5 October 2008

Against Islam, Even Jews and Nazis can be Friends

Unbelievable though it is, neo-Nazis and Zionists are once again finding increasingly common cause. This shocking article below shows how some elements among the Zionists are taking their anti-Islam/Arab politics to its logical conclusion. After all Muslims are demonised by Israel (having itself created Hamas) and they are equally demonised by Zionists.

As Ruth Smeed of the Board of Deputies of British Jews observed in the Guardian of Thursday 10th April 2008, ‘The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web - it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel’.

Historically of course the Zionist movement has often worked with Nazis against the common foe e.g. the Gestapo/Hagannah agent Feivel Polkes (whose file to this day is kept closed in Israel). But the article below is particularly shocking because American neo-Nazis are a tiny current, and yet their particular bile and vitriol has proved attractive to certain Zionists who are also wedded to the concept of race and nation.


by Daniel Sieradski, September 29, 2008 Following the September 11th attacks on the United States, many members of the Jewish community, increasingly concerned with the threats (real and imagined) posed by radical Islam to the security of the United States and Israel took a sharp turn to the political right. Some switched party affiliations, declaring themselves "9/11 Republicans," and subsequently went on the offensive against their predominantly liberal and progressive coreligionists, whom they have accused (as Caroline Glick did in a Jerusalem Post op-ed last week) of placing concern for liberal issues, such as a woman's right to choose, over preserving the physical safety of their fellow Jews.

Shockingly, as this group, in the advancement of their security concerns and in their growing contempt for the Left, made increasingly strange bedfellows with those historically considered to be hostile towards Jewish interests (such as Evangelical Christians and free market capitalists), some Jews went even further, not only abandoning their commitments to traditional liberal Jewish values, but forming political alliances with outright antisemites.

In 2003, for example, an investigation by an European anti-racist group found that some Jews were collaborating with neo-Nazis in order to promote anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment online. Their interactions included sharing "best practices" for sending anonymous threats to mosques and other Islamic institutions.

Likewise, in 2006 a small but vocal Jewish contingent joined — to the chagrin of many in attendance — the annual conference of the White Nationalist group The American Renaissance, seeking to make common cause against the enemy purportedly shared in Islam. The event quickly devolved into a heated battle between the Jews and antisemites present. Interestingly, the debate resulted ultimately in The American Renaissance's director, Jared Taylor, issuing a statement proclaiming that Jews were a welcome part of their community.
The latest manifestation of this unsettling phenomenon occurred last weekend in Köln, Germany, where several Jews attended an
anti-Islam rally organized by the far-right political party Pro North-Rhine Westphalia (Pro NRW). The rally, ordered shut down by the city government at the eleventh hour, was brought to a halt by militant antifascist (Antifa) activists who tussled with the anti-Muslim protesters in the open streets.

Among the rally's Jewish participants, some allege to be the victims of physical attack. One, identifying himself only as "Aviel," submitted the following account to several right-wing Jewish blogs:
I was wearing my Kippah and readily indetifiable [sic] as a Jew; however, they screamed at me "Nazis Raus". One of them showed [sic] me backwards and a woman spit on me and called me a fascist pig. At this point I had had enough and put my head down and started to try and break through the barricade. I was pummeled in the head several times and then shoved to the ground were I was beaten and kicked with steel toe boots in plain sight of the police who did nothing. [...] I got up and stumbled away. I didn’t realize that I had a broken rib until later.

Aviel's account quickly led to several denouncements of the Antifa, and his anti-anti-fascist banner was subsequently raised by sympathetic Jewish bloggers, like Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, who labeled the Antifa "Nazis," "useful idiots" and "the Brown Shirts of our time."

In their furious rush to denounce radical Islam and the radical Left together, these Jews have conveniently chosen to ignore that the rally was endorsed by the international White Power movement, that Pro NRW is connected to actual Nazis and Holocaust deniers, and that Antifa has an illustrious history of both saving Jews during the Holocaust and keeping Nazism and other forms of fascism at bay throughout Europe for the past 30 years.

As reported in Der Spiegel, Pro NRW hails from far-right anti-immigrant quarters and its approach to promoting xenophobia has become a model for extremist right-wing parties throughout Europe, including those outwardly hostile towards Jews, such as the Austrian Freedom Party, which is helmed by former Nazis like Anton Reinthaller and Friedrich Peter. Also of concern is the fact that Pro NRW receives considerable support from Günther Kissel, a German real estate developer and Holocaust denier, who has on occasion played host to historical revisionist David Irving. Even among vocal opponents of the "Islamisization of Europe," like German Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Ralph Giordano, Pro NRW is regarded as the "local variety of Nazism."

Conversely, Antifa, otherwise known as Antifascistisk Aktion, was founded in the 1920s by German communists to resist the rise of fascism in Europe. After the forced dissolution of the group by the Nazis in 1933, the Antifa moved underground, mobilizing resistance against the Nazis and providing, among other things, assistance to Jews fleeing Nazi persecution.

Having reconstituted themselves since the fall of Soviet Communism, in modern day Europe, the Antifa are the first line of defense against encroaching fascism, and most specifically against neo-Nazi hooligans that are known to prowl city streets and football matches looking for Jewish and non-white victims. As militant anti-fascists, Antifa activists routinely take to the streets to shut down neo-Nazi and anti-immigrant activities, trading fisticuffs when necessary to silence the promulgation of racial incitement.

Antifa activists have also been at the forefront of preserving historical memory, specifically regarding Germany's role in perpetrating the Holocaust. For example, in 2006, Antifa activists in Köln staged demonstrations and took other actions which forced the Deutsche Bahn railroad service to put an exhibit in the national railway museum commemorating Jewish children who had been deported to concentration camps along the German national rail lines. In the eastern town of Erfurt, Antifa activists took over the condemned factory of Topf & Sons, where the crematoriums for Auschwitz and Buchenwald were manufactured, turning the space into an anti-Nazi activist resource center and impromptu Holocaust museum.

Yet nonetheless, these activists whom should be regarded as heroes by the Jewish community have now found themselves the object of some Jews' wrath. That is because in the Antifa critique, the far-right's advancement of anti-Islamism is viewed, not as a cause to be championed, but rather as a modern parallel to classical antisemitism and thus as the first step towards reawakening the horrors of Nazism.

Unfortunately for many Jews, the lesson of the Holocaust — "Never Again" — applies only to the survival of the Jewish community: Never again shall we go like sheep to the slaughter. Kill or be killed. Survival by any means necessary. Whatever alliances, whatever moral compromises it takes. Thus we've born witness to decades of Jewish dissembling in defense of Israel's most egregious criminal acts. And now, growing ever more common, we are witnessing the phenomenon of Jews, out of fear of Islam, joining ranks with bona fide Nazis.

On the other hand, for many Europeans, and particularly the Antifa, whether in Germany or the UK, the lesson of the Holocaust — "Never Again" — applies to preventing the rise of fascism and the employment of racial discrimination as a political weapon (no matter whom that discrimination is directed against). In the context of Antifa's historical memory, Pro NRW's anti-Muslim incitements are a precursor to far worse horrors. If the disruption of that fate requires physical intervention, so be it.

Should a Jew cast his lot with Nazis, frankly, marching in support of their cause, and thus find himself the target of anti-fascist resistance, the Antifa should be forgiven for mistaking him for one of "them." A Jew should know better and deserves to have his ass handed to him.

That other Jews should then allow themselves to be used to denounce the Antifa by the same cretins from which the Antifa has sought to protect us for decades bespeaks only our sad state of affairs, and how low Jewish moral consciousness has sank in the advent of our affluence and national aspirations.

The cooptation of "Never Again" as a war cry for those partaking in the demonization of "the other" betrays the memory of all those who perished in the Holocaust. Such a disgraceful inversion of history should not and cannot be tolerated.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please submit your comments below