When accusations of ‘anti-Semitism are used to Justify Israeli War Crimes then all you do is make anti-Semitism respectable
Death to the Arabs demonstration in Jerusalem – like the Nazis?
On 14 December The Times of Israel revealed that Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories had, on July 31 2014 published an open letter on Facebook attacking the United States and Europe for criticising the victims of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza. Israel murdered over 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, in Operation Protective Edge.
In her post Albanese said:
“America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed — the Palestinians — who defend themselves with the only means they have (deranged missiles), instead of making Israel face its international law responsibilities,”
Although it would have been more accurate to use the term ‘pro-Israel lobby’ there was nothing anti-Semitic about her post. Those who attack Albanese do such so with all the sincerity of righteous hypocrites. The hypocrisy of the Zionists is like the US government giving lectures on human rights to China or Hitler complaining of racial discrimination against the Sudeten Germans.
The Israeli Mission to the UN didn’t bother to hide its real agenda.
Antisemitism is a persistent malice that has infected the United Nations Human Rights Council for far too long.
It would have been more honest if the Israeli Mission had simply said that talk of human rights for Palestinians was in itself anti-Semitic. After all Bezalel Smotrich, who is now in charge of the Civil (actually Military) Administration in the West Bank only recently declared that human rights organisations are an ‘existential threat’ to Israel. This is the real agenda of those who are attacking Albanese.
Naturally Deborah Lipstadt, a junk holocaust historian and Biden’s ‘anti-Semitism’ envoy got into the act saying that
Such blatant antisemitic rhetoric — particularly when it’s an established pattern — is simply unacceptable.
Lipstadt is the same person who accused Jewish supporters of BDS of enabling anti-Semitism. She described anti-Zionism, which used to be the majority position of all Jews, as anti-Semitic in itself. It’s no wonder that Lipstadt has been so silent about Jewish neo-Nazis being Cabinet Ministers in the new Israeli government.
The fact is that the pro-Israel lobby, in particular the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), does sees itself as a Jewish lobby. They are also seen by other Jewish organisations as a Jewish lobby.
For example AIPC engineered the defeat of Senator Charles Percy, a moderate Republican from Illinois, in his re-election campaign in 1984 after he had declined to support an AIPAC-sponsored letter and referring to Yasser Arafat as a “moderate”. AIPAC contributors raised more than a million dollars to help defeat Percy. Tom Dine, the Executive Director of AIPAC, boasted shortly after Percy’s defeat:
“all the Jews, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians — those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire — got the message.”
Jews you notice, not Israel supporters or Zionists, celebrated. In 2005, Steven Rosen, then a senior official with AIPAC, told journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker.
“You see this napkin?” Rosen asked Goldberg. “In twenty-four hours, [AIPAC] could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.”
When Senator Bernie Sanders said he would not attend AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington, DC, because he was concerned about the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.
the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations [CPMAJO] called Sanders’ words “irresponsible and counterproductive,” saying, “AIPAC brings together a bipartisan diversity of all sectors of society from across the political spectrum.”
Why should these American Jewish groups feel the need to defend AIPAC if it is only a pro-Israel organisation? Clearly they see being Jewish and pro-Israel as one and the same thing.
Bear in mind that Donald Trump, the anti-Semitic President of the USA, who believes that Jews owe Israel their loyalty, was directly responsible for the largest massacre of Jews in the US’s history when 11 Jewish worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh died. These groups kept silent about Trump’s responsibility then.
It is impossible to draw a line between AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby on the one hand and the Jewish community and Jewish organisations on the other. That is as true of the United States as Britain. Indeed it is worse in Britain.
The Greater Miami Jewish Federation lets the cat out of the bag with its explanation of who AIPAC was and where it had come from:
AIPAC was established in 1954 by leaders of the American Jewish community who recognized that Israel’s needs could not be satisfied by philanthropy alone. The economic, military and political support necessary for Israel’s survival could only come from the U.S. government. AIPAC’s mission ever since has been to nurture and advance the U.S.-Israel relationship.
In other words AIPAC, which is an openly pro-Israel lobby group, was founded by the leaders of America’s Jews. It is nothing but hypocrisy to then turn around and complain about the use of the words ‘Jewish Lobby’.
Likewise Alma, a Jewish Feminist group asked What are the different American Jewish organizations that focus on Israel? before listing AIPAC and the Zionist Organisation of America as Jewish groups. I have to confess I didn’t hear any complaints.
It may be that Albanese misspoke but anti-Semitism it is not. It’s like suggesting that associating the Mafia with Italians is racist.
The hypocrisy of these attacks on Albanese is even more nauseating when you consider that Zionists, when discussing amongst themselves, make no distinction between being Jewish and Zionist.
That is why if you are anti-Zionist you are called anti-Semitic or worse (Kapos, self hater etc.). But occasionally the mask slips. The Zionists themselves talk about a Jewish Lobby.
Alex Brummer, a Jewish Chronicle columnist and City Editor of the Daily Mail referred to the Jewish Lobby in the Jewish Chronicle of 5 December 2003 without any protest. In an article Straws in the Wind or More Hot Air Brummer described AIPAC as ‘one of the more right-wing and effective of the Jewish lobby groups’. I don’t recall any protests about anti-Semitism but of course Brummer was a right-wing Zionist.
Similarly the then Prince Charles referred in a private letter to Lauren van der Post to the ‘Jewish Lobby’:
“Surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in the US? I must be naive, I suppose!”
In the Jewish Chronicle of 11 April 2008 Nathan Guttman, in an article ‘Alternative’ US Lobby prepares to launch’ referred to ‘attempts to create an alternative Jewish lobby’. Again I don’t recall any howling about anti-Semitism from the usual suspects.
The fact is that the Zionist lobby considers itself a Jewish lobby and then criticises anyone who calls them out. It’s much like the IHRA so-called definition of anti-Semitism which states that
‘Manifestations [of anti-Semitism] might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.’
Yet the IHRA also states that ‘holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’ is also anti-Semitic! In other words anti-Semitism can mean anything the Zionists want it to mean. All that matters, as Humpty Dumpty observed, is ‘which is to be master.’
There was a similar outbreak of political hypocrisy when Gerald Kaufman, the former Jewish Labour MP, referred to ‘Jewish money’. The Zionists howled about anti-Semitism yet I found nearly 600 references to Jewish money in the Jewish Chronicle. The Witchhunt of Gerald Kaufman – Crucified for Supporting the Palestinians.
Even worse, Albanese compared Israel and its works to Nazi Germany! According to the ToI in 2015 she shared a picture of a Nazi trooper and a Jewish man side by side with an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian. Even worse in an interview with Italian media compared the Nakba, the Zionist mass expulsion of ¾ million Palestinians, to the Holocaust.
The Times of Israel solemnly informed us that ‘comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is considered antisemitic’ according to the IHRA. To compound her crimes ‘Albanese has recently spoken out against the IHRA definition.’ Clearly the woman is shameless and beyond help!!
Let us put to one side that Israeli leaders have regularly compared Palestinian or Arab opponents to the Nazis and Hitler since Zionist leaders have a free pass when it comes to such comparisons. The policy of the Nazis when they came to power in 1933 was to expel not to murder its Jewish citizens. That came later in 1941 onwards.
The most popular slogan amongst anti-Semites in 1930s Europe was ‘Death to the Jews’. Is it really anti-Semitic to point out that in Israel today, the favourite chant of Jewish mobs is ‘death to the Arabs’? The third largest political bloc in the Knesset today is led by the political representatives of those who cry for the murder of all Palestinians.
There are many comparisons between pre-1939 Nazi Germany and Israel. Israel, like Nazi Germany, is an ethno nationalist state. The French Revolution established for the first time the idea of a separation between church and state. The Israeli state is a throwback to the feudal era in the age of imperialism.
Geoffrey Alderman, a devoted Zionist and the historian of British Jewry poured scorn on the IHRA and its equating comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany as anti-Semitic. Alderman noted that many countries have been accused of behaving like Nazis. Tom Segev, an Israeli historian observed:
All Israeli governments have used the Holocaust as a political argument. Every Arab leader since 1948 has been compared at least once to Hitler. All Arab countries have compared Israel to the Nazis.
Netanyahu even claimed that Hitler would never have perpetrated the holocaust but for the Palestinian Mufti of Jerusalem.
In my book Zionism During the Holocaust I quote Israeli historian, Professor Idith Zertal as describing how, in Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, how Israel has exploited the holocaust:
‘The transference of the holocaust situation on to the Middle East reality… not only created a false sense of the imminent danger of mass destruction. It also immensely distorted the image of the holocaust, dwarfed the magnitude of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, trivializing the unique agony of the victims and the survivors, and utterly demonizing the Arabs and their leaders.[1]
Zertal also described how, during the Nakba in 1948, Yosef Nahmani, a senior officer of Haganah, was stunned by the cruelty of Israeli troops. He described how in Safsaf, the villagers raised the white flag but 60-70 men and women were massacred and asked: ‘Where did they learn cruel conduct such as that of the Nazis?’ According to one officer, ‘The most eager were those who had come from the [concentration] camps…’ According to Zertal
there hasn’t been a war involving Israel ‘that has not been perceived, defined, and conceptualized in terms of the Holocaust.’ Israel has mobilised the Holocaust ‘in the service of Israeli politics’.
Every war has been an ‘existential’ one. The Green Line between Israel and the West Bank was called the ‘Auschwitz borders’ by Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban .
Yehuda Elkana, a child survivor of Auschwitz and Rector of the Central European University in Budapest, before Netanyahu’s anti-Semitic friend Viktor Orban shut it down, wrote that
a profound existential “Angst” fed by a particular interpretation of the lessons of the Holocaust and the readiness to believe that the whole world is against us, and that we are the eternal victim. In this ancient belief, shared by so many today, I see the tragic and paradoxical victory of Hitler. Two nations, metaphorically speaking, emerged from the ashes of Auschwitz: a minority who assert, “this must never happen again,” and a frightened and haunted majority who assert, “this must never happen to us again.
So when we read the statement of Michèle Taylor, U.S. ambassador to the UNHRC that ‘We are appalled,” about Albanese’s comments we should recognise the doublethink of US imperialism. Not once has the US condemned the racism of the apartheid state that it funds.
In the West Bank there are 2 legal systems for 2 different peoples – Palestinians and Jewish settlers, yet the US has the effrontery to condemn Albanese whilst funding Israeli apartheid. Such is the hypocrisy of imperialism and its condemnation of ‘anti-Semitism’.
Whitewashing neo-Nazis: The CPMAJO & the ADL
Among the numerous Zionist groups, who are members of the CPMAJO is the Anti-Defamation League. It describes itself as an anti-hate group though Black Lives Matter repeatedly called it a racist pro-cop organisation.
Up till the war in Ukraine the ADL hadn’t hesitated to call the Azov Battalion a neo-Nazi group. But once the war had started ADL began to white wash it. On November 9 the ADL issued an email stating that it “does not” consider Azov as the “far right group it once was.”
On 17 March Electronic Intifada published an extraordinary interview by Andrew Srulevitch, ADL’s director of European affairs with David Fishman, of the academic committee of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“We’ve seen torchlit marches in the middle of [Kiev] with the red and black flags of UPA … and pictures of Stepan Bandera, who allied with the Nazis during WWII,” Srulevitch asked. “Isn’t that evidence of Nazism in Ukraine?”
Fishman replied that:
“For Ukrainian nationalists, UPA and Bandera are symbols of the Ukrainian fight for Ukrainian independence. The UPA allied with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union for tactical – not ideological – reasons,”
“For Jews, however, not only is allying with the Nazis unforgivable under any circumstance, but historians have documented that Ukrainian nationalists participated together with Germans in the murder of many thousands of Jews in Ukraine,”
As Ali Abunimah noted, Fishman’s lie that Bandera and other Nazi collaborators are “symbols” of the “fight for Ukrainian independence” mirrored the claims from American white supremacists that their display of the Confederate battle flag is merely to honor their “heritage”.
Fishman is an Academic Prostitute willing to harness his academic reputation to the political needs of Zionism. Daniel Lazare, in Who Was Stepan Bandera? wrote that Bandera’s OUN [Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists]
had played a leading role in the anti-Jewish pogroms that broke out in Lviv and dozens of other Ukrainian cities on the heels of the German invasion, and now they served the Nazis by patrolling the ghettoes and assisting in deportations, raids, and shootings.
Beginning in early 1943, OUN members formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Their first major act was an ethnic cleansing campaign aimed at driving Poles out of eastern Galicia and Volhynia.
“When it comes to the Polish question, this is not a military but a minority question,” a Polish underground source quoted a UPA leader as saying. “We will solve it as Hitler solved the Jewish question.”
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe in Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist, wrote that UPA killed 100,000 Poles between 1943 and 1945 and that Orthodox priests blessed the axes, pitchforks, scythes, sickles, knives, and sticks that the peasants it mobilized used to finish them off.
Simultaneously, UPA mounted attacks on Jews that were so ferocious that Jews actually sought the protection of the Germans. “The Banderite bands and the local nationalists raided every night, decimating the Jews,” a survivor testified in 1948. “Jews sheltered in the camps where Germans were stationed, fearing an attack by Banderites. Some German soldiers were brought to protect the camps and thereby also the Jews.”
Yet CPMAJO has no problem with one of its constituent organisations, ADL, whitewashing and justifying Bandera and his OUN/UPA which participated in the murder of 1.5 million Jews with the Nazis.
Tony Greenstein
