8.    A DELIBERATE, CONSISTENT AND SUCCESSFUL POLICY

It needs to be clearly understood that collaboration between Nazis and Zionists was not accidental or expedient.  It was not a matter of isolated individual actions. 

We are showing how it developed step by step and how it flowed logically from shared aims.  They were not ‘strange bedfellows’, and collaboration between Nazis and Zionists was not ‘paradoxical’ it was a logical development from the symbiotic relationship with anti-Semitism that has always existed since the first days of Zionism. 

The Nazis wanted to get the Jews out of Europe.  The Zionists wanted to get them into Palestine.  It was as simple as that. These shared aims at first resulted in the ‘non-criminal cooperation’ described by Hannah Arendt, which involved selecting Jews for survival.  Later, 

 ‘It was this fundamental error in judgment that fundamentally led to a situation in which the non-selected majority of  Jews inevitably found themselves confronted with two enemies - the Nazi authorities and the Jewish authorities.⁸¹  

The Nazis only adopted a ‘final solution’ of extermination when all other means of getting Jews out of Europe proved unsuccessful.  Zionists only collaborated with this when all other means of getting Jews to Palestine proved unsuccessful - when the Jews they wanted for Palestine looked like being murdered along with the rest.

The ‘selective’ policies that ultimately led some Zionist leaders like Kastner into directly assisting the Nazi butchers to murder Jews, were not adopted on the spur of the moment, but flowed logically from deliberate policy decisions taken before the Second World War began. 

The 'closed door' which sealed the fate of hundreds of thousands of Jews and enabled the Nazis to murder them was not the attitude of individual Zionists in various countries, but a conscious policy decision adopted by the Zionist leadership.  

8.1       Choosing Between the Jews and the Jewish State

That policy is expressed most clearly in a letter from Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, to the Zionist Executive on 7 December, 1938: 

The Jewish problem now is not what it used to be.  The fate of Jews in Germany is not an end but a beginning.  Other anti-Semitic states will learn from Hitler.  Millions of Jews face annihilation, the refugee problem has assumed world-wide proportions, and urgency.  Britain is trying to separate the issue of the refugees from that of Palestine.  It is assisted by anti-Zionist Jews.  The dimensions of the refugee problem demand an immediate, territorial solution; if Palestine will not absorb them another territory will.  Zionism is endangered.  All other territorial solutions, certain to fail, will demand enormous sums of money.  If Jews will have to choose between the refugees, saving Jews from concentration camps, and assisting a national museum in Palestine, mercy will have the upper hand and the whole energy of the people will be channeled into saving Jews from various countries.  Zionism will be struck off the agenda not only in world public opinion, in Britain and the United States, but elsewhere in Jewish public opinion.  If we allow a separation between the refugee problem and the Palestine problem, we are risking the existence of Zionism. 

As the Israeli Socialist Organization ‘Matzpen’ commented on this letter:

Saving Jewish lives from Hitler is considered by Ben Gurion a potential threat to Zionism unless the Jews thus saved are bought to Palestine.  When Zionism had to choose between the Jews and the Jewish state, it unhesitatingly preferred the latter.⁸²

Quite clearly, Ben Gurion's concern is not that Jewish refugees will be unable to find sanctuary, because there was no.Jewish State, but precisely that they might, in which case there never would be a Jewish State. 

If Palestine, will not absorb them, another territory will.  Zionism is endangered  (Ben Gurion) 

All other ‘territorial solutions’ refers to proposals for Jewish settlements in places like Dominica and the Kimberleys, and ‘certain to fail’ means simply that they would inevitably be assimilated by the surrounding population without becoming the basis for an independent Jewish State, not that the settlers would starve to death.

If 'mercy will have the upper hand and the whole energy of the people will be channeled into saving Jews from various countries' then 'Zionism will be struck off the agenda'.

Ben Gurion was quite correct in saying ‘If we allow a separation between the refugee problem and the Palestine problem we are risking the existence of Zionism.’  If the Jewish refugees had been resettled elsewhere, and especially if Zionists had accepted this, then the last chance for a Jewish State would have been gone. 

As it was, by tightly linking the refugee question with Palestine, the whole energy which should have been directed into rescue was diverted into demands for unrestricted immigration to, and a Jewish state in, Palestine, which for the first time won the support of a majority of Jews, and later of the United Nations. Without that link with the Holocaust refugees, this would never have been possible, and there would have been no such link if Zionists had accepted resettlement elsewhere. 

This was not just some abstract idea.  From it logically flowed, the efforts to sabotage the entry of refugees to Britain, America, Sweden, Australia etc. 

The first practical implementation of this policy was at the Evian Conference of July 1938, when 31 countries met to discuss the problem of absorbing refugees from Nazi Germany. 

The Zionists demanded, as the only possible solution, immediate admission of 1.2 million Jews to Palestine (whose total population then was a little over half that).  This completely impossible demand let other countries off the hook so that only Dominica made a definite concrete offer - to accept 100,000 refugees. 

As Christopher Sykes later commented in his book 'Cross Roads to Israel':

…From the start they regarded the whole enterprise with hostile indifference.  Zionist writers scarcely mention it the fact is that what was attempted at Evian was in no sense congenial to the spirit of Zionism.  The reason is not obscure.  If the thirty-one nations had done their duty and shown hospitality to those in dire need then the pressure on the National Home and the heightened enthusiasm of Zionism within Palestine, would both have been relaxed and stopped this was the last thing that the Zionist leaders wished for.  As things stood after Evian the outlook for the Jews was black throughout the world (except to quote Norman Bentwich again) for the bright spot of Palestine and the speck of Dominica.’  The Zionist leaders preferred that it should remain that way.  Even in the most terrible days ahead they made no secret of the fact, even when talking to Gentiles that they did not want Jewish settlements outside Palestine to be successful.  They did not want Santo Domingo to become more than a speck. They wanted a Jewish Palestine and the Dominican Republic could  never be that. 

This outlook and conception of policy, typical of the increasing narrowness of Zionist thinking, may seem horrifyingly party-minded and harsh.  It was all that undoubtedly, but it was something more besides.  It was not compassionless.  The Zionists, both the more large-minded and the most narrow, had a constructive aim.  The Zionists wanted to do something more for Jews than merely help them to escape danger.  The wanted to help them overcome their humiliation.  They wanted to make them the object of respect not the object of pity.  They wanted to enable them to stop being pathetic, and they conceived that there was only one way to do this, to make them come to Palestine and undertake a fully national life.  Since the early thirties there had been much trouble between Jews and the Palestine authorities over illegal immigration, and the Jews had raised the defense, and were to continue to do so, that Palestine was the only country where they could go and be welcome.  Before Evian the truth of this Zionist assertion was doubtful, but after Evian it was less so, and the latter state of affairs suited the Zionist leadership.  If their policy entailed suffering then that was the price that had to be paid for the rescue of the Jewish soul. 

It is hard, perhaps impossible, to find a parallel in history to this particular Zionist idea which was at the heart of the Zionist accomplishment during the ten years after 1938.  That such was the basic Zionist idea is not a matter of opinion but a fact abundantly provable by evidence.  It was an idea in whose reality people outside could not usually believe at first, and which often shocked them when they recognized its existence.  There can be no doubt that there again one is confronted with an idea which even if judged as morally wrong, is such, as could only be conceived by a great people.  As time went on it grew rather than diminished in strength.  It formed another cross-roads.’⁸³  

For Zionism, it was another cross roads to the State of Israel for millions of Jews, it was a cross roads to extermination, as the idea grew in strength in the way we have documented. 

The logic behind this Zionist policy could not be put more sympathetically than it is by Christopher Sykes.  He stresses that the Zionists weren't compassionless and weren't just out to deny refuge to Jewish victims of Nazism.  They had a constructive aim - a Jewish State. 

We can therefore believe him when he says ‘That such was the basic Zionist idea is not a matter of opinion, but a fact abundantly provable by evidence’

There seems no reason to doubt that:

If the thirty-one nations had done their duty and shown hospitality to those in dire need then the pressure on the national home and the heightened enthusiasm of Zionism with in Palestine would both have been relaxed.  Equally, if they had done their duty, a large part of the Holocaust could have been avoided.  Nevertheless, ‘This was the last thing that the Zionist leaders wished for.’

Equally, if they had done their duty, a large part of the Holocaust could have been avoided.  Nevertheless, 'This was the last thing that the Zionist leaders wished for.'

It is difficult to imagine what more effective action Zionists could have taken to assist Nazis to murder Jews.  Being Jewish, they were not eligible for membership of the SS, but they made a contribution which SS members could not make, in keeping the doors closed. 

For those of us who don't think Jews are ‘pathetic’- or the need to ‘undertake a fully national life,’ for those of us who don't think ‘the Jewish soul’ needed rescuing, the Zionist accomplishment during the ten years after 1938 ‘In building their Jewish State on the ruins of a European Jewry whose rescue was sabotaged, will not be seen as an idea ‘conceived by a great people’, but as the idea of vicious enemies of all people. 

This basic Zionist idea is indeed ‘one in whose reality people outside could not usually believe at first, and which often shocked them when they recognized its existence’. 

It is not surprising that many people, Jewish or not, do not believe, or are shocked by, 3CR programs about the consequence of this basic Zionist idea, when ‘everyone knows’ a very different story about heroic self-sacrificing Zionist rescue efforts, and how the Jews would have been saved if only there had been a Jewish State. 

Nevertheless, the facts are clear. 

8.2              The Jewish Agency Murders Jewish Refugees

If there is any remaining doubt that Zionists were prepared to collaborate with Nazism, and that they always put their aim for a Jewish state before the survival of the Jews, let us remember that it is on the public record that the Zionist ‘Haganah’, the ‘Jewish defense force’, not only joined the Gestapo in organizing forced emigration of Jews from Germany to Palestine, but also did its share of directly murdering Jews, when this proved unsuccessful. 

The VJBD has complained about a Palestine Speaks broadcast on 27 August 1978 which said ‘Many people of Jewish faith or background have also died at the hands of Zionist terrorist over the years.’ 

Let us therefore examine the case of the S.S. Patria, full of Jewish refugees from Hitler, which was blown up on November 25, 1940 supposedly in a mass suicide protest against the British decision to transfer them to Mauritius instead of admitting them to Palestine. 

On the 18th anniversary of their deaths, the Zionist leader Sharett together with Ben Gurion declared that they were martyrs to the cause and admitted complicity saying 'It is sometimes necessary to sacrifice a few in order to save the many '.⁸⁴ 

But by that time the memoirs of Herzl Rosenbloom, a member of the central Zionist leadership, the so-called 'Small Actions Committee', were being published:

A session of the Small Actions Committee, of which I was a member, met in Jerusalem.  At the table opposite me sat the commander of the Patria project,  A. Golamb, Haganah spokesman in the Zionist shadow cabinet.  When my turn came to speak, I rose and told the meeting openly everything I thought about this act; namely, that this was not a blow against England, but an irresponsible, aimless mass-murder of Jews who had been saved from the European catastrophe.  I added that if any of us believed that we had to fight the British by committing hara-kiri, let him commit hara-kiri, for hara-kiri is suicide and not an act of murder.  I stated plainly that this road was open to Mr. Golamb, but that he could not sacrifice other Jews for his policy without first asking them, and particularly the children among them – a crime which I openly protested.  At this point Mr. Golamb jumped up and attacked me with his fists.  But the people next to him at the table held him back.  I must add that Mr. Golamb’s fists which I will never forget, did not annoy me as much as the servility of all the committee members, none of whom supported me.⁸⁵ 

As Rabbi Shonfeld comments, this incident: 

‘Served on a small scale as a tragic symbol of what the Zionists did to tens of thousands, in accordance with their rule that says: the merit to be saved belongs to a Jew only when in Eretz Israel, and if that is impossible, it is better that his death and great suffering be joined to the building of the future state.’⁸⁶ 

8.3       Continuing Zionist Threats to Jews

But the foundation of the State of Israel by no means marked the end of murderous Zionist attacks on innocent Jews, since there was still a need to promote immigration. 

Thus there were a whole series of Synagogue bombings, distribution of anti-Semitic leaflets and so on by Zionist agents in Iraq in the early 1950's.  The Iraqi incidents are described in the Israeli weekly Haolam Hazeh of 20 April and 1 June 1966 under the headline ‘Bombs Against  Jews’. 

Prominent Zionist leaders have openly called for Zionist agents to be sent to Jewish communities outside Israel to commit anti-Semitic outrages,⁸⁷ so we can say that this is a continuing tradition of Zionism.  It stems from the basic anti-Semitic philosophy of Zionism which views diaspora Jews as a caricature of the normal, natural human, which feels a tiny bit of joy at outbreaks of swastika painting, which sees a little bit of anti-Semitism as good for keeping Jewish communities together, and so on. 

The most disastrous consequences have been for European Jews in the Holocaust, and the next worst sufferers from Zionist promotion of anti-Semitism were the Arab Jews who were uprooted after the establishment of the State of Israel.  Compared to these, and to the Jews of the Soviet Union and Iran, who are directly threatened by Zionist campaigns to ‘save’ them from remaining in their own countries, Australian Jews don't have much to worry about. 

Nevertheless, one can only feel concerned about the continuing Zionist efforts to segregate Australian Jews into a completely closed off community, kept ‘on ice’ for hopeful future emigration to Israel.

This present Zionist campaign to have Australian Jews officially designated as resident aliens by an Australian Government authority, and recognized as representatives of a foreign state with interests hostile to freedom of speech in Australia, does pose a definite threat to the status of Australian Jews, just as real, even though less severe than other Zionist threats to Jewish communities they have uprooted. 

If Australian Jews are to be identified with the State of Israel, in the way demanded by the VJBD, who knows what future situations could arise in another Great Depression, with the oil shortage, and a possible third world war starting in the Middle East?  The State of Israel and its vicarious citizens could find themselves as unpopular tomorrow as they were popular yesterday.  The Zionist dream of ‘ingathering the exiles’ from places like North America and Australia could then became as much a reality as it has already for Jews less firmly integrated into other societies. 

8.4              A Successful Policy

If all these opinions, facts and documents seem just too incredible, let us remember that the ‘basic Zionist idea’ 'Inscribed by Christopher Sykes was, however criminal, eminently successful.  If it had not been followed through with ruthless consistency, there would be no State of Israel, and no Zionist dominated Jewish communities supporting it today. 

It is no small achievement to have established a Jewish State in an Arab land, and to have done so amid world wide enthusiasm that has taken some 30 years to start wearing off. Even after the Holocaust, it was touch and go whether the State of Israel would be established or not.  Certainly without the Holocaust no amount of Zionist ravings about ancient biblical claims could have achieved this feat. 

If Zionism had not adopted Ben Gurion's policy of tightly linking the rescue of Jews to the future of Palestine, then we don't know how many could have been saved from extermination.  It would certainly have been a large number, and perhaps a majority, if it had tipped the balance in Allied policy and Nazi policy.  But very likely a large number would still have been massacred.  We just don't know.  

But we do know, with complete certainty, that if Zionism had not adopted Ben Gurion's policy then it would have been endangered exactly as he said.  There would have been no burning ‘Palestine Question’ at the end of the war, as the proposed solution to the problem of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees in displaced persons camps with nowhere to go (thanks to continuing Zionist efforts to close the doors of America, Australia etc).

There would have been no link between the Palestine question and the Holocaust, and there would be no State of Israel today.  Even the Zionist organization itself only dared to formally adopt the aim of an exclusive ‘Jewish State’ in 1943 and certainly nobody else would have gone along with this outrageous demand, which until than Zionists themselves had always indignantly denied was their real aim. 

The ultimate Zionist aim has always been and still is, to ‘ingather the exiles’  by uprooting all communities of the Jewish diaspora and transferring tem to a Greater Israel ‘from the Nile to the Euphrates’.  Even after the holocaust’ and the uprooting of Jewish communities in the Arab world, only a small minority of Jews have gone to live in Palestine. 

Without the Holocaust, and without Ben Gurion’s policy, there would have only been a few tens of thousands as there were up to the 1930's, or at most a few hundred thousand.  The mass of Jews in Europe and in the Arab world would have shown as little interest in going to live in Palestine as those in Australia and the USA have shown.  There would certainly not have been enough to expel the Arab majority and form a Jewish State. 

Perhaps Zionism could have succeeded well enough without Rudolf Kastner's collaboration in the extermination of Hungarian Jewry.  But the policies of Greenbaum and company, which led Kastner into collaboration, were the only policies that could have led to a Jewish State.  And the defense and cover up of this crime is the only approach that can prevent a complete collapse of Jewish support for Zionism both in Israel and abroad. 

8.5       Honorable Human Behavior and the State of Israel

Most Zionists today, as also then, know nothing about any of these matters, just as they know very little about what Zionism has done to the Palestinian Arabs.  If they did know very few would remain Zionists.  Most Nazis knew little or nothing about extermination camps. 

Only a very hard core would believe that the ‘atrocity stories’ are true, and that ‘historic necessity’ makes them justifiable.  Most Zionists, like most Nazis, prefer to just shut their eyes. 

But not all can shut their eyes. 

In writing ‘Perfidy’ to expose the Israeli Government's support and defense of  Kastner,  the extreme Revisionist Zionist Ben Hecht, whose whole book says not one sympathetic word about the Arabs, unburdened  himself saying: 

‘Such a book was not easy for me to write.  For the heart of a Jew must be filled with astonishment as well as outrage…that a brother should be so perfidious’⁸⁸ 

In reviewing the manuscript for the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharanot of 4 April, 1959, Elie Wiesel quotes Ben Hecht as saying ‘the best known, most respected leaders of Zionism - were actually criminals.’     Wiesel adds:

‘Somehow my typewriter refuses to write about Weizmann and about the heads of the Jewish Agency, who helped the Germans to destroy European Jewry.’⁸⁹ 

Determined Zionists can continue to shut their eyes and believe that nothing dirty or vicious was done either to Jews or Arabs to establish the State of Israel.  But a more widespread reaction is that quoted in Yediot Aharanot from a New York reader of ‘Perfidy’:  ‘I am totally shocked.  If even a small part of what is stated in this book is correct, I don't know how we can continue, to live peacefully.  Everything I believed in, everything I held sacred, has been placed in question.  We are all alarmed not daring to believe.⁹⁰  (Letter from A. Golan, 8 Teves, 5722) 

It is this reaction that the VJBD wants to prevent by declaring itself ‘offended’ instead of attempting to answer the accusations. 

Hard core Zionists can continue to believe that whatever was done was justified by the need for the Zionist State, and whatever lies are told to suppress the truth about what was done are justified by the need to protect that State. 

After all, they can say.  Look at the Gypsies.  They were massacred just like the Jews, although no Gypsy Agency collaborated in sealing their doom.  Today there is no Gypsy state and the remnants of the Gypsies have virtually disappeared through assimilation with other peoples.  They are hardly even remembered. 

But any Zionist with open eyes and a spark of decency would have to agree with Ben Hecht's conclusion: ‘honorable human behavior would have been of deeper worth to the world than a dozen States of Israel.’⁹¹

^{Nest: BETRAYAL IN THE GHETTOS}

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