Netanyahu's big lie serves to demonize the Arabs to justify Israel's repression of the Palestinians.
A generation ago, young Benjamin Netanyahu, then Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, appeared on numerous American news telecasts, and I recall thinking what a bright and articulate fellow he was, and considered him reasonable in asserting Israel’s right of self defense while also at least suggesting the Palestinians had rights and legitimate aspirations in the West Bank occupied by Israel.
I don’t know what happened to that Benjamin Netanyahu. Perhaps he never existed in the form he convincingly projected. Or, possibly, he hardened after countless internal and external political battles during which he acquired power as prime minister and lost it and, a decade later, got it back and lost it again before he quickly regained it for what most of the world prays will be a final time.
Each year Netanyahu lurches further to the right, embracing apartheid and justifying repression of the Palestinians because these lightly armed people somehow constitute a mortal security threat to the military colossus that is Israel. With the prime minister’s breathless support, his nation continues to violate international law by expanding Jewish settlements on Arab land in the West Bank and divide the indigenous people with hideous walls, countless checkpoints, surly guards, and modern highways for Jews only.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the man who faced allegations of influence peddling and corruption and who, while out of office in 2002, swore before the U.S. House of Representatives that Saddam Hussein was rapidly advancing toward the development of nuclear weapons, and who now seeks to push the United States into attacking Iran for the same unverified reasons, also has a new version of history.
According to the prime minister, Adolf Hitler in November 1941 was still planning to merely expel the Jews, not annihilate them, and the Fuehrer only implemented the Final Solution after Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini complained that Jews who left Europe would come to Palestine. Hitler allegedly asked what he should do. Burn them, replied the Mufti.
See, Netanyahu was essentially saying, we always have been and always will be surrounded by people who yearn to kill every one of us.
A horde of politicians and historians rebutted Netanyahu’s lie, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, during his state visit to the cradle of Nazism, told him that Germany accepted its responsibility for the Holocaust.
By then Netanyahu had retreated a little, and said of course Hitler ignited the Holocaust, but the Arabs encouraged him. It’s unclear how the corpulent prime minister learned so much about Hitler’s meeting with the Mufti since no transcript from their private discussion exists.
As an expert in the life and times of Hitler and the Nazis, I would like to remind Benjamin Netanyahu that Hitler in Mein Kampf had almost twenty years earlier written about his desire to “gas” the Jews. And after taking power in 1933, Hitler rapidly established the framework to destroy Europeans Jews: he concocted the Nuremberg Laws to deny them basic rights; he built concentration camps to imprison those who hadn’t left; he used the murder of a German diplomat as a pretext to destroy synagogues and Jewish businesses and commit mass murder during Crystal Night; he unleashed Einsatz Groups, at the start of World War II, to scour Poland in search of Jews and other undesirables executed by gunshots.
That’s the road to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other death factories. Benjamin Netanyahu knows this, yet he tells the big lie – a thousand lies – to demonize his eternal enemies, the Arabs, native people of a land he craves.
This article was originally published at GeorgeThomasClark.com.
Without expressing an opinion on the matter of the Mufti, Hitler’s regime, before the outbreak of WWII, encouraged German Jews to emigrate. Thus motivated by the Nazi regime in Germany, many German Jews, who were allowed to take out of Germany belongings and valuables, arriving then in Palestine, among other destinations; indeed, that was the German policy at the time.
In my book, “The Germans: Absent Nationality and the Holocaust,” published in 2010, I present a fact that is not disputed by scholars of the Holocaust: that, beginning with the surrender of France to Germany during WWII, German policymakers adopted a plan called “the Madagascar Plan.” According to said plan, the Germans were to deliver all of Europe’s Jews to the island of Madagascar. First, however, it was necessary for the Nazis to conquer the UK and wipe out the British Navy from the high seas, so as to enable them to ship the Jews as planned.
Since Great Britain and the British Navy did not cooperate with the Germans, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the deportation plan shifted to “the east,” i.e., after the occupation of vast parts of the Soviet Union by the Germans the European Jews were to be transferred to Siberia.
Most researchers are of the opinion that there was a moment in time where the plan for the total annihilation of Europe Jewry replace “the Eastern Plan.” and the only disagreement among most researchers is when did the shift occur? I discovered, as delineated in my book, that it was in early December 1941, immediately after the United States entered the war and following the Soviet Union’s counter-offensive.
In light of those occurrences, around 7 December 1941, Hitler reached the conclusion that the Eastern Plan was no longer possible. Having no other alternative means to “rid Europe of its Jews” at his disposal, and since Hitler was convicted that the Jews “pollute the Aryan race,” it was imperative to him to “get rid of them.” Thus the decision to totally exterminate them replaced the former decision, to deport every last one of them.
By the way, the strength of the Soviet counter-offensive took the Germans by utter surprise and nearly broke the ability of the German army to withstand it, as it consisted many army divisions the Soviets transported — without the Germans becoming aware of it — from east Siberia, were they were stationed in order to fight the Japanese if the latter were to join the fight against the Soviet Union.
What Hitler wrote in his book (Mein Kampf) before taking power in Germany is irrelevant; German policy was not made or executed according to the vision of that book.
I do not respond to the rest of the issues brought up in the article, since I am responding from the vantage point of a student of the history of that period, rather than from a political angle.
Dr. Yehuda Cohen, Jerusalem
I mentioned Hitler’s desire, expressed in Mein Kampf, to
“gas” the Jews, to establish that he had long planned to physically
eliminate the Jews of Europe. Furthermore, contrary to your claim that
what Hitler said in Mein Kampf was irrelevant, it was a conviction – an
obsession – that he held throughout his adult life and with increasing
intensity during his political career.
You stress your historical research for a book, and that’s fine. I spent
20 years researching and writing “Hitler Here,” a biographical novel
that has received strong reader reviews on Amazon.com as well as among
professional reviewers. And I am qualified to guarantee anyone that
Hitler explicitly said, before the outbreak of World War II, that if the Jews
(in his demented fantasy) again ruined Germany, as they supposedly had
during The Great War (WWI), he and the Nazis would make sure that they
perished.
The very public sources from the time that you refer to are naturally not going
to mention the quite secret plans brewing for a Final Solution to the
“Jewish problem” in Europe. Even when the Holocaust began most Germans were unaware of it. Most Jews were certainly unaware of impending disaster or they would not have so
cooperatively gotten into those trains heading East.
Your citations prove only that few people knew about the plans of Hitler and
his closest advisers. Remember, for example, that Hermann Goering, before
WWII said, “I wouldn’t want to be a Jew in Germany.”
Granted, Hitler would have been happy to wake up in a Europe
that was Judenrein, free of Jews. But he knew that wouldn’t happen, and
that is why he took the steps I mentioned in my column above. The
physical elimination of the Jews began no later than September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland and sent Einsatz groups to
locate and shoot as many Jews as possible. That, sir, is genocide and
something you evidently don’t consider an intrinsic part of the Holocaust.
I have also just checked the two reader reviews of your work, and one of them, by a Michael Savage, says your work is full of “typographical and grammatical” errors and contains the shockingly incorrect assertion that Hitler attended the Wannsee Conference.
George Thomas Clark
Bakersfield, CA
I should also add that the Madagascar Plan was a fantasy that had no more chance of taking place than Hitler’s “planned invasion” of India.
And these essentially conversational “plans” – relocating European Jews to dreary places like Madagascar and Siberia – where would they have led? In the Nazi rap sessions, the answer to that is clear: the Jews would have been worked and starved to death, and the survivors would have been murdered. But that was all too complicated. Poland, a killing ground since September 1, 1939, was deemed an ideal place for the six death camps – Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Maidanek, and Belsec.
In regard to the second very long post by Yehuda Cohen: I certainly have not agreed, explicitly or implicitly, that the Germans had a serious plan to ship European Jews to Madagascar or Siberia.
Evidently, you don’t realize that you’ve contradicted yourself in your first and second posts. In the first you claim that Hitler hadn’t considered a Final Solution until November 1941. In the latter you concede “There is living proof found in Israel that Hitler had a preference for expelling the Jews (till the beginning of the war).” So you’ve moved up your date of mass murder more than two years, to September 1, 1939.
I see absolutely nothing to debate here. The facts – and actions, rather than words – are quite clear. Starting on September 1, 1939, the Germans sent out SS Einsatz groups – killing squads – to mass murder the Jews of Poland. This was the start of the Holocaust, which was certainly not limited to the six death camps in Poland. Most of the original killing was done by shooting but soon the Germans started using gas vans to eliminate the Jews. This means of slaughter proved time consuming and emotionally difficult since many Germans broke down after opening the vans and seeing so much horror.
No document will ever change the fact that from the beginning of the war the Germans started to systematically murder the Jews of Europe. The means of killing changed in 1942 when the Germans built their six death camps in Poland.
As I stated in my first response to your original post, the Madagascar and Siberian plans were German fantasies – essentially fascist hot air. And, besides, in these incomplete plans the Germans discussed working and starving the Jews to death in either region, and would have murdered the rest.
You’re surely not contending the Germans were going to help the Jews establish a homeland, are you?
The only undetermined issue at the start of the war was where most of the murdering would take place. Most of the Jews who escaped from Europe did so before the start of World War II.
Actually, the gas vans weren’t used at the start of World War II in Poland in September 1939; they came later. But the Holocaust did begin at that time as Einsatz commandos shot scores of thousands of Poles and Jews.
Thank you
for your retort, I’m glad to relate to its main points, as follows:
Most of your queries and contemplations are covered, in a comprehensively academic fashion, in the appendix at the end of my book, The Germans: Absent Nationality and the Holocaust, (at pp. 145-163), which is entitled, “Was the Decision to Exterminate All Jews Taken, When and Why?
In the above-mentioned appendix I analyze in detail the questions posed in its title, and provide, in considerable detail, the relevant facts, including statements by foremost scholars on the matter in the last seventy years. Following a comprehensive reasoned critique of their conclusions, I have resolved the issue as I have. For want of space it is impossible to provide complete academic-level responses to the questions you have raised, but I will try to succinctly relate to most, below. I will also send you, within days, a summary of the appendix (3 pages in length) for your review. If you wish to read the complete appendix, which includes the details substantiating the academic analysis, it may be read within my book (see http://www.priestspublishing.com) or in a new booklet containing only the appendix, coming up on http://www.Amazon.com pre-order.
In your article and in your comments you are mainly discussing verbal expressions of Hitler and others, whence you ascertain Hitler’s intentions. My book, however, examines in detail not only those expressions, but, in particular, Hitler’s actions. My approach is that if the statements have not been implemented over the years, and when Hitler’s
actions even contradict – over a long period of time – statements he made before the outbreak of WWII, I prefer to rely on his actions in order to understand his actual intentions. This approach seems more realistic; after all, since when politicians’ statements are to be accorded such conclusive weight? Politics, universally, stand to prove that a politician would opt to say what would serve his immediate ends, and if his actions contradict such statements, the latter should simply be disregarded in favor of the former. At any rate, in the above-mentioned appendix I related to all the classified documents of the relevant period, not just to the information that was publicly known then, as it is all presented in historical research of that period.
There is living proof found in Israel that Hitler had a preference for expelling the Jews (till the beginning of the war). The evidence is in the form of tens of thousands of Jews whom Hitler allowed, before the outbreak of WW II, to travel in comfort to Palestine — with all their valuables — thus proving Hitler’s true intentions at that time. I am aware of that fact not only of the results of my academic research (which I conducted at the
Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as part of a post-doctoral work) but also due to the fact that I have four great-grandchildren who, on their father’s side, are descendants of a Jewish family that was allowed to arrive to Palestine amidst Hitler’s reign.
I did find a correct item in your reply, which is: Indeed, an editing error did occur on page 195 of the book’s first printing, relied upon by Michael Savage in his correct remark, and that was corrected (meaning: Hitler did not attend the Wannsee Conference) in a second printing. Incidentally, that is the only substantive error that particular reviewer indicated, and, on a personal note, it is unfortunate that you did not
also read the other comments relating to my book, although, I hasten to say, readers’ comments are not necessarily evidence of the correctness of an academic postulation.
I am well aware that you have been researching this issue for the past 20 years, and even published a book about the life and deeds of Hitler; and, moreover, that your predisposition and interpretation thereof differ from mine. The succinct appendix I will send you within days, will demonstrate that I have delineated — as previously mentioned — the other researchers’ positions, including those who disagree with the conclusions
I’ve reached; among them there are those whose interpretation is akin to yours. As I noted above, I deal with those arguments in the full appendix, where I show why said opinion is erroneous. I suggest that you’ll review the condensed appendix that I’ll send you and respond to what is presented in there, since apparently you wrote your comment without the benefit of even perusing my book. Had you read it, or at least the full appendix, you might, perhaps, have changed your mind on this specific matter. If that might happen, I’ll be happy if you would take the time to amend your response accordingly.
Anyway, since you consider the subject a weighty one, I do not doubt that you relate to these questions with sincerity, curiosity and openness. I appreciate your earnest expression, till now, and the fact that you do not dispute my assertion that the main body of Holocaust researchers posit that Hitler favored sending the Jews to Madagascar — an island then under French control, the same France that was then under German occupation; and that following the invasion of the Soviet Union, Hitler conjured up a
substitute plan, of sending the Jews to the east (Siberia). Thus, it seems there is no disagreement between us on those two points. Therefore, the question is: Are these many researchers mistaken, as you have, perforce, concluded. The difference between me and those scholars I have surveyed in the appendix of my book, concerns the exact date — during the war — in which the decision was made to convert the deportation plan into an extermination one. On that point I again direct your attention to the condensed appendix that I prepare especially for your review.
Dr. Yehuda Cohen
Jerusalem