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“Israel Shamir, your arguments have passed their sell-by date.”

 

The Obscure Charm of Zionism

A Dialogue between Israel Shamir and Saam Amerat

 

“Israel Shamir, your arguments have passed their sell-by date.”

This was the punch line of a letter I received from a previously unknown reader from Britain, Saam Amerat. He wrote:

 

“There was a time when racist organisations were anti-Zionist. At that time anti-Zionists like yourself were able to talk about working with them. Even though it meant working against anti-Nazis.

But that time is now over.

The Zionists have joined the Nazis, and the Nazis have become Zionists.

Now we see Nazis walking hand in hand down the streets of London with Zionists, they wave Israeli flags with one hand and give Nazi salutes with the other.

So your arguments have passed their sell-by date.

And you haven't kept up.”

 

Shamir: Indeed, Saam is right, up to a point. The political setup is changing; the new fad is the pro-Zionist swing of the European far-right. Once, they were against Jews, ergo, they were against the Zionist enterprise as well. Now they have discovered the obscure charm of Zionism. The more successful far-right parties of Europe have embraced Israel, have opened their gates to Jews and now are mainly carrying out an anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant agenda. Anti-Zionism is just too expensive – anti-Zionist right-wing parties are usually described as “neo-Nazi anti-Semites”, they find themselves out in the cold, without access to media, totally de-legitimised. But it enough for them to support Israel to become perfectly legitimate.

Gianfranco Fini (a leader of the Italian National Alliance) discovered this solution a long time ago. Fascist or not, but after his visit to Israel and a photo-op with Sharon in the Holocaust museum he became kosher, he made it to the top.

In the UK, the BNP became more Israel-friendly. The BNP has a few Jews and Zionists at the top. Anti-zionists Martin Webster, a former leader of National Front, and Robert Edwards, a leader of the socialist wing of the nationalist movement, have much less money, media coverage and public support.

In Sweden, the far right has been divided into pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist. Now, a few years after the split, pro-Zionist Sweden Democrats are on the verge of entering the parliament, as Jewish-owned media have ceased boycotting them. The anti-Zionist National Democrats are tiny and boycotted.

 

In France, Jean-Marie Le Pen exercised a steady anti-Zionist influence, despite having some Jews in top spots. But now the old man is on his way out, and his daughter (and probable successor) Marine is likely to change its agenda into anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant. The Jews work at it. A supporter of Marine Le Pen, Pierre Cassen, had organized a free wine-with-pork sausages street party at  Muslim prayer time on Friday in the  heavily Muslim area of Paris, La goutte d'or (it was stopped in the end, by the government) – and he was immediately invited for a conference by the Bnei Brith (or B'nai B'rith), the Zionist-Masonic organization and founder of ADL.

 

It is even worse in the Netherlands and Denmark, where the far right is strictly Zionist.  

 

Saam Amerat: I wrote the response to you while I was reading "Winnie the Pooh on Immigration and Race". It wasn't the first time you had mentioned that. I think the Zionists noticed that the immigrants to the west were Pro-Palestinian and not pro-Zionism, as planned so the Zionists changed their position.

 

This question has also passed its sell-by date, as you put it. There was time when only the far-right, a.k.a Nazis, were against the generous helping of immigrants. Now, nobody in Europe wants immigrants. Immigration restriction is out of the far-right-agenda and into every party’s, left or right, because that is what people want.

 

Immigration into Europe was not encouraged because humanists or Trotskyites, Antifa, militant feminists, gays, left-wing lunatic fringe insisted on it. Their dreams of importing a lot of immigrants, establishing gay marriages, having the church banned have had their heyday because the rich and powerful capitalists and bankers wanted disempowering working people, undermining solidarity, destroying the welfare state by overloading it. Rich Jews – and they are an important and influential part of the rich folk – had an extra angle, as they felt more comfortable and less seen in heterogeneous society. They also had animus against the Christian faith.

 

Now there is a production downturn, Europe has no jobs for immigrants, workers are out of work, the welfare state is on the verge of collapse, and even the Jews are not keen on immigration any more, because the immigrants are not all that pro-Jewish. 

 

As for my position, I always thought that mass immigration was a tool of the rich in their warfare against society; I saw that the right-wing has a powerful argument objecting to mass immigration, and I advised the left to accept it as a part of leftist paradigm. Indeed, the communist societies, the USSR and Cuba, did not allow mass immigration because they cared about their workers. But now this discussion is over: the Labour Party in Britain is strongly against the continuation of mass immigration, and the same is true in France and elsewhere in Europe.

 

Saam Amerat: My take on history is Nazis-Zionists alliance wasn't really a recent change. The Nazis and the Zionists have always been allies, it is just something they tried to hide from their supporters and enemies in the past.

This alliance should not come as any surprise, they both share the same ideology and have the same objectives. 'The Myth of the Twentieth Century' reads like it has been plagiarised from Theodor Herzl.

If you take Zionism, replace Israel with the Fatherland, replace Jews with the Arian race, replace amalekites with Jews, replace the Palestinians with the Slavs you have Nazism.

Theodor Herzl was an atheist, so Zionism for him was the creation of a myth to uplift the Jewish people, just as Nazism is the myth that Alfred Rosenberg created in his book to uplift the German people.

Nazism and Antisemitism in general have the same objectives as Zionism because antisemites want the Jews out of Europe, the Zionists also want the Jews out of Europe.

So people shouldn't be surprised that Zionist American bankers helped the Nazis take power. I don't believe what happened to Jews after he took power was their mistake. I believe it was their aim. They needed Jews to leave their homelands and move to Palestine, and Hitler was needed to scare them in to doing that.

And Local Zionists as well as Israel itself have been caught red-handed attacking Jews all over the world, to scare them in to leaving their homelands and moving to Israel.

This is because life being as hard as possible for Jews outside of Palestine makes life seem as nice as possible within it.

Jews being attacked by Nazis is the aim of Zionists, because Zionists want them to move to Palestine.

Neo-Nazis and other antisemites have also realised that Zionism can cleanse their nations of Jews. It took their combined brain cell a good few decades to work that out, because they aren't known for their intellect.

When the Neo-Nazis finally worked this out, and became openly Zionist some people in the Palestinian rights camp became scared, others became sad.
I didn't really feel anything, because I always knew they are on the same side. What was hidden, had just become open. No loss, no gain.

But all of this is irrelevant now, because the Nazi have given up on asking for our help against Jews, while the Zionists who accuse everyone who opposes them of being with the Nazis are now with the Nazis.
I don't just believe that is exactly how things should be, I believe things have always been like that, it is just they tried to stop people seeing that until now.

Shamir: In the 1930s, the Zionists indeed tried to convince Nazis that they have the same goal, to take Jews out of Europe. Many Nazis accepted this argument, and there was much collaboration between them. However, Adolf Hitler did not believe it. He thought that the Jews want to establish a territorial base for their operations, while continuing to live and operate in Europe.

History has proven that his view was more realistic: indeed, Jews live very well in the US and in Britain, and they do not intend to move to Israel, but they do support Israel as a part and parcel of their plans. Israel keeps Jewry alive, but still the most important Jewish activity takes place out of Israel. Goldman Sachs did not emigrate to Israel, neither did Zuckerman nor Foxman nor Lieberman. They prefer to make money, fight the church and limit civil freedoms in the US. So it is not reasonable to claim that “Neo-Nazis and other antisemites have also realised that Zionism can cleanse their nations of Jews”. Perhaps “they aren't known for their intellect” but they are not that silly either.

The European far-right has no illusions that Zionists will take the Jews out of Europe to Israel. It does not happen at all. They have made peace with Jews because that was their only chance to get on within their existing political system. Those who did not, like Horst Mahler, are in jail.

As for me, I was interested in the European nationalist right because this movement was less obedient, less fearful of Jews, more outspoken for Palestine. The leftist pro-Palestine movement had spent much of its time discussing antisemitism. They cared about it more than they cared about Palestine. They were infiltrated through and through. You live in England, so you probably know Tony Greenstein, Roland Rance and others who pretend that they fight for Palestine but in reality they act as crypto-Zionist agents. The nationalist right was not that infiltrated, it had a strong anti-Jewish tradition, and indeed they broke many a taboo. But now it’s over. Their leaders made a deal with Satan: they preferred to side with Zionists against Muslims.

Alas, the nationalist right was always very weak on morals. This weakness was inherited from Nietzsche or even from Descartes via Mussolini and Hitler. They love force, they love their nations, and they say: my nation, right or wrong. Opportunist leaders were their undoing, as it was the case with many Communist leaders.

Similar development takes place in Russia, too. Their nationalist right was strongly anti-Jewish; not anymore. In love with force and action, they actually liked Israeli hutzpah, panache of dealing with the Freedom Flotilla.

Let us remember some hard facts. Jews and Arabs all over are equally emotionally involved in the cause of Israel/Palestine, but Jews do overspend Arabs by huge margin in Russia and elsewhere. Arabs and Muslims probably have no less money than Jews, but they rather spend it on mosques - or horses. The cause of Palestine is the most popular, the most renown, but even in this field Arab financial involvement is tiny. Europe spends more, much more, but European money goes - quite rightly - to help refugees, not to fight for minds and hearts. The Jews send speakers to every university, to every conference, they organise meetings, manage discourse in its totality: not only about Palestine, but Palestine is a part of their paradigm. Embassies of Ramallah government rather try and stop actions of solidarity and support for Gaza because of their feud with Hamas.

Situation now is very dangerous, and its outcome depends on our actions. But our actions are limited by our resources. The far-right switching sides is a sign of it.

 

Saam Amerat: Jews being attacked by Nazis is not our aim. We want them to live happily ever after in their countries of birth, so Palestinian families aren't expelled or exterminated to make room for them in Palestine.

Our hatred of Zionism has nothing in common with the Nazis hatred of Jews.
We don't hate Zionists for perceived Jewish DNA the way the Nazis do, we hate the Zionists for what they do. We oppose the Zionists for the same reason Salahudin defeated the Crusaders and Qutuz defeated the Mongols.
We oppose the invaders for invading, enslaving and subjugating, not for their DNA and not of their beliefs.


 

Shamir: Now, this is a very Jewish claim that everybody hates Jews for what they are, be it their chosenness by God or their DNA or whatever. There is no such thing in real life. This is a part of Jewish religious belief that the Jews are so wonderful that everybody is envious of them. Antisemitism is a myth, an invention like penis-envy, this invention of Jewish Dr Freud. Nobody hates just for the fun of it.

Nazis – real German National Socialists, not the Hollywood sort – did not hate Jews for what they are, but they were against the Jews for what they thought they did. Nazis considered that Germany was colonised by Jews. Yes, their mode of colonisation was different from the Crusaders or Mongols; they would take over a house or a factory after a forced default of payments, bankruptcy or by fraud, not after a hot battle. But was it all that different otherwise, they argued, for indeed in1920s, some Jews accumulated much of German wealth, while many native Germans went broke.

In British India, Macaulay advised to make colonisation a truly lasting enterprise by undermining national pride and national education of the Indians so they would forget their glorious past. Was it very different from 1920s, when some Jews – newspaper owners and masters of discourse - were active in ridiculing and undermining German pride and German way of life, they asked.

Perhaps if Guy de Lusignan (defeated by Saladin) and Kitboga (defeated by Qutuz) have had banks and courts and newspapers at their disposal, they would never go near Qurn Hattin or Ain Jalut.   

In short, their view was strikingly similar to yours, and I do not intend to offend you. You want Jews to live happily elsewhere, so did they. Nazis had plans to send Jews to Madagascar or to Uganda or to create a Jewish state in Eastern Europe, so they would live there happily ever after. You disagree with being “invaded, enslaved and subjugated” so they were.

This is or was the position of the nationalist right in Europe. They considered the Rise of Jews, Jewish ownership of mass media, Jewish influence in discourse, Jewish financial control as a sign of colonisation of their land by Jews. They were Hamas; now, by making peace with Zionists, they went the way of Mahmud Abbas: they surrendered to the supreme force.

Now, let me make it clear and unambiguous. Whatever one makes of an argument of the attempted Jewish colonisation of Germany (or Poland, or Russia, or the US), one may and should be revolted by decolonisation-by-mass-murder. Whenever this occurred – for instance in Haiti where the white slave owners were massacred by their slaves in decolonisation drive; or in Western Ukraine where the Poles were slaughtered by Ukrainian Nazis – the result was always disastrous, the land ruined for centuries and people damned for ages.

I am all for decolonisation of Palestine, but not by mass murder or by mass expulsion; rather by removing privileges and equalising positions. This is the solution now in Palestine, and this could be a solution to any colonisation of any sort. 

 

Saam Amerat: When it comes to solutions, I believe in our camps there are three:
Mine, Yours and everybody else's.
Everybody else including Norman Finkelstein want pre-67, also known as the two states’ solution.
Both of us believe that is nothing but apartheid South African style. Its supporters are for it, because apartheid South African style is much better than what the Palestinians currently have.
But we know, Israel will never agree to Apartheid South African Style, because the whites there treated the blacks as such because they believed the Blacks to be lesser human beings. So the Zionists will never grant the Palestinians the rights of lesser human beings because the Zionists will never accept the Palestinians as Human beings.
Your solution is the one state solution, this is shared by people like Craig Murray which is the pre-48 post-British rule. You are calling for one state for everybody, in lands where the Arabs have already achieved a clear majority.
This will allow Palestinian refugees to return and Jewish settlers in post-67 to stay.
It doesn't offer any solution to Jews who may want to return to lands in the Arab world.
Israeli society is becoming more fascist, not less, and the Arab governments are becoming more complacent, not less.
The right wing is growing due to high birth rates, while the left wing are leaving for Europe.
So what incentive does Israel have to agree to such?
My solution is the pre-18 solution. The Middle East returning to what it was before the British came and messed things up.
It will allow Palestinians to come back if they wish and Jews to go back if they wish.
I think your drive is mainly towards creating a change in Israeli society, to get it to take a step back from Armageddon. There was a time when that may have been possible. But that time is now over. Explaining to Zionists that they are headed towards Armageddon will no longer work because too many of them now believe in Armageddon, with Armageddon as their ultimate objective.
I am talking about both the Jewish Zionists in Israel and the Christian Zionists who fund them in America, both the religious nuts in west bank settlements and right wing atheists in Tel Aviv.
They are all racing towards it, trying to be more right wing and more crazier than each other. Competing in Craziness.

 
Shamir: my conclusion is very similar to yours. Read my
essay on Turkey, I say that Palestine will be saved by its full integration in the area, by removal of post-colonial framework. One State solution could be achieved if the US people were able to remove the rule of Goldman Sachs – Lieberman – Foxman et al. Capitol Hill should be de-colonised before Ramallah. Then, democracy and equality would come to Palestine by default. But the Americans are subdued. They do not support Palestinians because they do not understand how can they rebel against Jewish rule? The US nationalists are not much to expect, either: they prefer to boast about their white skin, though forsooth, the only white man in their congress was Cynthia McKinney.  That is why I agree – the solution will be achieved by regional powers without help of Europe or the US.

 

Saam Amerat: The solution now lies outside of Israel/Palestine. Not really with Iran or Turkey, but with a united Iran and Turkey. A Middle Eastern EU. Our drive should be to push the peoples of the Middle East to push for a change of governments, bloodless coups, the removal of the dictators and kings and a replacement with a single state.
If British Middle Eastern map was able to remove Zionism, it would have done so already. So another map needs to be created to dump Zionism in the dustbin of history.  A united Middle Eastern Army will be able to reunite Palestine with the rest of the Middle East because disunited Arab Armies failed. And a united Middle Eastern economic potential, with the factories of Egypt, Turkey and Iran, the oil wealth of the gulf and the green lands of Sudan may show Zionists that working together is more profitable than stealing.

 

It is true the most rabid Zionists can be found in America and Europe. And these people have no desire to leave for Israel. They just want the sons for poorer men to do so. So they can fight for the fatherland. They want to earn in their banks, while the sons of poorer men work in kibutzes while fighting for the dream.

Yes Europe and America is where the Zionists feed and take, and that is where they buy politicians to aid their feeding and taking.

But Israel is where they build, and Israel is where they want Jews to work and contribute. To create their dream. So yes you are right Europe and America is where the Zionists suck blood, but Israel is where they vomit it out in to the awaiting ever hungry mouths of the settlers. Eating alone makes people, however selfish very constipated, Israel is where they relieve themselves of their ill gotten wealth with the excuse that it will fertilise Israel’s barren economy, but all that results from the shit they send to Israel is a very bad smell.

 

When it comes to unity and a unified state. I believe the wider the unity and the greater the area of the state the better.

I agree with your article that autonomy is needed to gain this unity.

I would like to add to it by stating that the autonomy needs to be all in composing. Peoples need autonomy as well as regions.

So Jewish ultra-orthodox can have their Saturday shut downs in their own villages, and can set up schools where their daughters don't have to sit next to Sephardis who they believe might pollute their children with the TV they watch. Each religion, region and community should have their own courts to deal with problems amongst they have amongst themselves and these courts should have the widest possible mandate if that is what those people who will be subjects to those courts want. Because it is no one’s business but their own.

The grey comes with mixed marriages in particular and mixed families in general. And to deal resolve conflicts in this grey area needs larger brains than mine, but these problems are resolvable.

Maybe not to everybody’s happiness, but they are resolvable to a greater degree of justice than what is currently available.

 

Shamir: I love Iran, but I just do not see Iran belonging to the area. Historically, Iran was not a part of Byzantine or Ottoman Empire. Iran has its own grossraum, great space, spreading to Central Asia, Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan. I doubt one may cross the civilisation borders.

Saam Amerat: When it comes to Iran, I believe Iran must be included to avoid disputes over territory and the treatment of minorities between it and its neighbours. The European Union means Germany doesn't need to invade France or Poland for territory it believes is its, because the Union means Germans already have access to those lands.

The best way to secure the greatest rights for Palestinians to return would be for Jews in Israel to have the greatest rights to return to their lands of origin including Iran and the Maghreb.

But yes Iran could be part of the same province of the larger state, a province that covers Afghanistan(where about half the population are Tajik, Iranian) and Central Asia, including Tajikistan where people speak Tajik(Iranian). This unity is needed to avoid separatist wars. Because not everyone is Iranian, Azerbaijanis and Turkmans speak a language that really should be called Turkish, while Uzbeks speak a language which can be understood in Turkey.

Edited by Ken Freeland

 

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