Previous posts in this series covering Nur Masalha’s book, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948: . . .
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Zionist Founding Fathers’ Plans for Transfer of the Palestinian Arabs
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Redemption or Conquest: Zionist Yishuv plans for transfer of Palestinian Arabs in the British Mandate period
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The Weizmann Plan to “Transfer” the Palestinians
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Zionist Plans for Mass Transfer of Arabs: Alive But Discreet
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Pushing for Mass Transfer of Arabs & Warning of “Rivers of Blood”
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Compulsory Arab Transfer Necessary for a Jewish State
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The Necessity for Mass Arab Transfer
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Expulsion of the Palestinians – Pre-War Internal Discussions
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Expulsion of the Palestinians: Caution and Discretion during the War Years
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Expulsion of the Palestinians: Insights into Yishuv’s Transfer Ideas in World War 2
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Expulsion of the Palestinians, Part 11
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Zionist leaders were always alert for opportunities to work with Arab countries that neighboured Palestine in hopes they could assist with plans to transfer the Arab population out of Palestine. Earlier we saw one such attempt to negotiate a plan with Jordanian leaders (1937), and in 1939 another hopeful meeting to work with the Saudi Arabian king was organized.
The plan was to promise King Ibn Saud a major role in a future Arab federation and more immediately to provide him with substantial financial aid to resolve economic hardship his kingdom was at that time enduring.
To approach the Saudi king the Zionist leaders happily found willing support from Harry St John Philby, British orientalist and advisor to the king [see the Wikipedia linked article for his “colourful” career and that of his son]. Philby’s contact in London was the famous British historian Lewis Namier who was closely associated with the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann and was the political advisor to the Zionist Jewish Agency led by Moshe Shertok.
The 6 October, 1939 meeting
The above four British and Jewish gentlemen met in London to come up with a plan to put to the Saudi king.
- It was proposed that all Arabs would be transferred out of Palestine except for an enclave in Jerusalem, which was to become akin to the Vatican City.
- The Jews in return would support King Ibn Saud’s bid for leadership of an Arab federation.
- £20,000,000 would also be given to the Saudi King, although Shertok wanted the money to go towards paying for the resettlement of the Arabs to be uprooted from Palestine. Weizmann expected the money to be raised by wealthy Jews and from grants from the United States government.
King Ibn Saud’s response to the proposal?
We learn from letters of Weizmann that the king reportedly excoriated Philby for thinking he could be bought with a “Zionist bribe”.
The British Labour Party Resolution, 1944
Zionist lobbying paid off with the British Labour Party, no doubt helped by the fact the Party included some very influential Zionists in its executive leadership. In 1944 the party introduced a pro-Zionist resolution (to be voted on later in that year) that read in part:
Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out as the Jews move in. Let them be compensated handsomely for their land and let their settlement elsewhere by carefully organized and generously financed. . . . indeed we should re-examine also the possibility of extending the present Palestinian boundaries, by agreement with Egypt, Syria or Transjordan.
Records of the Jewish Agency executive meetings inform us today how thrilled Zionist leaders like Ben-Gurion were with the Labour Party’s position, “gratified that the ‘Gentiles’ were endorsing the concept.” At a Jewish Agency executive meeting on 7 May 1944 Ben-Gurion is recorded as saying:
Zionism is a transfer of the Jews. Regarding the transfer of the Arabs this is much easier than any other transfer. There are Arab states in the vicinity . . . and it is clear that if the Arabs are removed [to these states] this will improve their condition and not the contrary.
The British government’s policy, however, had been to limit Jewish immigration because of the limited capacity of the existing Arab population in Palestine to accommodate the new arrivals. Ben-Gurion and other Zionists were accordingly somewhat concerned about the Labour Party resolution’s wording that linked Jewish settlement of Palestine with the transfer of the native Palestinian population. But minutes of meetings and diaries of the Zionists show that out of the pubic eye the took for granted the necessity of the transfer of the Arabs. At another Jewish Agency executive meeting on 20 June 1944, the director the the Agency’s department for immigration reminded Ben-Gurion and others,
“When we bring a plan for transferring one million Jews to the Land of Israel we cannot avoid the transfer.”
Ben-Gurion further pointed out that
the Holocaust had not yet been fully exploited to the benefit of Zionism because the Allies were still preoccupied with the pursuit of victory: the greatest opportunity for the Zionists was bound to emerge after the war. (Masalha, 160)
Enthusiastic Voices for Arab Transfer as Germans to be Transferred in Europe
Some of the views of the Jewish Agency executive expressed in 1944 May and December meetings:
Eliahu Dobkin: said he failed to understand why some of his colleagues wanted caution in moving towards transfer of the Arabs given that the same transfer policies were about to be carried out in Europe.
David Werner Senator: argued that transferring the Palestinian Arabs to Iraq was morally and politically justified because the same policy was to be applied to the German population in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Senator spoke against the “binationalist” positions of Martin Buber and Judah Magnes. Buber and Magnes spoke of morality in politics but Senator responded (according to records of the Jewish Agency executive meeting 16 December 1944)
stating that he felt no moral qualms about advocating forcible Arab removal: considering the catastrophe of European Jewry “against the transfer of one million Arabs, then with a clean and easy conscience I declare that even more drastic acts are sanctioned.”
The Ben-Horin Plan
Another Zionist leader and newspaper editor, Eliahu Ben-Horin, published a book in 1943 — The Middle East: Crossroads of History — that became the basis for former U.S. president Herbert Hoover’s plan. Ben-Horin’s plan was for an Arab transfer to Iraq or a “united Iraq-Syrian state” and the establishment of a pure Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River:
I suggest that the Arabs of Palestine and Transjordania be transferred to Iraq, or a united Iraq-Syrian state. That means the shifting of about 1,200,000 persons. A larger number were involved in the Greco-Turkish exchange of population; many more in the internal shifts in Russia….
The Palestinian Arabs will not be removed to a foreign land but to an Arab land…. The distance between their old and new homelands is small, involving no crossing of oceans or seas, and the climatic conditions are the same, if the transfer and the colonization project are well planned and systematically carried out, the Palestinian fellah will get better soil and more promising life conditions than he can ever expect to obtain in Palestine. The city Arab, too, can find a much wider field for his activities and ambitions within the framework of a larger and purely Arab state unit. (Crossroads of History, 224f)
Ben-Horin estimated it would take no longer than eighteen months for a mutual transfer of Arabs to Iraq-Syria and Jews from Iraq, Yemen and Syria to Palestine.
The evacuation project should be carried out with “firmness.” He added:
such a solution being both just and practicable, the Jews and the Arabs will soon develop good neighborly relations…. The one imperative pre-requisite to such a happy development is the absolute determination on the part of the major nations that will dictate the peace and lay the foundation for future world-order — that this and no other solution of the Arab-Jewish problems be adopted and carried into effect. (Crossroads)
Ben-Horin sought support from powerful figures and succeeded in attracting the interest of the Herbert Hoover, and Hoover soon took up Ben-Horin’s ideas and advocated them as the Hoover Plan, making them public in the press 19 November 1945. A Supreme Court Justice publicly joined Hoover in promoting his plan. The plan was presented as a positive solution for all parties:
every man of good will… will welcome Mr Hoover’s plan as an expression of constructive statesmanship. When all the long-accepted remedies seem to fail, it is time to consider new approaches. The Hoover plan certainly represents a new approach, formulated by an unprejudiced mind well trained in statesmanship, relief and rehabilitation. Should they, the Arabs, respond to the idea, we shall be happy to cooperate with the great powers and the Arabs in bringing about the materialization of the Hoover Plan.
The Ben-Horin / Hoover Plan was not a political heavyweight in changing events in the Middle East but it was evidence of a growing ideological mood for Arab transfer. In the wake of the 1948-49 war when Palestinian Arabs were fleeing from their lands and cities, Ben-Horin’s plan started to look very reasonable to many:
In May 1949, during the last stage of the Palestinian refugee exodus, Harper’s magazine published an article by Ben-Horin entitled “From Palestine to Israel.” The editor noted that in an earlier article in the magazine’s December 1944 issue, Ben-Horin had advocated a plan which at the time
looked far-fetched… that the Arabs of Palestine be transferred to Iraq and resettled there. Now, with thousands of Arab refugees from Palestine facing a dismal future, the transfer idea appears to be a likely bet… in view of the sound character of Mr. Ben-Horin’s earlier judge-merits and prophecies, we feel we can bank on his word about present-day Israel: ‘it works.’
The Significance of All of the Above, and Previous Posts
Not all Jews supported the idea of transferring the Arabs, though their voices were unfortunately outnumbered. One group opposing transfer was Hashomer Hatzair,
dismissed the transfer plans as “dangerous,” “ant-socialist,” and even ill-advised. (Masalha, 165)
Nevertheless,
the general support they received and the attempts to promote them by mainstream offical and Labor Zionists, particularly those leaders who were to play decisive roles in 1948 – Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, Shertok, Kaplan, Golda Meyerson, Weitz, and so on – highlight the ideological intent that made the Palestinian refugee exodus in 1948 possible. (Masalha, 165. Bolding added)
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Next: The 1948 Exodus….
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Masalha, Nur. 1992. Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Washington, D.C: Institute for Palestine Studies.
Neil Godfrey
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It’s difficult to imagine a more dramatic turning of the tables. Clearly, the Palestinians are the Jews and the Jews (more correctly, the Israeli government) have become the Romans.
Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, is a “must read” on this topic. Zionism is a house of cards where each card is a myth.
Benjamin Freedman’s 1961 speech in Washington is a “must listen” on the topic of a warning to the West about how Zionist leaders during WW1 and WW2 engineered the British supervision of the return of Jews to Palestine. To me the state of Israel today is like a co-tenant in a lease who was harassed by the neighbours, fought them and is now changing the terms of the lease out of spite, ignoring the wishes of the other tenant and landlord.
[Video deleted by Neil]
Not a co-tenant. The Zionists had no moral right to invade Palestine and set up a state there. They were invaders. They were the ones who started harassing the neighbours. Palestinians did not go to Poland or Golders Green and start harassing people there. They were living at home when the foreigners came to take over.
RoHa, the Turks were in control before the British in WW1 and I think the Arabs and Jews were co-tenants in a sense after WW1. While the Arabs “harassed” the Jews by trying to expel them completely, which failed, I agree that the Jews harassed the Arabs first, I think you are right, but the Arabs applied disproportionate force to their peril. Ever since then it’s been the Jews harassing the Arabs with US help. The solution to the Palestinian problem seems to me to go back to the Balfour Declaration of about 1917 and abiding by its spirit. That will mean the Jews have to give up an enormous amount of land and recognise that it was meant to be one state, not two, no walls, no apartheid. The US and Israeli governments do not agree, they want a stronghold for the wealthy elite.
Peter, RoHa makes exceedingly clear that the Zionists have no right to even be in Palestine at all. The empire that’s “in control” at a given time is irrelevant. A co-tenant is suppose to be legitimately there. And pay the owner. The owner happens to be the Palestinian people.
Hi Joe, “the Zionists have no right to even be in Palestine” is not accruate. Some Jews are Zionists but not all Zionists are Jews. All I’m saying is that it seems to me that if the Balfour Declaration (BD) was or still is abided by then Jews and Arabs have a chance to co-exist peacefully. At the same time, I consider that the BD was crafted cunningly and if exposed for what it really was, has huge implications for the low integrity of Zionism and of the British and US governments of their day and therafeter, and of course the Isreali government itself, as long as the former refuse to pressure Israel to comply with the UN resolutions which are consistent with the BD. Have you heard Freedman’s 1961 speech yet ?
Peter, your comment about Zionist leaders “engineering” the British supervision of the return of Jews to Palestine runs contrary to the information and clear record presented in the series of posts here. Or am I misinterpreting the rhetoric and implications of “engineering”? I have no idea who Benjamin Freedman is but have been advised that he is a holocaust denier and antisemite. I cannot vouch for those accusations but as long as they are unchallenged perceptions I am very concerned about his place in the discussion.
The very concept of Zionist leaders “engineering” political leaders smacks of antisemitism. Influence is one thing, but “engineering” is quite different and reminds one of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Or have I misunderstood your intended meaning?
For the record, I have never heard of Benjamin Freedman until now and have been given no reason to take up any interest in learning more about him or his views. My focus is entirely on the historical record itself, and as that is presented in a spirit of humanity for all. I trust this series of posts will go some small way to alerting a few to another side of the story that is never or rarely heard via Western media, and that there is no suggestion in any of these posts that any fault or blame lies with any ‘race’ or ‘people’ or ‘genetics’ — but entirely with specific political interests and individuals, often well-meaning and idealistic but tragically flawed and doomed in their consequences. Above all I want to be careful not to tarnish the intentions and motives (let alone natures) of a whole collective on the basis of what some individuals or groups within that larger body do.
Hi Peter. I have restored your comments and my own responses to them with some editing (to my responses, not yours). I have rephrased some parts of my responses that may have been over-touchy when first written, and want to accept that we are engaged in this discussion out of good intentions.
I have to reiterate, though, that my reading of Benjamin Freedman’s speech is a disturbing experience that is clearly anti-semitic and should be excluded from a serious discussion of the history of Israel and Palestine — as I have attempted to explain in other comments here.
Hi Neil. Thank you for taking the time to clarify your ideas. I sense you and I have significant differences on several levels, but I hope that we can learn from each other’s experience, knowledge and abilities.
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You seem to be uneasy with my anti-Zionist sentiments. I think that you equate them as anti-semitic i.e. ant-Jewish, which is not my intention. Rather I am inclined to believe that the elders of Zion were, in WW1 and WW2, and are, in the current 911 fraud, willing to jeopardise any ordinary Jewish lives as victims of their grand plans; again I would use the word “engineer”. I believe that rich and powerful people engineered 911, not men in caves, and not all Jewish, and sacrificed (i.e. murdered) over 3,000 US citizens and provoked the conflict that cost millions of lives in the Middle East as well as immeasurable on-going suffering.
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In the same way I see the Zionist leaders factored in the risk of mammoth collateral damage to Jew and non-Jew alike and I agree with Freedman’s conclusions that we are to be warned and on notice. You can shun my view but I see the same selfish evil at work, as Freedman does, in the Roman fraud that is our Bible. And in that Fraud, Jews were deceptively painted as the bad guys ! Yes let’s give preeminence to historical facts, as far as we can establish them. It may come down to who you trust, and why.
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It would be as fantastic to say that I do not recognise the state of Israel as that I do not recognise the Australian government. But that won’t stop me from feeling ashamed and sorry that the British invaded this land and treated the residents as animals. I wonder if the Zionists engineered the Arab war against the Jews that eventually led to the state of Israel in the same way that the US today is provoking Iran ?
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With best wishes, Peter
Who are these “elders of Zion”? That is a term from a well-known antisemitic tract, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It is a fraud. A hoax.
I never really understood the term “self-hating Jew” until I read Freedman’s speech. He is himself an anti-semite and has embraced Christianity to remove himself from his race.
There is no evidence at all for the conspiracy theory about Jews or anyone else apart from Al Qaeda and the 19 perpetrators being responsible. We have all the substantial evidence to verify that it was an Al Qaeda operation. On what serious evidential grounds can anyone seriously doubt it? There can be no question on that score. There is no evidence — only often misinformed or partially informed suspicion and speculation to suggest that the US or Jewish “elders” or any such group had anything to do with it.
You cannot just make claims like that without providing evidence, not speculation and inference or gut feeling.
(You mentioned Chomsky before, saying you saw similar claims in his work. Chomsky’s work is grounded sentence by sentence in hard evidence. You find nothing at all like the unsupported Freedman assertions in Chomsky’s works.)
Your dismissal of “men in caves” suggests an unfamiliarity with Al Qaeda and the terrorists involved in 9/11 and many other terrorist acts this century. They are not barbarians. Those 19 were well educated; Al Qaeda was and is led by very highly educated people. They are engineers, scientists, they know how to do stuff. They are not “men in caves”.
My take on Freedman is that he is correct because his first hand information fits my world view and I have not come across any war historians who can refute his assertions. I’ve been wrong before to trust opinion leaders and welcome correction about Freedman.
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I don’t know where I heard the term “elders of Zion”. I may have heard it from you not knowing the original context. It doesn’t matter, the inference is “the powers that be” in Zionism. This is not being anti-Jewish or as some put it crudely, anti-Semitic. One bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole bunch, just as the bad apples in the US who in my view engineered 911 don’t spoil every person in the US; I don’t hate all Americans.
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Could the best engineers and scientists in Al Qaeda have orchestrated 911 ? could they have diverted the Norad command ? Demolished Building 7 ? Removed the steel from the site immediately after the collapse ? Influenced the suppression of the facts in the official report ? Arranged to find the passport photo of one of the hijackers in the rubble and cinders of the collapsed buildings ? Arranged to remove the footage from cameras around the Pentagon that would have shown the approach of the object that hit it ? I refer you to the documentary “Loose Change” and Pastor Ray Griffin’s presentations. Hence my men in caves analogy, which I stand by.
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I am a mythicist in matters of the Bible, the modern state of Israel and 911. I’ll be 64 next month. It would be a pity if I spent the rest of my life in an ever growing state of delusion. What matters is that we together strive for peace, dialogue and disarmament. I’ll be attending the IPAN conference in Darwin 2-4 August 2019. It would be great to meet you or any of the Vridar bloggers there. (Independent Peaceful Australia Network).
Mere assertions cannot always be easily refuted. All I can do is ask for evidence (not inferences and rhetorical questions) and go where the evidence leads. I cannot follow mere assertions however much they might comport with my world view. And I hope that I no longer let my world view decide for me what evidence I should accept or reject. I think a more reliable approach is to allow evidence to shape one’s world view and to be open to modifying one’s world view accordingly.
I have been posting a lengthy series on the Zionist movement that led to the expulsion of the Palestinians and trying to make each post grounded in hard data, hard evidence, the diaries, the minutes of meetings, and so forth. If one follows that evidence one can see exactly how the Zionist state of Israel came about, and how the leaders of the Zionist movement “engineered it”, including — quite openly — the outcomes of meetings they had with political and financial interests in the UK and USA. All of that evidence fully and adequately explains everything. There is no room for or evidence for some “secret conspiracy”. Yes, there were secret meetings but they were minuted and those are all on the record, as per those posts. There was nothing “conspiratorial” about them in the sense Freedman and others speak of.
It sounds like you view mythicism as a kind of conspiracy theory — like Israel being founded by a Jewish conspiracy and 9/11 being hatched by a different conspiracy from 19 who flew the planes. I think any idea of Christianity being the outcome of a similar type of conspiracy theory is simply unsupportable. There is simply no evidence and the events in question are simply too complex to explain in such terms.
As for your other questions about 9/11, if you think it through one must surely come to accept that if all of those specific points were part of some conspiracy then we have such a massive and large-scale conspiracy to imagine, one that necessarily involved many, many persons to carry out. It is far easier to believe a conspiracy like 9/11 being carried out by only a handful of persons. Otherwise it simply could not be kept secret. Have you really thought through your questions on 9/11 seriously? Looked for the facts and explanations? Or accepted inferences from them that suit your world view? We know exactly how the 19 persons carried out every step of their conspiracy. Your questions seem to overlook the evidence we have for what happened. They seem to want to raise inferences rather than study the actual evidence.
On the supposed diverting of the NORAD command, see
9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes
and
NORAD’s Performance on 9/11 and Hollow Conspiracy Theories
I am no longer in Darwin, sorry. I trust you’ll have a successful meeting.
Hi Neil, My world view changes as I get more or better information. My world view was suspended when Hilary Clinton lost the last US election, and then it morphed a bit, but I must say is still on hold in some areas. Trump publicly promised “When I am elected you will know who flew those planes into the buildings” after having made several allegations of 911 cover up. Yet he has not mentioned it again. Something fishy is going on. I tried to feed my world view on more common sense.
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No Neil I do not see Israel as founded by a Jewish conspiracy as you put it. By now I thought you realised that I clearly distinguish between Jewish and Zionist. George Galloway, former UK MP, taught me that.
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Yes I do see mythicism as a kind of conspiracy. I’m inclined to give credence to J. Atwill’s Caesar’s Messiah. But interestingly the term conspiracy can be used in the loose sense. The ignorant and illiterate of Bible days roughly corresponds to the distracted and apathetic of today.
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I consider it naive to attribute as much intelligence to the 19 hijackers of 911 as you do. I see them as pawns brainwashed by the masterminds. I don’t have all the answers. And unlike you Neil I do think it could be kept a secret. What I’m saying is that the official version of the story is as nonsensical as the Bible was nonsensical but believed for 2,000 years.
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And come on, Building 7, what the ? It defies common sense for it to collapse as it did. That alone should be enough to give you reason to ask more questions.
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I’ve read your NORAD anti-conspiracy links. So what’s your point ? That it’s wrong to think that the NORAD management were complicit ? It seems to me that they were not involved but that those pulling the strings were much higher up than NORAD.
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If you want to look at evidence with me Neil, please see Loose Change :
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0KgVxbt1w
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Have you seen the 911 presentations by Pastor Ray Griffin ?
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Have you read Thierry Meyssan’s book “911 The Big Lie” ? Would you like to review it and critique it on Vridar ? I could send to you Poste Restante anywhere or to a PO box if you like.
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Best wishes, Peter (and thanks for the discussions. I appreciate so much of your work)
The only fishy thing is that Trump was playing to the conspiracy theorists about 9/11 and when he was in office he knew there was nothing more to be told than what is on the public record. There is no secret or mystery about who was reponsible for 9/11. None at all. The suspicious question some conspiracy theorists raise are all easily answered.
Trump promised lots of things in the election but simply went quiet on them after he was elected. That’s what politicians generally do. Part of the job description you might say.
George Galloway is an antisemite, sadly. I used to like his principles until he went overboard with antisemitism.
See the post earlier on how we try to deny our racism since WW2.
I have read enough of the 9/11 conspiracy things to know they are junk. There is no mystery about the collapse of the tower — simply consult the answers to your questions by specialists. They all make perfect sense to me and are consistent with laws of physics.
People are not “brainwashed” in the sense you and many seem to think. That’s a dehumanizing myth. They were engineers, chemists, who trained for years to pull it off, all with unlimited financial backing from we-know-who. I fail to see any mystery. I cannot understand your dismissal of the clearly human and understandable response or lack thereof of NORAD. It is entirely consistent with how people and the world works.
Hi Neil, I’m responding to your comments of 25/6/19 above including
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“I cannot understand your dismissal of the clearly human and understandable response or lack thereof of NORAD. It is entirely consistent with how people and the world works. ”
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Neil this is your world view coming out, which is contrary to mine. We obviously find eachother’s world views incomprehensible.
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For example, how you can simply accept that NORAD’s errors coincided perfectly with the other elements of 911 on the day. How your world view constrains you to believe that engineers and chemists who trained for years to pull it off would leave it to uncertainty that NORAD would get confused on the day. Or could some of that unlimited financial backing you refer to have found its way into or from the deep state networks that control NORAD ?
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You refer to specialists who have resolved the collapse of Building 7. Whose payroll are they on ? What’s their stake in the matter or their world view ? Have you not heard of Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth ? Have you seen the footage of the actual collapse ? Its a deck of cards with the base pulled out from under it. Please explain to me how you can accept that ? If the collapse makes perfect sense according the laws of physics then I will stand corrected.
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Physics is not my field. I work in finance. There was fervent stock exchange trading in put options in the weeks before the event that indicate the existence of inside knowledge of the catastrophe and the downward price effect that it would have on the shares of the insurance company that had to pay out for the destruction of the buildings. My world view is shaped not just by my personality here, but my professional knowledge and experience.
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911 was also a pretext for the disposal of Saddam Hussein for his alleged weapons of mass destruction, which he did not have. The US could pull this off with enough public uncertainty to prevent an uprising against their government. Bush and Blair remind me of the Caesars, Obama the Messiah and Trump a Pope.
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George Galloway is no more an anti-semite than I am. Like me, he’s an anti-Zionist. George and I maintain that not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. I have explained this to you before. Why do you not get it ?
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What did you think of “Loose Change, Final Cut” ? Did you watch it ?
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We should meet and have a cup of tea together one day. You know my email address, if you’re in Sydney, please contact me.
Best wishes, Peter
No, Peter. I have read the online transcript of Benjamin Freedman’s 1961 speech in Washington and long before I finished it was very obvious to me that it is anything but a “must listen”. It is an antisemitic diatribe. It resorts to Jewish conspiracy theory tropes. It is the antithesis of the study I have been posting here based on the archival research of the historian Nur Masalha.
I deplore, denounce, reject the entire sentiment and message of Benjamin Freedman’s1961 speech. The speech represents the antithesis of the historically verifiable understanding and information that I am attempting to share here. History is made by specific individuals with political and ideological interests and they generally find themselves in conflict with opposing forces among their own people, as I have pointed out in this and other posts. Historical knowledge emerges through a study of the documentary evidence.
Race-based conspiracy theories have no place here or anywhere else.
Neil while I respect the sincerity of your views I don’t understand them. What did Freedman say that is incorrect ? He is anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish. Let’s retire the term “anti-Semitic”. Frankly after the 911 fraud I am easily sold on what you call conspiracy theories, as long as they are factually based. You can call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, I’ll just smile. Seriously, how can you suggest I or Freedman am lumping all Jews in with the obvious Zionistic schemes that exacerbated WW1 and WW2 ? I think its better to listen to Freedman’s speech than read a transcript, as you get his emotional side which does not come through in print, and one can misinterpret the vibe with print.
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I Made some comments on the effect and importance of the Balfour Declaration, did you not publish these ? Or did they get removed in another the thread that you removed ? If possible could you please put them back as a separate thread ?
I would rather read the transcript in order not to miss the details. He says many times he has the evidence but it is too much to introduce it all in his speech. Yet even just clear references to something we could consult would be sufficient to establish his point. I know of no evidence at all that supports his claims of Jewish Zionist conspiracy and he gives no reason for anyone to seriously think there are any.
If you are persuaded more by the emotional tone than a clear examination and checking of the facts, the supporting evidence, then you are not thinking like an honest historian.
Here is what you wrote about the Balfour Declaration:
and
Neil it seems that more comments I made in the last 24 hours have disappeared, been deleted or disregarded. Have you removed them ? I took a copy this time and repeat them here :
Hi Neil, thank you for displaying my comments on the Balfour Declaration above.
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I still think you should listen to the Freedman speech at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUUsst5V_8Y You will not miss details as you can just as easy “rewind” and in fact you will be able to judge the sincerity of the man by his tone. By his emotion I meant that in the neutral sense, not that he’s emotionally upset; on the contrary he’s very level headed indeed, speaking with conviction and purpose, he does not rant and rave.
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I do want to be an honest historian; and do not wish to be racist. I would welcome guidance from anyone with accurate historical knowledge about what is not correct in Freedman’s analysis. Neil can you actually tell me what Freedman said that you believe is not historically correct ? He asserts that he was an adviser to US President Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924), so don’t you regard that as a good credential ? And why would he lie ? Whose payroll could he be on ? Is he crying sour grapes because his advice was not heeded by the US President ? Is he deranged ? Or is he, as I am inclined to accept, that he is correct in his analysis ? His views line up well with the subsequent history of the US government : the private control of their money supply, the reality of the US military industrial complex, their support of Israel, policies to destabilise the Middle East.
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My Jewish friends tell me that Chomsky as a Jew is a “self-hater”, which I think is an insincere way of trying to discredit him. I think that Freedman gets labeled likewise because, when he discovered and exposed the Zionist schemes in WW1 and WW2, and renounced Judaism, he was regarded as a traitor to the cause, but again, we must not confuse Judaism with Zionism.
I have never heard anything comparable to what Freedman says in his speech from Chomsky.
Here is what I find objectionable in Freedman’s speech:
He begins by speaking of Zionists but before long always refers to ‘the Jews’ as a totality.
As per the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, he says the “Zionists and their co-religionists have complete control of our government” . . . “Zionists and their co-religionists rule this United States as though they were the absolute monarchs of this country.”
He claims that the Jews conspired to have the United States enter WW1 in order to defeat Germany just at the point when Germany had victory “in the bag”, so to speak, and the Jews made their move at that moment in order to bribe Britain into giving them Palestine.
He goes on, as per the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to say the Jews controlled “all the mass media”, the banks, etc. They used their media and financial power to turn the United States overnight from being pro-German to being anti-German — all so that they could get the US into the war and so get the reward of Palestine from Britain.
The Balfour Declaration was the British Government’s reward or payment to the Jews for getting the U.S. to help them win the war.
The Germans finally realized why the U.S. entered the war when at the Peace Conferences they learned for the first time that the Jews had been promised Palestine for manipulating the U.S. to join in.
The Jews had been treated extremely well in Germany up until then, better than in any other country in the world. It was only when the Germans learned they had been betrayed or “sold out” in that way by the Jews that they turned against them.
Germans held the Jews responsible for their defeat and Freedman in fact says they were correct to do so. The Germans were guilty of nothing, Freedman says, only of being successful and thus earning the envy of Britain, France and Russia who decided they wanted to destroy Germany for no good reason. And then, Freedman says,
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He also says the Jews were 98% of the communists at that time, and as communists were trying to take over Germany after the war. They also controlled all the media and economy, of course.
The Jews of the world, Freedman goes on to “explain”, declared an economic boycott of Germany worldwide in order to smash the German economy — Even though, ….
Freedman accuses the Jews at this point of intending to “starve Germany into surrender into the Jews of the world”.
Freedman mentions the word “anti-Semitism” and says he doesn’t like the word because it is “meaningless”. It is meaningless, he later explains, because the only real semites in the world are Arabs and those claiming to be Jews are really a “Turko-Mongoloid” race.
He says the “Jews” were responsible for World War One, for the world-wide economic boycott against Germany, and for World War Two. The Jews were in a life and death struggle against Germany, he says, to see who would survive.
Meanwhile Germany decided to rearm in order to defend the world against Communism and save Christian civilization in Europe.
Freedman speaks of
Freedman says the Jews (in 1961, as he is speaking) “may be planning this World War III” — in order to hold on to Palestine.
But as for the Jewish race, he says they are not really Jews, but a warlike and spiritually degenerate race:
He says their king became so disgusted with their degeneracy that he decided to adopt a monotheistic religion and by chance elected Judaism. Once claiming to be Jews they could now, Freedman says, tell others in the world to give them the land of Palestine:
This deception, Freedman goes on to explain, is “one of the great lies . . . that is the foundation of all the misery that has befallen the world.”
He then compares the solution to this “Jewish problem”, these people who “couldn’t get along” with anyone else in the world, to “flushing the toilet” — sending them “back” to their “homeland”, Palestine.
He goes on to speak of Jews bribing governments, “stuffing their mouths with money”.
He then introduces some “secret” information only he knows as a “Jew” — that on the Day of Atonement the Jews take a vow that secretly absolves them from any vow they may appear to make in the world. In other words, Freedman announces that no Jew can be trusted, everyone is a liar, they all secretly vow that they are free to break any vow.
He warns that the Jews have control of the U.S. just as they once had control of Germany, and that they will lead the U.S. to ruin and defeat in another world war just as they ruined Germany in WW1.
Jews, he also makes clear, are the mainstay of the communists. The communist conspiracy and threat is really a Jewish conspiracy and threat.
But he’s not an “anti-Semite” because,
Does anything more need to be said. Freedman’s speech is rank anti-semitism to the core.
Chomsky is not on the same planet.
Neil thank you very much for spending the time to review Freedman’s speech, I appreciate it greatly. Your reaction is very interesting. It’s basically a harrumph, and I mean that academically, not personally. I will have to agree to disagree with you respectfully as I see the substance of Freedman’s speech, though damming to Zionism, believable and consistent with my world view.
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You said very little to actually expose the facts asserted by Freedman, as if to say “listen to him – it’s ridiculous!” For example the vows that Jews can break is a real Biblical teaching, another relic, like child sacrifice which the Jews practiced.
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Your comment “He begins by speaking of Zionists but before long always refers to ‘the Jews’ as a totality” makes me think that Freedman may indeed have gone too far, I’ll have to revisit the speech to check, thank you for pointing that out.
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I do not agree with you that “Freedman’s speech is rank anti-semitism to the core”. It makes sense to me that rich Jews betrayed or sacrificed poor Jews in the whole gambit of WW1, WW2, Palestine, the holocaust and the State of Israel. I mean that the way I understand Freedman, and am inclined to accept it, is that the Zionists who engineered to get the US into the war, must have known that it would be a rocky road ahead for Jews if the scheme was later uncovered. Yet they felt it had to be done to re-establish a homeland for the Jewish people.
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I know some of my views are marginal. My stance as Jesus mythicist has shown me that. I am not exactly happy to be harrumphed, but am getting used to it. Let’s keep dialoguing.
Peter, Freedman establishes nothing at all as a fact. His speech is nothing but a tirade of assertions. It is entirely in the wake of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and has nothing to link it with serious academic research such as you will find in the writings of Masalha or Chomsky. Nothing, not a single fact. It is entirely ant-semitic in the sense of being anti-Jewish, speaking of the Jews as a perfidious, treacherous race responsible for all the evils in this world.
How can you fail to appreciate that that is rank antisemitism?
Peter, I implore you. Do read the posts of Masalha that I have posted here. There is nothing, nothing, in any of them that provides the slightest iota of evidence for anything Freedman (or you!) assert. Nothing. Stick with the evidence, with reality. Zionism is bad enough but if we lose bearings and let our protest embrace antisemitism we have lost the cause. We become the enemy.
I deplore everything stated, every detail, every sentiment, every assumption, every innuendo, in Freedman’s 1961 speech.
Your comments justify everything left here by Bob de Jong and Joe Wallack and their ilk. They do not target me because I deplore all that they deplore — except I do not twist words or insinuate hidden meanings as they try to do to me.
Peter, I have your other comments nested comfortably here but they are probably not showing up to you (even in “awaiting moderation” status) because they were in response to other comments that I have also withdrawn for now.
My response might seem overly touchy but I cannot forget that this blog was once removed from online status by powers-that-be as a result of a flippant complaint over supposed “plagiarism” when a disgruntled Christian complained about my analysis of his blog post. Far worse allegations have been made against this blog and I don’t underestimate the potential damage they can do. Among those “far worse allegations” are those that try to brand me as a terrorist sympathizer and antisemite. I have been in the blogging world long enough to know that a blog is not judged by its critics on the basis of posts alone but also on how comments are perceived by critics. I don’t always have time to read all comments left here but I do, whenever I have an opportunity, make sure I read anything that is added to a post that has the potential to raise serious controversy — such as posts relating to terrorism and Israel-Palestine.
We now have Bob de Jong twisting my words to accuse me of all sorts of reprehensible sentiments and I do have other critics online whom I have long since blocked (but who are still there) and I have no way of knowing if any of them are in a position or with the intent to carry out more harm or even mere harassment to me both here and when I travel and to this blog and its ability to maintain a presence on the web. I do know from other forums that some of those persons maintain a livid hatred of me and some of the posts I write here, and that they do have an interest in shutting Tim and me down. I don’t wish to be taken offline again because it’s a horrid mess of a business to get back up again. (I do not have the support of a large agency or team behind me; it’s just Tim and me and whatever resources we can lay our hands on at the moment.)
That is where I am coming from, so I hope you will understand if I am perceived as being overly careful about anything that might jeopardize me, Tim, the blog. We’ve been shut down once before. We know that certain persons are still looking for an opportunity to repeat that exercise. I can only ask for understanding.
Good day Neil.
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– Masalha’s views seem to me to be compatible with Freedman’s; what do you think M. is correct about that F. is not ?
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– With Chomsky, I was not suggesting that any of his views are like Freedman’s, though some may be. I was just saying that they are both often labeled by Jews ass self-haters.
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– What would Freedman’s motives be if he was anti-Jewish ? I repeat : why would he lie ? Whose payroll could he be on ? Is he crying sour grapes because his advice was not heeded by the US President ? Is he deranged ?
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– I do not yet accept that he was anti-Jewish, rather, I see him as anti-Zionist. I will get back to you on your comment about what you refer to as his broad sweeps in the speech.
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– Do you see him similar to a former Christian, now atheist, who hates the church ? I know that’s not the best illustration. As a former Jew, he seems to be labeling the majority of Jews, Ashkenazim, as fake Jews, (no disrespect on my part) since they are from proselyted and conscripted peoples and can claim no bloodline to the Jews of first century Israel (Judea).
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– I welcome factual refutation of Freedman’s assertions about the WW1 and WW2 dynamics. Do you have any ?
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– Would any professional / trained historians care to comment ?
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– the fiasco and intrigue of the 911 fraud and resultant current the Middle East turmoil echo Freedman’s expose to me, in that the US government and military-industrial complex are essentially puppets and vegetables controlled by Zionists and multi-billionnaires.
” The Mandate is a reprehensible document drawn up, not by the Mandate’s Commission . . . but by the Zionists themselves in collusion with the British Government in the interests of the National Home. It was never debated in Parliament, but was issued under an Order in Council. This is the true origin of the trouble in Palestine. A fictitious right has been invented, namely, that ‘ the historic connection ‘ of the Jews with Palestine gives them a special status in the land. This supposed ‘ historic connection ‘ is none other than an ancient imposture.” Frances E. Newton: “The Mandate for Palestine,” 1946.
Btw many thanks for all these posts. They should be required reading
Hi Blake. I made a friend this week who is Jewish (at a seminar at a synagogue in Sydney by a visiting US Assyriologist). We chatted in the train on the way home. When I mentioned that I felt that understanding the Balfour Dec (BD) was a key to addressing the Palestinian-Israeli problem he said, and I’ll try to paraphrase, that the Arabs should have accepted it’s terms rather than fight against it. This puzzles me as I understand the BD to just be a commitment by UK to assist Jews to migrate and settle in Palestine, as co-tenants with existing Arab residents, stating that such migration must be without prejudicing the rights of the resident Arabs. We didn’t finish the conversation as he had to get out at Central, but I hope to meet him again to continue our friendship and discussion. Do you think the BD had “terms” or was it just an inadequately drafted document that opened the way for conflict, in the same way that random British colonial borders set by the UK and French Forbes and Piquot (probably spelled that wrong) has led to so much tribal conflict in the Middle East and Africa ? Was and is there an impasse where Arabs resisted Jewish migration and Jews used that rebellion to justify to themselves the creeping capture of more and more Arab land ?
Hi Neil, you mention that “The above four British and Jewish gentleman (sic) met in London”. Are you sure that Philby was Jewish, I read that he was a Muslim?
Philby was not Jewish which is why I wrote “the above four British and Jewish gentlemen . . . ” and explicitly identified which ones were Jewish in the post. The link I supplied pointed out that he converted to Islam in 1930 and the image I displayed strongly suggested his love of Arabian culture. He was also a Zionist.
I did not approve of your other comment because you said it was a reference to a Holocaust denier (a source I am not interested in) and you did not explain its relevance to the post.
Bob, I despise your ongoing outrageous twisting of my words and attempts to smear me with the filth of antisemitism and have accordingly spammed your subsequent comments. I note your inability to address the content of this or previous posts in the series and attempts to turn attention on your ignorant fantasies about me.
Where did comments by RoHa and myself, as well as the colonialist take on them by Grullemans disappear? Is this some kind of a joke where we are baited to comment and than erased wholesale?