6-11-03 Extensively Expanded 6-16-03
SPECIAL REPORT Massive Media Cover-up! Jews against Zionism: The Hidden Protest

Anti-Zionist orthodox Jews protest against Israel "On Sunday, June 1, 2003 at 5th Ave. and 59th St. in Manhattan, NYC a group of anti-Zionist Jews demonstrated against Zionism and the Zionist State celebrated by marchers in the so-called Israel Day Parade." As improbable as it may seem to the uninformed, there are a significant number of Jews in the United States, Great Britain, Israel and elsewhere who oppose Zionism, Zionist oppression of the Palestinians and even the very existence of the State of Israel itself! We say hidden protest because this tangible opposition has been totally ignored by the news departments of the major television and radio networks, magazines and newspapers (in the last source, some papers, such as The New York Times, may make very brief mention of the protests, but even then they bury articles far from the front page). Jews: http://www.realnews247.com/jews_zionism_cause_of_world_instability.htm">Zionism is cause of instability in the world "The Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews will proclaim their loyalty to pure Judaism and their opposition to Zionist heresy, which violates every principle of the Jewish religion. These people believe that the idolatrous Zionist ideology has nothing to do with Orthodox Jews, and that Jews are obligated by Judaism to live in peace and harmony with all other nations throughout the world, including Palestinian natives of course."

According to one website, the reasoning behind the opposition is Zionism's disobedience to God's plan: "The Creator gave us the Holy Land thousands of years ago. Yet, when we sinned, He took it away and sent us into exile. Since that time our task is to wait for Him to send the Messiah." In the minds of these Orthodox Jews, the Zionists sin by attempting a return to the Hold Land before the Messiah comes, instead of waiting patiently in exile. Obviously, should not be imagined that all or even most Orthodox Jews oppose Zionism nor that the ones that do are therefore ill-deposed towards Jewish nationalism. For an article concerning these issues, read Paul Gottfried's informative historical study, "Wishful thinking about the Middle East," where he observes:

The fact that some of the Orthodox in Eastern Europe had viewed Zionists as a threat to rabbinical authority or that some of the ultra-Orthodox believe Jewish nationalists have jumped the gun by establishing a pre-messianic commonwealth does not mean that these dissenting Orthodox were or are not Jewish nationalists. What separates them from the Zionists is the purely strategic question of when it is permissible to create a Jewish national state, where Jews can live apart from the nations of the earth. The Orthodox and the Zionists have never disagreed over whether such a project is desirable.

It is only in this context that one can begin to properly understand just what makes the anti-Zionist Orthodox Jew tick. Nevertheless, their opposition to Zionism is real and it is profound. And Gottfried is not entirely accurate: Yes, there is a difference concerning the timetable for reclaiming the Holy Land, but he misses the fact that although the Zionists have been able to marshal support from many Orthodox, they are also largely secular in outlook, even to the point of denigrating Jewish traditions, using religion only as a cynical means to win over the more conservative Jews and making race, not religion, the test for those seeking to immigrate to Israel.. Quotes from a few of these rabbis will suffice to show this. Reb Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz, known as the Chazon Ish (right), on founders of Israel and their successors: "The only actual difference with the formation of the Zionists' state is that before this they were hoodlums without arms and now the hoodlums have arms." His belief that the Zionists in what was then Palestine were promoting a false version of Judaism is well-illustrated in the following anecdote:

In 1946 a disciple of the Chazon Ish, very distressed, mentioned that a day does not go by without a Jew being killed by an Arab; the Chazon Ish, admonished him and said, "Why aren't you at all worried that tens of thousands of Jewish children receive an education on non-belief, which is as burning the soul and the body. Is not this mass murder worse than the killings of the Arabs? our sages have clearly expressed that he who makes someone sin is worse than he who kills him."

Concurring on this is Lubavitcher Rabbi Sholem Schneersohn: "It is surely clear that the Zionists not only are not approaching Judaism, but that they entirely destroy Jewish souls intentionally." The same theme is taken up again and again; Rav Chaim Soloveichik of Brisk (left) declared: "The Zionists do not make Jews into heretics in order to have a state, they want a state in order to make Jews into heretics." (For an extensive list of quotations from these and many other rabbis, see "Words of the Rabbis opposing Zionism" section of the Jews Against Zionism website. Note: The Jews Against Zionism website was shut down as this report was being expanded—early on 6-16 it was up and running, only to be suspended in the afternoon. Please check back periodically.)

News blackout, persecution of anti-Zionist Jews

Jewish anti-Israel/anti-Zionist demonstrations have taken place from New York to London to Jerusalem (photos above right, below right, and below left and bottom, respectively…other photos), but this opposition has been effectively covered up by the controlled news media. (For an example, see the Rally for Israel link below.) Why is this? The very premise of an anti-Israel/anti-Zionist Jew is highly newsworthy by virtue of its uniqueness. The answer is twofold. First, by ignoring this phenomenon, they are better able to perpetuate the myths that all Jews support Israel and (less consciously) all Israelis support Zionism, so that Americans are conditioned to respond in knee-jerk fashion: Jew=pro-Israel, without considering the possibility of exceptions to this unreal universal. Secondly, by establishing this false premise, the Israel Firsters within the journalistic community are able to stifle any and all criticism of the Israeli government. They are able to do this by cultivating in the public mind the falsehood that to oppose Israel is tantamount to opposing all Jews, which, by extension, makes one an anti-Semitic, "Holocaust"-denying bigot. The Zionists fear that if the general public were to become aware of Jewish opposition to Israel, many people would see through the myth and cease giving that nation the unconditional support (and huge annual foreign aid package) it currently enjoys.

And the pro-Zionist media and their handlers have also manipulated (and, on occasion, coerced) Jewish opinion. In an article, "Judaism is not Zionism," the Jews United against Zionism website states:

The Zionists have deceived many well meaning Jewish people via terror, trickery and false propaganda. They have at their disposal the use of a nearly universally subservient media. Whoever attempts to criticize them puts his livelihood and, at times, his very life in danger. (Emphasis added)

A case in point: Zionist oppression of Jews in Iraq Naeim Giladi, an Iraqi Jew, on the Zionist influence in that country:

I am writing this article for the same reason I wrote the book: to tell the American people, especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that to force them to leave, Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate even more Arab lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors.…I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called 'cruel Zionism.'…I write about it because I was part of it.

Zionist intimidation of anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews has various guises. On March 18, 2003, London witnessed strong-arm attempts to suppress the free speech of those protesting Israel. Last fall, at the Rally for Israel in Washington, DC, Jewish Zionists posing as Christian Zionists shouted down rabbis who demonstrated against the rally.

Further, some Orthodox Jews also have even shown that before and during World War II the Zionists cut deals with Nazis and even left some of their coreligionists to perish in the camps, when they could have aided in their rescue. (This peculiar collaboration is also covered at length by the socialist Jew, Lenni Brenner, in the books, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and 51 Documents: Zionist collaboration with the Nazis.) Incredibly, in a document to the Jewish Rescue Committee, which sought to secure the release of Jewish concentration camp prisoners, the Zionist Agency in Switzerland responded by callously declaring that "we must turn a deaf ear to the pleas and cries emanating from Eastern Europe." (To read a translation of the complete letter at the Jews not Zionists website, under "menu" click "Zionism and the Holocaust," then on "Min Hametzar.")

Anti-Zionist Israelis

It should be noted, should the Zionists attempt to pigeonhole such sentiments to an ultra-Orthodox fringe, that a number of liberal (politically and/or religiously) Jews have also sounded their disapproval, even in Israel. Their opposition is less concerned with the religious aspects of the equation, focusing, rather, on the gross human rights violations that have been a part of the Zionists' war against the Palestinians since Israel's inception (and before). An Arabic website notes that

There are a number of Jewish intellectuals who never stopped criticizing Zionism and always opposed its ideology and objectives.

They began opposing Zionism at the inception of 'The Israeli League for Human Rights' at the beginning of the 1970's.

Intellectual Jews opposing Zionism include Elmer Berger, Norton Mezvinsky, Mosh Menuhin, Mick Ashley, Israel Shahak and Maxime Rodinson. Israel Shahak was the head of the league in 1970 and he was the first Jew to record detailed information about the number of children, elderly and woman killed, including Arab villages demolished by Hagana and Stern terrorist movements.

Israel Shahak's records showed a total of 385 of 475 villages were demolished at the founding of Israel in 1948. (see Israel Shahak vs. Zionism)

Shahak, the late Jerusalem University chemistry professor and Nazi concentration camp survivor wrote scathingly about the religious and cultural underpinnings of Zionism in a number of works, including Jewish History, Jewish Religion and worked to defend the rights of Palestinians. Such efforts have not gone without notice. One of Shahak's critics—Werner Cohn, also a Jewish academic—has described him as "the world's most conspicuous Jewish anti-Semite" (some of Cohn's attacks on points raised in Shahak's book may be valid, but in general, there is far too much documentation there to refute the entire work). Also in Israel are the "refusniks"—a growing number of Israelis soldiers and enlistees who object to the treatment of the Palestinians and refuse to take part in state terrorism. Groups like Gush Shalom, founded by Israeli journalist Uri Avnery (right), have championed the refusniks' cause (shown above, protesting the Iraq War) and an end to the continuing ill treatment of Arabs living in the Occupied Territories. Israel Shamir, a Siberian-born Israeli journalist, has also written much on the subject.

Noam Chomsky, Israel and the "Holocaust"

MIT professor of modern languages and linguistics and political radical Noam Chomsky who, in books like Media control: the spectacular achievements of propaganda and Manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media has been a significant media critic ("Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media"), has also written and lectured much against the horrendous political realities in the Middle East—and Zionism's role in creating them. In his book Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, Chomsky decries the double standard of the controlled news media in reporting the conflict, with the Israelis always portrayed as morally upright victims, but the Palestinians as fanatical killers:

The contrast is clear enough in journalism and scholarship, and it is also familiar in standard media fare, where the Arab terrorist is routinely contrasted with the heroic Israeli. It would, for example, be inconceivable for a TV drama to portray an Israeli or Jewish character in the manner of the standard Arab villain, despite the ample record of Israeli terrorism over many years, effectively concealed in the United States.

However, the calumny he has received over such opinions pales in comparison to the enduring enmity he's reaped as a result of his defense of French academic Robert Faurisson's right to challenge certain alleged facts concerning the "Holocaust" without fear of losing tenure. In an essay "Some Elementary Comments on The Rights of Freedom of Expression," Chomsky went so far as to write:

Let me add a final remark about Faurisson's alleged "anti-Semitism." Note first that even if Faurisson were to be a rabid anti-Semite and fanatic pro-Nazi—such charges have been presented to me in private correspondence that it would be improper to cite in detail here—this would have no bearing whatsoever on the legitimacy of the defense of his civil rights. On the contrary, it would make it all the more imperative to defend them since, once again, it has been a truism for years, indeed centuries, that it is precisely in the case of horrendous ideas that the right of free expression must be most vigorously defended; it is easy enough to defend free expression for those who require no such defense. (Also see his "All denials of free speech undercut a free society," which also denounces the deceit and intolerance of the Zionists.)

While he said he had not read Faurisson's conclusions and had no particular interest in doing so, Chomsky stated (with remarkable open-mindedness for a Jew) that

I see no anti-Semitic implications in denial of the existence of gas chambers or even denial of the Holocaust. Nor would there be anti-Semitic implications, per se, in the claim that the Holocaust (whether one believes it took place or not) is being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence. I see no hint of anti-Semitic implications in Faurisson's work. (Chomsky letter to W. D. Rubinstein, 1981).

For this and for his approval of Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Chomsky was attacked by Canadian sociology professor Werner Cohn in Partners in hate : Noam Chomsky and the Holocaust deniers, which in typical Zionist fashion seeks to equate—without the slightest need for any supporting evidence—the simple denial or questioning of certain dogmas of the "Shoah" canon with the hatred of the Jewish people. Others Jewish critics of Chomsky for his anti-Zionist, pro-free speech positions include Marxist-turned-"neoconservative" author David Horowitz and pro-torture ACLU lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

Other voices of "self-hating Jews"

There are also other notable voices outside of Israel who are critical of Zionism's aspirations. In 1978, Rabbi Elmer Berger, executive director of the only secular Jewish anti-Zionist organization, the American Council for Judaism, wrote a short study, Zionist Ideology: Obstacle to Peace, that is just as relevant twenty-five years later. Around the same time, Alfred Lilienthal published The Zionist Connection (later appearing in a much expanded edition as The Zionist Connection II—click on cover for book review) a searing critique of the dominant Israeli ideology and its influence on America. Lilienthal, who served in the U.S. military and State Department, aroused controversy as early as 1949 with his article, "Israel's Flag Is Not Mine," published in Reader's Digest.

Norman Finkelstein author of The Holocaust Industry (a look at the cynical financial exploitation of the "Holocaust" by certain Jews), has written both a book, Image and Reality in the Israel-Palestine Conflict, and articles critical of the way the Palestinians are mistreated by the Zionist government of Israel. Michael Neumann, a philosophy professor at Trent University in Ontario, Canada, also has penned works concerning the Mideast crisis. In "What is anti-Semitism?" he shows how Zionists exploit the term anti-Semitism by accusing their critics of such an offense and how they mangle the meaning of words to suit their purpose:

"Antisemitism", properly and narrowly speaking, doesn't mean hatred of semites; that is to confuse etymology with definition. It means hatred of Jews. But here, immediately, we come up against the venerable shell-game of Jewish identity: "Look! We're a religion! No! a race! No! a cultural entity! Sorry--a religion!" When we tire of this game, we get suckered into another: "anti-Zionism is antisemitism! " quickly alternates with: "Don't confuse Zionism with Judaism! How dare you, you antisemite!"

Well, let's be good sports. Let's try defining antisemitism as broadly as any supporter of Israel would ever want: antisemitism can be hatred of the Jewish race, or culture, or religion, or hatred of Zionism. Hatred, or dislike, or opposition, or slight unfriendliness.

The serious side of this, of course, is that the use of the "anti-Semitism" slur is made by the media lapdogs of the Zionist Israeli government to help deflect criticism of its criminal policies. (It makes committing atrocities against the Palestinians much easier when one doesn't need to answer for them!) Finally, lawyer Stanley Cohen is standing up for the rights of Arab-Americans and their Palestinian relatives who have suffered at the hands of the Israelis. (He outlines the case here in a radio interview—the webpage has him misidentified as "Stephen" Cohen. Note the other links, including Noam Chomsky audios.)

A special term of reproach has been created for these and other Jewish critics of Israel/Zionism—self-hating Jews.* But such scorn only underscores the effectiveness of their criticism. However small in size, the importance of this Jewish resistance to the aims of the Zionists should not be underestimated. The news blackout of their activities is continuing proof of this.

See also the Special Report: Hitler, Nazism & Zionism

*Concerning the origins of this term, a biography of Shahak notes: "When he is accused, just as are American Jewish critics of Israel, of being a 'self-hating Jew,' he responds with first-hand knowledge. 'That is a Nazi expression. The Nazis called Germans who defended Jewish rights self-hating Germans.'"