Republished with permission Of Lenni Brenner
The Anti-Defamation League's National Director
is crazy like a Foxman
by Lenni Brenner
ABRAHAM FOXMAN, the ADL's National Director, is well and
truly crazy, and for two reasons: 1) He libeled me and 2) he thinks
he can get away with it.
The saying is that one good turn deserves another. Since
Foxman and the ADL have spread malicious nonsense about me, I will
tell the exact truth about them, putting their dishonesty about my
ideas within the context of the ADL's unending history of
right-wing stupidity and dishonor.
In October 1993, Foxman gave a speech at a Paris conference on
xenophobia. Later he adapted it as an article, "Holocaust Denial:
The Growing Danger," published in an ADL magazine, Dimensions: A
Journal of Holocaust Studies, vol. 8, number 1, released in the
Spring of 1994. There we find the following remarks:
"Another aspect of Holocaust 'revisionist' thinking can be
found on the radical left. A writer named Lenni Brenner maintains
that Zionists, in effect, were in league with the Nazis. He asserts
that there was a close link between elements of the Zionist
movement and the Nazi party, that Zionists were willing to foster
and exploit anti-Semitism in Europe to bring about a Zionist state,
and that they had proposed an alliance with Nazi Germany."
"Brenner's thesis, with its coupling of Zionists with Nazis,
serves as a propaganda tool to undermine Israel: as such, it has
found favor with the American radical left, and with the press of
the former Soviet Union. The erstwhile Soviet daily Izvestia wrote
of his work: 'During the World War, Brenner points out, Zionism
showed its real meaning: for the sake of its ambitions, it
sacrificed the blood of millions of Jews.' Brenner has also won
approval on the other end of the spectrum, the neo-fascist right:
His books have been promoted by the Institute for Historical
Review." [1]
Has Foxman even read me on Zionism's role during the Nazi
era? His speech and article unmistakably relied on "Hitler's
Apologists: The Anti-Semitic Propaganda of Holocaust Revisionism,"
prepared by Marc Caplan of the Research and Evaluation Department
of the ADL, in 1993. Here we find the original, slightly longer,
but no more honest, version of Foxman's libel, labeled "A
Revisionist Echo on the Left." Foxman's two paragraphs on me are
virtually the same as Caplan's first two paragraphs. Caplan added
that
"In 1987 this point of view surfaced in England, when a
stridently anti-Zionist play, 'Perdition,' by Jim Allen, was
scheduled for production at London's prestigious Royal Court
Theater. The play generated intense public controversy and,
finally, it did not open. The writer acknowledged Brenner's work as
a source in writing his play, which portrayed a wartime Zionist
leader who allegedly collaborated with the Nazis to save his family
and other Zionists while deserting the rest of the community. Allen
said he was seeking to mount 'the most lethal attack on Zionism
ever written.'" [2]
I've written four books and about 100 articles. Jim Allen is
a prize-winning British playwright. I defy the ADL to point to one
word in either of our writings that supports even a particle of the
Holocaust revisionists' depravity.
In the February 18, 1985 New Republic, Eric Breindel, now an
editor of the New York Post, reported that my first book, Zionism
in the Age of the Dictators,
"has been applauded, and made available by the Institute for
Historical Review, a pseudo-scientific flat-earth society which
endeavors to prove that the Holocaust was a hoax." [3]
Not having seen anything on the book by the Institute, I wrote
them and received a letter from Tom Marcellus of the IHR. They had
'promoted' the book on two occasions. They sent me a booklist:
"397. ZIONISM IN THE AGE OF THE DICTATORS: A REAPPRAISAL by
Lenni Brenner. An astounding, bombshell expose of the active
collaboration between Nazis and Zionists, by a courageous
anti-Zionist Jew who spent years piecing together the story.
Details the close links between the 'Zionist Revisionism' movement
(to which both the young Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir
belonged) and the Jewish question experts of the Nazi Party,
Brenner's charge, overwhelmingly documented: that Zionism and its
leaders from the beginning were prepared to go to any lengths to
achieve their goal of a state in Palestine -- lengths that included
fostering and exploiting anti-Semitism in Europe, and proposing an
alliance with Germany at the zenith of that nation's power. This
book has certain surviving WWII-era Zionists quaking in their boots
-- including the present Prime Minister of Israel!" [4]
The IHR's letter went on:
We also promoted it in an IHR Newsletter of a couple of years
ago, but the remaining copies of that issue and the records
concerning it were all lost in an arson that completely destroyed
our business address and inventory on 4 July last. [5]
I replied to Marcellus in a letter, on April 11, 1985. I
quoted from it in my third book, Jews In America Today, published
in 1986:
"The depravity of the Institute is clearly expressed in a box,
'The Holocaust,' in the same booklet: 'A catch-all term to identify
the alleged extermination of European Jewry which insists on the
following presumptions: 1) The Nazis executed a deliberate plan to
destroy (not resettle) European Jewry, (2) Six million or more Jews
perished as a result, and (3) A majority of these were killed by
poison gas (Zyklon B) in gas chambers designed for the purpose of
taking human life en masse. This is the orthodox or Establishment
view. A subscriber to this view could be called an
EXTERMINATIONIST: whereas one who endeavors to show that one or
more of the above presumptions is not factual is a REVISIONIST.'"
"All of the above is bullshit. I share not one iota of your
mad ideology. I am your implacable opponent. I do not believe you
have any right to exist.... and I support any and all attempts, by
any and all, Zionist or anti-Zionist, to bust up your institute and
your meetings. [6]
I had sent a letter to the New Republic, in response to
Breindel, but Martin Peretz's strange journal wouldn't run it.
Fortunately Alex Cockburn defended me in June 29, 1985 Nation.
Breindel replied, in the August 1, 1985 Nation. Cockburn retorted
that
"Breindel is fond of saying that the Institute... applauds and
disseminates Brenner's work, though he denies that he is thus
trying to saddle Brenner with the Institute's views. But of course
that is what Breindel has been trying to do.... The Institute lists
Brenner's book as it does books by such diverse people as A.P.J.
Taylor, former Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett and New
Republic contributors Ronald Radosh and Allen Weinstein. [7]
Caplan and Foxman may have read of this in the New Republic
and The Nation. But at any rate Caplan certainly was aware of my
opinion of the IHR when he wrote Hitler's Apologists. He had
attacked me in a previous ADL pamphlet, "Jew-Hatred As History. An
Analysis of the Nation of Islam's and The Secret Relationship
Between Blacks and Jews." In that screed he had quoted -- out of
context, of course -- from Jews In America Today. So he certainly
read of the entire IHR episode, as I devoted six pages to it.
It is in order for me to dismiss the Institute's praise of
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators by saying that this is of no
more importance the fact that roaches like gourmet cooking just as
much as you do. But readers are entitled to know why these nutsies
liked it. Basically, they minimize the Holocaust: ŒAw right, so
Hitler didn't exactly like Jews. And he rounded them up, as
enemies, and some of them died of disease. And besides, what about
Roosevelt rounding up the Japanese Americans on the West Coast? And
look at Stalin's Katyn massacre, and Churchill's horrific bombing
of Dresden, and the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here the
Yids are, yelling about Hitler, while the Allied leaders were
monsters, just like Hitler. Damned if it isn't true that everyone
has skeletons in their closet. Why go on dumping on po' ol' Adolf?'
Given this loony psychology, their catalogue is full of books on
Allied crimes, no less crimes for being emphasized by these
crazies. In the same way, my exposure of real Zionist activities
during the Nazi era became additional 'proof' that Hitler was no
worse than the rest of the wicked world.
As I don't waste my time reading such crackpots, I have no
idea if they still even mention my book. Certainly they are insane
if they went on praising me, or my book, after I told them that I
hailed anyone who burns their headquarters. As the ADL monitors
their publications, it is reasonable to think that the ADL would
have mentioned this in their attacks on me.
Caplan's paragraph re Jim Allen's Perdition is disingenuous in
its omissions. Allen is a prize-winning British TV playwright.
Perdition was based on a chapter in Zionism in the Age of the
Dictators, dealing with the role of Rezs-Kasztner, a Zionist leader
in Nazi-occupied Hungary in 1944. The play was driven out of the
Royal Court Theatre by a Zionist campaign, but their methods
alienated public opinion. David Cesarani, now an editor of Patterns
of Prejudice, published by the London Jewish establishment's
Institute of Jewish Affairs, admitted this in the July 3, 1987
Jewish Chronicle:
"Was it worth all the fuss? Had the play gone on, it would
have been seen by around 2,000 people. It might have attracted some
bad reviews and then disappeared.... In the event.... Personal
representations coincided with the threat of a mass protest outside
the theatre, the combined effect of which made it seem as if
pressure was being applied.... This was (theatre director) Stafford
Clark's autonomous decision, but the clamour made it appear
disastrously as if he had been bullied into censoring the play....
It is certainly difficult to know how to respond...without
resorting to heavy-handed methods. [8]
In fact Perdition was produced, first in print, then as a
reading at the Edinburgh Festival in 1987 and then in London in
May, 1988. It received massive media attention, including favorable
reviews. Stuart Hood reflected on the print version in the July 10,
1987 Guardian:
"There are certain themes from the history of the Second World
War which are subject to taboos.... (T)he Holocaust has come to
play an important ideological role. It has been in this sense
appropriated by the state of Israel and the Zionist movement. It
has thus become a shield against criticism of the policies and
actions of that state and of Zionism itself...... Allen was a bold
man to write Perdition.... Although he develops his argument with
understanding of the terrible dilemmas of the main persons
involved, his criticism of the role of Zionist ideology, then and
now, has led to his being accused of anti-Semitism, of which his
whole political past is a denial.... By refusing to stage a play
which honestly and compassionately examines a terrible moment in
human history, the Royal Court was guilty of failure of nerve, of
civil courage. By giving way to powerful lobbying it has reinforced
an indefensible political taboo." [9]
There is more to this story. The Jewish Chronicle for November
27, 1992 was forced to run an article which announced that
"The collapse of a libel action has allowed the controversial
anti-Zionist play 'Perdition' to be published in full for the first
time.... Pluto Press, omitted several pages from the original text
because of a libel action which was brought by Nathan Dror, a
senior figure in the Israeli Labour Federation, who headed the
Jewish rescue committee in Switzerland during the war. He brought
the action... for references to a letter quoted in 'Perdition,'
allegedly written by Mr. Dror during the Second World War, which
claimed Jewish deaths would help justify the foundation of a Jewish
state. The action, heard in the High Court in London, collapsed due
to lack of evidence." [10]
Dror's letter will be quoted below, in its proper
chronological place. I had quoted it in my book, which appeared in
Britain and America, in 1983. Dror didn't sue me. But when Allen
quoted the same letter, he was sued. Because of Britain's
reactionary libel laws, the publisher was compelled to print
Allen's play with a blank space where the letter was cited because
the libel case was before the courts. I had an accompanying essay
in that printing of the play, and had the unique experience for an
American writer, of having it in effect censored, with similar
blank spaces where I also quoted the letter.. II - Zionism and the
Nazis: The documentary record
By now two things should be clear to open-minded readers: l)
My ideas regarding Zionism's role during the Holocaust have nothing
in common with Holocaust revisionists, who deny that the Holocaust
happened, and 2) the Zionist movement has used both libel and a
spurious libel suit in its attempt to keep the facts from the
public. But at this point readers are better informed as to what I
didn't say than what I do say re Zionism's Holocaust role.
Naturally I refer them to Zionism in the Age of the Dictators,
which is obtainable in bookstores and libraries. But for now I will
describe some of the low points of their activities, using a small
part of the documentation included in my book.
The Nazis came to power in January, 1933. On June 21 the
Zionistische Vereinigung fur Deutschland (the Zionist Federation of
Germany) sent a memorandum to the Nazi Party. The document first
saw the light of day in 1961, when it was printed in Israel, but in
German. The Nazis were asked, very politely:
"(M)ay we therefore be permitted to present our views, which,
in our opinion, makes possible a solution in keeping with the
principles of the new German State of National Awakening and which
at the same time might signify for Jews a new ordering of the
conditions of their existence..."
"(A)n answer to the Jewish question truly satisfying to the
national state can be brought about only with the collaboration of
the Jewish movement that aims at a social, cultural, and moral
renewal of Jewry...a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring
in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values,
must also take place in the Jewish national group. For the Jew,
too, origin, religion, community of fate and group consciousness
must be of decisive significance in the shaping of his life...."
"On the foundation of the new state, which has established the
principle of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total
structure so that for us too, in the sphere assigned to us,
fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible... Our
acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and
racial realities. Precisely because we do not wish to falsify these
fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and for
the maintaining of the purity of the Jewish group... (R)ootedness
in one's own spirituality protects the Jew from becoming the
rootless critic of the national foundation of German essence. The
national distancing which the state desires would thus be brought
about easily as the result of an organic development... We believe
in the possibility of an honest relationship of loyalty between a
group-conscious Jewry and the German state..."
"For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the
collaboration even of a government fundamentally hostile to Jews,
because in dealing with the Jewish question no sentimentalities are
involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples,
and at the present moment especially the German people."
"The realization of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment
of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda
-- such as is currently being carried on against Germany in many
ways -- is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants not to do
battle but to convince and to build... Our observations, presented
herewith, rest on the conviction that, in solving the Jewish
problem according to its own lights, the German Government will
have full understanding for a candid and clear Jewish posture that
harmonizes with the interests of the state." [11]
I admit to being the Shakespeare of our times, but I didn't
make that up. Indeed the Lenni Brenner of the Elizabethean age
didn't have the imagination to concoct anything as grotesque as
this memorandum. It is found, complete, in A Holocaust Reader,
edited by the late Lucy Dawidowicz. But let's not stop here. Let's
look at some more Zionist wonderfulness.
The Nazis used the World Zionist Organization to break the
efforts of those Jews who were trying to boycott German goods.
German Jews could put money into a Berlin bank. It was then used to
buy export goods which were sold in Palestine. When the emigres
arrived there, they would receive payment for the goods that had
been sold. German Jews were attracted to this scheme because it was
the least painful way of getting their wealth out of the country.
However, with the Nazis determining the rules, they naturally got
worse with time. By 1938 users of the "Transfer Agreement" were
losing 30% and even 50% of their money. But this was still three
times, and eventually five times better than the losses endured by
Jews whose money went to other destinations.
The WZO naturally wanted better terms. Accordingly, in 1937,
the Haganah, the military arm of the Labor Zionists, who dominated
the Jewish Agency, the WZO's headquarters in Palestine, obtained
Berlin's permission to negotiate directly with the
Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the Security Service of the SS. A Haganah
agent, Feival Polkes, arrived in Germany on February 26, 1937 and
Adolf Eichmann was assigned to negotiate with him. Their
conversations were recorded in a report by Eichmann's superior,
Franz-Albert Six. It was found in SS files captured by the
Americans at the end of WWII. David Yisraeli, a well-known Israeli
scholar, reprinted it, in German, in his PhD thesis, The Palestine
Problem in German Politics 1889-1945:
"Polkes is a national-Zionist... As a Haganah man he fights
against Communism and all aims of Arab-British friendship... He
declared himself willing to work for Germany in the form of
providing intelligence as long as this does not oppose his own
political goals. Among other things he would support German foreign
policy in the Near East. He would try to find oil sources for the
German Reich without affecting British spheres of interest if the
German monetary regulations were eased for Jewish emigrants to
Palestine." [12]
Polkes had to cut short his visit. But in October it was the
Zionists' turn to receive Eichmann. He arrived in Haifa on October
2, 1937. Polkes took him to a kibbutz, but the British CID had
become aware of Eichmann's presence and expelled him to Egypt.
Polkes followed him and further discussions were held in Cairo. The
German report, photocopied in its entirety in volume five of John
Mendelsohn's Holocaust, gives us the rationale for the Haganah's
would-be collaboration:
"(I)n Jewish nationalist circles people were very pleased with
the radical German policy, since the strength of the Jewish
population in Palestine would be so far increased thereby that in
the foreseeable future the Jews could reckon upon numerical
superiority over the Arabs in Palestine." [13]
Polkes passed on two pieces of intelligence information to the
Nazis:
"(T)he Pan-Islamic World Congress convening in Berlin is in
direct contact with two pro-Soviet Arab leaders: Emir Shekib Arslan
and Emir Adil Arslan.... The illegal Communist broadcasting station
whose transmission to Germany is particularly strong, is, according
to Polkes' statement, assembled on a lorry that drives along the
German-Luxembourg border when transmission is on the air." [14]
The Laborites main Zionist rivals in the '30s were the
"Zionist-Revisionist" followers of Vladimir Jabotinsky. Their
Revisionism had nothing in common with present-day Holocaust
Revisionism. They wanted to revise the Zionist and British policy
towards the Palestinians. They wanted to crush them by force, with
an "iron wall" of weaponry. Today they are the dominant ideological
tendency in Israel's opposition Likud bloc.
As the British weren't in Palestine to do Jabotinsky's
bidding, he and his movement looked to Mussolini's Italy as a
potential replacement for Britain as Zionism's then necessary
imperial patron against overwhelming Palestinian numbers. While
Jabotinsky insisted that he personally didn't like Fascism,
Wolfgang von Weisl, the Revisionists' financial director, had no
hesitation about telling a Bucharest paper that although opinions
among the Revisionists varied, in general they sympathized with
Fascism. He eagerly announced that he personally was a supporter of
Fascism, and he rejoiced at the victory of Fascist Italy in
Abyssinia as a triumph of the White races against the Black. [15]
Italy was quite willing to support the Revisionists, who were
obviously the Fascists of Zionism. In 1934 Mussolini allowed the
Betar, the Revisionist youth group, to set up a squadron at the
maritime academy at Civitavecchia run by the Blackshirts. The March
1936 issue of L'Idea Sionistica, the Revisionists' Italian
magazine, described the ceremonies at the inauguration of the Betar
squad's headquarters:
"The order -- 'Attention!' A triple chant ordered by the
squad's commanding officer -- 'Viva L'Italia! Viva IL Re! Viva IL
Duce!' resounded, followed by the benediction which rabbi Aldo
Lattes invoked in Italian and in Hebrew for God, for the king and
for IL Duce ... Giovinezza (the Fascist Party's anthem) was sung
with much enthusiasm by the Betarim." [16]
Even after the outbreak of WWII, a wing of Jabotinsky's
following tried to get the patronage of the Axis powers. According
to their crackpot notions, Britain was the main enemy of Jewry
because London controlled Palestine and wouldn't establish a Jewish
state which, they believed, was the only solution to anti-Semitism.
Accordingly they sent an agent to Lebanon, then run by the
Vichy-French regime. He delivered a memorandum to a German
diplomat. After the war it was found in the files of the German
embassy in Turkey. The Ankara document called itself a "Proposal of
the National Military Organization (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." It is dated *11
January 1941. At that time they still thought of themselves as the
real Irgun, Jabotinsky's underground terrorists. Later they adapted
the name Lohami Herut Yisrael, Fighters for the Freedom of Israel.
However they are universally known as the Stern Gang, the name
given to them by the British, after their founder, Avraham Stern.
Their entire document is reprinted in Yisraeli's thesis, in German.
They told the Nazis that
"The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a
precondition for solving the Jewish question; but this can only be
made possible and complete through the settlement of those masses
in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the
establishment of a Jewish state in its historical boundaries... The
NMO... is of the opinion that... The establishment of the
historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and
bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest
of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in
the Near East. Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in
Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national
aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the
side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war
on Germany's side." [17]
At the time the Sternists were a numerically insignificant
minority of the Zionist movement and were reviled as the pro-Nazi
loons that they obviously were. This monstrous offer took on vastly
greater contemporary significance when one of their leaders,
Yitzhak Yzernitsky, later became prime minister of Israel under his
underground name, Yitzhak Shamir. As it happened, I was in
Jerusalem when Menachem Begin nominated him as his successor and
had the complete text of the traitors' memorandum printed, in
English, in an Arab-owned paper. An Israeli daily used the occasion
to confront Shamir on this episode. The story was picked up in the
21 October 1983 London Times. Yes, Shamir admitted,
"There was a plan to turn to Italy for help and to make
contact with Germany on the assumption that these could bring about
a massive Jewish immigration.. I opposed this, but I did join Lehi
after the idea of contacts with the Axis countries was dropped."
[18]
Even if we were to take this fairy tale as gospel, didn't
Shamir confess to knowingly joining a pro-Nazi movement? But he was
lying. In 1963, Gerold Frank wrote The Deed, a study of the 1944
Stern Gang assassination of Lord Moyne, Churchill's High
Commissioner for the Middle East. Frank tells of an incident
shortly after Jabotinsky's death, on August 3, 1940. The Jabotinsky
loyalists, led by David Raziel, and the Sternists sent speakers to
try to convince the undecided among the Irgun to go with them.
Frank relates that
"(T)he movement all but disintegrated. In September Stern
walked out and set up his own group... Eliahu (Bet Zouri) and David
Danon... were summoned to a remote schoolhouse... (T)hey were to be
addressed by a representative of each faction... (A) short,
square-shouldered, square-faced, muscular man awaited them. Itzhak
Yizernitsky... spoke tersely, summing up the reasons behind Stern's
decision to walk out... 'Men!' His deep voice rumbled, 'If you want
to smell fire and powder, come with us!' (pp. 91-3)... David, for
his part, could not forget Yizernitsky's 'fire and powder' remark
in the days immediately following the Raziel-Stern split." [19]
Frank had covered the trial of the two Stern Gang youths who
killed Moyne. Shamir organized the slaying. In 1963 Frank had no
reason to invent Yizernitsky-Shamir's speech, which is a minor
incident in the book. But Shamir had the best reason in the world
to make up his 1983 fraud. The world was still naive. It wasn't
ready for an Israeli Prime Minister who would admi t that he wanted
to ally himself with Hitler.
By 1994, when Shamir wrote his memoirs, Summing Up, he had
abandoned his lie about only joining the Sternists after they had
given up their treason to the Jews. Now we are told that ³In
September 1940, my life altered too, for I left the Irgun with Yair
(Stern's nom de guerre - LB) to enter the deeper underground from
which Lehi fought our outlawed war against the British. [20] But he
still cannot honestly deal with his own personal treason. He
doesn't even mention their memorandum, known to all scholars, of
course, but he rationalizes it away:
"What Yair hoped for was that the Nazis, so eager to rid
themselves of Jews, would help to bring the majority of Jews from
Europe, thru the British blockade, to Palestine, thus making havoc
of British illusions regarding post-war control of the Middle East,
facilitating Allied defeat and, possibly, if Britain knew what was
afoot, even producing the withdrawal of the White Paper (limiting
Jewish immigration - LB). Whatever the result, he reasoned, Jews
would be brought to Palestine. He didn't make this plan public, but
Lehi termed the world war a conflict between the forces of evil,
between Gog and Magog, and made unmistakable its position -- again
it must be remembered that all this was in 1940 and 1941 -- when it
was reasonable to feel that there was little for Jews to chose from
between the Germans and the British. All that counted for Yair was
that this idea might, after all, be a way to save Jews about whom,
no one else, least of all the British, seemed to care. Nothing came
of it, of course. By that time, though no one yet knew it, the
Nazis were already at work on a very different solution to the
Jewish problem. In the meanwhile, however, Lehi was not only feared
and disapproved of by the Yishuv (the Jews of Palestine - LB), but
also suspected of fifth column activities by a public that went on
believing -- incredibly, in the face of accumulating evidence to
the contrary -- that the British would open the gates of Palestine
to the anguished Jews and which refused to be weaned of emotional
and political dependence on Britain." [21]
The destruction of Hungarian Jewry is one of the most tragic
chapters in the Holocaust. When the Germans occupied Hungary, on
March 19, 1944, its Jewish community leaders knew what to expect,
as the country had been a refuge for Polish and Slovakian Jews. In
postwar years, the role of Rezsö Kasztner, a leader of the Budapest
Rescue Committee, was subjected to detailed scrutiny in Israeli
courtrooms.
In 1953 the Ben-Gurion government prosecuted an elderly
pamphleteer, Malchiel Gruenwald, for having libeled Kasztner as a
collaborator for his dealings with Eichmann in 1944. Gruenwald
denounced Kasztner for having kept silent about German lies that
the Hungarian Jews were only being resettled at Kenyermezo, in
Hungary. In return, he was allowed to organize a special train to
Switzerland, and place his family and friends on it. Further,
Gruenwald claimed, Kasztner later protected SS Colonel Becher from
hanging as a war criminal by claiming that he saved Jewish lives.
On June 21, 1955, Judge Benjamin Halevi found that there had
been no libel of Kasztner, apart from the fact that he hadn't been
motivated by monetary considerations. Later yet, Ben Hecht, a
Zionist, and one of the most famous American writers of his day,
wrote up the trial and its appeal in his book, Perfidy. Hecht
quoted Halevi's declaration that
"The Nazis' patronage of Kasztner, and their agreement to let
him save six hundred prominent Jews, were part of the plan to
exterminate the Jews. Kasztner was given a chance to add a few more
to that number. The bait attracted him. The opportunity of rescuing
prominent people appealed to him greatly. He considered the rescue
of the most important Jews as a great personal success and a
success for Zionism." [22]
The Labor government remained loyal to their party comrade and
appealed the case. Attorney-General Chaim Cohen put the fundamental
issue before the Supreme Court:
"Kasztner did nothing more and nothing less than was done by
us in rescuing the Jews and bringing them to Palestine... You are
allowed --in fact it is your duty -- to risk losing the many in
order to save the few...It has always been our Zionist tradition to
select the few out of many in arranging the immigration to
Palestine. Are we therefore to be called traitors?" [23]
On March 3, 1957 Kasztner was gunned down by right-wing
Zionist assassins. However the Supreme Court handed down its
decision in the case on January 17, 1958. It ruled, 5 to O, that
Kasztner had perjured himself on Becher's behalf, But it concluded,
3 to 2, that he could not be legitimately considered a
collaborator. The most forceful majority argument was presented by
Judge Shlomo Chesin:
"The question is not whether a man is allowed to kill many in
order to save a few, or vice-versa. The question is altogether in
another sphere and should be defined as follows: a man is aware
that a whole community is awaiting its doom. He is allowed to make
efforts to save a few, although part of his efforts involve
concealment of truth from the many; or should he disclose the truth
to the many though it is his best opinion that this way everybody
will perish. I think the answer is clear. What good will the blood
of the few bring if everyone is to perish?... There is no law,
either national or international, which lays down the duties of a
leader in an hour of emergency toward those who rely on leadership
and are under his instructions." [24]
Indeed the most important aspect of the trial was its full
exposure of the working philosophy of the WZO throughout the Nazi
era: the sanctification of the betrayal of the many in the interest
of a selected immigration. Once we understand this, we can deal
with Nathan Dror's letter.
The Nazis began taking the Jews of Slovakia in March 1942.
Rabbi Michael Dov-Ber Weissmandel, a member of the Agudat Yisrael,
an ultra-Orthodox political party, contacted Dieter Wisliceny,
Eichmann's representative, and told him that he was in touch with
the leaders of world Jewry. Would the Nazi take money for
Slovakia's Jews? Money was paid and the surviving Jews were spared
until 1944.
Weissmandel became one of the outstanding Jewish rescue
figures during the Holocaust because he was the first to demand
that the Allies bomb Auschwitz.. His post-war book, Min HaMaitzer
(From the Depths) written in Talmudic Hebrew, also tells of his
further efforts to pay off the Nazis to save Jewish lives.
Wisliceny took the matter up with Berlin and told the rabbi, in
1943, that he could have all the Jews in western Europe and the
Balkans for $2 million in American money, then a substantial sum.
Weissmandel sent a courier to Switzerland to try to get the money
from Jewish organizations. The courier brought back a letter from
Nathan Schwalb, the representative of the Hechalutz, a youth
section of the Labor Party. Dror is Schwalb's Zionist, i.e.,
Hebrew, name. Weissmandel described the document:
"There was another letter in the envelope, written in a
strange foreign language and at first I could not decipher at all
which language it was until I realized that this was Hebrew written
in Roman letters, and written to Schwalb's friends in Pressburg
(Bratislava)... It is still before my eyes, as if I had reviewed it
a hundred and one times. This was the content of the letter: 'Since
we have the opportunity of this courier, we are writing to the
group that they must constantly have before them that in the end
the Allies will win. After their victory they will divide the world
again between the nations, as they did at the end of the first
world war. Then they unveiled the plan for the first step and now,
at the war's end, we must do everything so that Eretz Yisroel will
become the state of Israel, and important steps have already been
taken in this direction. About the cries coming from your country,
we should know that all the Allied nations are spilling much of
their blood, and if we do not sacrifice any blood, by what right
shall we merit coming before the bargaining table when they divide
nations and lands at the war's end? Therefore it is silly, even
impudent, on our part to ask these nations who are spilling their
blood to permit their money into enemy countries in order to
protect our blood -- for only with blood shall we get the land. But
in respect to you, my friends, atem taylu, and for this purpose I
am sending you money illegally with this messenger.'" [25]
The letter startled rabbi Weissmandel, to say the least. He
pondered over it many times:
"After I had accustomed myself to this strange writing, I
trembled, understanding the meaning of the first words which were
'only with blood shall we attain land.' But days and weeks went by,
and I did not know the meaning of the last two words. Until I saw
from something that happened that the words 'atem taylu' were from
'tiyul' (to walk which was their special term for 'rescue.') In
other words: you my fellow members, my 19 or 20 close friends, get
out of Slovakia and save your lives and with the blood of the
remainder --the blood of all the men, women, old and young and the
sucklings -- the land will belong to us. Therefore, in order to
save their lives it is a crime to allow money into enemy territory
--but to save you beloved friends, here is money obtained
illegally." [26]
He went on: ³It is understood that I do not have these letters
--for they remained there and were destroyed with everything else
that was lost. [27]
Weissmandel assured us that the dedicated Zionist rescue
workers in Slovakia were appalled by Schwalb-Dror's letter. But it
expressed the morbid thoughts of the rancid elements running the
WZO: Instead of Zionism being the hope of the Jews, their blood was
to be the salvation of Zionism.
Reasonable readers have seen for themselves that the ADL
libeled me. But they may say that 'every movement has its lunatic
fringe. Libelers are not reviewers. What do responsible Zionist
historians have to say about Brenner and his charges?'
Walter Laqueur, the chairman of the International Research
Council of the Center for Strategic and International Studies at
Georgetown University, devoted six pages to attacking me in the
November 2, 1987 New Republic. (Again, I sent in a reply, but
Martin Peretz has no honor and his magazine did not run it.)
Laqueur insists that
"Even if all his facts were correct, Brenner's book would not
be a serious study of Zionism, any more than a collection of
profiles in scurrility from Benedict Arnold to Al Capone would be
a serious history of the United States." [28]
Surely Capone wasn't the last American rogue! At any rate,
after showing me to be the monster that I surely am, this Zionist
defense attorney makes a few concessions concerning my charges:
"It is quite true that some Zionists should not have looked
for Mussolini's support, even in the 1920s; they were grievously
mistaken to do so... It is true, moreover, that German Zionists did
not fully understand the meaning of Hitler when he came to power in
1933. Some of their comments and declarations make embarrassing
reading 50 years later." [29]
Laqueur wrote his plaidoyer for his movement's treachery
before Schwalb-Dror's suit had been flung through the courtroom
door. In the wake of that debacle for Zionism, his comments sound
more than a bit odd:
"The story of one Nathan Schwalb... is absolutely crucial for
the play.... Still, something went very wrong with this star
witness for the prosecution... Schwalb is alive... Thus, to their
dismay, Allen and Brenner found themselves suddenly confronted with
a libel action. Instead of refusing to change a single word in
their manuscript, they have excised ten pages from Perdition. They
must know that they could not possibly make their case in a court
of law -- or indeed, in the court of public opinion." [30]
In fact Laqueur was deliberately deceptive in this matter. On
page 144 of his 1980 book, The Terrible Secret, the great historian
himself had reported that Schwalb-Dror refused access to his files
to scholars.
Robert Wistrich is a professor of modern Jewish History at
Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He devoted not a few words to
denouncing me in his book, Between Redemption and Perdition. He
"(W)ould claim that the falsifiers of the anti-Israeli Left
who now rewrite the history of the Holocaust as a story of
Nazi-Zionist 'collaboration' are no less dangerous than the
neo-Nazi 'revisionists' and possibly more effective... (W)orks by
Lenni Brenner, such as Zionism in the Age of the Dictators... are
increasingly symptomatic of the times we live in." [31]
Nevertheless he, like Laqueur, has to make a few admissions
that some of my charges are quite true:
"In my view the entire Jewish leadership of that generation --
including the Zionists -- failed the test of the times and no
useful purpose is served by covering this up. Nor can it be denied,
given that the major priority of the Zionist movement at the time
was indeed building Palestine, that the tragedy of Diaspora Jewry
was inevitably given less attention than it deserved. Equally, one
can make a reasonable case that Zionists did not fight antisemitism
before 1939 with the appropriate vigour, that some Zionists
favoured the principle of racial separateness, and that others
wanted to develop a 'special relationship' with the Nazis for
opportunistic or other reasons." [32]
Readers must realize that not one responsible historian grants
a flyspeck of credence to even a syllable of any Holocaust
revisionist's scribblings. But even though Foxman and Caplan insist
that my writings are "another aspect of Holocaust 'revisionist'
thinking," two star Zionist historians confessed that a raft of my
accusations are --alas! -- all too true. So much for the
Anti-Defamation League's crude attempt to defame me. III - The
squalid history of the ADL
Even now, after I've adduced overwhelming evidence that the
Zionist movement failed European Jewry in its fatal hour, and that
therefore the ADL has libeled me, readers may ask a bewildered
question: Why is the ADL doing this? That is because the public is
so appalled at what the Nazis did to the Jews that it usually
doesn't think to ask what the ADL did for the Jews. Additionally,
most people identify the ADL with its contemporary reports on
anti-Semitism. It appears to be a bone fide civil rights watchdog.
But it did nothing for the Jews in the Nazi era and it has always
been an ultra-rightist nest.
The ADL is an autonomous branch of the B'nai B'rith (The Sons
of the Covenant), an international fraternal order, established on
October 13, 1843, with the declared "mission of uniting Israelites
in the work of promoting their highest interests and those of
humanity." [33] The first challenge confronting the group was the
slavery question, which it evaded in the interest of maintaining
unity between northern and southern Jews. The ADL itself was set up
in 1913, the year that a Jew, Leo Frank, was lynched in Georgia.
Its role in fighting anti-Semitism in the years before Hitler came
to power was pathetic. Deborah Moore's B'nai B'rith and the
Challenge of Ethnic Leadership says that
"(T)he ADL's internal-education section (was) devoted to
changing the behavior of Jews perceived to be unethical in the eyes
of Americans... In 1928, commenting on a lynching in Illinois, the
(B'nai B'rith) Magazine had admitted that 'when another kind of a
man gets hanged, we feel those revulsions that are natural at the
sight of a fellow-being going to his doom in the flush of life. But
when we read of a Jew being hanged, we discover ourselves feeling
resentful, not towards the hanging but towards the erring Jew.'"
The Magazine had concluded that "the sinning of the Jew is
counted by men not alone against himself but against his people
likewise." [34]
A booklet, This is B'nai B'rith, published in 1943 by the
organization, listed very few activities for those years, with the
main ADL accomplishment being to effect
"a profound change in the treatment of Jews in vaudeville.
Jewish comedians were loath in some instances to correct their
caricature of their fellow Jews, but earnest efforts on the part of
the League in presenting the social aspects of the problem resulted
in pronounced modification of the objectionable "humor." [35]
This is B'nai B'rith talking vaguely about the ADL's anti-Nazi
career in the years between Hitler's taking power and the war:
"In the years of persecution and propaganda that followed in
the wake of 1933, the A.D.L., through its program of research,
widespread fact dissemination, neutralization of libels and a
systematic campaign of education for democracy to counteract the
effects of un-American movements, was able to make a major
contribution to the common struggle against anti-Semitism." [36]
The booklet couldn't say more because the ADL and B'nai B'rith
role was disgraceful. The spontaneous reaction of American Jews to
the Nazis' ascendency to power was to boycott German goods. But
there were those who opposed a boycott. These worthies confined
themselves to charity efforts for German Jewry and its refugees.
Not least of these do-nothings was the B'nai B'rith. The B'nai
B'rith Magazine ran an editorial in its May, 1933 issue. Be sure
you are sitting down when you read this:
"Criticism is heard: B'nai B'rith did not join the public
protests against the German-Jewish tragedy!... The members of this
organization have cause to be proud of their affiliation with a
Jewish body that obscured its own prestige in order to serve its
German brethren the better... With the Hitler government
threatening reprisals against Jews, should B'nai B'rith have rushed
forward with loud protests?... Even those who were at first hot for
public protest have come to see that discretion is the better part
of valor in an hour when lives are in the balance... As for B'nai
B'rith, it feels that its action in this crisis will make a worthy
chapter in its history. [37]
Samuel Untermeyer, leader of the boycott movement, explained
the stance of elements like B'nai B'rith and the American Jewish
Committee (the parent of today's Commentary magazine, which the
B'nai B'rith always bracketed itself with, and which also opposed
boycotting Hitler). Boycott, he said, in 1933,
"conjures up to them images of force and illegality, such as
have on o ccasions in the past characterized struggles between
labor unions and their employers. As these timid souls are
capitalists and employers, the word and all that it implies is
hateful to their ears." [38]
The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust article on the B'nai B'rith
reports that even after the Nazis closed down the organization in
Germany, in 1937, the president of the order "remained opposed to
public protest and boycott, and still believed that 'quiet
diplomacy' could help the Jews of Germany." The Encyclopedia goes
on:
"B'nai B'rith, fearful of arousing antisemitism in the United
States -- like most American Jews at the time -- did not challenge
the quota system of the 1924 Immigration Act and did not try to
arouse public opinion against the administration's policy of not
fully utilizing even the quotas provided by that act." [39]
Nor did the ADL do anything of any significance in the fight
against the German-American Bund and its home-grown allies, the
followers of the Catholic clerical-fascist, Father Coughlan, or the
KKK. Nathan Belth's A Promise to Keep, published in 1979 by the
ADL, mentions a pamphlet on Coughlin, published in 1939 by a
coalition of Jewish groups, including the ADL. It then relates that
"The League and the (American Jewish) Committee... had as a matter
of policy and tactics been inclined to maintain low profiles in
public." [40] When the Bund staged a rally in New York's Madison
Square Garden on February 20, 1939, the Trotskyist Socialist
Workers Party called a counter-demonstration. Fifty-thousand Jews
and others fought a five hour street battle with the cops, who
protected the Jew-haters. But the night belonged to the
demonstrators. The 20,000 Nazis and Coughlanites would have been
mauled if the police weren't present. The ADL did absolutely
nothing to fight the Nazis that night. Indeed it was never prepared
to fight the enemies of the Jews. IV - The ADL and McCarthyism
Given the ADL's bankruptcy during the Hitler era, it is hardly
surprising that it continued on as an integral part of the
witchhunting apparatus that emerged in America at the onset of the
cold war. Arnold Forster, the ADL's counsel, wrote about this
morbid episode in his book, Square One.
In 1956 the Fund for the Republic issued a report on
blacklisting in Hollywood and TV. It described how the victims of
the right-wing "security clearance system" were either
'rehabilitated' or driven out of the industry.. An unnamed "public
relations expert" is quoted on the process. Forster acknowledged
that he was the expert and reprinted the relevant passages in his
book:
"If a man... finds his way to me... (and) I am convinced that
he is not a Communist, or if he has been a Communist, has had a
change of heart, I ask him whether he has talked to the FBI. If he
hasn't, I tell him the first thing he must do is go to them and
tell them everything he knows..."
The public relations expert concluded: "A guy who is in
trouble, even if he has a good case for himself, will stay dead
unless he finds someone like me who can lead him through the jungle
of people who have to be satisfied. He has to persuade those people
one by one. Usually he finds his way to a lawyer and that comes a
cropper, or he finds a public relations man or press agent who
doesn't have the confidence of the 'clearance men,' and he's only
wasting his time." [41]
Forster would take the hapless actor to right-wing journalists
like Victor Reisel or Fred Woltman for "affidavits" and then go to
CBS and try to get his "boy" a job. Square One was written after
McCarthyism had been thoroughly discredited and Forster made it
look like he was an unwilling collaborator with the witchhunters.
But the truth breaks out through the eyes of a cat, as they say. A
Communist magazine, Jewish Life, uncovered an internal ADL memo,
dated July 3, 1953, and ran it in their September, 1953 issue. It
dealt with a conference that took place in the office of the House
Un-American Activities Committee, on July 2, 1953. Herman
Edelsberg, the memo's author, was there, as were Washington
representatives of the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish War
Veterans. The question before them was how HUAC should deal with
hostile Jewish Communist witnesses. Edelsberg's report says that
they made the following proposals to Harold Velde, HUAC's chair:
"The files of the ADL and AJC should be consulted for
information about such witnesses. Where responsible Jewish
organizations had repudiated the witness or the line he peddles,
that fact should be put in the record before the witness sounds
off. In such cases, it would be most unlikely that the newspapers
would play up the witness' charges against the Committee... The
Committee staff handling such witnesses should be familiar with our
analyses of the Communists' studied tactics of exploiting charges
of persecution and discrimination. The witnesses should be
confronted with material from ADL's report, The Troublemakers, and
our two pamphlets on Communism... Velde and counsel agreed then and
there that in the future, Committee investigators would be sent to
the ADL and AJC for material on prospective witnesses. (That would
be a good opportunity to make specific suggestions on
procedure.)... We left on the most friendly basis. My colleagues
and I were heartened by the understandings achieved." [42]
Witchhunting began to decline after Senator Joe McCarthy of
Wisconsin was censured by the Senate in 1954, for trying to
red-bait the US army. Forster claimed that
"(T)he senator had built himself enough of a record to
convince me he was bad medicine. Not that the League itself,
although recognizing the evil in the man, had yet become
sufficiently resolute to attack McCarthy frontally. We were
suffering from the same fear of him and his destructive, national
movement, that affected so many others. ADL had been treading
cautiously about him while demonstrating its opposition to his
frenetic crusade. It was not until 1956, when Ben Epstein and I
released our book, Cross-Currents, that we openly attacked McCarthy
himself." [43]V - ADL witchhunting after McCarthy
McCarthyism may have declined but the ADL's hatred of the left
most certainly didn't. On February 22, 1967, the New York Times
reported that the Institute for International Labor Research, led
by Norman Thomas, the most prominent figure in the Socialist Party,
had received $1,048,940 between 1961 and 1963 from the CIA. Later,
in the July 1982 Commentary, Sidney Hook revealed that Thomas had
"telephoned Allen Dulles of the CIA and requested a contribution"
for their American Committee for Cultural Freedom in the mid-1950s.
[44] From 1957 through 1962 Irwin Suall was the National Secretary
of the SP. Today he is the "chief fact-finder," i.e., the head spy,
for the ADL.
I met Suall in 1957. I was a member of another socialist group
which was merging with the SP. Of course we had no idea about
Thomas's ties with the CIA. I left the SP in 1959 and was in
California when the Times broke the Thomas story, and I didn't see
it. Therefore I suspected nothing when I encountered Suall in the
Lion's Head Tavern in Greenwich Village in the early Œ70s. (I
believe the year was 1971.) He spotted me at the bar, called out my
name, and triumphantly announced that I was "with the National
Association for Irish Justice," the support group for the Northern
Ireland Civil Rights Association. He told me that he was the ADL's
chief fact-finder and explained that he knew all about the NAIJ
because he had files on the American tours of Ian Paisley, a
right-wing Protestant fanatic, who was the most vehement foe of
civil rights for Catholics. Whenever he came here he associated
with our own right-wing Protestant screwballs, some of them
anti-Semites. We two old friends drank the night into morning when
I suggested that he let me see his Paisley file. NAIJ could use it
to show the Irish Catholic community here where Paisley fit into
right-wing politics in this country. "I can't do that. You have
enemies of Israel in your organization." At that time I had little
interest in Israel. I knew that we had various leftists in the
NAIJ, who were anti-Zionist, but the topic of Israel never came up
in our pro-Irish movement. I explained to him that people would
think it rather odd if we asked prospective members how they stood
on Israel. That didn't matter.. Enemies of Israel are enemies of
Israel and that was that. Suall then began to rattle off intimate
details about NAIJ, including the name of a Communist who had just
started working for us. I realized he had a spy in my organization.
We knew the British, Irish and American governments automatically
put agents into our ranks. Therefore we were discreet when we did
anything illegal under US law. But we had a policy of not starting
a witchhunt for such spies because that only tends to make everyone
into paranoids, and that can kill a movement. I figured out who
Suall's mole was.. However, as I couldn't prove my suspect was
Suall's operative, and the certain presence of more important spies
wasn't affecting us, I prudently didn't mention this singular
conversation to anyone.
In fact the ADL even boasts that it spies on leftists. In
their 1974 book, The New Anti-Semitism, Forster and Benjamin
Epstein brazenly announced that ADL agents attended conventions
closed to the general public:
"The ADL has traditionally viewed close monitoring of
extremist activities as part of its obligation to the Jewish and
American communities. Therefore, its representatives often attend
open meetings, conventions, and conferences of extremist groups
(left wing and right wing) to keep abreast of what the groups are
doing." [45]
The two authors rationalized ADL infiltration of the Socialist
Workers Party:
"The SWP... take(s) umbrage when its anti-Israel, anti-Zionist
extremism is called anti-Semitism. Its domestic political course
has been clearly anti-Jewish... Although its spokesmen have been
careful to avoid the use of crude anti-Semitic phraseology, the
SWP's program and activities... have been totally hostile...
whenever Jews have been under attack from anti-Semites who happen
to be black, the SWP has consistently joined the fray against the
Jews." [46]
As we know from the Bund episode, the SWP believes in busting
up Nazi rallies. It is careful not to utilize anti-Semitic phrases.
It welcomes Jews into its leadership. Therefore, isn't it plain
that "its domestic course has been clearly anti-Jewish." That
charge from an organization which did next door to nothing vs.
Hitler, wins the all-time chutzpah prize.
The magnitude of ADL spying on progressive movements became
public knowledge in 1993 when the San Francisco papers revealed
that Tom Gerard, a local cop (and ex-CIA man) illegally gave police
information to Roy Bullock, Suall's man in SF. Further police
sleuthing revealed that they spied on a mass of groups, from Nazis
clear thru Armenian nationalists, the American Friends Service
Committee, the Mobilization for Peace, Jobs and Justice, the Bay
Area's broad-spectrum peace marchers, and the ANC and the
anti-apartheid movement. The two also spied directly on these last
for BOSS, South Africa's s ecret police.
As things stand, Gerard has pled no contest to a charge of
illegal access to police computers. He got three years probation,
a $2,500 fine and 45 days on the sheriff's work crew. The ADL made
a 'we didn't do it, but we won't do it again' deal with the DA. It
agreed to an injunction not to use illegal methods in its
'monitoring' of the entire political universe. Foxman said that,
rather than go to trial, where they would certainly be found
innocent, of course, ADL settled because "continuing with an
investigation over your head for months and years leads some to
believe there is something wrong." [47] The arrangement prevents
prosecution of Bullock.
In spite of the DA's slap-on-the-wrist deal, the documentation
of Bullock's activities provided by the police when they sought a
warrant to search the ADL offices in SF and Los Angeles, was
extensive. The ADL claims that Bullock was a free-lance informer
and that his activities for the apartheid regime were unknown to
them. But an FBI report on a January 26, 1993 interview with
Bullock takes up a letter found in his computer files, "prepared
for transmission to the South Africans." It read "during an
extended conversation with two FBI agents" in March 1990, they
asked "why do you think South African agents are coming to the West
Coast?"
"'Did I know any agents,' they finally asked?... I replied
that a meeting had been arranged, in confidence, by the ADL which
wanted information on radical right activities in SA and their
American connections. To that end I met an agent at Rockefeller
Center cafeteria."
The FBI report says that "Bullock commented that the TRIP.DBX
letter was a very 'damning' piece of evidence.' He said he had
forgotten it was in his computer." Of course he hastened to tell
the FBI that "his statements to the FBI that the ADL had set up his
relationship with the South Africans were untrue." [48]
It is far more likely that Bullock was telling the truth in
March 1990 and lying in January 1993. Apparently the FBI came to
him on another matter in 1990 and surprised him with their
questions about the South Africans. In 1993, Bullock met the feds
in his lawyers' office. It is reasonable to presume that they had
told him what to say, and what not to say. Certainly he knew that
if he wanted ADL assistance in his troubles with the FBI concerning
the South Africans, he would have to claim that they had nothing to
do with his South African ties.
We must also look at this situation from the ADL's
perspective. In 1993 it had the same access to these FBI reports as
anyone else. It then knew that he had implicated them with
Pretoria. Why didn't they repudiate him then for daring to lie
about them in such a grave affair? And, for that matter, why didn't
they repudiate him for trafficking with the apartheid regime, which
they claimed to oppose? Could it be that they didn't dare do so? If
they dumped him, he would have an incentive to tell the FBI
everything he knew about their illegal activities, regarding the
South Africans, and/or any ADL involvement in Israeli spying and
other criminal activities there.
Robert Friedman, known for his factual reliability when
writing on Jewish matters, reported that "Suall later told the FBI
that 'he didn't think dealing with South African intelligence was
different than dealing with any other police agency,' according to
a law enforcement source." [49] At any rate, the November 17, 1993
Daily News Bulletin, an organ of the Zionist movement's Jewish
Telegraphic Agency, reported that, after the settlement with the
SFDA, "the ADL continues to work with Bullock, according to Abraham
Foxman." [50]
Israel was South Africa's intimate military ally, selling
weaponry to the masters of apartheid in the face of a UN arms
embargo. And the ADL's own public stance was so opposed to the
African National Congress that it stretches credulity to the
breaking point for anyone to think that they didn't know that
Bullock was working with the South Africans. When he told the FBI
that the ADL put him in contact with the South Africans, he
expected them to believe him, because the world knew that Israel,
the ADL's political holy land, was Pretoria's ally.
The ADL Bulletin for May 1986 ran an article by Nathan
Perlmutter and David Evanier, "The African National Congress: A
Closer Look," which revealed the organization's intense hatred of
the movement leading the struggle in South Africa. The piece
started off with a pious "self-evident stipulation that apartheid
is racist and dehumanizing." But, it then went on,
"(T)his is not to suggest closing our eyes to what may emerge
once apartheid is gone.... We must distinguish between those who
will work for a humane, democratic, pro-western South Africa and
those who are totalitarian, anti-humane, anti-democratic,
anti-Israeli and anti-American."
The article went on to document what everyone already knew.
The Soviet Union supported the ANC. The ANC backed the PLO as
fellow colonized people. Then came the moral to the story:
"The fall of South Africa to such a Soviet oriented and
Communist influenced force would be a severe setback to the United
States, whose defense industry relies heavily on South Africa's
wealth of strategic minerals.... The survival of freedom in South
Africa will be possible only if the forces of violence on the far
left and of racial violence on the far right are defeated by the
democratic forces of moderation."
Those forces of moderation were -- didn't you know? -- the
apartheid regime itself: "The US State Department," i.e., Reagan,
said that "more positive changes have taken place in South Africa
in the last five years than in the previous 300." [51]
For propagandistic reasons, Israel had to make it look like it
was against apartheid and supported responsible opposition to it.
So it openly patronized Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, head of the
Inkatha Freedom Party and its death squads. When he toured here in
1992, Israel got the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations to host him at their New York office.. They
knew that, according to the June 12, 1992 DNB, "many
observers....say the violence among blacks reflects collusion
between the South African security forces and Inkatha aimed at
disabling the ANC." Yet, according to Kenneth Jacobson, the ADL's
director of international affairs, there was "nothing for us to
feel guilty about. He's a man with a point of view, and that should
be heard." The Mr. Nice Guy of South African politics declared
himself a free-market freedom-fightin' kind of fella and "not a
friend of Gadhafi or Yasir Arafat. All these are friends of the
ANC." [52]
The ADL thought so highly of their 1986 anti-ANC tirade that
they sent it to every member of the US Congress! And even after
Bullock was exposed as specifically reporting to the South Africans
on an LA meeting for Chris Hani of the ANC, Foxman fanatically
defended their venomous hatred of South Africa's liberators. The
Northern California Jewish Bulletin for May 7, 1993 described how
"Foxman, seeming like a general dressing down his troops,
marched into the Jewish Bulletin office...where he lambasted
critics of the ADL, speaking angrily of a conspiracy and at times
fuming as he turned several shades of red... 'People are very upset
about the (files on the) ANC,' he agrees. 'At the time we exposed
the ANC, they were Communist. They were violent, they were
anti-Semitic, they were pro-PLO and they were anti-Israel. You're
going to tell me I don't have the legitimacy to find out who they
were consorting with.'" [53]
Time hasn't been kind to Foxman. The ANC runs its country and
is a model of ethnic and religious tolerance. It never was
anti-Semitic and today there are seven Jewish ANCers in the
Pretoria parliament. Foxman was -- and is -- exactly what the
Jewish Bulletin's journalist described: a
steam-coming-out-of-his-ears right-wing ranter. VI - The ADL and
the affirmative action question
As many readers well know, whole Canadian forests have been
chopped down in recent years to provide newsprint for articles on
Black anti-Semitism. Such pieces frequently begin with a nostalgic
look back at the good ol' 'Black-Jewish alliance' of the early '60s
when the ADL was part of the great -- dare I say it? --
multicultural coalitions that marched behind Martin Luther King.
Such articles usually then turn into tales of Black
ingratitude. In life the Jewish establishment was only part of such
an alliance until the Black movement began to call for affirmative
action quotas, and the left-wing of the movement began to support
the Palestinians as fellow oppressed. From then on the ADL has been
a fanatic opponent of Black liberation. Jonathan Kaufman's Broken
Alliance tells of how Jack Greenberg, long-time head of the NAACP
Legal Defense Fund, came to see the ADL:
"As legal cases involving affirmative action began to appear
in the courts in the early 1970s, the Legal Defense Fund began
filing lawsuits... One of the first cases involved a challenge to
the New York prison system, which had never promoted a black
correction officer above the entry level... The Legal Defense Fund
sued successfully... When the case was appealed, Greenberg was
stunned to discover that the Anti-Defamation League had filed a
brief opposing the affirmative action plan... He did not know
officials at the ADL well. But he...called several of them up...
(Eventually) Greenberg felt some officials of the ADL, the most
vociferous opponents of affirmative action, had become "haters."
[54]
In its most notorious anti-affirmative action campaign, the
ADL was one of a gaggle of rightwing Jewish groups, plus several
gentile "unmeltable ethnic" outfits, the Fraternal Order of Police,
the Chamber of Commerce and other free-market freedom-fightin'
guys, who submitted amici curiae briefs on Allen Bakke's behalf
when he sued the University of California at Davis for setting
aside 16 seats in its medical school for minorities. In 1978 the
Supreme Court ruled that the school's plan discriminated against
whites.
In the August 1985 issue of Commentary, Harvard sociology
professor Nathan Glazer gave us the "pragmatic considerations"
behind the Jewish establishment's undying hatred of quotas:
"Jews were already 'over-represented' in the institutions that
were becoming battlefields... If it were to be generally conceded
that each ethnic/racial group should be represented
proportionately... what would happen to the over-represented? [55]
There is no doubt that Glazer, who is intimate with the Jewish
establishment, was referring to the ADL, amongst the others, when
he wrote the above. And in fact the ADL does give a distinctly
'Jewish' spin to its opposition to quotas. The December, 1978 ADL
Bulletin quotes Nathan Perlmutter, Foxman's predecessor as National
Director, on quotas:
"The message of the 1960s civil rights movement, he explains,
was to be color blind, to judge a person on his individual merits.
'Now, guided and abetted by government agencies, there is massive
backsliding to quotas, to evaluating a person on such extraneous
factors as race. The simple incontrovertible fact is that quotas in
favor of one group, by definition, means quotas against another
group. That's the very essence of the Nuremberg Laws.'" [56]
According to the November, 1979 ADL Bulletin, the ADL
"submitted a 'friend of the court' brief" in a case, Fullilove v.
Kreps,
"concerned with the constitutionality of the Federal Public
Works Employment Act of 1977, which provides that no grant for
public works shall be made unless the applicant assures... that at
least 10 percent of each grant sum be expended for 'minority'
business enterprises... (The) ADL... opposes this quota and
questions the legality of laws which establish
governmentally-designated and protected groups. 'Stamping the
imprimatur of the Federal government upon a particular racial or
ethnic definition, and granting and withholding benefits to
individuals accordingly,' our brief points out, 'calls to mind
notorious examples of attempts by other governments to define
racial and ethnic groups, such as the Nuremberg laws in the Third
Reich defining a 'Jew'." [57]
People get sent to mental institutions for a lot less than
this. The notion that a law, doubtlessly supported by a majority of
congressional Democrats, designed to bring a small measure of
economic justice to Blacks, Spanish-speakers, Orientals, Indians,
Eskimos and Aleuts, was really no better than Nazi anti-Jewish
legislation, takes my breath away. The idea that affirmative action
quotas in favor of minorities, might be used, some day in the
future, as a pretext to discriminate against Jews, is a notion that
hasn't occurred to anyone outside the Jewish establishment. There
were Jews among the congressional majorities that voted in every
affirmative action law. Surely no such scheme was thought to be
sanctioned by them. Were the gentiles in those congresses, black or
white, even remotely contemplating discrimination against Jews? Of
course not! The Nazi laws were measures taken against a minority
hated by the German government. American affirmative action laws
are policies projected by a government with a white majority in
favor of minorities. Jews are affected only insofar as they are
overwhelmingly white. And, of course, affirmative action has
actually benefited Jews. Glazer points out that
"(F)emales were one of the groups designated as beneficiaries
of affirmative action. Thus... one could argue that Jewish women
were as much helped by affirmative action as Jewish men were hurt,
or helped even more than Jewish men were hurt." [58]
Arguments utilizing previous discrimination against Jews to
oppose present proposals to redress past discrimination against
America's ethnic minorities, and women, are ideological
self-deceptions, at best, and sophistries at worst. They are
designed to put a pseudo-progressive gloss on efforts to preserve
the economic status quo. And, as affirmative action in favor of
women stands or falls with similar policies towards Blacks and
other minorities, such specious reasoning is a razor against the
interest of the majority of Jews, who, as with all other groups,
are majority female.
VII - Yo! Abe! Make me rich and famous, not just famous
Since one of the most important things we learn from the past
is that most people don't learn from the past, I must automatically
presume that at least some of my readers will still say, even after
this obviously factual recounting of the ADL's record, that,
whatever its past sins, it performs a valuable service in exposing
some anti-Semites. But its reactionary politics constantly leads it
to libel and lunacy, so much so that I must confess that I
celebrated when I discovered Foxman's attack on me. It meant that
I certified as part of the intellectual elite.
Surely the most hilarious of the ADL's cockeyed accusations
were uttered by Forster and Epstein in their book:
"Film cartoons - like the the X-rated Fritz the Cat which...
had a tasteless synagogue sequence... contributed to the atmosphere
of anti-Jewish denigration, along with anti-Jewish stereotyping
found in such full-length 1972 feature films as Woody Allen's
Everything You've Always Wanted to Know About Sex, Such Good
Friends, and Made for Each Other in addition, of course, to
Portnoy.... Capping and capitalizing on the vogue for sick "ethnic"
humor and dehumanization was... The National Lampoon... October
1972. A major item was a mock comic book entitled "The Ventures of
Zimmerman," a put-down on folksinger Bob Dylan, drawn with Jewish
features, blue Yarmulke, and portrayed as a scheming, avaricious,
money-hungry "superman" type who poses as a simple idealistic
folksinger.... The mock cover... bore a 'seal' reading 'Approved by
the Elders of Zion'.... Are the editors of Lampoon anti-Semitic?
Probably not. But they have made a signal contribution to the
perpetuation of those destructive stereotypes - like the Stuermer
cartoons so intimately associated with the annihilation of European
Jewry." [59]
For my immediate purpose of defending myself, a Jew, against
a libelous accusation of being a Holocaust denier, I call your
attention to the fact that at least two of the people accused of
contributing to the atmosphere of anti-Jewish denigration were
Jews, Woody Allen and Philip Roth, two of the greatest comic
talents of our age. But frankly I must say that comparing a Lampoon
spoof to the Hitler regime's most virulent Jew-hating rag is easily
the maddest thing I've ever seen in any ADL production.
You didn't know that Spike Lee is an anti-Semite? Well then,
you just are not as smart as one Abraham Foxman. Here is the
Forward for August 10, 1990:
"Filmmaker Spike Lee's portrayal of two Jewish jazz club
owners in the new film 'Mo' Better Blues' is being called
anti-Semitic by... the Anti-Defamation League.... The
two-dimensional depiction of the two brothers, named Moe and Josh
Flatbush, who appear in brief scenes throughout the movie, was
sharply criticized by Abraham Foxman.... "Spike Lee's
characterization of Moe and Josh Flatbush as greedy an unscrupulous
club owners dredges up an age-old and dangerous form of
anti-Semitic stereotyping." [60]
Spike Lee isn't the kind of person to take that kind of crap
from anyone, and he replied to the charge in a New York Times
op-ed:
"I'm not a racist; I'm not a bigot; I am not an anti-Semite.
What I try to do with all my characters is offer what I feel are
honest portraits of individuals with both faults and endearing
characteristics.... I challenge anyone to tell me why I can't
portray two club owners who happen to be Jewish and who exploit the
Black jazz musicians who work for them. All Jewish club owners are
not like this, that's true, but these two are....I'm an artist and
I stand behind all my work, including my characters, Moe and Josh
Flatbush. As of now, this matter is closed for me." [61]
I have presented more than enough evidence for any serious
reader to grasp the base character of both the ADL and the Zionist
movement. Therefore it is time for me to close as well. I will do
so with a quote, from a Zionist writer's article in The New
Republic, a pro-Zionist publication:
"(W)hile ever growing numbers of Jews believe anti-Semitism in
America is rising to crisis proportions, by nearly every available
measure it is actually on the decline.... In private, some Jewish
agency staffers insist the alarmist tone set by a few national
Jewish agencies, mainly for fund-raising purposes, is a key cause
of Jewish anxiety. Fingers point most often at the ADL and the Los
Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, both of which specialize in
mass mailings warning of impending doom and urging donations.
'People don't give if you tell them everything's o.k.,' says a
cynical staffer at one of the smaller agencies. People give
generously to the Wiesenthal Center and the ADL." [62]
J.J. Goldberg concludes by saying that "maybe it's time for
the leadership to start leading, and tell their public the truth."
But of course they won't. Therefore I ask my readers to help me
expose these incurable frauds. Now that you have read this critique
of the ADL, pass it along to the general public, Jew and gentile
alike. And let me thank you, in advance, for your time and trouble
in this regard.
NOTES
1. Abraham Foxman, "Holocaust Denial: The Growing Danger,"
Dimensions, vol. 8, 1994, p. 14.
2. Marc Caplan, "Hitler's Apologists: The Anti-Semitic Propaganda
of Holocaust Revisionism," p. 51.
3. Eric Breindel, "The Price of Rescue," New Republic, February
18, 1985, pp. 39-41.
4. Fall/Winter 1984 Books and Tapes of Revisionist History.
5. Letter from Institute for Historical Review, March 8,1985.
6. Letter to Institute for Historical Review, April 11, 1985.
7. Alex Cockburn, "Cockburn Replies," Nation, August 31, 1985, p.
130.
8. David Cesarani, "Back To Perdition," Jewish Chronicle
(London), July 3,1987, p. 26.
9. Stuart Hood, "Questions of Guilt and Taboo, Guardian (London),
July 10, 1987.
10. Julian Kossoff, "Full Version of 'Perdition' to be
published," Jewish Chronicle (London), November 27, 1992, p. 8.
11. Lucy Dawidowicz (ed.), A Holocaust Reader, pp. 150-155.
12. David Yisraeli, The Palestine Problem in German Politics
1889-1945 (Hebrew) Bar-Ilan University, Appendix (German): "Geheime
Kommandosache Bericht," pp.. 301-302.
13 Heinz Hohne, The Order of the Death's Head, p. 337.
14 Klaus Polkehn, "The Secret Contacts: Zionism and Nazi Germany
1933-41," Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 1976, p. 75.
15. "Dr. von Weisl Believes in Fascism," World Jewry (London),
June 12, 1936, p. 12.
16. "Supplemento al no. 8 di L'Idea Sionista," March 1936, p. 2.
17. "Grundzuege des Vorschlages der Nationalen Militaerischen
Organisation in Palastina (Irgun Zwei Leumi) betreffend der Loesung
der j uedischen Frage Europas und der aktiven Teilnahme der NMO am
Kriege an der Seite Deutschlands," Yisraeli, pp., 315-317.
18. Christopher Walker, "Shamir Defends Terrorist Past," The
Times (London), October 21, 1983, p. 24.
19. Gerald Frank, The Deed, pp. 91-93, 124, 139.
20. Yitzhak Shamir, Summing Up, p. 31.
21. Ibid., p. 34.
22. Ben Hecht, Perfidy, p. 180
23. Ibid., pp. 194-195, 268.
24. Ibid., pp. 270-271.
25. Michael Dov-Ber Weissmandel, Min HaMaitzer, p. 92.
26. Ibid., p. 93.
27. Ibid., p. 93.
28. Walter Laqueur, "The Anti-Zionism of Fools," New Republic,
November 2, 1987, p. 34.
29. Ibid., p. 34.
30. Ibid., p. 37.
31. Robert Wistrich, Between Redemption and Perdition, p.. 22.
32. Ibid., p. 244.
33. Bernard Postal (ed.), This is B'nai B'rith, p. 7.
34. Deborah Moore, B'nai B'rith and the Challenge of Ethnic
Leadership, p. 181.
35. This is B'nai B'rith, p. 61.
36. Ibid., p. 20.
37. "B'nai B'rith and the German-Jewish Tragedy," B'nai B'rith
Magazine, May, 1938, p. 227.
38. Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 277.
39. "B'nai B'rith," Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 1, p.
223.
40. Nathan Belth, A Promise to Keep, p. 141.
41. Arnold Forster, Square One, pp. 164-166.
42. "Memorandum of the ADL," Jewish Life, September 1953, p. 8.
43. Forster, p. 160
44. Sidney Hook, "My Running Debate with Einstein," Commentary,
July 1982, p. 47.
45. Benjamin Epstein and Arnold Forster, The New Anti-Semitism,
p. 336.
46. Ibid., pp. 137-138.
47. Debra Cohen, "ADL Settles California Case Over Collecting
Information," Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin,
November 17, 1993.
48. Joel Moss and Kathleen Puckett, (FBI) FD-302 of Roy Edward
Bullock, pp. 19-21.
49. Robert Friedman, Village Voice, July 27, 1993.
50. Cohen
51. Nathan Perlmutter and David Evanier, "The African National
Congress: A Closer Look," ADL Bulletin, May 1986.
52. Larry Yudelson, "South African Black Leader Seeks Closer Ties
with Jewish Community," JTADNB, June 12, 1992, p. 3.
53. Garth Wolkoff, "ADL Chief Lashes Out at Critics, Press,
D.A.," Northern California Jewish Bulletin, May 7, 1992, pp. 1, 26.
54. Jonathan Kaufman, Broken Alliance, pp. 111-112.
55. Nathan Glazer, "On Jewish Forebodings," Commentary, August
1985, pp. 32-34.
56. "National Director: Nathan Perlmutter," ADL Bulletin,
December 1978, pp. 7-8.
57. Jeffrey Sinensky, "The Supreme Court and Racial Quotas," ADL
Bulletin, November 1979, p. 8.
58. Glazer
59. Epstein and Forster, pp. 113-114
60. "Spike Lee Stumbles on Stereotypes," Forward, August 10,
1990, p. 8.
61. Spike Lee, "I am Not an Anti-Semite," New York Times, August
22, 1990.
62. J.J. Goldberg, "Scaring The Jews," New Republic, May 17,
1993, pp. 22-23.
*My special thanks to Adam Chandler for his editorial and printing
service, without which this pamphlet could not have been produced.