George Galloway: blame the Jews
British MP George Galloway, current darling of the left for his testimony against the Iraq war before the US Senate earlier this year and for slaying such mediocre dragons as Christopher Hitchens, reveals a disturbing side in a Sept. 9 interview with the loopy conspiranoid site Prison Planet, in which he both blames the Jews for persecution of Jews (including bringing Hitler to power), as well as for unleashing the global terror wave upon the world.
Of course, the past masters of government sponsored terrorism were the Zionists, who created the condition in the Arab countries, and in some European countries to stampede the Jewish populations out of the countries they had been living in for many hundreds years and get them into a Zionist state. Galloway comments:
"Suddenly Jewish people who had been the victims of Christian persecution suddenly saw their Synagogues being blown up, their countries being attacked and all kinds of provocations being staged so packed their bags and moved to occupied Palestine, then to be called Israel."
[...]
Returning to staged terrorism and Zionism Mr Galloway pointed out that Zionism has nothing to do with Jewishness. The Zionist movement, as it is well documented, funded Hitler before World War Two and many of the figurehead of Zionism were not and are not Jews.
"The reality is these people have used Jewish people, and they have used them with this ideology of Zionism, to create this little Hitler State on the Mediterranean, to act as an advance guard for their own interests in the Arab world, and we're all paying for it, the Palestinians have paid for it, the Arabs have paid for it, and now the American people are paying for it, and why should we? We don't want to live our lives in a permanent state of warfare and division."
Gee, really charming stuff. We just love that weasily "Zionism has nothing to do with Jewishness" line, the kind of ritual pseudo-distancing which always serves as a prelude for wacky anti-Semitic hallucinations. Meanwhile, we'd love to see the "documentation" that the "Zionist movement funded Hitler." We're waiting, George.
Thanks to our comrade David Adler for bringing this egregious horsecrap to light on his blog.
"zionist movement funded Hitler" quote
He's referring to the Ha'avarah Agreement. See:
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2004w16/msg00168.htm
for quotes from Arendt and Friedlaender regarding this.
non-sequitor
Here's what it says. Not a word here about the Zionist movement funding Hitler. And certainly all such cooperation came to an end by 1939.
Galloway's anti-semitism
So how does equating the awful practices of the Zionist state with Hitler's count as anti-semitism?
As for Zionist connections with Nazism I suggest you use Google but, just to be helpful:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=36171
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n4p29_Weber.html
Why are you trying to smear Galloway? Defending the human rights of Palestinians is not an attack on the rights of Israelis, except to maichean zionists of course.
Just keep moving the goal-post guys
Maybe the slow-witted won't notice. There is not a word in the material you link to about the Zionists funding Hitler. And congratulations on citing the Institute for Historical Review, a notorious Holocaust-denial outfit. Nearly spares me the effort of refuting your hogwash.
Equating Israel with Hitler may be mere sloppiness and overstatement rather than anti-Semitism. Saying Jews are responsible for their own oppression is anti-Semitism.
I believe you meant "Manichean" not "maichean."
It was always going to be a q
It was always going to be a question of whether Galloways corruption or his hatred of "Israel" would bring him down.
I thought it would be the corruption.
Maybe not
How about the fact that he's a Jew-hating wack job?
Just asking.
Why not read this
Why not read this
Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm
in particular
Fundamental Features of the Proposal of the National Military Organization in Palestine (Irgun Zvai Leumi) Concerning the Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe and the Participation of the NMO in the War on the Side of Germany (1941)
http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/irgunazi.htm
51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis (Hardcover)
by Lenni Brenner
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1569802351/103-9189673-6537455?v=glance
And the goal posts dance around the playing field...
I already read Zionism in the Age of Dictators. It paints an extremely one-sided picture, but (unlike the spewings of the IHR) the facts it presents are accurate and documented. It contains not a word about the Zionist movement "funding Hitler"—because it didn't.
You know, Stalin openly collaborated with Hitler between September of 1939 and June of 1941. I don't hear anyone on the supposed "left" arguing that the Russians were therefore to blame for Hitler's rape of their country.
Read more carefully
The claim that "The Zionist movement ... funded Hitler before World War Two" is false, but it was made by the web site that interviwed him, not by Galloway himself.
I always read carefully
It was by implication (at least) attributed to Galloway. And the stuff directly attributed to him (in quotes) is scarcely less abhorrant. And why is he slumming around with Prison Planet anyway?
Apparently not this time
The "implication" is simply your interpretation.
As to the views directly attributed to Galloway, there is considerable evidence (some uncovered by Israeli historians) suggesting that some attacks on synagogues in Arab countries in the 1950s were the work of Zionist provocateurs.
I have never heard of Prison Planet before, but during his just completed US tour, Galloway was ignored by most mainstream US media sources, so he made himself available to anyone willing to interview him. He also appeared on Bill O'Reilly's and Michael Medved's shows. One shouldn't conclude from that that he agrees with their views.
Yes, even this time
The "simply my interpretation" is disingenuous bunk. The Zionists-funded-Hitler line was clearly in the context of a paraphrase of Galloway's words. I've heard the claims about the Zionist provocateurs too—could be. I object more strongly to the "Hitler State" line. (How come nobody ever calls Colombia or Turkey or Indonesia a "Hitler State"? How come this epithet is met with howls of protest from the leftoid legions when it is applied to Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein?) And especially to the notion that "the American people" are paying for "the ideology of Zionism." Not for the crimes of our own government, but for "the ideology of Zionism." Yeah, everything is the Jews' fault.
At least Bill O'Reilly will afford him widespread exposure. I feel sorry for Mr. Galloway if he is so hard up he has to go to the tin-foil hat crowd at Prison Planet.
Bill? Alittle mixed eh?
Excuse me, but calling all Jews, >Zionist< is a little like calling all blacks,. So I take it you must be a White, Jewish, Zionist right?
Zionism is an Extreme Right Wing thing, you know! It's like the Klu Kluk Klan of the Jewish World (most Jews didn't want anything to do with Zionists going back to it's birth in 1898). Remember the United Nations declared Zionism to be Racism! Contemplate on the fact that a good percentage of Zionist aren't even Jewish, but rather Christian Zionists, who are over anxious for "The Second Coming"! Since you can be a Zionist even if you're not Jewish, then it is OK to even be a Facist/Communist and still be a Zionist today (especially in light of who owns all the banks). Well for the most part they have more of a connection to Zionists, than they do Jews! Some Jewish, some Christian, and even some Muslims (like the Bin Laden Family of Saudi Arabia)! But even their own people call them Zionists! And we can even include Golda Meir, a woman as a member in 1948. ;)
Don't you guys ever get tired of it?
Nobody ever said all Jews are Zionists. Completely irrelevant to the argument. And your overheated rhetoric betrays you. Zionism is no more "Extreme Right Wing" (there's that upper case fetish again) than any other form of colonialism or nationalism.
Bill's claim of "open collaboration" is a profound distortion
There was no "collaboration" between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. That is a lie. They signed a very temporary "non-aggression pact" AFTER the western powers had done likewise in order to forestall the initiation of conflict and move the battelines a few hundred miles to the West (away from Leningrad).
This lie has been repeated by right-wing social democrats and liberals for decades now and it is JUST NOT TRUE. It is a distortion at best and willful dissembling at worst.
Who armed the Spanish partisans fighting Franco?
A: The Soviet Union
Who formed the backbone of virtually every partisan resistance in Europe, as well as formed Popular Fronts Against Fascism in almost every country on earth?
A: Communists, under the political leadership of the Soviet Union
There were no industrial or trade agreements between the Soviet Union and Germany, which the USA had in effect. There was no collaboration on international affairs. There were no joint diplomatic offensives. There was no commonality of purpose. The only thing the Soviet Union and Germany had in common was that the US/UK alliance wished them both ill. This is the same garbage line today that says that those who oppose US imperialism somehow have to justify every creepy regime that runs afoul of US management... but wait, Bill argues that too.
You are trafficking in a lie.
Which you seem to do on the regular.
The myth of the collaboration between Nazis and communists hides the plain fact that they went to war in what was the single greatest clash in human history. But Bill will paint any picture he think justifies his own positions that are "agnostic" on US and Western imperialism against the supposed despotism of Stalinism and the backwardness of wogs everywhere.
(And if Bill wants a bibiliography of State Department Socialists who do, in fact, argue that Stalin was to blame for the German invasion... I'm sure it's already on your shelf.)
Pathetic revisionism
Stalin tried until 1939 to woo the Western bourgeois democracies into his Popular Front (which, incidentally, entailed the crushing of the Spanish anarchists and the restoration of capitalism in Catalonia and Aragon to reassure France and England). The West didn't take the bait, and mere weeks after Madrid fell to the fascists in 1939, Stalin decided to cut his losses and make a deal with the Fuhrer. The two tyrants gobbled up Poland on mutually agreeable terms, and Uncle Joe took the Baltics and half Finland for good measure (thereby driving the previously neutral Finns into the Nazi camp). At this point the line of the entire world communist movement (following the Kremlin and Comintern) became pacifist, opposing Churchill as a war-monger when he came to power in 1940 and generally downplaying the Nazi threat. So, contrary to your distortions, Stalin was still upholding Molotov-Ribbentrop in the name of "peace" with Hitler after the British leadership had already repudiated Munich. This treasonous state of affairs continued to obtain until Adolf betrayed his buddy with Operation Barbarossa in June 1941. Then Stalin began aiding instead of slaughtering Polish patriots—although he was sure to hold his armies back at the very gates of Warsaw in September 1944 to give the Nazis time to put down the uprising in the city, sparing the Red Army the trouble! The facts speak for themselves. Go spread your vile lies elsewhere.
George Galloway: blame the Jews
Mr. Weinberg,
Re: your original post. It's unfortunate that Hitchens has the dubious Galloway to use as a straw man to collectively represent those opposed to the Iraq war and occupation. (Though Even Amnesty International and Cindy Sheehan do not escape the venom of Hitchens’ agenda).
For Galloway to say that Zionism has nothing to do with Jewishness is obviously untrue: Israel's "Law of Return" for example, clearly wasn't written for Arab Palestinians.
On the other hand, your reference to:
"the kind of ritual pseudo-distancing which ALWAYS [emphasis mine] serves as a prelude for wacky anti-Semitic hallucinations" actually attests the success of a propaganda strategy designed to shut down criticism of Israeli policy and its supporters.
The pervasive mind set goes: Zionism is the same as being Jewish, therefore to critique Zionism (or oppose Israel's policies) is anti-Semitic.
Obviously, the "ritual distancing" would not be so prevalent if this smear of "anti-Semite" was not so ritualistically applied to critics of Israel (though not so much in Israel itself) that it has become a knee-jerk reaction in the minds of many in the West.
This smear tactic is not even deterred by the fact that many of the most articulate critics of Israeli policy are Jewish: they are labelled anti-Semites by way of being "self-hating Jews".
Although I've seen many good pieces from you, your seeming endorsement of this propaganda strategy is disturbing.
Mr Weinberg, could do a little gesture yourself and say the obvious: that being a strong critic of Israeli policy does not make you an anti-Semite, and that there are often reasons other than anti-Semitism for someone to feel the need to differentiate? (I suppose the fact that you said "pseudo" distancing allows for existence of "real" distancing--though this is not clear from your statement).
Oh please, spare me
Are we talking about "criticism of Israel"? No. I am a "critic of Israel" myself, and I feel no need to preface my criticisms of Israel's theft and colonization of Palestinian lands with any caveats about Zionism having "nothing to do with Jewishness." (What the heck is "Jewishness" anyway? Certainly not a precise term such as Judaism, Jewish ethnicity or Hebrew nationalism—such vague locutions clue you in that the writer either doesn't know what he's talking about or else has something to hide.)
But what Galloway and PP engage in here isn't "criticism of Israel"—it is anti-Semitism. (The Jews were responsible for Hitler, the Jews are responsible for al-Qaeda, etc.) So yes, this is bogus "pseudo-distancing." It is you who is falling for a propaganda scam, not me. Wake up. I am sick to death of having to explain the obvious.
And, by the way...
Why is it only posts about the Jews that spark these endless exchanges? I write about Nasa Indians in Colombia, Mapuches in Chile, Mayas in Chiapas, Armenians and Kurds in Turkey, Ismailis and Baluchis in Pakistan, Ahmadiyyas in Bangladesh, Mouros in Sri Lanka, Evenks in Siberia, Berbers in Algeria, Hassaniya in Western Sahara, Sardinians in Italy, Houmas in Louisiana—and not a word of reply from anybody. But heaven forbid I come to the defense of the Jews from hateful calumnies, and the whole world comes out of the woodwork to assail me. The only other such example is the Muslims of Bosnia. Why is that, I wonder?
Good question
I like to think that the majority of humanity can recognize the remarkable brutality and particular evil of the European Holocaust, and that any criticism of Israel as a modern nation-state would have to take into account the Jewish experience of this holocaust. And yet it is always the reverse. The holocaust is disbelieved by smearing its direct outcome, the strength of the Zionist movement.
I for one would like to thank you Bill for standing up for historical truth against the cowards who would destroy it.
What Galloway said
According to the UK Jewish News, what Galloway said was that Israel was a "little settler state on the Mediterranean." It appears Prison Planet changed it to "Hitler state."
When asked about the interview, Galloway told the Jewish News: "I stand by all those comments. Everything I have said there is fact and there are shelves full of books to prove it. I believe that Zionism has exploited the Jewish people as much as the Palestinian people and has turned the people of Einstein and Epstein into one apparently represented by Sharon and Netanyahu."
The British government said it had “no intention of validating these well-known views of George Galloway with any comment."
Nu, who is this Epstein?
The answer is obvious
Brian Epstein, the manager of the Beatles of course. Remember, Galloway is British, and the Fab Four are today all national heroes. Galloway may also fondly remember the famous episode in which the young John Lennon (who Epstein reportedly hit up for a handjob when they were on vacation together in Barcelona) suggested Brian entitle his autobiography "Queer Jew"—providing much fodder for politically correct Lennon-bashers to this day.
Another possibility is that Galloway really meant Spinoza, which sounds just like "Epstein."
I think you weill find that
I think you weill find that you're talking rubbish. You obviously can't read because non of that is what was said.
And by the way Zionists did use ant-semitic movements in Russia pre-1917 to get jews to move to Israel in the first place.
Rubbish: a very good example
And you obviously can't write, because you don't even know how to spell simple words like "none" or "will," much less make any substantive argument. This post is being presented as an example of the kind of "rubbish" which will no longer be tolerated on this website. If you don't like it: too bad. Get your own damn blog, and diss us to your heart's content. We have no responisibility to serve as a forum for such semi-literate bovine excrement.
More disingenuous propaganda
Well, what an honor. WW4 REPORT and myself have been dissed on the extremoid Uruknet site for taking on Galloway's dangerous bunk. I will point out but two of a barrrage of transparently bogus rhetorical tricks used in their post. First, they say Galloway is being "demonized" by the "pro-Zionist media," citing "blogger Bill Weinberg" as their first example. I happen to be strongly anti-Zionist, as should be obvious from the journalism run in WW4 REPORT (see recent example). Also, one hates to flaunt credentials, but the genuine Zionist extremists have found me sufficiently anti-Zionist as to add my name to their Self-Hating and/or Israel-Threatening (SHIT) List. Once again, there's no vindication like gettting it from both sides! Keep those rotten tomatoes coming, gang! Most ironic is that after a bogus stunt like this, you can bet dollars to donuts that Uruk will diss me for calling them "extremoid" if they take note of this post. Meanwhile, their site is full of revisionist denial of Saddam's genocide against the Kurds (of the type which we have refuted elsewhere), and uncritical cheerleading for what it calls the "Iraqi Resistance" (always in the upper case, itself a dishonest conflation of a fragmented movement with no clear leadership). I would say this qualifies as "extremoid."
The second propaganda charade I will stoop to point out is (once again) moving the goal-post mid-argument. The post concludes that "vacuously attempting to hitch George Galloway up with neo-Nazis...will not change the historical record...of Revisionist Zionism with its well-documented affinity for Italian fascism and opportunistic flirtation with Nazism." Neat, eh? The original charge (which Galloway says he "stands by," even if it appeared on PrisonPlanet as a paraphrase rather than an actual quote) was that "[t]he Zionist movement, as it is well documented, funded Hitler before World War Two..." Now, all of a sudden it becomes Revisionist Zionism, and "funding Hitler" becomes a mere "opportunistic flirtation with Nazism." This is the intellectual equivalent of three-card monte.
It has been brought to my attention...
...that the above-referenced piece of garbage on Uruknet was actually picked up from the metronomically predictable Kurt Nimmo. Well, we've been giving him some well-earned grief, so I guess we could expect some turnabout.
Gorgeous George
hardly the 'darling of the left'. More like poster boy of the wacky "I'm against everything and it's all a conspiracy".
Besides, getting kicked out of the Labour party and running against Oona King doesn't make him a leftie. Much more like Mosely from the thirties.
Thus it is argued...
in the British Marxist journal Workers Liberty. Here's one depressing tidbit:
blaming Jews for the Holocaust
I think that anyone who blames Jews for the holocaust (oh, isn't Zionist such a useful term - even the far-right have caught onto that now) is pretty clearly an antisemite. No argument.
WBAI
Is it a surprise when you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Bill you're disingenous, self hating is a tautology, just listen yr torured apologetics once in a while
My challenge remains
Do you wish to provide documentation that the Zionists funded Hitler? Or do you just want to show us that you don't know the meaning of the word "tautology" or how to spell "tortured"?
Alex Jones is a Far Right Conspiracy Theorist
I wanted to start off by saying that I am fiercly opposed to the extreme factions of Zionism and the State of Israel. I don't believe Israel has a "right to exist" moreso than any other country has the "right" to exist. It either exists, or it does not exist. I understand that not all Zionists are Rightwing, that some are liberals but still adhere to the Zionist ideology. I don't agree with it, but I accept this distinction. Even Noam Chomsky was a Zionist in the 1940's, and he is a Leftwing legend. Not all Zionist philosophers were racists, or believed that the land of Palestine was absolutely necessary to create a Jewish State. I don't have the source on me at the moment, but I recall reading from one of the early Zionist philosophers, writing that he would even accept the country of Greenland to be the land for the future Jewish State. So, the idea that it had to be Palestine, and that the Arabs had to be "put in their place" seems to have come from the Far Rightwing faction of the Zionist movement. Wasn't the founder of modern day Zionism himself, an atheist?
The Israeli lobby is pretty influential in the United States, but I get chills when I hear talk of "the Zionists own the government", etc. Perhaps they are ignorant of the implications of these statements, but this hearkens back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It would be just like saying, "China owns us", "Saudi Arabia owns the country." I agree with you that Anti-Zionism is NOT the same thing as Antisemitism, although Antisemites have started to use the phrase "Anti-Zionist" as a codeword for "Jews." This is all too obvious for anyone who is watching carefully. Another indicator is if they use the words "Ashkenazi" or "Khazar." Unfortunately, they have also thrown in their lot with the Palestinian cause, thus giving Rightwing Zionists an excuse to dismiss the Palestinian cause as being antisemitic, because "all of the Neo-Nazis support them. See? They ARE trying to drive us into the sea!"
I too question why whenever someone defends Jews, people suddenly come out of the woodwork to discredit said person. Are Jews not allowed to be defended from slander and libel?