Contents- please click on link to jump to paragraph header:
- What is Zionism?
- Palestine before Zionism
- Modern Israel: a British creation
- The Faisal–Weizmann Agreement
- 1936–1939 Arab Revolt and Britain’s suppression
- Jewry 1900-1945: Bundists, Zionists and Judaism
- Religious Views on Zionism: Jews can’t occupy Israel
- The Haavara Agreement- Nazis and Zionists working together
- Zionists Refused To Save Jews Even As They Were Being Gassed
- Fascism in the UK; Churchill and Auschwitcz
- Jewish Refugees- a tool for Zionism
- Nascent Israel’s first major atrocity- Deir Yassin
- The Nakba leads to Israel
- Descendants of the Israelites?
- Imprisonment without trial
- Attacks on Journalists
- “Peace” Initiatives
- How shit is used for ethnic cleansing
- Civil Resistance – Issa Amro
- Jews who oppose Zionism– Neturei Karta
- Israel: not much of a democracy
- The Future: Two State or Single State Solution?
- Films About Israel, Palestine
- The Start of the Solution- twinning Edinburgh with Gaza
- SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION a direct action network demanding an end to UK complicity with Israeli apartheid. Their main campaign is to shut Elbit Israeli munitions in the UK down. See Case against Palestine Action collapses again
WHAT IS ZIONISM?
First of all, it must be recognised that Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism; it is an idea first dreamed up and promoted by a small number of European Jews- in response, they said, to pogroms in Europe against Jews.
Modern Zionists intentionally mask the true nature of Zionism; therefore, depending upon their level of commitment, they describe it variously as – religious Zionism, political Zionism, secular Zionism, left wing Zionism etc. However, as described by Viennese Jew Nathan Birnbaum in 1883* when he coined the term ‘Zionism’, there is only one type of Zionism, which he said has three basic beliefs:-
- Jews are a distinct nation.
- Jews are destined to reclaim Palestine.
- Palestine is the rightful home for all Jews.
[ All of which are obvious fallacies. Avigail Abarbanel – a Tel Aviv Jewish psychologist commenting on Zionism recently said:-“Zionism is a mental illness which can be treated. It is a symptom of a deeper problem, the delusional belief that you have rights which do not exist.”
Indeed, following the longstanding Zionist imperative of “maximum land, minimum Arabs”, Zionism is in fact a doctrine of dispossession. It’s about dispossessing the rightful inhabitants of Palestine from their land, homes, property and even their identity.]
Although an early advocate, Nathan Birnbaum later completely rejected Zionism (as did the Bund [see below]) in favour of Jewish national autonomy within Europe. He reverted to observant Judaism and re-established an Orthodox party becoming its first General Secretary. It’s probable that after re-considering the tenets of Zionism, Birnbaum realised that in fact Zionism amounted to an alternative religion which is why he turned his back on it and returned to orthodox Judaism.
Others such as Theodore Herzl and Chaim Weizmann were left to continue with the Zionist project. At the first Zionist-Congress in Basle (29-31 August 1897) locations in other continents were considered as options for the establishment of a Jewish State- but a final decision was reached to colonise Palestine.
It was in June 1895 that the founder of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, wrote in his diary of how he proposed to ethnically cleanse the native people from a future Zionist Palestine. “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.” Since then, Zionist policy before they had a state, and Israeli policy since 1948, has been to drive Palestinians into poverty and to drive them out of Palestine. Two well-known Zionists, Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow, were to play important roles in obtaining the Balfour Declaration (see below)
During the colonisation which followed the Balfour Declaration, the indigenous inhabitants, be they Muslims, Christians, Jews etc, who did not agree with Nathan Birnbaum’s original Zionist definition, that Jews are a nation destined to reclaim Palestine, were targeted for removal by Zionist militias, using deadly force if necessary.
Hidden by all the smears and the witch hunt against anti-racists, the public have been deliberately misdirected about true background and nature of Zionism.
Fundamentally, a group of European Zionists, with no connection to the Holy Land, using the undoubted persecution of Jews as an excuse, resolved to dispossess others of their land. At the turn of the 19th century, they decided they would colonise Palestine whether the indigenous occupants, liked it or not. They turned the area they took over, using force, violence and terrorism, into a racist, apartheid State which they called Israel. Ever since then, they have reacted ruthlessly against anyone who has criticised them.
NOTE ON ANTISEMITISM- thanks to Beth Greene from FB
“The use of the word semitic peoples was deliberately changed by Wilhelm Marr who founded the ‘League of Anti-Semites’ in Hamburg in 1879. Marr falsely believed that Jews were a ‘semitic race’
Before that semitic people were the Arabs of the Near East including East Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghan. Semitic tribes spoke three languages: Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. Very similar languages ,all could understand and converse with each other. Even Jesus spoke Aramaic.
In all due respect to the Holocaust survivors they were not semitic; they have lived through Europe for millennia. They knew nothing of the traditions of the lands, the people the cultures. The only real semitic Jews were those who’d remained in the land and still classed themselves as Arab Jews.
During partition almost all of the 8% Semitic Jews opted to remain as Palestinians. Almost all of the natural Jews were Orthodox.
Very rarely has the natural Jewish population of Muslim countries suffered persecution, unlike in Western nations. And yet the West and Israel ceaselessly persecute Muslims.
Finally, Muslims take offence when certain people refer to the Jewish as the Abrahamic people, omitting the fact that they too are genuine Abrahamic people too. Abraham was the father of Ishmael his first-born son, Abraham has always been the father of Islam. The first man to decree one God. “
Zionists only care about Zionists and do not discriminate between different groups of opponents in meting out ‘punishments’. Nor do they want to mix with those who oppose them, they just want them either gone or at best to be passive. In this respect, Israel under Zionism is completely different to places such as South Africa where the colonisers wanted to dominate and exploit the native inhabitants but not necessarily get rid of them. Having said that, there is evidence in Israel, that non-white Jews are now suffering from discrimination. This critique of Zionism can be confirmed by the many quotes on record from early committed Zionists such as Jabotinsky, who made their intentions clear (he later founded the Jewish terrorist group The Irgun ).
Zionist sentiment is also confirmed by the actions of the Israeli government today, with their ‘Nation State Law’ which recognises only Jews as having a right to self-determination (more below). The notion that Zionists are interested in a ‘two state solution’ is totally false and no one should be fooled by it. Zionists would rather have a permanent state of conflict than ever agree willingly to share Palestine with anyone other than Zionists, from wherever they originate. The two-state solution is a smoke screen – a dead cat to distract from the real aim of Zionism – the complete and total theft of the ‘Holy Land’.
To this day, anyone who objects to the Zionist occupation and colonisation is automatically branded by the Zionists as an anti-Semite. This applies to any of their critics, particularly if they are Jewish. In fact it is often those Jews who object to Zionism who are singled out for the harshest treatment.
*Looking through the Israel Education web site ‘www.israeled.org’ for a reference to Nathan Birnbaum/Zionism this appears to be the only mention:-
BIRNBAUM, NATHAN (1864-1937). Writer. B. Vienna. One of the founders of Vienna Jewish Zionist students society, Kadimah, 1882. Edited Jewish nationalist journal, Selbstemancipation, 1885-6, 1890-3, and the Berlin Jewish German-language monthly Zion, 1896-7. Took part in Zionist Congress (Z.C.), 1897, and served for a time as secretary of Z.C., but later discarded Zionism in favour of the view that what was needed for Jewish national regeneration was cultural autonomy for a Yiddish-speaking Jewry in the diaspora. About 1918 turned from this to religion, becoming an active adherent of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish organization, Agudath Israel.
*THE BUND, the General Jewish Workers’ Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia was a Jewish socialist party founded in Russia in 1897; after a certain ideological development it came to be associated with devotion to Yiddish, autonomism, and secular Jewish nationalism, envisaging Jewish life as lived out in Eastern Europe (more below).
Palestine Before Zionism
The Kingdom of Philistine existed around 800BC and emerged at the same time as Israel and Judah. These three kingdoms lasted about 100 years, prior to being wiped out by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Then the Egyptians took over, followed by the Persians. The Torah was written in 340 BC by Jews who had been allowed back to Jerusalem by the Persians. Then the Greeks invaded; in about 200BC the Jews moved to Alexandria briefly- but then helped defeat the Greeks to return to Jerusalem to form Judea in 164BC. 100 years later, this was conquered by the Romans- who let the Jews keep their religion, but installed Herod in 40BC. There were 3 revolts from 66BC to 135AD against the Romans by the Jews, but they were all suppressed and the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Hadrian abolished Judaea and made Syria Palestina.
About then the diaspora began, driven by the Romans, with many Jews sold into slavery; others migrated to other parts of the Roman empire. By 300 AD the Roman empire was split and the Eastern half, under Constantin, issued the Edict of Milan, which gave legal status to Christianity, Judaism and other religions within the Roman Empire. Christianity’s new home became Jerusalem.
476AD saw the end of the Romans, defeated by the Germanic visigoths. But the Eastern Roman Empire survived, becoming the Byzantium Empire, which flourished for 1,000 years; the land of Palestine was part of it. The number of Jews there was much depleted- although they continued to flourish in North Africa, along the fringes of what had been the Western Roman Empire.
In 620AD Islam was born and the Arabs soon conquered Palestine and all the lands from Libya to Syria, leaving the Byzantium Empire in what is now Turkey. The Jews supported the Arabs at this time, in the hope that the Muslims would help them against the Old Roman and Byzantium Empire- which was largely Christian. The Arabs reciprocated, tolerating the Judaic religion because of its monotheistic beliefs. From this time forward the land was knows as Falastin, its Arabic name- but to those living in Britain at the time, it was Palestine. In 685 AD the Arabs built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, at which point Jerusalem became the holy site of the three monotheistic religions- Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The Muslim influence remained, right through the Ottoman Empire, which ran from 1299 until 1922 when the Europeans carved up what had been Arab lands- with the British taking Palestine.
The full history of the area is covered in 2000 years of Jewish History | from Destruction to Creation | Israel | Palestine, an Indian video which is somewhat pro-Israeli, but which accurately covers the period up to the Ottoman Empire. Also of interest is the TV series by John McCarthy “The walls Come Tumblin Down” which illustrates the archeological truth behind the Phillistines and the Israelites of biblical times- and shows much of the old testament to be an untrue reflection of history. For example, there is no evidence that the Israelites were slaves who fled from Egypt, for at the time Canaa was an Egyptian province; King David never lived in Jerusalem; the Phillistines arrived from Greece in 1200 BC whereupon the Canaanites took to the hills and morphed into the Israelites.
Furthermore, throughout much of the time of the old testament, the Israelites worshipped more than one God. Their name comes from the God they worshipped at the time: Rael- but they also worshipped Ashara, the female Goddess. Judaism as a religion evolved very much later, in Judea. At one stage its base was in Jerusalem, at the time when it grew to be the walled city that was the last redoubt of the Jews. At this time, in 840 BC, they were under attack by the Assyrians, who had already conquered Israel. It was finally taken by the Babylonians – who conquered Jerusalem in 722 BC.
The population changes of Palestine over the past 500 years helps give a sense of the changing demographics (from www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present)
Modern Israel: a British creation
It was Britain who effectively created Israel. The Palestinian land it occupies was taken by the British from the Turks in late WW1 and was then effectively ceded to the Zionist Federation through our then-Tory Government’s “Balfour Declaration” in 1917. It was given away before even the UK took it.
This was in spite of the fact that the Mandate territory of Palestine had already been included in territories promised to the Arabs during the First World War, an implementation of self-determination according to the MacMahon Letter (MacMahon was the British High Commissioner in Cairo acting under the instruction of the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey).
[There is more on Balfour and Hamas at the Twin Gaza site at www.twingaza.com/this-siege-is-illegal ]
Balfour of Lothian
The Balfour family seat lies a few miles from Edinburgh; he was educated in Edinburgh. His views founded Israel. The following paragraph is an extract from an article by one of the Edina-Gaza twinning activists, at Edina, sister-up with Gaza! – Bella Caledonia:
“Balfour was very much part of the British establishment of the time, he was a Tory, a Foreign Minister under Lloyd-George and had been Prime Minister of the UK. Like many of his class, he was also an evangelical Christian who believed that a return to Palestine by the Jews would herald the second coming of Christ and their conversion to Christianity, or their burning in hell. It was a way these ‘barbecuing Christians’, as Israeli Historian Ilan Pappé calls them, could get rid of the Jews from Britain or Europe and get the only Jew they wanted; Jesus Christ. The fact that Zionism was originally a Christian ideology surprised me, as did the demonstrable anti-Semitism of its adherents. Nonetheless, it was later picked up by a small minority of Jews and, especially after WWII, attracted many Jews of widely disparate values. It has a history of its own which I won’t burden you with here, but it grew and evolved into the settler-colonial state ideology we know today. But it began with Balfour.”
The Balfour declaration was included in the Mandate for Palestine—a document issued by the League of Nations in 1923, that gave Great Britain the responsibility of establishing a Jewish national homeland in British-controlled Palestine.
At that point only 5% of the population were Jewish. As Alison Weir in her If Americans Knew blog observes “Israel long claimed that its 1948 creation was on “a land without a people for a people without a land,” and many may still believe this founding myth. The fact is, however, that the land was originally inhabited by an indigenous population that was approximately 80 percent Muslim, 15 percent Christian, and a little under 5 percent Jewish. “
SCHOOLTEACHERS: If you work with young people and you want them to focus on the creation of Israel, please subscribe and download this excellent educational resource https://schoolhistory.co.uk/modern/the-balfour-declaration-of-1917/ (and if you are in media studies and want to show how Zionist teachers choose to present Israel’s history, go to the US Center for Israel Education site).
Zionists claim that Palestinians sold them the land; see Zionists often justify the creation of the Israeli state on Palestinian soil by arguing that the land was legitimately purchased. What is… | Instagram post from red. (@redstreamnet)
The Faisal–Weizmann Agreement
Zionists were duplicitous in convincing the British that their move to Palestine would be accepted by the locals. The Faisal–Weizmann Agreement was a 3 January 1919 agreement between Emir Faisal, the third son of Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, King of the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz, and Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader who had negotiated the 1917 Balfour Declaration with the British government, signed two weeks before the start of the Paris Peace Conference. Together with a letter written by T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) in Faisal’s name to Felix Frankfurter (Leader of Zionists in the USA) in March 1919, it was one of two documents used by the Zionist delegation at the Peace Conference to argue that the Zionist plans for Palestine had Arab approval.
Main points of the agreement
- The agreement committed both parties to conducting all relations between the groups by the most cordial goodwill and understanding, to work together to encourage immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale while protecting the rights of the Arab peasants and tenant farmers, and to safeguard the free practice of religious observances. The Muslim Holy Places were to be under Muslim control.
- The Zionist movement undertook to assist the Arab residents of Palestine and the future Arab state to develop their natural resources and establish a growing economy.
- The boundaries between an Arab State and Palestine should be determined by a Commission after the Paris Peace Conference.
- The parties committed to carrying into effect the Balfour Declaration of 1917, calling for a Jewish national home in Palestine.
- Disputes were to be submitted to the British Government for arbitration.
Weizmann signed the agreement on behalf of the Zionist Organization, while Faisal signed on behalf of the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Hedjaz.
The agreement had been presented to Emir Faisal in his room at the Carlton Hotel on 3 January- in English, which Faisal could not read, and its contents were explained to Faisal by Lawrence as the sole translator. Faisal thought that by signing the agreement he would get the British to agree to his Arabic kingdom. He signed the document in the same meeting, without consulting his advisors awaiting him in a separate room, but added a caveat in Arabic next to his signature, such that Faisal considered the agreement was conditional on Palestine being within the area of Arab independence. He wrote: “Provided the Arabs obtain their independence as demanded in my Memorandum dated the 4th of January 1919, to the Foreign Office of the Government of Great Britain, I shall concur in the above articles. But if the slightest modification or departure were to be made [sc. in relation to the demands of the memorandum] I shall not then be bound by a single word of the present Agreement which shall be deemed void and of no account or validity, and I shall not be answerable in any way whatsoever.“
The Zionist Organization submitted the Agreement to the Paris Peace Conference without the caveat. The Conference then agreed to the settlement of Palestine by the Jews.
More on the background to Palestine’s status after WW1 here.
Palestine under the British Mandate
How did the UK come to rule Palestine? The Sykes–Picot Agreement, was a secret agreement concluded between the United Kingdom and France in 1916. The main aim of the British and French was to agree on who should get which sphere of influence in Ottoman territories in Southwest Asia. The British wanted to control the Suez Canal, to facilitate shipping to India. When Germany lost the war, the Ottoman Empire was broken up and Britain took Palestine.
From 1918 up to 1939 Britain gave 656,700 European Jews visas to settle in Palestine; during their mandate, they changed the Jewish element from 8.1% of the population to 82%- a tenfold increase over a 20-year period. Fundamentally, Israel was created by European antisemitism. At the same time, the British supported Zionists to build the tools of state, including massive civic buildings and power stations, whilst denying the Palestinians support to do the same. Problems were compounded when Zionist trade unions excluded Palestinians from working in the industries that Jews had moved to control.
This film on the Holy Land set in Palestine 1941 shows the slow ascent of Zionism in Palestine. Fairly pro-Zionist, it features the government buildings and power station erected using Nazi money, built by Zionist Jews, in preparation for their creation of Israel. At that point the country was being called “New Palestine”. The film conveniently ignores the recent suppression of Palestinian rebellion by the British. View the film at https://youtu.be/IGUyiLeCPdQ
Following 1918, Britain helped revive the Hebrew Language, giving it immediate official recognition, printing it on the stamps, currency, government papers and all the places that demonstrated the Zionist claim on Palestine. Prior to this time, Hebrew was seldom spoken; it largely existed in religious texts.
After World War I, when Palestine came under British rule, first under the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration and then under the Mandate for Palestine, Hebrew continued to develop as the main language of the Yishuv, or Jewish population of Palestine. It was legislated under the Mandate that English, Hebrew, and Arabic would be the official spoken languages of Palestine.
In 1919, a centralized Jewish school system in which the language of instruction was Hebrew was established. As the Yishuv grew, the immigrants arriving from the diaspora did not speak Hebrew as a mother tongue, and learned it as a second language either prior to their immigration or in Palestine, while their children picked up Hebrew as their native language. At this time, the use of Hebrew as the lingua franca of the Yishuv was already a fait accompli, and the revival process was no longer a process of creation, but a process of expansion. In Tel Aviv, the Legion of the Defenders of the Language was established, which worked to enforce Hebrew use. Jews who were overheard speaking other languages on the street were admonished: “Jew, speak Hebrew” (Yehudi, daber ivrit/יהודי, דבר עברית), or, more alliteratively, “Hebrew [man], speak Hebrew” (Ivri, daber ivrit/עברי, דבר עברית) was a campaign initiated by Ben-Yehuda’s son, Itamar Ben-Avi.
The Academy of Hebrew Language focused on the structure and the spelling of Hebrew and prompted the issues about the further expansion of the use of Hebrew in Mandatory Palestine. The Academy worked with the Language College to publish the Ben-Sira in a scientific form.
The British renamed the geographical-administrative areas and gave them Hebrew names, at a time when Jews counted for only between 5% – 10% of the population; put simply, they were planning for Israel.
Land for Zionist settlers was acquired through the Jewish National Fund and its predecessors Jewish National Fund: A century of land theft, belligerence and erasure | Middle East Eye
1936–1939 Arab Revolt and Britain’s suppression
The revolt of 1936-1939, also known as the Great Palestinian Revolt, is one of the formative events of Palestinian nationalism. Driven by resentment with British rule and with the Zionist settlement of Palestine, the revolt began as a general strike but evolved into an armed insurrection. Diplomatic efforts led the British to recommend dividing Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, which the Arab side rejected. At the peak of the revolt some 10,000 Palestinian rebels took part in the fighting. Attacks were mainly directed at British installations such as the Trans Arabian Pipeline and railways, and to a lesser extent against Jewish settlements, secluded Jewish neighbourhoods in the mixed cities, and Jews, both individually and in groups.
The following images reflect the British response to the revolt and their attacks on Palestinian resisters.
The British response to the revolt was harsh and it expanded its military force in Palestine, deploying over 100,000 troops. Imprisonment without charges or trial, curfews, whip lashings, house demolitions, and collective punishment against villages and families were some of the practices it employed to quell the revolt. An estimated 10 percent of the adult Palestinian male population were killed, wounded, deported, or imprisoned. More than 120 Palestinians were sentenced to death of whom 40 were hanged.
[The Israelis collective punishment policy, whereby the Israeli occupation forces blow up the houses of Palestinian prisoners, was not invented by them; the British army applied the same procedure when they were in Palestine between 1917- 1948. Israel revived the same British martial law in occupied Palestine.]
The revolt was a disaster for the Palestinians and it failed to achieve its two goals; the uprooting of the Zionist settlement and the termination of the British Mandate. Due to the British crackdown, the Palestinians were left without a local leadership, as most of their leaders either fled the country or were deported by the authorities. Infighting between rival families deepened rifts in Palestinian society causing irreparable damage, all while the Zionists mobilized and British-Zionist cooperation increased. Those rifts would contribute to the Palestinians’ unpreparedness for the 1948 war (more here).
The National Army Museum website has a page The British Army in Palestine | National Army Museum (nam.ac.uk) which is very informative.
UK apology sought for British war crimes in Palestine
On the 6th Oct 2022, Munib al-Masri, 88, a close friend and supporter of the late Palestinian political leader Yasser Arafat, brought a petition against the UK Government, seeking an apology for British war crimes in Palestine. The BBC reported online that “the 300-page dossier of evidence asks for a formal acknowledgement and apology for abuses during the period of British rule in Palestine from 1917 until 1948, after which Britain rapidly withdrew and the State of Israel was declared.
A BBC review of the historical evidence involved includes details of arbitrary killings, torture, the use of human shields and the introduction of home demolitions as collective punishment. Much of it was conducted within formal policy guidelines for UK forces at the time or with the consent of senior officers. (see Palestinian petitions UK for apology over alleged abuses during British rule | Palestinian territories | The Guardian)
The Newsnight 9-minute programme on this is here:
Jewry 1900-1945: Bundists, Zionists and Judaism
Many Jews refused to support Zionism and opposed emigration to Palestine. For religious reasons primarily; they knew the Torah forbade it. (see “Religious Views on Zionism” below). Others declared that to move there was to accommodate European antisemitism. They opposed Zionism politically.
[from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundism :] Founded in Russia in 1897, the Jewish Labour Bund was a trade union as well as a political party; its initial purpose was the organisation of the Jewish proletariat in Russia, Poland and Lithuania. It was founded at the same time as the World Zionist Organization.
The concept of Doikayt was central to the Bundist ideology, expressing its focus on solving the challenges confronting Jews in the country in which they lived, versus the “thereness” of the Zionist movement, which posited the necessity of an independent Jewish polity in its ancestral claimed homeland, i.e., the Land of Israel, to secure Jewish life. The Bund (“Bund” , German for “Confederation” or “Band”) eventually came to strongly oppose Zionism, arguing that immigration to Palestine was a form of escapism. At that time, there were around 24,000 Jews in Palestine.
Zionism encouraged Jews to migrate to Palestine and by 1939 there were 449,000. But at that time there were 16.6 Million Jews worldwide- so under 3% of Jews had declared for Zionism strongly enough to make the move to Palestine. (But these Jews were to become the foundation for Israel.) The majority of the world’s Jews were in the Bundist camp- i.e. firmly rejecting Zionism. Bundism came to be associated with devotion to Yiddish, autonomism, and secular Jewish nationalism, envisaging Jewish life as lived out in Eastern Europe, sharply opposed to Zionism and other conceptions of a world-embracing Jewish national identity.
The Bundists were therefore amongst the 6 million Jews that Hitler gassed; they did not want to emigrate to Palestine (which Hitler had been encouraging Jews to do).
Where were the Catholics in all this?
In 1933 Cardinal Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII, signed the Hitler Concordat; whereby the Vatican accepted National Socialism.
There were 45 million Protestants and 22 million Catholic Christians in Germany in 1933. Thus the German Catholics accepted the Nazis- and then supported Franco, in his violent overthrow of the democratically elected Spanish socialist government of 1936. Hitler supported Fascist Franco and used Spain as the training ground for his bombers- for the war he was soon to launch in Europe. The Vatican was silent about antisemitism up to and throughout WW2 – reputedly to ensure the protection of the 7,000 Jews in Rome. However, it is further reputed to have helped some top Nazis to escape to South America after the fall of Berlin. It should be noted, though, that at a local level in occupied countries many Catholic clergy spoke out against the persecution of the Jews. The Nazis just ignored them.
Throughout the 20th Century, the Vatican were important and vociferous players in the internationalisation of Palestine, in their enthusiasm to protects Jerusalem’s holy sites as the birthplace of Christianity. It was this very internationalisation which the Zionists exploited, to their advantage.
Prior to the creation of the State of Israel in May 1948, the Holy See refrained from taking sides in the Arab-Jewish conflict, preferring to adhere to its foundational principle of “remaining [a] stranger to all merely temporal conflicts” – as provided in the 1929 Lateran treaty.
The initial Vatican response to the establishment of Israel was not supportive. In an article in L’Osservatore Romano, published the day Israel proclaimed its independence, in May 1948, “Modern Zionism is not the true heir of Biblical Israel,” said the Vatican organ, “Christianity [is] the true Israel.” The Vatican did not recognise Israel until 1993.
Note- it opposes Israel’s Nation State law of 2018, for it relegates Palestinian Christians to second-class citizens, as well as Arabs.]
But generally the Catholics and all other Christian faiths are unwilling to make too much of a fuss about what Israel is doing in the Holy Land. Stuart Littlewood commented in July 2022 about The utter uselessness of world churches: Western Christendom loses all credibility as Israeli theft of the Holy Land continues – Redress Information & Analysis (redressonline.com)
Religious Views on Zionism
Whilst secular (non-religious) Jews supported Bundism in the period 1900 to the late 1930s, Orthodox Jews opposed the move to Palestine on religious grounds.
This is because the Bible and the Torah both declare that Jews cannot return to their homeland until the Messiah has come. This website lists the biblical sources verifying this: Where in the Torah does it say Jews can’t have a state? | Torah Jews (truetorahjews.org). Christians will find it in the bible in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
Jewish Orthodox views hold that the Messiah will be descended from his father through the line of King David and will gather the Jews back into the Land of Israel, and usher in an era of peace.
And so much of what Zionism does breaches the ten commandments, which are the first of the 613 commandments that Judaism says were given by God to the Jewish people: see The Ten Commandments (jewishvirtuallibrary.org). The ones broken by Zionists on a regular basis are these, in their theft of Palestinian land and in the actions of the Israel Occupation Force: Thou shalt not murder; Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not covet anything that belongs to thy neighbour.
Therefore, up until WW2, the majority of Jews rejected Zionism; they were content to live in the areas they had settled. They knew that the Messiah had not come, therefore they must make their homes in the places they had settled, in the diaspora.
The Neturei Karta Orthodox Jews continue to espouse this:
The Neturei Karta Orthodox Jews oppose the modern nation of Israel as a godless and secular state, defying God’s will to send his messiah at the time he has preordained. There are just 5,000 Neturei Karta Jews but many more share their view that Israel is not their legitimate home. (see Jews who oppose Zionism below)
[from https://www.britannica.com/topic/Diaspora-Judaism] Although Reform Jews still commonly maintain that the Diaspora in the United States and elsewhere is a valid expression of God’s will, the Central Conference of American Rabbis in 1937 officially abrogated the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885, which declared that Jews should no longer look forward to a return to Israel. This new policy actively encouraged Jews to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland. On the other hand, the American Council for Judaism, founded in 1943 (but now moribund), declared that Jews are Jews in a religious sense only and any support given to a Jewish homeland in Palestine would be an act of disloyalty to their countries of residence.
[From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_in_Judaism ] [As noted,] Orthodox views hold that the Messiah will be descended from his father through the line of King David, and will gather the Jews back into the Land of Israel, usher in an era of peace, build the Third Temple, and so on.
Belief in the future advent of the Messiah is one of the fundamental requisites of the Jewish faith, concerning which Maimonides has written: “Anyone who does not believe in him, or who does not wait for his arrival, has not merely denied the other prophets, but has also denied the Torah and Moses, our Rabbi.”
We at ODP posit that those Zionist Jews who move to Israel, claiming the Bible and the Torah says it is theirs, are wrong; the Messiah has not yet come; they make a false claim on the land. They ignore this fundamental tenet of their religion, so eager are they to seize Palestinian territory.
“Jewish Power” was written by Paul Eisen in 2004: The crime against the Palestinian people is being committed by a Jewish state with Jewish soldiers using weapons displaying Jewish religious symbols, and with the full support and complicity of the overwhelming mass of organised Jews worldwide. But to name Jews as responsible for this crime seems impossible to do.
The Haavara Agreement- Nazis and Zionists working together
Over the critical 20 years following the Balfour Declaration of 1917, we British gave great support to Jews moving to Palestine, recognising their civic bodies and ignoring indigenous Palestinian ones. At the same time, under the Haavara Agreement, Hitler was taking money from Jews being forced to flee in Germany and making it available to Zionists in Palestine- on the condition that it was spent on German goods. The Haavara (Transfer) Agreement was negotiated by Eliezer Hoofein, director of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, was agreed to by the Reich Economics Ministry in 1933, and continued, with declining German government support, until it was wound up in 1939. Under the agreement, Jews emigrating from Germany could use their assets to purchase German-manufactured goods for export, thus salvaging their personal assets during emigration. The agreement provided a substantial export market for German factories in British-ruled Palestine. Between November, 1933, and 31 December 1937, 77,800,000 Reichmarks, or $22,500,000, (values in 1938 currency) worth of goods were exported to Jewish businesses in Palestine under the program. By the time the program ended with the start of World War II, the total had risen to 105,000,000 marks (about $35,000,000, 1939 values).
Nazi support was important in building up the power of the Jews in Palestine, using their cash for getting land, erecting important buildings; essentially giving the Jews in Palestine all the trappings of a nascent state.
Reminder note: Essentially, Jews in Europe fell into two camps- the Bundists, who wanted to remain in Europe; and the Zionists, who wanted all Jews to move to Palestine. It was the Zionists who then took power from the local Palestinians, as they became employers, building factories and power stations- and who worked closely with the supportive British authorities running the Mandate there.
This led to a great uprising of Palestinians from 1936 to1939, which was brutally suppressed by the British Army.
After war began, Hitler started slaughtering Jews in earnest. But it was not the Zionists he was slaughtering, for they had mostly gone to Palestine. It was the Bundists that Hitler largely eradicated- the ones that stayed behind.
Apparently, during the late 1930s, Yitzhak Shamir (who was later to become Israeli Prime Minister), and his small Zionist faction had become great admirers of the Italian Fascists and German Nazis, and after World War II broke out, they had made repeated attempts to contact Mussolini and the German leadership in 1940 and 1941, hoping to enlist in the Axis Powers as their Palestine affiliate, and undertake a campaign of attacks and espionage against the local British forces, then share in the political booty after Hitler’s inevitable triumph. More here
At the Tehran conference of Dec 2006; “The Holocaust, Global Vision”, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss from Neturei Karta reported some shocking revelations. (see Rabbi Yisroel D. Weiss Opening Remarks Holocaust Conference (nkusa.org))
In 1943 the Britons wanted to take the Jews into their colonies; it is clear the UK Parliament wanted to pass such a law, but the Zionists lobbied and they said to Churchill “only to Palestine” – and at that time Britain did not want to bring so many people there and the whole plan was put aside.
The Germans too, during the war, initially wanted to deport Jews (it was cheaper than killing them). The Zionist Federation opposed this- they told the Nazis that the only place Jews should be sent to was… Palestine! But few Jews wanted to go- only a few thousand went. This was partly because the Zionists only accepted rich young Jews. If you were old or poor, they were content to let the gas chambers be your destiny. Much of this is covered in Tony Greenstein’s new book (out November 2022) on Zionism during the Holocaust. There are some revelations. Hear the 90-minute podcast interview with him on it at http://firstname.lastname@example.org/Tony%20Greenstein%20Zionism%20During%20The%20Holocaust%20(2023).mp3
Also see: Tony Greenstein’s Blog: Why Ken Livingstone was right when he said that the Nazis supported the German Zionists against their Jewish opponents (azvsas.blogspot.com)
At the time that Zionists were building up their strength through trading with Nazi Germany, the British were doing their part. Many of the tactics Israel now uses against Palestinians were pioneered by the British. One such tactic was punitive house demolitions, carried out as a measure of deterrence. Another was administrative detention, or the internment of prisoners for an indefinite period of time without subjecting them to trial or charges. The British used those tactics as a series of reprisals and collective punishments during the Arab Revolt that began in 1936, where a Palestinian nationalistic movement rose to protest British rule and the official support for the increase in Jewish immigration. Did British Mandate pave way for Israeli occupation? | Human Rights News | Al Jazeera. The news item “UK apology sought for British war crimes in Palestine” at www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-63145992 gives some idea of what our country did there in the 1930s. The BBC Newsnight broadcast on 6th October 2022 provides visual shocking evidence.
3 million Yiddish-speaking Jews lived in Poland before WW2; read How Poland’s antisemites helped colonise Palestine | Middle East Eye
Zionists Refused To Save Jews Even As They Were Being Gassed
Over the period 1942 to 1944, Rabbi Weissmandl of Hungary made a deal with Eichman, whereby the Germans would “sell” the Jews to him- with the upshot that the Nazis would not have killed any Jews in Hungary, along with a third of the Jews in Slovakia that were still alive. [This was revealed by Rabbi Weiss at the Holocaust conference in Tehran.]
Those with the necessary funds were the Zionists – and so Rabbi Weissmandl approached them and sought their help.
Help was refused: the Zionists declared “only through the bloodshed of Jews will we get the land, because when the victors will divide the land after the war, then they will give us [the Zionists] the land in return for Jewish bloodshed, and that is what we want.” At the Tehran conference, Rabbi Weiss noted “They were sacrificing human beings on the altar of Zionism. Because they were the antithesis to Judaism, against God, human lives were sacrificed to reach their goal.”
Read the evidence: the following letters are taken from: The messages the Zionists ignored: Rabbi Weissmandel’s plea for help (fantompowa.net):
After the war, Rabbi Weissmandel expressed his frustration in The Holocaust Victims Accuse, a book by Rabbi Moshe Shonfeld (Neturei Karta, USA, New York, 1977): Why didn’t they try, from their place of freedom, to break through to us and send us a secret messenger? This question becomes greater when we see that the governments of Czechoslovakia and Poland, which were in free lands, sent secret messengers daily to their loyal people in the occupied countries. And therefore our amazement grows. Why don’t the great organizers of Jewry use these messengers if they have no other way? And during all of the years since we developed this method, those in the free countries did not once attempt to send messengers to us – rather, WE had to send them and to pay for them. How many did we send them only for the to return empty-handed – because those over there did not have time to answer ?
In answer to this, Rabbi Shofeld quotes the Zionist leader Yitzhak Greenbaum, who, after the war, stated: When they asked me, couldn’t you give money out of the United Jewish Appeal funds for the rescue of Jews in Europe, I said, ‘NO!’ and I say again ‘NO!’ . . . one should resist this wave which pushes the Zionist activities to secondary importance.
Here is the orginal letter from Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel:May 15th, 1944 – In a cave near Lublin, Poland.
“Sholom and Greetings.
We send you this special message to inform you that yesterday the Germans began the deportation of Jews from Hungary. It is the beginning of deportation of all the Hungarian Jews.
Every day, twelve thousand souls are being taken off. Four deportations of forty-five such train-loads move daily out of Hungary. Within twenty six days all that area will have been deported.
The deported ones go to Auschwitz to be put to death by cyanide gas. A great number are dead on arrival. The Germans allow a few of the strongest to stay alive. Those who are allowed to live are branded with a number burned into their arm and the Star of David burned into their chest.
Most of these privileged ones die within a month. Others take their place.
Those who go directly from the train to the gas chambers to be suffocated are not branded. They are completely consumed in the ovens and leave no evidence behind. These are 95% of each transport.
The dead bodies are burned in specially made ovens. Each oven burns 12 bodies an hour. In February there were 36 ovens burning. We have learned that more have been built.
Information supplied us by a few eyewitnesses reveals that in February there were four disposal buildings. We have learned that more have been built since then.
Formerly, the Germans killed and burned the Jews in the Forest of Birkenwald, near Auschwitz. Now the killing and burning take place in the buildings shown on the enclosed map.
In December, the Germans built special trains to transport the Jews of Hungary to their extermination. This is the schedule of Auschwitz, from yesterday to the end; twelve thousand Jews – men, women and children, old men, infants, healthy and sick ones – are to be suffocated daily and their bones and ashes are to be used to fertilize the German fields.
And you – our brothers in Palestine, in all the countries of freedom, and you, ministers of all the kingdom – how do you keep silent in the face of this great murder ? Silent while thousand on thousands, reaching now to six million Jews, were murdered. And silent now while tens of thousands are still being murdered and waiting to be murdered? Their destroyed hearts cry to you for help as they bewail your cruelty. Brutal you are and murderers too you are, because of the cold-bloodedness of the silence in which you watch.
Because you sit with folded arms and you do nothing, though you could stop or delay the murder of Jews at this very hour.
In the name of the blood of the thousands on thousands who have been murdered we beg, we plead, we cry out and demand that you take action, that you do deeds now – at once !
That the Ministers of Kingdoms and all the Lands raise a loud and piercing outcry that must enter the ears of the world, the ears of the German people, the ears of the Hungarian people. Let them cry out a warning to the German murderers. Let them proclaim that they know all that has been done in the past, and that which is still being done. And the Pope, himself, should join in this cry of outrage against the German murderers.
Let this outcry be heard over all the radios and read in all the newspapers of the world, that unless they stop at once the deportations of Hungary’s Jews – then will Germany be forever exiled from civilization.
We ask that the crematoria in Auschwitz be bombed from the air. They are sharply visible, as shown on the enclosed map.
Such bombing will delay the work of the German murderers.
What is more important – to bomb persistently all the roads leading from Eastern Hungary to Poland and to bomb persistently the bridges in the neighborhood of Karpatarus. Drop all other business to get this done. Remember that one day of your idleness kills twelve thousand souls.
You, our brothers, sons of Israel, are you insane? Don’t you know the Hell around us? For whom are you saving your money?
How is it that all our pleadings affect you less than the whimpering of a beggar standing in your doorway? Murderers! Madmen! Who is it that gives charity? You who toss a few pennies from your safe homes? Or we who give our blood in the depths of Hell?
There is only one thing that may be said in your exoneration – that you do not know the truth. This is possible. The villain does his job so shrewdly that only a few guess the truth. We have told you the truth several times. Is it possible that you believe our murderers more than you believe us? May God open your eyes and give you heart to rescue in these last hours the remainder.
Most important is that which I write about the bombing of the Auschwitz Crematoria and the bridges leading to them.
Such bombing can vitally delay the evil work of our slaughterers. And God who keeps alive the last remnant of Israel will show His mercy for which I pray. I pray as I write out of the sea of tears of the people of Israel. We wait God’s help.
One from the Market who witnesses the woes of his people”
(Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel, Exhibit of the Defence, no. 36, State Attorney v. M. Grünwald, District Court, Jerusalem, CC124/53)
At the Tehran conference, Rabbi Weiss posed the question as to why at the Nuremburg trials the Germans were taken and had to answer for their crimes, but the Zionists were never questioned.
Fascism in the UK; Churchill and Auschwitz
The 1930s in Britain were politically turbulent. In the aftermath of the Russian revolution, the country had became polarised, as support for the Labour Party took hold. [To get a flavour of change in just one city, watch Radical Reekie, a chronicle of social and political change in Edinburgh, from 1900 to 1940- the 23 minute video is on the Kids not Suits website at VIDEOS – Kids Not Suits.com].
The establishment of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) reflected rising antisemitism in Europe. Britain itself was not especially kind to Jews escaping Hitler in the 1930s; much is made of the Kindertransports, but it is the Quakers, not the British Government, that we should thank for organising those. Through their efforts, the United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. Their parents? The British kept them out. The USA was much worse- it kept out both the parents and the children (see Kindertransport – Wikipedia).
When war broke out, Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and National Socialists became proscribed and disbanded; but many of its members were already active in the UK security services: MI5 and MI6 [as chronicled by Henry Hemming in “Maxwell Knight- MI5’s Greatest Spymaster”]… their anti-lefty, anti-Jewish views were not an issue in an establishment utterly focussed on maintaining the empire.
(Throughout the 20s and 30s the British security services had monitored and infiltrated left-wing organisations and imprisoned communists: any grouping sympathetic to the USSR was a target.). At this time, the British were enthusiastically encouraging Jews to move to Palestine, assisting them in building up the tools of state. Israel would be the child of European antisemitism.
During World War Two, many wonder why the British did not act to protect Jews either held in concentration camps or being liquidated in Hitlers’ “final solution” . Churchill certainly knew what was going on as early as 1940. Jan Karski, Polish soldier, resistance-fighter, and diplomat, made sure he did. He is known for having acted as a courier in 1940–1943 to the Polish government-in-exile and to Poland’s Western Allies about the situation in German-occupied Poland. He reported about the state of Poland, its many competing resistance factions, and also about Germany’s destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and its operation of extermination camps on Polish soil such as Auschwitz-Birkenau that were murdering Jews, Poles, and others.
Karski was a Catholic; he was smuggled in and out of the Warsaw Ghetto to gain first-hand intelligence. In 1942 he was selected by the Polish Government in exile to visit a concentration camp and bring evidence to the UK and US Governments. Disguised as an Estonian camp guard, he visited what he thought was Bełżec death camp. It appears that Karski in fact witnessed a Durchgangslager (‘transit camp’) for Bełżec in the town of Izbica Lubelska, midway between Lublin and Bełżec. Based on Karski’s microfilm, Polish Foreign Minister Count Edward Raczyński provided the Allies with one of the earliest and most accurate accounts of the Nazi Holocaust. Raczyński’s Note, addressed to the governments of the United Nations on 10 December 1942, was later published along with other documents in a widely distributed leaflet entitled The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland.
Karski tried to meet Churchill; but Churchill was not interested; Karski was palmed off with foreign secretary Anthony Eden. The British view was that all that mattered was defeating the Germans. Churchill would not send British planes to bomb the transport railway lines or to drop propaganda on the German people, most of whom were ignorant of the gas chambers. In fact, the bulk of the Germans swallowed the Nazi films showing Jews enjoying their new lives – a case in point showing the faked benevolent treatment the Jewish “residents” of Theresienstadt supposedly enjoyed. (All later died in Auschwitz).
It appears that Churchill, alongside much of the security services, was not so concerned in the fate of the Jews; for these right-wingers, a key objective of WW2 was about securing the British Empire, for this was, at base, a war between imperialist Britain and would-be imperialist Germany, rather than a battle against fascism. So Karski went to the US to seek support there and in 28 July 1943, met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Oval Office, the first eyewitness to tell Roosevelt of the situation in Poland and the Jewish Holocaust. But Roosevelt asked him no questions about the slaughter of Europe’s Jews.
Amazingly, two Jews escaped from Auschwitz and also set out to tell the world what was going on. Walter Rosenberg arrived in the infamous camp in July 1942 aged 17 and two years later managed to escape with fellow prisoner Fred Wetzler in April 1944- by hiding in a wood pile; the SS rarely failed to stop escapees (who they publicly hanged) but these two Jews were smart. They trekked across Nazi-occupied Poland to Slovakia where they wrote a 32-page report- the first detailed account of the mass slaughter at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It got to Churchill, Roosevelt and the pope and ultimately helped save lives… for when the Allies finally reached the camps, they were prepared for what they needed to do to save those Jews that remained alive.
(Read about these two Jews in “The Escape Artist” by Jonathan Freedland)
It was only when the Russian, American and British armies got to the death camps in 1945 that the world woke up to what had been Hitler’s final solution.
(NOTE: To this day, Israel relentlessly milks the Holocaust in its use of it to try and justify its existence- see The IHRA Definition of Antisemitism and Labour – Campaign Against BOGUS Antisemitism)
Then there was the problem about what to do with the Jews who had been liberated. Some tried to return to the homes they had lost (in Poland, in Germany, in Czechoslovakia, etc), only to face hostility and a general refusal by the new occupants to hand back the keys. Where would the Jewish refugees go?
The British did not want them. Would the USA take them? In December 1945, President Truman decided they should; up to 400,000 Jews would, it seemed, be given visas for a new life in the USA – as American citizens.
Jewish Refugees- a tool for Zionism
But the 400,000 were never to be welcomed to the US at the Statue of Liberty. Truman’s initiative would have allowed nearly twice the 200,000 Jews festering in the camps of liberated Europe to find a home. It would have solved the Jewish refugee problem- as Lord Halifax told James Byrnes, US Secretary of State, very many of them would have opted for a new life in America rather than Palestine, had they been given the choice.
But such a solution to the Jewish refugee problem would have destroyed Zionism’s most powerful weapon of the time- the Nazi holocaust as a political and emotional blackmail card. The Zionists knew they had to act- and act quickly and ruthlessly. The decision to allow the Jews into the USA would require legislation in Congress. The Zionist machinations to prevent this is documented in Alan Hart’s brilliant book “Zionism- the Real Enemy of the Jews: Volume One- The False Messiah”. The Zionists fought to block the passage of the Jews to the USA- and they succeeded in so doing… for their political support in 1946 was essential to the Democrats, who were seeking to hold power in the US elections. The Zionists got what they wanted, but the Democrats still lost to the Republicans.
At the same time, the Zionists were busy in London. Palestine was still under the British mandate and in April 1946, the six British and six American members of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry published their report recommending the immediate issuance of entrance certificates into Palestine for 100,000 Jews “who had been the victims of Nazi and Fascist persecution”. The report completely ignored Truman’s offer and went so far as to declare that no country other than Palestine gave “hope of substantial assistance to finding homes for Jews wishing or impelled to leave Europe.” Britain granted the certificates; the Zionists were jubilant.
This propaganda film, set around 1946, paints a picture that ignores Trueman’s offer, and shows American Zionists demanding that Jews from Hitler’s camps be sent to Palestine – not the USA. This “educational film of 1940s Palestine”, at https://youtu.be/P7P1deMQ1Zw, brags of the Hebrew University, the new hospitals, the “pioneer settlements” that would soon displace the native Palestinians, as welcome developments. From viewing the film, one could be led to believe that Arabs there were primitive, ignorant, with some Palestinians only interested in making more money by selling their land to Zionists or enjoying new wealth as labourers on Zionist farms. It paints a picture that most of Palestine was “swamp and desert” before the Zionist’s arrival. It talks of lands “abused and eroded for centuries.” The early Kibbutz’s are described as socialist islands of planned communes, driving the engine of food production. It declares Palestine is being “brought to life” by settlers and that it is the “ancient homeland” of the Jews, not recognising that these people have no right to be there under the strictures of their own bible, the Torah. And that they have no genetic ancestral link to the area, most having originated from Kazakhstan, some 1100 years before. It accuses the League of Arab States around Palestine as being prepared to “threaten the peace” of the middle east, by launching “a religious war” on the Zionists, if Britain continues to allow more immigrants in.
But the UK had other ideas, and the end of WW2 saw vast numbers of displaced Jewish refugees moving to Palestine; many had been Bundists – who had now turned to Zionism, believing that in Israel they would find the homes they could call safe.
Early on in the war, the Zionists did everything they could to stop the British deporting illegal Jewish immigrants; when 1,800 of them were to be deported to Mauritius, the Haganah sank the ship carrying them in Haifa harbour, killing over 200 Jewish refugees. See Patria disaster – Wikipedia
|Year||Jews||Non-Jews||Total Population||% Jewish|
(*Over 70,000 people from 95 different countries migrated to ‘Israel’ last year, in the highest number in two decades, Israeli media reported. Most immigrants are from Russia and Ukraine.)
The 100,000 refugees that descended on Palestine in 1946 were determined to settle- and supported the Zionist leaders who aimed to create a new country of their own; they attacked any British forces in their way.
The British then effectively did a runner, leaving the problem in the hands of the newly-formed UN. Late 1947 saw the UN’s Partition Plan, which the Arabs rejected, but the Jews accepted. In 1948 Jews rose up and declared Israel an independent country, seizing the weapons the British Army had left behind.
Many Jews were battle-hardened through fighting for the British in Jewish battalions in WW2 and hungry for land; the peace-loving Palestinians were no match. There then started pogroms to seize Arab towns and a war with neighbouring Arab states, which led to the Nakba, that saw 750,000 Palestinians fleeing from their homes. 531 Palestinian towns and villages were seized and the locals expelled. The Irgun and Lehi (the nascent “Israeli Defence Force”) used extreme terror tactics to drive the Palestinians from their homes.
Joseph Massad in Middle East Eye observes “According to Hanna Yablonca’s book (Survivors of the Holocaust) around 22,000 soldiers, or a third of the Zionist army, the Haganah, and one half of its fighting force during the 1948 war were Holocaust survivors is crucial, as they participated in the expulsion of Palestinians and in many horrific massacres. As Tom Segev points out in his book The Seventh Million, Holocaust survivors also took part in the looting and pillaging of Palestinian property.
In the Israeli media, a photograph of Israeli soldiers expelling Palestinians included the caption: “Note the number tattooed on the guarding soldier’s arm. Many of the immigrants who have been through the hell of the European concentration camps lack the proper attitude toward the Arab captives of the state.””
6 out of 7 Massacres during the NAKBA was by Jews against Christians/Muslims. “The worst cases (Massacres) were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there.” — Benny Morris, Israeli Zionist Historian.
(As of February 2022 Tantura was been verified as a Massacre by Israeli historians. The lone Arab versus Jew Massacre was the Hadassah Medical Convoy Massacre where 78 Jewish doctors, nurses and personnel were murdered although they were escorted by Haganah militia and carrying military supplies. This brought about an Agreement, almost universally followed by both groups during the 48 War that the Military would be separated from Humanitarian Convoys. P.S. they were attacked because the Palestinians thought they were part of a military operation and therefore, fair game, and/or as a response to the Deir Yassin Massacre.)
Nascent Israel’s first major atrocity- Deir Yassin
The most well-known was the Deir Yassin massacre, which took place on April 9, 1948, when around 130 fighters from the far-right Zionist paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi killed at least 107 Palestinian Arabs, including women and children, in Deir Yassin, a village of roughly 600 people near Jerusalem. The village fell after house-to-house fighting. Some of the Palestinian Arabs were killed in the course of the battle, others while trying to flee or surrender. A number of prisoners were executed, some after being paraded in West Jerusalem. In addition to the killing and widespread looting, there may have been cases of mutilation and rape. News of the killings sparked terror among Palestinians, frightening them to flee their homes in the face of Jewish troop advances.
“A young fellow tied to a tree and set on fire. A woman and an old man shot in back. Girls lined up against a wall and shot with a submachine gun.” Neta Shoshani’s stories are confronting, even now (Haaretz, July 15, 2017). “‘They ran like cats’”..
More at Deir Yassin Remembered
The Nakba leads to the creation of Israel
Many more Palestinian villages were to suffer similar treatment; they were subsequently renamed and developed by the Israelis, as if the Arabs had never been there in the first place. (The Tantura massacre has only recently been given coverage; the Israeli PR machine tried to cover it up at the time). Their 750,000 refugees fled to Gaza, Lebanon- anywhere away from the Zionists, who were jubilant in having taken a land their leaders had told them had always been theirs. (more at Nakba – Wikipedia). The soldiers, who considered themselves Jewish, stole everything they could find from those who had fled. See Israel founders were ‘thieves’, Israeli historian says – Middle East Monitor
They even used poison in the wells and biological weapons to force the Palestinians off their land Historians reveal Israel’s use of poison against Palestinians – Middle East Monitor
The BBC finally acknowledged the Nakba in March 2023- Jonathan Cook bemoans the fact that this was not as “brave” as it was made out to be in the Guardian: The Holy Land And Us: BBC Nakba series obscures ethnic cleansing of Palestine | Middle East Eye
Over the following decades Israel seized more and more land, bringing in settlers from across the world, renaming Arab towns, remoulding history.
The following 70 years reflect a history of maltreatment of the Palestinians. These include such crimes against humanity of summary executions, genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, racism, Islamophobia and state-sponsored terrorism. It includes the deliberate maiming of unarmed civilians, violence against disabled people, abduction and incarceration of children, torture, detention without trial, house demolitions, land theft, continual breaches of international law, and many other atrocities committed against an innocent people. Israel has run a sophisticated system of Public Relations spin, propaganda and threat- designed to manipulate public sympathies to its support; demonising the real victims of its aggression: the Palestinian people. Palestinians continue to suffer unspeakable cruelty under illegal Israeli occupation whilst the worlds’ governments look on and do little to intervene.
During the night of 14-15 October 1953, two Israeli military units under Ariel Sharon besieged the village of Qibya, and isolated it from the rest of the neighboring villages, throwing bombs inside homes, firing randomly through open doors and windows and shooting at anyone who tried to flee.
67 Palestinian civilians were killed in the massacre, dozens were wounded and dozens of houses were bombed and blown up. More at Qibya massacre – Wikipedia and Remembering Qibya Massacre Of 1953 – Palestine Online
Yad Vashem and Deir Yassin
In 1953, just five years after the massacre of Palestinians at Deir Yassin, the Israelis built the Jewish Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem – on a site which overlooks Deir Yassin. Palestinians (if only they could!) have been asked to visit Yad Vashem – the symbol of Jewish suffering – and to look across the valley toward the birth site of their own tragedy. More here And here: Deir Yassin makes a mockery of Israel’s “never again” pledge
The abominable treatment of Palestinian Arabs by Israel, enshrined in law, is the biggest recruiting tool for Al Quaeda, ISIS and the rest. By refusing to speak the truth about Israel, the world is made a more dangerous place.
And the sad truth is, that Yad Vashem is a memorial to the Jews who did not want to leave their homes in Europe– the Bund Jews- those who opposed Zionism. And so the Zionists build their apartheid homeland on the ashes of those who refused to support them. They know too well that the voices of the dead cannot be heard.
In this way, the Zionists reap their unjust rewards for accommodating Hitler before the war.
In the year 2000 Israel began construction of their “great wall”, which most of the world recognises as the “apartheid wall”. It is at present 440 Km long, with over another 1,000 Km planned. It cuts into Palestinian territory and expands the land upon which Israelis go to build settlements upon.
Ongoing Ethnic Cleansing by Israel
The home demolitions carried out by the Israeli Government are too numerous to list, but the Israeli settlers themselves attack Palestinians and destroy their crops with impunity. In October 2022, elderly Palestinian farmer Harbi Abed cries after illegal Israeli settlers cut down nearly 120 olive trees from his own land in Nablus.
Gaza survives against the odds; both Israel and Egypt are on its borders; the Egyptian Government generally does as it’s told by Israel; both strangle this enclave of Palestinian freedom:
The Nation State law of 2018 is what most clearly defines Israeli apartheid; only Jews can be nationals, all others are merely citizens. Daniel Barenboim condemned it: “This racist new law makes me ashamed to be Israeli”. Read his Guardian opinion piece on why the race law conflicts with Israel’s founding statement.
Barenboim notes that back in 1948, Israel’s declaration of independence had said “The state of Israel will devote itself to the development of this country for the benefit of all its people; it will be founded on the principles of freedom, justice and peace, guided by the visions of the prophets of Israel; it will grant full equal, social and political rights to all its citizens regardless of differences of religious faith, race or sex; it will ensure freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.”
That didn’t last long… And after the Nakba it was always going to be a pretty empty promise.
Descendants of the Israelites?
Dr. Areilla Oppenheim of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, conducted the first comprehensive DNA study of Israelis and Palestinians in 2001. She concluded that the emigrants on ships to Palestine before it became Israel were of Mongolian 40% and Turkish 40% genome. There was no Semitic blood associated with the original Middle Eastern Hebrews of 4,000 years ago in Jerusalem or Biblical territory.
This was confirmed by another DNA project from Dr. Eran Elhaik at the McKusick-Namans Institute of Genetic Medicine at the John Hopkins University of School of Medicine, in 2012. His conclusions were the same!
The Jews of Ashkenazi never emigrated from ancient Israel!
At the same time, extensive DNA evidence showed that the Palestinians had 80% more or less Semitic blood in their ancestors, who were therefore determined to be the real Israelites.
The white Jews whose ancestors boarded ships to Palestine in 1882 before it was called Israel are not Israelites. These white Eastern European descendants of German, Russian, Polish, Austrian, Georgian, etc., are impostors who claim to be chosen by God, but are descendants of the ancient Khazars of the Khazarian Caucus and they have denied this scientific evidence because they have made up myths of their own history, which many Americans have believed for a whole century, i.e. the Schofield Bible.
Because the real history of the newly founded “Israel in 1947” is no longer a secret today. Since Palestinians have been found to be almost more or at least 80% Semitic, many politicians and supporters of Israel are on the wrong side of history. (Reprinted- thanks to Badr YouTwo)
Stuart Littlewood reflects in Redress Online upon what right these “Israelis” have to be there in the first place. “DNA research by one of America’s finest university schools of medicine, Johns Hopkins, shows that 50% of those living today in Israel today are Ashkenazi Jews whose claim to be descended from the ancient Israelites is very weak. On the contrary, the Palestinians have more Israelite blood than the Jews – they are the real Semites. This research work was published by the Oxford University Press in 2012 on behalf of the Society of Molecular Biology and Evolution. It found evidence for the Khazarian Hypothesis, which suggests that most Jews are Khazars, and concluded that probably no more than 2 per cent of Jews in Israel are descended from Israelites. (Also see Where are Ashkenazi Jews from? Their Origins May Surprise You and on VT – Did contemporary Jews descend from Ancient Israelites? Or did they descend from people converted to Judaism?)
The mass conversion of the Khazarians to Talmudic Judaism took place in the 8th Century AD. It was by diktat of their rulers, who were in the midst of conflict between Christian and Muslim armies; they chose Judaism so they could adopt “neutral” ground. But the Khazarians were never in ancient Israel. So, even if you believe the myth that God is some sort of real estate mogul who gave the land to the Israelites, he certainly didn’t give it to the Khazarians. Eastern European Jews who flooded into the Holy Land intending to kick the Palestinians out, are not genetically Semitic and have little or no ancestral connection to the land… This is still a controversial area of research but the Johns Hopkins study hasn’t been refuted… If the Palestinians are indeed the true Semites, the whole anti-Semitism argument falls down. The anti-Semites turn out to be the Israeli regime itself.”
(“The Thirteenth Tribe” by Arthur Koestler documents how and why the mass conversion to Judaism took place.)
So the religious/racist case for Zionism doesn’t stand up even on its own terms! But even if it did, we at CABA would not accept its validity. Even if it were proven that the Zionist colonists really were direct descendants of the biblical Israelites, that still would not justify their theft of Palestinian land.
By their action of moving to Palestine, Zionists have broken one of the fundamental precepts of the Torah, which declares that Jews expelled in the diaspora for worshipping a false God cannot return until the Messiah comes. Jews don’t recognise Christ as the Messiah, so in their book, the Messiah has not yet come. Can they therefore even continue to claim to be Jews? This issue is explored in more depth by CABA Chair, Pete Gregson, in his paper Why Zionists Are Not Jews; a shorter version was published by Redress Online on 8.4.22 In Pete’s view, the present-day descendants of the Israelites are, actually, the Palestinians. Even though they converted to Islam in the 9th Century AD, he considers them the only true Semites (ie Sons of Sem (also pronounced Shem)) with a valid claim to the land they have occupied for 2,000 years. He believes that Zionists have, by their actions, given up the right to call themselves Jews.
The Zionists of Israel are half Ashkenazim, half Sephardic. According to Britannia The Ashkenazi, plural Ashkenazim, from the Hebrew Ashkenaz (“Germany”) contrast with those who are of Sephardic (Spanish rite) Jewish origin. According to another publication, European Jews can be traced to “Ancient Ashkenaz” – an intersection of trade routes in eastern Turkey.
Ashkenazim differ from Sephardim in their pronunciation of Hebrew, in cultural traditions, in synagogue cantillation (chanting), in their widespread use of Yiddish (until the 20th century), and especially in synagogue liturgy. Eighty per cent of all Jews in the world are Ashkenazim.
Please read Ashkenazic Jews’ mysterious origins unravelled by scientists thanks to ancient DNA
Secular Jews define themselves as Jews but give no attention to its religious aspects. If they are Zionists, and they claim Palestine as being a home for the Jews, they have breached one of the tenets of Judaism and, in Pete Gregson’s view, can no longer claim to be Jews. For they are adopting a pick’n’mix approach to Judaism, claiming one tenet but ignoring the one pertaining to the diaspora. Their argument, that after WW2 there was nowhere for the Jews from Hitler’s camps to go, is powerful but unfair to the Palestinians. They should have seen themselves as guests in Palestine; they did not- they powered the Nakba and its ethnic cleansing, after all. And to this day they give up no land to those they have displaced.
Interestingly, Zionists seem to acknowledge their Kazar bloodline- Israel calls Kazakhstan (which lies between Russia and China) its “Partner in Eurasia”
Joseph Massad of Columbia University unpicks the fallacy of Israel’s claims in this Jan 2023 article: Biblical myths justifying conquest of Palestine belong in dustbin of history | Middle East Eye
Imprisonment without trial
There are over 65 laws in Israel that discriminate against Palestinians ( more here) .
Many Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem who resist Occupation are confined by Israelis in prisons under what is euphemistically described as Administrative Detention, a practice originally devised against Palestinians in the 30s by the British; there are presently 500 political prisoners at present- these people have never been tried in court. Since 1967, when the occupation began, Israel has issued over 52,000 administrative detention orders.
Read War on Want’s article on Israel’s military court system here. Please ask Liz Truss to tell Israel to end this practise here. And what about peaceful groups who protest? Israel brands Palestinian human rights groups as terrorists. Find out about all War on Want’s campaigns on Palestine here.
Palestinian prisoners have turned to hunger strikes. In August 2022, the Israeli Supreme court rejected the appeal request submitted for the release of Palestinian prisoner Khalil Awawdeh, who has been on hunger strike for 172 days protesting his illegal detention in Israeli jails, despite the severe deterioration in his health conditions. #FreeKhalil
As of August 2022, the Israeli occupation was holding 723 Palestine detainees in its jails without trial, the highest number since 2008.
In the first 10 months of 2022, 5300 Palestinians, including 111 women and 620 children, have been arrested by Israeli occupation forces, Palestinian Prisoner’s Society reported. See 2.5 min video How Many Palestinian Prisoners Are Being Held by Israel?
Attacks on Journalists
The Israeli Occupation Force targets journalists who document their attacks on Palestinians and the theft of Arab land. Shireen Abu Akleh’s murder in May 2022 was the most famous execution of a much-loved Palestinian broadcaster (see ‘Washington Post’ concludes that Israeli soldier killed Shireen Abu Akleh — building pressure on U.S. gov’t – Mondoweiss ) but there have been many others.
At least 45 journalists have been killed by Israeli forces since 2000, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Information. (see Shireen Abu Akleh and the journalists killed by Israeli forces | Israel-Palestine conflict News | Al Jazeera)
There have been efforts to broker peace. Yitzhak Rabin was the only Israeli leader with a real peace initiative. He signed, with Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the Oslo Accords. (For this, he paid a heavy price. Rabin, who was both Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, was murdered by a right-wing Israeli nationalist at the end of a rally in support of the Oslo Accords, at the Kings of Israel Square in Tel Aviv in 1995. Arafat too- paid the price. In 2004 he died from what was later found to be Polonium-210 poisoning (a truth not exposed until 2019 when Al Jazeera carried out an investigation. Only countries with nuclear reactors could produce Polonium and Israel had form- the year before they were caught trying to poison the leader of Hamas in Jordan.)
The first Oslo Accord was an attempt in 1993 to set up a framework that would lead to the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It anticipated a permanent solution by 2000. Rabin’s murder ended that dream, although the Accord had been jointly negotiated with foreign Minister Shimon Peres for Israel, who in 1995 signed Oslo II, in which the Palestinian Authority (PA) was given some limited powers and responsibilities in the Areas A and B and a prospect of negotiations on a final settlement based on Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. It envisaged the two-state solution.
Since then, matters only got worse with the ascendancy of the right-wing Sharon, followed by Netanyahu and now Bennet. None have been interested in supporting any peaceful solution, recognising their power comes from instilling fear of Palestinians in the Israeli population. But by claiming sovereignty over Gaza and the West Bank, these leaders have undermined any claim for Israel to be a democracy – since Palestinians in the occupied areas are unable to vote for who rules over them. Disaffection with the Palestinian Authority (PA), run by the Fatah party, led to the formation of the far more outspoken Hamas.
The way the Accords have been ignored is illuminated in this 35-minute podcast by Fida Jyryis No place like home: my bitter return to Palestine – podcast | News | The Guardian
Israel and the US nurtured fighting and distrust between the two parties which became violent in 2007- Hamas was elected throughout Palestine, but Fatah refused to cede power- now Hamas controls Gaza and Fatah controls the PA – which controls the West Bank. This article from the Council for Foreign Relations effectively explains all about Hamas. The recent decision by the UK by Priti Patel to proscribe the whole of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas as a “terrorist organisation” under the country’s 2000 Terrorism Act is detrimental to achieving peace- see why here
The two groups urgently need to come together and hold elections (there have been none for many years, since 2007) in order to speak for a unified voice for the Palestinian people. Hamas frequently calls for elections but need the agreement of the Palestinian Authority (PA) for these to take place, for all Palestinians need to vote in elections as to who will lead Palestine (not just those in Gaza). The PA raise reasons for not proceeding, the most recent being the claim that Palestinians in East Jerusalem were being prevented from voting by Israel. Hamas have described this refusal to hold elections as a “virtual coup”.
The people of Gaza are collectively punished for accommodating Hamas. There are ongoing problems in getting funds to Gaza; the PA hold all the cards: see Palestinian Authority withdraws from Qatar funding scheme for Gaza – Qatari envoy for example.
Regarding Hamas’ legitimacy: international law guarantees Palestinians the right to resist, including armed resistance- a course which Hamas follows; but few western governments acknowledge this. United Nations resolution 37/43, dated 3 December 1982, “reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”
There is gradual progress: on the 6th July 2022, Leaders of Palestinian Authority and Hamas Met in Algeria | News | teleSUR English
There is a third party active in Palestinian politics- in the West Bank- that appears to take up to 20% of the vote- the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It is centred around Ramallah, and in the suburbs of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nablus.
Hamas- Current Policy on Israel
According to Wikipedia, co-founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin said in 1987, and the Hamas Charter affirmed in 1988, that Hamas was founded to liberate Palestine, including modern-day Israel, from Israeli occupation and to establish an Islamic state in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
However, since 1994, the group has frequently stated that it would accept a truce if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, paid reparations, allowed free elections in the territories and gave Palestinian refugees the right to return.
In 2017, Hamas produced a new policy document that softened some of its stated positions and used more measured language.
There was no recognition of Israel, but it did formally accept the creation of an interim Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – what are known as pre-1967 lines. The document stresses that Hamas’s struggle is not with Jews but with “occupying Zionist aggressors”.
[ UN resolution 194 affirms the Palestinians right to return to the places from which they were driven. It was passed in 1948 and has never been rescinded.]
Hamas military wing was first added to the EU Terrorism List in 2001; the EU’s top court delisted it in Sept 2016, then following moves by Israel, it was confirmed in November 2021 as relisted following a CJEU ruling.
How shit is used for ethnic cleansing
Jewish settlers have exploited all manner of techniques to shift Palestinians from their homes (driving cars at kids, tearing down fences at Arab homes, etc). One of the most shocking involves them using their own excrement. Speak to any Palestinian living in the West Bank and they’ll explain that upper flats are rented or bought by settlers, who then resort to throwing their piss and shit onto the heads of Palestinians living below. If the Palestinians kick up a fuss, they are arrested. Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to Military Courts, with a 97% conviction rate. So eventually Palestinian families move out and the settlers declare another victory for Israel.
In one shocking incident in November 2018 that was reported (many are not), settlers pumped their own sewage into a school playground in Qalqilia, in the West Bank. The settlers who did it lived in the nearby illegal settlement of Sha’arei Tikva which is home to some 4,000 Jewish settlers. As usual, the Israeli police and army did nothing.
Civil Resistance – Issa Amro
Some Palestinians bravely resist with clever non-violent methods. Issa Amro from Hebron, in the West Bank, worked with young people in his Youth Against Settlements project, in one project giving them disposable cameras to document the regular Israeli brutality they faced. In 2010 he was declared “human rights defender of the year in Palestine” by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; this led to him suffering harassment from Israeli soldiers and settlers and a series of arbitrary arrests. In May 2017, a group of four U.S. Senators and 32 Congressmen, led by senator Bernie Sanders successfully forced the Israelis to drop charges against him. But then, on September 2, 2017, he was arrested by the Palestinian Authority (PA) on charges of violating the new “electronic crimes” law. The actual offense was “denouncing on Facebook the arrest of a journalist calling for the resignation of PA head”, seen as tantamount to criticizing the Palestinian Authority. In March, 2019, Amnesty International demanded that the PA should drop all charges against him, adding “It is disgraceful that Issa Amro is facing a prison term simply for expressing his views promoting human rights online”.
When the Campaign Against Bogus Antisemitism was founded in February 2022, Issa Amro agreed to become our patron.
Innocent Palestinians such as Issa suffer attacks from both the Israeli and PA authorities. Indeed, many Palestinians believe the PA to be complicit with Israel in keeping their lives a misery- but they dare not say so.
Christians are not terribly well treated by the Israelis- see Jesus ‘miracle church’: Jewish extremist found guilty of arson – BBC News– but Muslims are generally much nicer to them- and many Christians live in Gaza.
Jews who oppose Zionism
The Neturei Karta and – in London- the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations do not support Zionism.
The Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations is an umbrella organisation representing over a hundred congregations and educational establishments in Greater London. Many Haredi Orthodox communities are largely anti-zionist in outlook, as are many non-Orthodox and secular Jewish citizens, and are angered by attempts to conflate anti-zionism and antisemitism. The Charedi Jews of the UK are only interested in Anglo Jewry matters and do not get involved in Israel politics. See Orthodox activist’s unpublished statement to Jewish Chronicle: “Jeremy is a long friend to our community” – SKWAWKBOX
The Neturei Karta (NK) made the following observation after the furore that followed their trip to Iran to review the Holocaust in 2006: “Obviously two paths lie before the Jewish people. There is the path of Zionism that summons Jews to a state of perpetual war in order to “protect” Jewry and there is the path of the Torah which calls upon us to seek peace and dialogue with all men. To us the choice is elementary.”
In 1987 Rabbi Moshe Hirsch of the NK observed that Israel “is a state run by Jews, just like any company managed by Jews, but whose produce is not Jewish. They exploit the rabbinate, and say, look here we have the wailing wall, we have the rabbinate, we have people with long beards in the parliament, and we have certain laws which are Jewish laws, sort of giving it a Jewish taintage, but in reality it is just a mask of political expansionists.”
It has been said that Israel is a state based on ethno-religious nationalism, but Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro in the US points out that Israeli leaders are not religious Jews- they are atheists. Yet they use the Christian bible as an excuse for ownership of the land. Ben Gurion didn’t believe the bible was given by God, he didn’t believe God spoke to the prophets. Netanyahu doesn’t either. Zionists have adopted the Christian evangelical interpretation of the bible- and the fact that both the UK and the US, both “Christian” countries- support their right to the land, cements this view. Rabbi Shapiro (an anti-Zionist public intellectual- not in the Neturie Karta) shares the view of Rabbi Dovid Weiss (who is) that Israel is not the Jewish state; it is only the unilateral claim of the Zionists that it is. He rejects the transformation of Jews from a religious identity to a national identity.
Of course, there are also many secular Jews who oppose Zionism and support Palestine- they vociferously criticise Israel on political and humanitarian grounds. Moshe Machover, for example, regularly skewers Israel as a colonial project- see his article of June 2022: Messianic colonialism – Weekly Worker
Those Jews who have always been in Palestine refuse to take up Zionist arms: Why do Orthodox Jews Refuse to Serve in the Israeli Army? (israelversusjudaism.org). This article declares “Probably no legislation in the history of the State of Israel has generated as much controversy and public protest as the law passed on March 12, 2014 requiring Orthodox Jews to serve in the Israeli Defense Force [IDF]… Dozens of Orthodox Jewish men have been arrested for their religious principled refusal to serve in the Israeli Defense Force. Religious Jews who stand up for their beliefs are being brutalized. The Israeli police break into people’s houses in the middle of the night, drag them out and throw them into prisons for months and even years.
“The Torah teaches that the Holy Land was given to the Jews by the Almighty and taken away from them 2000 years ago by the Almighty. Since the Almighty sent the Jews into exile, only He can redeem them from exile; we are not to aspire to political nationalism. We are bound by Divine oath to accept the yoke of diaspora and live in peace and harmony within the nations that Divine destiny has placed us in. Jews are forbidden to create a sovereign state of their own, to rebel against any nation, to shed any blood, or to wage wars against any nation.”
Read The Rabbis Speak Out (nkusa.org)– The 130 Year Record of Religious Jewish Opposition to Zionism
Israel: not a democracy… and the Nation State Law.
The IHRA Definition of antisemitism claims it is antisemitic to act in relation to adopted point 3) “Applying double standards to Israel by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”.
We call this statement into account because Israel cannot claim to be a democratic nation. Haaretz noted that the number of Arabs in Israel (including Gaza and the West Bank) will exceed that of Jews by 2020. If it were a true democracy, the country would shortly be ruled by Arabs, a prospect so terrifying to Jewish leaders that they can only maintain their control through denying the 4.4 million Arabs living in the occupied areas the right to vote in Israeli national elections.
See “Democratic Jewish State”? Surely that should be “Racist European Colony” – One Democratic Palestine (onepalestine.land)
Israel’s ‘Nation State Law‘ of 2018 embeds apartheid in its legal system because it says only Jews have a right to self determination. It does three things:
- It states that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.”
- It establishes Hebrew as Israel’s official language, and downgrades Arabic — a language widely spoken by Arab Israelis — to a “special status.”
- It establishes “Jewish settlement as a national value” and mandates that the state “will labour to encourage and promote its establishment and development.”
Arabs and Christians now have citizens status only, whereas Jews have nation status- which confers greater rights. Watch Know your Stuff: Israel’s “Jewish Nation-State Law” Explained – the uber-mensch and the unter-mensch explained. An illuminating 23 minute video made in 2018 by Dr. Shir Hever
In January 2023 it was reported that About Half of Jewish Israelis Believe Jews Should Have More Rights Than Arabs, Study Shows – Israel News – Haaretz.com
A drift to the right. In March 2023, in the wake of widespread protests against the Israeli Government’s plans to allow a simple majority of 61 in the 120-seat Knesset to override almost any supreme court rulings, and to allow politicians to appoint most of the justices to the bench, many have declared that it signifies an attack on democracy. This excellent article, from an unlikely source, gives the lie to this: Israel is not, cannot be democratic based on Jewish superiority – The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)
Mondoweiss observes “Early Zionism sought to reform the “Ghetto Jew” into the secular Zionist militant. But now the new Israeli government not only wants to push society to the right, but to dismantle its secularism as well”- see Israel’s rightwing government represents the Judaization of Zionism – Mondoweiss
Israel is trying to erase Palestine from history. Read this 2019 Haaretz article “Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs” Since early last decade, Israeli Defence Ministry teams have scoured local archives and removed troves of historic documents to conceal proof of the Nakba. It includes some horrifying tales of terror gangs of Zionist Jews laying waste to Palestinian villages in brutal, systematic ethnic cleansing.
This up-to-date comprehensive film, the Israel Palestine Apartheid Explainer, (which does not mention the use of shit) was released in Feb 2022 by Amnesty to coincide with its report determining that Israel practices the crime of apartheid. This article from Naeem Jenah, Executive Director of the Afro-Middle East Centre, in South Africa of Feb 2023 says Israeli apartheid is worse than any suffered in his homeland
You can read the whole story in a nutshell by Stuart Littlewood: Despicable Balfour: A story of betrayal (Oct, 2016) and Radio Free Palestine (published in 2007, now available free on the net); please also see The Labour Party, anti-Semitism and Zionism by John Newsinger (Jan 2017) . A really excellent book on the making of Israel – particularly the role of the US- has been penned by former ITN and BBC correspondent, Alan Hart: “Zionism- the real enemy of the Jews“. Both Rabbi Ahron Cohen (see our Rogues Gallery page) and Clare Short MP loved it.
[Some agencies try to maintain Palestinian heritage- ARCH – The Alliance to Restore Cultural Heritage in Jerusalem ]
The British have an ongoing responsibility to rectify the suffering of the Palestinian people, which has arisen due to our machinations in the Middle East. Israel cares more about what the UK thinks of it than just about any other country- even more than the US. That is why our campaigning and support for BDS is crucial, in persuading Israel that it must change.
Jan 2023: Israeli restrictions on Palestinian flags ‘repressive’: Amnesty– Although it is not illegal to fly the Palestinian flag, Israeli laws prohibit the public display of a flag of an enemy country or group hostile to Israel’s existence. The new Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir made the decision to ban the Palestinian flag in public spaces. On 3rd Feb, the UN responded to Israel’s decision to withhold funding from the Palestinian Authority as a punishment for their complaining to the UN: Palestinian People’s Rights Committee Bureau Rejects Israeli Retaliation in Response to United Nations Decision Seeking International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion | UN Press
The Future: Two State or Single State Solution?
Along with growing numbers of Palestinians and Jews, we in CABA consider the two-state solution to be dead- Israel has killed it. There is so little left for Palestine that it could never be a viable state. This is a colonial project- the Israelis are settlers there, we must not forget. The only permanent solution is a single state, as 972 magazine, a Palestinian publication made clear in 2019: A just future demands the decolonization of Palestine – and a democratic state for all
And then, in November 2021, Palestinians favour a one-state over a two-state solution, poll finds – Middle East Monitor
Oxford Union held a debate on the matter in 2016: hear Gideon Levy explain why only a single state will work in this 12 min video
ICAHD– an Israeli group, shares this view: they say “Understanding the ‘conflict’ as a settler colonial struggle allows us to build a holistic path toward a liberated society for Palestinians and Israelis.”
This article by Jonathan Cook on the 2019 Israeli elections showed all main Israeli parties support continued occupation Why Israel is struggling to find a way out of its political deadlock
See this article in Haaretz from 8th Sept 2022: Two-state Solution Has Reached a Dead End, Former Jordanian Ambassador to Israel Says
See this blog post reporting on the speech that Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, the “moderate” alternative to Bibi Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, made when he spoke to the UN General Assembly on the 19th September. His remarks were tailored for a foreign audience; Silverstein pulls apart Lapid’s lies: Lapid and the Two-State Fraud – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם (richardsilverstein.com)
And whilst Lapid tells the UN that a large majority of Israelis support a two-state solution, a recent survey showed just 39% did (see New Poll: Support for Two-State Solution Declines among Arabs, Jews in Israel)
Of course, a just peace would need to see UN resolution 194 on the right to return honoured.
Unfortunately, the doomed two-state solution is supported by all major UK political parties, along with Israel and the Palestine Authority. UK Politicians and the press frame the problem of apartheid Israel as a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians where “it takes two to start a fight” and that “if only they sat round and sorted out their differences by drawing lines on a map” all would be well. That such as solution is now utterly impossible is a matter they prefer to ignore. Furthermore, Palestinian and Arab leader insist on the “1967 borders”- a position that will never be accepted by Israel.
It was reported back in 2009 that although polls had consistently shown Israeli and Palestinian majorities in favour of a negotiated two-state settlement, there was “growing disillusionment” with a two-state solution.
Than a poll published in 2021 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research revealed that only 39% of Palestinians supported the two-state solution. 60% of Palestinians said the final goal of their national movement should be “to work toward reclaiming all of historic Palestine from the river to the sea”. Another report published in 2021 by the RAND Corporation found that Israelis across the political spectrum also opposed a two-state solution. But for very different reasons: Israel is moving to the right and growing numbers of Jews in Israel reject any accommodation with the Palestinians- they know they hold all the cards. Predictably, the Amnesty report calling Israel apartheid has been either ignored or condemned in the Israeli press.
There are Israelis also calling for a single-state solution- the jury are still out on this organisation, which comprises both Jews and Arabs, but which seem to have more of the former: Friends of Roots There are definitely Israeli-funded groups in the UK purporting to be about bringing Jews and Muslims together. read about them at https://electronicintifada.net/content/interfaith-group-lies-about-israel-lobby-connections/35281
This organisation, based in Haifa, looks promising- please sign up to their manifesto called for One Democratic State at Sign The Manifesto – all (onestatecampaign.org)
Read what Ilan Pappe and Awad Abdelfattah have to say on the single-state solution in this article by Ramzy Baroud: ‘A Game Changer’: Ilan Pappe and Awad Abdelfattah on the One Democratic State Campaign (mintpressnews.com)
Non-Violence International have published Jonathan Kuttab’s Book – Beyond the Two-State Solution (nonviolenceinternational.net)– it is free to download and proposes how a single state could work.
It is no surprise that Israel has become progressively more hard-line towards the Palestinians over the past 25 years. Bennet, Netanyahu and Sharon before them led Israeli Governments that were past masters of stoking fear, who shamelessly peddled Holocaust tropes in order to frighten Israeli Jews into voting for them. They take every opportunity to paint Palestinians as little better than the Nazis, for wanting to drive them from their promised land. Israeli Jews are encouraged to think that to give an inch is to show weakness- and that all Palestinians want to drive them into the sea. On this basis they persuade the US to award them several billions of dollars each year (the US approved over $3.8 billion in foreign assistance to Israel in 2019; most is for weapons) as they argue that their defence is crucial to their survival. The right wing exploit the fear that Israeli citizens have of a second Holocaust should they accommodate the Palestinians. Extreme Zionists Jews are welcomed each year to settle in Arab land, to help create Eretz Israel- a land where there are no Palestinians and the Jews rule supreme. South Africa’s Afrikaners were the same in their fear of the ANC; it will take a concerted effort from the US and the UK to make change. Corbyn was the leader the Israelis feared the most which is why they worked so hard to remove him (see Al Jazeera Investigations: The Lobby).
For a concise summary of the ways in which Israel dominates Palestine, see Israel’s mockery of security: 101 definitions of occupation | by Sam Bahour | Medium . Listen to Dr Mohamed El-Doufani’s 10-minute talk of November 2022 Five Minutes to Midnight / Are we obsessed with Israel? (audioboom.com)
Apartheid in South Africa only began to fall apart when US sanctions from the mid-80s onwards created a run on the Rand- the whites gave in, when they knew that economically their prospects were grim. And so it is only through BDS that we will achieve the same for Palestine.
Israeli occupation Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in October 2022 that a United Nations report accusing “Israel” of violating international law following the 2021 aggression on Gaza, was “distinctly antisemitic”.
Films about Israel & Palestine
This section has been moved to Videos on Bogus Antisemitism and Palestine – Campaign Against BOGUS Antisemitism
The Start of the Solution- twinning Edinburgh with Gaza
If Edinburgh were to twin with Gaza, the UK could begin to address its historical wrongs to the Palestinians. The UK story began with Balfour, who hailed from Edinburgh. For this Scottish city to twin with the biggest city in Palestine and the victim of intense ongoing Israeli aggression would be to begin recognising our history in creating Israel and our duty to make amends.
Here is the illustrated speech made at the 2019 Gig for Gaza, from Pete Gregson explaining why Hamas concerns should make no odds- this is payback time for what the UK did to Palestine – 8 mins- www.tinyurl.com/whytwin
Find out about the campaign to support twinning at www.twingaza.com