee, all mention of the siren call of Zion is missing, to be replaced by this:
"And they have returned to their small town [Filakovo] to find they are no longer welcome... The surviving members of this close family know they have become temporary residents in their town and must find somewhere else to be."
In spinning himself as a refugee, Lowy has sketched a postwar atmosphere of anti-Semitic menace, necessitating flight. Nowhere, however, in Margo's biography is there any suggestion that post-war Filakovo is some kind of anti-Semitic hotbed. In fact, his brother John, the first in the family to be bitten by the Zionist bug, is quoted as complaining only that "I felt I had no identity. I was born in Czechoslovakia and was a Czechoslovakian citizen but neither Czech nor Slovak... Palestine seemed to be the place for recreating an identity." (p 32)
It's clear from the above that Lowy did not flee Czechoslovakia for Palestine. Rather he'd been indoctrinated and lured there by Zionist agents (whose only mission was to boost the size of the Jewish community in Palestine vis-a-vis the Palestinian Arabs). And just as Lowy has departed from Margo in his sketch of postwar Filakovo, so too with his account of his journey by boat to Palestine. In Margo, his boat contains 400 passengers (p 33), while in his AMC speech, it's risen to 700. Likewise, in Margo there's no hint of brutality when his boat is intercepted by the British, but in his AMC speech, we get this far more colourful account: "There are scuffles and commotion as the British soldiers board the boat. At gunpoint the frightened refugees are herded into the grey, steel hull of the warship."
Lowy might play the refugee in his AMC speech but the reality was that he'd been recruited, along with thousands of others in the postwar years, by agents of David Ben-Gurion's Jewish Agency for a Mossad-organised attempt to breach Britain's blockade of Palestine, established not, it should be remembered, as an act of anti-Semitic cruelty, but simply to prevent the swamping of Palestine's majority Arab population by illegal Jewish immigration. As the British government stated at the time: "[this] illegal traffic is not, as has been maintained, a movement arising spontaneously among the European Jews who see in Palestine their only hope for the future. Nor are those who encourage and direct it inspired solely by the sympathy which is so widely felt for suffering [rather it is] a widely ramified and highly organized movement supported by very large financial contributions from Zionist sources, which has been built up and put into operation by unscrupulous persons in an attempt tp force the hand of His Majesty's government and anticipate their decision on future policy in Palestine."*
With regard to Palestine then, Lowy was not only not a refugee but an illegal immigrant, an unwitting pawn, if you will, in a Zionist people-smuggling operation, itself just one aspect of the postwar Zionist rebellion against British mandate rule in Palestine.
Fast forwarding then to his decision in 1952 to migrate to Australia from what was by then Israel, we read in Margo that:
"When Frank first went to Israel there was every expectation the rest of the family would follow. But while he was there, Ilona [Lowy's mother] and his brother Alex followed [sister] Edith and her husband to Australia. They could have gone to Israel but economic conditions in the early 1950s were harsh... The thought of leaving Israel was difficult... but, for Frank and his brother John, the urge to be reunited with their mother Ilona was stronger." (p 52)
With regard to Australia then, Lowy was simply an immigrant, not a refugee.
Secondly, is Lowy such a paragon of multiculturalism that he should be lecturing us on the subject?
With the events of September 15 in mind, Lowy opined in his AMC address that migrants "should agree to live by the standards and values of this society... and agree to pass on these values to your children, to ensure they receive a broad and balanced education, untainted by the ideology of hate."
But Lowy's a Zionist who has donated significant sums of money to one of the main arms of Zionist colonialism in Palestine, the Jewish National Fund. As a financial backer of the JNF, Lowy's therefore doing his bit to ensure the maintenance of Zionist settler-colonial rule in Palestine over its indigenous Palestinian Arab population, whether they be in perpetual exile, under military occupation or living in Israel as second-class citizens. To advocate multiculturalism in Australia while funding monoculturalism and apartheid in another is to risk being called a hypocrite.
But there's another reason why Lowy's little homily on multiculturalism rings hollow. It has to do with what he was doing in Palestine in the critical year of the Palestinian Nakba, 1948. All we get in his AMC speech is this:
"Ashore in Palestine, he feels a sense of freedom. No one is chasing him or pointing a gun at him because he is Jewish. But the following year he's in a makeshift uniform, back in the turmoil of war, fighting in the War of Independence for the new state of Israel."
Of course, this kind of patter is the usual stock-in-trade of the Zionist true believer, who cannot bring himself to acknowledge the reality of the massacres and expulsions of Palestine's indigenous Arab population that were perpetrated by Zionist forces in Palestine in 1948. The historical record, however, is what should guide the rest of us. Relying on Margo's sketchy, no doubt sanitised, account of this period in Lowy's life, and fleshing it out with data from scholars of the Nakba, we can get at least some idea of Lowy's involvement in the events of 1948:
Margo mentions an Israeli attack on the Palestinian village of Sejera [ash-Shajara] in February 1948, in which Lowy was wounded. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi has written of it: "In mid-February 1948, as a battle flared between Arab and Haganah forces in the Baysan Valley, the Haganah forces carried out a diversionary attack on ash-Shajara." (All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, 1992, p 541)
Margo reveals that Lowy was involved in the 'liberation' of Tiberias in April 1948: "We would occupy one house and then move to the next. First we would break down the door, check if anyone was inside, throw in a grenade and then occupy it." (p 43) Michael Palumbo adds the necessary context: "[W]hen it was learned that the British were about to evacuate Tiberias, a company of elite Palmach troops were sent in to reinforce the town's Jewish militia. On the night of 17-18 April, a co-ordinated drive was made to cut the Arab section of town in two. Barrel-bombs, loudspeakers and 'horror sounds' were used to frighten the civilian population. (The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland, 1987, p 107)
After the fall of Tiberias, Israeli troops reportedly looted and desecrated Christian religious establishments there. (Palumbo, p 108)
In June 1948, according to Margo, Lowy joined the Barak battalion of the Golani Brigade. She quotes his commanding officer, Rafi Kocer thus: "They were a highly motivated unit. In some ways I think they were avenging the Holocaust and empowering themselves." (p 46) The question of exactly why Lowy and his troop should be avenging the Holocaust by attacking Palestinian Arabs obviously didn't occur to either Kocer or Margo. I wonder if it's ever occurred to Lowy?
Margo cites a second, final attack by the Golanis on Sejera in June 1948, though her timing appears to be out, however. Here's Khalidi again: "The village was captured on 6 May 1948 in the aftermath of the fall of Tiberias... The attack was part of a Haganah effort to consolidate its hold on lower Galilee before 15 May. Units of the Golani Brigade (mainly the 12th or Barak Battalion) struck at dawn and took the village after a 'powerful attack', according to the History of the Haganah. An unspecified number of villagers were killed during the attack; the Haganah's account states that the village's inhabitants 'fled leaving their dead behind'." (p 541)
Margo goes on to say that "[i]n the 6 months between July and December 1948, Kocer's commando unit had been involved in 73 combat missions, many behind enemy lines," and that from October 1948 Lowy was involved in fighting against the Egyptians in the Western Negev. (p 50)
While only Lowy himself is privy to the precise details of his involvement in what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describes as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which led to the Palestinian refugee problem that is still with us today (5.5 million souls and growing), the data presented above is surely sufficient to cast doubt on whether he's really the right person to be lecturing Australians on the meaning of multiculturalism.
[*Quoted in From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, Idith Zertal, 1998, p 237]
"The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and one of Australia's greatest refugee success stories, Frank Lowy, joined forces last night to defend multiculturalism against criticisms prompted by the riots in Sydney on Saturday... Giving the inaugural Australian Multicultural Council, Mr Lowy said it was time to move the discussion about multiculturalism to a new phase, 'beyond the recognition that it makes for a more vibrant community, or that we now have a wider choice of restaurants'." (Gillard, Lowy defend multiculturalism, Phillip Coorey, 20/9/12)
What a man, we're expected to exclaim. From refugee rags to riches beyond the dreams of avarice and on to multicultural icon. Bring on the musical!
Reality, however, cannot so easily be (air)brushed aside.
I dedicate this post, therefore, to a critical examination of the two key propositions that underpin Coorey's report: 1) that Lowy was a refugee; and 2) that Lowy is such a paragon of multiculturalism that we, the public, should sit up and take notice of what he says on the subject.
Not that I haven't already animadverted on these matters before - namely in the two posts, Frank Lowy: Arab Fighter (14/11/10) and Refugees (19/7/10) - however, in this post I'll be drawing on a new (for me) source: Jill Margo's 2000 biography of Lowy: Frank Lowy: Pushing the Limits.
Firstly, was Lowy a refugee or an immigrant?
After the war, Lowy and other members of his family returned from Russian-occupied Budapest to their home town, Filakovo, in Czechoslovakia:
"The Holocaust was finally over," writes Margo. "Frank locked away the experience and did not revisit it for 40 years. Throughout 1945 his family began to pick up the pieces of their shattered life. Alex established his own business and opened a shop. John found a new interest: Zionism. Frank was sent to nearby Kosice and a Zionist-funded camp for youngsters, where he was taught primarily about Palestine and Zionism... the Zionist Youth Group [there] was encouraging young people to emigrate to Palestine. Frank understood that this was an opportunity for a new start: There was nothing for me in Czechoslovakia, memories were terrible and I felt enormous inner pressure to leave. I had missed so many years at school, was not motivated to catch up and had no desire to create roots there. Joining the group to go to Palestine was like going to a school camp. This offered a new beginning, a new country, a new identity, a chance to be part of the Jewish drive to create a homeland. The Jewish Agency sent emissaries, collecting strays and displaced persons, and moving them clandestinely to Palestine. I felt I was leaving a place to which I did not belong for a much brighter future." (pp 32-33)
So the reason why Lowy left Czechoslovakia was because he'd been bitten by the Zionist bug. And yet, in his address to the AMC, in which he portrays himself as a refugee, all mention of the siren call of Zion is missing, to be replaced by this:
"And they have returned to their small town [Filakovo] to find they are no longer welcome... The surviving members of this close family know they have become temporary residents in their town and must find somewhere else to be."
In spinning himself as a refugee, Lowy has sketched a postwar atmosphere of anti-Semitic menace, necessitating flight. Nowhere, however, in Margo's biography is there any suggestion that post-war Filakovo is some kind of anti-Semitic hotbed. In fact, his brother John, the first in the family to be bitten by the Zionist bug, is quoted as complaining only that "I felt I had no identity. I was born in Czechoslovakia and was a Czechoslovakian citizen but neither Czech nor Slovak... Palestine seemed to be the place for recreating an identity." (p 32)
It's clear from the above that Lowy did not flee Czechoslovakia for Palestine. Rather he'd been indoctrinated and lured there by Zionist agents (whose only mission was to boost the size of the Jewish community in Palestine vis-a-vis the Palestinian Arabs). And just as Lowy has departed from Margo in his sketch of postwar Filakovo, so too with his account of his journey by boat to Palestine. In Margo, his boat contains 400 passengers (p 33), while in his AMC speech, it's risen to 700. Likewise, in Margo there's no hint of brutality when his boat is intercepted by the British, but in his AMC speech, we get this far more colourful account: "There are scuffles and commotion as the British soldiers board the boat. At gunpoint the frightened refugees are herded into the grey, steel hull of the warship."
Lowy might play the refugee in his AMC speech but the reality was that he'd been recruited, along with thousands of others in the postwar years, by agents of David Ben-Gurion's Jewish Agency for a Mossad-organised attempt to breach Britain's blockade of Palestine, established not, it should be remembered, as an act of anti-Semitic cruelty, but simply to prevent the swamping of Palestine's majority Arab population by illegal Jewish immigration. As the British government stated at the time: "[this] illegal traffic is not, as has been maintained, a movement arising spontaneously among the European Jews who see in Palestine their only hope for the future. Nor are those who encourage and direct it inspired solely by the sympathy which is so widely felt for suffering [rather it is] a widely ramified and highly organized movement supported by very large financial contributions from Zionist sources, which has been built up and put into operation by unscrupulous persons in an attempt tp force the hand of His Majesty's government and anticipate their decision on future policy in Palestine."*
With regard to Palestine then, Lowy was not only not a refugee but an illegal immigrant, an unwitting pawn, if you will, in a Zionist people-smuggling operation, itself just one aspect of the postwar Zionist rebellion against British mandate rule in Palestine.
Fast forwarding then to his decision in 1952 to migrate to Australia from what was by then Israel, we read in Margo that:
"When Frank first went to Israel there was every expectation the rest of the family would follow. But while he was there, Ilona [Lowy's mother] and his brother Alex followed [sister] Edith and her husband to Australia. They could have gone to Israel but economic conditions in the early 1950s were harsh... The thought of leaving Israel was difficult... but, for Frank and his brother John, the urge to be reunited with their mother Ilona was stronger." (p 52)
With regard to Australia then, Lowy was simply an immigrant, not a refugee.
Secondly, is Lowy such a paragon of multiculturalism that he should be lecturing us on the subject?
With the events of September 15 in mind, Lowy opined in his AMC address that migrants "should agree to live by the standards and values of this society... and agree to pass on these values to your children, to ensure they receive a broad and balanced education, untainted by the ideology of hate."
But Lowy's a Zionist who has donated significant sums of money to one of the main arms of Zionist colonialism in Palestine, the Jewish National Fund. As a financial backer of the JNF, Lowy's therefore doing his bit to ensure the maintenance of Zionist settler-colonial rule in Palestine over its indigenous Palestinian Arab population, whether they be in perpetual exile, under military occupation or living in Israel as second-class citizens. To advocate multiculturalism in Australia while funding monoculturalism and apartheid in another is to risk being called a hypocrite.
But there's another reason why Lowy's little homily on multiculturalism rings hollow. It has to do with what he was doing in Palestine in the critical year of the Palestinian Nakba, 1948. All we get in his AMC speech is this:
"Ashore in Palestine, he feels a sense of freedom. No one is chasing him or pointing a gun at him because he is Jewish. But the following year he's in a makeshift uniform, back in the turmoil of war, fighting in the War of Independence for the new state of Israel."
Of course, this kind of patter is the usual stock-in-trade of the Zionist true believer, who cannot bring himself to acknowledge the reality of the massacres and expulsions of Palestine's indigenous Arab population that were perpetrated by Zionist forces in Palestine in 1948. The historical record, however, is what should guide the rest of us. Relying on Margo's sketchy, no doubt sanitised, account of this period in Lowy's life, and fleshing it out with data from scholars of the Nakba, we can get at least some idea of Lowy's involvement in the events of 1948:
Margo mentions an Israeli attack on the Palestinian village of Sejera [ash-Shajara] in February 1948, in which Lowy was wounded. Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi has written of it: "In mid-February 1948, as a battle flared between Arab and Haganah forces in the Baysan Valley, the Haganah forces carried out a diversionary attack on ash-Shajara." (All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, 1992, p 541)
Margo reveals that Lowy was involved in the 'liberation' of Tiberias in April 1948: "We would occupy one house and then move to the next. First we would break down the door, check if anyone was inside, throw in a grenade and then occupy it." (p 43) Michael Palumbo adds the necessary context: "[W]hen it was learned that the British were about to evacuate Tiberias, a company of elite Palmach troops were sent in to reinforce the town's Jewish militia. On the night of 17-18 April, a co-ordinated drive was made to cut the Arab section of town in two. Barrel-bombs, loudspeakers and 'horror sounds' were used to frighten the civilian population. (The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland, 1987, p 107)
After the fall of Tiberias, Israeli troops reportedly looted and desecrated Christian religious establishments there. (Palumbo, p 108)
In June 1948, according to Margo, Lowy joined the Barak battalion of the Golani Brigade. She quotes his commanding officer, Rafi Kocer thus: "They were a highly motivated unit. In some ways I think they were avenging the Holocaust and empowering themselves." (p 46) The question of exactly why Lowy and his troop should be avenging the Holocaust by attacking Palestinian Arabs obviously didn't occur to either Kocer or Margo. I wonder if it's ever occurred to Lowy?
Margo cites a second, final attack by the Golanis on Sejera in June 1948, though her timing appears to be out, however. Here's Khalidi again: "The village was captured on 6 May 1948 in the aftermath of the fall of Tiberias... The attack was part of a Haganah effort to consolidate its hold on lower Galilee before 15 May. Units of the Golani Brigade (mainly the 12th or Barak Battalion) struck at dawn and took the village after a 'powerful attack', according to the History of the Haganah. An unspecified number of villagers were killed during the attack; the Haganah's account states that the village's inhabitants 'fled leaving their dead behind'." (p 541)
Margo goes on to say that "[i]n the 6 months between July and December 1948, Kocer's commando unit had been involved in 73 combat missions, many behind enemy lines," and that from October 1948 Lowy was involved in fighting against the Egyptians in the Western Negev. (p 50)
While only Lowy himself is privy to the precise details of his involvement in what Israeli historian Ilan Pappe describes as the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, which led to the Palestinian refugee problem that is still with us today (5.5 million souls and growing), the data presented above is surely sufficient to cast doubt on whether he's really the right person to be lecturing Australians on the meaning of multiculturalism.
[*Quoted in From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, Idith Zertal, 1998, p 237]
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
The One Who Got Away
Today is the 45th anniversary of the departure of the ship Exodus from the French port of Sete on 11 July 1947, ostensibly with the mission of running the British blockade designed to stem illegal Jewish entry into mandate Palestine, but actually with the intent of pulling off one of the greatest publicity stunts in history. (See my 17/6/10 post Cannon Fodder for Zion: Exodus 1947 where I cited the assessment of Israeli historian Idith Zertal.)
One particular eye-witness testimony to that affair you're unlikely to read in most accounts is that of the remarkable Emmanuel Levyne, to my knowledge the only Exodus volunteer to both see through the whole vile charade and blow the whistle on it.
After boarding the Exodus as a volunteer, Levyne began having what he called "revelations" that any attempt to "force the gates of the Promised Land" constituted a "rebellion," not against the British, but against God. In short, as he put it, "I lost the Zionist faith," and when the British eventually returned those they'd removed from the Exodus to Port de Bouc, near Marseilles, he alone of the able-bodied volunteers disembarked, braving the threats and intimidation of the Mossad agents among them whose role it was to enforce discipline.
What follows is a rough translation from the French of part of Levyne's 1969 book Judaisme Contre Sionisme (Judaism Against Zionism), a neglected work crying out for an expert English translation:
"As for the Exodus affair, I've said that it was nothing more than an anti-British provocation - something the Zionists no longer try to hide, as they did at the time when they succeeded in mobilising world public opinion against the British and portraying them as the new Nazis.
"The newspaper Le Meridional, for example, in its issue of November 5 1967, devoted an entire page in homage to the 20th anniversary of the Exodus. Here are the words of one of the Zionist officials involved with the ship, from an interview with the journalist Maurice Sardou:
'The voyage was planned well ahead of time with the sole aim of stirring up world opinion against the British. We wanted to create a real focus of attention, so we packed the ship with 4,427 volunteers, knowing that the British would intercept it and arrest them. We wanted the British to over-react. The provocation was necessary. And sure enough, when they boarded it and transferred its passengers to British ships, there was an outcry in the international press which characterised them as 'prison ships'.
'And when these ships returned to Port de Bouc, the French authorities refused to cooperate with the disembarkation of the immigrants. The French government appealed to Jewish community leaders in France to act as interpreters. Those who wished to disembark could do so, but no force was used. The immigrants voted unanimously to remain on board. Only those who were ill were taken off. The ships remained in port de Bouc for a month, attracting the world's press. The Hotel Arbois in Marseilles was full of journalists. Finally, the immigrants were sent to a camp south of Hamburg. This had a profound impact on international opinion, the UN, and even France.
'What did the voyage of the Exodus mean to you?'
'It represented the creation of Israel.'
"This is my sin, my crime. By boarding the Exodus, despite the prophetic warnings I had received, including the last on the quay in Sete harbour, I played a part in the creation of the State of Israel, which is to say the martyrdom of the Palestinian people. And it is precisely because I am aware of my culpability that I have become an anti-Zionist mystic and will not cease in my work until the suffering of the world's most disinherited and abandoned people - thus, spiritually, the most Jewish - is ended. That is, when the colonial State of Israel no longer exists."
One particular eye-witness testimony to that affair you're unlikely to read in most accounts is that of the remarkable Emmanuel Levyne, to my knowledge the only Exodus volunteer to both see through the whole vile charade and blow the whistle on it.
After boarding the Exodus as a volunteer, Levyne began having what he called "revelations" that any attempt to "force the gates of the Promised Land" constituted a "rebellion," not against the British, but against God. In short, as he put it, "I lost the Zionist faith," and when the British eventually returned those they'd removed from the Exodus to Port de Bouc, near Marseilles, he alone of the able-bodied volunteers disembarked, braving the threats and intimidation of the Mossad agents among them whose role it was to enforce discipline.
What follows is a rough translation from the French of part of Levyne's 1969 book Judaisme Contre Sionisme (Judaism Against Zionism), a neglected work crying out for an expert English translation:
"As for the Exodus affair, I've said that it was nothing more than an anti-British provocation - something the Zionists no longer try to hide, as they did at the time when they succeeded in mobilising world public opinion against the British and portraying them as the new Nazis.
"The newspaper Le Meridional, for example, in its issue of November 5 1967, devoted an entire page in homage to the 20th anniversary of the Exodus. Here are the words of one of the Zionist officials involved with the ship, from an interview with the journalist Maurice Sardou:
'The voyage was planned well ahead of time with the sole aim of stirring up world opinion against the British. We wanted to create a real focus of attention, so we packed the ship with 4,427 volunteers, knowing that the British would intercept it and arrest them. We wanted the British to over-react. The provocation was necessary. And sure enough, when they boarded it and transferred its passengers to British ships, there was an outcry in the international press which characterised them as 'prison ships'.
'And when these ships returned to Port de Bouc, the French authorities refused to cooperate with the disembarkation of the immigrants. The French government appealed to Jewish community leaders in France to act as interpreters. Those who wished to disembark could do so, but no force was used. The immigrants voted unanimously to remain on board. Only those who were ill were taken off. The ships remained in port de Bouc for a month, attracting the world's press. The Hotel Arbois in Marseilles was full of journalists. Finally, the immigrants were sent to a camp south of Hamburg. This had a profound impact on international opinion, the UN, and even France.
'What did the voyage of the Exodus mean to you?'
'It represented the creation of Israel.'
"This is my sin, my crime. By boarding the Exodus, despite the prophetic warnings I had received, including the last on the quay in Sete harbour, I played a part in the creation of the State of Israel, which is to say the martyrdom of the Palestinian people. And it is precisely because I am aware of my culpability that I have become an anti-Zionist mystic and will not cease in my work until the suffering of the world's most disinherited and abandoned people - thus, spiritually, the most Jewish - is ended. That is, when the colonial State of Israel no longer exists."
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Was Israel Born of the Holocaust?
I was reminded of this question by the following lines of Sharmine Narwani in yesterday's post:
"The cold-blooded program of ethnically cleansing Europe of its Jewish population has been so callously and opportunistically utilized to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arab nation, that it leaves me utterly unmoved. I have even caught myself - shock - rolling my eyes when I hear Holocaust and Israel in the same sentence."
Two Australian examples of this kind of linkage came to mind.
Speaking on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day last month, Julia Gillard had this to say:
"The Jewish people survived the loss of 6 million souls, and rebuilt a homeland in Israel to ensure their future. Today, on Yom Hashoah, we stand with the people of Israel in solemn memory, and we renew our commitment to Israel and its security." (PM's thoughts on the Shoah, The Australian Jewish News, 20/4/12)
Gillard's predecessor, Kevin Rudd, speaking in federal parliament on March 12, 2009, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Israel's creation, was even more categorical:
"The story of the establishment of the state of Israel begins with the unimaginable tragedy of the Holocaust." (See my 14/3/09 post The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 3.)
Needless to say, both Gillard and Rudd are wrong. The creation of Israel did not begin with the Holocaust.
Those with even the slightest grasp of history will know that Israel, in brief, resulted from the work of three single-minded Zionist ideologues: Theodor Herzl, who proclaimed the need for a Jewish State in his 1896 book of the same name; Chaim Weizmann, chief architect of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which enabled the Zionist colonization of Palestine in earnest; and David Ben-Gurion, who presided over the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist forces in 1948-49 and went on to become Israel's first prime minister.
As the Zionist movement's key man-on-the-ground in Palestine during the thirties and forties, you might well assume that the fate of German Jewry under the Nazis and the need to mount some kind of rescue mission was a central concern of Ben-Gurion's. Not so.
Here is Ben-Gurion speaking to a Zionist audience in 1938*:
"If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transferring to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter - because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People." (Righteous Victims: A history of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 181-2001, Benny Morris, 1999, p162)
And here he is again, after the Holocaust:
"Some ten months later [1/11/47] Ben-Gurion lectured to the youth of the farming movement that 'if they [the survivors] arrive and perceive us as the prosecuted and they the prosecutors, we will have to bear it, to get used to it, to understand their soul, to treat them with love, even if it arouses anger and revulsion within us. If we do not gird ourselves with love, we shall not be able to work with them'. This remarkable passage, never repeated, reveals not only Ben-Gurion's deep emotions, but also belated (if unconscious and unacknowledged) guilt feelings and recognition of his failure, and that of the Zionist community in Palestine, to mobilize to the utmost for the rescue of and aid to the dying Diaspora during the war years'." (From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, Idith Zertal, 1998, p 220)
No, the Holocaust was never Israel's raison d'etre, but that hasn't stopped Zionist ideologues and propagandists, who care as little for real Jewish suffering as they do for Palestinian, from exploiting it to the hilt to maintain and extend their grip on Palestine.
[* See especially my 7/12/09 post Zionism's Bedside Manner.]
"The cold-blooded program of ethnically cleansing Europe of its Jewish population has been so callously and opportunistically utilized to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arab nation, that it leaves me utterly unmoved. I have even caught myself - shock - rolling my eyes when I hear Holocaust and Israel in the same sentence."
Two Australian examples of this kind of linkage came to mind.
Speaking on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Day last month, Julia Gillard had this to say:
"The Jewish people survived the loss of 6 million souls, and rebuilt a homeland in Israel to ensure their future. Today, on Yom Hashoah, we stand with the people of Israel in solemn memory, and we renew our commitment to Israel and its security." (PM's thoughts on the Shoah, The Australian Jewish News, 20/4/12)
Gillard's predecessor, Kevin Rudd, speaking in federal parliament on March 12, 2009, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Israel's creation, was even more categorical:
"The story of the establishment of the state of Israel begins with the unimaginable tragedy of the Holocaust." (See my 14/3/09 post The Israeli Occupation of Federal Parliament 3.)
Needless to say, both Gillard and Rudd are wrong. The creation of Israel did not begin with the Holocaust.
Those with even the slightest grasp of history will know that Israel, in brief, resulted from the work of three single-minded Zionist ideologues: Theodor Herzl, who proclaimed the need for a Jewish State in his 1896 book of the same name; Chaim Weizmann, chief architect of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which enabled the Zionist colonization of Palestine in earnest; and David Ben-Gurion, who presided over the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Zionist forces in 1948-49 and went on to become Israel's first prime minister.
As the Zionist movement's key man-on-the-ground in Palestine during the thirties and forties, you might well assume that the fate of German Jewry under the Nazis and the need to mount some kind of rescue mission was a central concern of Ben-Gurion's. Not so.
Here is Ben-Gurion speaking to a Zionist audience in 1938*:
"If I knew it was possible to save all [Jewish] children of Germany by their transferring to England and only half of them by transferring them to Eretz-Yisrael, I would choose the latter - because we are faced not only with the accounting of these [Jewish] children but also with the historical accounting of the Jewish People." (Righteous Victims: A history of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 181-2001, Benny Morris, 1999, p162)
And here he is again, after the Holocaust:
"Some ten months later [1/11/47] Ben-Gurion lectured to the youth of the farming movement that 'if they [the survivors] arrive and perceive us as the prosecuted and they the prosecutors, we will have to bear it, to get used to it, to understand their soul, to treat them with love, even if it arouses anger and revulsion within us. If we do not gird ourselves with love, we shall not be able to work with them'. This remarkable passage, never repeated, reveals not only Ben-Gurion's deep emotions, but also belated (if unconscious and unacknowledged) guilt feelings and recognition of his failure, and that of the Zionist community in Palestine, to mobilize to the utmost for the rescue of and aid to the dying Diaspora during the war years'." (From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, Idith Zertal, 1998, p 220)
No, the Holocaust was never Israel's raison d'etre, but that hasn't stopped Zionist ideologues and propagandists, who care as little for real Jewish suffering as they do for Palestinian, from exploiting it to the hilt to maintain and extend their grip on Palestine.
[* See especially my 7/12/09 post Zionism's Bedside Manner.]
Monday, July 19, 2010
Refugees
To rephrase Orwell: All refugees are equal, but some refugees are more equal than others:
Paul Howes, AWU national secretary, anti-Rudd conspirator, Murdoch columnist, and Israel luvvie, believes, correctly, that Australia's refugee policy should conform strictly to the requirements of international law, it being crystal clear on the subject:
"I have always been a strident (some would say overly strident) believer in our responsibility to welcome refugees, regardless of how they arrive in this country. I don't hold this belief because I'm some bleeding-heart lefty. I believe this because I feel it is our responsibility, as human beings, to demonstrate compassion to the most vulnerable people on the planet. But I'm in the minority on this. Most Australians, if we look at the polls, want to take a firm stance against those refugees arriving by boat. Most people, despite international law being crystal clear on the subject, still incorrectly believe that if you arrive by boat, you are an illegal immigrant. In my opinion, I think it's sad that we, as a nation of immigrants, are unable to feel more compassion and be more welcoming to those who arrive here after us." (Our sad boat policy, The Sunday Telegraph, 11/7/10)
International law, as our learned friend (we are talking law here) says, is crystal clear on the subject of refugees. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), for example, says unambiguously: "Article 14 (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."
Now I'm assuming that Article 13 (2) is equally crystal clear to our learned friend: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
At the risk of giving my learned friend a bad dose of cognitive dissonance, can I therefore assume that he supports the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands in what is today known as Israel, but was then (1948) known as Palestine?
Orwell again: All refugees are equal, but some refugees aren't even refugees:
Interestingly, Julia Gillard made her first official statement on the issue of refugees on July 6 at Frank Lowy 's think tank, the Lowy Institute. Of Mr Lowy, Australia's second richest man, she had this to say:
"I am very thankful to the Lowy Institute for hosting me today. This Institute has established a reputation for independent, robust and forceful analysis of our nation's place in the world. It is exactly the right place to make today's address: Moving Australia Forward. I first would like to acknowledge the enormous contribution of the Institute's benefactor, Frank Lowy. Frank Lowy is a great Australian. He was a refugee who escaped to Israel after World War II in a crowded boat full of asylum seekers. After fighting for Israel, he arrived on our shores as a very determined 21 year old. He worked hard and went from factory worker to milk bar owner to Blacktown shopping centre developer and, in time, to the largest retail property group in the world - truly great achievements, and what a remarkable story... But moving forward means we must agree on the organising principles for developing policy, and believe we can agree on most principles. That we should be prepared to accept people in legitimate need just as a young Frank Lowy was accepted 60 years ago." (From the Prime Minister's speech Moving Australia Forward)
So, according to Gillard, Lowy was a refugee who escaped to Israel after World War II in a boat crowded with asylum seekers, and in legitimate need when he later reached Australia.
A refugee? Escaping to Israel? After the war was over? Really?
The 16-year old Frank Lowy left Hungary in 1946 and boarded the Mossad* vessel Yagur in France, part of a Mossad people smuggling racket (to use the term much beloved of our polly-waffles these days) to transfer as many displaced European Jews to Palestine as possible, despite the British Mandate blockade on illegal Jewish immigration. The Yagur was intercepted by the British and its passengers detained in Cyprus, before being moved to a detention camp in northern Palestine.
Lowy eventually ended up in the Haganah's Golani Brigade which played an integral role in the ethnic cleansing of the Galilee area in 1948.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappe affords us a taste of what the Golanis got up to: "The first targets of the Israeli forces in the 10 days between the two truces were the pockets within the Galilee around Acre, and Nazareth. 'Cleanse totally the enemy from the villages' was the order that 3 brigades received on July 6, two days before the Israeli troops - straining at their leashes to continue the cleansing operations - were ordered to violate the first truce. Jewish soldiers automatically understood that 'enemy' meant defenceless Palestinian villagers and their families. The brigades they belonged to were the Carmeli, the Golani and Brigade Seven, the 3 brigades of the north that would also be responsible for the final cleansing operations in the upper Galilee in October. The inventive people whose job it was to come up with the names for operations of this kind had now switched from 'cleansing' synonyms ('Broom', 'Scissors') to trees: 'Palm' (Dekel) for the Nazareth area and 'Cypress' (Brosh) for the Jordan Valley area." (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006, p 158)
After fighting for Israel, as Gillard spins it, Lowy migrated to Australia in 1952. How he could be described, as Gillard does, as being in legitimate need at this time is beyond me.
[*Yes, a Mossad vessel. See Idith Zertal's From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, 1998, p 237. See also my 17/6/10 post Cannon Fodder for Zion: Exodus 1947]
Paul Howes, AWU national secretary, anti-Rudd conspirator, Murdoch columnist, and Israel luvvie, believes, correctly, that Australia's refugee policy should conform strictly to the requirements of international law, it being crystal clear on the subject:
"I have always been a strident (some would say overly strident) believer in our responsibility to welcome refugees, regardless of how they arrive in this country. I don't hold this belief because I'm some bleeding-heart lefty. I believe this because I feel it is our responsibility, as human beings, to demonstrate compassion to the most vulnerable people on the planet. But I'm in the minority on this. Most Australians, if we look at the polls, want to take a firm stance against those refugees arriving by boat. Most people, despite international law being crystal clear on the subject, still incorrectly believe that if you arrive by boat, you are an illegal immigrant. In my opinion, I think it's sad that we, as a nation of immigrants, are unable to feel more compassion and be more welcoming to those who arrive here after us." (Our sad boat policy, The Sunday Telegraph, 11/7/10)
International law, as our learned friend (we are talking law here) says, is crystal clear on the subject of refugees. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), for example, says unambiguously: "Article 14 (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."
Now I'm assuming that Article 13 (2) is equally crystal clear to our learned friend: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
At the risk of giving my learned friend a bad dose of cognitive dissonance, can I therefore assume that he supports the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands in what is today known as Israel, but was then (1948) known as Palestine?
Orwell again: All refugees are equal, but some refugees aren't even refugees:
Interestingly, Julia Gillard made her first official statement on the issue of refugees on July 6 at Frank Lowy 's think tank, the Lowy Institute. Of Mr Lowy, Australia's second richest man, she had this to say:
"I am very thankful to the Lowy Institute for hosting me today. This Institute has established a reputation for independent, robust and forceful analysis of our nation's place in the world. It is exactly the right place to make today's address: Moving Australia Forward. I first would like to acknowledge the enormous contribution of the Institute's benefactor, Frank Lowy. Frank Lowy is a great Australian. He was a refugee who escaped to Israel after World War II in a crowded boat full of asylum seekers. After fighting for Israel, he arrived on our shores as a very determined 21 year old. He worked hard and went from factory worker to milk bar owner to Blacktown shopping centre developer and, in time, to the largest retail property group in the world - truly great achievements, and what a remarkable story... But moving forward means we must agree on the organising principles for developing policy, and believe we can agree on most principles. That we should be prepared to accept people in legitimate need just as a young Frank Lowy was accepted 60 years ago." (From the Prime Minister's speech Moving Australia Forward)
So, according to Gillard, Lowy was a refugee who escaped to Israel after World War II in a boat crowded with asylum seekers, and in legitimate need when he later reached Australia.
A refugee? Escaping to Israel? After the war was over? Really?
The 16-year old Frank Lowy left Hungary in 1946 and boarded the Mossad* vessel Yagur in France, part of a Mossad people smuggling racket (to use the term much beloved of our polly-waffles these days) to transfer as many displaced European Jews to Palestine as possible, despite the British Mandate blockade on illegal Jewish immigration. The Yagur was intercepted by the British and its passengers detained in Cyprus, before being moved to a detention camp in northern Palestine.
Lowy eventually ended up in the Haganah's Golani Brigade which played an integral role in the ethnic cleansing of the Galilee area in 1948.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappe affords us a taste of what the Golanis got up to: "The first targets of the Israeli forces in the 10 days between the two truces were the pockets within the Galilee around Acre, and Nazareth. 'Cleanse totally the enemy from the villages' was the order that 3 brigades received on July 6, two days before the Israeli troops - straining at their leashes to continue the cleansing operations - were ordered to violate the first truce. Jewish soldiers automatically understood that 'enemy' meant defenceless Palestinian villagers and their families. The brigades they belonged to were the Carmeli, the Golani and Brigade Seven, the 3 brigades of the north that would also be responsible for the final cleansing operations in the upper Galilee in October. The inventive people whose job it was to come up with the names for operations of this kind had now switched from 'cleansing' synonyms ('Broom', 'Scissors') to trees: 'Palm' (Dekel) for the Nazareth area and 'Cypress' (Brosh) for the Jordan Valley area." (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, 2006, p 158)
After fighting for Israel, as Gillard spins it, Lowy migrated to Australia in 1952. How he could be described, as Gillard does, as being in legitimate need at this time is beyond me.
[*Yes, a Mossad vessel. See Idith Zertal's From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, 1998, p 237. See also my 17/6/10 post Cannon Fodder for Zion: Exodus 1947]
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Cannon Fodder for Zion: Exodus 1947
It's become something of a cliche to liken the Gaza flotilla, and Israel's massacre of its activists, to events surrounding the attempt in 1947 by the Jewish refugee vessel, Exodus, to challenge Britain's postwar blockade of Jewish refugees seeking entry into Palestine. Here, for example, is soft Zionist Uri Avnery's spin on that story:
"On the high seas, outside territorial waters, the ship was stopped by the navy. The commandos stormed it. Hundreds of people on the deck resisted; the soldiers used force. Some of the passengers were killed, scores injured. The ship was brought into harbour; the passengers were taken off by force. The world saw them walking on the quay, men and women, young and old, all of them worn out, one after another, each being marched between two soldiers... The ship was called Exodus 1947. It left France in the hope of breaking the British blockade, which was imposed to prevent ships loaded with Holocaust survivors from reaching the shores of Palestine. If it had been allowed to reach the country, the illegal immigrants would have come ashore and the British would have sent them to detention camps in Cyprus, as they had done before. Nobody would have taken any notice of the episode for more than two days. But the person in charge was Ernest Bevin, a Labor Party leader, an arrogant, rude, and power-loving British minister. He was not about to let a bunch of Jews dictate to him. He decided to teach them a lesson the entire world would witness. 'This is a provocation!' he exclaimed, and of course he was right. The main aim was indeed to create a provocation, in order to draw the eyes of the world to the British blockade. What followed is well known: the episode dragged on and on, one stupidity led to another, the whole world sympathized with the passengers. But the British did not give in and paid the price. A heavy price. Many believe that the Exodus incident was the turning point in the struggle for the creation of the state of Israel. Britain collapsed under the weight of international condemnation and decided to give up its mandate over Palestine. There were, of course, many more weighty reasons for this decision, but the Exodus proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back." (Exodus 2010, 6/6/10)
So, Bevin bad, bunch of Jews good, right? Or is there more to the Exodus affair than that?
The full story of the Exodus (or President Warfield, to give it its correct name) is covered exhaustively by Israeli historian Idith Zertal in her 1998 book From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel. Zertal's account completely contradicts Avnery's assertion that the aim of the Exodus was simply to break Britain's blockade of illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine. She makes it abundantly clear that the whole affair was a joint Mossad/Jewish Agency media production designed to reap maximum publicity for the Zionist cause at a critical juncture (July 1947) in the United Nations' deliberations over the fate of Britain's Palestine mandate.
Culled from Displaced Persons camps in Germany and equipped with counterfeit documents, the ship's passengers were smuggled into France by Mossad agents with the aim of getting them to Palestine in time for the visit there of the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP), the body charged with finding a solution to the Palestine problem following Britain's pullout in 1948.
As Zertal reveals, "Messages that Mossad headquarters in the Yishuv sent to the ship at sea and as it approached the shores of Palestine, are another piece of evidence of the importance the Zionists attached to the ship in light of the UNSCOP work. This included precise instructions regarding what the ship was to broadcast to the shore: descriptions of the suffering of the refugees, with an emphasis of their fierce desire to reach their homeland. In particular, the instructions stressed, the ship should broadcast from the high seas a call for UNSCOP to intervene, to board the ship and record living testimony before the commission's members leave the country. Accordingly, the ship's messages implored the members of the commission to come see with their own eyes the plight of Exodus's passengers." (p 56)
As for the British, in contrast to Avnery's Big Bad Bevin vs the Holocaust Survivors caricature, and his factually incorrect assertion that the Exodus affair preceded Britain's decision to bail out of Palestine, there was far more involved here than the mindset of Britain's foreign secretary: In the words of Britain's ambassador to France, "the illegal Jewish immigration traffic is not a spontaneous exodus of refugees, but a carefully-organized Zionist campaign designed to force the hand of His Majesty's Government and to increase the proportion of Jewish population in Palestine [and so cause] severe embarrassment and difficulty for His Majesty's government in its efforts to reach an equitable solution to the Palestine question." (p 65)
Zertal makes it quite clear that the unfortunate Holocaust survivors on board the Exodus were mere pawns in Zionist hands:
"Eighteen days after the President Warfield slipped away at dawn from the [French] port of Sete [12/7/47], its 4,500 passengers crowded onto three British prison ships appeared again on France's horizon. During the weeks between the ship's sailing from France and its passengers' return in British custody, while the President Warfield was still making its way towards Haifa, its name was changed at sea by the Mossad agent on board to the Exodus 1947. Its passengers engaged in a bloody battle against the British navy and eight British warships. They were then led to the port of Haifa, taken off their ship, and forced, in view of UNSCOP members, onto three British 'prison ships' meant to return them to the port from which they had departed. During this period the issue of the ship and its passengers never left the political agenda of the Zionist leadership, the British, and to a slightly lesser extent, the country from whose port they had sailed, France... [T]here was a three-way international confrontation of interests and forces... As in previous incidents, the Zionist struggle ostensibly fought over the fate of the Jewish refugees was, in fact, aimed higher, directed toward the great, decisive battle for the establishment of a Jewish state. The people who actually showed concern for the immediate fate of the 4,500 human beings thrown at their doorstep were the French, in whose territory the Exodus affair reached its climax. They displayed concern even though - or perhaps precisely because - they were the junior, accidental partner in the power triangle; in any case, they were not involved of their own volition. The Zionists had never intended to actually bring the 4,500 refugees onto the shores of Palestine, and such an effort had no chance of success since the Exodus was a show project from its conception. The ship's sailing was no secret, expect for the moment it made its way, at dawn, out of the port at Sete, and as it set sail, it was under close surveillance by a light British patrol plane and the ships of the British navy. The messages sent from the ship to the Mossad center in Palestine, and from the Mossad to the ship, as well as the Jewish Agency political department's invitation to the members of UNSCOP to be present in Haifa when the refugees were loaded onto the British deportation ships, prove that those involved on the Zionist side were aware of the tremendous political effect of a ship carrying thousands of Holocaust survivors being denied access to the shores of their 'national home' through the use of British force." (pp 82-83)
For further revelations by Zertal, as well as the lowdown on Avnery, simply click on the relevant tags below.
"On the high seas, outside territorial waters, the ship was stopped by the navy. The commandos stormed it. Hundreds of people on the deck resisted; the soldiers used force. Some of the passengers were killed, scores injured. The ship was brought into harbour; the passengers were taken off by force. The world saw them walking on the quay, men and women, young and old, all of them worn out, one after another, each being marched between two soldiers... The ship was called Exodus 1947. It left France in the hope of breaking the British blockade, which was imposed to prevent ships loaded with Holocaust survivors from reaching the shores of Palestine. If it had been allowed to reach the country, the illegal immigrants would have come ashore and the British would have sent them to detention camps in Cyprus, as they had done before. Nobody would have taken any notice of the episode for more than two days. But the person in charge was Ernest Bevin, a Labor Party leader, an arrogant, rude, and power-loving British minister. He was not about to let a bunch of Jews dictate to him. He decided to teach them a lesson the entire world would witness. 'This is a provocation!' he exclaimed, and of course he was right. The main aim was indeed to create a provocation, in order to draw the eyes of the world to the British blockade. What followed is well known: the episode dragged on and on, one stupidity led to another, the whole world sympathized with the passengers. But the British did not give in and paid the price. A heavy price. Many believe that the Exodus incident was the turning point in the struggle for the creation of the state of Israel. Britain collapsed under the weight of international condemnation and decided to give up its mandate over Palestine. There were, of course, many more weighty reasons for this decision, but the Exodus proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back." (Exodus 2010, 6/6/10)
So, Bevin bad, bunch of Jews good, right? Or is there more to the Exodus affair than that?
The full story of the Exodus (or President Warfield, to give it its correct name) is covered exhaustively by Israeli historian Idith Zertal in her 1998 book From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel. Zertal's account completely contradicts Avnery's assertion that the aim of the Exodus was simply to break Britain's blockade of illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine. She makes it abundantly clear that the whole affair was a joint Mossad/Jewish Agency media production designed to reap maximum publicity for the Zionist cause at a critical juncture (July 1947) in the United Nations' deliberations over the fate of Britain's Palestine mandate.
Culled from Displaced Persons camps in Germany and equipped with counterfeit documents, the ship's passengers were smuggled into France by Mossad agents with the aim of getting them to Palestine in time for the visit there of the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP), the body charged with finding a solution to the Palestine problem following Britain's pullout in 1948.
As Zertal reveals, "Messages that Mossad headquarters in the Yishuv sent to the ship at sea and as it approached the shores of Palestine, are another piece of evidence of the importance the Zionists attached to the ship in light of the UNSCOP work. This included precise instructions regarding what the ship was to broadcast to the shore: descriptions of the suffering of the refugees, with an emphasis of their fierce desire to reach their homeland. In particular, the instructions stressed, the ship should broadcast from the high seas a call for UNSCOP to intervene, to board the ship and record living testimony before the commission's members leave the country. Accordingly, the ship's messages implored the members of the commission to come see with their own eyes the plight of Exodus's passengers." (p 56)
As for the British, in contrast to Avnery's Big Bad Bevin vs the Holocaust Survivors caricature, and his factually incorrect assertion that the Exodus affair preceded Britain's decision to bail out of Palestine, there was far more involved here than the mindset of Britain's foreign secretary: In the words of Britain's ambassador to France, "the illegal Jewish immigration traffic is not a spontaneous exodus of refugees, but a carefully-organized Zionist campaign designed to force the hand of His Majesty's Government and to increase the proportion of Jewish population in Palestine [and so cause] severe embarrassment and difficulty for His Majesty's government in its efforts to reach an equitable solution to the Palestine question." (p 65)
Zertal makes it quite clear that the unfortunate Holocaust survivors on board the Exodus were mere pawns in Zionist hands:
"Eighteen days after the President Warfield slipped away at dawn from the [French] port of Sete [12/7/47], its 4,500 passengers crowded onto three British prison ships appeared again on France's horizon. During the weeks between the ship's sailing from France and its passengers' return in British custody, while the President Warfield was still making its way towards Haifa, its name was changed at sea by the Mossad agent on board to the Exodus 1947. Its passengers engaged in a bloody battle against the British navy and eight British warships. They were then led to the port of Haifa, taken off their ship, and forced, in view of UNSCOP members, onto three British 'prison ships' meant to return them to the port from which they had departed. During this period the issue of the ship and its passengers never left the political agenda of the Zionist leadership, the British, and to a slightly lesser extent, the country from whose port they had sailed, France... [T]here was a three-way international confrontation of interests and forces... As in previous incidents, the Zionist struggle ostensibly fought over the fate of the Jewish refugees was, in fact, aimed higher, directed toward the great, decisive battle for the establishment of a Jewish state. The people who actually showed concern for the immediate fate of the 4,500 human beings thrown at their doorstep were the French, in whose territory the Exodus affair reached its climax. They displayed concern even though - or perhaps precisely because - they were the junior, accidental partner in the power triangle; in any case, they were not involved of their own volition. The Zionists had never intended to actually bring the 4,500 refugees onto the shores of Palestine, and such an effort had no chance of success since the Exodus was a show project from its conception. The ship's sailing was no secret, expect for the moment it made its way, at dawn, out of the port at Sete, and as it set sail, it was under close surveillance by a light British patrol plane and the ships of the British navy. The messages sent from the ship to the Mossad center in Palestine, and from the Mossad to the ship, as well as the Jewish Agency political department's invitation to the members of UNSCOP to be present in Haifa when the refugees were loaded onto the British deportation ships, prove that those involved on the Zionist side were aware of the tremendous political effect of a ship carrying thousands of Holocaust survivors being denied access to the shores of their 'national home' through the use of British force." (pp 82-83)
For further revelations by Zertal, as well as the lowdown on Avnery, simply click on the relevant tags below.
Friday, November 27, 2009
Mosque Busters
Follow the thread:
"Yehuda Etzion was no less colorful. A student of the Elon Shvut Yeshiva, determined and zealous in his faith, he was among the 'professional settlers' during the first years of Gush Emunim, spending long periods on the hilltops, moving constantly from one to another. Etzion did his military service as a paramilitary yeshiva soldier in combat engineering, a unit that provided him with the training in explosives that he latter used in terror group activities. He was a partner to the first settlement attempt by the Elon Moreh nucleus in Samaria, in the spring of 1974, and was among those who were forcibly evacuated while Sharon was endeavoring to protect him with his own body and instructing the evacuating soldiers to refuse to obey orders. Afterward Etzion headed the work brigade out of which the settlement of Ofra grew. During the days of Camp David he took part in demonstrations all over the country and organized protest settlements. However, the failure of the settlement attempt at Rujaib near Nablus right after the signing of the Camp David agreements led him to cut himself off from Gush Emunim and to a period of isolation and thought. Settling the land no longer looked to him like the most important course of action. He set out to seek a 'personality of spiritual stature, who would put himself at the head of an initiative that would march the Jewish people toward the fulfillment of their destiny'. The books of his relative, Shabtai Ben-Dov, and the conversations he conducted with his friend Yeshua Ben Shushan gave him ideas about the ways of accelerating the process of the Redemption... When Etzion asked... Ben-Dov whether removing the Dome of the Rock from the Temple Mount would start a dynamic of Redemption, the latter replied..., 'If you want to do a deed that will solve all of the problems of the Jewish people - do that!' Etzion and Ben Shushan turned for advice to Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook, the spiritual leader of Gush Emunim, and the rabbi directed them to Ariel Sharon." (Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007, Idith Zertal & Akiva Eldar, 2007, pp 81-82)
"The destruction of a mosque by Hindu radicals that led to some of the bloodiest religious riots in India since Partition was 'meticulously planned' by politicians including a former prime minister, according to a leaked report of the official investigation. The razing of the 16th-century Babri Mosque - in the northern town of Ayodhya, on December 6, 1992, by an estimated 150,000 Hindus - led to national violence in which about 2000 people died, mostly Muslims. The demolition also cemented the power base of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which came to power 4 years later. BJP hardliners had long claimed the mosque stood on the birthplace of Lord Rama, the Hindu warrior god, and had campaigned for a Hindu temple to be built on the site... Those [politicians] allegedly involved included former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee..." (Hindu MPs behind razing of mosque, Rhys Blakely, The Australian, 25/11/09)
"Ariel Sharon [was] the first Israeli prime minister to visit India since independence in 1947... During a dinner organised in his honour by his Indian counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on September 9, Sharon reaffirmed his government's determination to 'act against terror'. Vajpayee said: 'Our defence cooperation rests on the foundation of mutual understanding of security concerns'. The spectacular blossoming of Israeli-Indian relations owes much to their joint perceptions of 'Islamic threats' in Kashmir and in Palestine. Long fascinated by Israel, the leaders of the nationalist Hindu Indian Peoples Party (BJP) decided in 1999, after a fresh wave of bloody clashes with Kashmiri guerillas... to call on Israeli expertise... The events of September 11, 2001, further boosted that cooperation, and the Indian prime minister's national security adviser... speaking earlier this year to the American Jewish Committee in Washington, argued in favour of a central axis consisting of the United States, Israel and India that would fight terrorism together. Israel is now India's second-largest arms supplier after Russia." (Sharon & Vajpayee see eye to eye on terror, Francoise Chipaux, Guardian Weekly, 18/9/03)
"Yehuda Etzion was no less colorful. A student of the Elon Shvut Yeshiva, determined and zealous in his faith, he was among the 'professional settlers' during the first years of Gush Emunim, spending long periods on the hilltops, moving constantly from one to another. Etzion did his military service as a paramilitary yeshiva soldier in combat engineering, a unit that provided him with the training in explosives that he latter used in terror group activities. He was a partner to the first settlement attempt by the Elon Moreh nucleus in Samaria, in the spring of 1974, and was among those who were forcibly evacuated while Sharon was endeavoring to protect him with his own body and instructing the evacuating soldiers to refuse to obey orders. Afterward Etzion headed the work brigade out of which the settlement of Ofra grew. During the days of Camp David he took part in demonstrations all over the country and organized protest settlements. However, the failure of the settlement attempt at Rujaib near Nablus right after the signing of the Camp David agreements led him to cut himself off from Gush Emunim and to a period of isolation and thought. Settling the land no longer looked to him like the most important course of action. He set out to seek a 'personality of spiritual stature, who would put himself at the head of an initiative that would march the Jewish people toward the fulfillment of their destiny'. The books of his relative, Shabtai Ben-Dov, and the conversations he conducted with his friend Yeshua Ben Shushan gave him ideas about the ways of accelerating the process of the Redemption... When Etzion asked... Ben-Dov whether removing the Dome of the Rock from the Temple Mount would start a dynamic of Redemption, the latter replied..., 'If you want to do a deed that will solve all of the problems of the Jewish people - do that!' Etzion and Ben Shushan turned for advice to Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook, the spiritual leader of Gush Emunim, and the rabbi directed them to Ariel Sharon." (Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel's Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007, Idith Zertal & Akiva Eldar, 2007, pp 81-82)
"The destruction of a mosque by Hindu radicals that led to some of the bloodiest religious riots in India since Partition was 'meticulously planned' by politicians including a former prime minister, according to a leaked report of the official investigation. The razing of the 16th-century Babri Mosque - in the northern town of Ayodhya, on December 6, 1992, by an estimated 150,000 Hindus - led to national violence in which about 2000 people died, mostly Muslims. The demolition also cemented the power base of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which came to power 4 years later. BJP hardliners had long claimed the mosque stood on the birthplace of Lord Rama, the Hindu warrior god, and had campaigned for a Hindu temple to be built on the site... Those [politicians] allegedly involved included former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee..." (Hindu MPs behind razing of mosque, Rhys Blakely, The Australian, 25/11/09)
"Ariel Sharon [was] the first Israeli prime minister to visit India since independence in 1947... During a dinner organised in his honour by his Indian counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on September 9, Sharon reaffirmed his government's determination to 'act against terror'. Vajpayee said: 'Our defence cooperation rests on the foundation of mutual understanding of security concerns'. The spectacular blossoming of Israeli-Indian relations owes much to their joint perceptions of 'Islamic threats' in Kashmir and in Palestine. Long fascinated by Israel, the leaders of the nationalist Hindu Indian Peoples Party (BJP) decided in 1999, after a fresh wave of bloody clashes with Kashmiri guerillas... to call on Israeli expertise... The events of September 11, 2001, further boosted that cooperation, and the Indian prime minister's national security adviser... speaking earlier this year to the American Jewish Committee in Washington, argued in favour of a central axis consisting of the United States, Israel and India that would fight terrorism together. Israel is now India's second-largest arms supplier after Russia." (Sharon & Vajpayee see eye to eye on terror, Francoise Chipaux, Guardian Weekly, 18/9/03)
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Zionism's Bedside Manner
Dvir Abramovich begins his grizzle, Hollywood should stop exploiting the Holocaust (The Age, 2/11/09), with this little gem: "In a 2005 guest appearance on the sitcom Extras Kate Winslet, playing herself as a nun on a Holocaust film is asked, 'You doing this, it's so commendable, using your profile to keep the message alive about the Holocaust'. Winslet responds, 'God, I'm not doing it for that. We definitely don't need another film about the Holocaust, do we? It's like, how many have there been? You know, we get it. It was grim. Move on. I'm doing it because I noticed that if you do a film about the Holocaust, you're guaranteed an Oscar. I've been nominated 4 times. Never won. The whole world is going, 'Why hasn't Winslet won one?'... That's why I'm doing it. Schindler's bloody List. The Pianist. Oscars coming outta their ass...' Winslet was right, winning the Oscar for best actress this year for The Reader."
He laments, "The commodification of the Holocaust into a profitable, Oscar-reaping enterprise has reached such a nadir that commentators are saying, There's no business like Shoah Business'. Though I find this epigram distasteful, it does reflect a disturbing trend in which the Holocaust is being packaged and sold by fimmakers who are using this dark chapter as a ticket for advancing their own fame and artistic agenda. These films conveniently skip over the mass shootings, the gas chambers, the ovens, the mounds of naked bodies - filling up the screens with harmful falsifications. The damage Hollywood, with its huge marketing machine is doing the memory of the Holocaust is enormous. Think of Hollywood's cowboy and Indian movies and how they shaped our understanding of that episode."
Abramovich goes on to detail the ways in which he feels the current crop of Holocaust-themed films (The Reader, Inglourious Basterds, and The Boy in Striped Pyjamas) misrepresent the Holocaust. Typically, though, as a Zionist spruiker, he completely ignores the subjects of Zionism's shameless exploitation of the Holocaust as a cover for its crimes against the Palestinians* and Hollywood's considerable services to Zionist propaganda **.
[*See my 14/12/08 post Quack Cure (in response to an earlier Abramovich grizzle in The Age), **and my 1/10/08 post Paul Newman: Zionist Dupe.]
Thanks to Norman Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, and Jack Shaheen's Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, much light has been shed on those two issues. What is less well-known, however, is the cruelly instrumental attitude of the pre-state Zionist movement in Palestine (led by David Ben-Gurion) towards Holocaust survivors and Jewish displaced persons. Some revealing snippets from Israeli historian Idith Zertal's From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel (1998):
"The Jewish tragedy, which was revealed fully only after the war, and the unprecedented suffering of those who survived the destruction not only failed to budge Ben-Gurion from his views, but even entrenched them. After visiting the Displaced Persons (DP) camps in late 1945, Ben-Gurion remarked to a soldier from the Jewish Brigade, who demanded more extensive Zionist work in the camps, that 'the Zionist mission is not to save the remnant of Jews in Europe, but to save Palestine for the Jewish people'. The efforts of various Jewish philanthropies to provide immediate succour to the Jewish refugees, especially children - to extricate them from the camps and transfer them to foster families or institutions in Britain, France, and Switzerland - were halted at once by Ben-Gurion. When he reached Heidelberg at the end of his tour of the camps in Bavaria, he transmitted telephone instructions to the Jewish Agency representative in London 'against removing people from the American zone [of occupation] - not to France, England or Switzerland... I demanded that the removal of children and adults be stopped... unless for purposes of 'aliya', under instruction of the Jewish Agency'." (p 186)
"The encounter [between Palestinian Zionists and Holocaust survivors] was imbued with deep fear and a sense of guilt, incorporated by the Zionist discourse that placed a wall between 'us' and 'them', transforming the other side, the 'diasporic', into an object, a faceless mass of people waiting to be redeemed while performing the historic Zionist role assigned to them. 'It will be hell if all the [DP] camps come [to Palestine]', Ben-Gurion was told by rescue operatives in Europe in early 1946, in response to his question about what would happen if the Jewish Agency got the 100,000 entry permits it demanded. 'All this filth, just as it is, you [the Jewish Agency/Ben-Gurion] plan to move to Palestine?' protested the Zionist agents sent to Europe to deal with the needs of the refugees and bring them to Palestine. Ben-Gurion responded that it would be better for them ('the filth') to be in Palestine than elsewhere, implying that only in Palestine could the survivors be of any benefit and fulfill their historical function. 'When these Jews come to Palestine, we'll have trouble', said Ben-Gurion, 'but it will be Jewish trouble'. reporting the conversation to the Jewish Agency Executive, he never commented on the use of the term 'filth' by rescue agents, and he repeated it without elaboration." (p 216)
Yet, even back then you could glimpse a Holocaust industry of sorts:
"The importance of the Holocaust survivors in [Ben-Gurion's] formula derived from his belief in the crucial role of international public opinion. With the international media fed and orchestrated by a well-run Zionist propaganda machine, no power in the enlightened Western world would have the strength to prevent the Holocaust survivors from reaching their only refuge - the 'home of their lives' - in Palestine." (p 231)
Now wouldn't a Holocaust movie about Zionism's bedside manner really give Abramovich something to whinge about?
He laments, "The commodification of the Holocaust into a profitable, Oscar-reaping enterprise has reached such a nadir that commentators are saying, There's no business like Shoah Business'. Though I find this epigram distasteful, it does reflect a disturbing trend in which the Holocaust is being packaged and sold by fimmakers who are using this dark chapter as a ticket for advancing their own fame and artistic agenda. These films conveniently skip over the mass shootings, the gas chambers, the ovens, the mounds of naked bodies - filling up the screens with harmful falsifications. The damage Hollywood, with its huge marketing machine is doing the memory of the Holocaust is enormous. Think of Hollywood's cowboy and Indian movies and how they shaped our understanding of that episode."
Abramovich goes on to detail the ways in which he feels the current crop of Holocaust-themed films (The Reader, Inglourious Basterds, and The Boy in Striped Pyjamas) misrepresent the Holocaust. Typically, though, as a Zionist spruiker, he completely ignores the subjects of Zionism's shameless exploitation of the Holocaust as a cover for its crimes against the Palestinians* and Hollywood's considerable services to Zionist propaganda **.
[*See my 14/12/08 post Quack Cure (in response to an earlier Abramovich grizzle in The Age), **and my 1/10/08 post Paul Newman: Zionist Dupe.]
Thanks to Norman Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, and Jack Shaheen's Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, much light has been shed on those two issues. What is less well-known, however, is the cruelly instrumental attitude of the pre-state Zionist movement in Palestine (led by David Ben-Gurion) towards Holocaust survivors and Jewish displaced persons. Some revealing snippets from Israeli historian Idith Zertal's From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel (1998):
"The Jewish tragedy, which was revealed fully only after the war, and the unprecedented suffering of those who survived the destruction not only failed to budge Ben-Gurion from his views, but even entrenched them. After visiting the Displaced Persons (DP) camps in late 1945, Ben-Gurion remarked to a soldier from the Jewish Brigade, who demanded more extensive Zionist work in the camps, that 'the Zionist mission is not to save the remnant of Jews in Europe, but to save Palestine for the Jewish people'. The efforts of various Jewish philanthropies to provide immediate succour to the Jewish refugees, especially children - to extricate them from the camps and transfer them to foster families or institutions in Britain, France, and Switzerland - were halted at once by Ben-Gurion. When he reached Heidelberg at the end of his tour of the camps in Bavaria, he transmitted telephone instructions to the Jewish Agency representative in London 'against removing people from the American zone [of occupation] - not to France, England or Switzerland... I demanded that the removal of children and adults be stopped... unless for purposes of 'aliya', under instruction of the Jewish Agency'." (p 186)
"The encounter [between Palestinian Zionists and Holocaust survivors] was imbued with deep fear and a sense of guilt, incorporated by the Zionist discourse that placed a wall between 'us' and 'them', transforming the other side, the 'diasporic', into an object, a faceless mass of people waiting to be redeemed while performing the historic Zionist role assigned to them. 'It will be hell if all the [DP] camps come [to Palestine]', Ben-Gurion was told by rescue operatives in Europe in early 1946, in response to his question about what would happen if the Jewish Agency got the 100,000 entry permits it demanded. 'All this filth, just as it is, you [the Jewish Agency/Ben-Gurion] plan to move to Palestine?' protested the Zionist agents sent to Europe to deal with the needs of the refugees and bring them to Palestine. Ben-Gurion responded that it would be better for them ('the filth') to be in Palestine than elsewhere, implying that only in Palestine could the survivors be of any benefit and fulfill their historical function. 'When these Jews come to Palestine, we'll have trouble', said Ben-Gurion, 'but it will be Jewish trouble'. reporting the conversation to the Jewish Agency Executive, he never commented on the use of the term 'filth' by rescue agents, and he repeated it without elaboration." (p 216)
Yet, even back then you could glimpse a Holocaust industry of sorts:
"The importance of the Holocaust survivors in [Ben-Gurion's] formula derived from his belief in the crucial role of international public opinion. With the international media fed and orchestrated by a well-run Zionist propaganda machine, no power in the enlightened Western world would have the strength to prevent the Holocaust survivors from reaching their only refuge - the 'home of their lives' - in Palestine." (p 231)
Now wouldn't a Holocaust movie about Zionism's bedside manner really give Abramovich something to whinge about?
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Zionist Svengalis
"Not every despairing person can make, at home, the necessary belts, fuses and lethal charges. These things require a godfather." (Christopher Hitchens, Svengalis behind the murderers, The Australian, 20/7/09)
To return to Hitchens' column and the subject of Palestinian suicide bombers (see my previous post), you'll remember the gin-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay's contention that "nasty, vicious, fanatical old men, not human emotions," were the be-all & end-all of the Palestinian suicide bombing phenomenon.
Well, I got to thinking about those grumpy old Svengalis and their bomb belts. Who made the first bomb belt? I asked myself.
Robert Pape, in his authoritative study of suicide bombing, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005), is of the opinion that "the first attacker to use a 'suicide belt'" was a young female Tamil Tiger recruit named Dhanu, who used the device to assassinate Rajiv Ghandi in 1991. "It is not known how the Tigers hit upon the idea," he writes, but speculates that they may have been inspired by a scene in Frederick Forsyth's 1989 novel, The Negotiator. (Pape, p 227)
Perhaps, but Pape has overlooked another, earlier bunch of Svengalis who beat Forsyth to the punch by decades. First, a little context: From 1945 to 1948, a branch of the Palmach, known as Ha'mossad Le'aliya Bet (or Mossad), organized the clandestine immigration of European Jewish refugees to Palestine in defiance of the restrictions on Jewish immigration imposed by the British Mandate authorities at the time. From August 1946, the British began deporting such illegal arrivals to camps in Cyprus. Now read on:-
"There was resistance of some kind to British capture in almost all the Mossad ships, but it became established Mossad policy beginning with the British government's Cyprus decision in August 1946. The Mossad then issued instructions for passive resistance during the transfer of refugees to the British deportation ships. The initiators of this resistance policy and its escalation were Palmach headquarters in Palestine and members of Mossad's operational arm there. They were responsible for bringing the refugees from ship to shore, and thus the potential sites of clashes with the British were within their 'jurisdiction'. Their commander was David Nameri, a kibbutz member and one of the founders and senior officers of both the Mossad and the Palmach and the liaison between the two. An activist in both his views and actions, he had no direct contact with the refugees as did his colleagues in Europe. He therefore formulated his positions without being influenced by the specific fate of the refugees, their sufferings and fatigue, or their ability to fight or resist. The first instructions on resistance were transmitted from Palestine to ships that were already at sea, before a comprehensive policy had been adopted: 'If there is an attempt to take control of the ships outside the territorial waters, there should be passive resistance such as: preventing them from coming up the ladder, blocking the approaches to the helm and the engine room, interference with handcuffing and creating havoc'. A few days after publication of the British decision on deportation to Cyprus, Nameri demanded that the refugee ships be transformed into true vessels of war. His opinion, and that of some of his colleagues, was that 'shouts and curses' were no longer sufficient and that it was time to act, to conduct a fierce and violent battle against deportation including deliberate sabotage of the deportation ships. Explosions were put on the ships and were sometimes attached to the bodies of refugee women, who thus became living bombs. Instructions were given as to how and when to carry out sabotage. 'If they are deported without any response we will never be forgiven', Nameri stated in a cable to the Mossad in Tel Aviv (he was himself in Haifa, where the refugee ships were held until deportation). Nameri, who undoubtedly remembered the Patria tragedy six years previously - more than 260 Jewish refugees drowned as a result of a badly executed dynamiting of the ship that was supposed to deport them - and his own role in it, was still not deterred from renewing his demand to sabotage ships loaded with thousands of refugees." (From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, Idith Zertal, 1998, pp 140-141)
So here we have a bunch of "nasty, vicious, fanatical old (?) men" aka the Mossad, under the supreme command of another "nasty, vicious, fanatical old man" by name of David Ben-Gurion, turning female Holocaust survivors into ticking bombs for use against British sailors in a blatant attempt to make propaganda for the Zionist cause. Nice.
As to whether these ticking bombs ever went off, Zertal, an Israeli historian, records only that "[w]hile some [Mossad agents] organized resistance at almost any price, others calculated the cost and benefit, especially with regard to victims. With the deportation of both the Catriel Yafeh and the Twenty Three, orders came from shore to those accompanying the refugees to conceal and transfer explosives on the bodies of women refugee passengers. This appalling order was carried out, and a bomb was detonated on one deportation ship." (ibid p 169)
To return to Hitchens' column and the subject of Palestinian suicide bombers (see my previous post), you'll remember the gin-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay's contention that "nasty, vicious, fanatical old men, not human emotions," were the be-all & end-all of the Palestinian suicide bombing phenomenon.
Well, I got to thinking about those grumpy old Svengalis and their bomb belts. Who made the first bomb belt? I asked myself.
Robert Pape, in his authoritative study of suicide bombing, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005), is of the opinion that "the first attacker to use a 'suicide belt'" was a young female Tamil Tiger recruit named Dhanu, who used the device to assassinate Rajiv Ghandi in 1991. "It is not known how the Tigers hit upon the idea," he writes, but speculates that they may have been inspired by a scene in Frederick Forsyth's 1989 novel, The Negotiator. (Pape, p 227)
Perhaps, but Pape has overlooked another, earlier bunch of Svengalis who beat Forsyth to the punch by decades. First, a little context: From 1945 to 1948, a branch of the Palmach, known as Ha'mossad Le'aliya Bet (or Mossad), organized the clandestine immigration of European Jewish refugees to Palestine in defiance of the restrictions on Jewish immigration imposed by the British Mandate authorities at the time. From August 1946, the British began deporting such illegal arrivals to camps in Cyprus. Now read on:-
"There was resistance of some kind to British capture in almost all the Mossad ships, but it became established Mossad policy beginning with the British government's Cyprus decision in August 1946. The Mossad then issued instructions for passive resistance during the transfer of refugees to the British deportation ships. The initiators of this resistance policy and its escalation were Palmach headquarters in Palestine and members of Mossad's operational arm there. They were responsible for bringing the refugees from ship to shore, and thus the potential sites of clashes with the British were within their 'jurisdiction'. Their commander was David Nameri, a kibbutz member and one of the founders and senior officers of both the Mossad and the Palmach and the liaison between the two. An activist in both his views and actions, he had no direct contact with the refugees as did his colleagues in Europe. He therefore formulated his positions without being influenced by the specific fate of the refugees, their sufferings and fatigue, or their ability to fight or resist. The first instructions on resistance were transmitted from Palestine to ships that were already at sea, before a comprehensive policy had been adopted: 'If there is an attempt to take control of the ships outside the territorial waters, there should be passive resistance such as: preventing them from coming up the ladder, blocking the approaches to the helm and the engine room, interference with handcuffing and creating havoc'. A few days after publication of the British decision on deportation to Cyprus, Nameri demanded that the refugee ships be transformed into true vessels of war. His opinion, and that of some of his colleagues, was that 'shouts and curses' were no longer sufficient and that it was time to act, to conduct a fierce and violent battle against deportation including deliberate sabotage of the deportation ships. Explosions were put on the ships and were sometimes attached to the bodies of refugee women, who thus became living bombs. Instructions were given as to how and when to carry out sabotage. 'If they are deported without any response we will never be forgiven', Nameri stated in a cable to the Mossad in Tel Aviv (he was himself in Haifa, where the refugee ships were held until deportation). Nameri, who undoubtedly remembered the Patria tragedy six years previously - more than 260 Jewish refugees drowned as a result of a badly executed dynamiting of the ship that was supposed to deport them - and his own role in it, was still not deterred from renewing his demand to sabotage ships loaded with thousands of refugees." (From Catastrophe to Power: Holocaust Survivors & the Emergence of Israel, Idith Zertal, 1998, pp 140-141)
So here we have a bunch of "nasty, vicious, fanatical old (?) men" aka the Mossad, under the supreme command of another "nasty, vicious, fanatical old man" by name of David Ben-Gurion, turning female Holocaust survivors into ticking bombs for use against British sailors in a blatant attempt to make propaganda for the Zionist cause. Nice.
As to whether these ticking bombs ever went off, Zertal, an Israeli historian, records only that "[w]hile some [Mossad agents] organized resistance at almost any price, others calculated the cost and benefit, especially with regard to victims. With the deportation of both the Catriel Yafeh and the Twenty Three, orders came from shore to those accompanying the refugees to conceal and transfer explosives on the bodies of women refugee passengers. This appalling order was carried out, and a bomb was detonated on one deportation ship." (ibid p 169)
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