Informed and Honest Debate With Zionism Is Impossible
Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice chair of the Zionist Federation of the UK and Ireland. It was established in 1899 and played a significant role in securing the Balfour Declaration. In my e-mail invitation to him I said that I didn’t want a “ranting Zionist” on the panel because the key question being addressed was much too important for anything but serious and reasoned conversation and debate. Jonathan’s initial response, three words, was, “What’s the fee?”
The task of trying to put together a “balanced” audience of all faiths and none was both exhausting and exasperating. It led me to the conclusion that very many if not most Jews cannot be engaged by the truth of history because they don’t want to know it. Because it’s too uncomfortable for them. Even many members of “progressive” Jewish groups – those which campaign for a genuine and viable two-state solution and are critical of Israel’s present policies – don’t want to come to terms with the fact that Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which claims to be “the voice of British Jewry”, didn’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge my invitation to participate in the debate. The Chief Rabbi, who had spoken of a “tsunami of anti-Semitism”, apparently had “prior diary commitments”. I e-mailed my invitation to him on 18 May. On 2 June, when I had had no response, I e-mailed, “Does no response = no interest?” I sent a similar follow-up message to the Jewish Chronicle but again there was no response from it. Foreign Secretary David Miliband was the only MP not to respond. Perhaps Melanie Phillips (some of her Jewish critics have described her to me as “mad”) was speaking for them all when she replied: “Thank you for this invitation. However, since it appears to be inviting me to discuss the ancient canard of whether the Jews are responsible for their own persecution – and on an Iranian-backed TV station – I will most certainly decline.”
I did get a response from the Community Services Trust (CST), which, in its own words, “represents British Jewry to the police, government and media on anti-Semitism and security.” In other words, it’s the principal Jewish body in the UK for monitoring anti-Semitism and advising on how to counter it. Some might think that if there was one Jewish organisation above all others which ought to have welcomed the debate and been pleased to participate, CST was surely it. CST thanked me for the invitation, which it declined, and its response included the following. “The title of your book, as disturbing as it is, is nowhere near as problematic as the contents. The answer to anti-Semitism is not for people to tell Jews how to alter their behaviour… That your work is based in part on the books of Lenni Brenner and Alfred Lilienthal only compounds the offence. (I do quote both Jewish writers in Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. Brenner exposed Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. Lilienthal exposed, among other things, the development of the Zionist lobby’s controlling grip on Congress and the White House)… Perhaps your panel could consider the fact that, had Zionism succeeded in its aim ten years earlier, 6 million Jews would have been saved from the Nazis. This is a strange enemy for Jews to have.” (I resisted the temptation to respond with a comment to the effect that without the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust, Zionism would have remained a Jewish nationalist fringe movement without the support needed to colonise and ethnically cleanse Palestine)
Both Carol Gould and Jonathan Hoffman made suggestions about who should be invited from their side and, for the record, I did invite each and every one of the people they wanted to be there to cheer them on. Some came and some could not make it. I consider that I did everything humanly possible to see to it that Jews of all views were represented in the audience of all faiths and none. As it happened there were more anti-Zionists in the audience (of all faiths and none and including Jews) than Zionists and other supporters of Israel right or wrong, but that was not due to a lack of invitations from me.
And so to the panel discussions and debates.
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