Reading about the current events got me looking into the history of Palestine and Israel, and I noticed a lot of Israel’s politicians (like Yitzhak Shamir, Menachem Begin, and Ariel Sharon to name a few) were Zionist terrorists (using the word literally, not subjectively) since before the establishment of Israel. The groups they belonged to, like Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi have been designated terrorist organizations by the United Nations, British, and United States governments, and
Albert Einstein, in a letter to The New York Times in 1948, compared Irgun and its successor Herut party to “Nazi and Fascist parties” and described it as a “terrorist, right wing, chauvinist organization”.
The Zionists have explained their view as follows:
Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat. We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: “Ye shall blot them out to the last man.”
and
Late in 1940, Lehi, having identified a common interest between the intentions of the new German order and Jewish national aspirations, proposed forming an alliance in World War II with Nazi Germany.[22] The organization offered cooperation in the following terms: Lehi would rebel against the British, while Germany would recognize an independent Jewish state in Palestine/Eretz Israel, and all Jews leaving their homes in Europe, by their own will or because of government injunctions, could enter Palestine with no restriction of numbers.[32] Late in 1940, Lehi representative Naftali Lubenchik went to Beirut to meet German official Werner Otto von Hentig. The Lehi documents outlined that its rule would be authoritarian and indicated similarities between the organization and Nazis.
It just gets worse the more you look into it, but it does give important context to the current genocide in Gaza, and to the decades old conflict in general.
Agreed. I find the people in my life who blindly support Israel know nothing of the history of Zionism prior to 1948 and think Palestine was given to Israel just because of the holocaust, almost universally omitting that there were already people there and the responsibility of all western governments (I’m considering Russia “west” here) in the oppression of Jews in the years leading up to, and after, the holocaust.
The Behind the Bastards episode on Bibi Netanyahu talked about how he really got his start in the US as a lobbyist for the state of Israel and the media blitz Israel utilized to get both American parties to unconditionally support Israel. Most Americans are just propagandized af.
You are right, of course. There are things we can’t condone. But you realize that by saying it you sound exactly like the “all lives matter” response to BLM: technically correct, but oblivious to the context in which the original statement arises. When we say Palestinian lives matter, we aren’t saying Israeli lives don’t. We’re saying that you have forgotten that Palestinian lives even matter at all.
My favorite Israeli history tidbit is how their terror cells assassinated one of the guys trying to negotiate a peaceful way out of the violence creating the state of Israel caused because they were (wrongly, it turns out) afraid that the official government would try to take a peaceful solution to the conflict which might have jeopardized the creation of the ethnostate.
Bernadotte had previously gained international renown for negotiating the release of thousands of Nazi concentration camp prisoners including hundreds of interred Jewish people.
You should have continued citing your sources to have complete picture and correct historical context, not picking and choosing since it creates distorted picture:
Believing that Nazi Germany was a lesser enemy of the Jews than Britain, Lehi twice attempted to form an alliance with the Nazis, proposing a Jewish state based on “nationalist and totalitarian principles, and linked to the German Reich by an alliance”.[22][23] After Stern’s death in 1942, the new leadership of Lehi began to move towards support for Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union[17] and the ideology of National Bolshevism, which was considered an amalgam of both right and left.
I guess, yea.
Lehi supported both Hitler and Stalin.
You’re right, that does make the picture more complete!
To add even more context, Lehi was an offshoot of Irgun which was an extremist offshoot of Haganah. They had less than 300 members compared to Haganah’s 20,000.
Their ideology probably isn’t an accurate representation of all the politicians you mentioned except Yitzhak Shamir who was a leader of Lehi and became a prime minister of Israel 40 years later which is a bit weird.
Thanks for the additional context.
Well, about Ariel Sharon (from Wikipedia)
An official enquiry found that he bore “personal responsibility” for the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees, for which he became known as the “Butcher of Beirut” among Arabs. He was subsequently removed as defense minister.
And Begin
was described by the British government as the “leader of the notorious terrorist organisation”.
And there was a famous open letter published (the one signed by Einstein, among others) that
described Begin’s Herut party as “terrorist, right-wing chauvinist organization in Palestine,”[34] “closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties” and accused his group (along with the smaller, militant, Stern Gang) of preaching “racial superiority” and having “inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community”.
And those guys held the highest government office of Israel! It might be weird but it’s not uncommon, especially if you look into other government posts too. Like I said, the more you look into it the worse it gets.
Edit: another example
In 1915, Pinhas Felix Rosenblüth, who rose to be Israel’s first Justice Minister, wrote in a field report on Ostjuden published in Der Jüdische Student that the great lesson for young Jewish Zionists fighting on the eastern front, on experiencing delusions at what they observe of Jewish life there, was that Palestine was one large “institute for the fumigation of (all) Jewish vermin” (Große Entlausungsanstalt für alles jüdische Ungeziefer).
Abolishing private ownership of the means of production is definitionally left, so I don’t know who would consider it an “amalgam of both right and left” 😂
Unlike in the UK where Jews were considered second-class citizens, or in Nazi Germany where they were being ethnically cleaned & genocided, the Soviet Union had Jews among the Communist party ranks, including the politburo. There were Jewish Bolsheviks in the Communist revolution, so they’d been there from the start.
Abolishing private ownership of the means of production is definitionally left, so I don’t know who would consider it an “amalgam of both right and left” 😂
Maybe because Ultranationalism is very much a far right aspect of fascism?
Think you didn’t read it thoroughly enough. That text is talking about national “bolsheviks”, so just nazis.
Yeah it was about the USSR and about Nazbols, but I only noticed the USSR part on first reading.
Anyway Nazbol shitstains always seem to pop up at the fringes to prey on baby leftists. Caleb Maupin’s little cryptofash cult infested BreadTube for a while, seemingly collapsed in a sex scandal, but still somehow seems to skulk about: https://cpiusa.org/
If I recall correctly, the Hagana, Irgun and Lehi brigade eventually became the modern day IDF (literally). Those Nazi worshippers today are an important cultural aspect of Israel, in the form of helping to brainwash Israeli youth, and they’re also remembered as heroes by Israel (and ‘remembered’ as in the very same terrorists back then who are still alive today are remembered. This wasn’t so long ago that it’s beyond living memory). Israelis also usually go out and protest any time a member of the IDF is on trial for murdering a Palestinian.
I’ve basically always thought it would be a funny solution to everyone’s gripe with Hamas to just give them new branding as well and voila, problem solved.
This is kind of how I became a socialist.
Did a mission trip to Nicaragua when I was young, got home and wondered why the country was so fucked up.
“Oh, it’s literally entirely America’s fault, intentional, and their exact strategy for foreign relations which is just imperialism.”
