"Don't eat Belgian chocolate," the Israel consul in Florida ordered the large Jewish community there.

In Israel, anti-Belgian curses reached an ear-splitting new crescendo. Miserable Belgium! Mad Belgium! Megalomaniac Belgium! And again and again, Anti-Semitic Belgium! Neo-Nazi Belgium!

The Israeli ambassador was, of course, recalled from Brussels. No wonder, how can Israel keep an ambassador in the world capital of anti-Semitism?

The storm broke when a Belgian court decided that Ariel Sharon can be sued for alleged war crimes, but only after finishing his term as Prime Minister of Israel. Israel army officers connected with the 1982 massacre in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps can be sued even now.

On an Israeli TV program, the anchorman, a lawyer, put it this way: "Anti-Semitic Belgium wants to judge the officers of a second country for crimes committed in a third country, while the accused have no connection at all with Belgium, are not on Belgium territory and the whole affair does not concern Belgium. That is megalomania, really a matter for psychiatrists!"

"Strange," I replied on the program, "I seem to remember a case where country A kidnapped in country B the citizen of country C for committing in country D crimes against the citizens of countries E, F and G, all this in spite of the fact the crimes were committed before country A even existed."

I meant, of course, the trial of Adolf Eichmann, to which we all agreed.

"How can you compare the two!" the other participants on the program cried out in outraged unison. And indeed, how can one compare the actions of Jews with actions of goyim committed against Jews?

Well, it were the Jews who demanded, after World War II, that all countries put Nazi war criminals and their allies on trial. Eichmann was judged in Israel according to the Israeli "Law for bringing the Nazis and their Helpers to Justice", which does not recognize any borders. More recently the Knesset enacted another law, enabling Israeli courts to judge perpetrators of any crime committed against Jews anywhere in the world. If so, what's wrong with the Belgian law of "universal jurisdiction", that allows Belgian courts to judge was criminals from all over the world?

Immanuel Kant promulgated the Categorical Imperative: "Act as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature". But then, Kant was probably an anti-Semite.

Hundreds of years ago, the world adopted a legal doctrine that allowed every country to judge and hang pirates, irrespective of their ethnic identity, origin and area of activity. The assumption was that the pirate is an enemy of humanity at large, and that therefore every country has the right ­ indeed, the duty ­ to judge him.

The Belgian law against war crimes is a step in this direction, and I hope that many other countries will follow suit. Of course, it would be better if the International Criminal Court in The Hague would fulfil this duty, but much time will pass before it will be able to. Immense political pressures are being exerted, many limitations have been imposed, its hands and feet have been shackled. Worse, the only super-power, the United States, is openly trying to destroy it (as it destroyed the League of Nations after World War I.)

My dream is that before the end of the 21st century a new, binding world order, headed by a world parliament, will come into being. This order must include a world court and a world police force, that will judge conflicts between nations the way today's national courts judge conflicts between people. The road there is long and full of obstacles, decades will pass before humanity will reach this stage. But we must strive towards this end. In the meantime, other countries must follow the Belgian example, in order to progress along this way. Especially concerning war crimes.

Some will say that we should not extradite our fellow-citizens, that it is the duty of every state to judge its war-criminals itself. But this is utopian: no country in the world has really done so. That is quite natural: not only are states disinclined to admit to such shameful crimes and try to hide them, but generally such crimes are committed by agents of the state itself.

The affair of Sabra and Shatila is a good example. Here, briefly, are the facts:

In the summer of 1982, the Israeli army invaded West Beirut, violating an explicit commitment given to the American mediator, Phillip Habib, not to do so. By that time, the PLO forces had already left the city.

From that moment on, West Beirut, including the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Shatila, became an Israeli occupied territory, making the Israeli army responsible for everything happening there.

After the occupation, the IDF let the "Phalangists", members of an extreme Maronite Christian group, enter the two camps. These people has already committed heinous massacres in other Palestinian refugee camps. They were headed by a notorious mass-murderer, Eli Hweika.

All senior Israeli officials involved with Lebanon knew that the Phalangists were committing atrocities in order to panic the Palestinians into fleeing from Lebanon.

When the Israeli cabinet was informed of the army's intention of letting the Phalangists in, Minister David Levy, who was born in Morocco, warned that this would cause a disaster. His colleagues ignored his warning.

Immediately upon entering the camps, the Phalangists started to butcher men, women and children indiscriminately.

The commander of the action, Eli Hweika, oversaw the action from the roof of the Israeli divisional command post, which was located right next to the camps. The officers of the Israeli division commander, General Amos Yaron, overheard Hweika instructing his men by walkie-talkie to kill women and children, too. They hastened to inform Yaron, but he ignored the message. (Later he admitted: "Our senses had become blunted.")

During the night, while the massacre was going on (it lasted altogether three days), the Israeli Chief-of-Staff, General Raphael Eytan, ordered the army to accede to the Phalangists' request and light the area with flares. He also provided the Phalangists with a tractor (which served, it is assumed, to bury the bodies).

A young Israeli officer who heard the horrible stories of the shocked women who had succeeded in fleeing from the camps, ran from one officer to another, begging them to interfere. All of them refused.

After the massacre, the Begin government refused to order an independent investigation. In a huge demonstration in Tel-Aviv (the mythological 400-thousand-demo), we compelled the government to appoint a high-level state investigation committee, headed by Supreme Court judge Yitzhaq Kahan. It did a good job and its report included all the facts mentioned above. In its conclusions, it found that the Minister of Defense (Sharon), the Chief-of-Staff and a number of other senior officers bear "indirect responsibility" for the outrage. Some of us argued even then that the committee had bent backwards in order to protect the reputation of the state, and that from the same facts much more far-reaching conclusions could have been drawn.

The committee recommended, inter alia, to dismiss the Minister of Defense from his office and to remove Yaron from the active command of troops in the field. But the committee did not recommend to dismiss Sharon altogether from the government and from public life, neither did it dismiss Yaron from the army. It did not take any step against the Chief-of-Staff, because he was about to finish his term anyhow. Other officers suffered minor penalties.

Today, Sharon is Prime Minister, practically commanding the army and Amos Yaron is Director General of the Ministry of Defense. As a matter of fact, all those accused by the Kahan report have been promoted.

Most importantly, not one of those suspected of responsibility for the massacre was ever put on trial (as distinguished from a commission of inquiry).

After the enactment of the Belgian law of universal jurisdiction, the survivors of the massacre sued Sharon and the officers in Brussels. It's this case that has caused the present uproar.

Nobody questions the integrity of the Belgian judicial system. If Sharon and his men are confident of their innocence, why shouldn't they stand trial and prove it? After all, the Israeli government has put at their disposal its senior attorneys, paid by the state. (One could ask, of course, why I should pay for the legal defense of people put on trial for alleged war crimes. But never mind.)

All this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. The use of this defamation against everybody who dares to criticize Sharon and his colleagues reminds one of Dr. Samuel Johnson's sayings: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

So you may eat Belgian chocolate. Even if it is of the bitter kind.

Uri Avnery has closely followed the career of Sharon for four decades. Over the years, he has written three extensive biographical essays about him, two (1973, 1981) with his cooperation. Avnery is featured in the new book, The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent.
 

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Fraud fit for a King: Israel, Zionism, and the misuse of MLK
Tim Wise, 25 January 2003

Rarely am I considered insufficiently cynical. As someone who does anti-racism work for a living, and thus hears all manner of excuse-making by those who wish desperately to avoid being considered racist, not much surprises me. I expect people to lie about race; to tell me how many black friends they have; to swear they haven't a racist bone in their bodies. And every January, with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday just around the corner, I have come to expect someone to misuse the good doctor's words so as to push an agenda he would not likely have supported. As such, I long ago resigned myself to the annual gaggle of fools who deign to use King's "content of their character" line from the 1963 March on Washington so as to attack affirmative action, ostensibly because King preferred simple "color-blindness."

That King actually supported the efforts that we now call affirmative action--and even billions in reparations for slavery and segregation--as I've documented in a previous column, matters not to these folks. They've never read King's work, and they've only paid attention to one news clip from one speech, so what more can we expect from such precious simpletons as these? And yet, even with my cynic's credentials established, the one thing I never expected anyone to do would be to just make up a quote from King; a quote that he simply never said, and claim that it came from a letter that he never wrote, and was published in a collection of his essays that never existed. Frankly, this level of deception is something special. The hoax of which I speak is one currently making the rounds on the Internet, which claims to prove King's steadfast support for Zionism. Indeed, it does more than that.

In the item, entitled "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend," King proclaims that criticism of Zionism is tantamount to anti-Semitism, and likens those who criticize Jewish nationalism as manifested in Israel, to those who would seek to trample the rights of blacks. Heady stuff indeed, and 100% bullshit, as any amateur fact checker could ascertain were they so inclined. But of course, the kinds of folks who push an ideology that required the expulsion of three-quarters-of-a-million Palestinians from their lands, and then lied about it, claiming there had been no such persons to begin with (as with Golda Meir's infamous quip), can't be expected to place a very high premium on truth. I learned this the hard way recently, when the Des Moines Jewish Federation succeeded in getting me yanked from the city's MLK day events: two speeches I had been scheduled to give on behalf of the National Conference of Community and Justice (NCCJ).

Because of my criticisms of Israel--and because I as a Jew am on record opposing Zionism philosophically--the Des Moines shtetl decided I was unfit to speak at an MLK event. After sending the supposed King quote around, and threatening to pull out all monies from the Jewish community for future NCCJ events, I was dropped. The attack of course was based on a distortion of my own beliefs as well. Federation principal Mark Finkelstein claimed I had shown a disregard for the well-being of Jews, despite the fact that my argument has long been that Zionism in practice has made world Jewry less safe than ever. But it was his duplicity on King's views that was most disturbing. Though Finkelstein only recited one line from King's supposed "letter" on Zionism, he lifted it from the larger letter, which appears to have originated with Rabbi Marc Schneier, who quotes from it in his 1999 book, "Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Jewish Community." Therein, one finds such over-the-top rhetoric as this:

"I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth." The letter also was filled with grammatical errors that any halfway literate reader of King's work should have known disqualified him from being its author, to wit: "Anti-Zionist is inherently anti Semitic, and ever will be so."

The treatise, it is claimed, was published on page 76 of the August, 1967 edition of Saturday Review, and supposedly can also be read in the collection of King's work entitled, This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That the claimants never mention the publisher of this collection should have been a clear tip-off that it might not be genuine, and indeed it isn't. The book doesn't exist. As for Saturday Review, there were four issues in August of 1967. Two of the four editions contained a page 76. One of the pages 76 contains classified ads and the other contained a review of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album. No King letter anywhere.

Yet its lack of authenticity hasn't prevented it from having a long shelf-life. Not only does it pop up in the Schneier book, but sections of it were read by the Anti-Defamation League's Michael Salberg in testimony before a House Subcommittee in July of 2001, and all manner of pro-Israel groups (from traditional Zionists to right-wing Likudites, to Christians who support ingathering Jews to Israel so as to prompt Jesus' return), have used the piece on their websites.

In truth, King appears never to have made any public comment about Zionism per se; and the only known statement he ever made on the topic, made privately to a handful of people, is a far cry from what he is purported to have said in the so-called "Letter to an Anti-Zionist friend." In 1968, according to Seymour Martin Lipset, King was in Boston and attended a dinner in Cambridge along with Lipset himself and a number of black students. After the dinner, a young man apparently made a fairly harsh remark attacking Zionists as people, to which King responded: "Don't talk like that. When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking Anti-Semitism." Assuming this quote to be genuine, it is still far from the ideological endorsement of Zionism as theory or practice that was evidenced in the phony letter.

After all, to respond to a harsh statement about individuals who are Zionists with the warning that such language is usually a cover for anti-Jewish bias is understandable. More than that, the comment was no doubt true for most, especially in 1968. It is a statement of opinion as to what people are thinking when they say a certain thing. It is not a statement as to the inherent validity or perfidy of a worldview or its effects.

Likewise, consider the following analogous dualism: first, that "opposition to welfare programs is forever racism," and secondly, that "when people criticize welfare recipients, they mean blacks. This is racism."

Whereas the latter statement may be true--and studies would tend to suggest that it is--the former is a matter of ideological conviction, largely untestable, and thus more tendentious than its counterpart. In any event, as with the King quotes--both fabricated and genuine--the truth of the latter says nothing about the truth or falsity of the former.

So yes, King was quick to admonish one person who expressed hostility to Zionists as people. But he did not claim that opposition to Zionism was inherently anti-Semitic. And for those who criticize Zionism today and who like me are Jewish, to believe that we mean to attack Jews, as Jews, when we speak out against Israel and Zionism is absurd.

As for King's public position on Israel, it was quite limited and hardly formed a cornerstone of his worldview. In a meeting with Jewish leaders a few weeks before his death, King noted that peace for Israelis and Arabs were both important concerns. According to King, "peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity."

But such a statement says nothing about how Israel should be constituted, nor addresses the Palestinians at all, whose lives and challenges were hardly on the world's radar screen in 1968.

At the time, Israel's concern was hostility from Egypt; and of course all would agree that any nation has the right not to be attacked by a neighbor. The U.S. had a right not to be attacked by the Soviet Union too--as King would have no doubt agreed, thereby affirming the United States' right to exist. But would anyone claim that such a sentiment would have implied the right of the U.S. to exist as it did, say in 1957 or 1961, under segregation? Of course not.

So too Israel. Its right to exist in the sense of not being violently destroyed by hostile forces does not mean the right to exist as a Jewish state per se, as opposed to the state of all its citizens. It does not mean the right to laws granting special privileges to Jews from around the world, over indigenous Arabs.

It should also be noted that in the same paragraph where King reiterated his support for Israel's right to exist, he also proclaimed the importance of massive public assistance to Middle Eastern Arabs, in the form of a Marshall Plan, so as to counter the poverty and desperation that often leads to hostility and violence towards Israeli Jews.

This part of King's position is typically ignored by the organized Jewish community, of course, even though it was just as important to King as Israel's territorial integrity.

As for what King would say today about Israel, Zionism, and the Palestinian struggle, one can only speculate.

After all, he died before the full tragedy of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza would be able to unfold.

He died before the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel; before the invasion of Lebanon and the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla; before the 1980's intifada; before Israel decided to serve as a proxy for U.S. foreign policy--funneling weapons to fascist governments in South Africa, Argentina and Guatemala, or helping to arm terrorist thugs in Mozambique and the contras in Nicaragua.

He died before the proliferation of illegal settlements throughout the territories; before the rash of suicide/homicide bombings; before the polls showing that nearly half of Israeli Jews support removing Palestinians via "transfer" to neighboring countries.

But one thing is for sure. While King would no doubt roundly condemn Palestinian violence against innocent civilians, he would also condemn the state violence of Israel.

He would condemn launching missile attacks against entire neighborhoods in order to flush out a handful of wanted terrorists.

He would oppose the handing out of machine guns to religious fanatics from Brooklyn who move to the territories and proclaim their God-given right to the land, and the right to run Arabs out of their neighborhoods, or fence them off, or discriminate against them in a multitude of ways.

He would oppose the unequal rationing of water resources between Jews and Arabs that is Israeli policy.

He would oppose the degrading checkpoints through which Palestinian workers must pass to get to their jobs, or back to their homes after a long day of work.

He would oppose the policy which allows IDF officers to shoot children throwing rocks, as young as age twelve.

In other words, he would likely criticize the working out of Zionism on the ground, as it has actually developed in the real world, as opposed to the world of theory and speculation.

These things seem imminently clear from any honest reading of his work or examination of his life. He would be a broker for peace. And it is a tragedy that instead of King himself, we are burdened with charlatans like those at the ADL, or the Des Moines Jewish Federation, or Rabbis like Marc Schneier who think nothing of speaking for the genuine article, in a voice not his own.


Tim Wise is an antiracist activist, writer and lecturer.

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The Fraud of Zionism
by Wilbur Sensor

Most people have been trained to think of Zionism in positive terms. This is understandable. Decades of propaganda have misrepresented Zionism as a progressive, modern force bringing civilization to an arid, uninhabited wasteland. Such an image is an illusion. This essay will uncover the true history of Zionism. It will reveal the facts and make clear the real nature of the movement.

A MOVEMENT WHICH ASSUMES THE INCOMPATIBILITY OF JEW AND GENTILE

Zionism is an apartheid philosophy. Its founder, Theodore Herzl, was dismayed by the mass anti-semitism in France aroused by the Dreyfuss affair. He became convinced that the separation of the Jews from the Gentiles by ingathering all Jews in a separate Jewish nation was the only solution to the age old "Jewish problem". Herzl spelled out his program in his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State):

"The Jewish question exists. It would be foolish to deny it... The Jewish problem exists wherever Jews live in noticeable numbers. Where it does not exist, it is introduced by Jews who move in... I believe I can understand anti-semitism, which is in many ways a complicated movement. I look on this movement from the standpoint of a Jew - but without hatred or fear. I believe I recognize in anti-semitism what is crude humor, ordinary economic envy, inherited prejudice, religious intolerance - but also what is deemed to be self defense."

"Anti-semitism grows daily, hourly, among the peoples, and must continue to grow since its causes continue to exist, and cannot be alienated."

"The causa remota is the loss, in the Middle Ages, of the ability to assimilate; the cause proxima is our overproduction of middling intelligences, that can neither be drained off, nor rise higher-hence, no healthy draining off, and no healthy rising to a higher level. Downward, we are being proletarianized into revolutionaries; we are the subalterns of every revolutionary party, while at the same time our terrible financial might grows upward."

"Will it not be said that I am putting weapons into the hands of the anti-semites? Why? Because I acknowledge the truth? Because I do not assert that there are none but excellent people among us?"

"It is a national question; to resolve it we must, above all, first make it into a world political question... We are a people, a people..."

"The Jewish State is a world necessity, hence, it will arise..."

Herzl demands:

"We be given sovereignty over a part of the earth's surface sufficient for the rightful requirements of our people; we shall take care of everything else ourselves."

"No one is strong enough, or rich enough, to move a people from one dwelling place to another. Only an idea can do that. The idea of a state may well have such force."

"No economic disruptions, no crises, nor persecutions will follow after the departing Jews, but rather a period of prosperity will begin for the lands left behind. An internal migration of Christian citizens into the positions surrendered by the Jews takes place. The outlook is gradual, without any jolt, and its very beginning is the end of anti-semitism."

"The Jews leave as respected friends. If individual Jews then return, civilized countries will receive and treat them just as they would treat the citizens of any other foreign country."

"This emigration is no flight, but an orderly withdrawal, under the observation of public opinion. The movement is not only to be organized by completely legal means, it can, in any case, be accomplished only with the friendly collaboration of the participating government, which derives substantial benefit therefrom."

As these paragraphs make clear, to be a Zionist one must believe there is a Jewish problem. No Zionist since Herzl has ever repudiated this basic philosophical premise:

"If we do not admit the rightfulness of anti-semitism, we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism. If our people is deserving and willing to live its own national life, then it is an alien body that insists on its own distinctive identity, reducing the domain of their life. It is right, therefore, that they should fight against us for their national integrity.... Instead of establishing societies for defense against the anti-semites who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defense against our friends who desire to defend our rights." (Jacob Klatzkin, co-editor of the Encylopaedia Judaica)

A MOVEMENT WHICH NEVER TOOK ANY CONGNIZANCE OF THE POPULATION OF THE LAND IT COVETED

The Zionists have long maintained the myth, especially in the United States, that Palestine was uninhabited before the arrival of the Zionists. This deception is easily refuted. The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, writing on October 26, 1917:

"Now what is the capacity as regards population of Palestine within any reasonable period of time?...What is to become of the people of this country, assuming the Turk to be expelled, and the inhabitants not to have been exterminated by the war? There are over a half a million of these, Syrian Arabs- a mixed community with Arab, Hebrew, Canaaite, Greek, Egyptian, and possibly Crusaders' blood. They own the soil, which belongs either to individual landowners or to village communities. They profess the Mohammedan faith. They will not be content either to be expropriated for Jewish immigrants, or to act merely as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the latter."

Palestine at the beginning of the Zionist movement was part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Herzl, when he decided to champion a Jewish state in Palestine, necessarily made overtures to the Sultan on behalf of Zionism. These negotiations establish that the Zionists were well aware of the existence of the Palestinian Arabs.

"'When Herzl had spoken of a Charter (from the Sultan) he had not, needless to say, contemplated any eviction of the Arabs of Palestine in favor of the Jews. He was, to judge from his Congress addresses, hardly aware that Palestine had settled inhabitants, and he had, in perfect good faith, omitted the Arabs from his calculations.'"( Zionism, Leonard Stein.)


"Was there ever anything more extraordinary than this? Vast plans are made engaging the destinies of a multitude of people, yet the man who engenders these plans never takes the essential first step of surveying the land where he purposes to carry them out. Nor apparently do any of his associates suggest it to him. There might be no Arabs in the world for all the difference it makes to him or to his associates."

"Year by year Zionist congresses are summoned... Was a single day's session of a single Congress devoted to the discussion of the understanding which must be reached with the people of Palestine? Not one."

"There were nineteen Jewish colonies established in Palestine before the year 1900... All these trusts and colonies and the people who inhabited them were in regular continuous communication with Jewish bodies and persons throughout Europe and America..."

"In a hundred ways the conditions prevailing in Palestine and the existence of the Arabs and the varying ways in which the Arabs reacted to existing colonies and to the promise of more colonies must have been known to all active Zionists."

"The only conclusion then, and it is a conclusion forced upon the observer, is that if Zionism was unaware of the Arabs it was because most Zionists perceived an obstacle in the Arabs and did not want to be aware to them. (Palestine: The Reality, J.M.N. Jeffries, pp. 40-42.)

A MOVEMENT WHICH DISREGARDED PRIOR OBLIGATIONS

Zionism, in addition to coveting someone else's land, has always ignored the issue of prior obligations. The Arabs fought as Great Britain's ally in World War I against Imperial Germany's ally, Ottoman Turkey. The Arabs were guaranteed independence in an unified state once the war was won. The British pledge of Arab independence was contained in a letter dated October 25,1915 by Sir Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt to Sheriff Hussein of Mecca.

"The districts of Mersina and Alexandretta and portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus, hama, homs, and Aleppo cannot be said to be purely Arab, and should be excluded from the proposed limits and boundaries. With the above modification, and without prejudice to our existing treaties with Arab chiefs, we accept these limits and boundaries..."

"Subject to the above modifications, Great Britain is prepared to recognize and support the independence of the Arabs within the territories included in the limits and boundaries proposed by the Shereef of Mecca." (Palestine: The Reality, op. cited,p.76.)

British politicians later pretended that the pledge given by Sir Henry McMahon did not include Palestine. They are impeached by a secret Political Intelligence Department Memorandum on British Commitments to King Hussein. On page 9 the Memorandum states:

"With regard to Palestine, His Majesty's Government are committed by Sir H. McMahon's letter to the Sherif on the 24th October, 1915 to its inclusion in the boundaries of Arab independence."

The Zionist claim to Palestine has always rested on Lord Arthur Balfour's letter of November 2, 1917 promising British support for a "Jewish national homeland" in Palestine. This letter was issued nearly two years after Sir Henry McMahon's pledge of October 25,1915.

A MOVEMENT WHICH WROTE ITS OWN TITLE

Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothchild

"I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a National home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

This document is the grant deed which planted Zionism in the Near East. It is the most discreditable document ever issued by a major power. It was written by those to whom it was addressed and was the payoff for a shameless political manipulation.

The British government did not abandon its pledge to the Arabs because of altruistic concern for a "Jewish national homeland". The real reason was stated by David Lloyd George, Britain's wartime Prime Minister:

"There is no better proof of the value of the Balfour Declaration as a military more than the fact that Germany entered into negotiations with Turkey in an endeavor to provide an alternative scheme which would appeal to Zionists. A German-Jewish Society, the V.J.O.D. was formed, and in January 1918, Talaat, the Turkish Grand Vizier, at the instigation of the Germans, gave vague promises of legislation by means of which "all justifiable wishes of the Jews in Palestine would be able to meet their fulfillment".

"Another most cogent reason for the adoption by the Allies of the policy of the Declaration lay in the state of Russia herself. Russian Jews had been secretly active on behalf of the Central Powers from the first; they had become the chief agents of German pacifist propaganda in Russia; by 1917 they had done much in preparing for that general disintegration of Russian society, later recognized as the Revolution. It was believed that if Great Britain declared for the fulfillment of Zionist aspirations in Palestine under her own pledge, one effect would be to bring Russian Jewry to the cause of the entente."

"It was believed, also, that such a declaration would have a potent influence open world Jewry outside Russia, and secure for the entente the aid of Jewish financial interests. In America, their aid in this respect would have a special value when the Allies had almost exhausted the gold and marketable securities available for American purchase. Such were the chief considerations which, in 1917, impelled the British Government towards making a contract with Jewry." (Memoirs of the Peace Conference, David Lloyd George, p. 726.)

The eminent Mr. Lloyd George's opinion is confirmed by numerous other sources, especially by Mr. Samuel Landman in his work Great Britain, The Jews and Palestine, Mr. Landman was a very well known English Zionist whose positions included honorary secretary of the Zionist Council of the United Kingdom in 1912, editor of The Zionist, 1913-1914, solicitor and secretary of the Zionist Organization, 1917-1922, and author of several Zionist publications during World War One. His opinion is thus an official one which is completely consistent with that of Lloyd George.

"Mr. James A. Malcolm... spontaneously took the initiative, to convince first of all Sir Mark Sykes, Under-Secretary to the War Cabinet, and afterwards M. Georges-Picot, of the French Embassy in London, and M. Gout of the Quai d'Orsay (Eastern Section), that the best and perhaps the only way (which proved so to be) to induce the American President to come into the War was to secure the co-operation of Zionist Jews by promising them Palestine, and thus enlist and mobilize the hitherto unsuspectedly powerful forces of Zionist Jews in America and elsewhere in favor of the Allies on a quid pro quo contract basis..."

"The Balfour Declaration, in the words of Prof. H.M.V. Temperley, was a 'definite contract between the British Government and Jewry' (History of the Peace Conference in Paris, vol 6, p.173). The main consideration given by the Jewish people (represented at the time by the leaders of the Zionist Organization) was their help in bringing President Wilson to the aid of the Allies." (Great Britain, The Jews and Palestine, pp.3-6.)

Thus, according to the documented statements of both parties the British betrayed their war time ally, the Arabs, in deference to Zionist manipulation in bringing the U.S. into the war on Britains side.

The Balfour declaration was not written by British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour. It was written by American and English Zionists on both sides of the Atlantic. Many versions were prepared, discarded and rewritten before the final version was submitted to Lord Balfour to be issued in his name. English politicians, such as Lord Robert Cecil, made minor emendations to the letter which their Zionist "professors" wrote for them. The Covenant of the League of Nations which provided the international legal basis for establishing a British protectorate, or "Mandate" over Palestine was largely written by the Zionist agent, South African general Jan Smuts. The drafting of the language of the actual Mandate was written by U.S. Zionist and Harvard Law Professor Felix Frankfurter at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.

A MOVEMENT WHICH MADE FALSE PROMISES OF EQUAL TREATMENT

The false promises of equal treatment for the Arabs are to be found in the Balfour declaration itself. This declaration was produced by many hands over many months with deception as its deliberate objective.

"This too, memorable document is not so much a sentence of English as a verbal mosaic. Drafts for it traveled back and forth, within England or over the Ocean, to be scrutinized by some two score draftsmen half co-operating, half competing with one another, who erased this phrase or adopted that after much thought. At long last, out of the store of their rejections and of their acceptances the final miscellany was chosen, ratified and fixed. There never has been a proclamation longer prepared, more carefully produced, more consciously worded."

Whatever is to be found in the Balfour Declaration was put into it deliberately. There are no accidents in that text. If there is any vagueness in it this is an intentional vagueness.

"....this nationally issued and nationally endorsed document was nothing but a calmly planned piece of deception." (Palestine: The Reality, J.M.N. Jeffries, pp.)

The entire Balfour Declaration cannot here be analyzed. A few illustrations of its deceptive character will suffice.

"...it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious nights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine..."

"At the time of the Balfour Declaration the population of Palestine was 90% Arab and 10% Jew.

"Before this unpalatable reality, what did the framers of the Balfour Declaration do? By an altogether abject subterfuge, under colour of protecting Arab interests, they set out to conceal the fact that the Arabs to all intents constituted the population of the country. It called them the 'non-Jewish communities in Palestine'! It called the multitude the non-few; it called the 670,000 the non-60,000; out of a hundred it called the 91 the non-9. You might just as well call the British people 'the non-Continental communities in Great Britain'. It would be as suitable to define the mass of working men as 'the non-idling communities in the world,' or the healthy as the "non-bedridden elements amongst sleepers,' or the sane as 'the non-lunatic section of thinkers' - or the grass of the countryside as 'the non-dandelion portion of the pastures'." (ibid, pp. 177-178.)

"The crux arrives with 'civil rights'. What are 'civil rights'? All turns on this point. If civil rights remain undefined it is only a mockery to guarantee them. To guarantee anything, and at the same time not to let anyone know what it is, that is Alice in Wonderland legislation. 'I guarantee your civil rights', said the White Queen to Alice in Palestineland. 'Oh, thank you!' said Alice, 'what are they, please?' 'I'm sure I can't tell you, my dear,' said the White Queen, 'but I'll guarantee very hard.'" (ibid, p.179)

As soon as the Zionists set up shop in Palestine they made clear the real relationship of Jew to Arab. The formal government authority in Palestine, 1918-1920, was rested in the British Military Government. A competing, and in fact superior form of government existing side by side the British Military Government was the Zionist Commission. The attitude of the British Military Government and of the native Arab population was summed up by Sir Louis Bols:

"It will be recognized from the foregoing that my own authority and that of every department of my Administration is claimed or impinged upon by the Zionist Commission, and I am definitely of opinion that this state of affairs cannot continue without grave danger to the public peace and to the prejudice of my Administration."

"It is no use saying to the Moslem and Christian elements of the population that our declaration as to the maintenance of the status quo on our entry into Jerusalem has been deserved. Facts witness otherwise: the introduction of the Hebrew tongue as an official language; the setting up of a Jewish judicature the whole fabric of Government of the Zionist Commission, of which they are well aware; the special traveling privileges to members of the Zionist Commission; these have firmly and absolutely convinced the non-Jewish elements of our partiality. On the other hand, the Zionist Commission accuses me and my officers of anti-Zionism. The situation is intolerable, and in justice to my officers and myself must be fairly faced."

"This Administration has loyally earned out the wishes of His Majesty's Government, and has succeeded in so doing by strict adherence to the laws governing the conduct of the Military Occupant of Enemy Territory, but this has not satisfied the Zionists, who appear bent on committing the temporary Military Administration to a partialist policy before the issue of the Mandate. It is manifestly impossible to please partisans who politically claim nothing more than a "National Home", but in reality will be satisfied with nothing less than a Jewish State and all that it politically implies."

"I recommend therefore, in the interests of peace, of development, of the Zionists themselves, that the Zionist Commission in Palestine be abolished." (ibid,p.359)
A MOVEMENT WHICH DISCARDED ITS OWN SPONSOR

The British Mandate existed only to protect the incoming Zionists from the native Arabs. Mr. Vladimir Jabotinsky makes this clear in his 1923 title The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs):

"Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, be continued and make progress only under the protection of a power independent of the native population - an iron wall, which will be in a position to resist the pressure to the native population. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs... A voluntary reconciliation with the Arabs is out of the question either now or in the future."

"If you wish to colonize a land in which people are already living, you must provide a garrison for the land, or find some 'rich man' or benefactor who will provide a garrison on your behalf. Or else-or else, give up your colonization, for without an armed force which will render physically impossible any attempt to destroy or prevent this colonization, colonization is impossible, not "difficult', not 'dangerous', but IMPOSSIBLE!...Zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important.... to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot - or else I am through with playing at colonizing."

The British soon realized what a grave problem they had created for themselves by sponsoring Zionism in Palestine. The Arab riots of 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936-39 brought one British investigating commission after another to Palestine, all reaching the same conclusion - the cause of unrest in Palestine was massive Jewish immigration into a land already inhabited by Arabs.

In 1937 a Royal Investigating Commission headed by Lord Peel concluded that the proper solution to Jewish-Arab tension was to partition Palestine, creating a Jewish state, an Arab state and a British maintained "Polish Corridor" dividing the two. The Zionists reluctantly accepted the partition proposal but the Arabs did not. From this point on the British had outlived their usefulness to the Zionists.

In 1944 the terrorist underground Jewish group, the Irgun Zvai Leumi, began a partisan war to drive the British out of Palestine. The many bloody misdeeds of this group included assassinating British Soldiers, raiding British military depots, assassinating the British High Commissioner in Egypt, dynamiting the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, etc. until the British finally quit Palestine on May 15, 1948.

A MOVEMENT WHICH COLLABORATED WITH THE AVOWED ENEMY OF ALL JEWS

Zionism was founded on the mutual incompatibility of Jew and Gentile. As such it had a built in incentive for collaborating with another ideology built on the incompatibility of Jew and Gentile - Nazism.

Zionist collaboration with National Socialism dates almost from the inception of the Hitler regime. The Ha'avara, or Transfer Agreement dates from May, 1933. Under this arrangement approximately 10% or 50-60,000 of Germany's 500-600,000 Jews were sent to Palestine with their assets minus an exit tax. This fulfilled the Zionist desire to reroute Jews to Palestine while promoting the Nazi desire to rid Germany of Jewish influence.

Zionism enjoyed the official favoritism of the Hitler government. Numerous articles praising Zionism appeared in the German press. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Reich Propaganda Minister, commissioned a special medallion commemorating Zionism. The Zionist blue and white flag was the only national symbol permitted to fly in Germany other than the swastika. More importantly, special Zionist training camps existed in Germany to train German Jews for agricultural work in Palestine.

On at least one occasion, Chaim Weizmann the future first president of Israel vetoed the Rublee-Schact plan of January, 1939 which would have removed all Jews from Germany within a five year period. Weizmanns reason for so doing? He felt it was preferable to leave the Jews under German control so that they could later be sent to Palestine, rather than allow them to choose their own destination. In this regard Weizmann endorsed the thinking of his political rival, David Ben-Gurion:

"If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel." (Yoar-Gelber, Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry (1939-42), Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XII,p.199.)

A MOVEMENT WHICH REJECTS INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION BUT WHICH DEMANDS INTERNATIONAL OBEDIENCE

Zionism has never rested on consent, either of the Arabs of Palestine, of the influential English Jewish community which opposed it when first proposed or of the occasional gentile politician who warned of its dangers. Zionism has always demanded "Bow Down Before Me"!

Zionism ignored the British White Papers urging restriction of Jewish immigration to Palestine, it has ignored the United Nations resolutions on return of conquered territories, it continues to ignore the settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan river.

Zionism will never become a democratic movement because it is a doctrine of divine right. It is rooted in blood, mysticism and return to the soil.

Zionism has forged its case. It has used deceit, broken promises, backroom diplomacy, violence, blackmail and terrorism to achieve its ends. It has slept with the Devil while posing as an angel.