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The Zionist Connection II
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Introduction
Euphoric Americans clung to their video sets over that weekend. Sadat was addressing the Knesset--Egyptians and Israelis were not only talking to one another, but smiling. The "A-rabs" were at last willing to give up war. Peace, surely, must be on the way. This wishful thinking of course overlooked the fact that since 1948 there had been two wars going on simultaneously in the Middle East. The one between Israel and the Arab states was only a secondary consequence of what Syrian President Hafez al-Assad has called the "mother question"-the conflict between the Israeli Zionists and the Arab Palestinians. While there was some possibility of a separate agreement ending the Egyptian-Israeli war, a solution for the core of the dangerous Holy Land conflict seemed as distant as ever. The November 10, 1975, U.N. resolution equated Zionism with racism and racial discrimination, and for the first time placed the genesis of the continuing Middle East struggle squarely before a startled American public. But fervent supporters of Israel, Christians as well as Jews, reacted with unprecedented furor to the overwhelming U.N. censure and stirred the media to direct an equally unprecedented onslaught against the U.N., the Arab states, and the Third World bloc. The supporters of the resolution were denigrated with the charge "emulators of Hitler." The pro-Israel American public was led to believe that this was indeed but another attack on Jews and Judaism, a Nazi renaissance. The pertinency of this U.N. action to the continuing Arab rejection of the State of Israel was totally covered over by whipped-up emotionalism. What is Zionism, and what is its connection with the Middle East conflict? How, if at all, is it differentiated from Judaism? Why has Organized Jewry, invariably an unequivocal exponent of the separation of church and state, condoned their union in an Israeli state demanding the allegiance of everyone everywhere who considers himself a Jew, whether he be an observant practitioner or not? What validity is there to the insistence of a persistent minority that anti-Zionism is the equivalent of anti-Semitism? Such questions may mystify 90 percent of Americans, yet the answers go to the very heart of the Middle East conflict. It was the serious confusion between religion and nationalism that led directly to the 1948 establishment of the Zionist state of Israel in the heart of the Arab world, causing disastrous consequences for all concerned, including Americans whose government had played a major role in that nation-making. The resultant uprooting of Palestinian Arabs, whose numbers today have swollen to more than 1.6 million, many exiled for thirty years to refugee camps living on a U.N. dole of seven cents per day, brought down on the U.S. the enmity of an Arab-Muslim world, eroding a measureless reservoir of goodwill stemming from the educational and eleemosynary institutions America helped found. The creation of Israel, likewise, led to the penetration of the area for the first time by the Soviet Union, endangered the security interests of the U.S., and thrust the burden of a premature energy crisis into every American home. However much the essence of Judaism may have remained as distinct as ever from Zionism, the nationalist shadow has so overtaken the religious substance that virtually all Jews have, in practice, become Israelists, if not Zionists. Many who mistrust the Zionist connotation can still have their cake and eat it, through Israelism. While the vast majority of Jews in the Diaspora (the aggregate of Jews living outside of Palestine) do not believe in Zionist ideology, out of what is mistaken for religious duty they have given fullest support, bordering on worship, to Israel. Such worship of collective human power is just about as old as Pharaonic Egypt, and was practiced by the Sumerians, pre-Christian Greeks, and Romans as well. As Dr. Arnold Toynbee pointed out in A Study of History.
And these Jewish Zionists-Israelists have been joined by a large segment of articulate Christian opinion in the new worship of the State of Israel, which has been accorded the same privileges and immunities that have been vouchsafed to religionists who follow a genuine faith. On every other issue of concern to Americans, both sides have invariably been publicly presented, no matter how controversial: the cigarette lobby vs. cancer research, the drug alarmists vs. the upholders of pot, traditionalists-oldsters vs. Beatles-hippies, civil rights gradualists vs. extremists, hawks and doves over Vietnam, pro-Watergate outcome vs. Nixon apologists-to mention but a few. It has only been on the subject of Jews, Zionism, and Israel that the U.S. and most of the Western world have had a near-total blackout. The mere presence of the powerful Anti-Defamation League, even before the fearsome "anti-Semitic" label might be brandished, has imparted a sensitivity so powerful as to smother any idea of private discussion, let alone public debate, on the grave issues involved. The record of pressures, suppression, and terrorization practiced against many-including Presidents of the U.S., who in undisclosed memoranda, letters, and documents have entertained serious doubts about the course upon which Zionism has embarked-is massive and yet incomplete. The more submissive of the Victims of Jewish nationalist pressure have usually been either too ashamed or too afraid to publicize their experiences. Rarely has the deceit of so few been so widely practiced to the disastrous detriment of so many, as in the formulation and implementation of U.S. Middle East policy. Guilt, fear, and the preoccupation with domestic politics rather than consideration of policy, justice, and security interests have molded the direction of the deep U.S. involvement. And if John Q. Citizen was unmindful of what was really taking place, it was largely due to the inordinate power of the media to penetrate the inner sanctum of every home with its slantings, distortions, and myth-information. "T'ain't people's ignorance," as Artemus Ward once quipped, "that does the harm, 'tis their knowin' so much that ain't so." Barnum notwithstanding, the media has been able to fool the people most, if not all, of the time. The Watergate cover-up has to play second fiddle to the concealments in the Middle East fiasco for more than thirty years, involving, as it has, the continuous serious threat to world peace manifested by four regional wars and three serious Big Power confrontations, which only narrowly missed becoming World War III. The stationing of American technicians in the Sinai to help supervise the second Egyptian-Israeli disengagement accord may have been a step in the making of a new Vietnam. "One day," predicted a senior U.S. diplomat, according to Newsweek magazine, "there will be a congressional investigation into how we lost the Middle East that will make the great China debate seem trivial." This book, it is hoped, will contribute to a great Middle East debate that should take place before, rather than after, catastrophe strikes again in that already harassed portion of the globe. Certain basic questions require. answers: "Whose legal and moral claim to Palestine is stronger, the Israeli Zionists or the Arab Palestinians? How, if at all, may these claims be reconciled? How may the U.S. protect its vast political and economic stake in the area and simultaneously continue to foster its special, unique relationship with Israel? Will the undeniable, overwhelming public statement of "never again," as to another Vietnam, be meticulously regarded in our pursuit of Middle East peace? And above all, this clincher: Will President Reagan and his policy advisers cease avoiding and openly face the central issue in the entire problem--not the existence of an Israeli state, nor even the nonexistence of a Palestinian state, but the kind of a state Israel has to become so as to bring lasting peace to the area? For some time it has been apparent that someone would have to assume the burden of carefully examining the historical record of the Arab-Israeli conflict, starting with the "original sin" in uprooting the indigenous Arab Palestinians, and daring to articulate conclusions seldom aired. As Norman Thomas once observed, one of the Jewish faith is perhaps able to speak with "the necessary moral authority that no Gentile can express." However strong the temptation may be for any author to succumb to the prevailing mood of his surroundings and to indulge in indiscriminate stereotyping, heightened by cliche's and slogans, I have tried to maintain a fair perspective and not to allow personal experiences to dull the observer's vision, nor instill too deep-seated a passion. It is out of sadness, not anger, that I am forced to conclude that in embarking upon the new path that Organized Jewry has hewn for it, prophetic Judaism has incurred an incalculable loss in moral values, which author Moshe Menuhin has described as "the Decadence of Judaism in Our Times." What else can account for the anomaly by which the once-persecuted have adopted the philosophy of their chief persecutor? In doling out incarceration and death while sweeping through conquered Europe, did not the Führer undo the laws of emancipation for which so many Jews had so long struggled, as he decreed: "You are not a German, you are a Jew-you are not a Frenchman, you are a Jew, you are not a Belgian, you are a Jew"? Yet these are the identical words that Zionist leaders have been intoning as they have meticulously promoted the in-gathering to Israel (Palestine) of Jews from around the globe, even plotting their exodus from lands in which they have lived happily for centuries. If at times this book seems unduly critical of Israel, and neglects to place in balance the oft-repeated arguments in its favor, it is simply because the gigantic propaganda apparatus of Israel-World Zionism has spun such extensive and deeply ingrained mythology that there is hardly enough space to refute widely accepted theses and expose the picture as it really is. The reader, however, is particularly cautioned to keep in mind at all times the very vital distinction between the State of Israel and the people of Israel. Nor can he overlook the fact that one of Western man's most precious possessions is the inalienable right to dissent. As Thomas Jefferson expressed it, "For God's sake, let us freely hear both sides." This new, updated paperback edition has been published as an answer to the widespread demand to learn more about the untold side of a subject, the understanding of which may be vital to man's very existence. In giving fair consideration to what to many will come as an astounding recital, my readers are asked to display what William Ellery Channing once defined as the free mind:
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Part Three. The Cover-Over
XI Exploiting Anti-Semitism
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, important civilizations have fallen due to reasons ranging from external overexpansion to internal corruption. Should the Western way of life, of which the U.S. is the chief progenitor, fall victim to the ravages of time, future historians might well ascribe the downfall to a scarcely known disease, "labelitis." The "label" has contributed to the paralysis of individual thinking and has led to the concomitant mass conformity which, together with fear, has helped transform America into a nation of sheep years before "1984." The influence of the label and slogan is infinite. The unadorned cliche' parades forth shamelessly and unchallenged, sweeping politicians everywhere in and out of office. Slap the word "liberal," "Fascist," "reactionary," or "Communist," as the case may dictate, on any point of view you do not like, and a sure, quick victory can be yours Immediately. Nothing has accounted more for the success of Zionism and Israelism in the Western world than the skillful attack on the soft underbelly of world opinion - "Mr. Decent Man's" total repugnance toward anti-Semitism. The charge of this bias, instantaneously bringing forth the specter of Nazi Germany, so totally pulverizes the average Christian that by contrast calling him a Communist is a pleasant epithet. It was the Christian revulsion toward anti-Semitism in the wake of Hitlerian genocide, not the superiority of Zionist over Arab rights, that first created and then firmly entrenched the Israeli state, even permitting [403] [404] the occupation of conquered territories in the face of the U.N. charter and international morality. So strong has become the general aversion to anti-Semitism that even the full-blooded Semite, the Arab, absurd as it may be, has difficulty defending himself against this charge. The Jerusalem peace talks in January 1978 were disrupted when Prime Minister Begin hurled accusations of "anti-Semitism" at both President Sadat and his Foreign Minister. The emotional reaction, engendered by Nazi genocide, has given rise to an eleventh commandment, "Thou shalt not be anti-Semitic," and to a corollary twelfth commandment, "Thou must be anti-anti-Semitic." No Christian wishes to run afoul of these supplements to the interdictions handed down by Moses from Mount Sinai. In their zeal to carry out the new commandments, the anti-anti-Semites, guided by Organized Jewry, have rejected the basic distinction between those who are against Zionism-Israelism because they deplore its political precepts and abhor the consequences wrought by its measure, and those who are against Jews because they simply dislike Jews. Christian anti-Zionists and even Jewish anti-Zionists are alike denounced as antiSemites- discussion, muted doubts, and debate on Middle East policy are crushed. As Harvard's Dr. David Riesman noted some years ago in the Jewish Newsletter : "The Zionists can muster not merely the threat of the Jewish vote and the no-less important Jewish financial and organizational skills, but also the blackmail of attacking anyone who opposes (heir political aims for Israel, as anti-Semitic."1 For writing that "it is a sign of mediocrity in people when they herd together," Boris Pasternak, the Russian author of Dr. Zhivago, was immediately stigmatized by responsible Zionists, including the then Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, as an anti-Semitic Jew. That there are bigots and haters, that there was a Nazi Germany whose unparalleled genocide still stings the conscience of Man, and that there still is anti-Semitism, no one but the most irrational would deny. It is one of an infinite number of prejudices that ought to be eradicated. However, the presence of this sociological phenomenon should not give inviolability to the ruthless suppression of even the most constructive criticism of the State of Israel and of the multifold Zionist organizations. Anti-Zionism can no more be equated with anti-Semitism, the racist ideology directed against Jews as Jews, than Zionism can be equated with Judaism. Leading the high-pressure, efficiently organized, continuous campaign to keep anti-Semitism in the limelight through the pursuit of [405] alleged anti-Semites, as well as to suppress all dissent with Washington's "Israel First" policy, is the well-financed offspring of the 130-year-old B'nai B'rith, the Anti-Defamation League, which was founded in 1913. Known as the ADL, this most powerful organ is supported on most occasions by other Jewish organizations. The ADL's earlier emphasis on stamping out genuine prejudice and bigotry gave way long ago to acts of defamation, spying, and publishing spurious literary productions, motivated by support of Israel and effected by eliminating critics of Zionist tactics. The ward of the oldest and most powerful Jewish organization in the world, the ADL backs up its New York City national headquarters with an annual budget of $7.4 million (1975); twenty-eight regional offices around the country and two in Canada; a professional staff of 300, including specialists in the fields of human relations, communications, education, urban affairs, social sciences, religion, and law. It has representatives in hundreds of communities from coast to coast, and has thousands of secret dossiers on citizens of Canada and of the U.S. According to its own pamphlet: "Each regional office has its own board drawn from leaders and prominent citizens in its areas. Thus, in hundreds of communities throughout the nation, the ADL is able to cooperate as a neighbor to solve important local problems. Through its multifold private and public reports, allegedly directed against prejudice and bigotry, the ADL exerts enormous prejudice, often bordering on blackmail. In a True magazine interview in February 1971, three top leaders of the ADL, Benjamin Epstein, Seymour Graubard, and Dore Schary, boasted of their use of undercover agents and entrapment through impersonation. "ADL must have a pretty extensive spy network to do all this," the interviewer commented. Newsweek, trying to be as inoffensive as possible, called the ADL's methodology "highly selective," and, "never a total portrait."2 A review of ADL "Reports," often issued in book form by outside publishing houses, revealed the organization "straining to fit the products of its own espionage into the procrustean bed of its own personal predilections," to use the words of Unitarian minister and author Dr. John Nicholls Booth, a victim and a critic of that same organization. While sounding plausible, many of the charges leveled by this group were full of half-truths, inaccurate and questionable. The secret and confidential reports of the ADL, widely distributed in liberal circles, often resorted to placing the stock apology "but some of my best friends are Jews" in the mouths of critics to impute an innuendo of anti-Semitism. Odious impressions were often [406][407]created by twisting a few words, distorting the original text. Increasingly, the B'nai B'rith and the ADL have directed their activities, allegedly against bigotry, toward assisting Israel. When Israel's Ministry of Tourism decided to offset adverse 1967 headlines in the American press about the constant aerial bombing of Arab lands by inviting 1,200 foreign newsmen to Israel for a visit, the B'nai B'rith not only recruited journalists but organized their subsidized tours.3 The ADL continuously employed its "nonprofit organization" postal permit to disseminate Israeli propaganda publications, as it did during the June 1967 war 4 and on an infinite number of occasions since. As former B'nai B'rith officer Saul E. Joftes brought out in his suit against the brotherhood, which he carried successfully to the Supreme Court despite efforts of attorneys to stall adjudication for almost four years, charitable, tax-deductible funds were diverted into Israel-related projects of a political or quasi-political nature. Americans who have recently shown how sensitive they are to threats to their privacy and liberties when CIA wiretapping and spying were revealed have never been told about the building of what might be called the Jewish Gestapo or the largest nongovemment spy system function mg in the Western hemisphere. In his book The Pledge,5 Leonard Slater, a staunch Zionist sympathizer, detailed the many illegal programs devised to assist in bringing Israel into being. Starting in 1945, Zionists enlisted key Jews and Gentiles in many countries around the world; connived with judges, custom officials, and politicians; and according to FBI reports, even smuggled weaponry and men out of the U.S. and Europe, past the British into Palestine for the day of reckoning with the Arabs. Washington economist Robert Nathan interceded with J. Edgar Hoover to help free Zionist agents arrested at the Canadian border for smuggling arms destined for Israel. 6 Cases of rifle barrels were stolen from the U.S. Naval Supply Depot in Hawaii. Under the lead of the "Sonneborn Institute," named after U.S. Haganah leader Rudolf Sonneborn, the quest for an armament industry was realized. Material was gathered for Palestine into depots from Zionist organizations across the U.S. From Wisconsin came 350,000 sandbags, from Ohio 92,000 flares, from New Jersey 25,000 helmets. Chicago supplied 100 tons of barbed wire and ten tons of khaki paint; while New Orleans sent salt tablets and penicillin. San Francisco offered mosquito netting, Minneapolis 600 mine detectors, and from the port city of Norfolk, Virginia, two corvettes, an ice cutter and, "to guide the naval strategists of the future Jewish state, the complete memoirs of Admiral von Tirpitz."7 Under the guise of Talmudic studies in New York City, attorney Nahum Bernstein was teaching espionage and hand-to-hand fighting. This intelligence school met in an Orthodox religious tax-exempt institution which called itself the National Council of Young Israel. Through the B'nai B'rith, the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, and varied Zionist and pro-Israel groups, Israeli intelligence continued to penetrate into every part of the U.S. Temples, synagogues, and rabbis unabashedly cooperated. In fact, there was a cynical joke that is said to have circulated in the Pentagon: Every confidential military memo apparently was typed in triplicate, "one for the White House, one for the State Department, and one for Tel Aviv." At one point the Israeli navy was a photocopy of the U.S. Navy even as far as training from the Blue Jackets Manual. Outside of the U.S., too, secretive surveillance and purchased support for Israel went forward. The February 1970 hearings of the U.N. Non-Governmental Organization Committee heard a report that there was "a clandestine program of quasi-espionage in Eastern European countries, through American Jewish tourists, conducted by the Israeli government and paid for by the Israeli government, but run from inside B'nai B'rith, which was used as a cover-up." There are many ways of using anti-Semitism as an instrument to compel agreement with the Zionist position and to still any criticism of the Israelis. Foreign Minister Abba Eban, on the occasion of one of the many Israeli reprisals against Lebanon, defended Israel's actions: "The attitude of foreign countries cannot be entirely divorced from 'he traditional attitude of the non-Jewish world to the Jewish world." According to this theme on which the eloquent Israeli spokesman elaborated in 1974 and 1975 after he had retired from his Cabinet post and was lecturing on American university campuses while teaching at Columbia University, any and all criticism of Israel could only be considered anti-Semitic. Dr. Willard Oxtoby, writing in Presbyterian Life,8 had this to say on 'he effect of the anti-Semitism labeling:
Since criticism of Jews by blacks automatically became labeled anti-Semitism; since censure of Israel by Christians ranging from President Charles de Gaulle to the General Assembly and Security Council of the U.N. was held by the world Jewish community to be but another "manifestation of perennial anti-Semitism," according to Abba Eban; since anti-Zionism was declared by the Rabbinical Council of America to be but a new guise for anti-Semitism, it was inevitable that freedom of expression in the U.S. became totally restricted. Veteran Zionist leader Dr. Nahum Goldmann alleged there was a new kind of anti-Semitism that had sprung up in Communist countries and elsewhere among those whom he chose to term "members of the left wing." This variety of anti-Semitism, he asserted in February 1969, was being propagated in the form of anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist positions. Exploitation of prejudice reached unheard of heights in the 1974 study of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), The New Anti-Semitism, written by its high priests of the cult of anti-anti-Semitism, General Counsel Arnold Forster and National Director Benjamin R. Epstein. According to the press release, headed "Searchlight on Hatred," widely distributed by publisher McGraw-Hill, the new anti-Semitism is based on the old, only it emanates from different and surprisingly respectable sources. "The hostility of the Radical Left, the Radical Right, pro-Arab groups, black extremists, and a malingering anti-Jewish hate-mongering that has plagued the United States since the early twenties" has allegedly now been augmented by "others within the government, the media, the clergy and the arts, who are insensitive to Jews and Jewish concerns, particularly to the needs and wants of the State of Israel." And as authors Forster and Epstein indicated in their two-hour, unopposed radio interview on New York's popular WMCA Barry Gray talk show, anyone who does not go along 100 percent with their views on Israel is deemed "insensitive" and therefore "anti-Semitic." The ADL leaders made it very clear that "any threat to the security of the State of Israel" must be considered a threat to the Jews of the U.S. and hence must be viewed as anti-Semitism. The reason given by them for this new bigotry: "The hard-won status of American Jewry." The publication of this much ballyhooed study and book just happened to coincide with the growing feeling in many parts of the country that Zionist pressure, influence, and financial power had been responsible for the energy crisis that brought gas shortages and grave dangers. The cultists bitterly complained that Jews were no longer protected by the "moral indignation that followed the holocaust." Apparently, they wished to extend a protective curtain over the Zionist-imposed Middle East policy and other positions espoused by the Jewish Establishment. This was the seventh of the books on which these same authors had collaborated. 9 As usual, the book was released to the press first as a study one month before publication to lay the groundwork for a vast publicity follow-up. The New York Times obliged, as customary, with solid three-column coverage headed "Report by Anti-Defamation League Sees Example of New Kind of Anti-Semitism."10 This latest ADL work contained no index, probably purposely because it would have quickly revealed an imposing roster of respectable people listed as "anti-Semites." The tightly woven volume, set in smaller than usual type, contained infinite words and multifold unproven charges based on innuendo and insinuation. The names of those who were vilified were interwoven with those of a few recognized bigots and were adroitly dropped among members of the Radical Left, the Radical Right, Arab, and black extremists - a perfect example of the deceptive method of affixing guilt by juxtaposition. While the Foreword of its latest "study" set forth the ADL's longterm goal to "fight against prejudice, bigotry and discrimination" with "the weapons [of] law, education and public persuasion . . . to seek justice and fair treatment for all citizens alike," this widely accepted image of the organization was destroyed by the repeated insistence of the authors that "American Jews regard attacks on the existence of Israel as the ultimate anti-Semitism." As stated in the last paragraph of the Epilogue, "the heart of the new anti-Semitism abroad in our land" lies in the "widespread incapacity or unwillingness to comprehend the necessity of the existence of Israel to Jewish safety and survival throughout the world." Therefore, the mildest criticism of Israel or of Zionist activities was viewed as offensive "insensitivity" or "callous indifference" and was equated to anti-Semitism, distinguishable from the traditional kind, the authors averred, in that "the new antiSemitism is not necessarily deliberate in character and is more often expressed by respected individuals and institutions here and abroad people who would be shocked to think of themselves or have others think them as anti-Semites." In this Foreword ADL National Chairman Seymour Graubard laid the groundwork for old, recognizable tactics:
Having recalled the past to build fear and to invent present hostile situations, the ADL was ready to apply the smear and vilification so as to censor and silence, thus building an iron curtain over America that would bar any criticism, however constructive, of Israel, Zionists, or Jews (Judaism is rarely, if ever, involved). Even the New York Post's James Wechsler, long an avid friend of Israel, was objective enough to write that the latest Forster-Epstein ADL work is "grievously flavored by an intolerance of their own in equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism." Calling the presentation "illegitimate and uncivil," the columnist described a standard
The assumption of the simultaneous role of judge, prosecutor, witness, and juror brought this sole protest from the "brave" band of liberals who are otherwise frothing at the mouth at such stifling of freedom. All of the ADL books, with the tremendous publicity given to them before, during, and after publication (they were widely promoted on radio and otherwise by among others, Walter Winchell, during his days of fame) and the extensive advertising, ought long ago to have earned for the organization its appropriate name, "The Defamation League." The growth of anti-Semitism, which the ADL and other Israelist groups allegedly feared, suited the needs of the Zionists who wished to make Jews more conscious of their Jewishness. The worship of ethical universal Judaism, in their eyes, was for the few skull-capped old men and Talmudic scholars. But for the masses, who were turned off by the tedium of synagogue worship, there was the new exciting Israelism and the worship of anti-anti-Semitism. From its outset the Zionist movement had clearly indicated the extent of its vested interest in prejudice. Herzl expressed the hope that any anti-Semitism would "act as a propelling force which, like the wave of the future, would bring the Jews into the promised land."12 At the same time he also wrote: "Anti-Semitism has grown and continues to grow-and so do I" 13 The father of Zionism predicted: "The governments of all countries scourged by anti-Semitism will be keenly interested in assisting us to obtain the sovereignty we want." The rabbinate had long employed anti-Semitism as a means of keeping the flock within the fold, and since the creation of Israel, support in the Diaspora has been continuously and easily enlisted by depicting the new Jewish state as a kind of insurance policy in case of a renaissance of anti-Semitism. Consequently, Zionist leadership has cared little about how much anti-Semitism their own separatist activities might generate. The late British Parliamentarian Richard H. S. Crossman, an ardent Anglo-Saxon proponent of Zionism, cited Dr. Chaim Weizmann's contention that "anti-Semitism is a bacillus which every Gentile carries with him wherever he goes and however often he denies it."14 At this first meeting Dr. Chaim Weizmann allegedly bluntly asked Crossman whether he was anti-Semitic, to which the Labourite frankly answered, "Of course." Their friendship was sealed, and Crossman's energetic crusade, partly expiation for that original prejudice, followed. Bigotry has only been so much grist for Zionist mills. Crossman expressed it thus: "Who achieved that majority vote for partition at Lake Success? Not the terrorists of the Irgun nor the soldiers of the Haganah, but the aged leader of international Jewry [Weizmann], who could still sham and magic the Gentile world into recognizing its debt to her people."15 It is this continued process of shaming the Christian world into accepting the guilt for the genocide of six million Jews that first brought Israel into being, and since then has been the means of rallying continued support for Israel's cause in the U.S. and in the Western world. Parliamentarian Ian Gilmour, writing in the British magazine The Spectator, noted the inevitable link between Zionism and anti-Semitism:
This was a reecho of the words voiced earlier by Dr. Judah Magnes, the first President of Hebrew University: "We had always thought that Zionism would diminish anti-Semitism in the world. We are witness to the opposite."17 The separatist philosophy of Zionist dogma, staunchly supported by Organized Jewry after the holocaust, has been picked up alike by "retrogressive" conservatives and by liberal friends who would otherwise look askance at the mere mention of apartheid. And this overwhelming sentiment manifested itself, almost as if in answer to the blunt warning of Goldmann that a "current decline of overt anti-Semitism might constitute a new danger to Jewish survival. . . . The disappearance of 'anti-Semitism' in its classic meaning, while beneficial to the political and material situation of Jewish communities, has had a very negative effect on our internal life."18 Counsel Leo Pfeffer of the American-Jewish Congress voiced a similar statement: "Such discrimination may well be a blessing. It is possible that some anti-Semitism is necessary in order to insure Jewish survival."19 In Britain, too, an article in Blackfriars Magazine pointed to the danger of the extinction of the Jewish community because of the absence of anti-Semitism. 20 The large-city media came to the rescue and prevented such a catastrophe from occurring by keeping the anti-anti-Semitic pot boiling. Through its virtual control of the media, the Zionist machinery had no problems orchestrating three important themes:
An attempt was made to link alleged Fascist activities in Argentina with increasing anti-Semitic overtones in Egypt. In the spring of 1975 Argentine Ambassador in Washington Alejandro Orfila asked his good friend Egyptian Ambassador Ashraf Ghorbal to briefly see a visiting writer for a supernationalist publication called Marchar. In response, Ghorbal received the writer for just three minutes. Patricio Kelly, this particular writer, spoke no English whatsoever and the Egyptian Ambassador speaks but a few words of Spanish and Italian. The only other person present was a photographer whom Kelly brought along; most unfortunately, no effort was made to obtain an interpreter. Several weeks after the story of the interview appeared-and the paper went out of business not long after-the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in Buenos Aires fed a long section of the alleged interview, "Extermination of Judaism in the Mideast Is Point of Departure for Arab Liberation," through its main trunk wire extending worldwide to the specialized Jewish press, which immediately picked up the story. Jewish Week of Washington headlined its April 3 story: "Egyptian Ambassador Foresees Extermination of judaism." An additional commentary on the alleged interview was carried by the national chauvinistic Brooklyn Jewish Press (April 11) with the headline: "Extermination of Jews." Letters containing clips of this alleged interview poured into the Egyptian Embassy in Washington. Even the respected and fair Guardian in England published a large portion of the alleged interview, but later carried a full retraction apologizing "for running a piece of black propaganda," which the newspaper admitted was obtained from an Israeli source that was impeccable." The opposition Herut party demanded in the Knesset that the Israeli Foreign Ministry "reprint and distribute millions of copies of the interview by one of President Sadat's principal advisers," which they claimed proved what Israelis had always contended: "The conflict is not over territories, but over the very existence of Israel and the Jewish people." Executive Vice President of the Synagogue Council of America Rabbi Henry Siegman wrote Ghorbal: "Based on our association, I simply find it impossible to believe that you could have said the things attributed to you."21 Chairman of the Board of the World Jewish Congress Philip M. Klutznick forwarded to Ghorbal a similar message. Evans and Novak described the defamation of the Egyptian Ambassador as "cruel and tragic and without any effort to check the accuracy of the inflammatory report in a worthless publication . . . the understandable emotions and fears of thousands of Jews have been manipulated in the rising crescendo of the propaganda battle."22 Every incident everywhere in the world in which a Jew or someone reputed to be of "Jewish ethnic background" was victimized was being incessantly presented by the Times as another example of Hitlerian anti-Semitism. (Managing editor A. M. Rosenthal early in his career wrote a sentimental piece as a correspondent in Europe following his visit to Auschwitz and admitted "that there is no news to report," but [414] "there is merely the compulsion to write something about it," which he did. 23) The campaign was led by Professor Seymour M. Lipset's New York Times Magazine article,24 "The Socialism of Fools-the New Left call it 'Anti-Zionism,' but it's no different from the anti-Semitism of the Old Right" and by Commentary Editor Norman Podhoretz in an address before the American Jewish Committee warning that the "taboo on anti-Semitism is waning" and that a version of Nazism is the "in thing" today. When there were other victims in a mass tragedy, as in the Iraq hangings, the fate of Jews was singled out as evidence of persecution of Jews as Jews, rather than as a ruthless power play to tighten control. Every Times writer, correspondent, stringer, et al., with magnifying glass in hand, has undoubtedly been sworn to a Sherlock Holmeslike preoccupation with uncovering the most remote evidence of this prejudice and sending in his "find" to the news editor, who stands ever-prepared to build the remotest implication of bias into booming headlines of fact, to make atypical examples of prejudice appear typical. When Reverend George French Kempsell, Jr., of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Scarsdale, New York, condemned in a sermon the barring of Jewish escorts for debutantes going to a coming-out ball at the Scarsdale Golf Club, three lengthy stories appeared in the Times, two on the front page. 25 When the winner of the Freshman First Honor prize in a letter to the Daily Princetonian 26 dared question the appropriateness of bringing the Warsaw Ghetto Exhibit to the university, and pointed to "the martyr image of 6 million dead" as the primary theme of the Jewish drive toward Gentile acceptance, a raging controversy took over this ivy college campus. Princeton President Dr. Robert F. Goheen stigmatized the letter as "blind prejudice." The New York Times promptly made national news by picking up the presidential letter from the campus paper and featuring it prominently. 27 The Times continued to be the willing efficient transmittal belt in supplying the American public with constant alleged examples of Arab, Russian, and Christian "anti-Semitism" as a means of molding favorable sentiment for the Israeli state. And occasionally the trials and tribulations of a famed man of letters served the same purpose. The death in Venice on November 1, 1972, of poet Ezra Pound, who probably did as much for English literature in the 20th century as any single individual, brought wide press reportage on the stormy life of the famed expatriate. There was little reference, however, to the final turbulent event in the hectic eighty-seven years of Pound's life in [415] which the cult of anti-anti-Semitism gained another resounding victory, and Pound was the victim. While still living in Italy in 1972, the poet became the center of a swirling controversy when he was awarded the annual Emerson-Thoreau medal of Boston's American Academy of Arts and Sciences by a panel of distinguished writers and critics. The Academy's governing council vetoed the panel's recommendation on what they called "moral grounds, because of other aspects of his life." What this meant was that the council, with a large number of Jewish members, was penalizing Pound for his wartime Fascist leanings and alleged "anti-Semitism."28 Like most incidents involving the cult, the affair was wrapped in secrecy and would have remained hush-hush had there not been a leak of the letter from Academy President Harvey Brooks (Harvard) to certain members, in which he noted that "with memories of the Holocaust so prominent, there was the unavoidable implication that the award carried special approval of life as well as work." An award to Pound, it was felt, would be "deeply offensive to many members of the Academy." Three of this privately supported honorary society's 2,700 members resigned, protesting the relevance of social ideas in judging poetry. These were Professor Jerome Y. Lettvin of MIT; 0. D. Hardison, Director of the Folger-Shakespeare Library; and Professor W. Hugh Kenner of the University of California at Santa Barbara, who perceived an inconsistency in the membership honoring Pound for his book, The Pound Era, while Pound the poet was not acceptable. As Robert Reinhold's front-page article in the Times of July 5 1972, pointed out, many of the most distinguished creative writers, composers, and scientists down through the ages have embraced ideologies or led lives that most people would consider despicable: "Shakespeare was a usurer, Christopher Marlowe a blasphemer and probably a homosexual, Rimbaud ventured into slave trading and Baudelaire led a violent, depraved life, etc." In his letter of resignation Lettvin protested: "It is not art that concerns you but politics, not taste but special interest, not excellence but propriety." The MIT academician went on to note that to this day he himself was unable to bring himself to visit Germany, but he nevertheless felt strongly about the integrity of artistic intellectual expression. "We are witnessing the institutionalization of a very dangerous pathology in American intellectual life," stated Martin L. Kilson, a black professor of government at Harvard, the theme which he reiterated in a letter to the Times. 29 He attributed the decision to a "perverse ethnic defensiveness" on the part of Jewish intellectuals, whom he likened to "ethnically defensive blacks who want opposition to white racism established as a precondition for the recognition of an intellectual's work by intellectual institutions." Kilson went on to say that he was as outraged about anti-Negro intellectuals as a Jew is about anti-Semitic ones, but such outrage "is not a matter of intellect but of politics," and in evaluating an intellectual's work, he believed that "short of the intellectual himself committing criminal or atrocious acts against humanity under the influence of his politics, his intellectual works should stand on their own. Who is to judge what anti-Semitism is? Those who opposed the decision of the Boston Academy pointed to Pound's generous efforts not only to promote the careers of other writers, including James Joyce, Robert Frost, and T. S. Eliot, but also to his personal warmth toward many Jewish writers. Was he an anti-Semite? Eliot, a previous Emerson winner, was also alleged to have shared Pound's anti-Semitic outlook in his earlier works. What is this thing called anti-Semitism? Is any criticism of any Jew because he happens to be a Jew per se "anti-Semitism"? Even when Anna Pauker, a Rumanian Communist who had murdered thousands, was herself purged, certain quarters raised their inevitable hue and cry because she happened to be Jewish. If a Jewish politician is corrupt, is he to be given the protective cover of the label "anti-Semitism"? In his Canto 52, Pound had written: "Poor yitts paying for the Rothschilds/paying for a few big Jews' vendetta on goyim." From the earliest moments of his career, Pound had criticized the vulgarity of life and the international bankers, particularly those who were Jewish. His venom expressed itself in: "Usury is the cancer of the world." The Rothschilds have been assailed from the Right and the Left for their usurious practices in building their nearly inexplicable fortune. Is all such censure automatically verboten because the persons concerned are Jewish? Since the Nazi tragedy, Jews too often have managed to take shelter under the exemption: "Don't dare incriminate a Jew lest you be taking Hitler's side." But it took a 1973 column in the Boston Globe by Kevin Kelley to really expose the cult of anti-anti-Semitism. Strangely enough, this time the cultists were going after the movie industry, which has always been more than 100 percent subservient to Zionist nationalism. Certain Christians might well level the charge against Jesus Christ Superstar that it is irreverent (Catholics called it morally unobjectionable, but [416] [417] libertarian)-but that it is anti-Semitic carries this too far. The Boston columnist quite appropriately labeled as "hysteria" the outcry and the accompanying claim that producer Norman Jewison's name might fool people into thinking that he was Jewish, thereby somehow giving the movie, magically, a Jewish blessing despite its underlying bias. "That kind of suggestion, like the charge itself, is paranoid," wrote the columnist. 30 Particularly objectionable to the film's Israelist critics was the Jewish role in the crucifixion and the condemnation of Jesus by the high priests, whom they alleged were "libelously depicted as contemptuous, sadistic and blood-thirsty." (Amos, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and other of the Hebrew prophets of the Old Testament had, of course, similarly described the priests of an earlier period.) These one-track-minded Jews also protested a surrealistic scene following Judas's betrayal of Jesus and the use of Israeli tanks and Phantoms (without markings). American Jews charged these damaged the Israeli image-again a case of acting "more Catholic than the Pope," as the Israelis had given their initial approval to the film. The prerelease publicity for Superstar was tremendous as controversy was continuously fanned. A discussion on "Midday Live," the Channel 5 program in New York City, featured Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum's view that the film was strengthening the misconception held by many Christians, if not most, that the Jews had killed Christ. He would have history entirely rewritten. Apparently the lyrics of the song sung by Pontius Pilate made him appear all too human and shifted the responsibility for the crucifixion to the pressures of a hysterical Jewish mob. Further, the Rabbi insisted, the casting of a black actor in the role of Judas was likely to encourage black anti-Semitism. The cultists did not cease their "anti-Semitic" branding campaign. They tried to influence reviewers. The American Jewish Committee called a press conference denouncing the musical as comparable to the "anti-Semitic" Passion Play of Oberammergau. Rabbi Tanenbaum, however, was refused a meeting by Universal Pictures President H. H. Martin to discuss the Committee's concern that Superstar might rouse new bigotry in West Germany and Austria, where "a strong residuum of both religious and ideological anti-Semitism continues." This latest effort at suppression appeared on the same page of the New York Times 31 as a story about a new musical based on Molly, the character created by Gertrude Berg on national radio and television. When would John Q. Jew stand up and protest the blind stupidity of [418] [419] attacking historical facts behind the crucifixion of Jesus while encouraging the dissemination of this kind of Jewish stereotype:
Who breeds the anti-Semitism these cultists allegedly are fighting? Humorous as the Molly Goldberg series was, it contributed to building the anti-Semitic stereotype of the Jew as someone with an accent, part of a group apart from the other people of the nation in which he lives. Pressure from these same groups was responsible for bringing to an end the very popular television series "Bridget Loves Bernie," because it showed that an Irish-Jewish intermarriage can work despite obstacles. But the attempt to pressure NBC out of its scheduled showing of Lawrence Olivier in "The Merchant of Venice" failed after the cultists,joined by the magazine Jewish Currents, had expressed a deep dread in permitting this production "to be beamed into the homes of the mass TV audience."32 The anti-anti-Semitism cult is vital not only in the silencing of the Opposition to Zionism and Israelism, but it also supplies a principal raison d’etre for followers of the new modern kind of "Judaism." Many Jews insist they will remain in the faith so long as it is still unpopular to be a Jew, i.e., so long as anti-Semitism exists. This alone could account for the fact that the ADL and other "defense" organizations, with the powerful and wealthy Jewish-American community solidly behind them, have never attempted to launch one single objective scholarly study on the causes of anti-Semitism so as to make an honest effort to kill this bias. The reasoning is obvious. Neither the religious nor the lay leaders of the many Jewish organizations wished to lose their most potent weapon. If they removed prejudice they would lose adherents to the faith. If they made strides toward eliminating bigotry, funds for Jewish nationalist activities would dry up. Hence there must be no real attempt to solve the problem of anti-Semitism. Herein lies the conspiracy between the rabbinate, Jewish nationalists, and other leaders of Organized Jewry to keep the problems of prejudice alive, just as Goldmann and Herzl had advocated. The Christian has not interfered, particularly if he carried any prejudice in his heart-the endemic anti-Semitism to which Herzl and Crossman had alluded. No one understood these machinations better than famed journalist Dorothy Thompson. In 1938 she assumed the leadership of the country's moral mobilization against Nazism, after she risked life and limb in taking on the Nazi Bund in the famed Madison Square Garden incident. Her renowned wartime "Listen, Hans" broadcasts and espousal of the Zionist cause followed. She of course immediately became the darling of the Zionist movement. Upon her return from visiting newly created Israel, as her biographer noted, she began voicing "concern for the plight of the Arab refugees and dismay at the tactics of Jewish refugees."33 William Zuckerman, editor of the Jewish Newsletter, later wrote in a tribute to the great journalist, "Miss Thompson now saw that Zionism, which had started out as a liberal and humanitarian relief movement, was turning into a reactionary, aggressive, chauvinist movement of the same character as other European nationalisms, which she had been fighting throughout her journalistic career." A bitter campaign of character assassination was waged against her, even to the point of attributing her new viewpoint to the influence of her "anti-Semitic" third husband, highly respected Czech sculptor Maxim Kopf. As biographer Marion K. Sanders relates:
The Zionist pressure directed against Thompson resulted in certain newspapers, including the New York Post from which she received a full quarter of her income, dropping her syndicated "On the Record" column. She was bitterly hurt: "I am crushed at the thought that this campaign has been instituted by 'liberals,' against a writer in a 'liberal newspaper' whose intolerance of an opposing or differing view leads them to character-assassination and career-assassination. It has been boundless, going into my personal life."35 Meyer Weisgal, the intimate associate of David Ben-Gurion and her closest friend within the Zionist hierarchy, testified:
As the final word on this terrifying episode, this writer who had earlier been married to Sinclair Lewis wrote a memorable letter "On Creating Anti-Semites" for the Jewish Newsletter:
Dorothy Thompson was unable to halt the Zionist juggernaut. Scornful of the long-term effects of its anti-anti-Semitic campaign, the cult has continued its war of suppression and repression, waging an unparalleled blitz on the great and near-great to win acquiescence to its views on Israel.
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Lilienthal, Alfred M. Includes bibliographical references and
index. 1. Jewish-Arab relations. 2. United States Foreign
relations - Near East. 3. Near East Foreign relations -
United States. I. Title. This is the first international paperback
edition. Printed and Published by |