SWP sticks to invitation for Gilad Atzmon
According to e-mails circulated on left e-lists by Tony Greenstein - an activist who vehemently denounces AWL as "Zionist" - "The SWP are happy to have someone who... associates with fascists and anti-Semites... come to their annual 'Marxism 2005'...."
"My first reaction to the email was that it was a spoof, but apparently not.
"I think serious consideration should be given to a picket or leaflet of the event".
The person whom the SWP has invited, and insists on upholding the invitation for, is Gilad Atzmon, who (see below) denounces Greenstein and other leftist (and strongly anti-Israeli) Jews as "undercover Zionist agents of influence".
This is the correspondence between Tony Greenstein and SWP National Secretary Martin Smith.
Dear Martin,
This is utterly outrageous. I don't ask, I demand that you withdraw the invitation to Gilad Atzmon in WHATEVER capacity he has been invited to Marxism 2005. Are you really saying that you are happy to have someone who openly admits to circulating Holocaust Denial material perform at 'Marxism' 2005? What kind of Marxism is this? I understand that David Irving is quite good at blowing his own trumpet. Will you invite him too?
In case I did not distribute Atzmon's reply to my e-mail, asking him to dissociate himself from both Israel Shamir and Paul Eisen (the author of a Holocaust Denial tract), I enclose the relevant quotation below. He admits that he only has 'slight' differences with Eisen.
We may have our political differences, but I find it hard to believe that we can have any differences when it comes to treating with fascists and their sympathisers. What has become of the SWP, of which you are I understand the Secretary, when it says 'Never Again' one day, and invites to its annual event someone who believes it Never Happened?
Tony Greenstein
TG: I understand that you have been distributing Paul Eisen's most recent The Holocaust Wars which denies, in the course of defending Ernest Zundel, that there ever was a holocaust or extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis.
G: Mr Greenstine, True I circulated Paul Eisen's paper. I do believe that argumentative texts must be circulated as widely as possible. I am sure that in case you have a counter argument to suggest Paul will be delighted to address it. By the way, my take on the subject is slightly different than Paul's one and yet, i found Paul very attentive to my criticism. Furthermore, Let me assure you that if I ever see a great text written by yourself I ll be the first to circulate it. This is my way, that is what i believe in.
Martin Smith wrote:
Dear Tony,
I can confirm that Gilad Atzmon will be performing at Marxism 2005.
Martin Smith
----- Original Message ----- From: tony greenstein
To: enquiries@swp.org.uk
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2005 1:55 AM
Subject: Re Gilad Atzmon
To the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party
Dear Comrades,
I understand that at Marxism 2005, a certain Gilad Atzmon has been invited. I am not sure in what capacity he has been invited and I assume it is in respect of his undoubted musical accomplishments.
Nonetheless, Mr Atzmon, who penned the little witicism below with its play on the title of the Protocols of Elders of Zion, is a close associate of Israel Shamir, a notorious Swedish/Russian Anti-Semite who openly works with white supremacist organisations. Shamir's website openly lauds a Paul Eisen's The Holocaust Wars, which denies, in the course of defending Ernst Zundel, currently incarcerated in Canada for holocaust denial. Atzmon is distributing Eisen's works.
I must therefore demand that Atzmon's invitation is withdrawn from Marxism 2005 with immediate effect. I look forward to receiving confirmation that this has happened as soon as possible, as it is in all our interests that the Zionists and others are not aware of this invitation.
Fraternally,
Tony Greenstein
Dear Mr Atzmon,
I note that in the tirade below, you accuse Jews Against Zionism and myself of being 'undercover Zionist agents of influence'. No proof is provided for this calumny nor can any ever be provided. Please therefore withdraw this accusation.
I understand that you have been distributing Paul Eisen's most recent The Holocaust Wars which denies, in the course of defending Ernest Zundel, that there ever was a holocaust or extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis. Not that this should be any surprise given your association with Israel Shamir, who makes a habit of supporting and defending white supremacists. After all, there is an old saying that when you lie down with a dog you get fleas.
However every dog should be given one bite and I am therefore offering you a chance to retract the nonsense below as well as to dissociate yourself from Shamir and all his works.
Tony Greenstein
The Protocols of the Elders Of London - a document compiled by Gilad Atzmon
Introduction
In a very small segregated cyber shtetl somewhere in the north west side of yahoo (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/justpeaceuk/ ), a tiny cell of so-called 'liberal' Jews meets in the wee small hours. Night after night they are trying to save the Palestinian people from those who devote their lives to the Palestinian cause. There is one man who they really detest, his name is Israel Shamir (http://www.israelshamir.net/). An ex Jew, Shamir is a very civil and peaceful man and probably is the sharpest critical voice of 'Jewish power' and Zionist ideology.
Among Israel Shamir's many sins, he is a member in the Board of Advisors of DYR (Deir Yassin Remembered, an organisation founded with the purpose of commemorating the victims of the Deir Yassin massacre). DYR is engaged in promoting reconciliation between Arabs and Jews. The liberal Zionist cell, as we are going to read, cannot really take it. They demand the cleansing of Shamir. They insist upon ruining his intellectual career or at the very least, his reputation. They would use any possible manipulative strategy to have him thrown out of DYR, which is the first step towards sending him beyond the pale.
The following extracts are available on-line (for the time being) at Just Peace UK's official cyber shtetl: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/justpeaceuk/.
The extracts reveal a horrifying image of modern Jewish secular intolerance. It is a glimpse into the abusive, assertive and violent world of Zionist lobbying. It is a glance into the milieu of the people who try to determine the correctness of other people's world views. When reading these extracts,
just bear in mind that the authors behind them regard themselves as the forefront of Jewish moral thinking and universal humanism.
Let's let them introduce themselves
We shall start with what is the authentic voice of the Marxist Tony Greenstein. Greenstein suggests that "anti-Zionist Jews, maybe under the banner of Return or JAZ, should sign an open letter to the PLO/PSC etc. insisting that they categorically repudiate Shamir and all his works and calling on Deir Yassin Remembered to break its links. What is important is that those Jews who sign are seen, without any qualification or equivocation, to be opposed to Zionism root and branch AND opposed to Shamir". (Tony Greenstein) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/15068
Reading those lines by Greenstein, I wonder whether I am allowed to guess that 'anti-Zionist Jews' are basically a bunch of 'Just Peace UK' (a left Zionist group). If this is the case we should never take JAZ seriously again. If this is the case, Jews Against Zionism are operating as undercover Zionist agents. If true, and I still suspect it, it is very disappointing but not really surprising.
Orna Neumann doesn't like Shamir either, but unlike Greenstein who pleas for the help of his brothers, Neumann expects the Arab world to fight her Zionist wars. Neumann stresses that they (the cyber shtetl Just Peace UK) should "ask the Arab Media Watch and Affif and the PSC (Palestinian Solidarity Campaign) to denounce him (Shamir)". (Orna Neumann)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/15063
I may get it wrong here but when she mentions 'Afiff' she is probably referring to none other than Afiff Safieh, the Palestinian Ambassador to the UK. The fact that Neumann uses informal language calling Ambassador Safieh by his first name is in itself slightly unusual. Is Ambassador Safieh her
close friend? Is he an active member in this Liberal Zionist cell? I am sure he isn't. For those who don't know, Afiff Safieh is the supreme Palestinian diplomatic representative to the UK. It seems as if Elder Neumann is trying to portray an image as if some informal trading is possible with the ambassador. As if the ambassador is a Zionist collaborator. Having had the honour of watching Ambassador Safieh speak on behalf of the Palestinian people, having seen him and his wife sitting in front row seats at the DYR event. I am pretty confident that Neumann was searching for support in the very wrong place.
Roland Rance, a revolutionary socialist and an alleged devoted peace lover isn't far better. Like Neumann, Rance refers to the ambassador, applying similar informal language, but then, unlike Neumann, Rance doesn't ask Ambassador Safieh to intervene, he gives him orders. See for yourself:
"So we should not ask people like Afif and PSC to denounce Shamir because of his anti-Jewish rantings; we should insist that they join us in rejecting his whole approach as an obstacle to any progressive political strategy". (Roland Rance) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/15062
Sometimes I ask myself what Rance and his elder friends mean when they say 'progressive political strategy', Surely they mean silencing the voices of their political and ideological foes. I find myself wondering what is so progressive about silencing other people?
Apparently, some of the cell member are slightly more intellectually developed than others. For instance, Stephen Marks, is no doubt a strategically concerned one:
"I think" he maintains, that "the approach should come from a broad range of people, so Shamir cannot muddy the waters by claiming it is 'the jews' who are after him. The fact is that the zionists have been 'crying wolf' over anti semitism for so long that some people who have not read his material will be vulnerable to the argument that attacks on him are simply a reprise of the old Zionist chorus". (Stephen Marks) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/15064
Marks confesses here that Shamir is an internal Jewish problem but he insists upon finding a way to present Shamir as a threat to the world. But let us confront some facts here. It is the 'liberal' Jews who attack Shamir. Admittedly those left Jews are quoting two Palestinian writers (Ali Abunimah and Hussein Ibish) who denounced Shamir a while ago and yet I have never come across an orchestrated Palestinian campaign against Shamir. If anything, it is the other way around. Shamir is repeatedly praised by Palestinians and many of their supporters. From time to time you may come across an eloquent critique of Shamir's ideas. At other times, he is considered as an opinionist and treated as such. If anything, it proves beyond doubt that the Palestinian solidarity campaign expands and becomes more and more colourful. This is probably something that we miss in the protocols of the Elders of London. When I was collecting these extracts I found out that not 'many' Palestinians are engaged in
any dialogue within their cyber shtetl. If to be accurate, as a matter of fact I didn't find a single Arab that might hypothetically save their honour.
G-D Save the Queen
Ladies and gentleman, I assume that by now you are ready to meet the queen of the shtetl, Lady Deborah Maccoby. As we are going to see, Queen Maccoby is concerned not only with the Palestinians, in fact she tries to save the Christian world from regression. At the end of the day, to be a Shtetl Queen is a great responsibility.
" .the problem is that DYR has now become mixed up with anti-Semitic regressive Christian ideas and is being exploited as a means of demonising Jews and is seen not just as a symbol of massive injustice - acknowledgement of which can lead to reconciliation - but of a kind of cosmic sin. I know most of the people at the commemoration will not have seen it as such" (Deborah Maccoby)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/15099?expand=1
Being myself an active participant at the DYR event I cannot recall any 'anti Semitic regressive Christian ideas'. But if to be honest, I do not know what 'Christian regressive ideas' are. Does Maccoby refer here to the old accusation of Jews being Christ's killers? Maybe, but then, surely she should know that it has nothing to do with regressive Christianity; it is rather a historical narrative. However, in the DYR event no one blamed the Jews for killing Christ. If anything, it was the Zionists who were blamed for cleansing the Palestinian people as well as 'killing them'. But may I stress at this point that Maccoby's suggestion is in itself an outrageous insult to Christianity and Christian people. She really wants us to believe that Christianity is a shaky and fragile spiritual compound of dark beliefs, she wants us to think that it is she and her disciples who can save the Church from regression.
But we are not finished yet, it isn't only Christianity that must be saved, it is the foul Goyim who need saviours. Please show your respect to the 'gentile soul expert' Brian Robinson. Following the great tradition of Jewish analysts, Brian enlightens his fellows with some deep insights into the gentile psyche.
"If much of what Shamir writes strikes deep chords within people, let's say people whose primary motivation for involvement in this issue is an unacknowledged, and denied, antisemitism, then in attacking Shamir's writings we're attacking that hidden - but probably deeply cherished - part of those people's personalities. And they'll muster all the narcissistic defences they can - denial, projection (It's not us, it's you lot).
And maybe they've got us in a double bind - if we win the argument we lose it, and the better we win, the worse we lose ..." (Brian Robinson) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/15103
Funnily enough, Robinson is right, you can never win, you can only lose..
As one might guess, so far the battle against Shamir is far from being a great success, DYR's Board of directors ignored the outrageous demand to spit Shamir out. And so did the Palestinian Ambassador and all the other respectable supporters of the Palestinian struggle. The DYR event was an astonishing spiritual gathering. Many Palestinians performed and many others attended.
Amongst the audience and the performers you could find people from every religious group, class and ethnic origin. The Palestinian Ambassador honoured the event while sitting in the first row. Everyone was there except Deborah Maccoby and her clan of liberal Zionists.
Facing the apocalyptic aspects of the ensuing catastrophe, Orna Neumann is already getting ready for the worst case scenario:
"Has anyone seen his publication the flowers of the Galillee (Shamir's book)?" she asks and then continues, "Hitler also started from words....". For Neumann Shamir is the new Hitler, he is no longer just an ordinary anti Semite. He is now just about to liquidate the entire Jewish people. Ask
yourself why? Like Hitler, Shamir wrote a book. Undoubtedly, she puts her very strong logical skills to the service of the cause; let me tell you, dear Neumann, not only did he write a book (more than one), he has a small moustache.
London Underground
Confronting a clear defeat, Queen Maccoby and Goyim-expert Robinson have realised that the smear campaign was found to be counter effective; they have decided to go under.
"Just Peace UK list is at the end" Maccoby wrote "with all our messages on it (including this one!) Which means we should continue these discussions off line". (Deborah Maccoby)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/15080
If this coded message isn't clear enough, Robinson is here to help:
"Deborah, you have a good point about continuing the discussion, but how? One way is to establish a small email group -- I suppose to join such a group needs a central person to co-ordinate e-addresses - yourself?? http://groups.yahoo.com/group/JustPeaceUK/message/15083
As we can clearly see, the liberal Jews of North West Yahoo are withdrawing back to the ghetto practicing their old exclusive tactics. May I suggest something? What about the Israeli embassy in London, surely, they must have a secure concealed room, they would be happy to help you all. This is exactly what they are there for.
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Gilad Atzmon is anti-semite
Does it really matter that he is jewish?
G.Atzmon poisoned Internet with his anti-jewish articles while posing as Official Good Jew ..
Here is nothing to discuss - everybody knows that Atzmon is a classical jew-hater.. Not surprizing that he's website linked to Israel Shamir (in fact swedish neo-nazi who actually exposed as a fake'jew').
Gilad Atzmon is not a 'left' at all, as he's accuses jews of 'bolshevism'.
It's enough to read Gilad's article
'Zionists and Christ killers' to realize that.he is an antisemite.
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/nl305.htm
quote-
." In fact, putting anti-Semitic words into Jews' mouths is an age-old tactic of pogromists from around the world, the most infamous example being The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"
http://www.web.apc.org/~ara/documents/news/HLI.html
Israel Shamir
Whatever one may think of Israel Shamir, it is a fact that he is an Israeli living in Haifa (though born in Russia and lived onc in Sweden, I believe). Since the "Swedish neo-Nazi" story is false, it can only boomerang on Shamir's critics in the long run.
Also, it is my understanding that Gilad Atzmon does not pose as an "Official Good Jew" but as an ex Jew or non Jew, much as anticlericals do not pose as "Catholic atheists", but as "former Catholics" or "non Catholics".
on israel shamir (from the anti-fascist magazine monitor)
http://www.magasinet-monitor.net/english/shamiruk0204.htm
Israel Shamir
This lie about Shamir was disproved long ago. Everybody can visit Shamir (though in Jaffa, not in Haifa), and a lot of people do. For instance, he was recently visited for talks by Noel Ignatiev who wrote a piece about him. This Monitoret and Searchlight and other "antifascist' magazines are all subsidised by ADL, and they do not even hide it: you can read it on their list of donors. So naturally they spread their silly lies. If you doubt, write to shamir info@israelshamir.net and arrange for meeting him in Jaffa.
As for 'fake Jew', this is a racist comment.
there is a lot of anti-semite
there is a lot of anti-semite and other rightwing crap on israel shamir's website (which is of course no problem for believers in conspiracy theories like you) and a link to the russian fascist paper zavtra ... another artikel about him here: http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/sept_04/sept_04_22.html
'Israel Shamir' is impersonator
'This Monitor and Searchlight and other antifascist magazines are all subsidised by ADL, and they do not even hide it'
Where is the evidence ?links please.
Everybody knows that all fascists and neo-nazis hate ADL.
Is Electronic_Intifada or other pro-palestinians who criticize I.Shamir are 'subsidised by ADL' too ?
http://www.nigelparry.com/issues/shamir/nigelletter.html
''As for 'fake Jew', this is a racist comment''
it is not the fact that You actually use information You find over there openly talking about the "jewish problem", it is the fact that
You actually using our time to read material over nazi websites...and then You talk about 'racism' ?
Israel Shamir (real name Joran Jermas)
has been exposed on many antifa sites.as far-right extremist-.
By pretending to be a "Jew" 'Israel Shamir' can racially discriminate against Jews without being called an anti-semite..
Jöran Jermas (who is writing under the pen name Shamir)
www.searchlightmagazine.com/index.php?link=archive&year=2004
www.editorsoffice.de/ME_pfeifer_en.htm
Go and look at the website of Shamir and you will find his connections to neonazi and right wing extremists like David Duke and Horst Mahler.
Links below
Thanks anonymous for those links.
I had some difficulty finding the Searchlight article. I have put a direct link to it here
The other one is presently down but you can see a cached version in Google if you use search terms Shamir Pfeifer.
Holocaust denial
There is an airless unreality about 'Holocaust Denial' discussions. Most people without a personal stake in the matter who investigate the episode known to some as the Holocaust, to others as the Shoah, soon discover how flimsy and fugitive is the hard evidence for the mainstream account of it. This account has itself been continually revised, often under unacknowledged pressure from the evil Revisionists, e.g. in the matters of the death toll at Auschwitz (officially cut from 4m to 1m+ since 1945 and still falling), the downplaying of Wannsee and the absence of a written Fuhrer Order.
As survivors die, as Israel becomes more unpopular internationally and Arab political influence in the USA becomes more competitive with that of Jews, a more rational revision will be possible. Hate speech laws will not hold back the dam of historical curiosity for ever. I believe (after 20 years' contemplation of primary evidence) that this revision will show that while there was undoubtedly a severe a priori animus against Jews by German Nazis, leading to several million untimely deaths during the Second World War, the degree of centrally directed a prior intentionality about it is less than has been conventionally portrayed. Specifically, casualties occurred mainly because the Germans attempted mass deportations of Jews and purgings of Jews perceived as Bolsheviks, not because of a secret top-down genocidal policy; there was no 'industrialised killing' in gas chambers, though there may have been experiments on these lines; and the total death toll was well below the 6m normally asserted, which is not backed by specific names and addresses but is deductive.
The forensic evidence for mass gassing is very slight, the documentary evidence relies far too much on internally inconsistent hypotheses about 'coded language', and the eyewitness testimony is contradictory, often making physically impossible claims and frequently a demonstrable regurgitation of wartime propaganda. If we are so ready to denounce 'deniers' as neo-Nazis, why are the Jewish professors who so heavily influence the mainstream version to be treated as above suspicion-- given the enormous political and financial rewards that have accrued to Jewry and Israel from playing the genocide card?
By c. 2050 it is likely that the legend will have served its purpose and Jews will concede that the sufferings of their ancestors (most of whom were not Zionists) were dire but exaggerated. In the meantime, all this hysterical crying down of those who 'claim the Holocaust never happened' is counter-productive.
'untimely deaths' and 'financial rewards'
Effra,
Stating your case in as calm a manner as possible fails to mask the rabidity of the ideas you present. You manage to fit in just about every conceivable anti-Semitic caricature and falsification. You claim the attempted extermination of a people amounts to little more than ‘untimely deaths’, Jews control how history is written (they can do this because they have so much money) and there’s insufficient paperwork to prove anything anyway. I could go on but my stomach churns. Your message should be circulated as a warning to anyone who thinks we no longer need to fight this sort of poison.
TomU
Grotesque
If this were a website where we "moderated" all comments before posting, I doubt this Holocaust-denial comment would have been posted.
There are many detailed studies documenting the Holocaust. For the latest, see the book by Richard Evans, "Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial".
The idea that the whole story of the Holocaust is a matter of "Jewry and Israel" "playing the genocide card" for "political and financial rewards" is grotesque, if only because the broad outline of the Holocaust was known at the time and deliberately hushed up by the British and US governments for strategic reasons; that when it first came out into the open, Britain and the US continued to persecute Jews, and Britain tried to prevent the formation of the state of Israel; that the "mainstream" version has become established only after decades.
Now even Effra admits "several million untimely deaths" of Jews because of "severe a priori animus against Jews". But for him or her, if it's Jews, it's just "untimely deaths", not murder, and "a priori animus", not genocide... Anti-semitism is the term for this slippery wordplay.
Martin Thomas
Six million - or one million?
There's another aspect to this. I'm in favour of scientific historical investigation; if I believed the evidence showed that "only" one million Jews were killed by the Nazis, I'd want this fact to be public.
However:
a) I don't think the evidence shows this.
b) I've placed inverted commas around the word "only" for a reason. Your comment is grotesque because it implies that the murder of "only" one million Jewish people was/would have been somehow insignificant. It reminds me, on a vastly larger and therefore more appalling scale, of the SWP using the fact that NATO had overstated the number of Kosovars murdered by the Serb death squads in 1999 to, in effect, whitewash Milosevic and justify their pro-Serbia position. Only 5,000 Kosovars killed! How silly of Workers' Liberty to complain! Only a million Jews gassed! Oh how these Zionists do fuss!
Do you regard yourself as a socialist, or even as a left-winger?
Sacha Ismail
Anti-Semitism
Let's make this clear. The AWL believes in free debate, but making claims which have been conclusively shown to be nonsense, and can only serve the purpose of inciting hatred against Jews, is not acceptable.
The case Effra makes in favour of Holocaust denial - let's give it its proper name - is basically David Irving's. This has been proven rationally, in terms of scholarship and even in court to be false and motivated by racism. Consequently, it is not possible to make such claims without being a racist of the sickest and most vicious type.
Your type of "debate" is not welcome here, Effra - goodbye.
Naaah, let's continue...
This is the sort of debate that should be had in public, before an audience of whoever chooses to read this site. "Effra"'s views can be shown up as anti-semitic crap in open debate, so let's do it.
In the current political climate (where an associate of Israel Shamir is invited to Marxism), it's all the more important that we do so.
The nature of Holocaust denial
Holocaust deniers like to say - but surely you're interested in historical debate, etc. That's why they call themselves 'revisionists', as if it's all in the interests of truth. As is clear in Effra's comment, the argument is much more specific: it is that Jews have manipulated the historical truth for their own benefit. It is also, at least implicitly, thereby a historical exonoration of the Nazis.
Inform ourselves about it, sure. As Martin says above, the Richard Evans book is good. 'Debate' it, I think not.
Holocaust 'Denial'
I note that so far only appeals to authority and empty conjectures about motives have been adduced in attempted rebuttal of my moderately revisionist view of the Shoah. Richard Evans, for example, is not an original researcher of the subject any more than David Irving is: their writings, like so much of 'Holocaust Studies', consist of recycling claims which investigators such as Pressac and Meyer, who have never been tainted with the fatuous 'denier' label, have gravely undermined.
If the mainstream version were to be set in stone, we would still accept the Communist-inspired declaration that 4m people, mostly non-Jews, were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This was maintained long after the British pioneer scholar Gerald Reitlinger had concluded that the true figure was under 1m. Current estimates by those who have done the spadework on the ground and in archives hover around 500,000; but typically it takes 15-20 years for these to be processed by secondary historians such as Evans, Davidowicz and Burleigh.
My fault, in this and other aspects, is to be too right too soon. I accept that, just as I accept the penalty of agreeing with Yehuda Bauer that Wannsee was not really the grand conclave of extermination planners which movies still depict, and the sin of agreeing with Raul Hilberg that there is no hard evidence that Hitler personally authorised genocide. Come to that, one still reads occasionally of gas chambers at Belsen or Dachau being inspected by the British and Americans who liberated those camps, although Simon Wiesenthal 'denied' that 30 years ago.
BTW, Hilberg believes the total of deaths was just over 5m, but he has not yet been cast into the utter darkness for 'denying' the 6m figure. Maybe you have to be Jewish.
Holocaust Denial
I have hesitated to post anything before now, but I think a few comments are in order.
1. The question of how many, including Jews, were exterminated by the Nazis is a legitimate subject for research and debate. Hanna Arendt mentioned 4 million, others 6 million and Hilberg 5 million. The fact is that the true number of Jews exterminate can and will never be known since there what records there were were destroyed by the Nazis and most of those who were exterminated were never registered in the extermination camps since they were killed almost immediately they arrived.
2. The evidence for the gas chambers is overwhelming and even David Irving was forced to concede in the libel trial 'Irving v Penguin Books' that there were some killings by gas at Auschwitz and he also conceded that gas was used at Chelmnitz, Sobibor and other Reinhard death camps. The eye witnesse evidence is not contradictory but very strong. People such as the escapee Rudolph Vrba and many, many more eye witnesses.
3. The 'proof' that convinced Irving that the Holocaust was a myth, the Leuchter Report, has been comprehensively discredited as even Irving was forced to admit because it was based on the false assumption that the amount of gas needed to kill its victims was greater than the amount needed to delouse clothes. (Leuchter obtained samples from the walls of the delousing chambers, which proved positive for hydro cyanide, whereas the gas chambers proved gave either negative or very low readings. In fact the exact opposite was the case - it was the delousing that needed high concentrations, whereas the concentrations in the gas chambers was a fraction of this.
4. The most convincing evidence comes from the Nazis themselves. None of the Nazis tried at Nuremburg, Hoss the camp commandant or his deputy or indeed any of them denied that gas chambers were used to exterminate the Jews. Why should they? Hitler had openly proclaimed to the Reichstag on a number of occasions that a world war would result in the annihilation of Jewry.
5. However this is not the end of the story. The fact is that the Zionist movement has shamelessly used the Holocaust in order to intimdate their opponents and to justify their murderous and barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. This is in addition to its use to obtain enormous reparations from Germany and elsewhere, reparations which have been used to support the Israeli military machine rather than for the benefit of the holocaust survivors. There has, as Norman Finkelstein has written, developed a Holocaust Industry. The Holocaust has become an ideological weapon in the hands of the Zionist movement and indeed US imperialism. When I visited the Holocaust museum in Washington, I observed that the famous statement of Pastor Niemoller 'First they came for.... ' conveniently ommitted the Communists from his saying.
6. For years Zionism has accused its opponents of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial. I can remember my own experiences where the Israeli State funded Union of Jewish Students attempted to No Platform me on the grounds of anti-Semitism. Absurd and ludicrous since anyone on the left in Brighton will confirm that I have been one of the principal organisers of anti-fascism in this town. This very weekend I shall be out trying to stop a fascist meeting. And not once in 25 years have any of the Zionist groups in Brighton & Hove (which has the 4th largest Jewish community) ever helped organise any anti-fascist mobilisation. Their 'anti-fascism' is directed solely at anti-Zionists. Indeed when we approached the Jewish Youth Club in Hove, the Israeli shaliach told us that it was 'futile' to combat anti-Semitism and we should emigrate to Israel!
6. The moral of the phenomenon of Shamir & co. lies in the tale of the little boy who cried wolf. Zionists have cried 'anti-Semitism' for so long, that when the genuine article arises, many people have become indifferent. Even worse some people are saying that if you have to be anti-Semitic to be a supporter of the Palestinians then that is a price worth paying.
7. AWL, an organisation which considers itself socialist, has unfortunately been guilty of this. In taking up the absurd cry of 'left anti-Semitism' [absurd because there is nothing 'left' about any form of racism] it has played into the hands of the Shamirs and Eisens of this world. Anti-Zionism is the complete opposite of anti-Semitism because it is founded on a rejection of racism and the idea that Jews do not belong in the countries of their birth. It is Zionism which has historically had the most in common with anti-Semitism as even a cursory glance at the history of Zionism will confirm. The ONLY plaudits that Zionism's founding father Theodore Herzl received were from anti-Semites who welcomed a movement to get rid of Jews in their midst. Even today, the headquarters of the Zionist movement in Britain is called Balfour House. It is named after the notorious anti-Semite who introduce exactly 100 years ago, the Aliens Act, to keep Jewish refugees from the pogroms out of this country. His name? Arthur J Balfour, Tory Foreign Secretary and author of the Balfour Declaration which helped create the Zionist state.
8. Shamir, Eisen and the rest of Deir Yassin Remembered are poisonous anti-Semites and racists. But we have the Zionist movement to thank for the fact that they have the influence they have. Those of us in Jews Against Zionism who mounted the picket of Gilad Atzmon will work to marginalise them. We have already succeeded in isolating them and we will continue this work.
9. I note that apart from 1 member the AWL did not turn up for the picket of the SWP's Bookmarks. I assume that this was because in their eyes it was one bunch of anti-Semites picketting another! Nor of course did the Union of Jewish Students who when I was a student OPPOSED no platform for fascists and racists but supported it for Jewish anti-Zionists!
Tony Greenstein
So much to do, so little time...
If I had all the time in the world, I still would not be able to cover all of the ground that divides Tony Greenstein from the AWL on the question of Israel/Palestine. I will, therefore, limit myself to making a few succinct points about certain elements in his last post;
Firstly, on the question of anti-Zionism and anti-semitism. It is certainly the case that when Zionism existed as a bourgeois nationalist movement, an anti-semitic logic could be spun from it. That is why Marxists in the 19th and early 20th centuries were opposed to it - they were anti-Zionist in the name of Jewish workers staying in their countries of residence and fighting the class war. That attitude was correct.
That sort of Zionism no longer exists. Being an "anti-Zionist" in the sense of being against the bourgeois nationalist movement for the creation of a Jewish state is meaningless - a state of Israel exists and a population of several million people live in it.
It is perfectly reasonable and correct to be an "anti-Zionist" in the sense of being opposed to the chauvinism, expansionism and racism of the sub-imperialist ruling-class in Israel. But why then explicitly identify as an "anti-Zionist" any more than being "anti" any other form of national chauvinism?
Of course Jews "belong in the countries of their birth." Jews - and every other cultural and ethnic group - belong everywhere and anywhere. Freedom of movement of peoples, remember? It is Tony who denies Jews the right to live in the countries of their birth by implicitly denying the rights of Israeli Jews to remain in the country in which they were born and to self-determine. I find it baffling that Tony somehow reads into the AWL's belief that the Israeli people have national rights the tacit endorsement of the ultra-reactionary idea that if a state of Israel exists then all Jews should go there. A state of Israel *should* exist and all Jews should be able to go there...along with anyone else, of any cultural background, who might wish to. We are Marxists - we are for open borders.
On "left anti-semitism," Tony somewhat naively thinks this term refers to anti-semitism that somehow has a "left" character. He is wrong. Rather, it refers to the anti-semitic logic that can be extrapolated from the orientation of some left groups to the Israel/Palestine question. Tony would do better to explain why a position that is root-and-branch hostile to an entire nation of people (the Israelis, who - like it or not - are a national group certainly in the Leninist sense) in a way that it is not to any other *does not* have an anti-semitic logic, rather than arguing about semantics. The SWP's promotion of the anti-semite Atzmon and its previous association with obviously anti-semitic forces in such political milieus at the Cairo Conference seem to bear out the AWL's analysis that the SWP's position on Israel/Palestine lead it into a softness to and an accomdation with anti-semitism. *That* is what is meant by "left anti-semitism."
I'll leave it there. For all the bile Tony spits about the AWL (including, somewhat gobsmackingly, in the pages of the Weekly Worker, right in the middle of an election campaign in which Tony was standing *as part of the same coalition as the AWL*), he - like many other steadfast opponents of our politics - is happy to use the comments feature on our website. Rightly so - I think it's a testament to our culture that people who think we are "lapdogs of imperialism" (I paraphrase - maybe Tony can remind me of what he actually said) are free to post their thoughts on our website for all the world to read. Hopefully Tony will continue to do so and respond to the points that I have raised.
worth noting --
-- that Gilad Atzmon is sax magician.