From: makowsky@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (David Makowsky)
Subject: Re: Radio Host Fired After Jewish Prote
Reply-To: makowsky@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (David Makowsky)
Organization: Arizona State University, Tempe AZ
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1992 07:43:12 GMT

In article <1992Jul25.041112.7127@cs.anu.edu.au> bdm@cs.anu.edu.au writes:

# In article 24456@cs.brown.edu, dzk@cs.brown.edu (Danny Keren) writes:

# ><24131@castle.ed.ac.uk> egpv29@castle.ed.ac.uk (JHenderson) writes:

# >##I wonder if the fact that Edwards is a hate-monger, or the fact that he had
# >##little regard for facts and made up absurd, inflammatory statements such as
# >##"Yitzhak Shamir and David Ben Gurion colluded with the Nazis during World
# >##War II" could have had anything to do with his well-deserved canning. 

# >#Maybe he was referring to the 1941 offer of the LEHI group, commanded by
# >#Shamir, to co-operate with the Nazis against the British (Ha'aretz, Jan 31,
# >#1983).

# >a) And what does that have to do with Ben-Gurion?
 
# Nothing.  There is no evidence that Ben-Gurion played any part in
# the Lehi-Nazi matter or even that knew about it at the time.
 
	While I have absolutely no proof, I find it hard to believe that
the intelligence agencies of one of the allied countries did not know
about this and then relayed it to Ben-Gurion, unless these contacts
were little more than sporadic.

# >b) I remember reading the exact letter sent from Lehi to some Nazi official
# >   regarding this cooperation. It specificaly mentioned that the cooperation
# >   would involve moving the Jewish population of Europe to Palestine. One
 
# Please explain how moving Jews from Nazi-dominated Europe to Nazi-dominated
# Palestine would save them.  That is what was proposed.

	The explanation has to do with what was known about Nazi
domination at the time, and about what kind of deal LEHI might have
been able to strike.  This seems fairly intuitive (Not that I am
defending LEHI's action here.  I condemn them, but the strength of the
condemnation must be relative to what was known about the Nazis at the
time).

# >   has also to remember that the nature of the Nazi genocide *was not* yet
# >   known, and, in fact, in 1941 (perhaps somewhat can get the exact date
# >   of the letter) there wasn't yet an organized extermination program
# >   around; the death camps weren't built yet, and there was hardly a clue
# >   as to what the Nazis were pursuing. It was definitly known that they
# >   were rabid antisemites, and word of scttered massacres was proabably
# >   getting around, but the extent and methods of the mass murder were not
# >   applied yet.

# >   If one does not look at this in a cynical way, it can definitly be
# >   interpreted as an attempt to get the Jews of Europe out of there and
# >   into Palestine.
 
# The motivation was clearly the removal of Britain from Palestine and
# the establishment of a Jewish State, "on a national and totalitarian
# basis" as it says in the letter.  To this end they were prepared to 
# support a regime which was obviously in the process of destroying 
# the national aspirations of many other peoples.
 
# Here is the opinion of a good historian who has looked at the matter
# in great detail:
 
#   "Zionist historiography and political debates in general are rife 
#   with arguments about these Lehi contacts with the Axis (Germany and 
#   her allies.)  One of the arguments used to try and justify the
#   negotiations which Lehi tried to initiate through Otto von Hentzig,
#   the Axis representative in Beirut, was that in 1941 nothing was as
#   yet known about Nazi Germany's genocidal policy, so that there was
#   no reason to regard Germany as a worse enemy than Great Britain.
#   The spuriousness of this contention becomes clear from even a 
#   cursory reading of Jabotinsky's last book (written in the summer of
#   1940), which shows that the latter fully realized the demoniacal
#   nature of the Nazis' anti-Semitism and racism.  ...  The claim that
#   the negotiations with the Axis representatives were intended to 
#   save the Jews of Europe is equally fallacious.  Articles in Lehi 
#   publications portrayed the 'Jewish front in Europe' as a lost 
#   front, that would be impossible to save."  
#   [Yaacov Shavit, Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement 1925-1948,
#    page 231]
 
	If this is what that historian believes, then he is by no means
good.  While Jabotinsky was indeed a "prophet", to their own detriment
the organized Jewish community always considered him an outcast.  This
information is by no means secret, and I would tend not to believe
anything ever written by that historian for making such an
observation.

# >c) For fairness sake, one should remember the open admiration top Arab
# >   leaders, like Sadat and Hussein, expressed towards Hitler and Eichmannn,
# >   and that Syria is *still* harboring one of the most notorious Nazi
# >   war criminals. I find this much worse that the Lehi attempt to
# >   cooperate with the Nazis in 1941.
 
# Your facts are correct, but not your comparison.  If the Lehi's proposals 
# had been accepted by the Nazis, the result could have been VASTLY worse.
 
	Not necessarily.  Hitler could have found another scapegoat, in
which the results would probably have been the same but with a
different victim.  However, it was defintely not a policy that should
have been pursued.
--

David Makowsky
makowsky@enuxha.eas.asu.edu