Showing posts with label Alan Johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Johnson. Show all posts

19 February 2024

BBC Panorama Could Have Shown How Israel’s Main Purpose in Gaza is Ethnic Cleansing Instead It Decided to ‘Expose’ British Muslims Support for Hamas!

Instead of a Documentary on the Bombing of Every Hospital &University in Gaza the BBC Employed Islamaphobe John Ware as its Witchfinder General


You might think that at a time of genocide in Gaza Panorama might devote a programme to exposing Israeli lies about October 7 or how ethnic cleansing, not defeating Hamas, is the main reason for Israel’s Nazi-style blitzkrieg. Not a bit of it.

Today Panorama will give a helping hand to Israel’s killers by ‘exposing’ how British Muslims support Hamas. All with the aid of its favourite Islamaphobe John Ware.

In July 2019, shortly before the General Election Panorama broadcast Is Labour Anti-Semitic? It didn’t need the question mark since it had already made up its mind. It was a hatchet job on the Corbyn left and who better to front it than Ware?

Ella Rose was nominated for an Oscar for her starring role as John Ware's fake victim of antisemitism

The program attracted over 2,000 complaints yet Ofcom refused to investigate it. The British Establishment was determined to run with the ‘labour anti-Semitism’ narrative and it brooked no opposition.

If ever there was a reporter unfit to present a documentary on alleged racism in the Labour Party then it is Ware.

The programme failed to explain that the Jews interviewed all happened to be members/officers of the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement. It didn’t even give their names. Not one anti-Zionist Jew or member of Jewish Voice for Labour was interviewed.

On Monday Panorama will broadcast Hamas’s Secret Financial Empires by John Ware and producer Leo Telling. It attacks British Palestinians for funding Hamas. It relies on Israeli intelligence sources and is will be about as reliable as the Israeli allegations that Gaza’s hospitals were Hamas military bases.


Asa Winstanley of Electronic Intifada documents how:

As “evidence” of such “support” for “terror,” the producer cited four posts to X (formerly Twitter) by Altikriti, where he called into question some of Israel’s most high-profile atrocity propaganda about the Palestinian military assault on 7 October.

These Israeli narratives have been widely discredited and called into question across the world.

While the producer conceded that “there is currently no evidence (at least, of which we are aware) that 40 babies had been beheaded,” he claimed to have “gathered evidence” of other crimes.

Telling’s equivocal wording comes despite the fact that the “40 babies” claim has been definitively proven to be a total fabrication, and not simply an unproven claim.

 

Just one baby, Mila Cohen (10 months) was killed, by a stray bullet, 36 children in total. Compare that to the 15,000+ Palestinian children who’ve been murdered including 4 babies who were left to die by the Israeli military in Al Shifa when the ventilators were turned off.  Their bodies were left for wild animals to devour. See CNN’s Infants found dead and decomposing in evacuated hospital ICU in Gaza. Here’s what we know.


Of course every child is one too many but whereas Hamas went out of their way not to kill children there is evidence that Israeli is deliberately rounding up children like mice and then executing them.

It seems that the hatchet job that Panorama is intending will be as factually inaccurate as all Ware’s previous programmes. Winstanley describes how

Putting the program’s allegations to Altikriti, the producer described one of the campaigner’s tweets as a response to “a post by UK women.”

Yet the tweet Telling cites was actually a response to a pro-Israel lobby group, We Believe in Israel, which was spreading the Israeli propaganda about rape. The group is actually run by a man, Luke Akehurst, and the post in question does not quote women.


 The programme is going to broadcast how prominent British Palestinians like Anas Altikriti are supporting Hamas. Proof of this is their doubting of Israeli atrocity propaganda such as the story about 40 beheaded babies.

The ‘evidence’ for Ware’s accusations in the program is Israel’s Secret Police Shin Bet who are notorious for routinely using torture and abusing Palestinian children.


During Is Labour Anti-Semitic Ware described the interview by Labour Party staff member Ben Westerman of a Jewish member Helen Marks. It was witnessed by another Jewish member Rica Bird. A tape recording proved that Westerman lied when he alleged that Rica had asked if he was from Israel. She had asked what branch of the Labour Party he was from.

After having denied that Westerman lied for so long Ware finally admitted, in the Zionist journal Fathom (where else?) that ‘it cannot be ruled out that Westerman’s recollection has erred’ and that he ‘misremembered’.

This came after the BBC finally admitted that the interview with Izzy Lenga, a JLM officer, had been cut so as to suggest holocaust denial was a feature of Labour Party debate rather than her alleged experiences at University. However the admission was tucked away in Corrections & Clarifications rather than being broadcast.

The programme had two ‘expert witnesses’ Dave Rich from the Zionist Community Security Trust and the second witness was Professor Alan Johnson. Johnson is not Jewish and he has no special knowledge of anti-Semitism. He is Editor of Fathom, the journal of BICOM, the main Israeli propaganda organisation in Britain. He is a Zionist. Why was this information concealed?

The only conclusion is that Ware deliberately set out to mislead viewers. By not providing Johnson’s political and professional background Ware paraded Johnson as a neutral expert when he was nothing of the sort?

It is a testament to how dishonest Is Labour Anti-Semitic was that over 4 years later John Ware is still forced to defend it.

Arzu Merali’s documented how Ware's 2005 "A Question of Leadership" attracted over 600 complaints in just its first week protesting about its hostile and one-sided nature.

John Ware - the BBC's Go to Islamaphobe

The Muslim Council of Britain described the programme thus:

John Ware’s team have made a deeply unfair programme using deliberately garbled quotes in an attempt to malign the Muslim Council of Britain and with the barely concealed goal of drawing British Muslims away from being inspired in their political beliefs and actions by the faith of Islam. It is unfortunate that just when Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims are beginning to make progress in terms of their political participation in the mainstream, there are those who are purposefully trying to sabotage that process,’said Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain.

It seems that to qualify as so-called ‘moderates’ Muslims are required to remain silent about Israeli crimes in Palestine, otherwise they are automatically labelled as ‘extremists’.

And that is the gist of it. Ware’s agenda is to defend the Israeli state at all costs. Arzu described Ware as ‘someone who has made a career out of exceptionalising Muslims.’

One senior ex-Panorama journalist described the programme as

the most disgusting Panorama that I have ever seen. The presenter was acting like a prosecuting attorney, not a journalist.

 The Guardian's Madeleine Bunting called the documentary, which dubbed all Muslims as ‘extremist’, as an example of the ‘McCarthyite absurd’. Bunting described Ware’s journalistic method as being one of ‘Branding moderates as extremists’ and gave as an example his targeting of Sir Iqbal Sacranie of the MCB. She described his behaviour as McCarthyite.

Ware doesn’t so much investigate as pillory and scapegoat, substituting his own prejudices for reporting. Ken Livingstone’s description of Hitler having supported Zionism was termed a ‘cranky’ version of history. Since when is it a presenter’s job to pass judgement on a particular view of history?

One wonders what John Ware would call the memo that the German Zionist Federation sent on 21st June 1933, to Hitler?

‘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....’

Zionist historian, David Cesarani, wrote in The Final Solution:

‘The efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending support to its efforts to promote emigration.’

Maybe Cesarani was also a ‘crank’? Or perhaps the crank is Ware? Ware is a relic of the days of Empire when we ‘civilised the natives’. He wrote of his

horror... that some migrants to this country had brought with them a lot more than just their possessions.

They didn’t understand democracy and dissent. One can only wonder at where they may have got it from! Britain’s former colonies were not a model of democracy.

Racism oozes out of everything Ware writes. He described Islam as an ‘ideology’ which is what Tommy Robinson and the far-Right says. Since the Chief Rabbi stated that Judaism and Zionism are intertwined does not the same apply to Judaism?

In an article for a right-wing magazine Standpoint (27.6.17) Enough is enough of terror — but also of our self-doubt Ware wrote of Western civilisation being ‘based on Christianity, which enshrines individualism and freedom.’

One can only wonder what Torquemada’s victims would have made of that. Perhaps Martin Luther’s fulmination that ‘the Jews are our misfortune’ is Ware’s idea of civilisation? This was emblazoned on the masthead of the Nazi paper Der Sturmer.

In the article for Standpoint Ware wrote that the Tory Party’s

‘family quarrel over Europe... risks letting in a Labour leader whose entire political career has been stimulated by disdain for the West, appeasement of extremism, and who would barely understand what fighting for the revival of British values is really all about.’

These bigoted remarks should have rendered Ware as unfit to comment on a greyhound race let alone the Labour Party. Yet the BBC was and is more than happy to employ him.

Ware is of the opinion that the alternative to British values ‘is a diffuse mush with nothing particularly special to defend at all.’ Islamaphobia is just ‘powerful ammunition’ for discrediting Prevent. But it is in the final paragraph that we understand Ware’s motivation when he lambasted the Tory party for

‘risk(ing) letting in a Labour leader whose entire political career has been stimulated by disdain for the West, appeasement of extremism, and who would barely understand what fighting for the revival of British values is really all about.’

This is the man who the BBC believed was the most suitable person to present a programme on ‘Labour anti-Semitism’. The MCB got it right when they described Ware as ‘an agenda-driven pro-Israeli polemicist.’  

In an article Jeremy Corbyn’s gold standard code on antisemitism is far from black and white in the Jewish Chronicle Ware demonstrated his ignorance, not only about Islam but Zionism too. He opined that

‘any suggestion that ethnic cleansing was a principle war aim by the Jews in 1948 ... is highly contested. The Jews had accepted the UN partition plan. The Arabs had not.... The Arabs’ war aim was the destruction of the Jews’ emergent state fuelled by a religious Jihad. Survival was the Jews’ war aim.’

 Ware knows nothing about the Nakba. He referred to Arab war plans but the Arab armies only invaded in May 1948 as a consequence of the expulsion by then of over 300,000 Palestinian refugees. The ethnic cleansing was well under way.


Josef Weitz, Director of the Jewish National Fund’s Colonisation Department wrote in his diary in 1940, reprinted on 29.9.67 in the Israeli Labour Party daily Davar:

"Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country...We shall not achieve our goal of being an independent people with the Arabs in this small country. The only solution is a Palestine, at least Western Palestine [west of the Jordan river] without Arabs...And there is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighbouring countries, to transfer all of them; not one village, not one tribe, should be left...Only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb the millions of our own brethren. There is no other way out."

Commenting on what he had written in his diary 27 years later Weitz wrote that:

 when the UN passed a resolution to partition Palestine into two states, the War of Independence broke out to our great good fortune; and in this war a twofold miracle happened: a territorial victory and the flight of the Arabs. In the Six Days’ War one great miracle happened: a tremendous territorial victory; but most of the inhabitants of the liberated territories remained ‘stuck’ to their places which may destroy the very foundation of our state.”

Ware cannot help but be aware of the Zionist penchant for ethnic cleansing. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if you want to establish a ‘Jewish’ state in a land where two-thirds of the population are Palestinian then you have to expel them.

John Ware compliments me when he says  that ‘Greenstein must be one of the most disagreeable individuals I’ve ever set eyes on’

Ware never makes any distinction between Zionists, Israelis and Jews. He is clearly unaware of the Post-Zionist Israeli Historians such as Benny Morris or Ilan Pape otherwise he would not have written such junk.

In the same article Ware makes his own views crystal clear.

So deeply into Labour’s Left has anti-Zionism morphed into antisemitism (sic) — itself a Corbyn legacy — that Jewish Labour members are avoiding meetings.

When Ware embarked on Is Labour Anti-Semitic? his mind had long been made up. Even New Labour’s David Blunkett had savaged Panorama’s The Asylum Game and Ware, for

playing into the hands of a "Powellite anti-immigration agenda" ...

He particularly singled out for criticism the BBC1 Panorama special, the Asylum Game, and its writer and presenter, John Ware, for producing a "poorly researched and overspun documentary" which repeated unchallenged the claims of "the rightwing anti-immigration pressure group, Migration Watch".

In another article for the Jewish Chronicle in November 2016 Why the I-word has closed down debate on extremism Ware defended the notorious Islamaphobe Douglas Murray, Associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society and on the board of the far-Right Gatestone Institute. Gaby Hinsliffe in a Review of Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe described how

The rightwing journalist and commentator cites Enoch Powell and wants to protect white Christian Europe from ‘outsiders.’ [33]

Ware wrote in the Jewish Chronicle that

Islamophobia — however it is defined — will abate when terrorism carried out in God’s name ceases.

Ware quoted favourably Murray’s assertion that the term “Islamophobia” was ‘a meaningless idea – a crock.” Ware explained the difference between anti-Semitism and what he termed ‘(authentic) Islamophobia’.

‘The former is entirely irrational, the latter reactive.’

Which is exactly how anti-Semitism used to be defended. Ware blamed Muslim radicals

who have brought it on their fellow Muslims — by their promotion of Islam as a political ideology.

What is surprising is that if the BBC and Panorama were seriously interested in exploring racism in British political parties, and the same is equally true for the EHRC, then there is plenty of scope for a programme about the Tory Party. More than half of Conservative Party members questioned for a poll believed Islam is a threat to British life.

In 1987 Ware tried to discredit former army intelligence officer Colin Wallace on Panorama. Paul Foot, who was a brilliant investigative journalist dismissed Ware as a shoddy reporter. As the article A long history of lies against the left explained

In 1987 Ware reported for a Panorama documentary that tried to discredit former army intelligence officer Colin Wallace.

Wallace had exposed a “dirty tricks” campaign against Labour prime minister Howard Wilson.

Ware claimed Wallace was a fantasist. But as investigative journalist Paul Foot wrote, Ware’s own report was riddled with obvious errors.

Wallace’s letter in The Spectator showed how Ware was cavalier in his approach to facts and an establishment journalist:

John Ware, the former Sun reporter who now works for the BBC, no doubt owes much of his skill and flair as a writer to his days with his old newspaper.

Ware was defending the British army against allegations of  illegal activity. As in Palestine Ware went out of his way to defend the colonial authorities. Ware is the go to ‘journalist’ whenever colonial malpractice needs defending. It’s no surprise that the BBC, the old Voice of the British Empire, should solicit his services much as someone solicits a prostitute.

As Robin Ramsay of The Lobster explained Colin Wallace, who was framed for the murder of a man in Arundel (and later cleared) was subject to a concerted attempt at discrediting him. But for Paul Foot’s investigation this would have stuck.

In 2015 Ware produced a documentary Jeremy Corbyn: Labour’s Earthquake on Corbyn’s first leadership campaign. It featured claims from right wing Labour figures that a Corbyn victory would lead to left wing “thuggery and intimidation”.

The Independent described how Panorama lied when they told Corbyn’s team that their film was about the Labour leadership campaign as a whole, including all four candidates.

‘A source in Mr Corbyn’s campaign accused the BBC of conducting "a complete hatchet job" on Mr Corbyn.’

Ware produced a number of films attacking Muslims and Palestinians. One suggested that Palestinian charity Interpal funded terrorism. Others have targeted the Muslim Council of Britain and Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend).

Interpal successfully sued the Daily Mail in 2019 and was awarded £120,000 for alleging it funded terrorism. Ware also attacked Mend accusing it of antisemitism due to its members’ criticisms of Israel.

In Panorama or Propaganda Faisal Bodi documented Ware’s Islamaphobic journalism. Arzu Merali also documented the Islamaphobia of Ware in The banality and boredom of anti-Muslim witchhunts. Or beware John Ware for Middle East Eye,

In 'It's the last chance for Panorama' Ware was quoted by James Silver as being:

“A notorious pro-Israeli Islamophobe”, “desperate to discredit Muslims” with “a track record for displaying unfairness and twisting the truth”. Panorama's leading reporter, John Ware, is not quite public enemy number one for many British Muslims - that is an accolade no doubt held by Bush or Blair - but postings such as these on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee website show he comes a close second.

It says everything about the impartiality of the BBC, with its much vaunted ‘balance’, that it has continued to employ John Ware, a bigot for all seasons, whenever it has wanted to attack either the left or Muslims. We can therefore expect no better of Ware’s expose tomorrow of British Muslims and Hamas. Ware is a known liar and that is why the BBC employs him.

Ware not only writes for the anti-Palestinian Jewish Chronicle he owns part of it. In 2020 when the JC was going bankrupt Ware was part of a consortium which put in a bid to save it.

When two members of the consortium, William Shawcross and Rabbi Jonathan Hughes were contacted by the Jewish News they said that they didn’t know who was funding the bid. Clearly Ware has a lot invested, personally and politically in supporting both Zionism and Islamaphobia. As such he is about the worst person imaginable to be producing documentaries on Muslims for the BBC. It is like asking Nick Griffin of the British National Party to produce a documentary on British Jews.

The JC, according to ABC, the media industry’s auditor, had a paid sale of only 6,371 for May/June 2023. If it was any other paper the JC would have been allowed to go to the wall but it is considered too valuable a propaganda organ by the Zionists to be allowed to die a natural death.

To say that there is a conflict of interest between Ware as owner of the JC and Ware as BBC journalist is to put it mildly. Tomorrow night we can look forward to more of the same. I suggest that people get on the phones and start making complaints to the BBC now. To make a complaint go here and to phone in a complaint ring 0843 254 8737

Tony Greenstein

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20 July 2023

Finally the Zionists Break Their Silence With a 'Review' by Marc Goldberg of ‘Zionism During the Holocaust’

Zionist War Criminal Goldberg’s Description of My Book as ‘Perhaps the Worst book I’ve Ever Read’ is Why You Should Read It!!

Marc Goldberg, proudly describes how he became a settler ‘in time to find himself fighting the Al Aqsa Intifada as an IDF Paratrooper’. He is a curious choice to review a book on Zionism and the Holocaust. Goldberg is Head of Investigations at the CST, a Mossad Project.

Britain's  racist Home Secretary Cruella Braverman is a Welcome Guest at the CST's Annual Dinner

Some idea of the nature of the CST’s purported anti-racism can be gauged by the fact that Home Secretary Cruella Braverman, was guest of honour at their most recent annual dinner.

The ‘review’ was commisioned by Fathom, the Internet Journal of BICOM, Israel’s main propaganda organisation in Britain,

I recently observed that the Zionists had avoided discussing my book whereas the Jewish Chronicle had devoted a whole page to an attack, by the Queen of Trivia Tanya Gold, on Asa Winstanley’s Weaponising Anti-Semitism.

I surmised that the reason for this was that the Zionists didn’t want to get into a debate on their record during the Holocaust. Judging by Goldberg’s ‘review’ I wasn’t far wrong.

As is to be expected, Goldberg barely touches on the content of my book. He prefers see it as one more anti-Semitic tome. Originality is not something which defenders of Zionism and Jewish supremacy are renowned for. Goldberg also writes for the Times of Israel and The Jewish Chronicle.

Fathom’s founding Editor Alan Johnson claimed it would be a ‘scholarly journal’ but amongst its ‘scholarly’ contributors are David Collier, the far right Zionist who refers to Palestinians in the third person and Luke Akehurst, the Labour witchhunter. Neither are renowned for their academic prowess.

Collier’s sole article was an attack on the BBC and Jeremy Bowen for having given ‘a masterclass in anti-Israel propaganda.’ The myth that the BBC is ‘anti-Israel’ is a favourite Zionist theme, completely at variance with the facts.

David Collier, far-Right Zionist with Tommy Robinson supporter Dr Brian, is welcome at Fathom

Fathom includes amongst its Advisor Editors Trevor Chinn, the multi-millionaire funder of Starmer and a variety of Zionist organisations as well as ex-Israeli Chief of Staff Brigadier General Michael Herzog and a former Director of Mossad, Efraim Halevy.

Fathom welcomes the Israeli military and security establishment as associate editors

Fathom says it welcomes articles on the ‘new’ antisemitism or antisemitic anti-Zionism’.  Its prejudices are self-evident. You will not find anything in Fathom that questions Zionism or why Israel has ended up with Judeo-Nazi Ministers like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. Despite its pretensions Fathom is very much a propaganda journal.

Goldberg was part of the witchhunting against Black President of NUS

Despite its academic pretensions, Fathom is overladen with taken-for-granted Zionist clichés and assumptions. Goldberg’s review is consistent with this. This is not inevitable in a Zionist journal. The Journal of Israeli History really does carry scholarly articles and I cite it more than once in my book. But Fathom? It is afraid to pierce beneath the surface of Zionist propaganda for fear of what it may find.

Another military man on Fathom's Editorial Board

In its Introduction we are told that

‘Fathom’s highest quality editorship and insistence on careful fact-checking is fast propelling the journal into becoming essential reading for every person involved in policy and politics in the region and on the international scene.’

If the editors of Fathom believe this then they are suffering from a disconnect from reality that borders on a psychosis. There is no better example of falsifications than Goldberg who writes:

The author was only recently held by a British Court to be a ‘notorious antisemite’. In my opinion this book is antisemitic rubbish.

If you redefine anti-Semitism to mean anti-Zionism then I’m an anti-Semite. But Goldberg’s statement was a lie. Despite my pointing this out in their comments it’s still there. Is this fact checking?

Britain's  racist Home Secretary bunged the CST another £1 million this year

In 2017 I sued the Campaign Against Antisemitism for libel. Instead of defending their comment that I was a ‘notorious anti-Semite’ as factually true under s.2 Defamation Act 2013 they asserted that what they said was an honest opinion under s.3 even if it were untrue.

The Court agreed with the CAA that accusations of anti-Semitism are opinion and not fact. I therefore had to prove that the opinion of the CAA was dishonest, i.e. malicious, which is a high bar legally. At no stage did the Court offer an opinion of its own.

Nonetheless I have reason to be grateful to Goldberg. His description of my book as ‘perhaps the worst… I’ve ever read.’ is more valuable than all the academic recommendations on the back cover! 

Sir Trevor Chinn - Financier to a Host of Racist Individuals

Goldberg Avoids All The Difficult Questions

From February 1940 reports came into the Jewish Agency [JA] about how the Jewish population of Poland were being ‘mercilessly and cruelly annihilated’ yet no Palestinian Zionist body even discussed these reports. Why? Dina Porat, the Chief Historian at Yad Vashem admits that ‘these questions are hard to answer’ because ‘Ben-Gurion’s concentration on post-war goals shifted attention away from the present plight of Europe’s Jews.’

Dr Noah Lucas, a critical Zionist historian who I quote in my book

A serious historian, even a Zionist historian, would at least attempt to tackle such questions. Throughout my book I quote critical Zionist historians such as David Cesarani and Noah Lucas and it is a sign of the lack of commitment to scholarly inquiry that Fathom chose a propagandist rather than a historian to review my book.

Perhaps there is a Zionist equivalent to Godwin’s law? How long can a Zionist last out before attacking an opponent as anti-Semitic? Perhaps we should call it Goldberg’s Law. The beauty of attacking your opponents as anti-Semitic is that it saves you having to engage with their arguments.

The reason that Zionists resort to accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ so readily is that it’s impossible to defend Israel’s actions. How do you defend evicting Palestinians from their homes to make way for messianic settlers? How do you defend demolishing the homes of Palestinian but not Jewish terrorists? How do you defend the right of hundreds of Jewish communities in Israel to legally bar Arabs?

Goldberg accuses me of ignoring ‘the work that the Zionist movement … did to fight Hitler’ and ignoring ‘the challenges faced by the Zionist movement ….’ He complains that my book

doesn’t consist of a full review of the work undertaken by the Zionist movement against the Nazis, offers little to nothing in the way of context.

Peter Bergson, dissident Zionist whose Emergency Committee campaigned to save Jewish refugees - the American Zionist leaders sought his deportation

The problem is that not only did the Zionist movement do virtually nothing but they obstructed the work of others. I paid tribute to the dissident Zionists led by Hillel Cook (Peter Bergson), who were responsible for the formation of the War Refugee Board. I also paid tribute to the Zionist fighters in the ghettoes who disobeyed the instructions from Palestine to cease fighting the Nazis.

Medal struck to commemorate when the head of the Gestapo's Jewish Section, Baron von Mildenstein, sampled the hospitality of the kibbutzim 

When the vast majority of Jews supported boycotting Nazi Germany, the Zionists opposed it before they negotiated a trading agreement, Ha'avara, with Hitler. How could they fight Hitler when they were straining to increase their trade with the Nazis?

The Conference Centre Where the Evian Conference Was Held

I described in detail the Zionist hostility to the face-saving Evian Conference, called by Roosevelt to discuss the plight of Jewish refugees, in July 1938. Citing Boaz Evron’s Jewish State or Israeli Nation, I quoted Menachem Ussishkin at a meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive [JAE] of 26 June 1938:

Mr Greenbaum is right in stating that there is a danger that the Jewish people also will take Eretz-Yisrael off its agenda, and this should be viewed by us as a terrible danger. .. All other emigration countries do not interest him… The greatest danger is that attempts will be made to find other territories for Jewish emigration. (my emphasis).

Chaim Weizmann - first President of the Israeli state

I quoted from a letter of 13 February 1938 to Stephen Wise, the US Zionist leader, from George Landauer. It was a letter written at the behest of Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist Organisation President.

Even if the Conference will not place countries other than Palestine in the front for Jewish immigration, there will certainly be public appeals which will tend to overshadow the importance of Palestine.... it may bind Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for assisting Jewish refugees, and these collections are likely to interfere with our own campaigns

The consensus of the meeting was to ‘belittle the Conference as far as possible and to cause it to decide nothing….’

Despite hoping that the Evian Conference would come to nothing, the leaders of the Zionist movement afterwards cynically criticised it for its failures.

Goldberg has nothing to say about this or the opposition by the Zionists to rescue where it was not to Palestine. Goldberg says he finds ‘both ludicrous and false’ my suggestion that the Zionists obstructed rescue. However he saves us the opportunity to learn why.

Goldberg’s ‘review’ consists of a series of assertions, none of which he substantiates. He says ‘many of his quotes serve to obscure the meaning of the sources they’ve been taken from’ but there are no examples.

Goldberg alleges that ‘Greenstein has managed to omit every substantive act of resistance Zionists took against the Nazis’. His main example being Aliya Bet, the illegal immigration of Zionist pioneers, often with Gestapo connivance, into Palestine.

In fact I do mention it when I cited Dina Porat as saying that through this ‘we gave meaning to life, we raised the prestige of the Zionist movement.’ I commented that ‘The arrogance of this statement is breathtaking. In other words saving Jews to anywhere but Palestine was meaningless.’

6,000 people were estimated to have been rescued. Zionist prestige was for Porat the most important thing. The other example Goldberg gives of Zionist resistance to the Nazis is when 33 Haganah agents were parachuted into Europe in March 1944. Goldberg argued that:

this episode serves as an interesting insight into Zionism during the Holocaust. It shows that the Jewish Agency Executive succeeded in convincing the British to drop Jews from Palestine behind enemy lines to carry out operations that might help Jews.

32 agents at the fag end of the war were unlikely to bolster the existing, highly developed resistance in Nazi occupied Europe. I quoted Zionist historian Yechiam Weitz that

Their primary goal was in effect to influence the survivors to choose Palestine as their ultimate destination. This point is corroborated by testimonies from that period.’

Goldberg thinks my claim that the Kindertransport, in which 9,354 child refugees were brought to England ‘despite Zionist hostility’ ‘an odd thing to say’. Similarly my assertion that ‘the Zionist leaders instead demanded that the children be brought to Palestine, which the Colonial Office rejected.’ Goldberg claims that Chaim Weizmann had been one of the founders of the Central British Fund for German Jewry, which organised the Kindertransport and that both Weizmann and Lionel de Rothschilds ‘personally lobbied Chamberlain to allow the children to come to Britain.’

There were in fact 6 people on that particular delegation. Weizmann was one of 10 original founders of the CBF but he played little part in it. Those responsible for its founding were the anti-Zionist leadership of British Jews, Neville Laski and Leonard Montefiore in particular.

Goldberg accuses me of failing to mention Weizmann’s presence at the founding of the CBF. The CBF consisted of the traditional bourgeois leadership of British Jewry, which was anti-Zionist. Simon Marks and Weizmann had only been invited to join it in order to buy off Zionist hostility to their rescue activities.

The Zionists resented the fact that appeals for Jewish refugees were likely to displace their own appeals. The Zionists only agreed to cooperate because it was agreed that the first destination of refugees would be Palestine. Amy Gottlieb wrote:

‘there can be little doubt that this was the assurance that Simon Marks, Chaim Weizmann and other Zionists had demanded in return for their co-operation.’ (Men of Vision, p.29)

The anti-Zionist leaders had bought off Zionist opposition by agreeing to their demands. The idea that Weizmann lobbied Chamberlain for Jewish refugees to come to Britain beggars belief. I quoted Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary, recalling:

I remember at the time that Weizmann’s attitude shocked me.  He insisted on the children going to Palestine. As far as he was concerned it was Palestine or nowhere. 

When MacDonald refused to guarantee that the children would go on to Palestine Weizmann told him that: ‘We shall fight you - and when I say fight I mean fight.’

Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister was even more explicit:

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.

Goldberg complains that in my account of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I was more interested in attacking Zionism. That I sought to

‘undermine the significance of the Zionism to the fighters yet,… during the uprising in the ghetto ‘for two days both the Polish and Star of David flags flew, visible to thousands of Poles’ … Who raised that flag if the fighters were waning in their Zionist politics?

Goldberg failed to understand that I wasn’t suggesting that the Zionist ghetto fighters weren’t Zionists, rather that Zionism had nothing to do with their decision to resist. The Revisionist Zionists, who had staffed the Jewish police who carried out the roundups, also fought a separate struggle against the Nazis and it was they who flew the Star of David.

Subjectively the Zionist fighters in the Ghetto remained Zionists, but objectively their decision to fight owed nothing to Zionism and everything to do with the fact that they were organised and understood that the Nazis intended to murder them.

Dina Porat described how ‘there was panic in Palestine’ after the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt. Melech Neustadt of the JAE urged the Zionist youth movement leaders in Palestine to instruct their members in Poland to leave ‘and thereby stop the armed uprisings’. Why? Because they ‘would ultimately deprive the Yishuv of the cream of Europe’s potential pioneering force.’

Frumka Plotnika - fighter in Warsaw Ghetto - Refused Zionist Demands to go to Palestine

When a Zionist emissary arrived in Bedzin in July 1943 to persuade Frumka Plotnicka to leave, she replied ‘I have a responsibility for my brethren... I have lived with them and I will die with them.’ Zionist youth such as Zivia Lubetkin, refused on principle to leave. (160/161). Zionism saw the main fight as being against the Arabs, not the Nazis. Goldberg has nothing to say on this.

Goldberg questions my assertion that Jacobo Timerman, the Editor of La Opinion, ‘came under attack from the Zionist movement’.  It’s true that I cited an article in the Jewish Chronicle ‘Timerman Stirs Jewish Discord’ (14.8.81) by Jose Smilg, its correspondent in Buenos Aires, who alleged that it was Timerman’s fight for human rights which was ‘inspiring a rash of anti-Semitic articles in the Argentine press.’’

But I also gave a number of other examples such as

i.           Ma’ariv, the Israeli newspaper, withdrew from an agreement to publish Timerman’s book Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without a Number.

ii.          I described how in the United States ‘Timerman was attacked by right-wing Zionists who believed he ‘asked for what he got’.

iii.        I described how when Timerman received the Golden Pen of Freedom Award the venue was shifted from the Knesset to the Hebrew University in order not to offend Argentine’s anti-Semitic regime.

iv.        I also described how, when Timmerman published ‘The Longest War’ opposing the Lebanon War, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Yehuda Ben-Meir, described his book as ‘a collection of calumnies and lies arising from his own self-hatred.’

v.         When Timerman died, on 11 November 1999 he received glowing obituaries internationally but Israeli papers ‘provided only terse reports.’

Argentina’s anti-Semitic regime, between 1976 and 1983 murdered up to 3,000 Jews without so much as a Zionist whisper.

Goldberg described my book as ‘almost unreadable’. I accept that it must have been traumatic to have to read nearly 500 pages in which all those myths one had been brought up with were consigned to the fire. Such an experience can cause cognitive dissonance.

Goldberg could not understand why I wrote that it was only the Nazis who bore responsibility for the organisation of the Holocaust, yet I also said that the Zionists bore a moral responsibility for having obstructed the rescue of many thousands of Jews. Goldberg sees a contradiction where there is none.

Goldberg is sure that I have contradicted myself when I write that everywhere in Europe Zionism was a distinct minority among Jews yet I assert that

The Judenrate were composed of the traditional leadership, over two thirds of whom (67.1 per cent) consisted of Zionist supporters of all factions.

Goldberg asks ‘how both these things can be true’ suggesting that I am ‘determined to prevent the facts from standing in the way’ of my beliefs? Or it could be that the Goldberg assumes that the Jewish leadership politically reflected those they presided over?

Zionist resistance fighter Chajka Klinger condemned the collaboration of the Judenrat with the Nazis

If Goldberg hadn’t found my book so difficult to read he would have seen that I cited a Zionist resistance fighter Hayke Klinger who, in a speech in Palestine in March 1944 said: (148)

And precisely because those who stood at the head of most of the communities were Zionists, the psychological effects on most of the Jewish masses vis-à-vis the Zionist idea was devastating, and the hatred towards Zionism grew day by day...

Most disturbing of all was that I included others in the Holocaust:

‘what was not part of the Holocaust? We are left in the dark as to where, for Greenstein, the Holocaust begins and ends.’

I referred to the murder of the Disabled, 3m Russian POWs and 1m Gypsies whereas Zionism considers the Holocaust a Jewish-only affair. According to Gerhard Riegner ‘Drawing universal lessons from the Holocaust meant the ‘plunder of [Jewish] moral capital.’ All other groups come under Genocide, not Holocaust.

Collier, a contributor to Fathom, with Jonathan Hoffman - linkman between far-right Zionists and fascist groups

Boycott & Ha’avara

Goldberg criticises my reliance on the statistics of Edwin Black, author of The Transfer Agreement, the definitive book on the subject of Ha’avara. Goldberg cites a critical article by Richard Levy in Commentary (September 1984) in which he says of Black that his ‘weakness as a historian emerges in his treatment of the politics of the anti-Nazi boycott movement.’  It is pertinent to note the comment of David Wyman, Emeritues Professor of History at Massachusetts University in a letter to Holocaust & Genocide Studies [Vol. 11, p.277]:

‘It is entirely to the point to note that Levy is a retired nuclear engineer who has no formal training as a historian.’

It is sometimes difficult to understand Goldberg’s reasoning. For example he criticises me for citing Black in respect of the popularity of the Nazi boycott in Latvia whilst not mentioning that the Nazis had reached an agreement with the Latvian government to prevent the boycott. Goldberg suffers from ‘excessive love of authority syndrome’. He assumes that the Nazis’ successful pressure on the Latvian government to outlaw the Boycott was popular. Why?

Goldberg’s Failure to Understand the importance of the Boycott or Ha’avara

When Hitler was ‘elected’ Chancellor on March 5 1933 Jews spontaneously reacted by boycotting Nazi Germany. Only the Zionist movement and the Jewish bourgeoisie opposed the Boycott. The Zionists because they wanted to take advantage of the Nazi regime to build their ‘Jewish’ state. I quoted Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel:

‘Surely, Jewish Palestine... needed money to finance its development, but this brazen pragmatism went against the political philosophy of a majority of world Jewry. There developed a growing perception that instead of supporting and strengthening the boycott, Palestine was, in fact, sabotaging it.

Wiesel was a fervent Zionist but even he felt obliged to speak out. The Zionist movement was not interested in saving Jews. Its sole concern was its settler-colonial project in Palestine.

I have also ‘overblown the importance of this footnote of Holocaust history’. Even worse I am implying that world Jewry was capable of organising the overthrow of the Nazi government, which Goldberg says is akin to Nazi propaganda, i.e. anti-Semitic!

Of course by themselves Jews was not able to overthrow the Nazi regime but the whole point of the Boycott campaign was to persuade non-Jews to join them. Large sections of the labour movement supported it because they understood that the principal enemy of the Nazis were German trade unions and working class organisations.

I wrote that ‘The Nazis were ‘astonished’, given the record of Polish anti-Semitism, that the advent of the Nazis had given birth to a widely supported Boycott movement.’ (p.111) Despite the Zionist slander that most Arabs were Nazi supporters, Egypt had an almost complete Boycott. To the Zionists working with non-Jews to oppose anti-Semitism was and is anathema.

Jewish hero, Auschwitz escapee and anti-Zionist Rudolf Vrba bitterly criticised Zionist collaboration with the Nazis

Goldberg seeks to play down the economic importance of Ha’avara. His suggestion that Ha’avara trade accounted for only 1/1000 of German exports to Palestine is nonsense. Palestine remained a relatively small market for Germany but for the Jewish economy it was very significant. The reason that Hitler authorised the continuation of Ha’avara in 1937 was not for economic but political reasons. Ha’avara ensured that the defeat of the Boycott. The Zionist movement played the part, as Jewish Labour Leader Boris Vladeck termed it of ‘the official scab agent against the boycott in the Near-East’. The Zionists were happy to scab on the Boycott.

Goldberg wondered ‘why the fears of German Jewry aren’t addressed by Greenstein.’ In fact I did address these so-called fears, which suggests that Goldberg hasn’t properly read my book.

Publicly German Jews opposed the Boycott. If they had supported it they would have been killed. It was these denials that Goldberg relies on. I quote (108-9) from a message to Stephen Wise which said ‘Do not believe the denials, nor the Jewish denials.’ Moshe Beilinson, for the Labor Zionist movement, admitted that all Germany’s Jews, including the Zionists, supported the boycott. What I wrote was:

The Boycott forced the Third Reich to vigilantly restrain anti-Jewish violence. Goering was desperate. ‘Germany simply could not afford further export reductions’ and without exports ‘there would be economic death.’

The Jewish Chronicle, (‘The Unclean Thing,’ 27.12.35.) a supporter of Zionism, nonetheless thundered:

We object to the transfer of their assets in the form of the products of German factories and German employment. We say that that is aiding and comforting one of the most savage oppressions, even in Jewish history…. It breaks the united Jewish boycott front, a front let it not be forgotten, with which non-Jewish sympathisers were also aligned.

The Mothers of the Disappeared - Abandoned by the Zionists

Argentina – A post-war example of Zionist collaboration

In 1994 a bomb exploded in the Jewish Community Centre in Buenos Aires. Almost immediately Israel and the United States blamed Iran and Hezbollah. Yet as Bill Brencick, chief of the political section in the US embassy from 1994 to 1997, acknowledged in a 2007 interview, suggestions of Iranian responsibility were based solely on a ‘wall of assumptions’ and that there was ‘no hard evidence’.

In 2014 a former police spy, Jose Alberto Perez, who had infiltrated the Jewish community in Buenos Aires on behalf of the Federal Police, revealed to two investigative journalists, Miriam Lewin and Horacio Lutzk, that he had been ordered to turn over blueprints to the community’s building to his police case officer “Laura”.  ‘Laura’ had ordered him to find out the involvement of the Jewish community in the ‘Andinia’ conspiracy theory which held that Marx, Einstein and Freud were at the centre of a Jewish conspiracy against Argentina.

The Military Intelligence Agency SIDE oversaw the investigation of the bombing. The SIDE Unit handling the investigation was riddled with the same anti-Semitic officers from the Cabildo group, who had tortured and murdered Jews during the rule of the Junta.

The anti-Semitic right in the Argentinian state was happy to go along with Israel and the United States but Perez was under no doubt that the bombing was carried out by dissident elements in the police and security establishment.

Goldberg denies my claim that Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman committed suicide. ‘He was actually murdered.’ Goldberg prefers the version of events offered by the anti-Semitic Argentine state and Israel but there is considerable doubt as to whether  Nisman was murdered. An article in the Buenos Aires Times (17.1.00) refers to a 6 part documentary The Prosecutor, the President and the Spy which examines

the prosecutor's still unsolved death only days after he accused Fernández de Kirchner of colluding with Iran to allow the alleged authors of the bombing to go free.

The article refers to Pablo Duggan, author of the book Who Killed Nisman?, who states: 

"Nisman committed suicide. It's all proven in the file. This case should have been closed three years ago." 

The article tells how the series ‘which highlights the role played in the AMIA investigation by the intelligence services and the CIA – has caused a storm of reaction on Twitter.’ Its conclusion? The documentary tips the scales towards suicide.

The Argentinian state is riddled with anti-Semites, not the fake variety that Goldberg spends his time attacking. He is more than happy for Iran and Hezbollah to get the blame for the bombing. But given the confession of the police spy Perez and the record of the Argentinian state, it is highly likely that the perpetrators were home grown. Israel and its apologists like Goldberg want to exonerate genuine anti-Semites because they aren’t the real enemy.

Goldberg takes exception to my quote regarding the SS Intelligence Service that ‘Any attempt to foster anti-Jewish sentiment is strictly prohibited. Provoking the Arabs against Jewish immigrants only serves to harm the Reich.” Goldberg cites a 5 man Nazi commando group who were parachuted into Palestine with weapons and explosives in 1944. Their purpose was to instigate riots between Arabs and Jews.’

The only problem is that the quote from the SS was in a report dated January 1937. Of course 7 years later, when the Nazis were desperate, the idea of promoting Jewish-Arab riots was both appealing and elusive. In 1937 the Nazis were interested in Jewish emigration to Palestine. The last thing they wanted to encourage was Arab opposition. Hitler was opposed on principle to allying with indigenous peoples against their colonial masters. Not being a historian Goldberg telescopes 7 years into one.

Goldberg compares my observation that many Germans dismissed rumours of the murder of Jews as “atrocity propaganda” or refused to believe that such things could happen, with my statement:

‘What was unforgivable was that the Zionist leadership in Jerusalem refused to believe the evidence, even when it came from Jewish witnesses.’

Goldberg entirely misses the point. Ordinary Germans didn’t have any evidence of the systematic extermination of the Jews whereas the Zionists did have this evidence. Their offices in Geneva and Istanbul were in possession of reports of the killings very early on. ‘Exchange Jews’ who had been swapped with German prisoners returned to Palestine three times with detailed stories of what was happening yet the Zionists refused to believe them. They had other priorities.

I am also very critical of the British and US leaders who were also in possession of information about Auschwitz and chose to do nothing.

Goldberg doesn’t like the comparison between the Zionist movement, the Catholic Church and the USSR. The former had two billion adherents and the latter was a ‘large, powerful country.’ But the Catholic Church was also under attack. Hundreds, if not thousands, of its priests had been murdered in Poland. Yet despite this many of the Apostolic Nuncios had done all in their power to prevent the extermination of the Jews. In a number of countries the Church had sheltered Jews despite the risks. The Soviet Union had rescued up to 1.5 million Jews. No one expected the Zionist movement to match this but nor did one expect them to sabotage rescue attempts either.

Goldberg argues that I miss ‘the fact that Zionists were Jews who were caught up in and victims of the Holocaust the same as all other Jews.’ He deliberately conflates individual Zionists living under Nazi occupation with the Zionist leadership in the West and Palestine.

I pointed out in the final paragraph of p.61

To the Zionist leaders the Holocaust was a distraction. If saving Jews had been a priority, they would have established a central co-coordinating body to pull together all the various reports in order that they could identify where the destruction was taking place and where rescue was possible. The tiny Al-Domi group in Palestine suggested this but they were ignored.

Goldberg takes exception to what he calls my ‘Quote Mangling’ an example of which is where I write

‘In October 1941 David Ben-Gurion saw the catastrophe that was unfolding ‘as a source of strength and momentum’ which would accelerate the realisation of Zionism.’

Goldberg complains that ‘The quote isn’t from Ben-Gurion himself but from Shabtai Teveth’s biography of Ben-Gurion.’  That’s right. Which is why the footnote refers to Teveth’s book! But it is a devastating quotation coming as it did from Ben Gurion’s official biographer who went on to say that

If there was a line in Ben-Gurion’s mind between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying catastrophe, it must have been a very fine one.’

Goldberg objected to my pointing out that the far-right Alternative for Germany, which is riddled with neo-Nazis ‘loves the Jewish state’ and wants to make BDS illegal, Goldberg finds one individual member of the AfD who went to an anti-Zionist conference in Tehran to disprove this!

Goldberg suggests that Nick Griffin of the BNP is a supporter of the Palestinians. Yet when Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006. Lee Barnes, their legal advisor wrote on the BNP site that:

As a Nationalist I can say that I support Israel 100 % in their dispute with Hezbollah. In fact, I hope they wipe Hezbollah off the Lebanese map and bomb them until they leave large greasy craters in the cities where their Islamic extremist cantons of terror once stood. The 21st Century is the Islamic Century. Unless we start to resist the threat of Islamic extremism then within 100 years the West will have become Eurabia.

Ruth Smeed of the Board of Deputies was quoted as saying that

the British National Party website is now one of the most Zionist on the web – it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel.’

Who was the BNP leader at that time?  Nick Griffin. And who was welcomed like a hero at the last pro-Israel demonstration outside the Israeli embassy in May 2001?  Tommy Robinson!

The vast majority of the far right combines both anti-Semitism and support for Israel and Zionism. Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right protested that he was a White Zionist.

Goldberg recommends that readers read Eichmann’s Jews by Doron Rabinovici. I cite Rabinovici’s book as ‘one long apologia for the Kultusgemeinde, the Vienna Judenrat’. Rabinovici wrote that:

It was not because the Jewish councils betrayed the Jewish community but because they attempted to act in their interests that the Jewish functionaries were condemned to see things from the perspective of the authorities. They had to think like Nazis in the interests of the Jews.

So ferreting out the hiding places of Jews avoiding deportation was in the interests of the Jews! The President of Israel’s Supreme Court,Yitzhak Olshan was dismissive of this argument:

no matter how the Judenrat acted, they served the Nazis… Even those who served the interests of the Jewish communities assisted the Nazis.

Goldberg sympathises with the Judenrat and those who collaborated with the Nazis. Like the Zionist historians, he understands the ‘dilemmas’ of the Judenrat who did the work of the Nazis and dismisses those, including the Zionist fighters in the ghettos, who had nothing but loathing for the Judenrat, as did most holocaust survivors. Goldberg is nothing if not an establishment Zionist.

Goldberg take exception to Ken Loach’s calling my book ‘essential reading’ and his claim that my ‘detailed reference to original sources cannot be ignored.’ Goldberg concludes: ‘Perhaps it cannot be ignored, but it should be.’ This is Fathom’s idea of a review.

Goldberg writes of the ‘wave of outrage’ that greeted Loach’s play Perdition a quarter of a century ago. The outrage was the Zionist lobby trying to prevent a play being shown in the Royal Court Theatre that they didn’t like. Perdition was about Hungary in 1944 when a pact between the leader of Hungarian Zionism, Rudolf Kasztner, with Eichmann resulted in a train for the Zionist elite out of Hungary and complicity in the deportation of a half a million Jews to Auschwitz.

Robert Wistrich of Tel Aviv University, an ardent Zionist wrote that it was ‘unwise’ to attack the play as anti-Semitic, adding that ‘the entire Jewish leadership of that generation – including the Zionists – failed the test of the times.’ Wistrich conceded that ‘the major priority of the Zionist movement at the time was indeed building Palestine’. He accepted that ‘a reasonable case’ could be made that Zionists did not fight anti-Semitism before 1939

with the appropriate vigour’ and further ‘that some Zionists wanted to develop a ‘special relationship’ with the Nazis…. To deny these points… is not only stupid but unnecessary.

Goldberg’s ‘review’ perpetuates this stupidity. His ‘review’ isn’t particularly sophisticated because the Zionist defence of their record during the holocaust comes up against the facts. All they can do is shout ‘anti-Semitism’ hoping it will drown them out.

For those who wish to see for themselves whether my book qualifies for the title of ‘worst book ever’ you can email me at tonygreenstein104@gmail.com to inquire about buying a copy!!

Tony Greenstein

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