Even Israel’s Court Arabs are Humiliated and Insulted by the Racists who are Employed at Ben-Gurion Airport

However Servile and Loyal Israel’s Druze Citizens Are  they are Still Arabs and they Cannot Expect Equality with Jews

Ben-Gurion airport is notorious for racial profiling.  If you are an Arab or Black you can expect to be stopped, harassed and abused and sometimes assaulted. It goes with the territory. It's what they call ‘security.’

Israel has always singled out the Druze population for special treatment compared to the rest of Israel’s Arab population. It is part of the colonial divide and rule tactic.  Druze citizens of Israel (not those in the Golan) are drafted to serve in the army and receive extra benefits and privileges because of this.

That is why it came as a rude shock to them when Netanyahu pushed through the Jewish Nation State Law last year which made it clear that however ‘loyal’ they were, Israel was a state of the Jewish people not its non-Jewish citizens even if they are the worst collaborators.

Being collaborators and court Arabs made no difference.  The simple fact is that however loyal to the state the Druze are, and many are members of Zionist organisations and parties, they are still not part of the master race.

At the April 2019 elections this meant that instead of the Druze voting for Likud and even further right-Zionist parties, they voted in large numbers for Meretz, the left-Zionist party.  Without this support Meretz would not have had representatives in the Knesset.

Ben Gurion Airport

Obviously this was not a situation that could continue. No Zionist party can expect to rely on non-Jewish votes to remain politically viable so Meretz merged into the Democratic Camp with right-wing former Labour Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Druze votes transferred to the Blue and White party and I suspect the Joint List.

There has been a radicalisation in recent years in the Druze community as it has become more and more evident that Zionism does not have a place for them.

Ayub Kara, a very right-wing Druze member of the Likud party, fell out with Netanyahu and in the recent elections failed to gain a seat in the Knesset.

Passport Control

The experiences of Reda Mansour, Israel’s Ambassador to Panama, speak volumes about the contempt and disdain that Israel has for its Arab collaborators.  He was treated in the same way as any Arab would be at Ben-Gurion airport. 

However it is his own fault and one should not have sympathy for him. He has to understand, as the spokesperson for the airport made clear, that it is very difficult for the authorities at Ben-Gurion airport to distinguish between collaborators and people with principle.

Although it would be helpful if collaborators carried the Mark of Cain, unfortunately the Lord is no longer willing to oblige. In any case, most of those who carry out security work at the Airport are of the view that all Arabs are the same and that the only good Arab is a dead Arab.  Not being politically sophisticated Zionist liberals, they make no distinction between the corrupt and servile and leftist activists!

One can see and understand Reda Mansour’s pain and anger and indeed sympathise.  As he says, the town he comes from

‘Isfiya is not a town in the [Palestinian] territories, but a home to the main military cemetery for fallen Druze soldiers who died during their service in the Israel Defense Forces."

What can be more insulting than to treat him as if he was just another Arab living under Occupation or, even worse, as a Palestinian.

The reaction of the Israeli Airport Authority’s spokesman, Ofer Lefler, is priceless.  It is difficult to understand those who accuse security bureaucrats of not having a sense of humour. She said that the reason for the harassment is that ‘the security guard is doing everything she can to protect her and the State of Israel."

The good Ambassador should know that harassment of Arabs is clearly integral to if not essential to the security of the Jewish state. Even more amusing is Lefler’s statement that ‘security checks are performed “regardless of religion, race or gender and equitably.” ‘

Racial profiling at Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport, not just of Arabs but Black people is legendary. One must take one’s hat off to an official spokesman with such a droll sense of humour laced with a biting sense of irony.

Mansour is of course used by Israel to show that even Arabs can become Ambassadors. Of course he is Ambassador to the non-state of Panama, which is kind of an extension to the United States. It is really Trump’s side office and so although, for purposes of diplomatic niceties Mansour is called an Ambassador in reality he is little more than an errand boy to Israel’s US Ambassador Ron Dermer. Britain has an Ambassador (& even a Deputy Ambassador who I once knew!!) to the Vatican but no one pretends that this is the most sought after diplomatic post.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli Ambassador to Panama accuses Ben Gurion Airport of racial profiling

i24NEWS

August 03, 2019, 5:28 PM - latest revision August 14, 2019, 12:29 PM

“Thirty years of humiliation and you still haven't finished,” Mansour lamented in a Facebook post

Israel's Ambassador to Panama lashed out at Ben Gurion Airport security via social media on Saturday after he and his family were abruptly stopped for questioning.

Dr. Reda Mansour, a Druze diplomat who has been working for Israel's Foreign Ministry for decades, uploaded a lengthy Facebook post recalling his latest experience including “thirty years of humiliation” suffered at the transportation hub.   

Mansour claims that airport security officials began questioning him outside the entrance of the building after over hearing he and his group were from Isfiya, a Druze-majority village located in northern Israel near Haifa. 

Mansour said that one security official began barking out demands to see their passports and travel destination before letting them onto the premises. 

After security had let them through, Mansour recalled the conversation he had with his daughter walking to their terminal, who complained that “It's so upsetting to see how (the security guard) talked to you while you were smiling the whole time and politely replying to her!”

Mansur wrote that he finally began going over the incident while he and his family were traveling through the air.

"During the night, I thought to myself while on the plane: Go to hell Ben Gurion Airport. 30 years of humiliation and you are still not done. In the past, you would beat us at the terminal, today you've progressed to treating us as suspects at the checkpoint at the entrance [to the airport]."

“Thirty years of humiliation and you still haven't finished," he continued. "Isfiya is not a town in the [Palestinian] territories, but a home to the main military cemetery for fallen Druze soldiers who died during their service in the Israel Defense Forces."

Mansour concluded his post by stating: "I advise that that you take your security guards and those in charge of their training to visit this cemetery and teach them about self-sacrifice and respect. Until then, I have only this to tell you: You make me sick."

In response to Mansour’s Facebook post, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Lefler said in a statement that security checks are performed “regardless of religion, race or gender and equitably.”

"When we encounter more than 25 million passengers a year, there will be those who'll choose to be offended by a security guard who is merely doing her job. Even before an inquiry had been launched and only from reading the Facebook post, [I can say] there is nothing wrong with the security guard's conduct."

"My best friends, as well as your friends and relatives are buried in military cemeteries. I suggest that the respectable ambassador tell his daughter that the security guard is doing everything she can to protect her and the State of Israel," Lefler added.

Israeli Diplomat Says Humiliated by Racial Profiling at Ben-Gurion Airport: 'Makes Me Sick'

Ambassador Reda Mansour, a Druze, says he and his family were treated as suspects upon arrival at Tel Aviv airport.  Spokesman says 'nothing wrong,' arguing he 'chose to be offended'  Foreign minister 'won't let it happen again'

Noa Landau

Aug 04, 2019 6:46 PM

Israel's Ambassador to Panama Reda Mansour, who is Druze, harshly criticized on Saturday the treatment he and his family received during an inspection at Ben-Gurion Airport, saying they were humiliated and treated as suspects by security guards.

Mansour described the incident in a Facebook post, claiming he was asked to pull over and wait as he arrived at a checkpoint at the airport entrance, after the security guards were told he and his family came from the Druze-majority village of Isfiya.  

Israeli Ambassador to Panama Reda Mansour.Mfclemos

"During the night, I thought to myself while on the plane: Go to hell Ben-Gurion Airport. 30 years of humiliation and you are still not done. In the past, you would beat us at the terminal, today you've progressed to treating us as suspects at the checkpoint at the entrance [to the airport]," Mansour wrote.

He added that "Isfiya is not a town in the [Palestinian] territories, but a home to the main military cemetery for fallen Druze soldiers who died during their service in the Israel Defense Forces.

"I advise that that you take your security guards and those in charge of their training to visit this cemetery and teach them about self-sacrifice and respect. Until then, I have only this to tell you: You make me sick."

The Israel Airports Authority spokesman was the only official to respond to Mansour's claims the same day, saying "the security inspection at Ben-Gurion Airport is carried out regardless of race, religion, and sex. When one meets more than 25 million passengers a year, there will be those who'll choose to be offended by a security guard who is merely doing her job. Even before an inquiry had been launched and only from reading the Facebook post, [I can say] there is nothing wrong with the security guard's conduct."

"My best friends, as well as your friends and relatives are buried in military cemeteries. I suggest that the respectable ambassador tell his daughter that the security guard is doing everything she can to protect her and the State of Israel," Lefler added.

Mansour, who was born in Isfiya, is an Israeli diplomat and poet. He held a number of senior posts in the Foreign Ministry in addition to publishing poems and prose.

Most Druze men in Israel join the Israeli army, and the community as a whole has traditionally set itself apart from the general Arab public in its alliance with the state. However, the Druze minority in Israel is still discriminated against in many ways.

Some Israeli lawmakers also commented on the accusations of racial profiling on Saturday and a groupd of Foreign Ministry retirees expressed their solidarity with Mansour in a letter published Sunday, but it was only later on Sunday that the Foreign Ministry, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin released any statements about the incident.

Netanyahu said only he spoke with the ambassador after the incident, adding in a statement that he has "great appreciation for the way he represents the State of Israel in Panama."

"The Druze community is dear to our hearts and we would continue to act in every way to strengthen the brotherly bond with them," Netanyahu added.

The Foreign Ministry released a statement saying it "would examine the incident, in coordination with Israel Airport Authority and Ambassador Mansour.

"We believe that the main encounter that takes place between public servants, including those who are in charge of security, and visitors departing Israel or arriving in the country must be carried out with professionalism while maintaining mutual respect," the statement read.

Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz added that he was sorry for the incident. "I cherish the work you have done, hug you and your family and the entire Druze community," he said in a statement.

"I will act to make sure cases like this will not happen again," Katz added.

Foreign Ministry retirees wrote a letter supporting Mansour. "Dear Reda, we've decided to write to you personally and express our sorrow for the experience you endured," the letter read.

"We were appalled by the treatment you, your daughter and the rest of your family received during the security inspection at Ben Gurion Airport as well as the condescending statement issued by the Israel Airport Authority spokesperson following the incident, which ignored your feelings.

"Throughout the years, we've seen you invest your heart and soul in the representation of the State of Israel in the world. You are an excellent ambassador and a pride to all of us. Please express our support to your daughter and the rest of your family.

"We are convinced that our friends at the Foreign Ministry will later find the way to show you their support," the letter said.

Rivlin: 'What matters is that you felt hurt'

President Rivlin said Sunday that although he was confident a serious investigation was underway, "what matters is what you feel, and if you felt so hurt, then we have to give it due consideration."

Saluting Mansour's diplomatic work, Rivlin also had a special thought for the relationship between Jews and Druze in Israel. "The alliance between us and the Druze is an alliance built in life, not just in death. We need to make sure we keep building it every day, every hour, and not just in times of crisis and battle," the president said.

On Saturday, Meretz chairman Nitzan Horowitz said in a statement that "Ambassador Mansour is not alone. The Netanyahu regime brands first and second-class citizens."

Meretz lawmaker Mossi Raz added that "the arbitrary [security] inspections at Ben-Gurion Airport are the best Hasbara campaign for those opposing Israel in the world," while fellow party member Tamar Zandberg said "the racist profiling at the airport must stop. It has nothing to do with security."

A Zionist Quiz from Stuttgart – Holocaust Heroes and Survivors Accuse Zionism

Hotel Silber, Gestapo Headquarters and the Jewish Deportations from Germany

During my talk in Stuttgart

This blog has had a temporary respite over the past few days. That is because I am in Germany. I was invited by the Palestine solidarity group in Stuttgart to address a public meeting, which I did on Friday evening. To a packed audience I spoke on the topic of Zionism and Anti-Semitism.

Part of the audience of over 80 in Stuttgart

To test your knowledge of Zionism I have included a series of quotations which I used in my talk. Let’s see how many you can get them right! The answers are at the bottom underneath quotations from survivors of the Holocaust about the similarities between Zionism, Israel and the Nazis.

The centre of Stuttgart

The city of Stuttgart

On the Saturday my hosts took me into the centre of Stuttgart, a large industrial city in South Germany, the home of Mercedes Benz, Daimler, Bosch and Porsche. We visited Hotel Silber, now a museum but during the war the headquarters of the Gestapo.

Crowds outside Hotel Silber

Hotel Silber in the 1930's

The deportation of the Jews of Stuttgart

There is a permanent exhibition there now showing the deportation of the 2,500 Jews of Stuttgart beginning in October 1941, a month after the Yellow Star was made compulsory. 

Stuttgart Jews on the train to Riga in Latvia - 90% of them would never return

You can read about it here and see a video here. It states that the deportations were mainly to either the ‘model’ concentration camps of Thereisenstadt in Czechoslovakia (wrongly called an extermination camp in the film) or Auschwitz. However in October 1941 Auschwitz was not yet operational and wouldn't be for mass gassings until March 1942 so it is likely that the Jews of Stuttgart were sent to Riga, whose Jewish ghetto had been cleared by means of mass executions of the Latvian Jews.  See here.  Less than 10% of the Jews who were deported from Stuttgart survived.

Below are the quotations I used as part of my talk in Stuttgart.  See how many you get!

Zionist Quotations Quiz

1.           Hitler’s rise was “a huge political and economic boost for the Zionist enterprise.’

2.           ‘In Paris... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism.’

3.           ‘Anti-Semitism, too, probably contains the Divine will to Good, because it forces us to close ranks, unites us through pressure, and through our unity will make us free.’

4.           ‘Judaephobia is then a mental disease, and as a mental disease it is hereditary, and having been inherited for 2,000 years, it is incurable.’

5.           ‘I have spent most of my life in combating these very doctrines, [that Jews form a separate nation] when presented to me in the form of anti-Semitism, and I can only regard them as the more dangerous when they come to me in the guise of Zionism. They constitute a capitulation to our enemies.’

6.           The Nazi government 'is in agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry itself, Zionism, whose position is based on the recognistion of the unity of Jewry throughout the world, and the rejection of all ideas of mixing in’

7.           ‘the activity of the Zionist-oriented youth organizations that are engaged in the occupational restructuring of the Jews for agriculture and manual trades prior to their emigration to Palestine lies in the interest of the National Socialist state’s leadership.’

8.           ‘If we do not admit the rightfulness of anti-Semitism we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism... Instead of establishing societies for defence against 1.           ‘If we do not admit the rightfulness of anti-Semitism we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism... Instead of establishing societies for defence against the anti-Semites who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defence against our friends, who desire to defend our rights.’

Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose group were held at Hotel Silber in November 1937 before being released, arrested in Munich and executed in February 1943

9.         ‘our people were rather hard on him [William Evans-Gordon MP, founder of the anti-Semitic British  Brothers League in 1901. The Aliens Bill in England and the movement which grew around it were natural phenomenon which might have been foreseen... Sir William Evans-Gordon had no particular anti-Jewish prejudices... He acted as he thought, according to his best lights and in the most kindly way, in the interests of his country… he was sincerely ready to encourage any settlement of Jews almost anywhere in the British Empire, but he failed to see why the ghettos of London or Leeds or Whitechapel should be made into a branch of the ghettos of Warsaw and Pinsk.’ (my emphasis)

10.      ‘If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.’ This was a reaction to the British Kindertransport scheme to allow 10,000 Jewish children from Germany into Britain in 1938-39.

11.      ‘As the European Holocaust erupted, X saw it as a decisive opportunity for Zionism... X above all others sensed the tremendous possibilities inherent in the dynamic of the chaos and carnage in Europe... In conditions of peace,… Zionism could not move the masses of world Jewry. The forces unleashed by Hitler in all their horror must be harnessed to the advantage of Zionism. ... By the end of 1942… the struggle for a Jewish state became the primary concern of the movement.’

12.      The rise of Hitler was “an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”.

13.      ‘The Nazis victory would become “a fertile force for Zionism.”

14.       “It was morally disturbing to seem to be considered as the favoured children of the Nazi Government, particularly when it dissolved the anti-Zionist youth groups, and seemed in other ways to prefer the Zionists. The Nazis asked for a 'more Zionist behaviour.”

15.      ‘Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations.’ As Nicosia noted, X‘intended to use Zionism as a legal justification for depriving German Jews of their civil rights’ and he ‘sanctioned the use of the Zionist movement in the future drive to eliminate Jewish rights, Jewish influence and eventually the Jewish presence in Germany.’

16.      ‘Zionism has no illusion about the difficulty of the Jewish condition which consists above all in an abnormal occupational pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral  pattern and in the fault of an intellectual and moral posture not rooted in one’s own tradition… an answer to the Jewish question truly satisfying to the national state can be brought about only with the collaboration of the Jewish movement that aims at a social, cultural an moral renewal of Jewry…On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race... fruitful activity for the fatherland is possible. Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we don’t wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we too are against mixed marriages and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group… The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda… is in essence fundamentally unZionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build.’

17.      Palestine was  ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’

18.      When a friend of X called him an anti-Semite he retorted ‘I have already established here [in his diary] that I despise the cancers of Judaism more than does the worst anti-Semite.’

19.           Describing the reaction of Polish Jewish workers to Zionism in the 1930’s: ‘to the Jewish workers anti-Semitism seemed to triumph in Zionism, which recognised the legitimacy and the validity of the old cry ‘Jews get out!' The Zionists were agreeing to get out.’

Marika Sherwood

1

“Sometime after [1956] I heard a news item about Israelis herding Palestinians into settlement camps. I just could not believe this. Weren’t the Israelis also Jews? Hadn’t we – they – just survived the greatest pogrom of our history? Weren’t [concentration] camps – often euphemistically called ‘settlement camps’ by the Nazis – the main feature of this pogrom? How could Jews in any measure do unto others what had been done to them? How could these Israeli Jews oppress and imprison other people? In my romantic imagination, the Jews in Israel were socialists and people who knew right from wrong. This was clearly incorrect. I felt let down, as if I was being robbed of a part of what I had thought was my heritage. …

I have to say to the Israeli government, which claims to speak in the name of all Jews, that it is not speaking in my name. I will not remain silent in the face of the attempted annihilation of the Palestinians; the sale of arms to repressive regimes around the world; the attempt to stifle criticism of Israel in the media worldwide; or the twisting of the knife labelled ‘guilt’ in order to gain economic concessions from Western countries. Of course, Israel’s geo-political position has a greater bearing on this, at the moment. I will not allow the confounding of the terms ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘anti-Zionist’ to go unchallenged.”

Dr. Marika Sherwood, ‘How I became an anti-Israel Jew’, Middle East Monitor, 7/3/18. Marika Sherwood is a survivor of the Budapest ghetto.  In March 2017 she planned to deliver a talk entitled 'You're doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to me'. However after a visit from the Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev to the University’s Head of Student Experience Tim Westlake the title of the talk was changed at the insistence of the university authorities.  Thus at the behest of a foreign state, Manchester University changed the title of a talk of a Holocaust survivor.  All of course in the name of the  bogus IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’. See the Independent.

2

“Israel, in order to survive, has to renounce the wish for domination and then it will be a much better place for Jews also. The immediate analogy which a lot of people are making in Israel is Germany. Not only the Germany of Hitler and the Nazis but even the former German Empire wanted to dominate Europe. What happened in Japan after the attack on China is that they wanted to dominate a huge area of Asia. When Germany and Japan renounced the wish for domination, they became much nicer societies for the Japanese and Germans themselves. In addition to all the Arab considerations, I would like to see Israel, by renouncing the desire for domination, including domination of the Palestinians, become a much nicer place for Israelis to live.”

Dr. Israel Shahak, Middle East Policy Journal, Summer 1989, no.29.

3

“I am pained by the parallels I observe between my experiences in Germany prior to 1939 and those suffered by Palestinians today. I cannot help but hear echoes of the Nazi mythos of ‘blood and soil’ in the rhetoric of settler fundamentalism which claims a sacred right to all the lands of biblical Judea and Samaria. The various forms of collective punishment visited upon the Palestinian people – coerced ghettoization behind a ‘security wall’; the bulldozing of homes and destruction of fields; the bombing of schools, mosques, and government buildings; an economic blockade that deprives people of the water, food, medicine, education and the basic necessities for dignified survival – force me to recall the deprivations and humiliations that I experienced in my youth. This century-long process of oppression means unimaginable suffering for Palestinians.” 

Dr. Hajo Meyer, ‘An Ethical Tradition Betrayed’, Huffington Post, 27/1/10.

Hajo Meyer was a survivor of Auschwitz.

 4

“As a Jewish youngster growing up in Budapest, an infant survivor of the Nazi genocide, I was for years haunted by a question resounding in my brain with such force that sometimes my head would spin: ‘How was it possible? How could the world have let such horrors happen?’

 It was a naïve question, that of a child. I know better now: such is reality. Whether in Vietnam or Rwanda or Syria, humanity stands by either complicitly or unconsciously or helplessly, as it always does. In Gaza today we find ways of justifying the bombing of hospitals, the annihilation of families at dinner, the killing of pre-adolescents playing soccer on a beach. …

There is no understanding Gaza out of context – Hamas rockets or unjustifiable terrorist attacks on civilians – and that context is the longest ongoing ethnic cleansing operation in the recent and present centuries, the ongoing attempt to destroy Palestinian nationhood.

The Palestinians use tunnels? So did my heroes, the poorly armed fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. Unlike Israel, Palestinians lack Apache helicopters, guided drones, jet fighters with bombs, laser-guided artillery. Out of impotent defiance, they fire inept rockets, causing terror for innocent Israelis but rarely physical harm. With such a gross imbalance of power, there is no equivalence of culpability. …

And what shall we do, we ordinary people? I pray we can listen to our hearts. My heart tells me that ‘never again’ is not a tribal slogan, that the murder of my grandparents in Auschwitz does not justify the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians, that justice, truth, peace are not tribal prerogatives. That Israel’s ‘right to defend itself,’ unarguable in principle, does not validate mass killing.

Dr. Gabor Mate, ‘Beautiful Dream of Israel has become a Nightmare’, Toronto Star, 22/7/14.

Gabor Mate is a survivor of the Budapest ghetto.

Zeev Sternhell

5

“The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here [in Israel], the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people. The interviews Haaretz’s Ravit Hecht held with [the right-wing Israeli politicians] Smotrich and Zohar (December 3, 2016 and October 28, 2017 ) should be widely disseminated on all media outlets in Israel and throughout the Jewish world. In both of them we see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.

Like every ideology, the Nazi race theory developed over the years. At first it only deprived Jews of their civil and human rights. It’s possible that without World War II the ‘Jewish problem’ would have ended only with the ‘voluntary’ expulsion of Jews from Reich lands. After all, most of Austria and Germany’s Jews made it out in time. It’s possible that this is the future facing Palestinians.”:

Prof. Zeev Sternhell, ‘Opinion in Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’, Haaretz, 19/1/18.

Zeev Sternhell is a survivor of the Przemysl ghetto in Poland.

6a

“The Zionist movement of Europe played a very important role in the mass extermination of Jews. Indeed, I believe that without the cooperation of Zionists it would have been a much more difficult task….

[The Zionists] said that we are not Czechoslovaks or we are not Germans, we are not French, we are Jews and we must, as Jews, go back to our country, to Israel or to Palestine and found our state …

Then came the Nuremberg Law, which was a law, issued by a nominally civilized state [Nazi Germany], which said that Jews do not belong to Europe, but to Palestine. …

So, on one platform, Nazism and Zionism had something in common: they both preached that Jews don’t belong to Europe but to Palestine. ...

And naturally, the Germans said: ‘You see the Jews may not trust us but they will trust you’, to the Zionists, ‘because they have seen that they have always told them actually the truth: that you belong to Palestine, that you are a foreign element here.’ … 

And so the Jewish councils were preferably selected from well-known Zionists. And, because the well-known Zionists became respectable, many Jews who were respectable anyway became Zionists. So they formed Jewish councils from a Zionist core, fortified by respectable members of society: top lawyers, top business people, top economists and that was the Jewish councils. ...

They were promised by the Germans or by the local fascist government to be protected from any discrimination because they are needed for administering of the Jewish affairs. …

So you had here already a Zionist clique enforced by money of big Jewish businessmen who would be prepared to go along with the discrimination against the masses of the Jewish population which were neither rich nor Zionist, and in other words did not belong to the clique. …

So I didn’t trust them in spite of the fact that the Nazis gave them the right after the Nuremberg Laws. I considered them plain fascists and I considered them from the very start as despicable creatures who deal with the fascists and take profit out of it in order to be exempted from discrimination conducted against the others. …

So I didn’t trust the Nazis any more or any less than the Jewish Zionist councils. Indeed, I realised that the Zionists and the Nazis are approximately identical enemies of mine who have got both one thing in common, to get me out from home with 25 kilos to an unknown place and to leave my mother completely defenceless at home. …

The young people, the core of resistance, is always 16 to 30. Every soldier knows that they are the best material for fighting. … I was flabbergasted by the fact that the Zionists who pretended to be the protectors of the Jews, the first thing which they agreed to was to let go away a potential core of resistance who could in the last resort protect the families with force if necessary. … 

Dr. Rudolph Vrba, ‘Oral history interview with Rudolf Vrba’ , World at War TV Series, 1972, 1st section, extracts from 32 to 45mins.

Rudolf Vrba was a survivor of  Majdanek and Auschwitz. He escaped from Auschwitz in 1944 in order to warn the Jews of Hungary about the Nazi extermination programme. Tragically, some Zionist leaders had other ideas.

6b

“I am a Jew. In spite of that – indeed because of that – I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war.

This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler’s gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr. [Rudolf] Kastner, leader of the council which spoke for all Jews in Hungary…

While I was prisoner number 44070 at Auschwitz – the number is still on my arm – I compiled careful statistics of the exterminations … I took these terrible statistics with me when I escaped in 1944 and I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks notice that Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers. … Kastner went to Eichmann and told him, ‘I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.’

Eichmann not only agreed, but dressed Kastner up in S.S. uniform and took him to Belsen to trace some of his friends. Nor did the sordid bargaining end there.

Kastner paid Eichmann several thousand dollars. With this little fortune, Eichmann was able to buy his way to freedom when Germany collapsed, to set himself up in the Argentine…”

Dr. Rudolf Vrba, Daily Herald, February 1961 (cited in Ben Hecht, Perfidy, 1962, p. 231 ). 

6c

“Why did Doctor Kastner betray his people when he could have saved many of them by warning them, by giving them a chance to fight, a chance to stage the second ‘Warsaw [uprising]’ which Eichmann feared? …

Could it be, therefore that the defeatist mood of Doctor Kastner was reinforced by the memory of words used by Doctor Chaim Weizmann, first President of Israel, when he addressed a Zionist convention in London in 1937? He said:

 I told the British Royal Commission that the hopes of Europe’s six million Jews were centred on emigration. I was asked: ‘Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?’ I replied: ‘No.’ The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They are dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world … only a branch will survive … They had to accept it. … If they feel and suffer, they will find the way – Beacharit Hayamim [‘When the Messiah comes, all the dead will be revived’] – in the fullness of time … I pray that we may preserve our national unity, for it is all we have. 

‘Only a branch will survive …’. Did Kastner, like Hitler, believe in a master race, a Jewish nation created of Top People for Top People by Top People? Was that the way in which he interpreted Doctor Chaim Weizmann's somber oration and was he right in so doing? If so, who was going to select the branch? Who was going to say which grains would form the heap of moral and economic dust, destined to await the coming of the Messiah? …

[My family,] presumably, formed the dust which was to be swept into the ovens by the Nazis who used Jewish leaders as their brooms …”

Dr. Rudolf Vrba, I Escaped from Auschwitz, 2002, pp. 281-2.

[Rudolf Vrba’s views were always controversial, but even Zionist newspapers such as the Jewish News, (15/12/16) and the Jerusalem Post, (16/2/17) have, in recent years, published strong criticisms of Kastner’s role in the Holocaust. For more on this whole controversy, see: Tony Greenstein, Weekly Worker, (1/6/17) and Ruth Linn, ‘Rudolf Vrba and the Auschwitz Reports: Conflicting Historical Interpretations’ (2011) .]

Marek Edelman

7

“[During the war] it never even entered any of our minds that the Zionists were deliberately remaining passive in regard to the physical destruction of the Jews in order to additionally justify the founding of the State of Israel… But today, even acknowledged historians speak out loud about the way that some of the Zionists living in Palestine exploited the Holocaust politically! … 

[The first Israeli Prime Minister] Ben Gurion believed that the worse it is for the Jews in Europe, the better for Israel. He put that into practice… Ben Gurion washed his hands of the Diaspora… As early as a Mapai party conference in December 1942, he said that the tragedy of the European Jews did not ‘directly concern’ them. Those were the words of a leader who was willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of Jews to the idea of a Jewish state. I’m not saying he could have saved thousands of people, but he could have fought for those thousands of people. He did not do so. I don’t know whether this was deliberate.”

Dr Marek Edelman, 2016. Being On the Right Side: Everyone in the Ghetto Was a Hero, pp. 223, 448.

Marek Edelman was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and a commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

8

[As for Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin] ‘Fascist’ is a definition I can accept. I think even Begin would not deny it. He was a student of Jabotinsky, who represented the right wing of Zionism, who called himself a Fascist and was one of Mussolini’s interlocutors. Yes, Begin was his pupil. That is Begin’s history…. [The Holocaust] is Begin’s favourite defence. And I deny any validity to that defence. 

Primo Levi, The Voice of Memory: Primo Levi Interviews, 1961-1987, pp. 285-286. The quote is from 1982. Primo Levi was an Auschwitz survivor.

The Gaza Boat on which Reuben Moscovitz Sailed

9

I as a Holocaust survivor cannot live with the fact that the State of Israel is imprisoning an entire people behind fences. …  It's just immoral.

What happened to me in the Holocaust wakes me up every night and I hope we don't do the same thing to our neighbours. … [I compare] what I went through during the Holocaust to what the besieged Palestinian children are going through.

Reuben Moscovitz, ‘Jewish Gaza-bound Activists: IDF Used Excessive Force in Naval Raid’, Haaretz, 28/9/10. Reuben Moscovitz was survivor of the Holocaust in Romania

Answers to Zionist Quiz

1.           David Ben-Gurion

2.           Theodor Herzl

3.           Theodor Herzl

4.           Leo Pinsker

5.           Lucien Wolf, the Secretary of the Conjoint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies

6.           Reinhardt Heydrich

7.           Reinhardt Heydrich

8.           Jacob Klatzkin

9.           Chaim Weizmann

10.      David David Ben-Gurion

11.      Berl Katznelson

12.      David David Ben-Gurion

13.      David David Ben-Gurion

14.      Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a leader of German Zionism and later Vice Chair of the American Jewish Council

15.      Alfred Rosenberg, main Nazi theoretician hanged at Nuremburg

16.      Zionist Federation of Germany letter to Hitler of 21.6.33.

17.      Pinhas Rosenbluth, first Israeli Minister of Justice

18.      Arthur Ruppin, member of the Zionist Executive, first Director of the Palestine Office and Father of Israeli Land Settlement.

19.  Isaac Deutscher