Kasztner - Debating with Zionist Collaborator Mad Mikey Ezra

Well it was an excellent meeting held by Green Left at SOAS on the subject ‘Jewish Perspectives on anti-Zionism’. (see below) A couple of Zionists, including one ‘Mad’ Mikey Ezra [MME] and a couple of friends turned up, but although one of his friends had the courage to tackle me strangely MME, was totally silent, fiddling with his mobile (or something anyway!).

Although quite brave on the internet, MME is quite a coward at public meetings clearly being afraid to be shown up. He did the same at a Lenni Brenner meeting 18 months ago and when he tried to speak to Lenni afterwards was told to get lost because he'd badmouthed Lenni for not having gone to a university (whilst at the same time asking for help!). Elitism doesn't die it just takes on the jaded colours of 'left' Zionism. However Mikey is on the periphery of the ‘Trotskyist’ Zionist group, Alliance for Workers Liberty in Britain which probably says something about that group.

In a recent debate on Socialist Unity about the meeting, MME sought to indulge his favourite pastime - defending the record of the leader of the Zionist movement in Hungary (actually a minority of the movement!) Rudolph Kasztner, who in return for his silence over Auschwitz was allowed to organise a train of the Prominents carrying 1,684 people out of Germany to Switzerland, via Belsen-Bergen. After the war Kasztner hurried along to Nuremburg in order to testify in support of the Nazis he'd worked with. Not as an individual, but as the representative in Hungary of the Jewish Agency, the Palestine wing of the World Zionist Organisation.

I post my reply below and beneath that the original post from MME:

Reply to a Collaborator with Atzmon and defender of Kasztner

I am accused of distorting the truth, well I shall leave it to others to judge!

1. MME accuses me of 'lying' i.e. deliberately telling an untruth, because .5 million rather than .45 million Hungarian Jews died. But historians of the Holocaust cannot be exact because numbers were never recorded, either of those murdered or of those who escaped. Hilberg believes 5.1 millions died, the figure quoted as if it were sacred by the Zionists is 6 million. The truth is noone can know exactly how many died. Indeed Mikey gives a good demonstration of why this only plays into the hands of the Holocaust deniers who are quite able to notice the different totals given by different historians and then use those discrepancies to ‘prove’ how the Holocaust never happened, because they can’t even get the numbers of those murdered right. In fact it is a totally irrelevant point, what matters is that anyone died in the gas chambers or on the steppes of Russia. But if MME wants to say that the Zionists betrayed half a million rather than 450,000 I'm inclined to accept his word.

2. Yes I claimed that about 200,000 Hungarian Jews survived. Some 50,000 from the Labour Brigades and also those who fled, despite Zionist advice, over the Romanian border and about 150,000 in Budapest itself (where the Nyilas fascists killed about 50,000). Mikey being his usual dishonest self, gives us a link to to 'prove' that 255,000 survived. Well again this is, and has to be a matter of conjecture. But having gone to the link, guess what? Clearly MME can’t read or he doesn't understand the very article he refers us to or he is just lying again! Sure it mentions that 255,000 survived but the article also says that 'About 190,000 of these were residents of Hungary in its 1920 borders.' That is ten thousand less than I said survived of Hungary’s Jewish inhabitants! It would help if Mikey could read what he quotes! And the difference? Until 1944 Hungary had been a sanctuary for Jews who managed to escape from all over Europe – Austria, Bohemia and Moravia and Slovakia in particular. It is widely accepted that the pre-war Jewish population of Hungary was about 700,000 so if .5 million died then 200,000 survived.

Of course this is all irrelevant because what matters is the fact that anyone was annihilated in the gas chambers. But when your whole political project depends on exploiting the holocaust to provide you with reparations, which you then deny to the intended recipients - the Jews who survived the Holocaust - then numbers are important. See:

Just 10 of 66,000 Holocaust survivors' heirs get assets back relating to the assets of holocaust victims held in Israel. Or try or how about Yediot Aharanot on-line, entitled 'Struggling Survivors - Holocaust survivors accuse State of stealing their welfare funds'. This is the real scandal that sycophants like MME try to defend.

3. Yes the trial of Kasztner reached the Israeli Supreme Court and 2 of the 5 judges found the arguments of Kasztner's opponents quite persuasive, but the other 3 Judges found for the State. The argument of Kastner's lawyer, Attorney General Chaim Cohen was to the effect that 'if you find Kastner guilty of collaboration then you find the founders of the State likewise guilty'. In fact on one charge the Supreme Court did find the accusation of collaboration proven - Kastner had gone to the Nuremburg trial to exonerate his old friend, Waffen SS Col. Becher, which he did. In fact it later turned out that not only had he given testimony in favour of Becher, but he had also given testimony in favour of Dieter Wisliceny, the butcher of Slovakian Jewry, who was hanged in Bratislava after the war and his deputy Krumey - another SS henchmen and Waffen SS General Hans Juttner. If Mikey doesn't think this is collaboration, regardless of what the placemen of the Israeli Supreme Court say, then it just goes to show that his loyalty to the institutions of the Zionist State are higher than his alleged concerns for the victims of the Holocaust.

In fact we all, i.e. all socialists, know that courts are not neutral and in times danger to the state will act accordingly. But nonetheless the Israeli Supreme Court upheld all the findings of the Jerusalem District Court, which in turn, under Judge Benjamin Halevi, had held that all but one of the accusations of collaboration against Kastner by Malchiel Greenwald were proved. As Judge Goiten stated:
'It is enough that he (Kastner's accuser - Greenwald) has managed to convince the lower court, who fulfilled the task of jury and judge alike... However the facts which were revealed substantiate the findings of the lower court and prevent us as a court of appeal from intervening. I should add also that the evidence that was brought and which is not argued against by anybody on the Kastner-Becher relations after the war and the collaboration of Kastner by rescuing Becher from the gallows do not coincide with viewing Kastner as a National Jewish Zionist personality; and coincide with the findings of the lower court - that the acts committed during the war were acts of collaboration with the Nazis.'
Judge Moshe Silberg was even more forthright:
'We can sum up with these 3 facts:
A. That the Nazis didn't want to have a great revolt - 'Second Warsaw'.... [which Eichmann later confirmed in an interview]
B. That the most efficient means to paralyse the resistance wheel or the escape of a victim is to conceal from him the plot of the coming murder....
C. That he, Kastner, in order to carry out the rescue plan for the few prominents, fulfilled knowingly and without good faith the said desire of the Nazis, thus expediting the work of exterminating the masses.'

In fact Judge Goiten, although he believed and stated that Kastner was a collaborator, nonetheless voted for his acquittal on technical grounds essentially that since the Defendant, Malchiel Greenwald had not proved the truth of all his allegations, that Kastner had dressed up in SS uniform to visit Auschwitz and had financially benefited from his collaboration, it would be artificial to split up the charges of libel. This was also the opinion of Justice Olshan, President of the Court.

More importantly than Israeli judges, who have distinguished themselves by their support for the actions of the Israeli military in the occupation of the last 40 years or who endorsed the position of their fellow Judge Landau in accepting the use of ‘moderate physical’ pressure, i.e. torture by the Israeli military, who have accepted every human rights abuse against the Palestinians, systematic discrimination against Israeli Palestinians etc. was the fact that numerous witnesses who testified in the trial were themselves Hungarian holocaust survivors. They had no doubt about Kastner’s guilt. People like Levi Blum, from Kastner’s own birthplace of Cluj (Kolosvar). So when it comes to a choice between a collaborator and the Jewish survivors of the Hungarian holocaust Mikey chooses the former.

4&5. Mikey denies he is good friends with Gilad Atzmon and a minor collaborator. But he is caught on his own petard, to wit, when asked to dig up information on a fellow anti-Zionist comrade, Roland Rance, what does Mikey say to Atzmon? Piss off? Get lost? Do your own dirty work? This is what he actually wrote:

‘I have been very busy digging up stuff on Tony Greenstein - Roland Rance will have to wait for another day.
Mikey 03.12.07 - 8:53 pm #
‘Mikey, I hope you do not mind me saying that, but your contribution for the pls solidarity movement is priceless. It is crucial that we all know about the racist record of this Greenpiss, a man who was banned time after time for being a racist and an anti Semite!…
However, Good luck with Greenie and thanks for all the info you gave us about this low being.’
Gilad Atzmon 03.04.07 - 10:46 am #

However much Mikey wriggles he’s caught on the hook of his own words.
And we learn from David Taube that ‘Last week, Mikey invited me for a drink with Gilad Atzmon. Mikey's thoughts on Gilad and his worldview follow, below….’ I’ll spare people the gory details.

6. Yehuda Bauer is not reliable on when the Auschwitz Protocols, definitively revealing the existence of Auschwitz, were handed to Kastner, representative of the Zionists and the Jewish Agency in Hungary. According to Zionist and Yad Vashem historian, Yisrael Guttman,

Kasztner was given a copy of the report on 29 April 1944… but at that time he had already made a decision, together with other Jewish leaders, choosing not to disseminate the report in order not to harm the negotiations with the Nazis.

Shoah Vezikaron, cited in Ruth Linn’s ‘Escaping Auschwitz – A Culture of Forgetting’ p.72.

Incidentally even Bauer, dedicated Zionist historian though he is, makes the same estimation in his ‘Jews for Sale?’ pp. 156-7. The reality is that, as even Guttman acknowledges, news of Auschwitz was suppressed in order that the Zionist and Jewish elite could escape whilst half a million were burnt and gassed. And Mikey considers this is not collaboration? Perhaps he would enlighten us as to what he does consider collaboration?

7. Rudolph Vrba, a member of the Auschwitz Underground, who together with Alfred Wetzler, was the 2nd Jewish escapee from Auschwitz, someone who received the highest medal for bravery when fighting in the Slovakian Uprising against the Nazis, is apparently ‘unreliable’ – unlike Mikey. That is why all mention of Vrba was suppressed in Israel from high school holocaust texts, why Vrba and Wetzler were referred to as the 2 Jewish Slovak escapees rather than by name, why the Hungarian translation of the Protocols was hidden away at Yad Vashem and not catalogued separately, why Vrba was deliberately not invited (along with the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance, Marek Edelman) to testify at the Eichmann trial. And why were they unreliable? Because these Jewish heroes were not Zionists, were not collaborators, unlike Kasztner and in his own, trivial and pathetic way, Mikey.

The Hungarian Zionist Rescue & Relief Committee worked hand in hand with the Nazi appointed Judenrat. To most Hungarians it would have been indistinguishable. The Judenrat helped with the round up of Jews to the concentration areas, brickyards mainly, prior to deportation. The Rescue & Relief Committee likewise worked with them, ensuring that Jews were kept ignorant of their fate, and threatening the leaderships of those communities if they didn’t accept the central control of the Judenrat. It is a technical ‘mistake’ of no consequence. Vrba’s Report is credited with the saving of 200,000 Jews. Kasztner ‘saved’ 1,684 at the expense of half a million, yet Mikey considers his collaborator hero ‘reliable’.

8. The term ‘Prominents’ to describe the passengers of the Zionist train out of Hungary is that of Kasztner himself in his Report to his employers, the Jewish Agency. Some of the Zionists, being a petit-bourgeois movement were undoubtedly cooks, bakers, butchers and candlestick makers. We are talking about the political elite of Hungarian Jewry. That didn’t debar them from leadership since the big capitalists like the Manfred Weisses negotiated their own rescue via the aforesaid Kurt Becher. http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2008/06/zionist-collaboration-in-hungary-mike.html

9. Mikey claims that it is a blatant lie that ‘Kasztner does not mention the Auschwitz Protocols." Yes he paraphrases from the Report, but doesn’t mention the Report itself, viz. in its references to ‘Hungarian salami’ which was or should have been in the Auschwitz Protocols but which the Slovakian Zionist leaders omitted to insert. But let us see what the acknowledged historian of the Hungarian holocaust, Randolph Braham in the Politics of Genocide has to say:
‘Shortly after liberation, Kasztner brought out a detailed though self-serving report on the wartime activities of the Budapest Rescue Committee. In it, he provides both direct and indirect evidence that he and his colleagues on the Committee were fully aware of the draconic measures that had been adopted against the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. He is basically silent about their failure to inform Hungarian Jewry.’ (my emphasis) p. 706.

And Braham, who is himself a critical Zionist, asks a little further on:

‘Why were the Protocols not forwarded to these leaders of the world soon after they were completed on April 26? Why were the Hungarian Jewish masses not alerted about their content? What would have been the consequence had they been alerted before the deportations?… It is safe to assume that Krasznyansky’s recollection about Kasztner’s visit to Bratislava late in April 1944 and about his receiving a copy of the original German text there is correct…. Given the evidence that at the time of the German occupation of Hungary both Kasztner and the official leaders of Hungarian Jewry were aware of the Nazis’ extermination program, how can one explain their silence?’ pp. 718-9.

And this, of course, not Mikey’s pathological nitpicking, is the real question. Why were the Zionist leaders in Hungary, representatives of the Jewish Agency, silent? What did they hope to gain? The answer is all too obvious.

And let us also be clear. Whilst Kasztner was the big shot, the representative of the Jewish Agency, the Palestinian wing of the World Zionist Organisation, there were dissident Zionists, e.g. Moshe Krausz and Joel Brand, who desperately wanted to save their fellow Jews. Not because they were Zionists, if anything despite it. The reality is that Raoul Wallenberg and the other diplomats, including the Papal Nuncio, saved far more than the Zionists and they didn’t in the process help the Nazis in the destruction process.

10. Mikey tells us that ‘Whilst it is true that Kasztner gave testimonies or evidence in support of certain Nazi criminals, he also gave evidence against others.’ Well that makes it ok then!! He alleges that Kasztner made other statements leading to the conviction of other Nazi War Criminals. Not so. Mikey argues that ‘Kasztner stated in his report that Eichmann was determined that not a single Jew should survive.’ And so? Eichmann was not on trial at Nuremburg so this was a safe statement to make!! In fact it is not true because Eichmann was quite happy to help Kasztner ‘save’ a few Jews at the expense of the thousands. Kasztner was able to travel around Hungary, didn’t have to wear a yellow star and ended up sojourning in Berlin in a hotel. There is incidentally evidence that more than the 4 war criminals above, murderers of hundreds of thousands of Jews, were given supportive testimony by Kasztner e.g. Kettlitz, the purchasing agent for Becher. As Dr Robert Kempner, an American prosecutor at Nuremburg explained vs Kasztner:

‘Yes, I invited Kastner from Tel-Aviv to Nuremburg as a witness for the prosecution. Immediately after his arrival I regretted this invitation. Apart from the fact that he turned out to be a very expensive witness… a curious situation developed. We were, after all, the authorities of the prosecution. I consider it my duty to state explicitly that Kastner roamed the Nazi prison camp for Nazi Officers searching for those he could help by testimony or intervention on their behalf. In the end we were very glad when he left Nurenberg.’

Hansi and Joel Brand, Satan and the Soul, Tel Aviv 1960 p.107. cited by Akiva Orr ‘The Kastner Case, Jerusalem 1955’ pp. 97-8, Perdition – A Play in 2 Acts by Jim Allen.

11. MME infers that I distinguish between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews who were exterminated. Nonsense of course, I merely point out that the Jews of Ukraine and Poland were in their overwhelming majority opponents of Zionism. That was certainly one reason why the Zionists leaders in the West felt little compunction in playing down, or on occasion denying that the Jews of Eastern Europe were being exterminated (see S Beit Zvi, Post Ugandan Zionist in the Crucible of the Holocaust). MME thinks there’s something wrong in saying I’d be happy if those who are responsibility for the murder organisation called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee were vaporised. Why? Their whole mission is supporting, aiding and abetting war crimes. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if the White House and its occupants were also wiped out or if the Christian Zionist movements were likewise obliterated. It has nothing to do with who is Jewish or non-Jewish. You see Mikey, I’m not a racist. It isn’t only Jewish blood that is important. There is nothing morally wrong in wiping out organisations dedicated to murder – the only objection is that there will be other cretins to take their place.

12. MME quotes Zionist propagandist S. Levenberg to the effect that "Zionists are anxious to find any place under the sun which will afford Jewish refugees the prospect of escape." Well of course they would say that! Mikey cites Ben Gurion’s public speech but such words are easy. But in his private letter, as President to the Zionist Executive, (17. 12. 38) he make his real attitude to Jewish refugees quite explicit:
‘If the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and aid for the national museum on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail.... We are risking Zionism's very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem.’ Y Elam, 'Introduction to Zionist History' Tel Aviv 1972 ppl25/6 cited in Machover/Offenburg Khamsin 6 see also 'Ot, organ of the Youth cadre of the Israeli Labour Party, no 2 Winter 1967.
There are too many other quotations and incidents I could cite but the fact is that Ben Gurion, made one or 2 speeches during the war about the Holocaust and that was it. All Zionist activity had one aim – statehood. All else was secondary.

13. MME wonders whether I think that Zionists in the Holocaust ‘were against advocating resistance in the ghettos.’ and cites Mordechai Anielewicz, of Hashomer Hatzair and commander of ZOB, the Warsaw Ghetto Fighting Organisation. MME misunderstands. Zionism is a political movement which opposed fighting anti-Semitism. In Warsaw some of the worst collaborators and Gestapo agents were Zionists such as the Abraham Gancawajch, also of Hashomer Hatzair. But it isn’t a question of individuals but of politics. Many Zionists did resist, not because they were Zionists but despite that fact. But there is no recorded example, for example in Reuben Ainsztein’s ‘Jewish Resistance in Nazi Occupied Eastern Europe’ of outside help from the Zionist movement, the best organised political current in world Jewry, to the ghetto resistance. Anielewicz himself expressed his regret over the "wasted time" undergoing Zionist educational work. [Gutmann p.143] He went on to say that

"had the fate of the Jews in 1942 lain in the hands only of the political parties (Zionist - TG), the revolt would never have taken place." Y. Guttman, ‘The Jews of Warsaw - 1939-1943, Ghetto Underground Revolt’, Harvester Press, 1982 p. 441 fn. 23.

Likewise Emanuel Ringleblum, the historian of the Warsaw Ghetto, wrote of Anielewicz of Hashomer, the commander of the JFO:
The Mordechai who had matured so rapidly and risen so quickly to the most responsible post as commander of the Fighters Organisation now greatly regretted that his fellows and he had wasted three war years on cultural and educational work. We had not understood that new side of Hitler that is emerging, Mordechai lamented. We should have trained the youth in the use of live and cold ammunition. We should have raised them in the spirit of revenge against the greatest enemy of the Jews, of all mankind, and of all times. [Emmanuel Ringelblum, Comrade Mordechai in Yuri Suhl (ed.), They Fought Back, p.102], cited in Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, Ch. 21.]

14. Mikey complains that I spoke on a Jewish perspective on anti-Zionist on a Friday night! The tradition of Jewish socialism and Marxism was always to reject the babble and mysticism of the rabbis. However I note that the silent Mikey was not prevented from attending!

15. Mikey claims that ‘Far from the BNP being Zionist… a senior BNP spokesman said that paper was the mouthpiece of a "clique of Zionist parasites and crooks." Err yes. That’s exactly my point. The BNP manage to combine both anti-Semitism and Zionism. But come to think of it, so does Mad Mikey Ezra.

Tony Greenstein

>>It becomes tiresome correcting Greenstein’s errors that he regularly makes on numerous matters concerning Zionism and especially about the Holocaust. It is quite clear that he is trying to make a political point and by doing so has no objecting to distorting the truth in a heinous way.
1. Joe90 initially claimed that 200,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in WWII. The person aptly named as "Correction" corrects this outrageous statement to a figure of 500,000. Now Greenstein lies and tells us "As a matter of fact about 450,000 Jews were exterminated in Hungary." He should have listened to "Correction" who was basically accurate. In fact, as the Holocaust Encyclopedia tells us, "Under German occupation, just over 500,000 [Hungarian Jews] died from maltreatment or were murdered."
2. Tony Greenstein claims that "about 200,000" Hungarian Jews survived the Holocaust. The actual figure was closer to 255,000.
3. Tony Greenstein claims that "there’s no doubt" that Kasztner was "a collaborator of the worst sort." This is a deliberate lie. Greenstein is well aware that the accusation that Kasztner was a collaborator reached the Supreme Court in Israel who ruled, "one cannot find moral defects in [Kastzner’s] behaviour, one cannot find any causation between it and the expediting of the deportation and the extermination and one cannot see it amounting to the degree of collaboration with the Nazis." (Ben Hecht, Perfidy Jerusalem: Milah press, 1999 p. 275)
4. Tony Greenstein claims that I imitate Kasztner in my own way. This is nonsense, he has simply made it up.
5. Tony Greenstein claims that I am a friend of Gilad Atzmon. This is again a pathetic lie. Far from being a friend, I have attacked and ridiculed Atzmon on numerous occasions on the internet and it is there for anyone to verify.
6. Tony Greenstein claims that Kastzner was given the Auschwitz Protocols on April 29. This is not known for certain. For more information of the uncertainties surrounding this, see Yehuda Bauer, "The ‘Protocol of Auschwitz,’" Yalkut Moroshet, No. 3, Winter 2005.
7. To suggest what Kastzner did with the Auschwitz Protocols, Greenstein relies upon Vrba, but Vrba was not in Hungary and as such would not have known. In any event, Vrba is notoriously unreliable. For example, even in the very short passage by Vrba that Greenstein quotes, Vrba makes a big error by suggesting that Kasztner was a member of the Hungarian Judenrat. Not only is this wrong, Greenstein knows it is wrong as he admits that Kasztner was not on the Judenrat later in his own post! One may well wonder why Greenstein relies upon the work of someone he knows to be unreliable?
8. Vrba also makes the error that Greenstein repeats that the train full of Jews that Kasztner managed to save from the Nazis were all "prominent." This is nonsense, as an analysis of the passengers shows. An analysis of the occupations of passengers carried out Ann Pasternak Slater from the passenger list shows for example there to have been 40 workmen or labourers, 27 teachers, 25 tailors, 18 nurses, 12 gardeners, 3 shoe makers, 2 bakers, 2 cooks and the list goes on with 10 secretaries, 7 locksmiths, 7 mechanics, 7 hairdressers etc etc. (Ann Pasternak Slater, "Kasztner’s Ark" Areté 15 Autumn 2004, pp. 5-40
9. Greenstein claims that he has read kastzner’s report and goes on to say using capitals for greater emphasis: "NOT ONCE IN THE REPORT DOES HE [Kastzner] MENTION THE AUSCHWITZ PROTOCOLS." This is a blatant lie. I direct Greenstein to section II:18 of the report where Kasztner clearly states:
"According to these reports, the SS was ready to repair and renovate the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz… one of the guards was overheard saying, ‘Soon we’ll eat good Hungarian salami,’ referring to the provisions the Jews took with them.."
10. Whilst it is true that Kasztner gave testimonies or evidence in support of certain Nazi criminals, he also gave evidence against others. Kasztner made other statements leading to the conviction of other Nazi War Criminals. For example Kasztner stated in his report that Eichmann was determined that not a single Jew should survive. For more information on these testimonies see Shoshana Barri (Ishoni), "The Question of Kasztner’s Testimonies on behalf of Nazi War Criminals," The Journal of Israeli History, Vol 18, nos. 2 and 3 1997 pp. 139-165.
11. Greenstein makes the following disgusting statement: "Hitler wiped out the reserves of anti-Zionist Jewry in Poland and the Ukraine." What Greenstein does not mention is that Hitler also wiped out Zionist Jews in Poland and Ukraine. It was not as if they got to the gates of Auschwitz and the Nazis said All Zionists to the left for safety and all anti-Zionists to the right for gas chambers. Maybe Greenstein simply does not care that Hitler killed Zionist Jews, after all Greenstein has admitted elsewhere he would not lose any sleep if thousands of Jews who work for AIPAC were vaporised.
12. Greenstein says that it is "well documented" that "Zionists were more concerned about statehood than saving the remnant." The official view of the Zionist Jewish Agency in so far as Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany was defined the following month, in the January 19, 1939 edition of London’s Zionist Review, "Zionists are anxious to find any place under the sun which will afford Jewish refugees the prospect of escape." (Quoted by S. Levenberg, Guardian "Letters," January 29, 1987) To complete refute Greenstein’s argument, This is what Ben-Gurion stated very clearly in September 1943:
"We must do whatever is humanly possible, whatever a human being of flesh and blood is capable of doing, in order to render material assistance to those on the forefront of rescue, in order to save those who can still be saved, to delay the disaster to the extent that it can be delayed. We must do it now, to the best of our will and ability." ( quoted by Tuvia Frieling, "Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust of European Jewry 1939-1945: A Stereotype Reexamined," Yad Vashem Studies XVIII 1987 pp. 199-232)
13. I have no idea if Greenstein thinks that I, or the Zionists in the Holocaust were against advocating resistance in the ghettos. Unlike Greenstein, I remember the activities of Mordecai Anielewicz, an activist within the Zionist youth movement, Hashomer Hatzair and other Zionist youth including those active within the socialist Zionist Dror and religious Zionist Akiva youth movements who were part of the ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organisation) in the Warsaw Ghetto. Given Greenstein has admitted elsewhere that he used to be a member of Bnei Akiva he should know this.
14. The use of the David Irving and Nick Griffin analogy was to show that that they do not represent mainstream British Jews. In a similar way Greenstein does not represent mainstream Jewish views. The views he holds would be agreed with by a tiny tiny minority of Jews in the country. The talk at SOAS is billed as, "Anti-Zionism. A Jewish Perspective." Not a single spokesperson from mainstream Jewish body is billed. I am in favour of freedom of speech and I am not against Greenstein exercising his right to it. The title of the talk is misleading. Tony Greenstein is a self declared Marxist and I am sure readers of this blog do not need me to remind them that Marx viewed religion to be an opiate of the masses. Marxists reject religion. The title of the speech might be better as "Anti-Zionism: An anti-Zionist perspective." I can make a further observation and that is that this speech by Greenstein is being held on a Friday night and as such, no religious Jew would be able to attend. Does it show even the slightest sensitivity the concerns of the Jewish community in Britain when a talk is held offering a Jewish perspective on a Friday night by someone who has rejected the religion he claims to speaking from the perspective of! It is a farrago of nonsense.
Finally, on this point, given Greenstein makes so many errors about Zionism and Jewish history as can be seen in this response to his nonsense, if anyone takes him seriously and considers him some form of authority, they are seriously deluded.
15. Far from the BNP being Zionist as Greenstein alleges, as the Jewish Chronicle reported a few months ago, a senior BNP spokesman said that paper was the mouthpiece of a "clique of Zionist parasites and crooks." In fact, the view of the organised Jewish community was elaborated by Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust in a letter to the Guardian on April 14, 2008 where he said that the message from the Jewish community was "whoever you vote for, use your vote to stop the BNP."
Comment by Mikey — 1 September, 2008 @ 1:49 pm
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2767