Jews Need To Know

Alan Hart

Most Jews do not want to know the facts and documented truth of history as it relates to the making and sustaining of conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel . Supported in argument by the work of Yehoshafat Harkabi , Israel ’s longest serving and universally respected Director of Military Intelligence, I assert that the Jews need to know. Why? In his seminal book, Israel’s Fateful Hour, published in Hebrew in 1986 and English two years later, Harkabi wrote these warning words:

“ Israel is the criterion according to which all Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish state is an example of the Jewish character, which finds free and concentrated expression within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct, which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely to be transformed into empirical proof of the validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism. Israelis must be aware that the price of their misconduct is paid not only by them but also Jews throughout the world.”

Two decades on (during which the world has witnessed what I think could be described as demonstrations of Israeli state terrorism in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip), it is perfectly clear to seriously well informed people (the few) of all faiths and none that Israel’s “misconduct” - arrogance of power and appalling self-righteousness now laced with naked propaganda lies, and contempt for international law and the political and human rights of the Palestinians - has become, or is at least becoming, the prime factor in the re-awakening of the sleeping giant of classical anti-Semitism in the mainly Gentile nations of the Judeo-Christian or Western world where most Jews live.”

My own view is that after the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, and because of it, the giant would have gone back to sleep, remained asleep and, in all probability, would have died in its sleep IF Zionism had not been allowed by the major powers to have its colonial way. In my book Zionism: The Real Enemy of The Jews, I say that with pork-barrel American and other Western politicians as friends, the Jews have not needed enemies. I also do not blame the Zionist lobby for exercising its awesome influence. It is only playing the game according to the rules. The problem is the pork-barrel nature of what passes for democracy in America .

In the context above it seems obvious to me (as obvious as it is to the relatively small number of Jews who are aware of the truth of history and have the courage to speak out) that Jewish ignorance and/or denial of the truth of history has got to be ended if the Jews are to play their necessary part in stopping the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again in a foreseeable future - assuming the political and military leaders of the Zionist state continue to be opposed to peace on any terms almost all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept.

The key to the understanding needed in the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian or Western world where most Jews live - i.e. the understanding needed to stop anti-Semitism going on the rampage - is knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Zionism. I mean political Zionism as opposed to what could be called spiritual Zionism. When Gentiles know the difference, why Judaism and Zionism are opposites, they can understand two things. One is why it is wrong to blame ALL Jews everywhere for the “misconduct” - I say crimes - of the hardest core Zionist few in Israel .

Almost all Arabs and many other Muslims have always known the difference between Judaism and Zionism; and that’s why, historically speaking, they said in their various ways, and meant, “Our enemy is Zionism and Zionists, not Jews as Jews”. It is a fact that prior to Zionism’s colonial enterprise, the Arabs and other Muslims were the best protectors of Jews in need of sanctuary). The other is why, contrary to Zionism’s assertion, it is perfectly possible to be passionately anti-Zionist - opposed to Zionism’s colonial enterprise - without being in any way shape or form anti-Semitic (anti-Jew).

What is the truth of history Jews need to know and come to grips with? In very brief (and therefore inadequate summary) the following are the three main elements of it.

* Israel and the Palestinian refugee problem were created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing. I write and frequently say that Holocaust Denial is as evil as that crime itself, but I also believe that Nakba or Ethnic Cleansing Denial is as obscene as the act denied.

* Israel ’s existence has never, ever, been in danger from any combination of Arab military force. Not in 1948. Not in 1956. Not in 1967. And not even in 1973. Zionism’s propaganda assertion to the contrary - the claim that Israel has lived in danger of annihilation, the “driving into the sea” of its Jews - was the cover that allowed Israel to get away where it mattered most, in America and Western Europe, with presenting its aggression as self-defense and Israel as the victim when, actually, it was, and is, the oppressor. At the end of the Prologue to Volume One of Zionism: The Real Enemy Of The Jews, I quote from a conversation I had in 1980 with then retired Major General Shlomo Gazit, the best and the brightest of Israel ’s Directors of Military Intelligence. I said to him: “Shlomo, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all a myth. Israel ’s existence has never, ever, been in danger.” Through a sad smile he replied, “The trouble with us Israelis is that we’ve become the victims of our own propaganda.”

In an article on 28 March 2009, Uri Avnery asked what the real platform of the new government led by Netanyahu will be. He answered, “Deception for the fatherland”. Deception, I add, has always been Zionism’s policy. In my book I tell readers there were times when the Gentile me wanted to cry out with the pain of knowing how much Israelis and most Jews of the world have been deceived by Zionist propaganda.

* Zionism’s assertion that Israel has not had Palestinian and other Arab partners for peace is pure propaganda nonsense. The most detailed and documented demolition of it is contained in Avi Shlaim’s seminal book, The Iron Wall: Israel And The Arab World, first published in 2000. (Avi documents, just one example of many, the fact that Egypt ’s President Nasser wanted an accommodation with Israel and secretly explored the possibility of making it happen with Moshe Sharett , Israel ’s foreign minister and briefly prime minister). On the subject of the readiness of Arafat and his PLO for peace with Israel inside more or less its borders as they were on the eve of the 1967 war, I can speak with greater insight and authority than most (if not all). After acting in 1980 as the linkman in a secret and exploratory dialogue between Arafat and Shimon Peres -an initiative approved by Victor Rothschild and funded by Marcus Sieff and associates - I spent a year living with Arafat and his six most senior leadership colleagues to talk their story out of them for my first book, Arafat, Terrorist Or Peacemaker? The truth is that by the end of 1979 Arafat had secured the endorsement of the highest decision making bodies on the Palestinian side for his policy of politics and compromise with Israel - for peace on terms which any rational government and people in Israel would have accepted with relief. What he needed thereafter was an Israeli partner for peace. He eventually got a somewhat reluctant one, Rabin, but he was assassinated by a Zionist zealot who was not mad and knew exactly what he was doing - killing the peace process. The truth is also that Zionism has never been interested in peace on any terms almost all Palestinians and most other Arabs and Muslims everywhere could accept.

The notion that Israel ’s existence would or could be threatened by a Palestinian mini state on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with either East Jerusalem its capital or an open Jerusalem the capital of two states, is the fantasy at leadership level of deluded minds. If there was a Palestinian mini state in existence, and if from it rejectionists launched attacks on Israel and were not contained and put out of action by the Palestinian government’s security services, the IDF at a point would crush the mini state out of existence and do so with the understanding of the world. As Arafat once put it to me: “Does anybody seriously think that we Palestinians would be so stupid?” He meant and said that having suffered and sacrificed so much for so many years in order to get a small measure of justice, the Palestinians would not be stupid enough to give Israel the pretext to take away from them what they had gained and close the Palestine file forever.

To illustrate why I am completely aware that some/many Jews don’t want to know the truth of history, I’ll tell a little story.

After my wife, my second best friend in the world (for more than 40 years) is my Jewish accountant. I’ll call him M. He’s strictly kosher in all departments from religion to food. Over the years he has accompanied me on some of my foreign trips. As a way of thanking M for his service and friendship, I took him with me to sit in on my last private conversation with Golda Meir shortly before she died. It lasted more than five hours. M was thrilled to meet Mother Israel and she had no objection to him sitting in and listening. Before we said goodbye for the last time, she allowed me to take a photograph of M with his arm around her shoulders. Today it has pride of place in M’s London home and young visitors say to him: “Who’s that? Your mother?” Now to the point. M loathes what Israel has become - he frequently visits one of his married daughters there - but he won’t read my book. He doesn’t want to know the truth of history. Shortly before Volume One was published, I said to him: “Like most Jews, you believe that Israel went to war in 1967 either because the Arabs attacked or were about to attack. What if I can prove to you, using only Israeli sources, that the Arabs did not attack and were not intending to attack and Israel ’s leaders knew that? What, in other words, if I can prove to you that it was a war of Israeli aggression which, actually, neither Prime Minister Eshkol nor Chief of Staff Rabin wanted?” After a long pause, and not much above a whisper, M replied, “If what I believe about the 1967 war is not true, everything crumbles.”

M was fully aware that by “Israeli sources” I meant not only those Israeli leaders who admitted the truth after the event - Rabin in February 1968 and others years later. M knew that I had covered that war and three weeks of the countdown to it for ITN - I was the first Western correspondent to the banks of the Suez Canal with the advancing Israelis. More to the point, M also knew that I had access to what was really going on behind closed doors as the hawks plotted to force Prime Minister Eshkol to give the defense portfolio to Moshe Dayan. My “deep throat” and mentor in Israel was Chaim Herzog, one of the founding fathers of Israel ’s Directorate of Military Intelligence. On the second morning of the war, Chaim said to me, “If Nasser had not been stupid enough to give us a pretext for war, we would have invented one within a year.”

It could be said, and I do say, that, like the mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian or Western world, most Jews, including most Israeli Jews, have been brainwashed by Zionist propaganda. But that alone is not enough - is it? - to explain why most Jews don’t want to know the truth of history.

In my analysis, which I know is shared by some of the most informed and thoughtful Jewish minds of our time, there are reasons beyond the need for them to play their necessary part in stopping the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage again why Jews (in big numbers not small ones) should end their silence on the matter of Israel’s “misconduct”.

One indication of how high the stakes are is to be found in An Ethical Tradition Betrayed, The End Of Judaism, the latest book of Nazi holocaust survivor Dr. Hajo Meyer. My dear friend Hajo was born in Germany , served in the Jewish underground, was captured by the Gestapo and transported to Auschwitz . On page 240 he writes:

It seems to me improbable that the pioneer experiment of Israel , which started out full of hope and ideals, can be saved and that lasting peace and mutual trust between Israelis and Palestinians can still be achieved. The negative forces that were present from the start, especially the disdain with which the Palestinians were looked upon, have prevailed over humanistic ideals and social ethics….. Although the long history of the Jews under unremittingly adverse circumstances since antiquity testifies to their fortitude, the impact of the Holocaust may have destroyed the innermost fabric, the deepest nature - in short, the essence - of Judaism forever.

That was an updated echo of what Arnold Toynbee wrote in the early 1970’s:

On the Day of Judgement the gravest crime standing to the German National Socialist account might not be that they had exterminated a majority of Western Jews, but that they had caused the surviving remnant of Jewry to stumble.

In my book - in the Epilogue which is titled The Jews as the Light Unto Nations - I have tried to be inspiring with the following words (which are on the back jacket of the UK edition of Volume Two):

If the Jews of the world can summon up the will and the courage to make common cause with the forces of reason in Israel before it is too late for us all, a very great prize awaits them. By demonstrating that right can triumph over might, and that there is a place for morality in politics, they would become the light unto nations. It is a prize available to no other people on earth because of the uniqueness of the suffering of the Jews. Perhaps that is the real point of the idea of the Jews as Chosen People….. Chosen to endure unique suffering and, having endured it, to show the rest of us that creating a better and more just world is not a mission impossible.

And so to the question.

Is it wrong of the Gentile me to want all Jews to engage openly and honestly with the truth of history - in other words, am I the problem or are they (many if not most) for not wanting to be engaged by it (even when they have a most powerful vested interest in doing so)?

This question was provoked by a message I received during my on-going work to arrange an event - a panel conversation chaired by me, followed by debate with a quality invited audience, to be recorded for TV and a DVD - with the title Anti-Semitism Rising - Why? (One of the related questions to be discussed is whether or not there is a cause-and-effect relationship between Israel ’s behaviour and the rise of anti-Semitism) . The message in an e-mail exchange with a top official of a “progressive” Jewish group, which is critical of Israel and campaigns for some justice for the Palestinians, was to the effect that it’s counter-productive and therefore wrong of me to seek to engage Jews with ideas about the Zionist state’s behaviour which are too uncomfortable for them.

That reminded me of a statement made to me by several “progressive” Jews shortly after the publication of the UK edition of Volume One of my book. The statement was that I should change the title because Zionism: The Real Enemy Of The Jews was “too uncomfortable for Jews.” I said, “With respect, that’s their problem.” Professor Ilan Pappe, Israel ’s leading revisionist (which means honest) historian and author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, said he would end our friendship if I changed the title of my book because it was “the whole truth in seven words”. Of course he was joking about ending our friendship to make a point.

Footnote (1)

Above I have offered thoughts about the understanding needed to prevent the monster of anti-Semitism going on the rampage in the Western nations where most Jews live. There is also urgent need for understanding to prevent the other monster, Islamophobia, from going on the rampage. Throughout the nations of the Western world it is on the prowl and licking its lips. What is the understanding needed? Knowledge of the fact that the main threat to American and other Western security is not Islam in any manifestation but Western foreign policy in general and, in particular, America ’s unconditional support for Israel right or wrong. As my book demonstrates, Zionism was the godfather of violent Islamic fundamentalism Palestinian and Lebanese style, and American support for Zionism right or wrong is a prime cause of the radicalization of the entire Arab and wider Muslim world. There are some indications that President Obama would like to change American policy. The question is - will he be allowed to?

Footnote (2)

On 31 March, the JTA (Jewish Telegraph Agency) put out a breaking news story about the Obama administration’s decision to “seek to join the UN Human Rights Council, reversing the U.S. policy of shunning the group.” This decision, the JTA added, was “prompting concern among some Jewish groups.” I think it ought not to prompt concern among informed and rational Jews - those not totally traumatized by the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust and brainwashed by Zionist propaganda to the point where they are beyond reason on the matter of Israel .

Footnote (3)

The assertion/claim that Iran , even if it did have nuclear weapons, would pose a threat to Israel ’s existence is nonsense - in my view out of truly mad minds. If Iran launched a first strike on Israel it, Iran , all of it, would be destroyed. No Iranian leaders would ever be that stupid. (Actually they are very far from stupid).The real problem for Israel’s leaders if Iran did have an atom bomb or two or several - and it’s still a very big IF - is that they would no longer enjoy more or less complete freedom to impose their will on the region.

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