How Nazareth Escaped the Nakba

Nazareth was the one Palestinian city in Israel whose inhabitants were not evicted in the Naqba.  Jonathan Cook tells the fascinating story of why Nazareth’s inhabitants escaped the massacres and expulsions.  He also tells the story of how Upper Nazareth was founded, as a way of confining and suffocating Nazareth.  In Upper Nazareth today, founded a Jewish only city, the Mayor Shimon Gapso has banned the celebration of Christmas.

Christmas in Nazareth

Israels +972 Magazine reports how, when Palestinian residents approached Gapso, and requested that a Christmas tree be put up, since there were 3 large menorahs (candelabrums) erected to celebrate the Jewish festival of Chanukah, Gapso, reports Israeli news site NRG (owned by Maariv), refused. “Upper Nazareth is a Jewish town and all its symbols are Jewish., As long as I hold office, no non-Jewish symbol will be presented in the city.”

modern Nazareth

In 2010 Gapso proclaimed that the public display of the Christian symbol as provocative and banned Xmas trees from public squares. "Nazareth Illit is a Jewish city and it will not happen -- not this year and not next year, so long as I am a mayor". 

Racism?  Perish the thought.

Moshe Sharett, Israel's Prime Minister and Amin Gargurah, Mayor of Nazareth

Why Israel has silenced the 1948 story of Nazareth’s survival

12 January 2016

A rarely told story of the 1948 war that founded Israel concerns Nazareth’s survival. It is the only Palestinian city in what is today Israel that was not ethnically cleansed during the year-long fighting. Other cities, such as Jaffa, Lydd, Ramleh, Haifa and Acre, now have small Palestinian populations that mostly live in ghetto-like conditions in what have become Jewish cities. Still others, like Tiberias and Safad, have no Palestinians left in them at all.

Historic photo of Mary's Well

Nazareth was not only an anomaly; it was a mistake. It was supposed to be cleared of its Palestinian population, just like those other Palestinian cities now in Israel. Much to Israel’s regret, it has become an unofficial capital for Israel’s 1.6 million Palestinian citizens, a fifth of the Israeli population.

The reason for Nazareth’s survival are the actions of one individual. Ben Dunkelman, a Canadian Jew who was the commander of the Israeli army’s Seventh Armoured Brigade, disobeyed orders to expel Nazareth’s residents.

Church in Nazareth on site of Joseph's workshop, 1891

Dunkelman’s role has been largely obscured in the historical record – and for good reason. Israel would prefer that observers make an unjustified assumption: that “Christian” Nazareth survived, unlike other Palestinian cities, because its leaders were less militant or because they preferred to surrender. Dunkelman’s story proves that was not the case.

It is therefore a welcome development that a major Canadian newspaper, the Toronto Star, has revisited Dunkelman’s role in Nazareth, even if its reporter, Mitch Potter, has contributed in his own way to the mythologising of Dunkelman in an article headlined: “The Toronto man who saved Nazareth”.

Xmas tree banned in Nazareth Illit

Excised memories

It is worth bearing in mind, when we consider the attacks on Palestinian cities in 1948, how sensitive these matters were for Israel. Both Dunkelman and another commander, Yitzhak Rabin, who would later become a prime minister, wrote memoirs that included their experiences of the 1948 war.

Under pressure from the Israeli military authorities, both excised from their accounts the sections they had written dealing with the attacks on the Palestinian cities they were responsible for attacking. That was because those accounts were the proof, long denied by Israel and its supporters, that the Israeli leadership had intended and carried out the ethnic cleansing of most of the Palestinian population during 1948.

Crusader-era carving in Nazareth

Some 750,000 Palestinians – out of 900,000 living inside the borders of what was to become the new Jewish state – were forced out and refused the right to return. In fact, the expulsion rate was far higher than the ostensible 80 per cent figure. Under pressure from the Vatican, Israel allowed many Christian refugees back; it did a land swap with Jordan in 1949 that brought more than 30,000 Palestinians into the new state; and many Palestinian refugees managed to sneak back to surviving communities like Nazareth and blend in with the local population in preparation for what they hoped would be their return to their villages.

Rabin led the attack on the Palestinian cities of Lydd and Ramleh, near Tel Aviv and today the mostly Jewish cities of Lod and Ramla. According to the missing section of his autobiography, later publicised in the New York Times, Rabin asked David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, what to do with the 50,000 inhabitants of Lydd and Ramleh. Rabin recounted: “Ben Gurion waved his hand in a gesture that said: ‘Drive them out!’” Rabin did exactly that, after a terrible massacre of hundreds of residents who were sheltering in a local mosque.

Old postcard of Nazareth women

Ben Gurion, as the Israeli historian of the period Ilan Pappe has noted in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, was careful not to leave a paper trail showing that he had ordered the expulsion of Palestinians. Instead, Israel would promote the myth that the Palestinian population had been ordered by neighbouring Arab leaders to flee.

The Skylight of Modern Nazareth

Relieved of command

We do not know if Dunkelman had a similar meeting with Ben Gurion. What we do know, and the Star’s account confirms, is that it had been made clear to Dunkelman that he was supposed to expel the inhabitants of Nazareth. Dunkelman disobeyed, and allowed the city to surrender. He was relieved of his command in Nazareth a day later.

Russian pilgrims approaching Nazareth. circa 1904

The Star reports on a page referring to the attack on Nazareth that was removed from Dunkelman’s 1976 memoir, Dual Allegiance. We know about it only because his ghostwriter, the late Israeli journalist Peretz Kidron, tried to interest the New York Times in Dunkelman’s story, as a counterpart to Rabin’s. The Times published the Rabin story but ignored Dunkelman’s.

Interestingly, Dunkelman kept the account of his role in the Nazareth attack so quiet that, according to their quotes in the Star, neither his son nor his publisher at Macmillan knew about it.

Dunkelman writes that he was “shocked and horrified” at the order to depopulate Nazareth. He told his superior, Haim Laskov: “I would do nothing of the sort.” He demanded that his replacement give his “word of honour” that the inhabitants would be allowed to stay, and concludes: “It seems that my disobedience did have some effect … It seems to have given the high command time for second thoughts, which led them to the conclusion that it would indeed be wrong to expel. There was never any more talk of the evacuation plan, and the city’s Arab citizens have lived there ever since.”

Nazareth-The-Fountain-of-the-Virgin-1894

‘Swallowing’ Nazareth

In fact, we know what those “second thoughts” were. Stripped of a pretext to justify expulsions from Nazareth in the supposed “heat of battle”, Ben Gurion came up with Plan B (or maybe it was Plan E, given that the ethnic cleansing was inspired by Plan Dalet, or D in Hebrew).

In the wake of the 1948 war, during a near two-decade period of military government imposed on Israel’s new Palestinian minority, Ben Gurion decided to establish Nazareth Ilit (Upper Nazareth) almost on top of Nazareth. It was the flagship of his “Judaisation of the Galilee” campaign. Ben Gurion was aghast not only that Nazareth had survived, but that it had doubled in size as thousands of refugees from surrounding villages fled to it seeking sanctuary.

According to Israeli state archives, Michael Michael, the military governor for Nazareth in this period, stated that the goal of Nazareth Ilit was to “swallow up” Nazareth. In short, Israel hoped retrospectively to destroy Nazareth as a Palestinian city, transforming it into another Lydd. The Jewish city of Nazareth Ilit would become with the main city, with Nazareth its own shadow ghetto. Despite Israel’s best efforts, it largely failed in this goal, not least because it struggled to attract Israeli Jews to live next to a large Palestinian population .

Nazareth, 1842

Why was it so important for the Israeli leadership to destroy Nazareth? Because they feared that a Palestinian city – with its intellectuals, political activists, and advanced education system under the control of international Christian institutions – might encourage the emergence of an effective resistance, one that would be able to mount opposition to a state privileging Jews. Such a political and cultural capital might articulate to the outside world exactly what Israel was up to in Judaising places with large Palestinian populations like the Galilee.

Mortar barrages

The Toronto Star’s starry-eyed account of Dunkelman includes the following observation: “He won no medals for refusing to molest civilians [in Nazareth], nor any credit from his Israeli superiors.” He is painted as a man who stuck close to the rules of war and avoided hurting civilians wherever possible in a series of “almost bloodless” attacks.

But in fact, as the Star notes in passing, Dunkelman’s chief military talent was for making innovative use of “concentrated mortar barrages”, a skill he learnt during the Second World War. In other words, he was an expert at firing large numbers of imprecise shells into populated areas, inevitably killing and wounding civilians.

Two Canadians have published posts making important criticisms of the Star’s account.

Peter Larson, chair of Canada’s National Education Committee on Israel-Palestine, points out that the operation in July 1948 led by Dunkelman was an attack on communities like Nazareth that were supposed to be firmly part of an Arab state under the terms of the United Nations Partition Plan, set out nine months earlier. As Larson writes, “Nazareth was forcibly incorporated into the new State of Israel contrary to the UN plan and despite the wishes of its residents.”

Palestinian children play outside Deir Latin church in Gaza

Protection for Christians

There is archival evidence to suggest that Dunkelman believed Christian Palestinians needed protecting, a view he did not extend to Muslim Palestinians.

Israeli historian Benny Morris notes a cable from Dunkelman as his troops marched through the Galilee in November 1948: “I protest against the eviction of Christians from the village of Rama and its environs. We saw Christians at Rama in the fields thirsty for water and suffering from robbery. Other brigades expelled Christians from villages that did not resist and surrendered to our forces. I suggest that you issue an order to return the Christians to their villages.”

Morris mentions that under the influence of Dunkelman, among others, the Israeli army’s guidelines on the expulsion of Christian Palestinians changed over time.

In contrast to his decision to protect Nazareth and Christians, Dunkelman and his soldiers were ruthless in driving out Palestinians from many of the more than 500 Palestinian communities razed by Israel in 1948 and afterwards.

War crimes

In Saffuriya, a large Muslim village a few kilometres from Nazareth that was attacked by the Seventh Brigade a day earlier, barrel bombs were dropped on the village as the residents were at home breaking that day’s Ramadan fast. All of Saffuriya’s inhabitants were driven out, and their homes destroyed. Today it is an exclusively Jewish farming community called Tzipori.

Without a doubt, Dunkelman directly participated in the mass expulsion of many tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians from their homes – a war crime by the laws of war that had recently emerged in the wake of the Second World War. He also admitted in his memoir that he allowed his troops to loot Palestinian property, another war crime.

But, while he does not refer to them in Dual Allegiance, Dunkelman is also implicated in some of the more notorious Israeli massacres of Palestinians in 1948.

In the worst case, in the village of Safsaf, north of Safad, notes Canadian journalist Dan Freeman-Moloy, Dunkelman had command responsibility as he led Operation Hiram in late October 1948. His troops’ behaviour in Safsaf and elsewhere is made clear in documents in Israel’s military archives uncovered by Morris for his book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem.

Drawing on a declassified briefing from November 1948 by Israel Galili, Ben Gurion’s number two in the defence ministry, Morris writes of the actions of Dunkelman’s troops:

“At Saliha it appears that troops blew up a house, possibly the village mosque, killing 60-94 persons who had been crowded into it. In Safsaf, troops shot and then dumped into a well 50-70 villagers and POWs [prisoners of war]. In Jish, the troops apparently murdered about 10 Moroccan POWs (who had served with the Syrian Army) and a number of civilians, including, apparently, four Maronite Christians, and a woman and her baby.”

Morris concluded: “These atrocities, mostly committed against Muslims, no doubt precipitated the flight of communities on the path of the IDF advance. … What happened at Safsaf and Jish no doubt reached the villagers of Ras al Ahmar, ‘Alma, Deishum and al Malikiya hours before the Seventh Brigade’s columns. These villages, apart from ‘Alma, seem to have been completely or largely empty when the IDF arrived.”

Dunkelman can no doubt take credit for Nazareth’s survival. But a full and proper historical accounting is still needed of the war crimes committed not only by Dunkelman but by those he answered to.

The Israeli War on Christmas…and Christianity

Lehava's Benny Gopstein praises the Nazis’ mythical figure ‘The Eternal Jew’

Benny Gopstein is the leader of Lehava, a fascist organisation whose ‘charitable wing’ Hemla is part funded by the State of Israel.  It runs a hostel which caters for poor Israeli Jewish women who’ve been ‘rescued’ from relationships with Arab men.  Thanks to Tzipi Hotoveli, the Deputy Foreign Minister, Hemla  was given a grant by the government to continue with their ‘good works’.  This includes funding Gopstein’s own salary.  Israeli Nazi organisation funded by Government 

One of many varied posters for Der ewige Jude

Lehava’s main campaign is against Jewish-Arab relationships (as in Nazi Germany it's only relationships between the women of the master race and the men of the untermenschen which the racists are obsessed with).  In Germany Hitler specifically forbade the legal authorities charging Jewish women, who had relationships with Aryan men, with Rassenschande (racial pollution).  So it is with Lehava.  Jewish men having sex with Arab women is not a matter of concern though according to religious law they should do it out of sight and far away from their Jewish wives!

Gopstein in chains (Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90)

In August Gopstein came out with a call to burn down Christian churches.  Members of Lehava were recently convicted of arson at Jerusalem’s only mixed Arab-Jewish school, Hand in Hand, though unlike Palestinians guilty of arson received derisory sentences of two and two and a half years..  Now Gopstein has called for the expulsion of ‘the vampires’ of Christianity  from Israel ‘before they once again suck our blood.’  Lehava Leader Benny Gopstein Advocates Burning Churches & Mosques 

Poster for the film Der ewige Jude

This is the language of anti-Semitism and in particular feudal Christian anti-Semitism.  Now Zionism’s fruitcakes have adopted the same language.  But there is a marked contrast between the treatment of Arabs and Jews.  Raed Salah, leader of Israel’s now banned Northern Islamic League, has been sentenced to 11 months gaol on what are essentially trumped up charges of incitement to racial hatred. He has denied the interpretation placed on many of his comments and when he was subject to deportation proceedings in Britain, the government lost the case because it had relied on Zionist sources, the Community Security Trust for its evidence.  The evidence had been tampered with and one poem in particular had had words added to it ‘we Jews’ in order to make it appear to be anti-Semitic.

Indeed he was acquitted of racial incitement by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court.  It was only on appeal to the higher colonial court, the Jerusalem District Court, that the acquittal was reversed, thus demonstrating that the conviction was political not evidential in nature.

Leader of the far-right Israeli group Lehava, Benzi Gopstein on August 11, 2015. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)

With Gopstein there is no dispute.  He has openly supported the burning down of Christian churches and now advocates their expulsion from Israel in another racist tirade. 

Lehava protestors

What is the response of the Israeli authorities to Gopstein’s comments.  Those who are always so eager to imprison any Palestinian who makes any untoward comment or gesture are strangely silent when it comes to Jewish racists.  Nothing, absolutely nothing.   Because Jewish racism is not only condoned but actively supported by the Israeli government and state.  From Netanyahu to members of his Cabinet, racist statements have poured forth.

One of the exhibits from Der ewige JudeSuch are the double standards of the ‘Jewish’ State.

It is no surprise that Gopstein refers to the Eternal Jew.  This is a figure much favoured by anti-Semites.  The eternal wandering Jew punished for deicide is a standard feature of anti-Semitism.  So much so that perhaps the most anti-Semitic of all the Nazi’s films was the Eternal Jew, , Der Ewige Jude.  Gopstein is in good company.

However Gopstein's anti-Christian hatred is not simply confined to the neo-Nazi section of the Israeli right.  It permeates through religious Zionism and the Zionist right.

Nazi propaganda art  the "Wandering Jew"

In Upper Nazareth, built in order to contain Arab Nazareth (but to where many Arab Nazarenes have gone to live because Nazareth is unable to expand because Arab communities in Israel are denied planning permission and its lands have been confiscated anyway) there has been a virulent campaign against the inflow of Arabs.  The city’s chief rabbi, Isaiah Herzl declared that Xmas trees would be “offensive to Jewish eyes”.  The Mayor, Shimon Gapso, declared that '“As long as I hold office, no non-Jewish symbol will be presented in the city.” 

The Israeli War on Christmas…and Christianity

by Richard Silverstein on December 22, 2015  in Mideast Peace

Fox News and other far-right media sites and politicians have railed for years about the “War on Christmas” supposedly waged by atheists, liberals and other enemies of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  But there is a far more virulent enemy of Christmas and Christianity in our midst.  No, you won’t find him in a Muslim country, the demon du jour of Donald Trump and the far-right.

The Eternal Jew exhibition in Vienna

Instead, you will find him in the Holy Land, Israel, the birthplace of Christianity.  He is Bentzi Gopstein, leader of a Jewish fascist group, Lehava.  In his past, he’s been accused of murdering an Arab couple a week after the assassination of his mentor, Meir Kahane.  No charges were ever brought against him for that crime.  Like white supremacists and Kahane himself, Gopstein has adopted fighting Jewish-Arab miscegenation as his political mantra.

Lehava administers a hostel supported with $120,000 in government funding for “wayward women” who’ve supposedly left relationships with Arab men.  In Knesset hearings, Gopstein and his political supporters have cried rivers of tears about impressionable Jewish women being lured into lives of sexual slavery by Arab men who tempt them.  They offer reams of claims about the severity of the problem, but never any firm statistics.  Nor does anyone ever offer a skeptical view on the matter.

In the past year, Gopstein has expanded his attack to include Christianity as well.  All of it.  He called for the banning of Christianity and the burning down of churches and…lo and behold, a week later the Church of Loaves and Fishes was nearly burned to the ground.  Though arrests were made, no one has been charged for the crime, a standard outcome in Israeli police investigations unless massive political pressure is mounted to lay charges and prosecution.  Jewish terror even co-opts the security apparatus.

This week, just in time for Christmas, Gopstein let loose his latest barrage against the Church.  It’s a memorable screed called Defeating the Vampire, combining overwrought rhetoric with a largely-fictional account of Jewish history:

In recent days, I’ve walked through this land [of Israel] feeling a sense of real disquiet.  I’m not talking about the lack of personal security that derives from a government that is impotent against the Arab enemy…but rather a lack of spiritual security, a destruction of the fortress, a disintegration of the Jewish people’s line of defense against our most deadly enemy of the past hundreds of years: the Church.

He proceeds to outline the ways in which Christianity has allegedly attempted to exterminate the Jewish people:

Against this [the Church’s] unimaginable power stood the Jewish people like a poor sheep surrounded by seventy wolves; like easy prey before all those bloodthirsty animals.  The history of the Jews of Europe…is written in the blood of millions–from the cruel Crusades in which entire [Jewish] communities were wiped out, to pogroms throughout the continent [sic], to countless blood libels, mass expulsions from England, France, Spain and Portugal–all of them were only stations along a cruel journey which our people suffered in Christian Europe.  A journey which reached its end in the smokestacks of Auschwitz, a moment over which the Vatican rubbed its hands with glee [sic].

Despite all this, the Jewish people survived…The Eternal Jew stood tall.  And when the ashes of Auschwitz piled high and the blood soaked into the fetid soil of Europe–when the the desecration of God’s name [the extermination] had reached its peak…God could no longer stand it and raised up out of the smoking embers the State of Israel–a most resounding slap in the face the Church had ever endured.

What was the secret of the Eternal Jew enabling him to survive all these horrors of the Church [sic]? 

Without doubt, it was the burning faith in the justness of our path, the deep loathing of Christianity which every Jewish baby sucks from his mother’s milk…The children of those Jews who were burned like sacrificial sheep, founded the State of Israel, whose very being negated the Church.

…Because we maintain one of the strongest armies in the world the Church has no chance of destroying our bodies…But they place their last hope in the blood-sucking vampire: the missionaries.  If they cannot kill Jews, they can still try to convert them…Stores devoted to selling evangelical literature offer their wares to all on Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road.  Entire settlements are crawling with missionaries.  Many businesses are run by them and serve the evangelicals, in many cases camouflaging their intent and without the knowledge of  their [Jewish] employees.

That same disgust Jews felt toward Christianity, which was the only thing which saved us during our dark days in Europe, that same disgust has faded in the midst of the good life of the era of democracy.  The Christian is no longer perceived as a threatening vampire, but rather as a nice tourist, friendly and a partner in the prevailing western culture we both share.

…In a few days, this cursed religion will celebrate Christmas throughout this land.  To our sorrow we can feel this everywhere.  You see fir trees in stores.  On billboards, you can see flyers inviting the wider public to study about Christianity–right in the heart of Jerusalem.

…How could even the Orthodox and Haredi communities not have raised their voices against this?  Could they too have lost the basic Jewish instinct which was the inheritance of our people for hundreds of years?  Have they too become trapped in the net of democracy, free speech and the politically-correct brotherhood of man?

Christmas has no place in this our holy land.  Evangelicals must not gain a footing here.  Expel the vampires from our land before they once again suck our blood.  We’ve already fed them enough.

For those of you who heard echoes of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda in Gopstein’s tropes, you heard well.  The notion of the Eternal Jew is of course directly appropriated from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  But the most striking phrase was the notion that Christians are blood sucker-vampires.  This is precisely the complaint that echoed in the pages of Der Shtumer: the Jews as leeches sucking the vitality from Europe.  In the case of the Nazis, they were more obsessed with money and high finance, claiming Jews controlled world capital.  Gopstein sees Christians sucking the blood from the millions of Jews murdered, supposedly by direct command of the Church.

Of course, much of his argument is false and fabricated.  I’ve added [sic] after the ones that are the most farcical.

There will be those who argue that Gopstein is an outlier.  He has nothing to do with the real Israel.  Everyone sees him as a madman, etc., etc.  But that is patently false.

Not only is Gopstein an accused murderer, his followers burned down a Jewish-Arab school in Jerusalem.  Other disciples (either direct or indirect) burned the Church of Loaves and Fishes to the ground only a week after he issued a call to undertake such acts.  These are not the acts of the sort of lone gunmen who’ve perpetrated acts of terror lately in the U.S.  This is a powerful leader with a charismatic message that resonates deeply with tens or hundreds of thousands of Israelis.  It is a message the Israeli political and security echelons have no interest in combatting.  Despite calls from the Pope himself and Israeli human rights NGOs for his arrest, he remains free.

It’s also ironic that Israel’s increasingly authoritarian government considers legislative proposals that would force NGOs receiving foreign funding from wearing a sort of “Jewish star” like ones forced on us by the Nazis, whenever they entered the Knesset.  The ironic truth is that rightist NGOs like Lehava, Honenu, Im Tirzu, NGO Monitor, and many others, probably receive far more foreign funding than left-wing NGOs.  The major difference is that the latter receive donations from governments and large foundations, while the rightists receive mostly individual gifts.  You may be certain that if these bills pass you will not see Ronen Shoval (Im Tirzu) or Gerald Steinberg (NGO Monitor) shuffling through the halls of the Knesset with any scarlet letter on their chests.  That fate will be reserved for B’Tselem, Peace Now, New Israel Fund, and their like.

It is truly extraordinary that foreign funders embrace the hate spewed by Gopstein.  He’s very cagey about where his funding comes from.  One source we know for sure is the Israeli government itself.  Its social welfare ministry funds projects sponsored by an NGO called Hemla.  One of them is the hostel for “wayward girls” mentioned above.  Gopstein is the public affairs representative for Hemla and earns a salary from it.

He’s told the media that individual donors are directed to give through the Fund for Saving the Jewish People (FSJP).  One of these is the Falic family based in Hollywood, FL.  This extended family owns Duty Free America, a company which owns duty-free shops around the world.

A Falic-affiliated fund donated $60,000 to FSJP.  They donated more than half the funds that Bibi Netanyahu raised for his campaign in the last Likud primaries.  They also donate millions to a raft of mostly GOP pro-Israel candidates.

As you can see, the Falics are not outliers.  They find the doors of power open in Tel Aviv and Washington DC.  They’ve also endowed Bentzi Gopstein with a seal of approval through their giving to his cause.  Instead of six moves of separation from Gopstein to Netanyahu, there is now only one.  He is close to the beating heart of Israeli political power.

The Falics offered this deceptive defense of their giving to journalist, Uri Blau:

I am committed to giving tzedakah to causes which I care about deeply, such as the well-being and continuity of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. I believe that it is important for Jews to be connected to our roots, our history and our homeland, and to take care of one another.

I believe in diversity, co-existence and integration, as opposed to “anti-assimilation,” but I recognize that this can occur only when each person holds strongly to his or her own ideals, ideologies, religion and convictions. As Tevye succinctly put it in Fiddler on the Roof, “As the Good Book says, ‘Each shall seek his own kind.’ In other words, a bird may love a fish, but where would they build a home together?” In summary, staying true to one’s beliefs can not only give meaning to one’s own life, but can influence the conscience of others to make more sound choices and better judgments, including living together in peace and harmony.

Though it’s touching to see Mr. Falic quote the words of Fiddler on the Roof, I note he’s compared Israeli Jews to birds of prey and Palestinians to fish, their prey.  That does seem just about right, though I’m certain the speaker didn’t catch the irony.  And how Palestinians are supposed to understand from this rhetoric or from Gopstein’s Nazi-like speeches that their “consciences should make better judgements…and live together [with Jews] in peace and harmony” is beyond me.

I recently posted about Donald Trump’s increasingly xenophobic and Islamophobic rhetoric and the tropes it shares with fascist themes.  The call for closing our doors to Muslims, even those who are citizens, is extraordinary.  Even more extraordinary is that such rampant racism gains him supporters, rather than destroying his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.

Though it appears in the latest polls that even Bernie Sanders could beat Trump in a one-on-one matchup, and many Democrats relish the prospect of running against him–we should recognize Trump as a watershed candidate.  Before him, those whose campaigns were largely based on themes of hate and racism were thoroughly rejected even in their party nomination contest, let alone the general election.  George Wallace, while popular, was largely a fringe candidate.  Barry Goldwater was trounced by Lyndon Johnson.

Trump is a different animal.  He exudes hate, yet his supporters feed off it.  It only makes him stronger.  The rest of the country waits for a day of reckoning which never comes.  His comeuppance never comes.  Instead he glides through the campaign season with the cocky air of Rocky, a heavyweight boxing champ.  Nothing can touch him.

Bentzi Gopstein’s call for ethnic cleansing of Christians and Palestinians from Israel mirror those of Trump here in America.  Israel itself is lurching farther and farther toward fascism and outright religious hatred, if not war.  Israeli extremists like him thrive on this confrontation.  They know the more Jews and Arabs die the closer they are to that final battle between the forces of Light and Dark, between demons (Muslims) and angels (Jews).  They know in their hearts that the Jews will win.  That they will vanquish their enemies and trample them underfoot.  That is the day devoutly and fervently awaited.

Gopstein and Trump represent two poles which attract.  They offer the same solutions (though Trump offers them with considerably more salesmanship and panache).  The outcomes of their winning their contests will be similar for America and Israel: a disaster of monumental proportions.

I have enough faith in America that it will not make this choice.  About Israel, I have far less faith and hope.  It is embracing Gopstein’s vision with a frightful passion.  Whatever ideas of his are not yet mainstream, they will be in a month or a year.  This is the same path followed by his rebbe, Meir Kahane.  In the 1970s they thought him a ranting maniac.  Now the maniac’s ideas trip lightly off the tongues of Israeli cabinet ministers and generals.  Fascism no longer lurks in Israel’s  shadows.  It preens and prances through the halls of power.

Head of extremist Jewish group calls Christians ‘blood-sucking vampires’

Religious rights group calls on police and attorney general to investigate Lehava leader Bentzi Gopstein for incitement to violence in recent op-ed

By Times of Israel staff December 22, 2015, 4:52 am 71

A religious rights organization on Monday called on the police to investigate the head of an extremist anti-assimilation group after he published an op-ed branding Christians “blood-sucking vampires” and calling for them to be expelled from the country.

Bentzi Gopstein, leader of the Lehava organization, penned an article published on the ultra-Orthodox Kooker website last week decrying the “lack of spiritual security” he’s felt in Jerusalem of late because of “our deadly centuries-old enemy — the Christian church.”

Last month, a dozen Lehava protesters headed by Gopstein demonstrated outside a Christmas event at Jerusalem’s YMCA, decrying what they termed the “murder” of Jewish souls.

Shouting, “You murdered us in exile,” and condemning European blood libels and historical persecution of the Jews, the small group waved Israeli flags and sang Hanukkah songs outside the venue, with some signs urging all the “impure” Christians to leave the Holy Land.

A Lehava protester carries a sign reading, ‘Get out, unclean ones,’ at a protest decrying a YMCA Christmas bazaar in Jerusalem on Sunday, November 29, 2015 (Times of Israel)

In his Kooker article published December 17 in Hebrew, Gopstein called the establishment of the State of Israel in the mid-20th century “the most ringing slap in the face the church ever received” after centuries of failed attempts to eliminate the Jews. Since violent methods failed, he writes in his diatribe, “it was decided to invest billions of dollars over the years in order to gain a foothold in the Holy Land and disseminate spiritual poison” through missionary work.

“The Christian is no longer considered a threatening vampire, rather a pleasant, friendly tourist and partner in the Western culture that dominates our lives,” he said, blaming the Israeli education system for not instilling enough Jewish education in students. “The vampires can send a message of thanks to the government of Israel for making their work much easier.”

He called on all willing Jews to raise a cry “and fight the devious phenomenon,” referring to Christianity as “that accursed religion.”

“Christmas has no place in the Holy Land,” he concluded. “Missionary work must not be given a foothold. Let’s throw the vampires out of our land before they drink our blood again.”

Approximately 160,000 Israeli citizens, or 2 percent of the population, is Christian, and a considerable number of Israel’s foreign tourists are adherents to the faith as well.

In response to Gopstein’s remarks, the Israel Religious Action Center called on Israeli legal authorities to launch a criminal investigation into what it deemed to be the Lehava leader’s incitement to violence against another religious group.

“Bentzi Gopstein is capable of doing anything in order to incite against anyone not like him — Arab Muslims, Christians and others, while using blunt language and calling to violence,” Orly Erez-Likhovski said in a statement posted on the group’s Facebook page.

“Unfortunately, against this blatant incitement, accompanied by unruly violence, there’s deafening silence by law enforcement,” she said, calling on Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein to put Lehava leaders and others who incite to violence in the dock.

Lehava was established as an organization aiming to prevent marriage between Jews and Arabs, which is prohibited according to religious Jewish law. The group has become identified with the extreme Jewish right and its members have been seen patrolling downtown Jerusalem on some evenings, looking, they claim, for mixed couples.

Their vigilante patrols have often degenerated into scuffles, and there were several instances over the past year where members of the organization have beaten Arabs. Most of the organization’s members are teens.

Some Israeli politicians have been calling on the government to outlaw the group, whose members have been implicated in several hate crimes.

Der ewige Jude

The "Eternal Jew" or the "Wandering Jew"

The concept of the "Wandering Jew" is far older than National Socialism. It derives from a literary and popular legend, about a Jew who mocked or mistreated Jesus while he was on his way to the cross and who was condemned therefore to a life of wandering on earth until Judgment Day.

The story of this wanderer was first recorded in the chronicles of Roger of Wendover and Matthew of Paris during the thirteenth century. The exact nature of the wanderer's indiscretion varies in different versions of the tale, as do aspects of his character, some of the more common themes being the doom of the "Wandering Jew" to travel the world forever, forsaken by all unfortunate enough to encounter him.

Nazi Propaganda saw in this proof that the Jews have been justifiably persecuted by all racers over the millenium.

The Eternal Jew exhibition first opened in the Library of the German Museum in Munich on November 8, 1937, and ended on January 31, 1938. Billed as a degenerate-art exhibition, it was the largest prewar anti-Semitic exhibit thus far produced by the Nazi's. The exhibit featured photographs pointing out the typically "Jewish" features of political figures, such as Leon Trotsky, and international film star Charlie Chaplin.

The displays emphasized supposed attempts by Jews to bolshevize Germany, It did this by revealing an 'eastern' Jew - wearing a kaftan, and holding gold coins in one hand and a whip in the other. Under his arm is a map of the world, with the imprint of the hammer and sickle. The exhibition attracted 412,300 visitors, over 5,000 per day.

The exhibition moved to Vienna for August 2 through October 23, 1938, and then to Berlin from November 12, 1938 through January 31, 1939. Police reports stated there was a direct correlation rise in anti-Semitic feelings, and in some cases violence against the Jewish community in each city the exhibition was held.

The film Der ewige Jude opened on November 29th, 1940 throughout the German Reich. Each city where the film played had it's own posters. In the Altenkirchen district of Betzdorf, the film was described as a "documentary film about world Jewry". "It is unique because it is no fantasy, but undiluted reality."

The Nazi goal of Der ewige Jude is to be the first film to portray a fully exposed picture of world Jewry, and to be a "valuable tool in the struggle to break the power of the Jews over the Aryan race."

The consistent theme throughout the film of the Jew as parasite in an otherwise healthy host, is found throughout the film in several forms, each of them designed to reveal to Germans the "true" Jew underneath the veneer of European culture that concealed the Jewish parasite.

Jews are introduced as a foreign, swarthy, hook-nosed, untidily bearded, sullen presence that clogs the teeming streets of middle Europe. They haggle, squabble over food at the table, hoard with wealth, conceal it from tax collectors, and grow sleek and fat at the expense of good Germans. Their religion and culture are seen as cabalistic sources of secret powers.

In one famous scene, swarms of rats scurry through cellars and sewers, the shots are intercut with images of Jews emigrating from Palestine to to all corners of the world. The overlaid text conveyed the message:

 "Where rats turn up, they spread diseases and carry extermination into the land. They are cunning, cowardly and cruel, they travel in large packs, exactly the way the Jews infect the races of the world."

Artistically, the film is a "black masterpiece" of the cinematic conventions of 1940; a German version of The March of Time style that included animated maps, falsely labeled stock footage, segments of feature films borrowed to make some ideological point, stills, decoupages of evocative book jackets and headlines, and an omniscient voice-over narration.

The film was directed by Fritz Hippler, the Director of the Film Department of the ministry subordinate to only Joseph Goebbels, for all films produced by the Reich ministry. Born in Berlin in 1909, Hippler studied at Berlin and Heidelberg universities, completing a thesis on Marx, Mill and Lagarde for which he was awarded a doctorate of philosophy.

As a student he was already enthusiastic about the Nazis, joining their various organizations as early as 1926. They promised to create work for all, end corruption and restore Germany's place in the world, this appealed to Hippler who managed to obtain a position working on newsreels. The quality of  of his work did not go un-noticed and several reels  impressed Goebbels who later promoted him to Director in 1939.

Fritz Hippler

Throughout the making of Der ewige Jude, Hippler kept in daily contact with Goebbels, he returned with final footage to Berlin on October 16, 1940. The rushes were developed the same day and shown to Goebbels during the evening. The pictures of half-an-hour with ritual slaughtering, deliberately staged as cruelty to animals, shocked Goebbels who wrote in his diary the next morning:

"Dieses Judentum muss vernichtet werden." (This Jewry must be annihilated).

After having shown these rushes at the Führer’s dinner-table on October 28, 1940 - where everybody according to his diary were deeply disturbed, Goebbels went to Lodz to see for himself on October 31. He wrote in his diary, that the Jewish Question was more a task for the surgeon than a humanitarian one.

The importance of Der ewige Jude lies not in its technique but in its brutal service to the cause of Nazi racism. Hippler's Der ewige Jude,  would "fill the spectator with a feeling of deep-seated gratification for belonging to a people whose leader has absolutely solved the Jewish problem." It is believed that films such as Der ewige Jude helped prepare the German people to accept the eventual policy of genocide inflicted upon Jews.

Pamphlet written by Joseph Goebbels distributed prior to the start of the film,

outlining we are expected to see and think in the film

The film begins with an impressive expedition through the Jewish ghettoes in Poland. We are shown Jewish living quarters, which in our view cannot be called houses. In these dirty rooms lives and prays a race, which earns its living not by work but by haggling and swindling. From the little urchin to the old man, they stand in the streets, trading and bargaining.

Using trick photography, we are shown how the Jewish racial mixture in Asia Minor developed and flooded the entire world. We see a parallel to this in the itinerant routes of rats, which are the parasites and bacillus-carriers among animals, just as the Jews occupy the same position among mankind.

The Jew has always known how to assimilate his external appearance to that of his host. Contrasted are the same Jewish types, first the Eastern Jew with his kaftans', beard, and sideburns, and then the clean-shaven, Western European Jew. This strikingly demonstrates how he has deceived the Aryan people. Under this mask he increased his influence more and more in Aryan nations and climbed to higher-ranking positions. But he could not change his inner being.
 

After the banishment of the Jews from Europe was lifted, following the age of Enlightenment, the Jew succeeded within the course of several decades in dominating the world economy, before the various host nations realized - and this despite the fact that they made up only 1 per cent of the world population. An excerpt from an American film about the Rothschild's, made by Jews, reveals to us the cunning foundations of their banking empire.

Then we see how Jews, working for their international finance, drive the German people into the November Revolution. They then shed their anonymity and step out openly on to the stage of political and cultural life. Thus the men who were responsible for the disgraceful debasement of the German people are paraded before us. Incontestable examples are shown of how they robbed the country and the people of immense sums.

As well as gaining financial supremacy they were able to dominate cultural life. The repulsive pictures of so-called Jewish "art" reveal the complete decline of cultural life at that time.  Using original sequences from contemporary films, the degrading and destructive tendency of Jewish power is exposed. For hundreds of years German artists have glorified figures from the Old Testament, knowing full well the real face of Jewry.

How the Jew actually looks like is shown in scenes shot by Jews themselves in a "culture film" of a Purim festival, which is still celebrated today to commemorate the slaughter of 75,000 anti-Semitic Persians, and the doctrine with which future Rabbis in Jewish schools are educated to be political pedagogues. We look into a Jewish 'Talmud' class and experience the oriental tone of the ceremony in a Jewish synagogue, where Jews conduct business deals among themselves during the holy services.

However, the cruel face of Judaism is most brutally displayed in the final scenes, in which original shots of a kosher butchering are revealed. These film documents of the inhuman slaughter of cattle and sheep without anesthesia provide conclusive evidence of a brutality which is simply inconceivable to all Aryan people. In shining contrast, the film closes with pictures of German people and German order which fill the viewer with a feeling of deep gratification for belonging to a race whose Führer is fundamentally solving the Jewish problem.

Two different versions of the film were made, the original version, and a toned down one without the gory scenes of ritual slaughtering. In Berlin the film opened simultaneously in sixty six theaters with the two versions shown at different times of the day.

One review by the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung stated:

"Only when the film ends, can the viewer breathe again, from the darkest recess does he come back to the light again."

Despite such press reviews, the commercial success of Der ewige Jude paled in comparison to other anti-Semitic films such as Jud Süss. SD reports from many regions in Germany and Austria were consistent: "The horror scenes disgusted viewers and the documentary aspect was considered nerve racking."

Despite the commercial failure of the film, images were replicated onto posters and publications throughout the Reich and occupied Europe. The goal of eliciting fear, disgust and hatred, toward the Eternal Jews was summed up by one critic:

"One has a deep sense of salvation after seeing this film. We have broken their power over us. We are the initiators of the fight against world Jewry, which now directs its hate, its brutal greed and destructive will toward us. We must win this battle for ourselves, for Europe, for the world."

Hippler was captured by the British in 1944. He escaped prosecution as a criminal when Allied tribunals failed to convict other filmmakers, such as Veit Harlan,(Jud Suss).  After a process of "de-Nazification" he served the American Army as a translator. In later life, he earned his living as a travel agent.