Jew World Order

It all started when a political muck-racking site–Guido Fawkes—unearthed a number of 2014 Facebook posts by Labor Party MP Naz Shah that were critical of Israel. Those posts included a map of Israel superimposed on a map of the U.S. with the suggestion that Israel should be moved to the U.S. and riffs relating to this fantasy. Shah was promptly accused of anti-Semitism. She apologized for her postings, noted that they pre-dated her election to Parliament, and professed that they do not reflect her considered views. Nevertheless, political pressure was brought to bear and Shah was suspended from Parliament by Labor Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn pending an investigation.

It bears mentioning that Shah’s Facebook postings were not an actual suggestion. They appear to be ironic commentary on the very close relationship between Israel and the United States. But Shah obviously has negative feelings about the existence of Israel in the Middle East. She is anti-Zionist.

In the meantime, long time Labor Party member and former mayor of London Ken Livingstone came to Shah’s defense. She is not anti-Semitic he said. Although many Labor MP’s have expressed concern for the rights of Palestinians over the years, and they sometimes have said harsh things about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, Livingstone says he has never heard any Labor Party MP say anything anti-Semitic.

In defending Shah Livingstone said: “Let’s remember that when Hitler won the election in 1932, his policy was that Jews should be moved to Israel.” This comment immediately made Livingstone the center of the controversy and, in turn, led to Jeremy Corbyn suspending him as well.

Livingstone’s statement has left even his most sympathetic critics scratching their heads. What could he have been thinking? At Mondoweiss Robert Cohen (a Brit) says that, although he does not believe the British Labor party has a problem with anti-Semitism, he implies that the statements by Shah and Livingstone are anti-Semitic, and he counsels critics of Israel to stay away from self-made bear traps like mentioning Hitler and Israel in the same sentence, or questioning Israel’s narrative of national self-determination, or to suggest “Zionist control” of anything (like pointing out Zionist efforts to equate criticism of Zionism with anti-Semitism?)

At +972 Magazine Gilad Halpern (an Israeli) notes that, in addition to Livingstone getting some of the key facts wrong in his sentence—like Hitler did not come to power in the 1932 elections (he was appointed chancellor in January 1933) and Israel did not exist until 1948—there is something mysterious about what relevance Livingstone had in mind:

Livingstone has a “dubious” record of downplaying quasi anti-Semitic statements, says Halpern:

The reason [Livingstone] came under so much fire was the subtext: assuming that issue had some relevance for 2016 Britain, he was talking about the present, not the past. It was his underlying intentions that were called into question. Why on earth would one evoke Hitler’s supposed warming to Zionism in a debate about contemporary politics, if it wasn’t to draw some sort of parallel, as awkward and far-fetched as it may have been, between Zionism and Nazism? And why would he allow himself to be dragged into a debate about the Holocaust at a time when his party is bending over backwards to fend off accusations that it is teeming with anti-Semites? Livingstone, an astute and experienced politician, took a plunge into an empty pool. While all this might have been a slip of a tongue from a politician who’s no stranger to controversies, it is pitted against a dubious backdrop of his consistent effort to downplay positions within his party that could be branded, if not downright anti-Semitic, as bigoted and hateful.

A Search for Relevance

Livingstone, however, has said that he accepts Israel and supports a two-state-solution. He has also said that it would have been better if Britain and the US had opened their doors to Jewish refugees rather than to support the creation of Israel in ’48. At minimum, we must acknowledge that a statement that the U.S. and Britain should have thrown open their doors to Jewish refugees from Hitler is manifestly not anti-Semitic.

Here is what Livingstone said on a panel in London on January 2, 2013 (starting @10:21):

Nobody disagrees with the academic concept that the Jews have a right to a state. What they didn’t have a right to was the displacement of the Arab community. We now live in a world where the reality is there is an Israel. I would not have created an Israel, but there is an Israel there. I support the concept of the two-state-solution. I want to see the ending of the wall and the separation, so there is an economic link (inaudible) there now (as) exists between France and Germany.

But it was a travesty. And the main force driving American policy makers in actually getting the UN vote to create the State of Israel is they were too frightened of anti-Semitism in America and Britain to do what we should have done, which is open our doors to the refugees from Hitler and to welcome them into Britain and America; not, because of our fear of anti-Semitism, actually displace an established Arab population who have spent the last 60 years living in degrading conditions and subject to constant violence.

Zionists don’t like to hear such talk (e.g. Jonathan Freedland who did not characterize Livingstone’s comments fairly), but it is not anti-Semitic. In the context of the question whether it would have been better to welcome Jewish refugees from Hitler in the U.S. and Britain instead of forming the state of Israel, it is historically relevant to note that the Nazis were cooperating with Zionists in the early 1930’s to transfer Jews to British Mandate Palestine.

It is also relevant to note, that German National Socialism was objectionable not only because Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews, and because Nazi Germany turned into a genocidal war machine; it was also objectionable for its ideology of building a national homeland for the German people at the expense of all competitors to the land. This ideology was about more than extermination of the Jews: it included plans for the mass starvation of 30 million Ukrainians to make room for German settlement. And it’s worth noting that the idea of a Jewish homeland for Jews in Palestine does bear some uncomfortable parallels to this Nazi ideology separate and distinct from the horrors the Nazis committed during the war, and without making any comparison between Nazi atrocities and anything Israel has done or may do.

It is worth recalling, as Livingstone’s observation about Nazi and Zionist collaboration does, that European anti-Semitism helped with the creation of Israel. See, for example THIS article by Siddhartha Shome.

We usually think of this “assistance” as hatred and intolerance of Jews in Europe forcing Jews to create Israel as a Jewish state wherein Jews can take refuge. In other words, anti-Semitism created (and continues to create) the need for a Jewish state and was the impetus for its creation. For the anti-Semitic Western powers (even after the war), voting for the partition of Palestine was a way to rid themselves of Jews living in displaced persons camps in Western Europe.

But there is a flip side to this. “It is the job of Zionism,” declared Ben Gurion, “not to save the remnant of Israel in Europe but rather to save the land of Israel for the Jewish people and the yishuv” (see Shomes article at note 3). The gateway to the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem has an inscription, in Shome’s translation: “I will put my breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil.” In other words, Jews living on their own soil: Jewish blood mingling with Jewish soil protected by Jewish power. It’s not a recipe that bodes well for non-Jews living in the land.

Anti-Semitism helped to create the modern state of Israel, but in non-trivial ways, anti-Semitism also infected the ideology of this project.