What few Americans understand is that there has been a long historical alliance -- from the end of the 19th century until today -- between Zionism and real anti-Semites -- from those who planned pogroms in Czarist Russia to Nazi Germany itself. The reason for the affinity many Zionist leaders felt for anti-Semites becomes clear as this history emerges.
You will have to read the link to find most of those answers, but here's a juicy one:
Zionist-Nazi Alliance Proposal
Still, as late as January 1941, the Zionist group LEHI, one of whose leaders, Yitzhak Shamir, was later to become a prime minister of Israel, approached the Nazis, using the name of its parent organization, the Irgun (NMO). The naval attaché in the German embassy in Turkey transmitted the LEHI proposal to his superiors in Germany.
It read in part:
It is often stated in the speeches and utterances of the leading statesmen of National Socialist Germany that a New Order in Europe requires as a prerequisite the radical solution of the Jewish question through evacuation. The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question. This can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historic boundaries.
The LEHI proposal continues:
"The NMO ... is well acquainted with the good will of the German Reich Government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans."
It goes on to state:
The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would be in the interests of strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East ... The NMO in Palestine offers to take an active part in the war on Germany's side ... The cooperation of the Israeli freedom movement would also be in line with one of the recent speeches of the German Reich Chancellor, in which Herr Hitler stressed that any combination and any alliance would be entered into in order to isolate England and defeat it.
The Nazis rejected this proposal for an alliance because, it is reported, they considered Lehi's military power "negligible." [For more on this, see: M. Weber, "Zionism and the Third Reich" in the July-August 1993 Journal, pp. 29-37.]
Is that un-frikkin-believable or what? We have been soooooo lied to?
Zionists have repeatedly stressed -- and continue to do so -- that, from their viewpoint, Jews are in "exile" outside of the "Jewish state." Jacob Klatzkin, a leading Zionist writer, declared: "We are simply aliens, we are foreign people in your midst, and we emphasize, we wish to stay that way." This Zionist perspective has been a minority view among Jews from the time of its formulation until today.
When the term "anti-Semitism" is casually used to silence those who are critical of the government of Israel and its policies, it should be noted that Zionism's history of alliance with real anti-Semitism has been long-standing, and this has been so precisely because Zionism and anti-Semitism share a view of Jews which the vast majority of Jews in the United States and elsewhere in the world have always rejected.
This rarely discussed chapter of history deserves study, for it illuminates many truths relevant to the continuing debate, both with regard to Middle East policy and the real nature of Jews and Judaism."
The point of peaceful Jews is reiterated in this piece:
We Aren’t One: American Jewish Voices for Peace"American Jewish peace voices do not genuflect before the Israel Lobby.
Unlike Israel, where free speech and public debate thus far remains sacred, a number of so-called major American Jewish organizations (many of whom have few if any paid members) have sought mightily to stifle critics.
Neocons are in reality very well paid home front warriors and publicists for the new American Empire. Callow ideologues, they played a crucial role in getting the U.S. into Iraq and are now desperate to take on Iran but from afar (please don’t count on they or their close family members ever ending up in combat units in Iran). Some are probably motivated by right-wing Israeli sympathies; most, however, are drawn to rigid Manichean geopolitical doctrines of preemptive war. Now they are clinging as "national security" advisors to the bellicose Rudolph Giuliani, once again hoping for another "cakewalk" against Iran.
The truth, though, is that the primary responsibility for the massive bloodletting in the Middle East rests with the President, Vice-President, Donald Rumsfeld, their Congressional sycophants, a mass media that serves as a willing transmission belt, and the mighty oil, munitions and yes, Israel Lobby, which also includes Christian fundamentalists and Christian Zionists, desperate to welcome Armageddon."
Everybody knows, hey!
