(This is the post that Mezvinsky was answering)
The proposals that Israel should be admitted to NATO, discussed by Clifford Kiracofe in a post not long ago, provide yet another illustration of the inability of so many of that country's most committed supporters, both in United States and elsewhere in the West, to grasp the suicidal nature of the course they have encouraged it to follow.
At a time when the waves of unrest sweeping the Arab world are calling fundamentally into question the ability of the United States to persuade governments in crucial countries – above all Egypt – to act in ways which Israel wants, support for that country in some of the traditionally most loyal allies of the US has been collapsing. Certainly, the Israeli government's presentation of its policies towards the Palestinians – and also Lebanon and Iran – as the unavoidable defensive responses of a beleaguered outpost of Western civilisation, confronted by that civilisation's implacable Arab and Muslim enemies, retains powerful traction, particularly among neoconservatives, in Europe as in the United States.
So in Britain for example a prominent neoconservative, Michael Gove – Education Secretary in the current Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition government – has argued in his influential polemic on the Islamist threat to Western civilisation, Celsius 7/7, that Israel must be defended all costs because it 'is an integral part of the West, a vessel for its values, an example of its virtues and is hated not for what it does but what it is'.
But neoconservatives like Gove – who in 2008 described the invasion of Iraq as ‘a proper British foreign policy success’ – are not being entirely successful in persuading their own peoples. While the events of the past decade have encouraged a wave of Islamophobia in Europe, as in the United States, this has signally failed to produce an increased sense of solidarity with Israel among the population at large. The annual poll of perceptions of the global role of different countries done for the BBC World Service, published earlier this month, showed a marginal improvement in Israel's worldwide rating, which still however left Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea as the only countries surveyed ranked as having a more negative influence. Among the generally very negative views of the country in Europe, a particularly dramatic change was the increase in negative ratings in the UK from 50% to 66% – with only 14% now giving the country a positive rating.
Interestingly, this brought British perceptions almost precisely into line with those in Germany, where there was a slight improvement in how Israel was regarded, with negative ratings falling from 68% to 65%, and positive rising from 13% to 15%. So among those peoples who have traditionally been the closest allies of the United States, and who have a long history of supporting Israel, the country's standing has collapsed. There is clearly a major gap between European and American perceptions -- although negative ratings of Israel in the US were also reported as rising, from 31% to 41%, leaving them just short of positive ratings, at 43%.
Alliance with neoconservatives has in fact been a poisoned chalice for Israel. The last thing that country needs is friends like Michael Gove, who encourage Israelis to believe that attitudes to them have nothing whatsoever to do with actions of theirs which others may find objectionable, and are purely to do with their virtues. The belief that one represents a state of achieved perfection, and that any hostility on the part of others can only be understood either in terms of their moral turpitude or one's failure adequately to explain one's virtues, is dangerous enough for the United States and Britain, who have the benefit of relatively secure geographic locations. The Israelis, who do not, simply cannot afford to duck out of the endeavour – which is commonly liable to be less than entirely pleasurable – of confronting how one is actually seen by others, in order to understand how they have responded to what one has done in the past, and calculate how they might respond to what one might do in the future.
The last thing I would want to do is to replace one kind of nonsense by another, and suggest that if the Israelis were prepared to confront how they were seen by others, all their apprehensions would be revealed as the delusional products of Holocaust trauma. Whatever they did, the hostility of the Arab and Muslim peoples among whom they live would confront them with intractable problems. But the propensity to assume that hostility is practically invariably a matter of essentially motiveless anti-Semitism – with Hitler's aspiration to destroy Jews simply because they were Jews as the central point of reference – does Israel and its external supporters no favours. In relation to Arabs and Muslim peoples, it is suicidal.
If one sees these as imbued with some kind of ineradicable desire to eliminate Jews, the idea that a state in the Middle East could ever represent a 'safe haven' for actual or potential victims of anti-Semitism, which has been central to Zionism, has to be a mistake. Confronted by such implacable malevolence, even the most determined resistance, under the wisest leadership, could hardly be expected to do more than delay the inevitable end. Granted the premise, logic points inescapably to the conclusion that the whole Zionist enterprise was hopeless from the start. And sensible Jews able to see which way the wind is blowing, and in a position to find a comfortable refuge in safer places, will be prone to do so.
In relation to declining support in the West, Israel and its external supporters commonly talk about delegitimation, as though this decline reflected the malign efforts of people implacably hostile to the very idea of a Jewish state. But in relation to my own country, Britain, this is delusional. The decline of support for Israel simply does not reflect cunning propaganda from Palestinian advocates – whose efforts, taken in themselves, resonate among rather limited sections of the population. It is the actions and words of successive Israeli governments and their supporters in this country and in the United States which have shifted sympathy away from the country.
One element in this remarkably successful effort at shooting oneself in the foot is a failure on the part of the Israeli government to grasp the premises on which on which support for the country has commonly been based – and in particular, the crucial role of the assumption that a two-state solution was feasible. As long as I can remember, it has been taken for granted among most people here concerned with these issues that there existed a division of Palestine such that, with patient encouragement from outside, sooner or later it would come to seem preferable to the leaderships on both sides to any other option available to them. And crucially, it was also assumed that the difficulties they could be expected to face in taking their peoples along with them, in the face of the obvious ability of 'rejectionists' on both sides to stand in the way of and disrupt any likely agreement, could be overcome.
A pyrrhic victory.
If there was to be such a division, it has been clear ever since 1967 that it involved the Palestinians acknowledging that 78% of historical Palestine contained within the the borders prior to the Six Day War was irrevocably lost, in return for Israeli withdrawal from the remaining 22% -- with minor border adjustments. The successful defiance by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of the timid attempts by the Obama Administration to persuade it to observe some minimal restraints on the ongoing process of settlement of the West Bank – a pyrrhic victory if there ever was one -- have in the minds of many on both sides of the Atlantic finally put paid to belief such a division is ever going to happen.
Coming together with the revelations in the 'Palestine Papers'in January about the extraordinary lengths to which Palestinian leaders were prepared to go to accommodate Netanyahu's predecessors, the conclusion is increasingly being drawn that there is no Israeli 'partner for peace'. And indeed, people have increasingly been asking themselves whether they have been deluding themselves, and failing to recognise that the continuation of the settlement of the West Bank throughout the period since the 1993 Oslo Accords meant that the whole 'peace process' has been misconceived.
In Britain, this scepticism has been moving into the journalistic mainstream. At the time of Obama's attempts to resuscitate the 'peace process' last August, the international affairs editor of the Financial Times, David Gardner, published an article entitled 'A poisoned process holds little hope.' Having pointed to the 'relentless and strategic Israeli colonisation of occupied Palestinian land' as the fundamental problem vitiating the 'peace process', and he went on to remark:
It is essential to remember that the biggest single increase of Jewish settlers on Arab land – a 50 per cent rise – took place in 1992-96 under the governments of peace-makersYitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres at the high-water mark of the Oslo peace accords. Many Israelis will point to the perfidy of the late Yassir Arafat, who wanted to talk peace but keep the option of armed resistance dangerously in play. But what killed Oslo was the occupation. The second intifada which erupted a decade ago was essentially the Oslo war.
The most remarkable transformation, however, has been at the Daily Telegraph – which in the days of Lord Conrad Black used to be a central neoconservative stronghold, and where the neoconservative presence remained extremely strong even after his departure. It has certainly very far from vanished, but last September Peter Oborne, who back in 2009 took a leaf out of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's book and co-authored a notable pamphlet on Britain's own Israeli lobby, moved to the paper as chief political commentator.
What provoked the pamphlet was a speech given by the Tory leader David Cameron to an organisation called the Conservative Friends of Israel not long after the attack on Gaza, in which Cameron went out of his way to praise Israel because it 'strives to protect innocent life'. When Oborne remarked to some Tory MPs that it was difficult to reconcile this with the 'numerous reports of human rights abuses in Gaza', he recalls, they 'looked at me as if I was distressingly naive, drawing my attention to the very large number of Tory donors in the audience.' However, the problem the British Israeli lobby is finding increasingly difficult to handle is that the actions of successive Israeli governments are producing revulsion and disillusion – and also disgust at the pusillanimity of our own political leaders,and their willingness to cave in to the combination of financial inducements and emotional blackmail deployed by Israel's sympathisers.
The ‘fulcrum moment’.
In article in the Telegraph at the end of last year about the deep splits in the governing coalition about policy towards Israel, Oborne remarked that the 'fulcrum moment' in making a close alliance with Israel 'which once seemed so natural' appear 'anachronistic and embarrassing' was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon back in 2006. And as with the David Gardner article, that by Oborne brings out the immense impact on perceptions of the continued building of settlements, as a result of which, he writes, 'the Middle East peace process is dead, and the prospect of an independent Palestinian state has vanished.'
And this is indeed the crux of the matter. An Israel which can be expected to find a modus vivendi with the Arab and Muslim worlds it inhabits has a reasonable chance of retaining both elite and mass support in Britain. But the actions of an Israel which promises to remain indefinitely in a state of embattled conflict with those worlds will divide opinion. Moreover, at the heart of the division are issues which have nothing whatsoever to do with attitudes towards Jews, and which in fact divide Jews just as much as they do the general population.
Introducing Conservative Friends of Israel back in 2007, the organisation's Political Director, Robert Halfon, opened by explaining that‘with over 2,000 members and registered supporters alongside 80 percent of the Conservative MPs, Conservative Friends of Israel has become the largest affiliated group in the Party.’ And he went on to say that anyone who signs up as a new member gets a free copy of ‘Michael Gove’s book about extreme Islamism ‘Celsius 7/7’.
Given that Michael Gove's book rehashes a whole range of neoconservative themes – prominent among them the familiar claim that Islamists are motivated by a deep hatred of freedom – Halfon could hardly have found a better way of persuading opponents of neoconservatism, that the CFI is a catastrophic influence on British politics. This claim, clearly, provides a useful propaganda tool for those wanting to suggest that enemies of Israel poses a mortal threat to people in Britain or the United States. As the owner of this blog, and also other commentators here, have reiterated time and again, such ideological simplicities obscure the diversity of political movements in the Arab and Muslim worlds, as well as the crucial fact that rather few of these pose any kind of fundamental threat to the United States, as also to Britain.
What is also obscured is the crucial fact that jihadists are motivated by concrete grievances, and also can exploit such grievances in recruiting support. Against this background, Gove’s continued rosy view of the military intervention in Iraq, which certainly caused widespread Muslim antagonism and also succeeded in replacing a defanged Sunni tyrant with Islamist Shia close to the clerical regime in Tehran – a real potential threat to Israel – is palpably delusional. Moreover, against this background an Israel which is not capable of attaining a modus vivendi with Arabs and Muslims, but tries to salvage its position by the kind of indiscriminate violence practised in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009, and by definitively turning its back on the two-state solution, is not a strategic asset, but a major strategic liability. Jihadist terrorism is not an existential threat to Britain, any more than to the United States. The implications of a full-scale ‘clash of civilisations’, which the words and actions of Israel and its American and British supporters encourage, couldvery well be.
The one-state solution.
The logic of this view was spelt out in the address given by Ambassador Chas Freeman in Oslo last September, in which he suggested that the stranglehold of the Israeli lobby on US policy-making made it imperative for Europeans and Arabs to get together to put the kind of real pressure on Israel to which it has never been subjected throughout the Oslo process. The crucial question which he left open was whether this pressure should be directed to a kind of last minute attempt to salvage the two-state solution, or whether this should be regarded as vanished beyond hope of recovery, and the pressure should be directed to a one-state solution.
What makes the position of the CFI and other elements in the British Jewish lobby particularly absurd is precisely such pressure, which they will determinedly resist, is the only way in which Israel could conceivably be prevented from committing suicide. Absent the two-state solution, as the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert remarked in 2007, Israel becomes an apartheid state, which will lead inexorably to the collapse of its power base among American Jews, and the one-state solution. This would certainly spell the end of Zionism. Whether Jews could coexist successfully with what is likely to be a majority Palestinian community in a binational state is an open question -- I must admit my own inclination is to be pessimistic.
It is clear that emerging splits among American Jews are a crucial element in how the policy of the United States towards the Middle East will evolve in coming years. The same holds true in Britain. And it is here that one of the most important effects of Netanyahu's defiance of Obama is liable to be felt. As in the United States, most British Jews have believed in the two-state solution. There is certainly a wide spectrum of attitudes among those who have placed their hopes in the possibility of a settlement with the Palestinians. But I think it is fair to say that a bedrock element is an identification with the fate of fellow Jews which memories of the Holocaust make if traumatic to abandon without a sense of guilt and betrayal. In a world where hopes of settlement with the Palestinians have disappeared, however, the tension between identification with Israel and the liberal values shared by very many Jews in Britain as in the United States is going to become unmanageable.
It really has become difficult to find rational grounds for optimism that the trends of the past few years can be reversed. An Israel where Avigdor Lieberman can be Foreign Minister is not going to turn back into the Israel where Abba Eban was Foreign Minister. And often repeated mantras, such as the notion that it is precisely leaders of the right, like Netanyahu, who can make fundamental compromises and carry their followers with them, look threadbare: after his defiance of Obama, the notion of him as a Nixon going to China,or a de Gaulle surrendering Algeria, looks fatuous.
Meanwhile, although still largely beneath the surface, the question of 'dual loyalty' is rearing its head. In the wake of the Holocaust, it came to be accepted as natural that British Jews should feel loyalty to Israel as well as to Britain. Indeed loyalty to Israel has commonly coexisted with a very deep sense of loyalty to Britain -- and there has been an immense Jewish contribution, much of it from refugees from disasters of twentieth-century European history, to British life. But vanishing prospects for a two-state solution raise the question of whether loyalty to Israel and loyalty to Britain remain compatible. For neoconservatives, be they Jewish or Gentile, they obviously are in harmony. But most British Jews are not neoconservatives, any more than are most American Jews. In Britain, as in the United States, issues which bitterly divided the Jewish community in Britain back in 1917, when the Balfour Declaration paved the way for the creation of Israel, and was eagerly championed by leading Jewish liberal politician, Herbert Samuel, and vitriolically attacked by another, his cousin Edwin Montagu, are again becoming inescapable.
What seems likely is that the stranglehold which the Israeli lobby has secured on the political process in the United States, together with his alliance with neoconservatives in that country and elsewhere, has blinded Netanyahu – and indeed many other Israeli leaders and supporters – to the suicidal nature of recent Israeli policy, and indeed of the whole attempt to colonise the West Bank. The extent to which Netanyahu simply has not grasped the implications of his actions was made amply evident in the extraordinary phone call he made to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to express his disappointment after Germany supported last month's UN resolution declaring Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories to be illegal and a 'major obstacle to the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace'. The resolution, which was sponsored by at least 130 countries, this was supported by all members of the Security Council, apart from the United States, which vetoed it. His complaint provoked a furious response from Merkel, according to Haaretz, who complained that Netanyahu had not 'made a single step to advance peace.'
Even with Germans, the assumption that one can rely on Gentile guilt over the Holocaust to inhibit criticism of Israel cuts less and less ice. One comes back again to the automatic assumption that opposition to what Israel does reflects hatred of Jews – related to which is the assumption that accusations or imputations of anti-Semitism are both an appropriate and effective means of stifling such opposition. In fact, as the balance of opinion about Israel shifts, such accusations not only progressively lose traction, but become counter-productive. The use of the post-war taboo on anti-Semitism, which arises out of the Holocaust, to stifle criticism of Israeli policy tends to create a particularly toxic form of resentment, which comes when people are prevented from expressing thoughts and feelings they regard as perfectly legitimate – while enabling those creating resentment to blind themselves to the fact they are creating it. It also is visibly tending to weaken the taboo, which is much to be regretted.
That there are sinister undertones to some of the opposition to Israeli policy – and certainly among some pro-Palestinian activists – is clear. A revival of anti-Semitism, as also the current upsurge in Islamophobia, is something to which men and women of goodwill should be implacably opposed. But anti-Semitism is certainly not the prime driver of the ongoing shift of opinion in Britain as elsewhere against Israel, and until Israelis and their supporters abroad grasp that fact, they will continue to act in ways which are leading inexorably to the end of the Zionist experiment, and indeed may already have put paid to hopes for its survival.
LeaNder, you wrote, "yes, there was a Jewish boycott of Nazi Germany, justifiably so,"
On what basis was the Jewish boycott justified?
Hitler had been in power for fewer than 90 days. Arthur Ruppin negotiated the Transfer Agreement with Nazis in 1933 -- presumably before Samuel Untermyer and other met in Europe to plan the boycott.
According to Etan Bloom, Arthur Ruppin had been at work "producing" the elements of Hebrew Culture in Palestine since 1908, with no small measure of German and NASDP support; Tel Aviv was over 10 years old by 1933; at least four aliyehs had taken place, selected according to Ruppin's eugenic plan that he formulated in close collaboration with German colleagues. Parties, kibbutzim, and other institutions had been formed in Palestine, on models from Ruppin's German correspondents. Whether Nazis thought Jews could create a state in Palestine or not, Ruppin and others had gone ahead and created the elements of a state.
I have not been able to determine WHEN the plan for the "World Capital Germania" was conceived. Was it before the March 1933 Jewish boycott of Germany, or after?
The newspaper headline can scarcely be called a "half-truth;" it's as factual as factual can be. And it scarcely seems ambiguous, but even if one might somehow assign a claim of ambiguity to the March 23 headline and the action it announced, Samuel Untermyer clarified the issue unmistakably by repeating the press release in NYTimes in August 1933, and enlarging on the situation by speaking and writing that Germans owed their prosperity to Jews, who were the "aristocrats" of the world, and referring to Germans as "brutes and barbarians."
Posted by: Fiorangela | 25 March 2011 at 04:27 PM
William R Cummings, I disagree entirely with your assertion that Nazis would have targeted Arabs. That makes no sense.
Nazism was a nationalist reaction to what was perceived by many Germans to be too much influence and impact on German culture and economics by Jewish financiers, merchants, media, and academics, exacerbated by the great influx of Jews fleeing Russia and bringing Communist ideas with them to Germany.
Arabs were not involved in any such activities that impacted German society.
It's important to recognize that German antipathy to Jews was NOT "just because they're Jews," nor was the animus based on religion -- Hitler spells that out quite plainly in "Mein Kampf." There were CAUSAL factors based on Jewish behavior and actions towards Germany (like boycott), NOT existential factors.
Causal factors are important to recognize inasmuch as Netanyahu has set up an equivalence between Iran and Hitler/1938: Take a rational look at who is imposing punishments on whom, and for what reasons (real or imagined).
Posted by: Fiorangela | 25 March 2011 at 06:34 PM
I also doubt that the Nazis thought at the time that a small Jewish colony in Palestine would be a threat to the German Empire, but if you can provide me something on why Germany feared that I will be glad to read it.
The whole discussion started after the Arab Revolt and the recommendations of the Peel Commission. I know some of the sources. I do find Nicosia much more easy to read than most of these documents.
Zionism and anti-semitism in Nazi Germany, Francis R. Nicosia, starting page 126, A Jewish State.
Walter Hinrich, Referat Deutschland, a member of the Nazi government:
The funny thing is they wanted to dominate the world themselves, room full of mirrors. But if I remember well, finally Hitler intervened and the support of Zionism and immigration to Palestine continued for a while. There were more urgent things to do, like annexing and dispossessing ...
Posted by: LeaNder | 25 March 2011 at 07:23 PM
Look, Fiorangela, the Nazis weren't born in 1933, they had tried to seize power in Munich in 1923. And from 1924 everybody about Hitler's plans, his ideology, in his Mein Kampf. Besides, there were many boots on the ground that showed people their mindsets, and equally many propagandist that made their views known to the wider German and world scene. So your boycott versus Havara Agreement timetable really is futile.
Posted by: LeaNder | 25 March 2011 at 07:42 PM
Fiorangela: Years ago on public radio in San Francisco, a news commentator, an Irishman and former BBC ME reporter, announced at the end of his show the subject of his next program would be the collaboration between Zionists and Nazis prior to WWII, aka: The Transfer Agreement. That show was never broadcast, he was terminated immediately.
Posted by: euclidcreek | 25 March 2011 at 07:59 PM
Thoughtful and excellent piece.
One concept for a "solution" is a bi-national state (one state) which perceives itself as part of a Euro- Mediterranean community.
Granted, the construction of a EuroMed community will take a lot of work. But it may be that the present "winds of change" from Morocco to Egypt may be positive for such a project. Libya, after the elimination of the Qaddhafi regime, has a role to play.
So would a bi-national state in historic Palestine.
The present trajectory of the Zionist state/project is, as David Habakkuk says "suicidal" and as Harper says, "tragic."
Cal,
Prof. Kevin MacDonald in several books has a controversial historical approach to the issue.
Posted by: Clifford Kiracofe | 25 March 2011 at 09:02 PM
Fiorangela,
".. exacerbated by the great influx of Jews fleeing Russia and bringing Communist ideas with them to Germany.
Thank you mentioning that...what happened in Russia and the Jews emigrating to Germany who were part of it did influence Hitler...yet new historians and popular writers seldom explain that connection.
Posted by: Cal | 25 March 2011 at 10:42 PM
LeaNder,
Thanks for info reply.
I can only say that idea was either propaganda hysterics or very prophetic...maybe both.
LOL.
Posted by: Cal | 25 March 2011 at 10:47 PM
Clifford.
Prof. McDonald name sounds familiar but don't believe I have read anything by him.
I will look him up though and do a read.
You say he has a controversial historical approach ...in your opinion does that mean he is sort of 'way out there' or just that he deviates from popular history?
Posted by: Cal | 25 March 2011 at 10:57 PM
I forgot to compliment Habakkuk on this excellent and accurate article that really does cover all the bases concerning Israel, the Zionist and the Jews.
And I believe this is true..."But I think it is fair to say that a bedrock element is an identification with the fate of fellow Jews which memories of the Holocaust make if traumatic to abandon without a sense of guilt and betrayal."
But I also think some of the most driven Zionist are motivated by revenge and power.. a desire to overcome their reputation as weak and powerless...and they are living out that obsession through Israel.
But the question I always end up with is how much longer will the US, and the world for that matter, be held captive by the nightmares and delusions of a minority of Jews?
At some point this tyranny of a minority visited on the rest of the world has to end.
I wish I believed that they, and that includes the Israeli government and their supporters in the US, were smart enough not to push it to the point where it comes down to them or us.
But I don't see anything in their past or current history that says they are capable of recognizing when enough is enough.
Instead of always asking is it 'good for the Jews' they should be asking themselves why,if they are only for themselves anyone else should be for them.
Posted by: Cal | 26 March 2011 at 12:03 AM
Fiorangela! The fact that the NAZI's eliminated all the Gypsy peoples they could find and intended to eliminate all SLAVS refutes your arguments. There was no room for others once the master race had its ultimate victory. MY heritage is Polish, Welsh and Scot so even with my blue eyes and blond hair probably would not have passed based on NAZI eugenics and race theory.
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 26 March 2011 at 02:23 AM
Cal,
Yes, outside the mainstream interpretation although assembled from standard primary and secondary sources. His methodology is derived from evolutionary biology and the behavioral sciences. He has taught at California State University/Long Beach.
A fascinating study by a well known British historian is: Michael Grant, The Jews in the Roman World (New York: Scribner's, 1973). The parallel is to the USA and Israel today.
You are quite correct to indicate the US Congressional Record as a valuable and authoritative primary source for research on the Zionist Lobby and US politics.
Posted by: Clifford Kiracofe | 26 March 2011 at 06:36 AM
Clifford, what do you think about Kevin MacDonald's historical expertise? His small base in using, some say misusing scholarship?
***************************
Fiangorola, I'd suggest you take a closer look at the website: Wintersonnenwende
Then take a look at the bookseller. You have to follow the German link to get there. Bookseller=Buchversand. They adore Hitler and have quite a bit of literature about him. His will to peace, how he was tricked into war and on and on it goes, you will probably find some literature that the Holocaust actually didn't happen and loads of studies about cruelty towards Germans.
Or go to the original document you link to in context. Here the The Jewish Declaration of War, is the second chapter of a book by Ingrid Weckert, the mate of the late German neo-Nazi Michael Kühnen.
You decide whom you trust.
Actually already the name of the site makes me deeply suspicious. But that would lead us deeper into the Aryan mental universe of the Nazis with the many Untermenschen/subhumans that have to be extinguished on their way to power, and their vision of the world to come.
Posted by: LeaNder | 26 March 2011 at 07:49 AM
thanks for the link, MRW, I am pleased you are still around.
Posted by: LeaNder | 26 March 2011 at 07:51 AM
".. exacerbated by the great influx of Jews fleeing Russia and bringing Communist ideas with them to Germany.
This influx was vastly exaggerated. As it is today? German antisemites didn't differentiate between Jews from the Eastern Prussian territories, that were actually Germans, and immigrants from futher East.
Posted by: LeaNder | 26 March 2011 at 08:04 AM
Cal, actually Russian Jews weren't needed to spread socialist ideas on German ground, remember Marx was German. But if you look at networks, you can just as well look at the White Russian networks that found supporters on the right, e.g. the Nazis. These Russian networks were active in the US too. They had close contacts with e.g. Ford.
Posted by: LeaNder | 26 March 2011 at 08:08 AM
google online book, url has not made it through the SST filters.
google this 1881 article in Eclectic magazine titled, The Jews in Germany.
I get your point, LeaNder, that antipathy toward Jews predated 1933. My question is, what engendered those attitudes -- Jews and Germans lived together fairly amicably from ~700 AD. What changed? I submit that Jewish financial power was the major factor.
Posted by: Fiorangela | 26 March 2011 at 10:00 AM
Arafat opined that accepting Oslo would be suicidal for him.
Posted by: Charles I | 26 March 2011 at 10:14 AM
I composed a lengthy response to LeaNder, with links, quotes, etc., but upon pressing 'post' a pop-up said, "Sorry, can't post your comment." I've since checked for spinach in my teeth and used deodorant -- and posted a 'test' reference to an article in an 1881 European magazine.
LeaNder, I chose the wintersonnde site ONLY for the gif of the newspaper, and I selected THAT site rather than one of the three others available because the others are from Christian fundamentalist organizations that seemed less historically grounded. In fact, however, the Christian sites have a print of a different edition of the same newspaper & headline but that also includes an article by a British leader who was negotiating peaceful resolutions in Europe at the time.
Churchill was uninvolved with affairs re Germany. Only when the possibility of a peaceful resolution of European conflicts seemed possible, that would have left Germany in a position to challenge UK empire-dominance, was Churchill induced to rejoin the fray. WWII did not have to happen.
Cal -- Kevin MacDonald has some theory of White European privilege er something; I find it problematic. imo David Irving presents sourced information that is worth assessing with a critical eye.
LeaNder, frankly, I don't have a problem with German "apologetics." Israel's present behavior has made of that state a petri dish, for good or ill. The fact that Jewish people have shut down alternative perspectives on holocaust is unfair from the outset -- Germans should be allowed to tell their own story. Furthermore, censorship suggests that there is information that some prefer to elide -- Graetz wrote 11 volumes of Jewish history but did not mention hundreds of years of Jewish kabbalism because he found the topic disturbing.
William Cummings --
1. Were there Arabs on German lands or lands that Germans sought to annex?
2. You and Edwin Black should get together: Black is attempting to gin up furor over a Nazi-Arab alliance against the Jewish people.
Posted by: Fiorangela | 26 March 2011 at 10:27 AM
"Sorry, can't post your comment."
if you use Firefox, as I do, I get this almost always. I have found a trick to deal with it, instead of changing to IE.
I clean othe hole cache and open a new window. Then I can post.
ooops, I have updated to Firefox 4, and now have problems to find my old way around. But that with a little time spend on learning, I hope, I will find new error-escape-strategies again.
Posted by: LeaNder | 26 March 2011 at 01:22 PM
Neither Germany or England had access to oil but a history of the transformation of the British Navy from coal to oil and the German response as its military mechanized over time should be documented and researched carefully by someone as to the links of the NAZI's ambitions and need for petroleum before and during WWI and WWII. Fortunatley the abundance of Oil from the US served the allies well in WWII and US high octane petrol. But what I would call the awakening of various militaries and navies in the need for securing petroleum put much of the ME in play even before WWI. Hey who exactly did the British think would protect there oil concessions in Iran for example? Rommel's efforts were in part driven by the need for secure petroleum resources. And cutting off the Suez Canal!
Posted by: William R. Cumming | 26 March 2011 at 01:43 PM
I am (trying to) add these references here
because this post, per the SST search machine, contains other significant references to Kevin MacDonald.
I think the references may be of interest to a number of SSTers.
Kevin MacDonald, as many of you know, is quite the controversial character.
To put it mildly, he is a bête noire for the SPLC and ADL.
And much of the intellectual community, following suit, avoids him like the plague.
However, in March of 2018, an academic at Oxford actually published a lengthy (23 page) review of his theories (available for free!):
"Judaism as a Group Evolutionary Strategy
A Critical Analysis of Kevin MacDonald’s Theory"
by Nathan Cofnas,
published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Human Nature, March 2018
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-018-9310-x/fulltext.html
MacDonald on 2018-03-20 replied with an even lengthier (41 page) response:
"Reply to Nathan Cofnas
Debating THE CULTURE OF CRITIQUE"
by Kevin MacDonald, 2018-03-20
http://www.unz.com/article/reply-to-nathan-cofnas/
Some comments from the public, including an interesting comment by "Chinese Nat Maiden"
(HUMINT specialists may find this of interest, not that I have anyone in mind :-)
are at
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2018/03/19/reply-to-nathan-cofnass-review-of-the-culture-of-critique/
Next, Cofnas naturally has HIS comments on MacDonald's reply.
That is a high-tech response, a reprint of MacDonald's response with the areas Cofnas want to discuss highlighted. Moving your cursor to a highlighted area produces Cofnas's response.Cofnas gives a link to those comments in his comment #1 at the unz.com link above:
As of now, that is as far as the ping-pong match seems to have gone.
But I expect MacDonald will volley back in good time.
Those desiring to witness a good academic debate may enjoy following the arguments.
Which are not entirely irrelevant to the issue of what is driving U.S. policy, both foreign and domestic.
Also, while I am no doubt transgressing on some people's ideas of norms,
I might as well also link to an article not dealing with MacDonald,
but definitely giving a definitely not-politically-correct discussion of the overwhelming Russophobia so much of the American "elite" exhibits:
"It's Time to Drop the Jew Taboo"
by Charles Bausman, 2018-01-15
http://www.unz.com/article/its-time-to-drop-the-jew-taboo/
Posted by: Keith Harbaugh | 27 March 2018 at 08:30 PM