This Week in Palestine w/Sherif Fam - The Zionist-Nazi Connection (2009)

Sherif Fam: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to This Week in Palestine, a weekly 45-minute segment of news from Palestine and discussion of issues relevant to the Palestinian struggle for freedom from Israel's brutal military occupation and colonization of their homeland. This program presents news and analysis from the Palestinian perspective, a perspective we do not get from the mainstream media. You may recall that we reported last week on Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's instructions to all Israeli embassies and consulates to hang a 1940s picture of the then Grand Mufti of Jerusalem sitting with Hitler in a clear attempt to smear the Palestinians and muster public support for Israel. While it is true that the Grand Mufti appealed to Hitler in desperation of watching the Zionist British alliance rape his country, It is also true that former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, then the operations commander of the notorious terrorist group of thugs known as the Stern Gang, who were responsible for many massacres of Palestinians, sent emissaries to Beirut to meet with German agents and offer the services of the Zionist military to Nazi Germany. Indeed, there is a long history of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. That history has been carefully hidden from public view. Today, we have the privilege of exploring that history with Professor Mazen Qumsir. Professor Qumsir currently teaches and does research at Bethlehem and Berzeit Universities in occupied Palestine, and is president of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People. He has had a long and distinguished career, having previously served on the faculties of Yale University, Duke University, and the University of Tennessee. He has published several books, of which the most acclaimed is Sharing the Land of Canaan, Human Rights, and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle, which was translated to Spanish. The book explores the history of Zionism and is available online at his website, www.kumsiyah.org. He joins us now by telephone from Palestine. Good afternoon, Professor Mazen Kumsiyah. Thank you for being here.

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Good afternoon to you, and thanks for having me on your show.

Sherif Fam: On the contrary, it's our pleasure, sir. The long history of Zionist collaboration with Nazi Germany is well known to professional historians, but is rarely, if ever, discussed outside academic circles. As you know, Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman instructed all Israeli embassies and consulates to display the picture of Mufti Hosseini sitting with Hitler, comfortable in the notion that the public is ignorant of the Zionist collaboration with Nazi Germany. Could you give us a primer on the other side of this coin, the nature and extent of the Zionist connection with Hitler's Germany?

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Yes, actually the connection started very early on in the Nazi regime when Hitler was first elected in the early 1930s. The World Zionist Organization and the Zionist Federations of Germany both sent him telegrams of congratulations and support, knowing very well his views as articulated in his book about Jews in Europe and things like that. And then when Hitler introduced the racial laws in Germany, the Zionist Federation of Germany further congratulated him and said that Basically, what he is trying to do in Germany is analogous to what they plan to do for Palestine. That is establish a national unified identity that excludes others who are different. And so in that sense, they fully approved what he did. And the relationship continued and became stronger in the mid-1930s and late 1930s. when there was a boycott of Nazi Germany, and the Zionist movement broke the boycott and developed what was called the Transfer Agreement, which we can delve more deeply into, if you like. And the relationship went further on up until 1941-42, when, as you pointed out earlier, the high officials of the Nazi regime were invited to Haifa as the guest of the Haganah and other underground Zionist forces, and continued up until the end, basically, up until the end of the Nazi regime.

Sherif Fam: How about the transfer movement that you had mentioned a couple of minutes ago? What was that about?

Mazin Qumsiyeh: So as the world boycotted Nazi Germany and Nazi products, the Nazi regime began to feel the economic pressure. And the boycott was supported by socialist Jews like the Bund and other socialist organizations. The Zionist movement, by contrast, decided... that it is wise to seek alliance and seek arrangements with Hitler. So they approached the Nazi regime about facilitating Jewish immigration to Palestine. That is, members of the Jewish community in Germany and in the concentration camps from Eastern Europe who are Zionist and would be willing to come to Palestine under the banner of Zionism could... exchange basically their goods in Germany for money that they would spend in Palestine on German goods. It was a win-win kind of situation for the Zionist movement and the Nazis, so to speak. For the Zionist movement, it meant getting these people that supported the Zionist movement to come to Palestine. And for the Nazi movement, it meant basically a market for its products, then boycott around the world, and the support of the Zionist movement of very wealthy and rich individuals like Rothschilds and Weismans of the world to support basically a break on the boycott of Nazi Germany. In the process, of course, that had the implicit agreement by the Zionists that other Jews who are not supportive of the Zionist movement, and especially socialist and communist Jews who are not interested in immigrating to Palestine but are interested in going to Europe, other places in Europe, or the United States, that those Jews would be not of their concern, that Nazi Germany could do whatever it wants to with these other Jews, so to speak. which happened to be the majority of Jews because the Zionist movement was very small at the time. So essentially, in a nutshell, the movement was, or the agreement, what was called the Haavara Agreement or the Transfer Agreement, was an agreement that benefited Nazi Germany and that benefited the Zionist project on the expense of Jewish lives in Europe.

Sherif Fam: It is amazing how much the Zionist movement oppressed Jews in Europe with the idea of forcing them to emigrate into Palestine. And that continued after the war in 46, 47, and the camps of the displaced persons. Didn't that not happen there? Where the Zionist movement compelled young men and unaccompanied children to go to Palestine and separated them from their families. to force them to go to Palestine and fight against the Palestinians. But also during the war was, if I may, and you refer to this somewhere, you have referred to this as there were two envoys, that Yitzhak Shamir, who was then operations commander of the Stern Gang, there were two emissaries that he sent to Beirut with a proposal. That proposal was found in the archives of the German embassy in Ankara. In that document, let me, if I may, quote a point that was made in that document, and I quote, "...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 Middle East." So while the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was desperately looking for help to end the carnage and rape of his land, Israel would offer the Wehrmacht power and influence in the Middle East. This was far more insidious than the appeal to end the carnage in Palestine that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was trying to make to Hitler.

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Yes, the Mufti of Jerusalem was actually at the time expelled from Palestine. He was out of Palestine. And he was out trying to gain alliances against the British more than anything else, who had occupied Palestine then for over 20 years. That was his main aim. And so his logic was the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so to speak, or try to be friends. But this was not the case for the Zionist movements in Palestine, which were very strong in Palestine, had strong alliances with the British. and yet secret alliances with the Nazi movement. And the alliances were interested very much in basically expelling the Palestinians and in bringing Jews of Europe to Palestine.

Sherif Fam: as you refer also in your book, Professor Qumsiya, what Ben-Gurion, who was then in the leadership of the Zionist movement, when there was an opportunity to save thousands of Jewish children in 1938. He told a meeting of Labour Zionist leaders. Could you...

Mazin Qumsiyeh: There was a proposal to bring Jewish children from Germany and from the areas under German control in 1938 before things got bad to bring them to England. And Ben-Gurion stood very strongly against it, as were most of the leaders of what was then called the Yishuv, which is the Zionist settlement movement in Palestine. And in this meeting of the leaders of the Yishuv, he told them why he was opposed to this. He said, you know, if I had the chance to save all the children in Germany, Jewish children in Germany, by taking them to England, and only half of them by bringing them to Eretz Israel, to the land of Palestine then, then I would choose the latter, because we should not put the interests of these children ahead of Jewish history and the Zionist project. This was the essence of his statement, that basically he was willing to sacrifice Jewish children by preventing them from going to places like England and the United States. if the other alternatives get some of them into Palestine. That was the main goal of Ben-Gurion and his movement. And basically the Zionist movement set this course very early on in the 1930s that they would rather Jews come to Palestine than be liberated, go live anywhere else comfortably, that Palestine was the place for them. So they actually instituted a program to close the doors for Jewish migration from areas in which they are persecuted to any other country and leave them basically one door open, which is to come and join the Zionist movement and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. So because of that, the Zionist movement lobbied Western governments like England, Australia, other places, the United States certainly, and Canada, to prevent Jewish immigration into those countries and not allow them to expand the quotas. There's another little-known fact about the history in which the Zionists claimed that they were doing what they were doing to help Jews, when in reality there's now ample documentary evidence that they lobbied, for example, the United States government against Jewish migration into the United States, against expanding the quotas for immigrants, for Jewish refugees from Europe to come to the United States.

Sherif Fam: Yes, and not only that, they would react violently to Jews who were against the idea of Zionism. Did they not develop that equation, Jew equals Zionist? with the idea that if you were a Jew and were not a Zionist and you were a traitor, that would justify violent action against fellow Jews.

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Yes, and this almost paradoxical situation where they both claim to represent Jews, but at the same time were willing to sacrifice any Jews who opposed them. It is almost reminiscent of the Saqqari movement against the Roman, the Jewish movement, that was so extreme and so radical they called them Saqqari because they would hide their daggers under their cloaks and would stab and kill anybody, you know, Jewish, Roman, or anybody who opposed them. and they are the ones who led in their extremist movement to basically the Romans finally cracking down on them. This extremism has reached unprecedented levels in the 1940s, of course, when even some rabbis that were anti-Zionist were murdered by Zionists. And when the Zionist movement in the 1950s put some bombs in front of synagogues and Jewish community centers in Iraq, for example, to scare Iraqi Jews into leaving to Palestine in false flag operations. This, again, shows the disregard for life generally, and, of course, Jewish life included, just to achieve a political end. This became a standard-bearer structure of the Zionist movement, that violence... is the way to achieve political ends. And that's where the violence of Israel stems from, is from these very early movements of using Zionism to coerce Jews and non-Jews alike to accept their ideologies and to support their ideologies.

Sherif Fam: Yet, you know, this equation, Jew equals Zionist, survives until today, and in fact has found its way in the dictionary, that if you're an anti-Zionist, you are an anti-Semite. Yet we see from the documentary records that Zionism is, if anything, almost the antithesis of Judaism.

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Well, I am not sure about, you know, I would go that far. Judaism, like any religion, has various strands in it. And I think Zionism represents a particular understanding of Judaism. For the Zionists, that's how they perceive it, in the same way that Osama bin Laden assumes that his philosophy represents an understanding of Islam. So, you know, their idea, you know, you can find some support for it in certain writings, and certainly you can find some opposition to it in certain biblical writings. So these are the kinds of things that go under the interpretation, so to speak, of a religious text, in which extremists have used religious texts to justify their activities. But by and large, Zionists have not been religious. Ben-Gurion himself hated religious Jews. He called them dogs and and things like that. And most Zionists were secular atheists who adopted Zionism as an alternative religion almost, as an alternative philosophy to understand the world, so to speak. This historically is not unusual for humans to do that when they want to support a particular political ideology. The Crusaders certainly used Christianity in the same sense. when they were butchering Muslims, Jews, and also fellow Christians who didn't happen to belong in the right category of Christianity, so to speak. So it is found in history. I would say that the Zionist movement was a bit more extreme in the way it applied these idiotic principles and used them through violence to achieve political ends.

Sherif Fam: Well, that's when you get God into the picture, everything else falls apart. Who wants to debate God? And that's, I mean, one can find anything in the scriptures. In the Bible, in the Torah, in the Quran, you can find proposition A and proposition not A. Anything you wish can be found in the scriptures.

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Exactly.

Sherif Fam: What other things can you tell us? Well, I'd like to try and get beyond the Zionist rule that is in effect in Israel. In fact, if we are to understand This government, this Israeli government, we need to know its roots. The Likud and other parties are really byproducts of Jabotinsky's movement, the revisionists. Do they follow, basically, they follow Jabotinsky's ideas, do they not? I mean, much has been made of the Hamas constitution, if you will. But what of the Likud?

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Yes, we have to understand that Likud and Kadima today also trace their ideological foundations with Vladimir Jabotinsky. Vladimir Jabotinsky in the 1920s founded what's called revisionist Zionism. And the only thing he revised about Zionism is really the way it's presented and the way it's acted upon. His view, unlike Ben-Gurion, was that Zionism can be achieved only by force of arms, without any use for international treaties, diplomatic gestures, language or verbal things, gymnastics, etc., The Mongolian, by contrast, believed in the use of both violence and diplomatic and other activities. So the only difference was not in the goals of these two movements, the traditional labor Zionism and the Jabotinsky revisionist Zionism, but in the tactics they used to achieve these goals, both of them aimed for a Jewish state. both of them aimed to remove the Palestinians from their land. Because Jabotinsky was more focused on direct violence, he was more interested in any kind of collaboration or any benefit with any kind of movement or government, regardless of how fascist or how arrogant or how anti-democratic it was. In fact, his His black shirts, people that the military under his command, the militia under his command, imitated in dress and in walk and in gestures the fascist movement in Italy and admired the fascist movement in Italy of Mussolini and things like that. And they also sought alliances with them because, again, they believed that just like them, these fascists believed in the power of the military. And so we can build alliance with them that the blitzkrieg that Germany is doing is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing in Palestine, is his reasoning and his logic. Now, Ben-Gurion was a little more cautious, but again, tried to achieve the same goals in different ways. And as I mentioned earlier, the Haganah and the Yishuv leadership that's more mainstream, was willing to talk to Hitler and to make deals with Hitler like the transfer agreement, but to do it in more careful, behind-the-scenes, secretive ways, not up in your face as Jabotinsky and his ideological descendants now do, people like Avigdor Lieberman and Shamir and Sharon and Netanyahu. are the ideological descendants of Jabotinsky.

Sherif Fam: Well, if we are to achieve any kind of just settlement of this violence against Palestinians, how are we to go... from a Zionist era, which we are in now, through the Likud and Viktor Lieberman's party, Betenu Yisrael or something. What are your thoughts about a post-Zionist era and how one can get to that era?

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Well, we face a very hard problem here. We Palestinians today are 10 million or 11 million Palestinians. Seven million of us are refugees or displaced people. And we face one of the most organized, best organized, best financed, best structured colonial settlement projects in history. I mean, the British in India or the French in Algeria or the Spanish in Portugal or whatever, the Portuguese in Africa, were nothing compared to the Zionist movement here in terms of its structure, organization, meticulous planning, etc. So we face a very, very strong enemy. But I believe that it is not a foreclosed conclusion that the Palestinians will continue to suffer loss of land and suffer at the hands of the Zionists. I think actually if we look historically, we can get some encouragement from the fact that the only places where colonial movements really succeeded is when they wiped off the natives completely or semi-completely so that there's enough of them, there's not enough of them left to really mount an effective resistance. And those who are left are manageable, and I am thinking here of places like the United Canada, Australia, where the native population is so small and so manageable that the society can be expected to be safely continued development under the majority rule that exists there. Where this didn't happen, where the natives were not obliterated completely or semi-completely, we find that The last six decades, basically, have showed that people do get their freedoms. In fact, Israel is the only place where this has not happened yet. And I'm thinking here of places like Algeria, like South Africa, like most countries in Africa itself, Rhodesia previously, now Zimbabwe, and things like that. So Israel remains as the only one in which the native population still exists in very, very large numbers. And the colonizers are having a tough time. And I think they are having a tough time. And I think the paranoia of what we started with this conversation is about Lieberman sending the picture, the old picture of 1940 or whatever, of Hitler with the Mufti of Jerusalem, shows a kind of desperation on the part of the Zionist movement. When you resort to resurrecting a 63-year-old picture to buttress your cause as you are killing Palestinians and settling their land today, it shows an act of desperation, I think.

Sherif Fam: It shows on their part an act of desperation, but on the other hand, as you made the point, in time, even though the populations were not totally obliterated, but time, in what way is time acting? Is time acting on the side of Palestinians or is it acting on the side of Israelis?

Mazin Qumsiyeh: I definitely think it's acting on the side of the Palestinians. If you look today, between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean, there are 5.5 million Palestinians and an approximately equal number of Israeli Jews. And many of the Israeli Jews, I would say more than half of them, are not Zionist, are either post-Zionist or even anti-Zionist. And the Palestinians are reproducing fairly rapidly in this area. And so the Zionist movement had run out of large numbers of Jews around the world to bring here. Certainly Russian Jews were the largest number, one million that were brought in the 1990s. But this has ended, basically, and now are 1980s and 1990s. And now there's a reverse migration. Over 300,000 Israelis have moved from Israel. to the United States. Over 250,000 Israelis are now living in Germany even. So I think, you know, we can see that the trends are not, you know, good for Zionism long term. And the other aspect, I think the second point to make about that is the use of military power and military might to achieve political ends have also been curtailed significantly in the last 20 years, and even more so in the last five or six years. I would say, take the example of the Israeli attack in Lebanon in 2006 or the Israeli attack on Gaza just this past year, and you will see that that military might cannot achieve political ends. Israel was not successful in what it aimed to achieve with these military campaigns against Lebanon and against the Gaza Strip. So I think at this point, all the Israeli Zionist establishment has left to it is its military power, and that has been shown to be basically not too useful to achieve its political ends. So it has to come now with time being on the side of justice and human rights for Palestinians. I'm very convinced of this. I think in the next 10 years we'll see dramatic changes here.

Sherif Fam: I'm glad that we can end this interview on an optimistic note. Thank you very much, Professor Mazen Khomsia, for being our guest today. Thank you. Thank you. The subject of Zionism is a very broad subject, and perhaps we can continue our discussion in another edition. Thank you very much. And that is all we have for today. The following is the second part of my interview with Mr. Lenny Brenner, recorded on Thursday, August 13th. In it, Mr. Brenner talks at some length about the Zionist collaboration with Nazi Germany and touches upon the subject of ending the Zionist project with the creation of a single democratic secular state. Here it is. Good morning, Mr. Lenny Brenner. Welcome back to This Week in Palestine. During the first part of the interview aired last week, you discussed the early history of Zionism as it arose in Europe and the Zionist project of creating a state for Jews. In pursuing that project with single-minded determination, one can say that the Zionists did not pay much attention to the warfare of Jews. Could you lay out for us the various agreements the Zionists made with Nazi Germany over time such as the so-called transfer agreement in 1933, I believe, as well as later agreements. And then I would like to ask you about your views on a single-state solution and how we can get there from here.

Lenny Brenner: Okay. In 1983, I published a book called Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. And basically what it is is exactly a study of the relationship between the Zionist movement and the Nazis and Mussolini's fascism in Italy. And to my amazement, I was astounded by the enormous success of the book. You know, you don't expect a book like that to be picked up all over the world. But among other things, the London Times wrote a favorable review of the book. Edward Mortimer wrote it in the February 11, 1984 London Times. Mortimer later... became the communications director for Kofi Annan in the United Nations. So as a professional writer, I've learned that the way books are judged as to whether or not they're a success is, number one, if they make a million dollars for the author, of course. But the book isn't about sex, so... It doesn't run to that, but the other way that you determine the importance of a book is the importance of the publications that review it, you know? Yes. Okay, so this was reviewed favorably by the London Times and Moscow's Izvestia, which at that time was the official organ of the Soviet Union. And essentially, they both say... the same thing. And now I'm reading from the London Times Review. The fact that Yitzhak Shamir's Stern Gang sent a note to the Nazis in 1941. They sent it twice. to offering to go to war on Adolf Hitler's side is what Mortimer is talking about. And he says that fact gives an extra edge of topicality to what would be in any case a highly controversial study of the Zionist record in the heyday of European fascism by Lenny Brenner, an American Trotskyist writer who happens also to be Jewish. It is short, crisp, and carefully documented. Mr. Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where the Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler. He is careful also to put on record the opposition to such policies within the Zionist movement. Okay, now, I quote that because, as I say, you know, this is one of the world's most prominent newspapers saying, hey, it's a great book, go and read it, you know. Okay. Now, you mentioned the transfer agreement in 1933. So the way that worked was this. Hitler came to power in January of 1933. And in June of 1933, the Zionist Federation of Germany sent him a message, sent the Nazis a message. I mean, you don't send it to Hitler directly. saying, hey, you know, we can get along because you want us out of Germany and we want Jews to go to Palestine. So what they worked out, the Zionists and the Nazis, was a thing called in Hebrew the Ha'avara. In English it means the transfer. Now, the way it worked is this. Anybody, Jewish people, gentile it didn't matter who wanted to leave germany with money had to pay a certain amount of that money to the german government before they left because we're talking in 1933 we're talking the depths of the depression and they just didn't want people to anybody to walk out with money you know that kind of thing and if you had to walk out they they took a percentage off you Okay, so what happened was they worked out this agreement where if you sent, let's say, a thousand, if you wanted to send a thousand Reich marks to Germany, from Germany to Palestine, what they would do is you would give the thousand, you're a German Jew, you would give your thousand marks to the German government and they would send, let us say, 800 Reich marks worth of steel pipes to Palestine. Now, that would be less of a deduction from 1,000 marks to 800 than if you tried to send the money to New York. You see what I'm getting at? In other words, it's a discount, okay? Now, you... The German government would send the steel pipes to Palestine. The Zionist, the Jewish agency there would get it, and they would sell it, sell the pipes, and then you, the German Jew, would get, let us say, 750, the equivalent in pounds of 750 marks. So both the Nazis took a discount, but it was cheaper than going to New York, sending the same money to New York, and then the Zionists took a discount. But again, it would be still cheaper than if you had to pay the money to the Germans to send the money to New York. Okay. Now, the problem that they had, the Zionists had in... Palestine was that at that time, 1933, the Zionist colony there was still small. So, you know, who do you sell those steel pipes to? I mean, you know, they could use a certain amount of them, but, you know, they were getting more in the way of that kind of machinery than they could actually use at that time.

Sherif Fam: So they had to export it.

Lenny Brenner: So they literally began, the Nazis were selling, the Zionists were selling Nazi goods in the rest of the Middle East. Okay, now that's for sure. I mean, there's no dispute that that happened. They even tried to sell some of those goods in Britain But the British Zionists said, listen, don't do that. I mean, if you do that, that'll just bring attention, you know, to what's going on. And understand that the overwhelming majority of Jews of all kinds, you know, politically, naturally oppose any kind of dealings with the Nazis, you know. That's automatic, if you know what I mean. It's almost regardless of your politics, you do that. So... it continued along until oh and what the zionists then then did this is 1933 was since they had signed the trade agreement they convinced the head of the jewish office of the ss a guy named count uh uh leopold uh von mildenstein they convinced him to go to Palestine as their guest, the guest of the German Zionist Federation. And he visited, you know, and he went to different, you know, Zionist kibbutz, so on and so forth. And then he came back to Germany, and he wrote 12 articles for the Angrif, which was Propaganda Minister Goebbels' newspaper, on his trip. And they made such a big thing out of it that they actually made a medal. This is the Nazis. with a swastika on one side and a star of david you know which is the zionist symbol on the other side and it said a nazi goes to palestine and writes about it in the angrif now i actually have the medal i have a copy of the medal i see yeah you know in other words somebody uh you know uh nazi uh memorabilia is uh there's a big market for that kind of thing and somebody uh put one of these things uh onto the market and you know probably didn't realize what it was if you know if you know what i mean you know it's just another metal to this guy but A friend of mine bought it and then he sold it to me. So I actually have the thing and I have it on the internet, you know, the pictures of the medal. After we're done talking, I'll email you a copy of the medals.

Sherif Fam: But didn't they also put as part of the agreement, explaining part of the agreement, telling the Germans that if Jews leave Germany and go to Britain or France, that they would badmouth the Germans. Right. It would be bad for the Germans.

Lenny Brenner: Right. In other words, both, you see, that was the attitude of the Nazis as well. You know, in other words, Send the Jews to Palestine and all they can do is complain to other Jews.

Sherif Fam: Right. And so at this point they would only allow Jews to go to Palestine and not to leave and go anywhere else.

Lenny Brenner: No, no, no, no, no. They allowed them to go to other places, but they gave a special discount to go to Palestine.

Sherif Fam: I see.

Lenny Brenner: Right. I mean, in other words, Einstein, for example, came to the United States. But, you know, you see, let me put it this way. When Hitler came to power, we know that he had written Mein Kampf in 1926. And he talked then in 1926 about how the German government in 1914, when the war broke out, should have killed five or 10,000 Jews to, you know, to keep the rest of them in line, you know. But when he actually came to power in 1933, remember that he comes to power in a country that had been defeated in World War I. The Germans had to withdraw all their troops from the Rhineland. They couldn't have any troops there. have an air force. They had to, the German government at that time had a deal up until 19, from, from 1921 to the Weimar regime had a deal from 1921 to 1933 where they actually did secret training inside the Soviet Union. Okay. Because the Soviet Union was opposed to British imperialism. So they worked out that kind of deal and, so that the Soviet Union, you know, could learn things about militarism from the German military. You know, it worked both ways, you know. Okay, so that, of course, was canceled in 1933. But when, as I say, when Hitler comes to power, he has come to power in a very weak, militarily weak Germany. So he didn't have a real one consistent policy towards the Jews. He wanted them out, but where they should go, what they should do, et cetera, et cetera, that wasn't clear to him. So like every branch of the Nazi government, you know, in a sense had its own policy. But the most important guy was von Mildenstein with the SS. Now, what is amazing about this is that von Mildenstein's lieutenant and, you know, sort of like disciple, was none other than Adolf Eichmann, all right?

Sherif Fam: The Adolf Eichmann.

Lenny Brenner: The Adolf Eichmann, right. Okay, so von Mildenstein, as I say, he goes to Palestine, he writes this, you know, wonderful, hey, they're doing good over there, you know, this is a new Jew, this is a place to send them, etc. So the next thing you know is that Adolf Eichmann starts to study Hebrew, okay? Now, whenever I tell this to American Jews, they burst out laughing, because so many American Jews have left Judaism, and probably the biggest reason that they had for leaving was that they had to study Hebrew, which was a dead language. They had to study Hebrew, which they don't speak. and it's a foreign language, and it sounds like extra homework to them. So the notion of Adolf Eichmann studying Hebrew is amusing, if you know what I mean. It's so ironic. But at any rate, what then happens... is that in 1937, the Haganah, which was the underground militia of the Israeli Labor Party, at that time it was the party of David Ben-Gurion, who later became the first prime minister of Israel, and today the Labor Party is run by Ehud Barak,

Sherif Fam: Yes.

Lenny Brenner: Okay. I mean, you know, I'm just saying this so that, you know, people can connect it up to today. Yeah. They sent this guy, Feivel Polkus, to Berlin. And we know what was said because Eichmann and the Nazis kept the record of this. And after World War II, all these records were captured, you know? Okay. So what he did was he offered to... for the Nazis in the Middle East looking for oil you know places where there would be oil all right and and he invited Eichmann to come to Palestine so again we know from the Nazi records that Eichmann came to Palestine in 1937 he was there For one day, he claimed to be a journalist, you know. And the British let him in, but then, you know, they had second thoughts. They realized, you know, what's this all about, you know. And they kicked him out, and he went to Cairo, where he met again with Polkus. And again, Polkus told him that, you know, the Zionists, of course, liked the policies that Hitler was doing in Germany, because that was forcing Jews to leave. and and uh but what they wanted was in return for spying for the nazis they wanted a better deal in the on the the haravara transfer agreement in other words you know i i mean they didn't have a discount yeah in other words uh less of a discount if you know what i mean you know okay uh now The Nazis decided, no, they didn't want that. They really weren't interested. They had very incoherent policies towards the Middle East. Their attitude was that, you know, remember, this is 1937, and they're still just recovering. They're just beginning to remilitarize, if you know what I mean. The militarization hasn't been completed yet. But their attitude was, Hitler wasn't interested in any kind of colonies in Asia or the Pacific, the traditional kind of Western imperialism. What he wanted to do was conquer Poland and conquer the Soviet Union and spread Germany out. Very different from everybody else's thinking. So he really wasn't interested in in doing a better deal with the Nazis, with the Zionists, for a couple of reasons. Number one, he didn't need Middle Eastern oil. He had very good relations with the Romanian government, which had the plus the oil fields. Okay, so he was getting all the oil that he needed from that. Okay, so his attitude was, you know, the Nazi attitude was, you know, thanks, but no thanks, you know. And one scholar put it very nicely. He said that generally speaking, the Zionists were more interested in doing a deal with the Nazis than the Nazis were doing a deal with the Zionists, if you know what I mean. I understand. Yeah, yeah, you know.

Sherif Fam: Can we fast forward a little bit to 1938 when there was almost a military agreement between the Haganah and the Nazis.

Lenny Brenner: No, I'm saying that's what I'm talking about now. In other words, that the Nazis decided, no, thank you, Mr. Polkus, but no thank you. Now, understand that all of these documents were captured by the Americans after World War II, and they shipped some of them to the Library of Congress, and then they shipped them back to Germany, et cetera. But there is no dispute whatsoever about these documents, these Nazi documents. And you've written about that? Oh, yes. But understand, other Zionist scholars have written about it as well, but the problem is that most Zionists don't read their own scholars. Well, they don't want to know about that part. Exactly, exactly. That's really what it is. Now, what they do, however, when they do hear about it, Oh, now let's take this further. Now, all of this was being done by the Labour Party and the Haganah, okay? They were the dominant element in Zionism in that period. What we call today... The Zionist revisionists, who are the movement of today, of Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, at that time they were a minority within the Zionist movement. Now, their attitude was they were pro-Mussolini, pro-fascist. okay and uh jabotinsky at first he didn't like mussolini uh he thought he called him a head buffalo and so on and so forth but when he realized that the british were beginning to back off from the idea of setting up a jewish state in palestine because of you know all the pressure they were getting from the from the arab world he then shifted and looked for a new mandatory, you know, a mandate, a European protector to help the Zionists conquer Palestine. So he shifted to Italy, and Mussolini had at least 135 young Zionist revisionists trained at his naval academy in Civitavecchia. And at least 35 of them actually joined the university fascist group in Italy. In other words, they weren't, you know, Jabotinsky always said, look, I'm not a fascist, I'm working with fascists, but I'm not a fascist, you know. But his rank and file I would estimate at least 70% of them were, called themselves individually fascists, if you know what I mean, you know? And so these were the guys who joined the university fascist group. Now what happened though, and we know for sure that when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, that the Zionist revisionists supported it, okay? So, you know, supported the invasion, and they marched in Italy in victory parades, et cetera, in Italy against the Ethiopians. That's for sure, okay? I mean, again, no one disputes that fact, okay? But then in 1936, the Spanish Civil War broke out, And, you know, it was a left-right kind of proposition. And Mussolini realized, listen, if the workers win in Spain... We have about 15 minutes at most. Yeah. If the workers win in Spain, that would inspire his workers in Italy to try to overthrow him. So he had to crush the workers in Spain, and he realized he couldn't do it alone by himself. So he allied himself with Hitler for the first time, kicked out all the Jews that were in the fascist party, and kicked out the Zionist revisionists from the Naval Academy. So Jabotinsky, who was the founder of Zionist revisionism, eventually drifted back to the British. But a wing of the Zionist revisionists was so committed to fascism that they interpreted everything differently. They decided, listen, Mussolini tried to help us and the Jews were ungrateful. In other words, the overwhelming majority still kept saying, fascism is bad, so on and so forth. So what do you expect? He broke with us. So what they did, and this was a group led by Abraham Stern, and a fellow by the name of Yitzhak Shamir, okay, in 1940 and 41, they wrote a document offering to go to war on Adolf Hitler's side. a representative to beirut because at that time 1940 beirut was controlled by vichy france you know which was the the the puppet uh the nazi puppet regime in uh in france after hitler conquered france and they presented it to the german ambassador there and again we have the document because they put it in their archives, and, you know, after the war, the Allies captured the archives. So there's no dispute that Yitzhak Shamir tried to go, and the Stern gang, tried to go to war on Adolf Hitler's side. They sent the same message twice to the Nazis, all right? I mean, so there's no argument about it. Now, what makes that ominous was that shamir later became the prime minister of israel yes all right so you know think about it for a minute uh you know and your listeners should think about it for a minute for from 1983 to about 1991 israel was run by a guy who wanted to go to war a jew who wanted to go to war on hitler's side because he was a fascist like like like hitler was a fascist you know I mean, all this, I mean, sounds like I'm making it up, so to speak, you know. I mean, who could believe this, you know, except it's absolutely documented. Now, what literally happened was that I sent, well, I was in Jerusalem when Shamir was appointed prime minister when Begin had to retire. He went mad, literally. And they had to replace him with Shamir. And I had the document, the Stern Gang offer to go to war on Hitler's side in English and in German. So I gave the English version to a Palestinian weekly. They ran it completely, and the foreign newspaper men in Israel asked Shamir about this. And he lied. He said, yes, there was a plan to contact the Nazis, etc. I oppose this, but I did join Stern's group after the proposal was rejected. Now, When I read this, I literally, by that time I was in London, I walked into the London Times and I introduced myself. They had me talk to an editor and I showed them these documents in German and in English, etc. And I showed them, I said, look, he's lying because he says that he uh joined them after they made the proposal but they made the proposal twice and he definitely was a member before the second proposal you know i mean he was he was really a member before the first proposal but you know i i could prove that he was a member right then and there out of the documents that that he had been a member the second time in all the also in that document it says

Sherif Fam: that the establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, totalitarian basis.

Lenny Brenner: Yes, that's the key word. Totalitarian in those days meant fascist Nazi.

Sherif Fam: And bound by a treaty with the German Reich. Yes. Would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the near east.

Lenny Brenner: Okay, you got it. That's exactly it, you know.

Sherif Fam: And they also represented to the Germans that the Germans were against mixed marriages and Zionists were against mixed marriages. And therefore, they intended to emulate what Germany was doing. They intended to emulate it in Palestine. And Germany had passed its own racial laws. So there was every intention at that point to have a racist...

Lenny Brenner: Absolutely. In other words, as I say, the Zionists were divided into two rival groups at that time, but both of them shared this racialism. The German Zionist Federation told the Nazis, you're opposed to mixed marriage, we're opposed to mixed marriage. You know, you're in favor of the group, we're in favor of the group. You know, that kind of thing. I mean, you know, they were trying to butter up the Nazis in the interest of setting up the air... state in Palestine. So there's no doubt about that.

Sherif Fam: In the interest of time, let me just mention, as you had mentioned, that the Likud government, of which Benjamin Netanyahu is the head, is an outgrowth of Jabotinsky's revisionist Now much is made of the charter of Hamas, but nobody talks about the charter of the Likud government. And it says here, a part of the Likud platform, it says that, let me see, The government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River. Right. It says it right there. And it says that Jerusalem is the eternal united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. And the government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem.

Lenny Brenner: All right. You see, that goes back to an article that Jabotinsky wrote in 1923 called The Iron Wall, We and the Arabs, okay? And basically, what he said there was, you know, the original Balfour Agreement and the mandate, et cetera, was that what we call Palestine and Jordan was supposed to be part of the so-called Jewish national home. Right. By 1922, the British realized, number one, there are no Jews in Jordan, and no Zionists in Jordan, and they needed a place to park one of the sons of the Sharif of Mecca, who had been thrown out, expelled by Ibn Saud. So they gave Jordan to Abdullah the Hashemite, you know? Okay. The Zionist movement, their attitude, the bulk of the Zionist movement's attitude was, listen, since there are no Jews there, so what? You know, let them have it. Who cares?

Sherif Fam: Yes, but I'm also reminded of Rabbi Fishman in the 1947 United Nations Commission on Inquiry, who displayed a map taken out of Herzl's diaries that showed, as the land claimed by the Zionists, it showed all of Jordan, all of Syria, all of Lebanon, parts of Iraq and Egypt and Saudi Arabia. So this is the land that was claimed by the Zionists.

Lenny Brenner: In other words, they were claiming, you know, they had an imaginary map of what the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel were, etc.

Sherif Fam: And that was debunked. by a book written recently by Shlomo Sand.

Lenny Brenner: Right. But let me finish up on what I'm saying. In practical matters, the British had declared that Palestine and Jordan would be the Zionist national home, and then they took away Jordan. What Jabotinsky, the rest of the Zionist movement's attitude, as I say, was, listen, let them, who cares, you know, because we're having enough difficulty in building in Palestine. But Jabotinsky's attitude was, no, no, no, no. You can't let the British give up Jordan, give it back to the Arabs, because the Arabs will say, if we were able to get the British to give up Jordan... then if we keep on, we'll get them to give up Palestine. Okay? So Jabotinsky's attitude was, no, we have to revise the British policy. And that's how they got their name, Zionist revisionism.

Sherif Fam: I understand.

Lenny Brenner: Okay. Let me just finish on this, because then we can go on. So when Jabotinsky realized that the British weren't going to give back Palestine, that's when he began to look towards Mussolini.

Sherif Fam: I understand. I understand. But even revealing that history, you must have been criticized very much.

Lenny Brenner: Well, what happened, of course, was when the London Times wrote the review, that forced Zionists to review the book. See, up until that time, they tended to ignore anti-Zionist books, but they had no choice. Well, a magazine called European Jewry reviewed the book, And they said, okay, the facts are there. But of course, Lenny is misinterpreting them and so on and so forth. But the key is the facts are there. You understand what I'm saying? In other words, they went, my publisher told me, Lenny, when you're writing the most controversial book imaginable, your enemies are gonna go through it with a magnifying glass they're going to look for the smallest mistake and blow it up so there can be no mistakes I had to give photostatic copies of everything that I quoted you know everything like that so the result was that when there's sure enough when the Zionists went through the book they couldn't find one mistake and You got my point. I got your point. All right. So in other words, the book then became authoritative. what they do now is they don't argue against that they argue yes but the mufti of jerusalem he went to war on hitler's side etc etc which of course is absolutely true he did not go to war he was exiled and he just visited him on despairing of the rape of his land no no he went beyond that he organized Muslim troops in Yugoslavia against Tito and Chechen and English elements against Stalin. After World War II, it was Stalin and Tito who brought the charges of collaboration with the Nazis. I mean, the Zionists also brought them, but what made it important was that Tito, who by that time was running Yugoslavia, and Stalin brought the charges. Now, there's no doubt that, I mean, there are photos of the Mufti with SS men, Muslim SS men in Yugoslavia, where they're wearing, you know, fezes with the SS on the fez, etc. I mean, these are all real. There's no doubt about it. But Just recently, a guy by the name of John Rothman wrote a book on the Mufti, and it was reviewed by the New York Times, and what was really incredible about the review was that the Review, in effect, said, shut up, John, because the Nazis, the Zionists, also tried to go to war and hit the side.

Sherif Fam: Right, and we want to hide that.

Lenny Brenner: Yeah, in other words, you see, in other words, I mean, I know Rothman for many years, and, you know, he thought, oh, boy, you know, we can take care of this whole issue by exposing the Mufti. But from the Zionists... realize today that they lose in an argument where everybody knows that both they and the Mufti collaborated. The reason is that many Palestinians repudiate the Mufti. In other words, I've worked for many years with left-wing Palestinians, and their attitude is the Mufti represented the old feudal class, you know, in... uh... palestine uh... we have nothing to do with that clear so we don't care you know we uh... when we don't have to hide what he did we we're not here