Last year Tony Greenstein published a book that was the culmination of many years of research, titled “Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponization of Memory in the Service of State and Nation.”
The book examines in great detail the Holocaust mythology that Israel promotes and deploys in a strategic manner to neutralize and smear intellectual and political criticisms of its human rights violations. (You can order the book from Greenstein at tonygreenstein104@gmail.com.)
Greenstein has a long pedigree. He has been an anti-Zionist in Britain for more than 40 years. He is a founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the largest organization in the UK focused on Palestinian human rights. Greenstein is also an active trade unionist, author, blogger, and son of a rabbi.
Here’s Phil Weiss speaking to Tony Greenstein.
Articles and links mentioned in the show
- Tony Greenstein’s blog
- Tony Greenstein’s articles at Mondoweiss
- Buy “Zionism During the Holocaust: The weaponisation of memory in the service of state and nation” from a local bookstore on Bookshop.org.
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I haven’t read the book but here’s a paragraph from an Amazon review (emphasis mine) –
“The basic indictment is that Zionism was happy to sup with the devil if it furthered the goal of a Jewish state. The two movements also shared a basic aspiration in the form of a racially pure state from which undesirable elements were to be removed – in Germany that meant the disabled, gypsies and Jews, and in Palestine the majority native Arab population. For the Zionist movement everywhere the welfare of European Jews was never a priority and efforts to let Jews flee to safety to any destination but Palestine were always opposed. The heroes in this squalid saga are individuals like Marek Edelman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance, and Rudolph Vrba, who broke out of Auschwitz bringing first-hand information about the industrial scale of the extermination. Their hostility to Zionism meant that both men were largely written out of history. The villains are Zionist leaders like Rudolf Kasztner, Stephen Wise and David Ben-Gurion.”
Indeed, Marek Edelman appears to have been anti-Zionist – I wonder if this leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising would be considered anti-semitic by AIPAC for his views:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek_Edelman
“Edelman was a lifelong anti-Zionist.[29][30][31] In a 1985 interview, he said Zionism was a “lost cause” and he questioned Israel‘s viability.[32] He remained firmly Polish, refusing to emigrate to Israel.[33]“
Basically the goal of the Nazis was to kill the Jews, as many as possible. The goal of the zionists was to save as many as possible. So the goals were contradictory.