[Marxism] FW: Zionism and Anti-Semitism II

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Zionism In the Age of the Dictators: A reappraisal by Lenni Brenner.

The book is available on the website REDS - Die Roten at the URL
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm

Solidarity,
Einde O'Callaghan
Webmaster, REDS - Die Roten

This website is full of some important information and concepts. I urge
all to visit it.

>From Brenner's book:

"To be a Good Zionist one must be Somewhat of an Anti-Semite:

Although blut was a recurrent theme in pre-Holocaust Zionist literature,
it was not as central to its message as boden. As long as America's
shores remained open, Europe's Jews asked: if anti-Semitism could not be
fought on its home ground, why should they not just follow the crowd to
America? The Zionist response was double-barrelled: anti-Semitism would
accompany the Jews wherever they went and, what was more, it was the
Jews who had created anti-Semitism by their own characteristics. The
root cause of anti-Semitism, Zionists insisted, was the Jews' exile
existence. Jews lived parasitically off their 'hosts'...

These tenets combined were known as 'shelilat ha'galut (the Negation of
the Diaspora), and were held by the entire spectrum of Zionists who
varied only on matters of detail. They were argued vigorously in the
Zionist press, where the distinctive quality of many articles was their
hostility to the entire Jewish people. Anyone reading these pieces
without knowing their source would have automatically assumed that they
came from the Anti-Semitic press. The Weltanschauung of the youth
organization Hashomer Hatzair (Young Watchmen), originally composed in
1917, but republished again as late as 1936, was typical of these
effusions:

 The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both
pysically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and
throws off the harness of social obligations, knows no order nor
discipline. (pp22-23)

Similarly, in 1935 an American Ben Frommer, a writer for the ultra-right
Zionist-Revisionists, could declare of no less than 16 million of his
fellow Jews that:

The fact is undeniable that the Jews collectively are unhealthy and
neurotic. Those professional Jews who, wounded to the quick, igdignantly
deny this truth are the greatest enemies of their race, for they thereby
lead them to search for false solutions, or at most palliatives." (p.
23)

And:

In 1925 the most vehement protagonist of total abstentionism, Jcob
Klatzkin, the co-editor of the massive "Encyclopedia Judaica", laid down
the full implications of the Zionist approach to anti-Semitism.

If we do not admit the rightfulness of antisemitism, we deny the
rightfulness of our own nationalism. If our people is deserving and
willing to live its own national life, then it is an alien body thrust
into the nations among whom it lives, an alien body that insists on its
own distinctive identity, reducing the domain of their life. It is right
therefore, that they should fight against us for their national
integrity...Instead of establishing societies for defense against
antisemites, who want to reduce our rights, we should establish
societies for defense against our friends who desire to defend our
rights." (p. 30)

Note:
And of course those leading Zionists in Europe, who aided and abetted
anti-Semitism went on to become collaborators with the nazis, cut
special deals for their friends, familiies and fellow Zionists, and
aided in the deceptions, rounding ups, registrations, transport and
liquidation of Jews by the nazis; without their collaboration with the
nazis, the full dimensions of the Holocaust would have been impossible.

Jim Craven


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism