In 1933 People Boycotted German Goods – Today we Boycott Israeli Produce

 

most people walk past the shop as the message has got through

 

 

Ecostream - a 'customer free area'

An angry Hoffman in all his glory

Hoffman and his trademark flag lends support to the Boycott

 

 

 Jonathan Hoffman Joins the Boycott of Brighton Sodastream

Well he didn't actually advocate boycotting an Israeli shop, but he might as well have done!
 
To those who don’t know him, Jonathan Hoffman is the co-Chair of the Zionist Federation of Britain.  He also responsible, almost singlehandedly, for the successful closure of the Israeli shop Ahava in Covent Garden.  His trade mark is to shout a slogan, regardless of the effect or content, until all but the most dedicated supporters steer clear.

Hoffman was on fine form today. ‘No Nazi Boycotts in Brighton’ was his slogan.  He must have been ignorant of the fact that Brighton is where the neo-Nazi English Defence League were repulsed on April 22nd, without any help or support from Brighton’s Zionists.  Even stranger still given that Hoffman demonstrated alongside the English Defence League outside Ahava.  When we printed a photograph proving this Hoffman alleged it was ‘photoshopped’.  Very soon after he was forced into a grovelling apology to the photographer David Hoffman (no relation) who took exception to the suggestion that his photograph was anything but genuine and threatened him with a libel action.

Hoffman has an unerring ability to alienate even his own side.  Such was his  obnoxiousness that even the normally placid Board of Deputies of British Jews was forced to suspend him for one week  Statement regarding Board of Deputies International Division yesterday and when he attacked the placid Mick Davis, boss of Xtrata and the Jewish Leadership Council for having made some mild criticisms of Israel, UJIA chair threats to sue over resignation petition  he found himself facing another libel action and was once again was forced to withdraw his remarks.  Yet today he denied all!!

What would we do without the affable Jonathan Hoffman to support our cause!
 
At one stage today he became so confused that he was shouting his support of ‘green’ shops like Sodastream (ethnic cleansing is ‘green’ in Hoffie’s books) whilst also shouting ‘communists out of Brighton’ like the good McCarthyite he is.  

No wonder the only people going into the shop were dedicated Zionists.  At one point he was becoming so obnoxious that the Police had to warn him about his behaviour and when his flag flew in my face once too often I detached it from the stick he was waving it with, something else the Police were quite happy with.  Indeed one of the Zionists struck me going into the shop and then squealed when I defended myself as he attempted the same leaving the shop.  Suffice to say that the Police weren’t too impressed with his cries of having been attacked!

The main supporters of Sodastream today were, as always, fundamentalist Christian Zionists who'd like the Jews to return to the Holy Land in order that they can perish as quickly as possible and the Rapture of the Elect can Take Place.  Lovely people!

Tony Greenstein

The Zionists are consistently reactionary - in 1933 they Opposed a  Boycott of Hitler - Today they Oppose a Boycott of Israel

Jewish  War Veterans Boycotted Shops Selling German Goods - the Zionists Opposed the Boycott

Like the boy who cried wolf, supporters of Israel call a boycott of Israeli goods ‘anti-Semitic’.  They even compare it with the Nazi Boycott of Jewish Shops on 1st April 1933.   History to the Zionists is a flexible instrument, since they 'forget' that the Zionist movement played the role of the enemy within the Jewish community in the 1930s.  

The SA laid siege to Jewish shops just as the Zionists lay siege to Gaza

 The Nazis didn’t ‘boycott’ Jewish shops, they laid siege to them, just as Israel lays siege to Gaza today.  In 1933 Jewish groups and the labour movement who organised a boycott of German goods in protest at Hitler’s policies.  And it was the Zionist movement, a tiny minority of the Jewish community, which opposed a Boycott of Nazi Germany.  The Boycott threatened to bring down the Hitler regime and caused a major crisis for Hitler as the non-Nazi part of his coalition overruled him and Hindenburg and the Army supported them.  But the Zionists rescued Hitler by concluding a trade agreement with Nazi Germany.  But for the role of the Zionist movement, Hitler might have been deposed and there might have been no holocaust or invasion of Europe.

In May 1933 the German Consul in Jerusalem. Dr Wolf, wrote to the German Foreign Ministry, asking 'whether it would be possible to place at the disposal of Jewish emigrants (from Germany) part of their capital in order to finance the export of German goods to Palestine ... In this way it might be possible to wage a successful campaign against the Jewish boycott of Germany. It might be possible to make a breach in the wall of the anti-German boycott.' p.131 The Third Reich and the Transfer Agreement, David Yisraeli Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 6, No. 2. (1971), pp. 129-148.

‘March 23, 1933 was a day that had frightened the Nazi leaders.  A boycott was being organized by the Jewish War Veterans in the USA to enthusiastic approval.’  On March 27 ‘thousands were scheduled to rally at Madison Square Gardens…. Boycott movements were also fast developing in Lithuania, France, Holland, Great Britain and Egypt.’

SA thugs close down Jewish shop despite the unpopularity of the siege,  The Palestinian economy is also closed down by Israeli checkpoints, border controls, buring of olive groves and land confiscation.

In a speech to the Reichstag Hitler declared:  ‘We need contact with the outside world and our foreign markets furnish a livelihood for millions of our fellow citizens…. By the next day, March 24, Reich leaders realized that boycott agitation was accelerating, especially in Great Britain.  Placards proclaiming BOYCOTT GERMANY spread infectiously throughout London, and were now in the windows of the most exclusive West End shops.’ 

Siege in Berlin - ended after less than a day by the Boycott Movement internationally

Goering, Hitler’s Deputy and President of the Reichstag, summoned the heads of Germany’s 3 major Jewish organizations … at noon the next day, Saturday March 25.  The Zionists were not invited because in 1933 ‘Zionism in Germany was a mere Jewish fringe movement.’  [Edwin Black, The Transfer Movement - The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine’, pp. 33-37, Brookline Books 1999].  But at the last moment the Zionists secured an invitation to the meeting.  Whilst the leaders of Germany’s Jewish organisations were resisting suggestions that they could do anything to stop the Boycott (they could hardly say they supported it) the Zionist attitude was entirely different: 

‘(Kurt) Blumenfeld … declared that the German Zionist Federation was uniquely capable of conferring with Jewish leaders in other countries, since German Zionists were affiliated with a worldwide organisation.  Once uttered, the words forever changed the relationship between the Nazis and the Zionists.  It was suddenly clear that the Jewish group the Reich had been ignoring was, in fact, the one it should be negotiating with in its efforts to combat the Jewish presence in Germany.  After all, both Nazis and Zionists agreed that Jews did not belong in Germany.’

The Zionist ‘objective was not … the preservation of Jewish rights in Germany.  Rather, they sought a means of turning the miseries of German Jewry into a new impetus for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.’
 
‘Within days of the JWV’s boycott declaration the Veterans showed the press well over $2 million in lost German orders… a mushrooming, even if uncoordinated, anti-German boycott movement was spreading throughout Europe and America…. Without a strong economy Germany could not rearm and could never begin its conquest of Europe.’ [Black p. 47]

When on March 28th the Nazis announced a ‘boycott’ of German Jewish shops on April 1st the international reaction was instantaneous.  The Boycott of German goods was stepped up and Hitler came under enormous pressure.  Foreign Minister von Neurath resigned (later retracting).  The SA Siege of Jewish shops which had been intended to be indefinite, was called off later the same day, April 1st.  [Black, pp. 46-68]  The violence that was later evident on Krystalnacht was kept in check because of the fear of Boycott in the West.  [Black, p.233]  The boycott ‘forced the Third Reich to vigilantly restrain anti-Jewish violence in Germany, since each incident helped intensify the anti-Nazi movement.’[Black p.372]

60% of  Capital Investment in the Yishuv - the Zionist Economy in Palestine - was from Nazi Germany

But on August 7 1933, the Zionist leaders scabbed on the Jews of Germany and concluded a trade agreement, Ha'avara, with Nazi Germany.  It led to $100 million dollar investment in the Palestine Jewish economy.  It helped build what became the Israeli economy.  Between 1933 and 1939 Ha'avara accounted for 60% of total capital investment in Jewish Palestine. [Jewish Frontier, May-June 1998, p.29, New York] 

Nazi Germany became the biggest exporter to the Zionist economy in Palestine!  When anti-fascists tried to persuade people to support a boycott of Nazi Germany ‘it became difficult to mobilize Britain when protest and boycott were incongruously disowned by Jewish leaders themselves.’   The one chance of bringing down Hitler early in his reign of terror had been sabotaged for the chance to build a ‘Jewish’ state.  Indeed the ‘Zionist leadership was compelled to go further.  The German economy would have to be safeguarded, stabilized, and if necessary reinforced.  Hence, the Nazi party and the Zionist Organisation shared a common stake in the recovery of Germany.  If the Hitler economy fell, both sides would be ruined.’ [Black p. 253]  

A Nazi Goes to Palestine - Goebbel's Der Angriff publishes a series of articles on how Baron Mildenstein was faschinated by Zionism

In March 1933 Baron von Mildenstein, who became the Head of the Gestapo’s Jewish desk before Eichman took over, spent 6 months touring the Kibbutzim in Palestine as a guest of the Zionist labour movement and Histadrut. [History Today, January 1980, Vol. 30, No. 1]  It was little wonder that ‘German Jewry vehemently rejected Zionism as an enemy from within.’ [Black p. 168]    Edwin Black incidentally is a vehement Zionist who nonetheless resisted the pressure put on him not to publish his book.

Boycott has always been a weapon of the oppressed from the Boycott of slave grown sugar in Britain in the 19th century to the Boycott of Apartheid produce from South Africa.  It is no surprise that the Zionists and their Christian fundamentalist supporters reject a Boycott of Israeli Goods.  After all, they also rejected the anti-Nazi Boycott!

Tony Greenstein