The Zionist Plan for ‘Cleansing’ Gaza of its Palestinians is Not New – Like Many Such Ideas It Originated with their Nazi friends

 There is a German word for what is being proposed – Judenrein or today Arabrein

There is nothing new in Donald Trump and Netanyahu’s plans for the ‘evacuation’ of the Palestinians from Gaza. The Nazis’ devoted much time and energy to a similar ‘problem’.

From 1939 onwards hundreds of thousands  of Jews, Poles and Gypsies, were preventing the Warthegau, that part of Poland which was conquered and incorporated into Greater Germany, being settled with German colonists. Most of them were expelled to the Generalgouvernment, that part of Poland into which they intended to pour all the racial ‘mush’ (Himmler).

Volksdeutsche of Łódź greeting German cavalry in 1939

The Nazis managed, with difficulty, to resettle half a million Volksdeutsche in their place just as Israel hopes to settle Jews in Gaza. 

Hans Frank

Many were the conflicts within the Nazi bureaucracy between the Gauleiter Arthur Greiser and the Governor-General of the Generalgouvernment, Hans Frank. For those who are interested in Nazi resettlement policies you can read Christopher Browning’s article on Nazi resettlement policies.

Arthur Greiser

It was only when the Nazi plans for the resettlement of the Jews to the East were thwarted that they turned to extermination. So it is with Gaza, except that the Zionists reversed the process, first they began the extermination process and only then turned to expulsion.

Palestinian journalists demonstrate outside the Palestinian Authority against the banning of media

Yet despite this that pathetic poodle of US imperialism, Keir Starmer and his contemptible fool of a Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, could not bring themselves to criticise Trump. As the Guardian’s Peter Walker put it, ‘Prime minister and colleagues use political code to push back at proposal without directly criticising US president.’

Even Ed Davey of the Lib Dems criticised the loathsome Trump whilst pushing for the resurrection of that old lame duck, the two-state solution. Starmer has built his career on slavish loyalty to the American Empire and Trump is not going to stop him.

Starmer told us  how he was ‘moved’ by the image of Emily Damari, the Israeli hostage who was reunited with her family. The images of Palestinian hostages, who had been starved, beaten and tortured, did not make any impression on this apology for a human being. However it is doubtful that anything could move Starmer apart from a subsidy from one of his millionaire friends towards his wardrobe.

When Israel was established as a ‘Jewish’ State it fabricated a narrative that the Palestinian refugees had run away, on orders from the Arab regimes, despite pleas from the Zionists to stay. This was comprehensively debunked, first by Erskine Childers and Rashid Khalidi and then Israeli historians Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe.

I was brought up to believe this nonsense.  Israel had closed its archives and even reclassified documents that had been released in order to hide the truth. [see Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs].

Benny Morris explained that ‘Defense Ministry officials apparently hope their actions will raise doubts about the conclusions and credibility of various scholars.’ This enabled people like Israel’s vile Ambassador, Tzipi Hotoveli, to proclaim that stories of the Nakba were an ‘Arab lie’.

Only 3% Of Jewish Israelis Think Trump's Ethnic Cleansing Plan For Gaza Is Immoral

Today there is no pretence. Israelis in their overwhelming majority want the Palestinians of Gaza (and the West Bank) either expelled or  exterminated. Some 82% of Israeli Jews support Trump’s plan and just 3% consider the proposals immoral. The rest think it impractical. This is what memory of the Holocaust has become in Zionist hands.

It is worth bearing in mind that Israelis are far more racist towards the Palestinians than Germans were to Jews. Anti-Semitism in Germany was never respectable. The Nazis had to work hard to persuade Germans and they never succeeded. Anti-Semitism was confined to the core of the Nazi party itself. Between 1930 and 1933 Hitler downplayed anti-Semitism to the point of non-existence.

Of course people will find this difficult to accept given the way the media portrays the reasons why Hitler came to power. However all serious historians agree. For example Ian Kershaw wrote in Popular Opinion and Dissent in the Third Reich that the more than five million extra votes that the Nazis obtained in the 1930 elections ‘were in no sense anti-Semites’. David Cesarani suggested in The Final Solution  that  Hitler’s attacks on Jews ‘diminished to vanishing point’. Even Zionist historian Yehuda Bauer accepted this. 

In 1939 Hitler began to fulfil his desire to create ‘living space’ lebensraum for the German people by conquering first Poland, then Western Europe and finally Russia. That is precisely what Israel is doing. Achieving its Arab-free living space.

For 15 months they carpet bombed Gaza under the pretence that they were seeking to destroy Hamas when it was obvious to anyone, bar Jews for Genocide and that inveterate liar Starmer, that Hamas was the one thing they hadn’t destroyed.

Hospitals, schools, clinics, universities, journalists, residential homes and agricultural land – all were subject to the an intensity of bombing that made the destruction of Nuremberg, Dresden and Hamburg seem like a picnic.

All the while Butcher Biden supplied the 2,000 lb bombs that enabled the devastation. Now Trump comes along and says that of course Palestinians can’t live in the rubble whilst still continuing to supply the 2000 lb bombs. The hypocrisy and mendacity of our rulers knows no bounds.

We have a weak and shaky ceasefire, which hasn’t stopped Israel killing Palestinians in Gaza although the bombing has (temporarily) stopped. There isn’t an agreement that Israel has made that hasn’t been broken and they are still killing people in Lebanon. Netanyahu and much of his coalition would like to restart the slaughter because to the Zionists not enough Palestinians have yet died.

Yet whatever Israel does, as far as Starmer, Trump and our own Jews for Genocide in the form of the Board of Deputies, are concerned it is acting in self-defence. It is an interesting legal concept as to whether an occupying power has the right of self-defence. Perhaps Russia has such a right in Ukraine! Maybe we should consult our favourite ‘human rights lawyer’ Sir Kid Starver.

I fear that Israel will find a pretext to restart the war against Gaza. What Trump has done is to provide Israel with a pretext to break the ceasefire, as Netanyahu has promised, after the first phase, in which case we will see a continuation of the genocide. This is a very real danger. Of course it will be difficult politically to restart the slaughter but that will depend on the American administration. One thing is for certain. The Arab regimes could stop it in a day if they stopped the oil.  And the Arab masses could stop it if they overthrew those regimes.

Israeli military operation in Jenin: Palestinian homes attacked with simultaneous blasts

Instead Israel’s war on the Palestinians has spread to the West Bank. For the past 5 years I have raised funds for the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre in Jenin refugee camp. Three times the Israeli military has deliberately wrecked the interior of the Centre.

Today I have no idea if Al Tafawk is even standing because much of Jenin’s refugee camp has been blown up and numerous people, including children have been killed. Yet still Western leaders have the audacity to about Israel’s ‘self-defence’. If only Goebbels had had such good propagandists as the BBC provide he could have achieved far more without the opprobrium.

Israeli Soldiers Celebrate Destruction in Jenin

Israel’s attack on Jenin we should not forget was preceded by 25 days of violence by the Quisling Palestine Authority. Yet even now organisations like Britain’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign are afraid of calling these Quislings by their name. First Israel banned Al Jazeera and then the PA banned it.

See Two Days after Speaking to the Palestine Chronicle – Jenin Journalist Killed by Palestinian Authority

See The PA and Israel are allies in silencing the truth

Trump’s plan though is unlikely to be carried out. The last thing the Egyptian and Jordanian states want is hundreds of thousands of Palestinians determined to seek their revenge. Despite their role as collaborators, neither regime has a death wish.

If the Zionists cannot achieve an empty Gaza by ethnic cleansing then mass murder and genocide is the alternative and the only thing standing in the way are Hamas and the Palestinian resistance.

This of course is where Britain’s political police come in. They will do their utmost to arrest and persecute anyone who supports resistance to Israel’s genocide. All in the name of ‘the fight against terrorism’. This is the state of British ‘democracy’ today and we can rely on Britain’s compliant judiciary to do their best to help.

There has been one of those absurd ‘debates’ about whether Israel is committing genocide. As if not using the word changes the reality. I suggest people read Yuval Abraham’s article in +972 Magazine, Bomb the area, gas the tunnels: Israel’s unbridled war on Gaza’s underground as to what Israel’s tactics were. Abraham writes that:

The Israeli army intensively bombarded residential areas in Gaza when it lacked intelligence on the exact location of Hamas commanders hiding underground, and intentionally weaponized toxic byproducts of bombs to suffocate militants in their tunnels…

The investigation, based on conversations with 15 Israeli Military Intelligence and Shin Bet officers who have been involved in tunnel-targeting operations since October 7, exposes how this strategy aimed to compensate for the army’s inability to pinpoint targets in Hamas’ subterranean tunnel network. When targeting senior commanders in the group, the Israeli military authorized the killing of “triple-digit numbers” of Palestinian civilians as “collateral damage,” and maintained close real-time coordination with U.S. officials regarding the expected casualty figures.

 So there we have it. Israel was prepared to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians on the off chance that they might kill a member of Hamas.  And then creatures like Lammy & Starmer dare to call Hamas ‘terrorist’.

In the process three Israeli hostages — Nik Beizer, Ron Sherman, and Elia Toledano — were killed by asphyxiation as a result of a Nov. 10, 2023, bombing that targeted Ahmed Ghandour, a Hamas brigade commander in northern Gaza. Even if the bombs didn’t kill them then the carbon monoxide they produced did.

Israel soldiers were not willing to fight in the tunnels but thought that carpet bombing would do the trick. Fortunately it didn’t and at the end of the war Hamas and the Resistance was killing more of Israel’s war criminal military than it was at the beginning.

Imagine if Hamas exploded a bomb in the middle of Tel Aviv because they believed a senior officer of the Israeli army was passing by?  Or Russia bombed a market place because it believed a Ukrainian general was doing his shopping there. The pages of the tabloids would be filled with blood curdling rhetoric.

Israel’s figures of Hamas fighters killed were always phony. Every male civilian they killed was a Hamas ‘terrorist’ but at the end of the day the Zionists ended up fooling themselves, which was why, when the ceasefire came into effect, Israelis were stunned to see hundreds of Hamas fighters in their distinctive olive green uniforms handing over the healthy and well-fed Israeli captives, unlike the emaciated and tortured bodies of the Palestinian captives that Israel had seized.

Israel’s 2,000 lb bombs were supplied by the United States despite knowing how they would be used but ‘bloody’ Blinken stymied any declaration that human rights violations were being carried out. Why?

Because under the Leahy law if the US State Department declared that Israel was committing war crimes then the U.S. Government would have been barred from using funds to assist in those crimes. Instead investigations into Israel’s war crimes never progressed beyond an initial stage.

"אז יאמרו בגויים הגדיל ה' לעשות עם אלה, הגדיל ה' לעשות עמנו היינו שמחים"

ועוד יותר טוב ועוד יותר טוב.

תודה לך הנשיא טראמפ.

Together, we will make the world great again 🇮🇱🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/3Wjx0VZRTK

— בצלאל סמוטריץ' (@bezalelsm) February 4, 2025

Netanyahu and his far-right partner Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Finance Minister,  ‘proud homophobe’ and fascist are itching to get back into the bombing on the grounds that if you haven’t succeeded yet try, try and try again. But what is clear is that Hamas and the Palestinian Resistance has not been defeated and is unlikely to be defeated. 

At the moment Israel’s genocidal lust and desire for more living space is now translating into war on the people of the West Bank.

Even Trump cannot simply declare that he wants Palestinians to leave Gaza because he wants the gas fields in the sea off Gaza. Instead he dresses it up as concern for the Palestinians. He wrote that the Palestinians in Gaza would have "far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region."

There is nothing new in this duplicity. As Abdaljawad Omar wrote:

the same language has been used before. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson justified the Indian Removal Act as a necessary measure for the “happiness” of Native Americans, ethnically cleansing them under the guise of protecting their way of life....

The logic remains unchanged — displacement framed as pragmatism, ethnic cleansing cloaked in the language of order and progress, and for Trump: Palestinians as an obstacle to a beautiful beachfront where everyone could live, including “some Palestinians.”  

In Trump’s impossible Gaza plan can still do a great deal of harm Michelle Plitnick wrote that ‘in one of the cruelest, most repulsive twists of the Trump argument, he actually argued that his plan for ethnic cleansing was intended to benefit the Palestinians.’

This could be so magnificent. But more importantly than that is the people that have been absolutely destroyed that live there now can live in peace in a much better situation because they are living in hell. And those people will now be able to live in peace. We’ll make sure that it’s done world class.

It is noticeable that German leaders have said next to nothing. But why should Germany’s leaders say anything? The worse it gets for Palestinians the more they can come to terms with their own holocausts. After all, if even the Jews perpetrate a holocaust then it can’t be that bad.

Today Gaza is unliveable in because Israel deliberately made it so. For the Palestinians to be removed would be to reward the war criminals. That Trump can suggest it and the media can actually debate it seriously demonstrates how low moral standards have sunk in the western world.

One wonders what Western leaders would say if Putin had carpet bombed Ukraine and then said he was removing the population to save them further trauma and he expected Britain, Germany and France to take them in and foot the bill! All in order that they could have ‘beautiful’ lives free from Russian bombs! Yet this is what Trump is saying and our leaders cannot even spell out the implications for fear of offending his fragile ego.

We are entering a period of great uncertainty. The Palestine solidarity movement has a responsibility to step up its protests and begin to make life uncomfortable for those in power. Instead of allowing the Metropolitan Police to disrupt our protests we should be disrupting the rhythms of London. The first thing we should be doing is to hold the demonstration which was initially planned for the BBC – with or without the agreement of Britain’s political police.

Tony Greenstein

See also 

The Gaza 'war' was a lie, as is the ceasefire. Trump just told you

Jonathan Cook

The PA and Israel are allies in silencing the truth

The PA and Israel are allies in silencing the truth

I witnessed firsthand the PA’s brutality against journalists in Gaza. Its possible return does not bode well for us.

Published On 1 Feb 2025 

A group of Palestinian journalists protest in front of the Palestinian Legislative Council headquarters against the decision of the Palestinian Authority to close Bethlehem-based private TV channel, Al-Roah, in Gaza City on October 17 1999 [File: Mohammad Saber/AFP]

On December 28, 21-year-old journalism student Shatha Al-Sabbagh was assassinated near her home in Jenin. Her family accused snipers from the Palestinian Authority (PA) deployed in the camp of shooting her in the head. Al-Sabbagh had been active on social media, documenting the suffering of Jenin residents during the raids by Israel and the PA.

Just a few days after Al-Sabbagh’s assassination, the authorities in Ramallah banned Al Jazeera from reporting from the occupied West Bank. Three weeks later, PA forces arrested Al Jazeera correspondent Mohamad Atrash.

These developments come as the Israeli occupation has killed more than 200 media workers in Gaza and arrested dozens across the occupied Palestinian territories. It has also banned Al Jazeera and refused to allow foreign journalists to enter Gaza. The fact that the PA’s actions mirror Israel’s reveals a shared agenda to suppress independent journalism and control public opinion.

To Palestinian journalists, that is hardly news. The PA has never been our protector. It has always been a complicit partner in our brutalisation. That is true in the West Bank and it was true in Gaza when the PA was in power there. I witnessed it myself.

Growing up in Gaza, I watched how my people were oppressed by Israeli forces and by the PA. In 1994, the Israeli occupation formally handed over the Strip to the PA to administer under the provisions of the Oslo Accords. The PA remained in power until 2007. During these 13 years, we saw more collaboration with the Israeli occupation than any meaningful attempt at liberation. For journalists, the PA’s presence was not just oppressive, it was life-threatening, as its forces actively stifled voices to maintain its fragile grip on power.

As a journalism student in Gaza, I experienced this suppression firsthand. I walked the streets, witnessing PA security officers looting shops, their arrogance apparent in the brazen act of theft. One day, when I attempted to document this, a Palestinian officer violently grabbed me, ripped my camera from my hands, and smashed it to the ground. This wasn’t just an assault, it was an attack on my right to bear witness. The officer’s aggression only ceased when a group of women intervened, forcing him to retreat in a rare moment of restraint.

I knew the risks of being a journalist in Gaza and like other media workers, I learned to navigate them. But the fear I felt near the PA forces’ ambush points was unlike anything else. That was because there was never logic to their aggressive actions and no way to anticipate when they might turn on you.

Walking near the PA forces felt like stepping into a minefield. One moment, there was the illusion of safety, and the next, you faced the brutality of those who were supposedly there to protect you. This uncertainty and tension made their presence more terrifying than being on a battlefield.

Years later, I would cover the training sessions of Qassam Brigades under the constant hum of Israeli drones and the ever-looming threat of air strikes. It was dangerous but predictable – much more so than the actions of the PA.

Under the PA, we learned to speak in code. Journalists self-censored out of fear of retribution. The PA was often referred to as “cousins of Israeli occupation” – a grim acknowledgement of its complicity.

As the PA was fighting to stay in power in Gaza after losing the 2006 elections to Hamas, its brutality escalated. In May 2007, gunmen in presidential guard uniforms killed journalist Suleiman Abdul-Rahim al-Ashi and media worker Mohammad Matar Abdo. It was an execution meant to send a clear message to those who witnessed it.

When Hamas took over, its government also imposed restrictions on press freedoms, but its censorship was inconsistent. Once, while documenting the new policewomen’s division, I was ordered to show my photos to a Hamas officer so he could censor any image he deemed immodest. I often managed to bypass these restrictions by swapping my memory cards preemptively.

The officers weren’t fond of anyone overriding their orders, but instead of outright punishment, they resorted to petty power plays—investigations, revoked access, or unnecessary provocations. Unlike the PA, Hamas did not operate within a system of coordination with Israeli forces to suppress journalism, but the restrictions journalists faced still created an environment of uncertainty and self-censorship. Any violation on their part, however, was met with swift international condemnation—something the PA rarely faced, despite its far more systematic repression.

After losing control of Gaza, the PA shifted its focus to the West Bank, intensifying its campaign of media suppression. Detentions, violent crackdowns, and the silencing of critical voices became commonplace. Their collaboration with Israel was not passive; it was active. From surveillance to campaigns of violence, they play a crucial role in maintaining the status quo, stifling any dissent that challenges their power and the occupation.

In 2016, the PA’s collusion became even more apparent when they coordinated with Israeli authorities in the arrest of prominent journalist and press freedom advocate Omar Nazzal, who had criticised Ramallah for how it handled the suspected murder of Palestinian citizen Omar al-Naif at its embassy in Bulgaria.

In 2017, the PA launched a campaign of intimidation, arresting five journalists from different outlets.

In 2019, the Palestinian Authority blocked the website of Quds News Network, a youth-led media outlet that has gained immense popularity. This was part of a wider ban imposed by the Ramallah Magistrate’s Court that blocked access to 24 other news websites and social media pages.

In 2021, after the violent death of activist Nizar Banat in the PA’s custody sparked protests, its forces sought to crack down on journalists and media outlets covering them.

In this context, the prospect of the PA returning to Gaza following the ceasefire agreement raises serious concerns for journalists who have already endured the horrors of genocide. For those who survived, this could mean a new chapter of repression that reflects the PA’s history of censorship, arrests and stifling of press freedoms.

Despite the grave threats that Palestinian journalists face from Israel and from those who pretend to represent the Palestinian people, they persevere. Their work transcends borders, reflecting a shared struggle against tyranny. Their resilience speaks not only to the Palestinian cause but to the broader fight for liberation, justice and dignity.

---

Eman Mohammed is an award-winning Palestinian-American photojournalist and Senior TED fellow currently based in Washington, DC.

For a Democratic State not a Jewish State

Israel was created, not as a rejection but a reflection of Nazism – that's why there cannot be a 2 State Solution – Lebensraum Drives Israel Every Bit As Much as Nazi Germany

Please Register Here

https://tinyurl.com/yrtxa5nf

Debate: What is the solution? One state, two states or something altogether different?

People may have difficulty accepting the headline. The IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism calls it anti-Semitic. Today even the simplest of truths, such as calling Israel’s attack on Gaza ‘genocide’, are deemed ‘anti-Semitic’.

In 1993 the Oslo Accords were signed. The wolf and the sheep were going to lie down without the Palestinian sheep being eaten by the Israeli wolf. Not only did most Palestinians support it but so did the vast majority of the Palestine solidarity movement,

In Britain PSC held an Emergency General Meeting to debate the Accords. About one-third of the meeting opposed the Executive motion arguing that support for the Oslo Accords represented a capitulation to Israel and that there would never be a Palestinian state. That the Oslo Accords represented a neo-colonial solution. Moving the Executive motion Israeli anti-Zionist Uri Davies, who is now embedded in the Quisling Palestinian Authority, assured the meeting that all would now be hunky dory,

As a result of our defeat I resigned from PSC, the group that I had been one of the co founders of, along with Roland Rance, another Jewish anti-Zionist and co-founder of PSC. I did not rejoin Brighton and Hove PSC until 2000 and national PSC until 2005 when the BDS campaign began. In 2022 I resigned once again from national PSC when, with the support of the SWP, it abandoned opposition to Zionism.

We were told that we could not go against the will of the Palestinians, even though most Palestinians only supported Oslo because they believed that a fraction of a loaf was better than no loaf. If given a free choice most Palestinians would have supported a unitary Palestinian state and the Right of Return of the refugees.

Oslo gave the Palestinians virtually nothing. Autonomy in a fraction of the West Bank (Area C) a city state to run (Jericho) and control of that part of Gaza where there were no settlers with Yassir Arafat arriving in triumph.

Every prediction I made about the Oslo Accords came true whereas Julia Bard of the JSG could only witter on about 'a new politics'

As I predicted in a debate in Labour Briefing with Julia Bard of the non-Zionist Jewish Socialists Group, Oslo represented the worst defeat since the Nakba for the Palestinians. It didn’t even mention a Palestinian state. I used a biblical metaphor. The Accords were a message of potage. The soup that Jacob gave Esau in order to deprive him of his birthright.

The JSG and other soft supporters of the Palestinians were all in favour of the Accords. For them Zionism was not a reality, it was just a word. Israel was not a settler colonial state but just a Jewish state gone wrong. Zionism wasn’t part of their language. All that mattered was that Palestinians and Israelis had become reconciled. Their differences hadn’t really been political but inter-personal. All that was needed was reconciliation. It was part of the western personal politics of identity and the feminist zeitgeist. The PLO had been legalised, the Palestinian flag could now be flown and in return the PLO recognised the Israeli state and the UN repealed Resolution 3379 which said that Zionism was a form of racism.

Zionism was irrelevant to anyone except us leftists. All that mattered was that Israelis got to know Palestinians better. The differences had not been structural. The Nakba was the past, Israel was here to stay.

Netanyahu and Obama

I dropped out of Palestine solidarity work for the best part of a decade. After all if the Palestinians had decided to fly the White Flag what role was left for people like me?  However disillusion with the Accords was quick to materialise. On 4 November 1995 Yitzhak Rabin, the war criminal turned peacemaker, was assassinated. Netanyahu played a major part in creating the atmosphere that led to Rabin’s murder. He had spoken at rallies where Rabin’s effigy had been dressed up in Nazi uniform.

Netanyahu won the May 1996 elections for Prime Minister against Labour’s Shimon Peres (the first and only time the Prime Minister was chosen by the electorate). In 2000 there began the second Intifada.

The question however is why did the Oslo Accords fail? Large sections of the left supported it, including even the Fourth International’s Michel Warshawsky, of Jerusalem’s Alternative Information Centre.

To understand what is happening today and yesterday one has to go back to basics and understand Zionism. This is one of the reasons why I am a Marxist because it gives me the tools of analysis to understand historical developments by reference to the material and economic conditions that lead to capitalism and imperialism.

Nationalism and religion deal in heroic tales, myths of the past and the metaphysical. It substitutes wishful thinking and a deity for what was and what is.

Why is it that Israel has come to be a Reflection of Nazi Germany?

The one question that has bedevilled Israel since its creation in 1948 has been ‘Who is a Jew’. It is the same question that perplexed the Nazi race scientists too. Defined as a race, the Nuremberg definition of Jews was based on religious practice. If your grandparents, going back to 1870, were practising Jews then you too were Jewish.

The Nazis found that even this definition had its difficulty, so they created a ‘mixed race’, the Mishlinge. If one of your grandparents was Jewish you were a quarter Jew and if two of them were Jewish then you were a half-Jew. So too in Israel. There are many Jews who conform to the definition of a Jew in the 1970 Amendment to the Law of Return, also based on who your grandparents, relatives and partners are but they still fall foul of the religious halachic definition, which is based on whether your mother is Jewish.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute

That is the problem with ‘race’. Despite the best efforts of the racial scientists of the Nazis' Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, (which was partly funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) with their measurements of the cranium and other physical attributes, ‘race’ defies any scientific definition.

The ‘Jewish’ State was created as an ethno-nationalist state so defining who is a Jew was supremely important. It was inevitable that purity of race and the predominance of Jews was essential. That is why the Zionist formulation of a ‘Jewish Democratic State’ was an oxymoron. Israel could be either Jewish or Democratic but not both.

Moshe Sharrett - Israel's second Prime Minister and its only dove

Anyone wishing to understand the engine behind Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide should read Livia Rokach’s Israel’s Sacred Terrorism, which is based on the diaries of Moshe Sharrett, Israel’s second prime minister. Sharrett was a dove amongst wolves and he lasted less than two years as Prime Minister, from December 1953 to November 1955, when Ben Gurion ‘retired’ and then returned as first Defence Minister then Prime Minister.

Sharrett however left what became 8 volumes of a diary. Over 40 years later it was translated into English and expanded to include declassified archival material, released as My Struggle for Peace: The Diary of Moshe Sharett, 1953–1956. It pulled no punches. Sharrett described Ben-Gurion’s ‘diabolic plans’ to "Christianize" Lebanon, i.e., to foment and take advantage of the sectarian divisions in Lebanese society that French colonialism had bequeathed to them. Ben-Gurion had a ‘detailed blueprint for the partition and subordination of that country to Israel’. Sharrett described how:

"I have been meditating on the long chain of false incidents and hostilities we have invented, and on the many clashes we have provoked which cost us so much blood, and on the violations of the law by our men-all of which brought grave disasters and determined the whole course of events and contributed to the security crisis".

Sound familiar? It should.

Moshe Dayan, lsrael's then chief of staff (later Defence Minister), explained why Israel needed to reject any border security arrangements offered by the neighbouring Arab States or the UN, as well as formal security guarantees suggested by the United States.

Such guarantees, he predicted, might "tie Israel's hands" and prevent the attacks and incursions across the armistice lines which went on throughout the mid- 1950s, under the ‘euphemistic name of reprisal actions.’ Dayan described these actions as being

" our vital lymph. They . . . . help us maintain a high tension among our population and in the army. . . in order to have young men go to the Negev we have to cry out that it is in danger". (26 May 1955)

Rokach described how

the creation of a siege mentality in Israeli society was necessary to complement the prefabricated myth of the Arab threat. The two elements were intended to feed each other.

Rokach quoted the testimony of a soldier who participated in the occupation of the Palestinian village of Duelma in 1948:

Killed between 80 to 100 Arabs, women and children. To kill the children they fractured their heads with sticks. There was not one house without corpses. The men and women of the villages were pushed into houses without food or water.

Then the saboteurs came to dynamite the houses. One commander ordered a soldier to bring two women into a house he was about to blow up. . . . Another soldier prided himself upon having raped an Arab woman before shooting her to death. Another Arab woman with her newborn baby was made to clean the place for a couple of days, and then they shot her and the baby. Educated and well-mannered commanders who were considered "good guys". . . became base murderers, and this not in the storm of battle, but as a method of expulsion and extermination. The fewer the Arabs who remain, the better. (quoted in Davar, 9 June 1979)

Let no-one believe that Israel’s atrocities in Lebanon and Gaza are new or the product of ‘right-wing’ Zionism. Rokach described how

‘War with Egypt was to remain a major ambition of Israel's security establishment, but the time was not yet ripe. On February 25, Ben Gurion, himself put the brakes on his collaborators' impatience when he rejected Lavon's proposal "to go ahead immediately with the plan for the separation of the Gaza Strip from Egypt." The Old Man was determined to stick to his timetable. Now, Sharett noted later, "Ben Gurion suggested to concentrate on action against Syria." (27 February 1954)

Rokach described a ‘historic opportunity to occupy Southern Syria’. On January 31, 1954 Moshe Dayan went on to outline his war plans.

The second plan-action against the interference of the Syrians with our fishing in the Lake of Tiberias. . . .The third-if, due to internal problems in Syria, Iraq invades that country we should advance [into Syria] and realize a series of "faits accomplis." . . . The interesting conclusion to be drawn from all this regards the direction in which the new Chief of Staff is thinking. I am extremely worried. (31 January 1954)

On February 25, 1954, Syrian troops stationed in Aleppo revolted against Adib Shishakly's regime. After lunch Lavon took me aside and started trying to persuade me: This is the right moment to act. This is the time to move forward and occupy the Syrian border positions beyond the Demilitarized Zone. Syria is disintegrating. A State with whom we signed an armistice agreement exists no more. Its government is about to fall and there is no other power in view. ... This is an historical opportunity, we shouldn't miss it. I was reluctant to approve such a blitz-plan and saw ourselves on the verge of an abyss of disastrous adventure. I asked if he suggests to act immediately and I was shocked when I realized that he does. I said that if indeed Iraq will move into Syria with its army it will be a revolutionary turn which will ... justify far reaching conclusions, but for the time being this is only a danger, not a fact. It is not even clear if Shishakly will fall: he may survive. ... He repeated that time was precious and we must act so as not to miss an opportunity which otherwise might be lost forever. Again I answered that under the circumstances right now I cannot approve any such action. ... I saw that he was extremely displeased by the delay. However, he had no choice but to agree. (25 February 1954)

President Eisenhower and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser

Lavon was Defence Minister. He left the Israeli government owing to the scandal of the Lavon Affair when an Israeli terror cell, comprising Egyptian Jews who Israel had recruited, were arrested in the summer of 1954. They had planned to plant bombs in movie houses, a post office, and U.S. institutions in Cairo and Alexandria. The purpose was to create the impression that Egypt under the nationalist Gamal Abdel-Nasser was unstable and thus undermine Cairo’s relations with the United States and Britain.

Unfortunately for Israel its agents were caught red-handed planting bombs and two members of the Zionist terror cell, Moshe Marzouk and Shmuel Azar, were executed in Egypt. Six others were sentenced to long prison sentences and only released in 1968.

In the 1950’s Israel was not a super-power. It could not bomb its neighbours with impunity. At that time the United States was more interested in preventing the Arab countries aligning with the Soviet Union than Arab nationalism and relying on Israel to intimidate the Arabs and protect the oil. Thus Eisenhower told Israel to withdraw its army from the Sinai Desert and the Gaza  Strip saying that territorial aggrandisement could not be rewarded. He even threatened to withhold $100m in aid.

From the start Israel was an aggressive, militaristic state seeking to expand its borders. Israel has permanently engaged in a search for  lebensraum. Whereas the US did not rely on Israel in its early stages, today Israel is the main pillar on which western imperialism relies in the Middle East.

Theodor Herzl - founder of Political Zionism

Why Zionism is the ideological and political reflection of Nazi ideology

That Zionism is a political ideology based on race not religion is not open to dispute. From Moses Hess, the first political Zionist, who wrote in Rome & Jerusalem that ‘race is primary, class is secondary’ to Herzl’s Deputy, Max Nordau who was a strong believer in eugenics, Zionism as a settler colonial movement based its right to displace the indigeous Palestinians on racial supremacy.

Early Zionist felt a particular attraction to the same ideas that motivated the most virulent anti-Semites. Nordau’s theories on art and illness ‘ripple through the writings of Nazi race ideology, including Mein Kampf...’ [Jason Farrago] In an interview with La Libre Parole [21.12.1903] Nordau explained that Zionism

is not a question of religion but exclusively of race, and there is no-one with whom I am in greater agreement on this position than M. Drumont.

Eduard Drumont was the leader of the anti-Drefussards in France. Zionism was a ‘blood and soil’ form of nationalism (blut und boden). None more so than Zionist Federation of Germany [ZVfD] which on June 21 1933 wrote to Hitler explaining their kinship:

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

This letter was sent in an attempt to curry favour with the Nazi leadership. No one forced the ZVfD to send it. Germany’s Zionists wanted the Nazis to know that there was a group, a tiny group of German Jews (approximately 2%) which was friendly to the Nazi racial experiments. It was never replied to. It can be found in Lucy Dawidowicz’s Holocaust Reader pp. 151-153.

Once it is accepted that the same principles of racial purity that underlay the Nazi experiment also motivated Zionism, then it is clear that Israel can never live in peace with either the Palestinians nor its Arab neighbours. In its eyes they are racially inferior.

The driving force behind Hitler’s war on neighbouring European states was lebensraum, the search for ‘living space’, as Hitler outlined in the Hossbach memorandum. During the war Germany engaged in vast resettlement schemes that led to thousands of German colonists settling in places like the Warthegau, the annexed part of Poland from which the Poles and Jews were expelled.

This of course is exactly what is and has happened in the West Bank. Jews have been resettled from pre-1967 Israel to the Territories on the pretext that god gave it to them! It is the settler right which has risen to power in Israel.

Similarly the motive behind Israel’s war against Lebanon, its house demolitions and destruction in Jerusalem, is simply a Zionist version of lebensraum. As former Israeli Minister Yossi Sarid wrote in 2011:

Suddenly we are short of space here in Israel, which has become full to capacity and needs lebensraum. Every cultured person knows that this is a despicable German concept, banned from use because of the associations it brings up. Still, people are starting to use it, if not outright then with a clear implication: We are short of land, we are short of air, let us breathe in this country.

When we embarked on the Six-Day War did we want to remove a threat or did we want to gain control in order to spread out? That's what happens after 44 years of mire and moral corruption, which distort things and make us forget the original objective and replace it with an entirely different one. We were fortunate when we occupied the West Bank because had we not done so, where would we have come to live? And who knows how high housing prices would have risen? The divine promise is now being revealed in all its ability to prophesy about real estate.

The original Zionist aim was to conquer Eretz Yisrael (the Biblical Land of Israel) which god apparently promised to Abraham in a fit of madness. This promise stretched from the Litani river in South Lebanon down to the Brook of the Nile in Egypt and across to the Euphrates in Iraq. So there is lots of room to grow in future years!

Of course even Netanyahu is not so crude as to admit that he is aiming to conquer all of this territory. Instead Israel’s steady expansion is dressed up as ‘the right to self-defence’ or ‘security’ but the aim is clear. Gaza is to be cleared of its indigenous population in order to allow Israelis to settle it once again. The far-right is even talking seriously in terms of settling South Lebanon.

Always you understand it is ‘security’ never lebensraum that is their concern. Israel conquers a territory, as it did in 1967, which unsurprisingly provokes resistance. This is immediately termed ‘terrorism’ and that in turn results in Israel’s ‘right to self-defence’. In the course of ‘defending’ itself Israel expands a little bit further.

One sometimes has to feel sorry for Hitler and Goebbels. If only they had ‘genocide’ Joe and his partner, serial liar Anthony Blinken, then history might have looked on them in a more favourable light.

It is true that Hitler’s Final Solution meant gassing and shooting the Jews and Roma (who the Zionist historians insist did not suffer a holocaust). However the Nazis also experimented with blowing up Jews with explosives. Unfortunately their explosives weren’t powerful enough which was why they opted for gas, first Carbon Monoxide and then Zyklon B, hydrogen-cyanide.

However if Biden and Kamala Harris had been around to provide them with 2,000 bombs of high explosives who knows? Perhaps they would have settled on blowing the Jews up. In self-defence of course. But to those who find killing people by gas as opposed to explosives especially abhorrent ask yourself this – which is more cruel? Killing someone with poison gas, which is relatively quick or burying people alive under rubble to die a lingering, painful death. I just ask of course because we know that Biden and Netanyahu are civilised people.

Next Tuesday Jewish Network for Palestine and the Socialist Labour Network are holding a webinar on why, after the genocide in Gaza, there is only one goal that the Palestine solidarity should set and that is the de-Zionisation of the Israeli state. The two-state solution is an apartheid, neo-colonial solution which envisages a tamed, civilised State of Israel co-existing side by side with a Palestinian state.

Just as it is impossible to tame the appetite of a fox for chickens and lions for lambs, so Israel becoming a peace-loving, non-racist state is equally impossible. A rabid dog cannot be cured. Israel was flawed from the start. As a settler colonial, ethno-religious Jewish state, it could not be other than an inherently racist state.

Romanian Roma children deported to Transnistria and murdered

Any state which defines its national collectivity in terms of religion will automatically discriminate against those who aren’t of that religion. Israel is not a theocracy, although it is heading that way, but it is a state no different to the Christian ethno-nationalist states of Eastern Europe – Romania, Slovakia, Croatia in the 1930s and 1940s. 

Without exception they were the most enthusiastic participants in the Nazi holocaust. Slovakia was the first to deport its Jews – it asked the Nazis to take them off their hands. Romania didn’t ask the Nazis to exterminate its Jews, it managed that task all on its own as did Croatia, the only Nazi occupied state to set up its own extermination camp, Jasenovac.

Of Romania’s 600,000 Jews, it butchered 300,000 without any need for Nazi help. Even Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor of Poland, who was hanged at Nuremberg, remarked of Romania’s Jassi pogrom, that ‘we practice surgery, they practice butchery’.

Israel’s Jewish Nation State Law, passed in 2018 is quite clear:

The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.

The other 20% of Israel’s population, its Arab/Palestinian citizens can go to hell. In the words of Netanyahu, Israel is a state, not of all its citizens, but its Jewish citizens.

They have individual, not national rights. What does that mean? That the 93% of Israeli land which is owned by the State and the Zionist institutions like the Jewish National Fund belong only to the metaphysical Jewish people.

That is why to this very day, Bedouin living in the ‘unrecognised’ villages of the Negev are evicted to make way for Jewish  towns. Al Hiram was evicted to make way for the Jewish-only town of Hiram. The Bedouin were considered to be squatting on land that did not belong to them, because state land is Jewish state land.

The idea that a Jewish state could accord its non-Jewish inhabitants equality is pure fantasy. The two-state solution embodies this fantasy. The guiding ideology of Israel is Zionism and the responsibility of the Israeli state is to give effect to Zionism. 

Yair Lapid is the leader of Israel's opposition and in Zionist terms is on the 'left'. Yet  his declared principles are no different from the Zionist right:

My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign has fought bitterly against adopting a one-state solution. If it is to have any political credibility after the current genocide and ethnic cleansing it has to jettison this reluctance. Its pretext has always been that it is up to the Palestinians to decide what they want but Palestinians are in no position to decide anything. It is an abdication of responsibility.

A solidarity movement does not have to adopt the slogans of those they support. Whereas the Palestinians may be forced into all sorts of compromises, the solidarity movement is under no such pressures. Our duty is to exert pressure on Zionism and its backers.

The Vietcong were forced to accept the presence of the South Vietnamese government after the January 1973 Paris Peace Talks. The Vietnam Solidarity movement though called for reunification of Vietnam.

The real reason why PSC has refused to support a one-state solution has nothing to do with the Palestinians. They have not defended Hamas as the choice of the Palestinians. The real reason for their hostility to a single state solution and the abolition of a Jewish state relates to their appeal to reformist politicians and trade union leaders, for whom the two-state solution is sacrosanct.

Even the most left-wing of British politicians, such as Jeremy Corbyn, are pro-Palestinian but not anti-Zionist. They have no analysis or understanding of why Israel behaves as it does. They are therefore intimidated by accusations that opposition to a ‘Jewish’ state is anti-Semitic. They cling to the idea that Israel can be reformed, even though this belief is evidence free. The same politicians would never have dreamed of calling for a two-state solution in Apartheid South Africa to include a White state but they do with Israel.

PSC refuses to challenge these fundamental beliefs of the British Establishment because, in so far as it has any strategy, it believes it can win them over. They call it ‘mainstreaming’. PSC supports the Palestinians but at the same time has nothing to say about the Zionist nature of a state whose very existence guarantees continued genocide and ethnic cleansing.

What this has meant in practice is that trade union leaders and left-reformists, such as Corbyn and McDonnell, have been able to ‘both sides’ the Palestinian struggle. You can support a Jewish state and a Palestinian state. You don’t have to touch the thorny question of Zionism. This is what happened during Corbyn’s years of retreat. He accepted Zionism as a valid expression of Jewish identity resulting in a Jewish state. It meant that he succumbed to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’  smear campaign. The rest is history.

Supporters of the Palestinians must break from both Zionism and the two-state solution. There is only one solution, a democratic, secular state. That is the purpose of this webinar. The terrible ordeal of the Palestinians of Gaza and now Lebanon must be ended once and for all. Just as the Nazi state was destroyed so too must the Israeli state. Its continued existence means continued genocide. The two-state solution is an apartheid solution and those who support it should be asked what price they are willing to see the Palestinians pay.

Tony Greenstein