This is not isolated stuff for John Wight, as he often comments on the Socialist Unity blog under the handle of "John W". He comments on the Muslim Council Of Britain To Commemorate Holocaust Day thread:

"8. I think the decision is a mistake. The Holocaust is undoubtedly manipulated by Israel and their friends and supporters to justify the continued occupation and ehtnic cleasning of Palestine. By pandering to the exceptionalism of the Holocaust, supported by the British Government, illustrates a lack of political awareness on the part of MCB and, I have to say, Salam, for whom I have a lot of respect.

Tactics should flow from principles and this is not a decision rooted in principle. Rather, it has been motivated by a fear of calumny by the British government and uninformed opinion within society.

The MCB’s previous position of advocating changing the name of the commemoration to Genocide Memorial Day was entirely reasonable, politically relevant, and they should have stuck to that position.

This is a sad day for the Palestinians and all those who understand the true nature of the aparheid state of Israel. It is also an insult to the victims of the Holocaust, among them homosexual, gypsies and communists, whose slaughter has been used to justify crimes against humanity.

J

Comment by John W — 22 December, 2007 @ 2:35 pm"

See http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1408

There's plenty more like that

"29. On holocaust memorial day to condemn commemoration of the holocaust victims because of the plight of the palestinians is truly the anti-imperialism of fools.

Reply:

This is garbage. No one is condemning the commeration of holocaust victims Instead, those of us who understand history as fluid and not fixed recognise that to support or condone this kind of exceptionalism is to invite a repeat of what happened to the Jews under the Nazis. I challenge you to deny that the plight of the Palestinians today is inextricably linked to the crime that is the holocaust, and that the holocaust, the international guilt which exists as a result of the holocaust, has not been used to justify the ongoing crimes of ethnic cleansing and apartheid being committed against the Palestinians by the State of Israel.

John Wight

Comment by John W — 11 January, 2008 @ 10:57 am"

from the Commemorate Holocaust Victims thread, http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=1505

Modernity,
I am also finding this theme turning up in far more legitimate discussions and texts - the idea that the Holocaust is used to justify Israeli HR abuses, etc.
In fact, it is little more than the idea to be found in the Protocols (Article 8) that claims that antisemitism is not only good for the Jews, but helps them in their plans for world domination, etc.. It is really ugly stuff.

Modernity, Saul,
The purpose of this nonsense is, on the one hand, to deny a specific Jewish aspect to the Holocaust (hence reference to Roma, lesbians, gays, communists, etc. in the name of a faux universalism), whilst on the other, replacing them with the Palestinians. By so doing, the holocaust still "continues" to eat its victims, but this time it is the Palestinians as Jews and Jews as Nazis.

Saul,

I would agree, it is turning up more and more, in the past you primarily would have found such sentiments amongst the Extreme Right and neo-Nazis, but now it seems bit by bit that those views are traversing the political divide.

Another peculiarity is the change in style that has occurred on the Extreme Right and parts of the Western Left

I think there is a trend amongst the more intelligent sections of the Extreme Right to obscure their most conspicuous antisemitic passions and often couching their anti-Jewish racism in the fog of post-modernist speak.  This appears to be a concerted effort to conceal their true intent, making their views seem more legitimate, whilst fishing around for potential supporters.

Conversely, the slickness of the Extreme Right is counterbalanced by the shrill voices amongst Western "anti-imperialists" who regularly seek to ramp up anti Israeli rhetoric, adopting the terminology and expressions previously associated with the Extreme Right.

It is all very peculiar.

I see very very little difference between Engage's views on Zionism and the declared anti-Zionists except on the issue of the boycott of Israel.

This is the main reason why so many Engage posters have a hard time dealing with the anti-Semitism of the left and are abusive towards posters who are critical of Palestinian terrorism. It's all a family  quarrel.

I doubt you will post my comments as you seem to censor those who are not leftists.

Dov,
That seems a little unfair. Engage affirms Zionism as Jewish self-determination and regularly hosts comments from those who are not leftists (Paul Bogdanor being one very obvious example). Whilst some of those involved in Engage are more critical of Israel than some would be, that does not make them anti-Zionists!

Not unfair at all, James Mendelsohn. Ask posters like N. Friedman, Shriber or Noga, who have been on the receiving end of anti-Zionists, have in fact been insulted by posters, like Saul for their views.

Dov: I'm glad someone noticed the insults and hostility. My last two comments have been garbaged. Unfortunately I did not save them before submitting. I thought that Engage had changed its draconian moderation. Well, I was too hasty... I wonder if they'll post this comment. Perhaps they will. Just to prove me wrong...

This is hardly the consistent fair-minded policy of a website purporting to fight the restrictions to freedoms that the boycott will impose upon Israeli academics. It seems a little bi-polar; to exert so much effort to stop the boycotting of Israeli academics while restricting access to what must be considered "too" pro- Israeli posters...

Dov,

I am not a spokesperson for Engage, but you are simply not in reality to make the following statement:

"I see very very little difference between Engage's views on Zionism and the declared anti-Zionists except on the issue of the boycott of Israel."

Since when have Engage called for the destruction of Israel like anti-Zionists do?


If you bothered to read the home page of this website, you would know that Engage is "a resource for the monitoring and the critique of left and liberal antisemitism." That is what it is. It is not a mouthpiece for Kadima, Likud, or the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  If that is the sort of thing you are after, try another website.

Mikey,

Different people have very different ideas about how to counter Antisemitism that has infected those on the left of the political spectrum.

Regarding Noga's point, many of us believe that the approach of, for example, David H. that, in fighting Antisemitism, also fights Israel's control of lands captured in 1967, actually advances the case of the Anti-Zionist and/or Antisemites. We believe that such approach is ill-considered. This is not to suggest that we think Israel ought retain such land, which is a different point.

Further, some of us believe that the close connection between some of those on the left of the political spectrum and Islamists requires that there be an examination of what Islamists really believe. And, that necessarily involves understanding something about Islam - both theologically and historically - and addressing such matters as they are. The response from many that such is essentialist or racist prevents reasoned discussion. Such charges are not only insulting but they effectively advance the position of the Antisemites and Anti-Zionists.

And, there is the additional point that those who cry "racist" too often and too easily will eventually be seen as crying wolf. And, that too advances the agenda of the Antisemites and Anti-Zionists. Which is to say, such cries are disingenuous.

"Dov: I'm glad someone noticed the insults and hostility. My last two comments have been garbaged. Unfortunately I did not save them before submitting. I thought that Engage had changed its draconian moderation. Well, I was too hasty... I wonder if they'll post this comment. Perhaps they will. Just to prove me wrong..."

Same here, Noga.

Besides, a number of my post have not been published here and I am not sure this one will be either.

Mikey said: "If you bothered to read the home page of this website, you would know that Engage is "a resource for the monitoring and the critique of left and liberal antisemitism."

Here is a quote from David Hirsh's own keyboard:

"Engage is a single issue campaign. It focuses on one issue, antisemitism, and is therefore concerned also about the demonization of Israel, and of Jews who don't think of themselves as anti-Zionists. We believe that a new commonsense is emerging that holds Israel to be a central and fundamental evil in the world. We disagree with this notion and we think that it is dangerous. The danger is that this kind of thinking may well lead to, and license, the emergence of a movement that is racist against Jews in general."

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=648

At least it is honest enough to put forth a genuine concern about  "The demonization of Israel". It is enough for David Hirsh (by his own account a "non-Zionist") to express a concern about the demonization of Israel to merit from the boycotters a view that he represents "rabid" Zionism. (I've been to some of their websites. I speak advisedly).

I would suggest that the way the boycotters demonize David Hirsh  your sneer demonizes someone like me, by referring to me as "a mouthpiece for Kadima, Likud, or the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

A "mouthpiece" is used to connote negative meaning, to indicate  an automaton spokesperson who perpetuates an unsavoury, illegitimate agenda, a propagandist. It is reductive and probably defamatory. Which is why I called it a demonizing sneer.

Back to John Wight, last October, he wrote from Edinburgh that he

"is currently based in Scotland, where he is active in left wing politics. He lived in the US for five years, based in Los Angeles, and was an organizer in the US antiwar movement with the ANSWER Coalition and was briefly a member of the Workers World Party. He was also a member of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement and spoke in this capacity at meetings in and around LA. His writing appears regularly in Counterpunch, Scottish Left Review and the British Marxist daily newspaper, The Morning Star."

Anyone familiar with the organizations or publications cited, whether on one side or another of the Atlantic, will quickly understand his orientation.

Funny how Engage is attacked by antizionists as apologists for Israel , and by right wingers as antizionist.

" some of us believe that the close connection between some of those on the left of the political spectrum and Islamists requires that there be an examination of what Islamists really believe."

I'm with you so far N. Friedman.

"And, that necessarily involves understanding something about Islam - both theologically and historically - and addressing such matters as they are."

That's where I differ from your view.  I think that what you call "Islamism" is one form, one strand, one kind of Islam.  I think that there are others.  

I agree with Aziz Al-Azmeh when he argues that: "...there are as many Islams as there are situations that sustain it."  

And when he says: "... the presumptions of Muslim cultural homogeneity and continuity do not correspond to social reality."

I agree with Sami Zubaida when he argues that "...in insisting on a strict Islamisation of society and government the modern fundamentalists represent a departure rather than a continuity with Islamic political traditions or precepts...  This break is accentuated by the fact that modern Islamic groups are operating ideologically and politically within the context of the modern nation-state and the political concepts related to it."

The Islamists claim that their view of Islam is the one, single, authentic version of Islam.

N. Friedman, it seems to me that you accept this self-definition.  The Islamists pose on video, they pose as the mad passion-driven Arab, beheading the Jew, and you accept this as the authentic picture of Islam.  

In a grim reversal of the blood libel, Nasrallah boasts of having a collection of Jewish body-parts.  You claim that there is something about Islam which explains or which legitimizes this kind of behaviour.  Yet clearly it is only one strand of Islam which legitimates this kind of behaviour - it is the radical jihadi Islamist political movement.  It is a political movement which secularizes Islam by constructing out of its language and its ritual and its symbols, a modern totalitarian political ideology.

Now you have every right to hold your view Neal - which is that there is something inherent within Islam which is totalitarian.

The worry is that this view leads you to demonize all Muslims as being particularly - ESSENTIALLY - more susceptible to totalitarianism than Christians or Jews.

It is a similar essentialization to the one which looks at the behaviour of the most extreme Jewish settlers and argues that their rationalizations come from the Torah, their arms and legitimacy comes from the state of Israel, their money comes from Jewry around the world - and they are the authentic manifestation of Judaism.  This is an essentialization which demonizes all Jews as though they were Kahanists.

You have every right to hold your view Neal but Engage is not here to function as a vehicle for your view.  We are here to challenge anti-Zionism and we are here to do it on our own basis and in our own way.

You don't approve of the politics with which we challenge it and you don't approve of our strategy.  Fine.  Then do it your way.  And criticize us.  But I'm not prepared to allow you to divert every thread into a discussion of whether or not Islam is at the heart of all that is wrong in the world.  That is not why we put so much effort into Engage.  That is not the argument we want to spend all our time having.  

N. Friedman: "The response from many that such is essentialist or racist prevents reasoned discussion. Such charges are not only insulting but they effectively advance the position of the Antisemites and Anti-Zionists."

I believe that the conflation of the political movements of Jihadi Islamism with Islam does run the risk of demonizing Muslims and I do believe that it often feeds into and legitimizes anti-Muslim racism.   You may feel this to be insulting, but it is my view.  And I am the editor of this site.  

I don't think there is any evidence that what Engage does "effectively advances the position of the antisemites and anti-Zionists".  I think that this claim is just a bit silly.

"I don't think there is any evidence that what Engage does "effectively advances the position of the antisemites and anti-Zionists". I think that this claim is just a bit silly."

Yet, you allow posts by people like Saul that demonise as "Zionists" people who come to the support of the Israeli government. He said that he supports the Israeli people but not the government. Israel is a democracy and refusing to support the legitimacy of its govenment is no different than holding an anti-Israel position.

We allow People like Saul and we allow people like you and like N Friedman and like Noga and like Shriber and like me.

We just don't guarantee to publish every word people write.

We make editorial judgments.  Think of it like the letters page of a newspaper.

If you want unlimited comments - if you want a place to discuss the issues of the day - or Israeli politics - or the evils of Engage - try Harry's Place.  I like Harry's Place and they have an open comments policy.  If you want an online place to congregate, chat and argue, it cannot be bettered.

David,

You have my views all wrong. I do not claim that Islam and Islamism are one and the same. Instead, I hold that Islamism is sufficiently related to Islam that one needs to understand Islam to understand Islamism.

Islamism is, as I see it, an attempt to create a renaissance in Islamic belief and Islamic power under the unusual circumstances of the modern world. Hence, Islamism is clearly closely related to Islam, to the extent that traditionalist generally find it difficult to counter the arguments of the Islamists since Islamists employ arguments directly from Islamic theology and tradition.

As for your comment that I see only one Islam, that is not my view. Nonetheless, there are things that being a believing Muslim entails - just as there are things that being a believing Methodist entails. That does not mean that I believe there is only one strand of Islam.

You are free to call my view essentialist. I am free to call your understanding of Islam to be contrary to fact. My view is that one goal of scholarship is to find descriptions that generally apply. In my view, the descriptions that I believe applicable may differ from yours but, as I see it, you cannot understand something without making a description. On your Islam that has no essence, you are making a statement which, in my view, is contrary to fact.

Clearly, we understand what religion is very differently. I think religion is a set of deeply believed ideas, with different ones coming front and center at different times and/or places. These ideas exist whether or not, in some given location or time, some believer choose to ignore certain ideas or such ideas are washed behind local customs.

As for demonizing Muslims, I do not think I have done any such thing. As I have said, Islam has a martial strand that ought be understood the way that one understands the martial strand of thought in the Roman Empire. I, for one, think the Roman Empire admirable notwithstanding it martial thinking. The same for Islamic civilization.

“We make editorial judgments.  Think of it like the letters page of a newspaper.”

Your editorial judgment failed you, then, David when you posted Saul’s attack on me. I don’t mind being criticized or even attacked for things that I have said or written (as long as I can reply), but not for something I didn’t say.

Saul’s attribution of comments to me that another poster made was pretty obvious to anyone who had taken two minutes to verify the quote.

I find it most amusing that some think me an anti-Zionist! In your dreams.
As to the hostility, stop writing nonsense and I will discuss things weith you like a reasinable human being. But..................lets take NF's comments. Here I was having an pleasant interchange with Modernity and NIMN about a very serious and important matter concerning the manner in which the Holocaust is being used against Jews on the left and then, bang, this from
Friedman,

"Further, some of us believe that the close connection between some of those on the left of the political spectrum and Islamists requires that there be an examination of what Islamists really believe. And, that necessarily involves understanding something about Islam - both theologically and historically - and addressing such matters as they are. The response from many that such is essentialist or racist prevents reasoned discussion. Such charges are not only insulting but they effectively advance the position of the Antisemites and Anti-Zionists".

Bang - the problem rephrased in the terms of needing "to understanding something about Islam - both theologically and historically - and addressing such matters as they are".
No it is not! It is no more necessary to understand Islam "theologically and historically" as it is to understand the situation in Israel by understanding Jews "theologically or historically". (That is precisely what Jacqueline Rose does and I bet you're no fan of hers!)
The Middle East is a political matter. If you want to refer it constantly back to "Islam", then go ahead. But if you do, do not be surpised if I continue to ask you whether Israel's treatment of the Gazans, their occupation of what will one day be part of an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank is part of the "history and theology" of Judaism.
I find it incredibly narrow that you feel that yu can write out of the equation the secular forces both in Israel and Palestine, those who fought hard and long against the theos, but who also preach hatred and racism (as well as those theos who preach peace). As with your conservative friends, your thinking in static blocks, cannot bust lack the sophistication of even beginning to comprehend the real world. But, hey, you just carry on being upset that some stranger in a virtual chatrrom is rude to you. Avoids real thought I guess.

Dov,
A basic political point. I'll spell it out for you so you don't get it wrong.
Not liking a government is one thing. Denying the legitimacy of a government or the country it represents in another.
Let me make it clearer for you ok? Here goes,
A while ago a person called Margaret Thatcher led a Conservative Government in Britian. I hated her and I hated it for the many bad things she and it did. But (and here is the science bit) I did not think that her government, or the country she represented was not legitimate (there are questions about how far manifesto policy binds government policy when in office and can indeed, address question of legitimacy for particular policies, but I won't complicate matters for you). So, let's see what we have learnt shall we?............
1. I  think the Israeli government is wrong to treat Gaza the way it is for a whole host of political and moral reasons.  Occasionally, I may phrase that as I think Israel is wrong to be treating Gaza that way.
2. I may loathe the Israeli government for that and for a dozen and one other reasons, just like I despise the current Republican government in the United States (of America) for a dozen and one reasons. That is called having an opinion. Lots of people have them and in democracies they are positively encouraged.
3. Neither of these opinions (see point 2) in any way casts doubt on the legitimacy of the government nor the country they represent.

Now, I appreciate some other posters prefer to base their opinion (or views)  of a country and a government according to their religion or culture. But that is a bad thing. It is a bad thing because it thinks that decisions made by those countries are predetermined by history and theology. It denies free will to the living - a common feature of conservative orthodoxy. That is something else I hate whilst at the same not denying their legitimacy to say it or express that view. Of course, recognising someone's legitimacy does not mean I have be polite to them. The right to offend is an Enlightenment value I cherish!

Dov, I think even you should be able to grasp the point now!

Saul, stop patronizing me.

I know exactly what you meant. I also know the way you treat posters with whom you are in disagreement.


As to your difference between not liking the Israeli government and its people, it's a difference without a difference because you haven't historicized or contextualized your point. It's one thing to dislike the British government or the French government or the Iranian government and make a distinction between it and its people. These countries legitimacy is not being questioned in the context of the discussion. Israel's legitimacy is.


The issue of Gaza is a separate issue. I would be happy to discuss it with you, but it's only one example of the way anti-Israel activists try to delegitimize the country.

It's hypocritical of Jacqueline Rose for example to pretend that her problem with Israel is its treatment of Gaza when her problem with Israel is the very existence of the country.

You also say that,

"Now, I appreciate some other posters prefer to base their opinion (or views)  of a country and a government according to their religion or culture. But that is a bad thing. It is a bad thing because it thinks that decisions made by those countries are predetermined by history and theology. It denies free will to the living - a common feature of conservative orthodoxy. That is something else I hate whilst at the same not denying their legitimacy to say it or express that view..."

Now, this is a red herring. You need to offer specific evidence that someone based their “opinion (or views) of a country and a government according to their religion or culture.”

Still, I would like to know why you equate “religion and culture” as if they were the same and treat them in a negative light.

I also don’t agree that it is a speaking of a countries culture or religion is a bad thing or it denies “free will to the living” whatever that means to you. In fact I find this view a little paranoid, it is certainly confused. Does speaking of the British in historical terms deny you the right of “free will?”  If so how?


For the rest if you, Saul, if you find pleasure in attacking people expect them to attack you back. Most sane people are not doormats and don’t like to be stepped upon.  

Saul,

My original post was addressed in response to Mikey. My I wrote was directly responsive to what that person wrote.

As for your comment, I do not understand how a movement such as Zionism could be understood without knowing something about Jewish history and, to a lesser extent, about Judaism. And, I cannot imagine how one can understand how modern Israel came to be without understanding such things. It is, after all, no accident that Israel is located in the ancestral Jewish homeland and not Alaska. And, it is no accident that a Jewish liberation movement developed given the circumstances of Jewish history. And, I think that Jewish history and, to a lesser extent, Judaism play roles in Israel's ongoing history.

However, your comment about Gaza makes no sense to me at all. The issue in Gaza is that it is ruled by religious fanatics with a religious agenda to increase the portion of the world ruled by Muslims - beginning with Israel's demise, to be replaced by a waqf under Islamic rule (as it says in the Hamas Covenant). Those particular religious fanatics who rule Gaza, along with their more avid supporters, want their pint of Jewish blood and there is no settlement with such people; unfortunately only bloodshed.

In any event, the topic I was addressing is Islamism, not Gaza. In the case of Islamism, I do not see how it can possibly be understood without understanding Islam and the history of Islam.

You say that the issues concerning Islamism are solely political. I do not see how you can adequately understand a movement which is self-consciously religious (i.e. Islamism) on solely political terms. And, I do not see how one can understand Islamism without understanding a good deal about Islam and Islamic history.

You may recall that sometime during or after being arrested in connection with the assassination of Sadat, Ayman al-Zawahiri said, of his own views and those of his compatriots, "We are Muslims who believe in our religion." I trust that he knows his views and was not saying that "We are non-believing persons of nominal Muslim background who have a solely political cause."  I take, instead, his statement to invite an inquiry as to what it means to say such a thing as "We are Muslims who believe in our religion."

I am at a loss to understand how you see only politics. To me, you believe your ideology notwithstanding evidence that contradicts it. Eyes wide shut.

DH: "You don't approve of the politics with which we challenge it and you don't approve of our strategy.  Fine.  Then do it your way.  And criticize us.  But I'm not prepared to allow you to divert every thread into a discussion of whether or not Islam is at the heart of all that is wrong in the world."

So why do you let them divert every thread, David?

"So why do you let them divert every thread, David?"

Who is the "them," Carrie?

With no reference to any previous comments -- a question about the article that started all this. I'm curious to know: on what, exactly, does Wight base his claim that Palestinians were among the victims of the Nazis? Since the Germans never reached Palestine/Israel during WW II, when exactly were the Nazis supposed to be a in a position to do anything to the Palestinians? (They did control areas with Arab population in North Africa for a while -- but not, AFAIK, areas with with a *Palestinian* population). So this claim seems to be a complte fabrication -- no substance at all. The only Palestinian/Nazi connection known to me (but then, I don't claim to be a historian) is that certain Palestinian leaders *collaborated* with the Nazis (and had to travel outside their homeland to do so). But presumably Wight would claim to possess facts (real or invented) to prove his point. Anyone here knows what these facts might be?

Quote from the Morning Star's asticle:

“In fact, the Palestinians hold a unique place as the Holocaust’s forgotten victims, at least in the eyes of those charged with maintaining the objective of colonising the Middle East in the interests of Western neoliberalism.

“in short, the long-suffering Palestinians have been sacrificed upon the alter of the West’s continued blind support of that apartheid state otherwise known as the state of Israel.”

Quote from Martin Amis:

"I know it's a great tradition of the British left to support Palestine, but when you come up against this question, you can feel the intelligence and balance leaving the hall with a shriek, and people getting into this endocrinal state about Israel. I just don't understand it. The Jews have a much, much worse history than the Palestinians, and in living memory. But there's just no impulse of sympathy for that... I know we're supposed to be grown up about it and not fling around accusations of anti-Semitism, but I don't see any other explanation. It's a secularised anti-Semitism. Do you want another drink yet?"

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/the-two-faces-of-amis-774978.html

"In any event, the topic I was addressing is Islamism, not Gaza. In the case of Islamism, I do not see how it can possibly be understood without understanding Islam and the history of Islam"

Exactly, and this thread was about abuse of the holocaust by the Morning Star.....geddit!

"As to your difference between not liking the Israeli government and its people, it's a difference without a difference because you haven't historicized or contextualized your point."
This is meanigless. I have absolutely no idea what you mean,

"It's one thing to dislike the British government or the French government or the Iranian government and make a distinction between it and its people. These countries legitimacy is not being questioned in the context of the discussion. Israel's legitimacy is."

So, Dov, you are telling me that I can't criticise Israel. How dare you! Nationalists of every country give this rubbush! Iran - don't criticise since we are the only Islamic government, let's give nothing to the Imperealists. US - we are at war, so no criticism please. Israel - our legitimacy is being questioned - no criticism please.

You see, Dov, I refuse to have my thought and speech constrained by antisemites and antizionists on one side, and rabid nationalists on the other. I'll criticise who I want, when I want..........it is a freedom some of use won not that long ago!

NF
Please tell me where I have once said that Israel should negotiate with Hamas?
I have said, along with many Israelis, that the Israeli government's tactic of blockade is wrong, wrong, wrong.
If you are going to comment on my posting, please do not misrepresent me. It;s funny isn't it, when thinking don't fit into some preconceived idea? Guess you get a bit confused!
Again, do you actually have anything to say about the story at the top of this thread, you know, the one you ignored?
I still await an answer, is Israeli violence in the OT part of its theology and culture? (sorry, Dov, should, I not mention the raft of human right abuses logged by and verified by Israeli human rights organisation - just in case?)

on what, exactly, does Wight base his claim that Palestinians were among the victims of the Nazis? Since the Germans never reached Palestine/Israel during WW II, when exactly were the Nazis supposed to be a in a position to do anything to the Palestinians? (They did control areas with Arab population in North Africa for a while -- but not, AFAIK, areas with with a *Palestinian* population).

Reply:

Surely this isn't a serious statement. The Nazi Holocaust led directly to the influx of Jews into Palestine and the Nakba in 1948 during which 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly dispossessed and expelled from their land. Don't you see the connection between both events?

The European powers, allied to the US, encouraged this mass immigration of Europe's surviving Jews to Israel because they didn't want them. In a very real sense, the Nazi Holocaust was the catalyst for the Zionist dream of a Jewish State. Up to this point the Zionists were viewed amongst most Jews as a fringe sect not to be taken seriously. The Holocaust played into their hands, allowing them to see their vision fulfilled.

The vast majority of Jews who immigrated to Israel, both before and after the Second World War, did so believing the Zionist myth that Palestine was a 'land without people for a people without land.'

Understanding history as the constant fulfilment of the principle of cause and effect, the Palestinians can be considered then the Holocaust's forgotten victims.  

Saul,

I never said you suggested negotiating with Hamas. So, I do not see how I have represented your views on the matter. Read what I wrote more carefully. In any event, you, not I, raised Gaza. So you, not I, chose the topic. I responded by noting my point that Gaza is in the hands of religious fanatics.

Read my comment at February 01, 2008 at 06:23:52 PM, which addressed Mikey's comment that was immediately above it. The context of my noted post was an argument about how to counter Antisemitism. I might add that David H. responded directly to my comment which, I think, makes what I wrote legitimately part of the topic of the page.

You suggest that Israel stop its blockade. I do not recall addressing that issue at all. If you are looking for my views on the topic, I do not have a strong one. I do not live in Israel and do not have to live with the consequences, whatever they may be. If you are asking me if I find blockades to be morally troubling, the answer is that I find all war to be morally troubling. But, among things that might be done in a war, blockades are scenes à faire. So, it is morally troubling. But, so is the entire war strategy of the Palestinian Arabs, which is based on killing as many civilians as possible and hiding military activities in civilian locations and using children as pawns. In fact, that strategy is a whole lot more troubling to me. I think that the Palestinian Arab war, as fought, cannot remotely be justified under just war theory.

As for your question about Jewish thought, Judaism does not have a theology in the normal sense of the word. So, I do not think such is involved, at least not in the way your question poses the issue. However, the Jewish Scriptures and the Talmud certainly play a role in the way that Jews think - even Jews who are not religious. However, that was not really my point in my earlier post.

My point - which responded directly to your question - regarding Judaism and Zionism and Israel is that had, for example, the Passover prayer been "Next year in Juno, Alaska," modern Israel might have a different location. Further, the fact that some Jews hold - and I have met such people - that Israel's boundaries are drawn in the Scriptures so that it is sinful to alter them has impacted on Israel's history, post 1967. The same for the fact that the historic biblical land thought of as Judea, as opposed to modern Israel, could be ceded by Israel. Such, I think, impacts on the willingness of some Jews to cede such land. It certainly makes it very painful for many Jews, apart from whether it would or would not be a good idea, politically, militarily and morally.

Since when does John Wight know what he is talking about? His comment is simply a disgrace and full of more holes than a sieve.

To highlight a few of his utterly preposterous comments:

1. The Nazi Holocaust did not lead directly to what he refers to as the "Nakba." The creation of the State of Israel was envisaged much earlier on and supported in 1917 by the British government via the Balfour Declaration. This was not only years before the Holocaust took place but also years before the Nazis came to power in Germany. [1]

2. There were not as Wight puts it, "750,000 Palestinians... forcibly dispossessed and expelled from their land." Wight ignores the fact that the Arab Higher Committee ordered all Palestinians to leave Haifa. In fact, according to the scholar Efraim Karsh a British intelligence report summed up that "had it not been for the incitement and scaremongering of the Haifa Arab leadership, most Arab Residents might well have stayed. [2]

3. John Wight is wrong when he states "The European powers, allied to the US, encouraged this mass immigration of Europe's surviving Jews to Israel." In fact, even after the war many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust were in displaced persons camps. The British government, even post the summer of 1945 when the Labour Party came to power continued to restrict Jewish immigration to Palestine against the wishes of the United States. [3]

4. Wight is wrong when he reiterates his point, "In a very real sense, the Nazi Holocaust was the catalyst for the Zionist dream of a Jewish State.". He yet again the Balfour Declaration. [4]

5. Wight is wrong when he states, "Up to this point the Zionists were viewed amongst most Jews as a fringe sect not to be taken seriously." In the UK for example, the Board of Deputies of British Jews had by January 1938 become majority Zionist in outlook. [5]

It is astounding that Wight can make such ludicrous and historically inaccurate comments with any serious intent. I note that he writes for the Morning Star, a paper (then the Daily Worker) that supported the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and thereby aligned itself with Nazis.




References

[1] http://www.mideastweb.org/mebalfour.htm
[2] Efraim Karsh, "Were the Palestinians Expelled?" Commentary July-August 2000 pp.29-34
[3]http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm
[4]  http://www.mideastweb.org/mebalfour.htm
[5] Todd Endelman, "The Jews of Britain, 1656-2000" (University of California Press, 2002)p. 218

Mikey:

2. There were not as Wight puts it, "750,000 Palestinians... forcibly dispossessed and expelled from their land." Wight ignores the fact that the Arab Higher Committee ordered all Palestinians to leave Haifa. In fact, according to the scholar Efraim Karsh a British intelligence report summed up that "had it not been for the incitement and scaremongering of the Haifa Arab leadership, most Arab Residents might well have stayed. [2]

Reply:

Self proclaimed Zionist and pro-Israel historian, Benny Morris, responding to the weight of historical evicence, has admitted that the Nakba did take place and that it involved the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians. He goes further, acknowledging massacres such as that which took place at Deir Yassin and other incidences of atrocities committed by Jewish militants against the indigenous Arab population -
http://www.logosjournal.com/morris.html.

Mikey:

John Wight is wrong when he states "The European powers, allied to the US, encouraged this mass immigration of Europe's surviving Jews to Israel." In fact, even after the war many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust were in displaced persons camps. The British government, even post the summer of 1945 when the Labour Party came to power continued to restrict Jewish immigration to Palestine against the wishes of the United States. [3]

Reply:

With World War II over and the Nazi death camps open for the world to see, Zionists redoubled their demands that Britain open its Palestine mandate to unlimited Jewish immigration.

Jewish terrorist groups the Irgun Zvei Lumi and the Stern Gang escalated their campaign to force Britain's hand.

Britain's new labour government (unlike its predecessor) strongly sympathized with Zionism's goal, whilst at the same time hoping to be able to remain friendly with the Arabs. Adding to the British quandary was President Truman. whose Zionist leanings were clear. In April 1946, yielding to American pressure, Britain sent yet another commission to study the issue. The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry recommended that 100,000 European Jewish refugees be admitted immediately, that restrictions on Jewish land purchases in Palestine be lifted, and that a binational Jewish-Arab state be established under United Nations trusteeship. Faced with the political and economic costs of policing Palestine, the British gladly turned the matter over to the UN. In 1947 the UN sent its own commission to seek answers to the Palestine problem. The result, the following year, was the founding of Israel and war between the Jewish and Arab .

Mikey:

Wight is wrong when he states, "Up to this point the Zionists were viewed amongst most Jews as a fringe sect not to be taken seriously." In the UK for example, the Board of Deputies of British Jews had by January 1938 become majority Zionist in outlook.

Reply:

Jewish Opposition to Zionism - codoh.com/zionweb/ziondark/zionoppdex.html

Michael Neumann: Jewish Opposition to Zionism - www.counterpunch.org/neumann06052006.html

History of orthodox Jewish opposition to Zionism and Israel - www.zionism-israel.com/his/orthodox_judaism_history.html

Need I go on?

Conclusion:

The historical revisionism that has been used to justify Israel's ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians since the formation of this apartheid state constitutes a crime against humanity in of itself.

The State of Israel is an historical anomaly. Fortunately, with the increasing momentum building towards an international boycott, the foundation of moral legitimacy upon which this apartheid state rests has begun to crumble.

All people of conscience and consciousness look forward to the day when one state emerges on the land of Palestine in which all people - whether Jew, Arab, Christian, or other- exists side by side under the principle of universal human rights.  

John Wright.

John you post a link to back up your view from a holocaust denial site CODOH which is a far right holocaust denial site "The Committee For Open Debate On The Holocaust".

Seems some things haven't changed since the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

“Self proclaimed Zionist and pro-Israel historian, Benny Morris, responding to the weight of historical evicence, has admitted that the Nakba did take place and that it involved the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians. He goes further, acknowledging massacres such as that which took place at Deir Yassin and other incidences of atrocities committed by Jewish militants against the indigenous Arab population -…” John Wight



Benny Morris is a Zionist what is a self proclaimed Zionist, anyway? Is it any different from a self proclaimed, Israel hater or antisemite?

You haven’t read his book, have you?  In any case, you don’t seem to have read his book, John Wight.

Morris doesn’t prove his case. At best he and other so called “new historians” say that Ben Gurion ordered the evacuation of Arab civilians from fighting areas. There was no general order to “expel” all Arabs from the Jewish State.  

In any case it known from Arab radio broadcasts at the time monitored by the Western media that the Arab High Command did order a general evacuation of Arabs from the fighting areas to get them out of the way of the fighting. The Arabs expected to kill or drive all Jews into the sea as they kept proclaiming in their propaganda.

Benny Morris is not the only historian who has written on the subject. Try reading other historians as well. Anita Shapira another important historian of the period  has pointed that Benny Morris  had no access to the Arab archives and hence that his history is one sided.  Efraim Karsh has also written an extensive critique of the Benny Morris and his ilk.

Mikey is right: the Arabs expelled over half a million peaceful Jews from their midst while Israel had to deal with both an hostile Arab population as well as the invading armies of the Arab League.

John. You seem to cherry pick (in a good old Stalinist tradition) in order to make your case. You quote Morris but have you read what Morris has since written after gaining access to more archival evidence ?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200403u/int2004-03-25

John , you mention atrocities caried out such as the massacre at Deir Yassin , which were terrible and are quite rightly condemned, but you don't mention the atrocities carried out against the Israelis and Palestinian Jews.
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1353
There were great wrongs carried out by both sides , but simply googling in order to present your warped version of events , ends up with you linking to far right holocaust denial sites.  

John Wight. Thanks for your suggestion as to what should be the solution to the Palestine / Israel conflict. However i don't have much faith in a writer for The Morning Star since they published this racist bile from Atzmon :

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index2.php/free/culture/music/interview__2

"I know deep inside me that the Hebraic identity is the most radical version of the idea of Jewish supremacy, which is a curse for Palestine, a curse for Jews and a curse for the world. It is a major destructive force,"


"For an Israeli to humanise himself, he must de-zionise himself. In this way, self-hating can become a very productive power. It's the same sense of self-hating I find, too, in Jews who have given the most to humanity, like Christ, Spinoza or Marx. They bravely confronted their beast and, in doing so, they made sense to many millions."

"All people of conscience and consciousness look forward to the day when one state emerges on the land of Palestine in which all people - whether Jew, Arab, Christian, or other- exists side by side under the principle of universal human rights."

Yea, sure, just like Lebanon or perhaps the Sudan. John Wight what are you smoking?

Well, it's always possible to either misquote an author or refer to an earlier, later revised, version of their writings. Benny Morris has much more recently noted that while the Israelis were responsible in part for the Palestinian refugee exflux, they were by no means responsible for all of it: the Arab High Command had at least an equal responsibility for the situation. And it is so easy to overlook the 800,000 Jews forced out of Arab and non-Arab Muslim countries. Strictly not comparable, of course. After all, they're only Jews.

And to wilfully ignore just _who_ voted for the establishment of the State of Israel borders on an intellectual crime. Let me see now, the Soviet Union, Czechslovakia, Bulgaria...Western imperialist societies all of them.

And if the State of Israel is a historical anomaly, then so are the 56 Moslem states that clearly so proclaim themselves as such - and many of which put bars on just what is allowed to be believed/practised in the field of religion. It makes just as much sense to argue that _all_ nation-states (including those based on religion) are anomalous: that doesn't make them all demonised. Unless John Wight cares to do so now, and declare himself a citizen of the world, recognising no national boundaries.

"The state of Israel is a historical anomaly"

And what do we do with anomalies? Smash em, hey Wight?

Go and read, say, Human Rights Watch or Amnesty reports on Israel. There's disadvantage and exclusion, there has been a blockade, but there's no apartheid. When you use the word, you reveal yourself as a propagandist and you damage your cause.

Israel is not an apartheid state. You use apartheid as code for contending that Israel doesn't exist and that the Jews in Palestine have simply built a wall to keep out the Palestinians. News for you - in 1947 the UN passed resolution 181 partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The Jewish state exists. The Arab one was stymied not least by Egypt v. Grand Mufti wranglings in Gaza and the WB.

"All people of conscience and consciousness look forward to the day when one state emerges on the land of Palestine in which all people - whether Jew, Arab, Christian, or other- exists side by side under the principle of universal human rights."

Coming from you, not very rousing. Don't apply the attributes 'conscience' and 'consciousness' to your own frayed opinions and expect to garner any credibility. When did you ever undertake a shred of the type of the co-existence work required for the above to happen? From what I can gather the extent of your activity has to present Israeli Jews as a bunch of usurping cuckoos, as if they never had the right to be there in the first place. Israeli Jews now constitute half of the world's Jews - Israel is their home, and you should take that as seriously as you take the national aspirations of Palestinians (your perfunctory reference to human rights is just throat-clearing). And taking that seriously involves engaging properly with, and working to minimise, Israel's security concerns. With Hamas, Hisballah and Hizb ut-Tahrir gaining ground in the region now is surely not the time to ignore these.

But for some reason, you do. And this is what makes you and others like you, so suspect.

Interesting to read the responses to my arguments, each verily dripping with anti-Arab racism, distortions and Zionist propaganda.

Fortunately, the sentiments encouraged and expressed on this forum constitute a minority view, which given all of the historical and empirical evidence with regard to Israel's provenance and its treatement of the Palestinians, its commitment to ethnic cleansing and apartheid, is entirely appropriate.

This will be my final post on here. Before I depart, I should like to disabuse Israel's supporters on this forum of 3 interlocking myths surrounding this issue:

Myth #1: Israel has the right to exist.

No apartheid state has the right to exist. Apartheid South Africa did not have the right to exist, Nazi Germany did not have the right to exist, and the apartheid state of Israel does not have the right to exist.

I maintain that in the long term only a one-state solution is viable. In the short term a two-state solution in which the right of return of all Palestinian refugees is facilitated is the way forward. This short term solution would obviously also have to involve a suitable sum in reparations to the Palestinians for damage done to their society ecoonomically and as compensation for 60 years of murder, theft and ethnic cleansing.

Israel is an historic anomaly in that it has been responsible for the dislocation in the region along with the impact of western imperialism. Which other state continues to encourage people from other parts of the world, people with no concrete connection to the land, on the basis of religion, to settle on land expropriated from the indigenous population?

Too, the State of Israel has ignored or violated more UN resolutions than any other state since the UN was formed in 1945. 28 Security Council Resolutions and almost 100 General Assembly Resolutions have been either ignored or violated by Israel. No other nation comes close.

Myth #2

To campaign for Palestinian human rights is to be anti-semitic.

This has been the calumny which has served to prevent otherwise good people from speaking out and standing up for the rights of the Palestinians. It is proved an expecially effective and potent threat in the US. Ironically, the only fitting tribute to the millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust is to campaign for Palestinian human rights today.

Myth #3: Israel is a liberal democracy.

Unless you happen to be one of 4 million Palestinians living under a brutal military occupation, or one of the Arab minority living in Israel proper. Israel has treated this Arab minority -- the descendants of the 150,000 Arabs who stayed put when Israel was established during the Nakba in 1948 -- as the enemy within for decades, as a fifth column with links to the greater Arab world, bent on undermining the Jewish state. (Other Palestinians became refugees in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring Arab countries.) Until 1966, Israeli Arabs were subjected to curfews, administrative detentions, land confiscations and employment restrictions under a military regime. Israel even required its Arabs to carry "movement licenses" whenever they left their villages.

Now, despite legislation to grant them equal rights passed over the last ten years, they are still treated as second class citizens by all levels of Israeli society - namely the army, judiciary, and body politic.

Finally, as part of my piece on the Holocaust, I wrote:

'...it is essential that we bear in mind that the Holocaust was not the starting point of the nazi persecution of the Jews in Europe. Rather, it was the culmination of a process which took place over a decade.

It began with the slow but steady demonisation of the Jewish religion and culture, then government-sanctioned attacks on their communities, businesses and places of worship, then the implementation of apartheid laws, followed by ethnic cleansing and the forced removal of the Jews to specially designated ghettoes. The logical conclusion of this process was the Holocaust.

It is an irony of history that the Palestinians are being subjected to much the same methods of oppression today by the state of Israel that were visited on the Jews by the nazis throughout the 1930s. It is an irony that takes on the form of an ominous portent which we ignore at potentially catastrophic cost.'

I would like to thank John Wright for his postings which indeed reminded us exactly what we are up against. Whilst I sometimes enjoy the historically legitimate infighting between us Jews, there are some very nasty pieces of work waiting to deal with us in world outside.

Time and again historically, when the Jew haters have had the upper hand, they have taken advantage of this. It would appear that Mr. Wright belongs to this esteemed club, albeit from it's Communist/Stalinist/Trotskyite sub group.

Let us remember that in our activities.  

Personally, I decided 30 years ago that the solution to living as a Jew in the modern world was to leave the cold grey shores of the UK and move to Israel. A small part of that decision was based on my experiences as a student activist on the UK campuses in the mid and late 1970s. To my surprise I see that nothing has changed.

John Wight - Firstly can you tell me where my post is "verily dripping with anti-Arab racism, distortions and Zionist propaganda."

Secondly can you please provide examples where Engage has said "To campaign for Palestinian human rights is to be anti-semitic."

You say this is your last comment on the subject on this thread , but you haven't addressed anything that has been posted in response to your original comment. I'm not surprised especialy when you linked to a far right holocaust denial site in order to prove your point.

Wight, like all of his ilk, cannot but fall back into mythology to make his call for the destruction of a state. What is happening in the OT is like what is happening in Germany in the 1930's!! Is ANYONE expected to believe that nonsense. Even Finklestein has had problems with this rubbish. The fact is, of course, the idea of forcing contemporary mat,ers into the past is, as Arendt noted, a form of fascism. And, as we also know from Adorno and others, fascism thrives on myth. The real question, of course, is how we got to a stage in which myth passes for history.

John Wight,

Every now and then I feel compelled to respond to a fool, a chauvinistic know nothing. As you bothered to write your ludicrous response and as I am feeling in a generous mood, together with the fact that it will provide me some entertainment value, I will lower myself to the gutter than you have descended to and respond.

I note that you have wisely avoided attempting to justify your original claim in the Morning Star that the Palestinians are “the Holocaust’s forgotten victims” and have moved over to other matters. You have completely ignored my point about the Balfour Declaration, so I assume you have accepted my point that the idea for the State of Israel was not created out of the Holocaust but predates it.

In order to justify your arguments about 750,000 Palestinians being expelled, you decide to cite Benny Morris. When I was younger, my mother taught me the phrase, “When in a hole, stop digging.” Either it is not a lesson that you learnt or one that you took on board. Efraim Karsh commented that he was very surprised by the claims made by Benny Morris in his book on the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem. He therefore took it upon himself to look up the entire documentation that Morris used in respect to the Zionist position regarding the expulsion of Arabs. He discovered to his bewilderment “that there was scarcely a single document quoted by Morris which had not been rewritten in a way that distorted its original meaning altogether.” The truth was that Morris made a whole catalogue of errors and distortions and Karsh managed to fill up a large part of a whole book dedicated to exposing them. [1]

Moving on to the policy of Europe and America, you originally claimed that "The European powers, allied to the US, encouraged this mass immigration of Europe's surviving Jews to Israel." I am please to see that you now agree that Britain acted only after, “yielding to American pressure.” Maybe you have learnt something.

You then make a laughing stock of yourself. Richard has already pointed out that in your desperation to find a source to justify your claim that until the Holocaust “the Zionists were viewed amongst most Jews as a fringe sect not to be taken seriously,” you have used a Holocaust Denial web site favoured by Neo-Nazis. The Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust which you referenced is run by Bradley Smith, who himself was a key speaker to the Holocaust Denial conference held last year in Iran. In that speech, Smith praised the work of Butz, for his Holcocaust Denial tract, “The Hoax of the 20th Century.” Smith went on to give support to the monstrous lie that the Holocaust was a hoax and that there were no gas chambers with his disgraceful and offensive statement that “It cannot be demonstrated that homicidal gas chambers existed in any camp in Europe which was under German control.” [2]

In my previous response, I commented that the forerunner to the communist newspaper that you wrote your despicable, false and offensive comments to were aligning themselves with Nazis at the time of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. In fact, as Konan Fischer explained very well, communist alliances with Nazis went back even further. In 1932 the German communist party, the KPD, proposed United Action and posters appeared in Germany “showing Communist, Nazi and Socialist workers standing shoulder to shoulder in class solidarity against the bourgeoisie.” [3] How disgraceful, how shameful and how utterly reprehensible the actions of the KPD were. Yet communists clearly did not learn from their mistakes as the Soviet Union, post the Holocaust, continued to wage a long and state sanctioned antisemitic campaign. For example, Pravda published a completely fictitious account of a plot by a group of mainly Jewish doctors , “inhuman beasts,” who had been “recruited by an branch-office of American intelligence -- the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization called ‘Joint’” to kill Russian leaders. [4] Given this background, it does not surprise me that modern day communists are quite happy to use material of modern day neo-Nazis in their own propaganda.

Despite your soiled and grubby source, complete with images of spiders webs reminiscent of cartoons used by the Nazi Julius Streicher in Der Stuermer, I took the trouble to read each article that your source links to. In not one of these articles is there a suggestion that Zionists were a “fringe sect” until the Holocaust. You also use an article by Michael Neumann in Counterpunch to try and justify your erroneous claim. Neumann also does not make any comment to imply that Zionists were a “fringe sect” amongst Jews until the Holocaust. I do notice that what he did do, is to praise a book on anti-Zionism that has a chapter by Alfred Lilienthal. This is the same Lilienthal who gave support to the Holocaust denier Faurisson. [5] Finally, you link to an article about the ultra-Orthodox and anti-Zionism. It is rather ironic that whilst it is true that for theological reasons, there were and are sections of the ultra-Orthdodox opposed to Zionism, it is these groups that can be more appropriately classified as fringe sects.

You have clearly demonstrated that you have no comprehension or knowledge of Zionism, the Holocaust and the history of the State of Israel. Reading your comments to the Morning Star and on this thread makes me almost feel sorry for you. For someone with such little familiarisation with the historical record to embarrass themselves in public in the way you have must be terribly humiliating.

In conclusion, I would like to provide you with some valuable advice: It is better not to write anything and have people wonder if you are completely stupid rather than putting your fingers to the keyboard and exposing your lack of knowledge to anyone who reads your comments. .

Regards

Mikey

References


[1] Efraim Karsh, Fabricating Israeli History: The ‘New Historians’, Second Revised Edition, (Abingdon, Oxon: Frank Cass, 2000) The quote used can be seen on pages xvii-xviii

[2] http://www.codoh.com/newsite/articles/bradleysmith/adoc04a.html

[3] Conan Fischer, “Class Enemies or Class Brothers? Communist Nazi Relations in Germany 1929-33,” European History Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 3, July 1985 pp. 259-79

[4] “Vicious Spies and Killers under the Mask of Academic Physicians,” Pravda January 13, 1953 P.1. An English translation has been provided by P.R. Wolfe and BINIE staff on the following web site:
http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/vrach-ubijca-e.html
For more on this fictitious plot see for examples, Samson Madievski, “The Doctors’ Plot,” Midstream, Sept-Oct 2003 and L. Rapoport Stalin's war against the Jews: the Doctors' Plot and the Soviet solution. (Toronto: Free Press, 1990.)

[5] Werner Cohn, “Chomsky and Holocaust Denial,” in Eds. Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Anti Chomsky Reader, (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004) pp. 117-58

JW,

"Which other state continues to encourage people from other parts of the world, people with no concrete connection to the land, on the basis of religion, to settle on land expropriated from the indigenous population?"

Many anti-Israel activists make often try to deligitimise Israel by claiming that Jews are solely a religious group and that therefore Jews - who in this "narrative" are merely the descendants of Europeans/others who have converted to Judaism - have no connection to Palestine/Israel other than through their religion (unlike the Palestinians who, according to this narrative, have always lived on the land).
But Jews are an ethnic group as well, and do have historical roots in the region. Antisemites in Europe generally did not regard the Jews as members of a faith community but rather Semitic outsiders who belonged "where they came from"; an antisemitic battle-cry in the 19th century was "go back to Palestine!" And of course, these beliefs culminated in the Holocaust.

Thanks, Mikey, for the demolition.

It is also interesting to note that John Wight does not even attempt to add empirical evidence (is there any?) in support of allegations that Israel is "an apartheid state", that this remains, as it always does, an assertion, never rising to the status of a hypothesis capable of being tested.  

Nor is there any evidence to support the further assertion that "It is an irony of history that the Palestinians are being subjected to much the same methods of oppression today by the state of Israel that were visited on the Jews by the nazis throughout the 1930s. It is an irony that takes on the form of an ominous portent which we ignore at potentially catastrophic cost." No it isn't a portent, ominous or otherwise, let alone an irony, especially without evidence. Nowhere does Wight cite the equivalents of the Nuremburg Laws, the development of the concentration camps, and so forth, which might point in this direction, other than among the fevered minds with whom he associates. As always, only among such groups does the lack of evidence constitute a case already made.

I note further that his arguments against the establishment of the state of Israel by the UN ignore the _full_ roll-call of the UN members who voted in favour of the motion, numerous of whom could not, by 1947, even remotely be considered allies, agents, clients or dupes of the imperialist USA (not that I personally consider the USA of this time imperialist in any sense the likes of Wight would accept).

It is also instructive to note Wight's departure (reminiscent of so many others), no doubt telling his comrades that he told it like it was, and there was no answer to his allegations. Of course there aren't, if you shut yourself in a soundproof room, you can't hear a thing from outside, where the normal rules of evidence and dialogue apply.

Brian Goldfarb "It is also instructive to note Wight's departure (reminiscent of so many others), no doubt telling his comrades that he told it like it was, and there was no answer to his allegations. Of course there aren't, if you shut yourself in a soundproof room, you can't hear a thing from outside, where the normal rules of evidence and dialogue apply."

No , he'll be complaining about adhominem attacks on him as well as accusations of antisemitism. Anyway he won't be back. He's a smash and grab merchant.

Mikey,

Every now and then I feel compelled to jump into the dirty pond occupied by supporters of apartheid and ethnic cleansing such as you and yours.

It is clear that you have chosen to completely ignore anything I have written thus far, blinded as you are to anything except Israel's divine purpose in the barbarism and savagery it has meted out to the Palestinians since 1948.

You are clearly a fool, a dangerous fool, and the only comfort to be had is that yours consitutes an increasingly discredited minority view with regard to the issue of Palestine.

Not once, anywhere, have I denied the Holocaust - either that it took place, its enormity, nor that it constitutes anything other than one of the greatest crimes in human history.

However, that crime did not take place in Palestine, the guards at Auschwitz did not speak Arabic, and yet the Palestinians have been condemned to pay the price for it.

Israel is an apartheid state, committed to the formation of a Greater Israel and in the process perpetual war. Hezbollah's victory in 2006 was celebrated throughout the Arab world and beyond by all people of conscience and consciousness.

One of your acolytes mentioned something about 'demolition.' He knows nothing. I am utterly committed to the cause of Palestinian self determination and human rights. I am proud to have campaigned in support of their cause in the US and here in the UK. In 2006 I played a key role in pressuring the Edinburgh International Film Festival to return sponsorship money from the Israeli Embassy in London, and I also helped to organise a march demonstration of 8000 through the centre of Edinburgh in solidarity with the people of Lebanon against Israel's criminal attack on that country civilian population.

The occupation of Palestine is illegal under international law. The so-called settlements are also illegal. Under international law resistance to occupation is enshrined.

The state of Israel is a hydra-headed monster, comprising Zionist ethnic cleansers, US imperialists, and Arab collaborationist regimes.

Arrayed against this monster are the forces of human progress. Already, with the first moves to institute an international boycott of this apartheid state, the foundation of moral legitimacy upon which Israel rests has begun to crumble. Like apartheid South Africa before it, a state to which Israel was a close ally, the apartheid state of Israel will one day join the scrapheap of history. As soon as the scales fall from the eyes of international Jewry with regard to the racist and fascist ideology that is Zionism, the world will begin to emerge from the iron heel of war and brutality in the Middle East.

Speed the day!

   

Come on John Wight all you are doing is repeating the mantra "Israel is evil." If you have better argument you should be posing on David Dukes web site and not here.


You wrote,

"Israel is an apartheid state, committed to the formation of a Greater Israel and in the process perpetual war. Hezbollah's victory in 2006 was celebrated throughout the Arab world and beyond by all people of conscience and consciousness."

Leaving aside the stupid and demonstrable false comment about Israel being an "aparthied State," your comment that Israel is committed to " a Greater Israel" is just as false.


Speaking of greater Israel is like saying giant shrimp, its an oxymoron, but never mind that. If Israel had been committed to a "greater Israel" why would they withdraw from Gaza or enter into negotiations with the PA President for the creation of a Palestinian State?


John Wight you are too ridiculous to talk to. You are in fact an antisemitic goon.

John Wight "The state of Israel is a hydra-headed monster, comprising Zionist ethnic cleansers, US imperialists, and Arab collaborationist regimes."

First Wight links to a holocaust denial site (CODOH).
Now he uses the phrase "hydra-headed monster" - sounds familiar.

John - you come on here with your "hardcore antizionist soundbites" but you fail to answer any of the comments and facts posed by people to you. This website is called "Engage" and it's called that so people can Engage. Get it ?
So instead of acting like a verbal thug why don't you address some of the points made. You don't do yourself any favours. I've had discussions with several boycotters , we don't agree but we try and discuss facts.  

Perhaps we can start by seeing if you regret linking to a holocaust denial site in your first comment ?

John Wight. I suggested maybe you try and engage , hoping to see if it's possible for you to Engage.

However i missed your last sentence "As soon as the scales fall from the eyes of international Jewry with regard to the racist and fascist ideology that is Zionism, the world will begin to emerge from the iron heel of war and brutality in the Middle East."

Fuck off and don't come back.

In July 1937, the Peel Commission issued a report, in which the following was inscribed:

"Considering what the possibility of finding a refuge in Palestine means to thousands of suffering Jews, is the loss occasioned by Partition, great as it would be, more than Arab generosity can bear?"

The statement was written in 1937, when the world was beginning to get wise to what was being planned for the Jews, but even so, the report can only imagine "thousands" of suffering Jews getting a lease on life if permitted to immigrate to Palestine.

The British Mandate restricted severely Jewish immigration, in spite of the warning in the Peel report that things looked very bad for the Jews in Europe. The Peel Report stipulates the urgent importance of continued Jewish immigration and British commitment to it. Yet the British restricted immigration, because they buckled to Arab pressure to do so.

The Arabs of Palestine, though addressed with the most explicit plea in the report to show "generosity" to the persecuted Jews of Europe, existentially threatened, did not for a second consider this possibility and continued to mount their pressure on the British to seal the borders. The Mandate of Palestine, which had been commissioned with the provision of a safe haven for Jews, chose to close ranks with the Arabs and seal the borders, against the Jews.

Are Arabs completely innocent, then, of complicity in the Holocaust? Who exercised the policies of Apartheid, who put pressure on Britain to keep out the Jews, thus sealing the fate of hundreds of thousands to be exterminated?

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John Wight explained very clearly why he is doing and speaking as he does.

"I am proud to have campaigned in support of their cause in the US and here in the UK. In 2006 I played a key role in pressuring the Edinburgh International Film Festival to return sponsorship money from the Israeli Embassy in London, and I also helped to organise a march demonstration of 8000 through the centre of Edinburgh in solidarity with the people of Lebanon against Israel's criminal attack on that country civilian population."

His opinions and activism have given him a position of self-importance and noble grandeur. He is here. He is there. He is everywhere. His phone never stops ringing. He is the proverbial Humpty-Dumpty sitting on the wall (practically). How can he face up to history and find out that he actually is sitting on a wall of lies, distortions, and fabrications thus losing all these accolades with which he adorns himself? If he falls, can anyone get him back on that wall again? Will anyone even want to?

John Wight,

Oh dear, I thought  you may have learned your lesson, but no, like the idiot that you are, you have decided to come back for more punishment. To use a boxing analogy you are a like a lightweight with no training who thinks they can pick a fight with a heavy weight professional. It is simply no contest and if it indeed  was a boxing match, the referee would have stopped the fight long ago. If you wish to use arguments that may impress a 13 year old with a below average IQ, I suggest you try other forums for your blabbering balderdash.

The “barbarism and savagery”  that does occur in the region is not that by the State of Israel but by the Hamas, an organisation referred to as “murderous terrorists” by the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.  [1] The chosen methodology of these terrorists is to strap a bomb onto the bodies of others, including children, and encouraging them to detonate the bomb in a hotel restaurant, a pizzeria, a  crowded bus, a night club or anywhere else that there may be plenty of innocent civilians. It can be noted that it is not just Israelis that Hamas to choose to kill with their “barbarism and savagery”   but also Palestinians  via such callous  methods as tying their hands and feet together and throwing them off the roof of eighteen story buildings. [2]

Your preposterous comments continue with your suggestion that merely supporting the existence of the State of Israel, “consitutes [sic]  an increasingly discredited minority view with regard to the issue of Palestine.”  In actual fact, the “discredited minority view” is entirely the opposite. Had you been following Palestinian opinion polls, you would note that even the majority of Palestinians now support a two  state solution including 69% who believed that Hamas should change its opinion on the elimination of the State of Israel. [3] But since when did you care about what the Palestinians actually want or would vote for?  All you care about is your own warped and degenerated view of the world.

You may well claim that you do not deny the Holocaust did take place, but you fail miserably to explain why you linked to a Holocaust Denial web site. If you have a problem  reading, then I suggest you request that a responsible adult reads my previous messages to you slowly enough for your brain to absorb the words, that is if you are capable of absorbing information that does not spew from the pages of communist newspapers. If you do this, you will find that I have repeatedly informed you that it was not the Holocaust that led to the creation of the State of Israel, but that the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine was looked upon favourably by the British government in 1917 when the Balfour Declaration was issued.

You outlandishly allege that the State of Israel is an apartheid state but you do not even provide a flimsy amount of evidence in an attempt to support your case. The evidence is in fact to the contrary. Arabs in Israel not only get to vote in Israeli elections,  but they also have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, and Arabs also participate in daily Israeli life. You probably did not know this as I would not be surprised if the Morning Star have never reported this basic information.

You fantastically argue, again without any evidence, that Israel is “committed to the formation of a Greater Israel.”  You cannot seriously believe that anyone with an ounce of knowledge will actually be taken in by this codswallop can you? Had you bothered to find out anything about what Israelis think, you would note that the majority of Israelis also support a two state solution. If Israel was committed to the formation of a Greater Israel, it could have annexed the West Bank and Gaza a long time ago. It chose not to. Moreover, Israel is interested in peace and is prepared to give up land in exchange for peace. This was demonstrated at the time of Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt.

You however, being a warmonger, have no interest in peace; all you want to do is cheer on when Palestinians murder Israeli Jews via suicide missions. Despite your allegations about international law, you have not ,and nor can you, point to me one international law that says it is legitimate to send children packed with explosives into a crowded place full of innocent civilians and detonate that bomb. Not only are these actions illegal, they are also morally reprehensible.  

Whilst I am discussing your warmongering, I note that you also “celebrated” what you refer to as “Hezbollah's victory in 2006” in a war started by that terrorist organisation with the sending of rockets into Israel and the kidnapping and murder of Israeli soldiers.  If you wish to claim that Hassan Nasrallah not losing his life meant that the war was a victory for Hezbollah then that is your prerogative, but to celebrate their actions is nauseating. Recent stomach-turning statements by Nasrallah where he boasted about having the body parts of Israeli soldiers  exposes him for being a  repulsive and revolting specimen of a human being. [4] You must be a very sick individual to be joyous at such statements.

Your pride in “pressuring the Edinburgh International Film Festival to return sponsorship money from the Israeli Embassy in London” is misplaced. Not only do you not care about the wishes of the Palestinians, but in your warped mind, you believe rejecting charitable donations from the State of Israel to a Scottish arts festival in some way assists revolutionary communists around the world.  What a strange person  you are Wight. You are also beating your chest about assisting to organise a march against Israel’s war in Lebanon. This war was against the terrorist Hezbollah and not, as you claim, on that country’s “civilian population. “  You are clearly not one who would want to let the truth interfere with the way you wish to portray the actions of the State of Israel.

In your wretched claim that “The state of Israel is a hydra-headed monster,” and with your talk of “international Jewry,” a rational person can only conclude that you have been spending far too much of your time on those neo-Nazi web sites.  I am therefore not surprised that you support  a boycott of Israel, an  action attempted by the members of the University and College Union, which was exposed by the drafter of the Race Relations Act as illegal. Just wondering,  are you on first name terms with the leaders of the BNP in Scotland?  

Finally, you incorrectly refer to Zionism as both racist and fascist when it is neither and you allege that the State of Israel “will one day join the scrapheap of history.” The only thing that has certainly joined the scrapheap of history is communism. It collapsed at the back end of the 1980s. It is over Wight, get a life, move on and get in the real world.

Mikey

References

[1] BBC News June 20, 2007, 23:44 GMT  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6223388.stm

[2] NPR and Associated Press, June 12, 2007 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10988462

[3] Near East Consulting opinion poll conducted in  November 2007, http://www.neareastconsulting.com/surveys/peace/211/

[4]  Haaretz January 20, 2008 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/946136.html