Unholy Alliance: The Historical Links Between Zionism and Fascism
EACH period in history has its shadow into which are cast the inconvenient, the difficult, the awkward; facts which may work against the interests of the ruling powers. Central among these powers is Zionism, which, since the end of the Second World War, has besmirched the memory of those Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany through what Professor Norman Finkelstein has labelled the ‘Holocaust industry’. Recently, however, some very troublesome facts have begun to emerge that disrupt the ‘holier-than-thou’ image that has been so assiduously constructed by Zionism.
The founding-father of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl, believed that the Jews would always be aliens in Europe and that ‘anti-Semitism’ was inevitable. Herzl proposed that the Jews be given their own state, preferably in Palestine, although in 1903 he did consider a proposal from the British Government for settlement in the occupied Kenyan Highlands.
After the First World War, Zionism faced a radically transformed continent as Europeans turned to both Communism and Fascism to bring about its restoration. Zionism’s response to the rise of these creeds is probably not what you would expect to hear from the ‘Jews-as-victims’ school of historiography.
In 1920, Winston Churchill argued that a struggle was taking place for ‘the soul of the Jewish people’, a struggle between Zionism and Bolshevism. The latter was itself Jewish-led, at least at the outset, and its promise of universal equality was seen as a way to combat anti-Jewish legislation and advance Jewish interests. Sadly, the reality of Bolshevism turned out to be less than equal and just for the East European peasantry. Bolshevism also claimed to oppose all forms of nationalism and this included Zionism. Consequently, in line with its own thinking Zionism soon looked for allies elsewhere and co-operated with the European Far Right in the quest for a common solution to the Jewish Question.
Most people think of the Jews as a religious group, but they have not always been thought of in that way, either by themselves or by others. Max Nordau, a fervent follower of Herzl, said in 1903 that Zionism was ‘not a question of religion, but exclusively of race.’ It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that the Zionists went on to seek collaboration with both Italian and German fascism. Initially, Mussolini was hostile to Zionism and saw it as a tool of British foreign policy. However, in the mid-1920s the Italians became convinced that the foundation of a Jewish state in Palestine was a way to remove British influence from the Middle East. The Fascist press began to comment favourably about Zionism, and vice versa. Vladimir Jabotinsky, leader of the Revisionist faction of Zionism, set up a Betar (Revisionist Youth) squad at the maritime academy of Civitavecchia, which was run by Fascist Blackshirts. Another leading Revisionist, Abba Achimeir, even wrote a newspaper column entitled ‘Diary of a Fascist’.
In Germany, the Zionist Federation (ZVfD) began an alliance with National-Socialism shortly after Hitler’s ascension to power. Kurt Tuchler of the ZVfD and Baron Mildenstein of the SS jointly visited Palestine over a period of six months, the outcome of which was a long series of articles in Dr. Goebbel’s influential Berlin daily, Der Angriff. In 1933, Sam Cohen and Chaim Arlosoroff set up the Transfer Agreement with the Third Reich, by which Jewish money was moved from Germany to Palestine via the Zionist Bank. German interest in Zionism continued with a 1937 visit to Palestine by SS men Adolf Eichmann and Herbert Hagen. Eichmann later revealed that he was greatly impressed by the Zionist efforts, even to the point of saying ‘had I been a Jew I would have been a Zionist.’ Earlier, Eichmann had met Labour Zionist agent Fievel Polkes, who volunteered to spy for the Reich as long as it did not conflict with his own particular objectives. Meanwhile, Zionist kibbutzim training camps prepared young Jews for emigration, with one centre at Neuendorf continuing to operate until at least March 1942.
The SS also forged an alliance with the Mossad-le-Aliya Bet to smuggle Jews into Palestine illegally. The infamous Stern Gang, known in England for its terrorist campaign against British troops, offered in January 1941 to make a political and military alliance with with Hitler’s Germany. The proposal stated: “The establishment of the historical Jewish State on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of maintaining and strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East.”
This totalitarian spirit returned to haunt the world in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in the form of Israeli governments dominated by Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir; the former a Revisionist, the latter a Stern gangster.
Over the last two decades, in particular, historical research has demonstrated that thousands of men of Jewish descent served in the German military with Hitler’s full knowledge and consent. They included two Field Marshals and fifteen Generals. One such was Field Marshal Erhard Milch, deputy to Hermann Goering. This, in addition to the many Jews who served in the ghetto police and as concentration camp guards. The totalitarian power of modern Zionism was demonstrated in 1987 when a play by Leftist writer Jim Allen, Perdition, was effectively censored by a Zionist lobby concerned about the incriminating subject matter. The play deals with the Kastner trial in Occupied Palestine in 1953, which exposed the fact that a member of the Budapest Rescue Committee, Rudolf Kastner, had collaborated with the SS in order to have a small number of the keenest Zionists transferred to Palestine itself. The great majority of Jews in the ghetto were told they would be loaded on trains and resettled elsewhere. Whether this was true or not, the fact remains that Kastner was prepared to leave a large number of his people to the tender mercies of the SS in order to save a self-selected elite.
These are the facts that the Zionists do not wish to become common knowledge. In conclusion, therefore, it can be said that although World Jewry and National-Socialism were traditionally hostile to one another, the Jews developed their own parallel ideology: Zionism, which is today a very powerful force. Not merely in Occupied Palestine, but also in Europe, North America and the ‘former’ imperialist colonies of Africa and Asia. The fact that, between 2018 and 2019, the British Labour Party systematically ousted many of its own ministers and activists for exposing these facts demonstrates the enduring might of this same totalitarian phenomenon.
