Thoughts On Germany And Palestine: The Zionist Shameful Deal With The Nazis
07 December 2010By Mazin Qumsiyeh
The conference in Stuttgart about Palestine was themed
"Separated in the past, together in the future", was
sold-out, and had some high powered speakers and lots
of energy [1]. We listened, spoke, networked, bought
each others' books, ate, hugged, cried, and laughed. I
mostly spent lots of time in thinking; maybe because
waiting at airports or because such conferences give
us opportunity to reflect or whatever. Thoughts are a
mixed blessing.
In that labyrinth of neurons firing sometimes
uncontrollably, we are transported to the past, to the
present, to the future, whipsawed by images and
stories and sounds and smells. The one minute I am
thinking of my delay of three hours at the bridge to
Jordan while Israeli Shin Bet agents scurry
around trying to figure out what to do about me. I
reflect on my angered indignation verbalized twice to
a young white clean-cut guy (maybe Russian?). Did I
challenge him too much or was it too little?
In visiting Germany one cannot help but reflect on
history. The thoughts are transported to periods
before I was born, periods in history and facts I have
read and verified and contrast it with myths that are
taught daily to unsuspecting publics. Germany lives in
the modern presence but the mist of a heavy and dark
past moves all around sometimes getting thick and
blurring visions. Some people pump such smoke trying
to convince Germans and themselves that this is that
mist emanating from a relevant past. We think and
speak of how best to explain to Germans that guilt
feelings are misdirected. How do we explain the
Nazi-Zionist collaborations and the horrors that
happened because of a misunderstanding of what really
happened nearly seven decades ago [2]. But most of all
I reflect on both how good people can be and how much
evil they can do. After all, what makes an Ilan Pappe,
brilliant professor, humanist who shed all his tribal
borders and moved to touch his humanity? And what
makes an Ehud Barak, a war criminal with blood of
thousands on his hands?
Not in my name is the message that a brilliant Jewish
German woman (Evelyn Hecht-Galinski) gave in her
speech. Her clarion voice echoed those of prophets
speaking to decadent kings of the past articulating in
passionate moral clarity what horror awaits if they
stay their destructive course. As human beings, we
cannot choose to stand on the side line while a grave
injustice is being committed. We cannot stand by and
watch as Western governments succumb to lobbies and
send weapons and money that are used to commit
horrific crimes. As citizens of those countries we
cannot be silent.
I listen to Evelyn's words (translated from German to
English) and to the tone of her strong voice and
determined looks that penetrate to the hearts of a
mesmerized audience. I think this is what decency and
courage look like.
I listen to Ilan Pappe brilliantly articulating in
very simple and common language what the underpinning
of this "issue" is about (that it is a simple
colonialism and racism, nothing special other than the
success of propaganda in drowning this fact with much
mythologies, lies, and nonsense). He explains how we
are allowed to criticize specific Israeli policies
like attacks on Gaza etc but we are not allowed to
criticize the ideology (Zionism) behind these
policies. We must move from dealing with the symptoms
rather to deal with the etiology. He mentioned how
Zionists themselves for decades used terms like
Hityakvut (to colonize) to describe their activities
which amounted to creating a state by destroying a
country (his book "the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine"
remains a classic). But my mind wonders back to olive
trees being uprooted in Al-Walaja. My thoughts are
wandering all over the map. Feelings of moral outrage,
mix with memories of childhood playing in hills that
was not yet infected with colonies.
I listen to my friend Dr. Haidar Eid describe life in
Gaza and could only think about the absurdity that he
is less than two-hour drive from where I am but that I
could only get to meet him face to face for the first
time thousands of kilometers away in Stuttgart,
Germany of all places. It is not fair that he is
imprisoned in the concentration camp with 1.5 million
prisoners whose only crime is that they are not Jewish
and as such were ethnically cleansed and occupied.
Haidar's years in South Africa gave him the ability to
really understand similarities and differences of our
"hafrada" (Hebrew for segregation) with "Apartheid" (Afrikaaner
for segregation). Ali Abunimah's articulate
description of where we are with the BDS movement and
the media struggle in the US complements nicely our
talks about life and struggle in Palestine.
Felicia Langer was there. She served for decades as an
Israeli lawyer trying to defend Palestinian political
prisoners in kangaroo courts of colonial apartheid. I
think that the image of her and me and Haidar on the
stage is an image of what the future of an inclusive
democratic state will be like.
I listen to my friend Lubna Masarwa who verbalized
better than any of us the moral indignation that is
right and urgent. She says "we are struggling as
Palestinians, we are tired and we want you to do
more..it is urgent and the world keeps letting Israel
commit massacres and continue its ethnic cleansing
practices..why...enough is enough..we are fed up.." My
thoughts here bounce across in a room full of dark
walls trying to think of why the disease of apathy is
so hard to cure among humans. Silence and indifference
while injustice and war crimes are being committed is
not just some distant historical episode but a brutal
living reality. Children in Auschwitz seven decades
ago and children of Gaza and Sabra and Shatila today
are after all still children. Their eyes and their
suffering may be ignored by most of humanity but their
truth will penetrate deeper than any fog of mythology.
It can no longer be said by anyone in the age of the
internet that "we did not know."
I talked about Popular Resistance in Palestine (the
subject of my just published book) and explained in as
simple a language I could what it means to live here
and struggle here and love. I explain that we are in
this all together (humanity) and that this is not just
a struggle by and for Palestinians. Summarizing 130
years of resistance is not easy. At the conference
there is really little time, everyone wants to talk to
us, to get a book signed, to exhange cards, to hug.
The organizers did a masterful job. I stayed with a
wonderful Palestinian host (Anton). Two of the key
organizers also spoke about the plight of the Bedouin
communities in the Negev. Attia and Verena Rajab (and
their young son who also volunteered) epitomize
kindness and hard work but also of love that should be
the model for all of us.
More can be said about this conference but ultimately,
Lubna said it well "enough talk, time for action." And
all who attended this conference have rolled-up their
sleeves and got to work. Onward.
Notes:
[1] For conference information and resources, see
http://senderfreiespalaestina.de/konferenz/index.html,
and www.publicsolidarity.de
[2] Menachem Begin became prime Minister of Israel and
many boulevards are named after him. This is a guy who
admired fascists and Nazis and even modeled his
group's uniforms and goose-steps after them. His
groups sent a letter to Nazi Germany seeking alliance
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/
Palestine-Remembered/Story799.html Einstein and others
wrote in the NY Times about Begin's group: "Among the
most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the
mergence in the newly created state of Israel of the
"Freedom Party" (Tnuat Haherut), a political party
closely akin in its organization, methods, political
philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist
parties. It was formed out of the membership and
following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist,
right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine."
(http://qumsiyeh.org/ einsteinetalonbegin/ )
-See also "FDR, Ruth Gruber and me: Zionists stymie
WWII rescue plan," by Ronald Bleier October 2006
http://desip.igc.org /FDRGruberAndMe.html
- There is also "Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of
Forgetting" by Ruth Linn, Cornell U. Press, 2004. It's
about Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler who escaped from
Auschwitz in 1944 and gave detailed information to the
Jewish Council of Slovakia that could have saved a
large proportion of the Hungarian Jews who had not yet
been deported. But the Jewish Council suppressed the
information in order to get a trainload of their own
(Zionist) people out and aided in the death of 437,000
Hungarian Jews. A summary about Hungarian Jews is
found in "Kasztner's List: Zionist collaboration in
Hungary" http://www.fantompowa.net/Flame/kasztner_intro.htm
-See also Bauer, Yehuda, Jews for sale?: Nazi-Jewish
negotiations, 1933-1945, New Haven, CT, Yale
University Press, 1994. http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner05252005.html
- I urge everyone to also read Lenni Brenner's book
"51 Documents: History of Nazi-Zionist Collaboration".
- There are also data in my book chapter 6 http://www.qumsiyeh.org/chapter6/
- Hajo G. Meyer, 83 yo survivor of the concentration
camps wrote me a note once: "Are you aware that
besides the Ha'avarah agreement the terrorist and
murderer Avraham Stern had written to the Nazis on
January 11th 1941 to fight with his Irgun forces
together with the Nazis against the British!
That is, I think, still stronger stuff."
- And finally, the leadership of the Yishuv and the
Zionist movement did sign a shameful deal with the
Nazis "The Transfer Agreement" (see the book by Edwin
Black with that title).
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