Greta Berlin's Racism & the Gaza Freedom Movement

Or How I was Taken in by Greta Berlin's Protestations of Innocence

After my first post on the anti-Semitism and the Free Gaza Movement and the distribution of a link concerning an anti-Semitic video  by a Eustace Mullins, which claimed that the Zionists had basically organised the holocaust in conjunction with the Nazis, I received on October 14^th various e-mails protesting about my post and saying that Greta had never made an anti-Semitic comment in her life.

Despite evidence to the contrary I was prepared to let Greta put her case but the post underneath from Mondoweiss is, I believe, quite conclusive in respect of this matter and it explains why the previous Board of the Gaza Freedom Movement has resigned.

In particular the vicious and racist attacks on Ali Abunima by Greta are unacceptable and demonstrate, to my eyes at least, that Greta isn’t quite as innocent as she makes out.

In order to understand the background, I am publishing the e-mails I received and my responses.

Whether I made an error of judgement is for others to decide.  However what I do feel strongly about is that it is inevitable, when Zionism repeatedly attacks the Palestine Solidarity movement for 'anti-Semitism' that some people will respond in inappropriate ways or will be taken in.

I think it's important that not only we do not rise to the bait but that we also throw the charge back at them.  If they say we are 'anti-Semitic' then we are entitled to ask why they are so concerned about 'anti-semitism' when they have nothing to say about other forms of racism, i.e. Zionism.  Do they e.g. condemn the rabbis who issued and endorsed the fatwa of Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi of Safed barring Arabs from renting rooms in the city?  Or condemn Torat HaMelech, a vicious tract which justified the murder of Palestinian children?  In other words we should not be defensive and respond to every provocation.  I have personal experience of late with entirely made up  allegations by Zionists on the Sodastream picket.  By people who of course don't care a damn about real anti-Semitism.

What we should do is sort the wheat from the chaff.  The dedidated racists and anti-Semites from those who are gullible and taken in by Zionist propaganda.  The Atzmons, Shamirs, Martillos, Bards and co, who have now been joined by Ms Berlin too.

I should also thank Stephen Marks who first alerted me to this post from Mondoweiss below. 

There is also A final word on Greta Berlin and the Free Gaza controversy where Ali Abunimah makes it very clear just what this group around FGM were up to when they posted

Tony Greenstein

From: Irish;iristulip@gmail.com;
To: tonygreenstein@yahoo.com
Sent: Sunday, 14 October 2012, 17:02
Subject: Here is my rebuttal. Thank you.

This is ALL that happened regarding a video I wanted to park in a small group and watch later

1. I grabbed the video out of a group of 1000 people, a group that is private
2. I meant to park it into a group of 30+ people that is secret (to watch it later), but I never checked the settings before I hit SHARE, because I was in a hurry.
3. I did not watch the video. Why would I have watched the video? I was in a hell of a hurry and was traveling like crazy those four days. I would have watched it in the small group. Would we have had a discussion on it? Probably. We discuss all kinds of things as you can see from the attached conversation
4. I did not know my personal Facebook page was connected to the Free Gaza TWITTER page. There are 3300 TWEETS on the Free Gaza page, and you all attacked me for this mistake without even giving me a chance to clarify or figure out what had happened.
5. Free Gaza apologized on the front page of the website, using the language that Ali Abunimah gave us.
6. I apologized on the front page of Free Gaza after I figured out what had happened. That should have been the end of it.

I never said a word about the video. I never hit LIKE. In fact, I have been demonized, not for the mistake I made, but for the assumption that surely I MUST have said something to merit all of this hatred. I assure you, I did not.

This witchhunt is not about my stupid mistake. It's because I endorsed Gilad Atzmon's book, The Wandering Who," a book I personally liked. If everyone is going after me for my endorsement, then they need to go after the famous endorsers of Gilad's journey, including Richard Falk, John Mearsheimer, Karl Sabbagh, William Gates and Dr. Samir Abed-Rabbo.

OK Tony. You said you would publish my explanation. Please do that for me. You and I are never going to agree about Gilad, and why should we? I honor your distaste for his book. You should honor my endorsement or go after everyone who has endorsec

 

From: Irish
To: tony greenstein
Sent: Sunday, 14 October 2012, 16:50
Subject: Re: Your post

Dear Tony. Ali did no investigation of me. He never called me. He suggested that I write an apology on the front page of www.freegaza.org, and I did exactly that. Did you watch the video? Have you seen the video? It's just stupid, but it is NOT anti-semitic. It's anti-Zionist, big time. And he does not deny the holocaust. He blames the Zionists.

But that's not the point. I didn't watch the video until two days later. I just meant to park it in my small group, and that was it.

As far as distancing myself from Gilad, I don't walk away from my friends. Have you seen the endorsers of his book? I am in honorable company. Are you going after Richard Falk, John Meirsheimer, Ramzy Baroud, Mazin Qumsieh, Paul Larudee and a host of others? Did you even read the book? Why do I have to distance myself from Gilad's point of view?

This is ALL that happened. .

1. I grabbed the video out of a group of 1000 people, a group that is private
2. I meant to park it into a group of 30+ people that is secret (to watch it later), but I never checked the settings before I hit SHARE, because I was in a hurry.
3. I did not watch the video. Why would I have watched the video? I was in a hell of a hurry and was traveling like crazy those four days. I would have watched it in the small group. Would we have had a discussion on it? Probably. We discuss all kinds of things as you can see from the attached conversation
4. I did not know my personal Facebook page was connected to the Free Gaza TWITTER page. There are 3300 TWEETS on the Free Gaza page, and you all attacked me for this mistake without even giving me a chance to clarify or figure out what had happened.
5. Free Gaza apologized on the front page of the website, using the language that Ali Abunimah gave us.
6. I apologized after I figured out what had happened. That should have been the end of it.

I never said a word about the video. I never hit LIKE. I have never said anything. In fact, I have been demonized, not for the mistake I made, but for the assumption that surely I MUST have said something to merit all of this hatred. I assure you, I did not.

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 8:29 AM, tony greenstein <tonygreenstein@yahoo.com> wrote:

Dear Greta,

I have tried to penetrate what is a very impenetrable story about who was discussing what and a video which was anti-Semitic but which I've not seen.  What is and isn't true is difficult to unravel and therefore many of us will rely on people who have investigated it like Ali Abunimah and Gabriel Ash.

I suggest you post a response which I will put up which includes responding to one of the main points which have riled many of us, which is concerning Gilad Atzmon.   The fact that you lauded his book, which is without doubt anti-Semitic and also locates the oppression of the Palestinians and Zionism's barbarities in Jewish identity is something that has weighed heavily with us.  Settler colonialism, be it in southern Africa, Palestine or Ireland has nothing to do with the inherent characteristics of the settler.  That is to accept their ideology.

Leaving aside all the stuff he has posted which is anti-Semitic http://www.azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/guide-to-sayings-of-gilad-atzmon-anti.html which I put on my site 18 months ago, his book on Jewish identity is nothing of the sort.  It simply draws a straight line between the Mosaic god 3,500 years ago and what Israeli Jews do today.  Anyone who wasn't so ignorant would know that Jewish identity has changed many times over the centuries, indeed many times within the last century from the Bund and Jewish working class movements of the pre-war years to Zionism now.  It is one of the arguments of the Zionists that they have a claim to the land based on what their forefathers were 'given' 3,500 years ago.  It's the myth of the thousand year Reich.  

Atzmon has done a great deal of damage, by associating some in the PS movement with anti-Semitism and drawn in others like Kenneth O'Keefe, at the same time as openly opposing BDS as 'book burning' and dissociating himself from the academic and cultural boycotts, which he has termed 'Jewish'.  My and others' criticism of him hasn't been because we have been particularly offended but because it hurts the Palestinian cause.  I can only speak for myself but in endorsing Atzmon you lent substance to the other charges.

I should add that having picketted much of yesterday outside the Sodastream shop in Brighton with the Chair of the Zionist Federation, one Jonathan Hoffman going on about 'nazi boycotts' I also noted that they made numerous references to you although no member of the public would have had the foggiest what they were on about.  If you are sincere, and I hope you are, in your disavowal of anti-Semitism, then a clear distancing from Atzmon would indeed enable some of us to come out and say you've been misrepresented etc.

Tony

Dear Tony. I have never made an anti-semitic comment in my life. I really am upset that you would legitimize what I consider to be a witch hunt on activists who stand up for justice in Palestine. I can't be any clearer about what happened than what was posted on the front page of http://www.freegaza.org/.

I'll reiterate:

I'm so done with this nonsense. I'll say it one more time.

1. I grabbed the video out of a group of 1000 people, a group that is private
2. I meant to park it into a group of 30+ people that is secret (to watch it later), but I never checked the settings before I hit SHARE, because I was in a hurry.
3. I did not watch the video. Why would I have watched the video? I was in a hell of a hurry and was traveling like crazy those four days. I would have watched it in the small group. Would we have had a discussion on it? Probably. We discuss all kinds of things as you can see from the attached conversation
4. I did not know my personal Facebook page was connected to the Free Gaza TWITTER page. There are 3300 TWEETS on the Free Gaza page, and you all attacked me for this mistake without even giving me a chance to clarify or figure out what had happened.
5. Free Gaza apologized on the front page of the website, using the language that Ali Abunimah gave us. What is his problem?
6. I apologized after I figured out what had happened. That should have been the end of it.And that is the extent of what happened.

I made no comment about the video. I did not LIKE the video. I thought it was parked into a small group for discussion later. I fail to see why we could not have discussed it, as we have discussed homophobia, racism, propaganda and other topics. So I am being demonized for a posting mistake and not for anything I EVER said. I am attaching a sample of the conversations in that small group. My attorneys have the original thread with the names.

Thank you. Greta

OK. I think that's quite fair. Thank you Tony. That is what free speech is all about. I'm 71 years old. I remember the witch hunts of the 50s and how people demonized my own father. I never suggested you agree with me. You said you would post my comments, and I'm happy you are honoring that. Greta

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 9:50 AM, tony greenstein <tonygreenstein@yahoo.com> wrote:

Greta

I did indeed say I would publish your comments and I will.  I will also publish underneath my own viewpoint but I will put yours up and mine as a comment below.  I think it is unfortunate that you don't dissociate yourself from Atzmon, as he is so clearly anti-Semitic and he has been disavowed by virtually everyone in the PS movement in Britain.  But it is your choice

Tony

If only it was just one tweet: One activist’s experience in the ‘Our Land’ Facebook group

cross post from Mondoweiss

 

by Bekah Wolf on October 18, 2012

Four months ago, I was added to a Facebook group called “Our Land” much of which, when I finally looked at the content, immediately struck me as anti-Semitic in nature, so I complained to the person who had added me.

That person was Greta Berlin. The “Our Land” page currently has 13 administrators, including Greta, and is a combination of posts from legitimate sources such as Ma’an News Agency and Al Jazeera on current events in Palestine, along with anti-Semitic rants and comments. The video of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins that Greta tweeted out on the Free Gaza Movement's Twitter account on September 30 originated in this group.

Some people have come to Greta’s defense, accepting her assertion that this was a technical mistake, that she did not support the content of the video, and that those who have criticized her response to the “mistake” are on a witch hunt. I'd like to acknowledge that the Free Gaza Movement was not synonymous with Greta Berlin; some of my good friends and people I deeply respect were leaders of that movement and their work and commitment should in no way be minimized by this.

Setting aside Greta's woefully inadequate explanations for the tweet (of which there were several), the fact remains: Greta is an active administrator of a Facebook group that is full of unabashedly anti-Semitic rhetoric and has been called out before by activists for it but has never done anything to challenge or stop it. Since the controversy broke, the “Our Land” group has attempted to cover some of its tracks. The fact that Greta remains an active administrator of a Facebook group that accommodates this kind of bigotry raises serious issues about her commitment to building an anti-racist movement committed to justice and equality. Moreover, her unprincipled, vicious and Islamophobic attacks on the Palestinians who have called her to task for her behavior should alarm all of us who are committed to Palestine solidarity work.

While I am personally disappointed in Greta the stakes here are much higher than one person's lack of judgement. This moment is a challenge to the Palestine solidarity movement and for us to define the movement we want to be, and the rhetoric and ideas we are willing to embrace. I hope by writing this, I can explain what led me to address these concerns, and what I hope we can all learn from the experience.

A History of Anti-Semitism

On July 11, 2012 I started poking around “Our Land”. I found this article, with a personalized introduction posted by Greta, about Zionist-Nazi collaboration:

At the time, the group had just begun, and it included a wide range of voices. While the issue of Zionist leaders having some level of coordination with the Nazi government is well-established, someone immediately took issue with the introduction, which did not come from the article itself but was added by Greta. Particularly, the idea that “The H” was “to a large degree created” by Zionists.

Here is part of the discussion that followed:

Greta's assertion that the introduction was not hers but was a comment her “Jewish friend” wrote could not be verified, as the comments on this article had been turned off by countercurrents.org due to “racism”. This excuse, however, once again reeks of the same rationale she used about the tweet: these aren't her words, yet she still chooses to disseminate them, without qualification.

After I began to engage in the discussion, challenging the anti-Semitic claim that Jews orchestrated the Holocaust, I was immediately attacked by a prolific poster to the group: Joachim Martillo. He posted to the group often; his area of interest seemed to be the inherent viciousness and evilness of Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews. When I challenged both his outrageous bigotry, and his penchant for posting pseudo-scientific rants on Facebook, this is what he said to me:

“Bekah Wolf is expressing the same sort of bigotry that Jews commonly express when they claim non-Jews can't write about Jewish history or the Holocaust because they are not sufficiently in touch with the Jewish experience.[…]



For the record, I tend to comment here in the morning to get my mind working -- sort of like calisthenics.



At one time I was trying to focus on becoming a scholar of modern Eastern European and Jewish historical political economics.



But it is really hard to obtain a university position if one does not write what rich Jewish donors want to read.


Then I moved into packet switching technology (cash flows in an economy are mathematically indistinguishable to packet flows in an Internet) and invented one of the key building blocks of the Internet.”

I then, in a private direct message to Greta, complained about him, and the group in general, for its content, questioning why she had added me to it in the first place. She had this to say:

July 11
Greta Berlin
I just posted this to the idiots ganging up on you in Our Land. I have not been online or I would have stopped it much sooner. .......Sorry Bekah, the page is not mine. I belong to it just like you do. And, for everyone else in here, Bekah has more cred in her little finger than many of you do in your entire body. She lives in Beit Ommar, a Palestinian village in the Hebron District where PSP is based and puts her feet where her mouth goes. She's too modest to tell you these things, but she is an amazing women who works nonstop for the Palestinians.......

Greta Berlin
 
I was laughing at Joachim though. He has his good moments but his head is sometimes up his ass...ertions. And they have no idea who you are, so I just had to smack them a bit

What was shocking to me was the fact that she in no way addressed the issue I was bringing up: that Martillo was habitually making virulently and anti-Jewish postings in the group. And she just plain lied, she wasn't just a member of the group, she was an administrator who had been added as one in June:

Take a look at that list of administrators, by the way. Eight of the 12 besides Greta are the same people who signed a letter on her behalf as members of another “secret” Facebook group in which she claims she intended to post the Eustace Mullins video.

I left the group in July, but when I heard about the tweet she posted, and her claim that it was just a mistaken posting intended for a Facebook group, I was reminded of Our Land. On September 30, I requested to rejoin the group. Greta approved me within 15 minutes of my request, clearly still an active administrator. At the same time, I notified a couple of Palestine solidarity activists, including editors at The Electronic Intifada, about the existence of the group and my belief that it was probably involved. Sure enough, there, on Sept. 28, was the video posted by another of the administrators. This is the posting Ali Abunimah referred in his October 6 post on The Electronic Intifada, (“Greta Berlin’s statement is not correct").

Unabashed Anti-Semitism

As I looked through the posts of the group, my suspicions that anti-Zionism was consistently confused with overt anti-Semitism was confirmed. For example, another video posted on the same day as the one Greta tweeted was entitled: “The Holocaust Hoax.”

When one contributor posted an article with the introduction “we must never generalise about Jews and Zionist Jews” Joachim Martillo came back with this explanation of why we, in fact, should:

This is the same man who Greta told me “had his good moments”. She also welcomed him back after he was banned from the forum for the week.

What needs to be understood and emphasized is that this kind of virulently racist material was common in the group, and, as far as I could see, never challenged by the administrators, including Greta.

A Guilty Mind?

After it became clear that The Electronic Intifada had gained access to the group, there was a belated attempt at a cover-up. On October 9th, several prominent members of Greta's support network, along with the most racist contributor, deleted their Facebook pages, eliminating their previous posts to the group. When administrator Sam Siddiqui deleted her Facebook profile, she took with it a post in which another member of the group wrote that she did not support Greta because she too had confronted Greta about her anti-Semitic rhetoric on Facebook (in one example I saw, Greta blamed bad coverage of Israel/Palestine in the Economist on the fact that it is "50% owned by the Rothschilds." Besides playing into tropes of Jews running the media, this is also factually inaccurate).

In addition, Joachim Martillo also deleted his Facebook profile, taking with it all traces of his previous posts.

What is perhaps even more disturbing is that while Greta refused to condemn these posts (let alone exercise her authority as an administrator to remove them and ban the contributors), she is totally unapologetic. When someone posted one of the articles in an Israeli newspaper about the tweet, she said about her detractors, “I find them hysterical. What they don't seem to realize is that, like Gilad Atzmon, people are now buying the book. What morons.”

Greta Berlin continues to defend and openly participate in a Facebook group that posts videos exactly like the one she tweeted two weeks ago and reportedly finds "disgusting." She is unapologetic about it now, and has been in every interaction I've had with her about it. I do not think that Greta is a Nazi-sympathizer, but I have seen her engage, accept, and encourage anti-Semitic rhetoric, and this is incredibly damaging to the Palestine solidarity movement. What she, and this group, represents is dangerous to our movement in solidarity with Palestinians: a complete disregard for the basic principles of anti-racism and anti-bigotry most of us hold dear.

Lessons Learned

Several people, particularly Palestinians in Palestine, have criticized the amount of attention Greta and her tweet have gotten. Some have criticized her for making this about her and drawing attention away from the people who are actually suffering. Others have criticized those in the movement who have tried to hold Greta accountable. What people seem to be missing, however, are two key reasons why we cannot tolerate this rhetoric in our movement.

First, as a movement based on universal principles of human rights, freedom, and dignity, we should not allow any bigotry, racism, Islamophobia or anti-Semitism in our midst. This was a point eloquently made in recent days in a statement signed by more than 100 Palestinian activists, academics and cultural workers.

Secondly, there are some utilitarian reasons why we should avoid this kind of rhetoric. Every time a Palestine solidarity activist takes on the issue of Holocaust and its connections to Zionism, every time they conflate Judaism with Zionism, they are making an inherently Zionist argument. The horrific historical reality of the Holocaust does not, and never can, trivialize or justify the dispossession and suffering of the Palestinian people. But Greta and others, by insisting on making such topics a primary concern are tacitly conceding a key Zionist claim that the legitimacy of Zionism and its past and present deeds in Palestine stems from the Holocaust.

As an anti-Zionist Jew who has been active in Palestine for 10 years, Greta Berlin's statements and the content of “Our Land” not only offend me, but they have damaged my ability to combat Zionist rhetoric by claiming that I cannot be both religiously Jewish and anti-Zionist. Zionists routinely argue that to be Jewish is to be Zionist and the kind of rhetoric displayed on “Our Land” concedes this important point and supports this fundamental Zionist claim. In addition, this episode regarding Berlin’s tweet has damaged our movement as a whole and has shown deep short-sightedness by opening us up to attack and dismissal by Zionists who are desperately trying to paint us as a movement as anti-Semitic. Palestinians have not asked the solidarity movement to concern itself with notions of Jewish identity, authenticity, and the Holocaust, but to offer active and effective solidarity in restoring their rights in their country.

I am hopeful, however, because of the principled stances prominent members of our movement took against this offensive and misguided rhetoric. In my experience, a majority of Palestine solidarity activists are genuinely anti-Zionist and desire to combat a modern-day political movement, not an ancient religion or group of people. To paraphrase what a fantastic Palestinian activist once said, there were Jews in Palestine long before Zionism, and there will be Jews there long after Zionism as well.

Greta Berlin’s anti-Semitic Tweet Damages the Cause of Gaza

The Free Gaza Movement Must Get Rid of Those Who Legitimise Anti-Semitism

Greta Berlin and Atzmon's take on the story

I must confess I  had barely heard of the name Greta Berlin until today.  What I know now is more than enough to know that she is doing incredible damage to the movement everytime she opens her mouth.  She has been dishonest, to put it mildly.

Some of us are trying to build BDS and in Brighton we are fighting to stop an Israeli shop, Sodastream, based on an Israeli settlement, from continuing to trade.  People like Berlin do incredible damage to the movement because anti-Semitism today does not hurt Jews.  It hurts the Palestinians by giving the Zionists a free gift.

Berlin in happier days

n

To put it bluntly, there is nothing that Zionism wants more than to show that is opponents are anti-Semitic.  In a tweet that Berlin put on the Free Gaza Movement's twitter account we learn that ‘Zionists Ran the Holocaust and the Concentration Camps.”  It is difficult to know where to start with this nonsense and plain pig ignorance.

Firstly, although she is probably unaware of the difference, the holocaust was primarily perpetrated at the Extermination camps not Concentration camps – Birkenau, Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzek and Maidenek among others.    Birkenau was the extermination part of the Auschwitz concentration camp, which was both a labour and extermination camp.  The others were almost exclusively extermination camps.

The concentration camps were not set up primarily with Jews in mind – the first ones – Dachau and Sachsenhausen were for Communists, Socialists, Liberals and other dissidents and were, of course bad enough.  Maybe 2/3 of the 6 or so million Jews died in the extermination camps, but it is sheer and utter lunacy to pretend that the Zionists ‘ran them’.

Eustane Mullins - Vicious anti-Semite

The holocaust did not just claim Jewish lives but those of gypsies and gays ('anti-socials).  If it had run its course it would have claimed the lives of Slavs and Hitler had already made it clear that 30m Russians were slated  for starvation.

The crimes of the Zionist movement are bad enough as it is without such exaggeration.  There is no doubt whatsoever that the Zionist movement – and here I distinguish sharply from individual Zionists who also perished in the holocaust – collaborated with the Nazis.  Initially they broke the anti-Nazi boycott with a trade agreement called Ha'avara – the Transfer Agreement – that ensured that the primary exporter to Jewish Palestine was Nazi Germany!  Over 60% of the capital investment in Jewish Palestine (the Yishuv) between 1933-39 was Nazi Germany.  But at least the Zionists could claim then that they didn’t realise that Nazism would have such lethal consequences because initially the Nazis aim was expulsion not extermination and of course the first victims of the gas chambers were not Jews but the German people themselves – the mentally and physically handicapped (the so-called Euthenasia Programme – T4 named after "Tiergartenstraße 4” in Berlin) when up to 100,000 Germans were murdered in the special hospitals of Brandenburg, Hartheim, Grafenek and others.  In 1941 the Bishop Galen of Munster spoke out against what was happening and Hitler was forced to call a halt (in fact the murders became the wild euthenasia programme carried out in the concentration camps themselves).

Up to 200,000 people are believed to have been killed.  For those who are interested in reading up on the precursor to the holocaust, Henry Friedlander’s book ‘The Origins of Nazi Genocide. From Euthanasia to the Final Solution’, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill & London 1995 is the best there is.

Add caption

But the Zionist movement, which had always accepted anti-Semitism as the natural reaction of non-Jews to the Jews in their midst, ‘understood’ Nazism.  Some actively cooperated and like Israel’s former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir openly proposed collaboration.   ‘Death of Israel’s pro-Nazi Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’ .  Others like HeHalutz representative in Switzerland during the war, Nathan Schwalb, openly argued that the Jews needed a blood sacrifice in order to take part in the negotiations for the ‘Jewish’ State.  This is all documented.  Ben-Gurion himself, Chairman of the Jewish Agency and first Prime Minister of Israel, were totally unconcerned with the holocaust and preferred the intricacies and bickering of the Zionist parties of the Yishuv.  Little wonder that even his own official biogropher, Shabtai Teveth could write 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.’ [p. 851,  The Burning Ground] referring to the holocaust.  Likewise the writings of Zionists such as Israel’s first Justice Minister Pinhas Rosenbluth, who described Palestine as an ‘"an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin." (Joachim Doron, Classic Zionism and Modern Anti-Semitism: Parallels and Influences (1883-1914) Studies in Zionism/Journal of Israeli History, Autumn 1983, Vol. 8) could have been taken from Mein Kampf.

Berlin in  Germany

Likewise there is no absence of evidence that the Zionist movement deliberately obstructed rescue of Jews to any place but Palestine during the war, thus condemning thousands to death, going so far as to describe Jewish campaigners against the USA’s anti-Semitic immigration legislation as ‘worse than Hitler’ (see Lenni Brenner's 51 Documents and Zionism in the Age of the Dictators).  The Kasztner trial in Israel demonstrated beyond any doubt that the representative of the Jewish Agency, Rudolph Kasztner, made an agreement with Adolph Eichman in Hungary, that in exchange for the Jewish and Zionist elite of 600 (increased later to 1684) in a train out of Budapest, then they would collaborate in rounding up nearly ½ million Hungarian Jews for Auschwitz.  This is covered in Ben Hecht’s Perfidy (Hecht was a Revisionist Zionist).


But collaboration was one thing.  The suggestion that the Zionists who, like all Jews, were trapped in the furnace that was Europe, actually ran the concentration and extermination camps is obscene.  No Jew ran or took part in the running of a concentration camp.  The fact is that the Zionists of Europe were abandoned by their Palestinian Zionist compatriots.

Berlin’s accusation that the Jews and Zionists ran the holocaust and therefore perpetrated it, also links to a vicious anti-Semite, one Eustace Mullins, for whom Jews were just human vermin and the instruments of the financial malaise of the United States.  It is somewhat ironic that Glenn Beck, the Fox News presenter, a vicious  Zionist who addressed Israel’s Knesset, is an enthusiastic backer for all of Mullin’s anti-Semitic claptrap. 

But this too is no surprise.  Zionism’s most ardent backers in the United States are the Christian Zionists of John Hagee.  Hagee is on record as describing Hitler as god’s emissay sent to drive the Jews to Israel!  Once again anti-Semitism and hatred of the Palestinians and support for Zionism go hand in hand.


Any Palestinian supporter who, out of political or intellectual laziness, gives comfort to these anti-Semites is also giving comfort to Zionism.  Zionism is a form of race hatred which is also turned against anti-Zionist Jews.  Not for nothing do we get called ‘self-haters’.  Literally we hate ourselves because we hate our race.  It is a deeply anti-Semitic concept and people like Berlin feed it.  On the contrary, as I explain to the Zionists, I hate them and racism for the same reason that I hate anti-Semitism!

And if you want proof of how crazed and racist, to the point of adopting a Nazi mentality the Zionists have become, see articles like ‘Shin Bet Urges Halt to funding Judeo-Nazi Yeshivah’ 
Ali Abunimah, the editor of the excellent Electronic Intifada web site, has pointed to the damage and hypocrisy of Berlin.  I would go even further.  It was allegedly part of a private discussion on her Facebook page that mysteriously made its way onto a Free Gaza Movement tweet.  If this were so she would immediately have posted copies of said discussion.  She refused.  Even more to the point, what are Palestinian supporters doing discussing garbage like this anyway?  Was it an academic exercise?  If so what conclusions were reached?

Not surprisingly, Zionist apologists and propagandists have seized on this as an example of the solidarity movement. The Free Gaza Movement Shows Its Anti-Semitic Face (UPDATED) .  Yet nothing could be further from the truth.  When, as is inevitable, some members of the Palestine Solidarity movement demonstrate that they are anti-Semitic, then they are expelled.  They play into the hands of the Zionists.  When Francis Clarke-Lowes came out as a holocaust denier in Brighton PSC he was immediately expelled.  And you know what?  Harry’s Place, neo-con Zionist site which had purported to support people like myself who had initiated the expulsion, then showed their fury when they realised we meant what we said in that there was no room for racists in the movement.  They immediately proceeded to bar me from commenting such was their sincerity!! 


Unlike the Zionist movement we expel racists.  The Zionist movement takes racists and fascists, people like Glenn Beck, to their bosom.  That is the difference.

If this were one error, one misjudgment by Ms Berlin, then one could perhaps be more forgiving   But as Tom Pessah points out, she has form.  She went out of her way to praise the viciously anti-Semitic book by Gilad Atzmon ‘The Wandering Who’ last year.  It is a book which lays the blame for the financial crisis on Jewish bankers.  Atzmon deliberately conflates Jews and Zionists and holds that it is impossible to be a Jewish anti-Zionist.  The more Jewish you are the more of a Zionist you are.  ‘Jewish anti-Zionists are a fifth column ‘who will convert (to Zionism) in the next anti-Semitic wave… who makes Zionism into an eternal struggle for ‘Jewish salvation’.’  [‘Not in my Name’] but at least the Zionists are honest. I have written an essay on Atzmon’s political development which is worth visiting.  The book by Atzmon, according to Berlin, is apparently ‘one of the best reads of 2012.' In fact it is a shoddy work, lacking footnotes, wholly impressionistic and anti-materialist.  Indeed anyone with the slightest understanding of what used to be called the Jewish Question would know that Jewish Identity has never been fixed.  Today the majority Jewish identity is a Zionist one, it is worship of the state.  That is why it produces nothing of cultural significance, except for anti-Zionist Jews such as Israel’s most famous poet Yitzhak Laor.  In an interview with +972′s Larry Derfner, Berlin claimed she found “nothing anti-Jewish in that book,” adding that she felt Atzmon had been “demonized.”
Perhaps believing that Jewish anti-Zionists are a ‘fifth column’ is an example of such demonisation or the belief in an overriding Jewish conspiracy to control the world.  In Ali Abunimah's blog, 'Greta Berlin’s statement is not correct' on Sat, 10/06/2012 Abunimah writes:

'On 30 September a tweet was made from the official Twitter account of the Free Gaza Movement (@freegazaorg) which stated “Zionists Ran the Holocaust and the Concentration Camps.”

The tweet linked to a video of an anti-Jewish diatribe by notorious anti-Semite and conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins.

The tweet’s contents originated as a posting by Free Gaza Movement’s Greta Berlin on her personal Facebook page. It was posted automatically from Facebook to Twitter. Following considerable uproar over this tweet, the Free Gaza Movement posted a statement on its website on 4 October that included the following explanation:

    A TWEET from the Free Gaza TWITTER account was posted several days ago that had a link to a lecture titled, “Zionists Ran the Holocaust and the Concentration Camps.” This TWEET did not come from Free Gaza, and does not represent FG’s position in any way whatsoever; in fact we condemn its content. It came from Greta’s private Facebook page and was shared with a group of people who were discussing propaganda and racism, and this link was an example of the terrible propaganda that could be spewed on websites. For some reason, Facebook connected our Free Gaza account to her personal Facebook account, and the link was posted.

This statement did not calm the growing controversy. In order to dispel any doubts, many people, including me, asked Berlin to publish screenshots of the discussion from Facebook to show the context in which the video was posted. Berlin, who controls the @freegazaorg Twitter account, refused.'
Free Gaza Movement @freegazaorg
@AliAbunimah @alexbkane @972mag 'Many in the group will verify our ongoing discussions. The group is private, like many Facebook groups.'

This evening I had an opportunity to spend several hours with full access to a private Facebook group of which Berlin is an administrator, and where the video was first posted by another administrator on 28 September with the comment “This will be a real thought provoker for some.”

When the video was posted on 28 September it was neither preceded nor followed by any interactions that would fit the description that it “was shared with a group of people who were discussing propaganda and racism, and this link was an example of the terrible propaganda that could be spewed on websites.” This context does not exist.


I have no doubt that other members of the Free Gaza Movement took Berlin’s explanation in good faith. Now is the moment for them to demand proper accountability.
As members of a broad and diverse Palestine solidarity movement, our loyalty to one another can only be based on trust and honesty.

On bigotry and solidarity 

By Tom Pessah

Greta Berlin’s anti-Semitic tweet was but one in a series of comments she has made, enabling many of her critics to discredit the entire Free Gaza Movement. As activists, it is our job to make sure one bigotry can never be used to justify another.

An Iranian American acquaintance once explained to me the predicament she’s in. She’s a committed feminist who wants to expose and critique any examples of male domination in Iran. Yet whenever she does so, her critique is immediately seized upon by those wishing to justify the next war, which could harm her family.

I was thinking of my friend recently in light of the controversy generated by pro-Palestine activist Greta Berlin’s anti-Semitic tweet (“Zionists Ran the Holocaust and the Concentration Camp”). Everyone can make a mistake, but this is part of a pattern. After reading an erroneous report about the origin of a recent anti-Muslim film, she excitedly tweeted that “an Israeli film maker, 100 Jewish donors” were behind the project. Recently she glowingly endorsed a book by Gilad Atzmon, calling it “one of the best reads of 2012”. In an interview with +972′s Larry Derfner, Berlin claimed she found “nothing anti-Jewish in that book,” adding that she felt Atzmon had been “demonized.”

Atzmon is a Holocaust denier; he has previously asked “if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war?” In this book that Berlin endorsed, Atzmon writes on page 179 “we, for instance, can envisage a horrific situation in which an Israeli so-called ‘pre-emptive’ nuclear attack on Iran that escalates into a disastrous nuclear war, in which tens of millions of people perish. I guess that amongst the survivors of such a nightmare scenario, some may be bold enough to argue that ‘Hitler might have been right after all.’

On page 27 he argues “Throughout the centuries, some Jewish bankers have gathered the reputation of backers and financers of wars and even one communist revolution.” Again, Berlin found “nothing anti-Jewish about that book” which she tells Derfner she read till the end. The current controversy may cause Berlin to finally dissociate herself from this ongoing pattern of endorsing anti-Jewish literature.

One of the strongest Palestinian voices calling out Berlin for her anti-Jewish behaviour has been Ali Abunimah, one the leaders of the global BDS movement. Abunimah’s vision is consistent: he believes in full equality between Israeli Jews and Muslim and Christian Palestinians. He has written of his vision for one state, which would include changes in current Israeli immigration policies to allow Palestinian refugees and their families to return to their homeland and live alongside Israeli Jews. Abunimah’s family is from Jerusalem, and they were living in the nearby village of Lifta before they were expelled in 1948.

In order to root out any expressions of anti-Jewish bigotry, it is important not to put principled activists like Abunimah in the predicament my Iranian friend faces: having their criticism manipulated in order to justify further harm. Greta Berlin is also one the founders of the Free Gaza movement and an organizer of flotillas which are aimed at breaking the siege on Gaza – a siege which has prevented access to clean drinking water, causing death and disease. Denying human beings access to clean water and medicine is certainly as racist as Berlin’s tweets are. Yet, unlike Abunimah, many of her critics have seized upon the opportunity to discredit her entire movement and to legitimize these inhumane policies. One form of bigotry can never be used to justify another. Solidarity is indivisible.

Tom Pessah is an Israeli graduate sociology student at the University of California, Berkeley.


A contrary viewpoint is put by Larry Derfner, al so 972 mag.
Published October 6, 2012

Head of Free Gaza Movement: Anti-Semitic video in question is 'disgusting'

After being accused of promoting a video which places the blame for the Holocaust on the Zionists, Greta Berlin tells her side of the story.    

I just finished about a 20-minute phone interview with Free Gaza Movement spokeswoman Greta Berlin, who spoke from Los Angeles. I exchanged some e-mails with her, I asked her several questions, I read quite a bit of the criticism and condemnations of her from left and right, and the bottom line is that I find her defense to be completely credible. She is not, to my mind, any kind of anti-Semite or wacko. Even if I find some of her terminology about Gaza (“slow-motion genocide” and “extermination camps”) to be awfully exaggerated and dangerous, I see no evidence that she’s the monster she’s been made out to be. She’s a self-described anti-Zionist, but I see nothing she’s done or said that I, at least, would consider beyond the pale.

To recap in brief: Berlin has been accused of promoting a video by a crazy, dead Jew-hater, Eustace Mullins, who says the Zionists were behind the Holocaust. The accusation is that Berlin promoted the video on Sunday by tweeting it on the Free Gaza Movement’s Tweeter account. On its website, the FGM apologized for the tweet, condemned the video’s content and said it “came from Greta’s private Facebook page and was shared with a group of people who were discussing propaganda and racism, and this link was an example of the terrible propaganda that could be spewed on websites.” Berlin stated on the website:

I am not a Holocaust denier. And I am not a supporter of the video that I posted, nor would I ever have been. It was, in fact, an example of propaganda that is EXACTLY what I and others are horrified over. The video (although I didn’t watch it then) seemed like the kind propaganda that our group was discussing. And I passed it on because of the title.

 Ironically I am caught in the same propaganda hysteria that I was trying to fight. It was my mistake that I didn’t post to the small private group on Facebook and the video ended up on my wall. Greta

It seemed the easiest way to determine if Berlin was telling the truth or lying would be for her to publish the Facebook group discussion of the video, in whole or at least in part. On Friday night, Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada wrote that he had just spent several hours on a discussion group where the video was posted (though, he noted, not by Berlin):

 [I]t was neither preceded nor followed by any interactions that would fit the description that it “was shared with a group of people who were discussing propaganda and racism, and this link was an example of the terrible propaganda that could be spewed on websites.” This context does not exist.

I asked Berlin if she would publish the group discussion, in full or in part, and she reiterated what she wrote on FGM’s website – that the video never made it to her discussion group. She said the group discussion Abunimah monitored has over 1,000 members, while the group she meant to send the video to has 37. In other words, she said, the  group discussion for which she’d intended the video never took place, so there’s no discussion to publish. (See statement from group members in UPDATE below.)

I saw part of the Facebook discussion that Abunimah evidently referred to, and from what I saw, his description was right – but it’s not the group Berlin says she meant. She said the smaller group has been together for nearly a year, and in the last month some of its discussion topics included  “homophobia in the Middle East,” “the tragedy of the Jews from Arab countries – it’s an inseparable part of the Zionist story,” the Israeli 12th grade draft resisters, Pamela Geller, and a Tel Aviv historical exhibition on “Nakba perpetrators.”

She says she didn’t watch the Mullins video when she tried to send it to her group – which she did on the basis of its title, “Zionists operated the concentration camps and helped murder millions of innocent Jews” – but said she has watched it since. “It’s disgusting!” she exclaimed. “This is what upsets me more than anything [that such a video could be associated with her and FGM]. The man is a nut.”

I asked about her endorsement of Gilad Atzmon’s book “The Wandering Who?” which is widely considered anti-Semitic (and which I haven’t read). She said she’s “not a big fan of what he writes,” but that as she wrote in her endorsement, she found the book fascinating, funny, sad “and by the end I was exhausted. When I wrote that after reading all that I was ‘glad I’d been brought up a Methodist,’ that was meant to be funny.” I asked if she thought the book expressed hatred of Jews, and she said, “I found nothing anti-Jewish in that book,” adding that she felt Atzmon had been “demonized.”

I asked about the FGM tweet of a 1943 Nazi propaganda movie, and she said she didn’t recall seeing the movie or sending the tweet. Regarding an FGM tweet about the infamous film “The Innocence of Muslims” that mentions “An Israeli film maker, 100 Jewish donors,” she said those details were taken from the early reports in the New York Times and other mainstream news agencies, but that since then, of course, the story had changed. “The New York Times was fooled, too,” she said.

I asked her about an FGM tweet of the “slow-motion genocide” in Gaza. She said: “That’s a term I’ve been using for a long time, I use it in my presentations. That is my view of what’s happening.” I asked her about the FGM tweet regarding the “extermination camps” in Gaza. She said: “I think if something isn’t done about Gaza pretty quickly, I think that is what’s going to happen. There are lots of reports, UN reports, that say Gaza is going to become uninhabitable. I am pretty upset by the situation in Gaza.”

Berlin, who’s 71, apologizes for hitting the wrong button on Sunday’s tweet, but not for anything else, certainly not for anything she’s said with FGM. She doesn’t strike me as a person who scares easily, or who would disown something she believes in to stay in anyone’s good graces. If she genuinely believed in crackpot, anti-Semitic ideas, I think she’d say so and stick by it. But she says she doesn’t believe in such ideas, in fact she finds them disgusting, and there’s nothing remotely close to any definitive proof that she does believe them, and I think the reason for that is because she doesn’t.

UPDATE: Statement by members of Berlin’s FB discussion group:

In the past few days there have been a flood of attacks on Greta Berlin, based on an incident that was blown out of proportion, a reaction to an innocuous post that was taken completely out of context. When Greta saw the original post published in one Facebook group, she intended to share it with our group in the context of an ongoing discussion. Unfortunately, she forgot to change the setting on the Facebook sharing feature, bringing the post to her wall instead of landing in our closed group. Since Greta’s wall was linked with the Free Gaza Movement Twitter account, the post found its way to Twitter. Isolated from our discussion, the post was understood completely out of context, leading readers to believe that Greta herself was endorsing the content of the post.

Ours is a small and secret Facebook group, 37 members strong, consisting of a very diverse set of people from different backgrounds, ethnicities and opinions. Many of us know each other personally; our mutual trust allows discussions to involve subjects that are not appropriate for public consumption, sometimes simply because our opinions are not fully ripe; we experiment with them and bounce them off each other in an attempt to understand the issues at hand, developing a better and more coherent argument.

One such topic involves the role of the Zionist movement during the Holocaust. Numerous historians before us made the claim, that leaders of the Zionist movement gave higher priority to the realization of their national project, sometimes missing opportunities to save European Jews. These priorities were made explicit in a famous quote by David Ben-Gurion, their consequences analyzed by historians such as Tom Segev and others. In this context Greta wished to highlight that anti-Semitic remarks have exaggerated and distorted this argument, claiming that Zionists have actively “run the concentration camps”.

Naturally nobody in his or her right mind would adopt such a claim, least of all Greta Berlin. Greta is highly respected and trusted by a large community of human rights activists, a co-founder and one of the leaders of the Free Gaza Movement. She’s faced down the IDF on the high seas a number of times, and is obviously no coward. If she hated Jews and denied the Holocaust, she would not be afraid to say so in public. But that’s not what she thinks, and her personal courage is a matter of record. So there is no reason for anyone to doubt her word.

Many in the media accused Greta of actually endorsing this false claim. Being familiar with the relevant discussions, we attest that understanding the context makes it plain that she does not endorse it, nor are we aware of her ever suggesting that she does. Others accused Greta of failing to provide the required context that supports her position. In the paragraphs above we tried to shed more light on this context, explaining the technical glitch that resulted in the publication of an isolated fragment of discussion, decontextualized from the rest. We hope that this will contribute  to the clarification of this unfortunate affair.

Members of the Facebook group:

Adam Rawat, London, UK
Fadwa Othman, Nablus, Palestine
Ian Raven. Leicester, UK
Kyle O’Laughlin, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Mary Hughes Thompson, Manchester, UK
Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestine
Mike Burch, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Moe Tamim, Montreal, Canada
Mona Affaneh, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Nadia Mansour, Los Angeles, California, USA
Ofer Engel, London, UK
Rim Selmi, Tunis, Tunisia
Robby Martin, Dublin, Ireland
Sam Siddiqui, Mumbai, India
Walid Jabari, Bethlehem, Palestine
Yani Haigh, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia