Former London Mayor, Ken
Livingstone, embroiled himself in a high profile political row today when in
defending Naz Shah, a Labour MP suspended yesterday by her party over
Facebook posts critical of the State of
Israel which she indicated she liked (
and since under pressure, denounced, in
a personal statement to Parliament, explaining she made the supporting comments at the height of the Israeli
invasion and bombardment of Gaza) .
Livingstone asserted there was an early 1930s pact between Hitler and Zionists, which has
got him into political very hot water with Labour Friends of Israel. John
Mann MP told him bluntly when he ambushed him
- when Livingstone was on his mobile live on LBC radio – as Livingstone was
making his way to a television studio at 4 Millbank in London, where all the
Parliamentary and political broadcasters are based.
Livingstone was assailed by Mann who haranged him to learn his Jewish history
properly, dubbed him a Nazi apologist, and called for his expulsion from the Labour
Party.
Livingstone later told the BBC’s Andrew Neil that if the BBC and Mann did their historical
homework, they would find out what he said about Hitler ands Zionists was actually true.
I did not know anything about this unlikely quirky period of history, so I did
do some research, and discovered Ken Livingstone was indeed right, according to
the sources below
The Haavara
Agreement (Hebrew: הסכם
העברה
Translit.: heskem haavara Translated: "transfer agreement") was an
agreement between Nazi Germany and Zionist German Jews signed on 25 August
1933. The agreement was finalized after three months of talks by the Zionist
Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank(under the directive of the Jewish Agency) and the economic authorities of Nazi Germany. The agreement was designed to
help facilitate the emigration of German Jews to Palestine. While it helped
Jews emigrate, it forced them to temporarily give up possessions to Germany
before departing. Those possessions could later be re-obtained by transferring
them to Palestine as German export goods.[1][2]
Transfer agreement used by a large consulting firm
PALTREU, an acronym for Palaestina Treuhandstelle, established specifically for
Jews wishing to emigrate under the Haavara Agreement, to advise how to deal
with the bureaucracy.
Hanotea company
Hanotea (Hebrew: הנוטע),
a Zionist citrus planting company, applied in May 1933 for the ability to
transfer capital from Germany to Palestine. Hanotea served to assist German
Jews' immigration to Palestine as part of the Zionist endeavor. In a deal worked
out with the German government, Hanotea would receive money from prospective
immigrants and use this money to buy German goods. These goods, along with the
immigrants, would then be shipped to Palestine. In Palestine, import merchants
would then buy the goods from the immigrants, liquidating their investment.
This arrangement appeared to be operating successfully, and so paved the way
for the later Haavara Agreement. Connected to Hanotea was a Polish Zionist Jew,
Sam Cohen. He represented Zionist interests in direct negotiation with the
Nazis beginning in March 1933.[3]
“
|
CERTIFICATE
The Trust and Transfer Office
"Haavara" Ltd. places at the disposal of the Banks in Palestine
amounts in Reichmarks which have been put at its disposal by the Jewish
immigrants from Germany. The Banks avail themselves of these amounts in
Reichmarks in order to make payments on behalf of Palestinian merchants for
goods imported by them from Germany. The merchants pay in the value of the
goods to the Banks and the "Haavara" Ltd. pays the countervalue to
the Jewish immigrants from Germany. To the same extent that local merchants
will make use of this arrangement, the import of German goods will serve to
withdraw Jewish capital from Germany.
The Trust and Transfer Office, HAAVARA, LTD. |
”
|
— Example of the certificate issued by Haavara to Jews
emigrating to Palestine
|
||
The Haavara (Transfer)
Agreement was agreed to by the German government in 1933 to allow the Zionist
movement, in the form of the Haavara company to transfer property from Germany
to Palestine, for the sole purpose of encouraging Jewish emigration from Germany.
The Haavara company operated under a similar plan as the earlier Hanotea
company. The Haavara Company required immigrants to pay at least 1000 pounds
sterling into the banking company. This money would then be used to buy German
exports for import to Palestine.
The Haavara Agreement was
thought among certain circles to be a possible way to rid the country of its
supposed "Jewish problem."
The head of the Middle Eastern division of the foreign ministry, Werner Otto von Hentig, supported the policy of concentrating Jews in Palestine.
Von Hentig believed that if the Jewish population was concentrated in a single
foreign entity, then foreign diplomatic policy and containment of the Jews
would become easier.[5] Hitler's support of the Haavara Agreement
varied throughout the thirties. Initially, Hitler criticized the agreement, but
shortly reversed his opinion, and continued to support it, in the face of
opposition, through 1939.[6]
After the invasion of
Poland and the onset of World War II in 1939, the practical continuation of the
Haavara agreement became impossible. In 1940, representatives of the
underground Zionist group Lehi met
with von Hentig to propose direct military cooperation with the Nazis for the
continuation of the transfer of European Jews to Palestine.[7] This proposal, however, did not produce
results.
- Arab-Israeli Wars: 60 Years of Conflict, Ha Avara, ABC-CLIO, accessed May 7, 2013.
- Yf’aat Weiss, The Transfer Agreement and the Boycott Movement: A
Jewish Dilemma on the Eve of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem Shoah Resource Center, accessed
May 7, 2013.
- Francis R. Nicosia: The third
Reich & the Palestine question, p. 39 ff.
- Heritage: Civilization and the Jews (PBS)
- Francis R. Nicosia: The third
Reich & the Palestine question, pp. 132–133.
- Francis R. Nicosia: The third
Reich & the Palestine question, pp. 140, 142.
- Ada Amichal Yevin, In
Purple, The Life of Yair - Abraham Stern, Hadar Publishing House Tel
Aviv, 1986, pp. 225–230
Another controversial article “Nazi Propaganda was Based
on What Zionists Said”, also provided details of the controversial history.
“Torah-true Jews wish to live in peace and harmony with
their neighbors in every country among the community of nations, including in
historic Palestine. They deplore acts and policies of violence carried out by
those who, misusing the name of Israel our forefather, have substituted the
ideal of chauvinist nationalism for the eternal values of the Torah, the
eternal divinely bestowed inheritance of the Jewish people.
“It has been the age-old intention of Zionism to
intentionally stir up anti-Semitism anywhere possible, and even more commonly,
to take advantage of any Jewish suffering anywhere in order to enhance its
cause Indeed, hatred of Jews and Jewish suffering is the oxygen of the Zionist
movement, and from the very beginning has been to deliberately incite hatred of
the Jew and then, in feigned horror, use it to justify the existence of the
Zionist state – this is, of course, Machiavellianism raised to the highest
degree. Thus, the Zionists thrive on hatred and suffering of Jews, and seek to
benefit thereby through keeping Jews in perpetual fear, causing them to ignore
the true nature of Zionism, and instead to consider the Zionist state is their
salvation.
“Although Zionists and others dispute it, the undeniable
fact is that revolutionary secular and apostate elements in the Jewish
community in Europe contributed greatly to hostility towards Jews after World
War I. This aroused hatred of Jews in general among many non-Jews. While a
prisoner in 1924 in the fortress of Lansberg on the River Lech, Hitler wrote
his Mein Kampf. When he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he was assisted
by Goebbels, Roseberg and Streicher. From them came the declarations, “The Jews
of Germany caused the defeat of Germany in the 1914-1918 war; the Jews of
Germany were responsible for the terrible conditions in Germany that followed
the war; the Jews of Germany are foreigners and they wish to remain foreigners;
they have no loyalty to the country of their birth; they are not human; they
are filthy dogs; they have no right to intrude into Germany’s affairs; there
are too many Jews in Germany.
As far as Zionism is concerned, the founder of Zionism
and apostate, Theodor Herzl, sought to intensify hatred of the Jew in order to
enhance the cause of political Zionism. Here are some of his “pearls”:
"It would be an excellent idea to call in
respectable, accredited anti-Semites as liquidators of property. To the people
they would vouch for the fact that we do not wish to bring about the
impoverishment of the countries that we leave. At first they must not be given
large fees for this; otherwise we shall spoil our instruments and make them
despicable as 'stooges of the Jews.' Later their fees will increase, and in the
end we shall have only Gentile officials in the countries from which we have
emigrated. The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the
anti-Semitic countries our allies." (The Complete Diaries of Theodor
Herzl. Vol. 1, edited by Raphael Patai, translated by Harry Zohn, page 83-84)”.
Additional words from the vivid imagination of this
dreamer, from p. 68 of Part I of his Diary: "So anti-Semitism, which is a
deeply imbedded force in the subconscious mind of the masses, will not harm the
Jews. I actually find it to be advantageous to building the Jewish character,
education by the masses that will lead to assimilation. This education can only
happen through suffering, and the Jews will adapt."
“Hateful views of Jews as being subhuman did not have to
be invented by Nazi theorists such as Hitler, Goebbels, Rosenberg and
Streicher. This ideology was simply adapted from statements of political
Zionists such as those found in the writings of the Zionist Yehezkel Kaufman in
1933.
“In addition to Hitler, Rosenberg, Goebbels and
Streicher, many other Nazi leaders used statements from Zionists to validate
their charges against the Jews of Germany.
As stated earlier, Zionism thrives on anti-Semitism. Ben
Gurion declared, “…not always and not everywhere do I oppose anti-Semitism”.
Livingstone was naive to allow himself to be embroiled in
such a dispute in the week running up to several very important elections for Labour.
But strangely his history seems to have
been correct.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources:
■Guardian Volume
two Issue 7
■Satmar Grand
Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum
■The Jews of
Batna, Aleria: A Study of Identity and Colonialism by Elizabeth Friedman.
■The Jewish
Communities of Morocco and the AIU by M. Laskier, State University, Albany,
N.Y.
■The Impact of
Western European Education on the Jewish Millet of Baghdad by Maurice Sawdayee.
■Outcaste Jewish
Life in Southern Iran by Laurence D. Loeb. Gordon and Breach.
■The Last Arab
Jews. The Communities of Jerba, Tunisia by Abraham Udovitch and Lucette
Valensi. Harwood Academic Publishers.
Further
reading
· Avraham Barkai: German Interests in the
Haavara-Transfer Agreement 1933–1939, Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute
35; 1990, S. 245–266
· Yehuda Bauer: "Jews for sale? Nazi-Jewish
Negotiations, 1933-1945", Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1996. ISBN 978-0300068528
· Edwin Black: "The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story
of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine", Brookline
Books, 1999.
· Werner Feilchenfeld,
Dolf Michaelis, Ludwig Pinner: Haavara-Transfer nach Palästina und
Einwanderung deutscher Juden 1933–1939, Tübingen, 1972
· Tom Segev: The
Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust (2000, ISBN 0-8050-6660-8), especially p. 31ff
· David Yisraeli: The
Third Reich and the Transfer Agreement, in: Journal of Contemporary History
6 (1972), S. 129–148
· R. Melka: Nazi
Germany and the Palestine Question, Middle Eastern Studies. Vol.
5 No. 3 (Oct., 1969). pp 221–233.
· Hava Eshkoli-Wagman: Yishuv
Zionism: Its Attitude to Nazism and the Third Reich Reconsidered, Modern
Judaism. Vol. 19 No. 1 (Feb., 1999). pp 21–40.
·
Klaus Poleken: The Secret
Contacts: Zionism and Nazi Germany 1933–1941. Journal of Palestine
Studies. Vol. 5 No. 3/4 (Spring–Summer 1976). pp 54–82.
