Despite Libelling Ken Loach over Perdition – the Zionists Do Not Want to Discuss their Record During the Holocaust or their Relations with the Nazis because it is 'anti-Semitic'
Channel 4
Debate on Perdition
Given my recent conviction
in a trial of Palestine Action activists and the possibility of being
imprisoned I wish to sell my remaining copies of Zionism
During the Holocaust as quickly as possible! I am therefore offering them for sale at cost price.
Prices from the bookshops and Amazon are 50% higher! For those interested
please contact me at tonygreenstein104@gmail.com
Secondly it is remarkable that the only criticism of my book from
the Zionists has come from ex-Jewish
Chronicle hack Jenni Frazer, now writing for Jewish News.
In a piece, written
over a year before my book came out and just after the Zionists had
successfully pressurised Crowdfunder to take down my crowdfunder, Frazer compared
me to Netanyahu:
One is an
egregious and avid Jewish antisemite, the Brighton-based Tony Greenstein. And
the other is the former Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Without reading a word of the book Frazer confidently writes
that ‘the book does honestly just sound
dreadful. …’ I guess it must be dreadful for Zionist propagandists (which
is what ‘journalists’ for the Zionist press are) to read the truth for once.
Frazer described how:
A martyred Greenstein blames
“the Zionist bookburners” for the demise of his Crowdfunder appeal, asking: “What is the difference between Joseph
Goebbels and the Zionist lobby? Answer: Goebbels burnt books after they were
printed. The Zionists try to burn the books before they are printed”. Gosh,
how witty…. ‘
[thanks Jenny that is almost
a compliment! - TG]
Anyone who is
the least bit tempted [to support the Crowdfunding Appeal] ought perhaps to
know that disgraced former MP Chris Williamson, who was suspended from Labour
over allegations of antisemitism (and then resigned from the party before he
was expelled) is an admirer of Greenstein’s and has urged people to donate.
I ought
perhaps to add… that in criticising Netanyahu I do not question his true and
lasting love of Israel. I just question his methodology. What he and Greenstein
have in common, I am afraid, is an overweening sense of self and rightness.
Neither is attractive.
Clearly Jenny thought that associating the ‘disgraced (in whose eyes?) MP Chris Williamson’ with my book would
prove detrimental.
I mention all this because the book has been selling
extremely well. The reviews have all been favourable and it is given a score of
4.8 out of 5 on Amazon.
40 years ago when Lenni Brenner brought out the first book on
Zionist-Nazi Collaboration, Zionism
During the Dictators, the Zionist propaganda machine got to work
and there was actually a debate in the pages of the Jewish Chronicle. Today the only debates in the JC are between right-wing and even
further right Zionists.
4 years later Ken Loach produced Perdition,
a play by Jim Allen. Perdition was based on a libel trial in Israel brought by
Rudolf Kasztner, the former leader of Hungarian Zionism, against a holocaust survivor
who accused him of collaboration. Kasztner had reached a deal with Eichmann for
a train out of Hungary for the Zionist elite. In return he and his followers
collaborated with the Nazis in the deportation of nearly half a million
Hungarian Jews.
The Kasztner Train
Kasztner failed in his action and Israel’s government fell as
a result. It is a trial that the Zionist movement doesn’t like to talk about
today because the facts of the case are so clear. Even many
Zionists now accept that Kasztner was a collaborator but that hasn’t
stopped the attacks against Ken Loach.
Why then have the Zionists, who normally don’t hesitate to
attack anything that upsets them, like the film ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie’
kept so quiet?
The obvious, indeed the only, reason is simply that the
Zionists got badly burned first time around by Brenner’s book and then Perdition. The evidence, not only of collaboration
with the Nazis but active efforts by the Zionists to prevent Jewish refugees
being rescued, is so great that this is a debate that they simply don’t want to
get into.
The Perdition affair
led to a heated debate
on Channel 4 which pitted Brenner, Alan and Marion Woolfson against 3 Zionist propagandists.
By common acclaim the Zionists lost and lost badly.
The usual Zionist response to allegations of collaboration with
the Nazis is, as their faithful pet Owen Jones repeats, that such accusations
are equivalent to saying that the Jews murdered themselves (see No,
Jews did not collaborate in their own genocide).
This is as absurd as saying that to speak of
Quisling is to suggest that all Norwegians collaborated in their own
occupation. Quisling represented a tiny minority of Norway's population and
likewise the Zionists were a tiny minority of the German Jewish population.
Everywhere in the Jewish world the Zionists were in a minority.
No one is suggesting that the Jews collaborated with
the Nazis but that the Zionist leadership did. Once again people like Owen
Jones conflate Zionist with being Jewish and then go on to blame us for their
own anti-Semitism! The fact that only 2%
of German Jews were Zionists in 1933 escape these apologists for Apartheid.
But the record is very clear. As Ben Gurion told the
Executive of Mapai (forerunner of the Israeli Labor Party) on 9 December 1938:
If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.[1]
Jewish synagogue set alight during the Kristallnacht pogrom
This was in the context of the Kristallnacht pogrom
of November 9-10 1938 which shocked the world. The British Government agreed to
let 10,000 German Jewish children into Britain and the Zionists bitterly
opposed it.
According to Zionist ‘logic’ if refugees from Nazi
Germany could be saved by going to any country other than Palestine then they
would simply recreate anti-Semitism there. In his founding pamphlet, The Jewish State Theodor Herzl had
written that the Jews:
…naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted and there our presence produces persecution…. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying Anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.
If countries other than Palestine could save the Jews then
what was the point of having a Jewish state?
It is hard to argue with this logic.
Victor Orban, anti-Semitic Hungarian Prime Minister tours Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Propaganda Museum like so many other anti-Semites and neo-Nazis before him
My book makes a number of points about the Zionist record
before, during and after the holocaust.
i.
Until
the Holocaust, which was seen as the defeat of the Jewish diaspora, Zionism was
in a minority in every Jewish community.
ii.
From
its inception the Zionist movement agreed with the anti-Semites that Jews did
not belong in the countries of their birth. They also understood that without anti-Semitism there
wouldn’t be enough Jewish immigrants to make a future Jewish state viable.
iii.
That
anti-Semites, not least the Nazis, frequently quoted from Zionist writings to ‘prove’ that the
Jews were an alien element.
iv.
That
the Zionists uniquely amongst German Jews were pleased at the accession to
power of the Nazis.
v.
That
the Zionist leadership in Palestine and internationally saw only opportunities
for their movement to grow with the Nazis taking power in Germany.
The International Jewish Boycott Campaign That the Zionists Fiercely Opposed
vi.
Whereas
the vast majority of Jews sought the overthrow of the Nazis through a Boycott
campaign, the Zionists sought to establish relations with the Nazis to their
mutual benefit.
vii. That throughout the war the Zionists
opposed any scheme to rescue Jewish refugees from Nazi occupied Europe whose
destination was not Palestine.
viii. That after the establishment of the
State of Israel nothing changed. From the neo-Nazi Junta in Argentina to the
Azov Battalion in Ukraine, Israel has been happy to supply weapons and training
to anti-Semitic regimes and forces.
ix.
That
Zionism begins from the assumption that Jews are aliens in every country bar
Israel and its goal is the ‘ingathering of the exiles’. The term ‘exile’ in itself means that Jews
living outside Israel are aliens.
When I published my book I took a decision to leave out one
chapter on Cruel Zionism. I have
decided to make it available to people here.
It describes the efforts of the State of Israel
to destabilise the position of Jews
in the Arab lands after 1948.
Israel needed a Jewish working class and the European Ashkenazis
preferred the Oriental or Arab Jews of the Middle East to be that working class.
Also they sought new immigrants in order to make the state demographically
viable and they therefore set about ensuring that the position of Jews in the
Arab world was made untenable.
I copy below links to all the reviews, podcasts and
interviews I’ve done in connection with the book. There are a number of
Amazon reviews, all positive! I’ve also
included one reader’s comment too.
Tony Greenstein
Reviews and Talks
About the Book
CPGB meeting 12.12.2022
Zionism and the holocaust – Future of
the Left Events
Electronic Intifada Podcast
Over the Edge Bookfair Galway
Interview Tony Gosling,
Bristol Community Radio
Official Book Launch Jewish Network 4 Palestine
ReviewJewish Voices for Labour
Book Review Middle East Monitor
Israel and Argentina During the Military
Junta
Why lefties need a big book about anti-Semitism – Kay Green
Penniless Press – reviewed by Alan Dent
Phil Weiss speaks to Tony Greenstein.
Review in Electronic Intifada by Asa Winstanley
How the Zionist movement has used the Holocaust to Sanitise Their Racist Project by Weaponising the Memory of the Murdered 6 Million
Recording of the South Africa PSC and Brighton Book Launches for Zionism During the Holocaust
Brighton Book Launch
How Zionism helped the Nazis perpetrate the Holocaust
Asa Winstanley Review in Electronic
Intifada
Al Hiwar TV - Tony Greenstein speaks about his
book Zionism During the Holocaust
The Struggle - Rescue of Jews was NOT
the Zionist Priority During the Holocaust
Rudolf Vrba, the anti-Zionist Jewish hero who escaped from Auschwitz to bring news of the extermination plans to Hungary's Jews in the Auschwitz Protocols. The Hungarian Zionist leader, Kasztner, suppressed them.
I just wanted to say how glad I am that you have written your book on Zionism
during the holocaust - and glad too that I have read it. Every
page. Including most of the index and bibliography thank you very much,
and not forgetting the fantastic photos, especially of Vrba and Edelman.
I am ashamed to admit how much of the history was unknown to me (not all of
it!), and there was not room in your book to address all of my ignorance, but
you have set down the markers, laid out the case to answer (cases) and I do
thank you for erring on the side of brevity and concision.
(One final point - trivial I know, against what you have accomplished - but
thank you also for putting the footnote numbers in bold! I have not seen
that done before. It is very helpful! I hope it catches on.)
Kind regards
John C
[1] Gelber,
‘Zionist policy and the Fate of European Jewry,’ Yad Vashem Studies
(1939-42) p. 199; see also Segev, The
Seventh Million, p. 28; Teveth p. 855; Piterberg p. 99.