Nazi-Zionist comparisons deconstructed?

Here's an article that seems to be popping up all over the internet. It's supposed to be a deconstruction job on the comparison of Israel with the nazis. It starts deftly enough, pointing out all the examples of things that Palestinians are allowed to do under zionist rule that Jews couldn't do under nazi rule. But then, Dr Rory Miller, Senior Lecturer in Mediterranean Studies at King's College, University of London, delves into history to demonstrate that this nazi-zionist comparison has been around since the 1940s, indeed "a memorandum written during World War II and circulated among the Zionist leadership predicted that after the war opponents of Zionism would consciously attempt to present Zionists as "Jewish Nazis" as a way of delegitimizing Jewish aspirations in Palestine."

Unfortunately Dr Miller doesn't say who wrote the memo, or why s/he thought that such a comparison would be raised but he does provide some interesting quotes; none though with an explanation of what was happening at the time of the quote to beg such a comparison. Indeed the reader could be left with the impression that the comparisons were/are perfectly apt.

Miller quotes Freya Stark, who he describes as a British propagandist and anti-zionist:

I today lunched with Mrs Rothschild and a Jewish painter (Rubin) who has done some really beautiful work in Palestine. Olga Rothschild who is studying Jewish history and is inclined to be fair and very impressionable had, I noticed, very much come round since the last meeting and told me what she dislikes in the Zionists is their Nazi principles. I think it is one of the propagandist's purest pleasures to see his own words come back dressed up as Other People's Ideas.

Then "a senior official at the British Embassy in Baghdad who spoke of a:

powerful Jewish organization in Palestine, that is run on Fascist lines and Nazi principles… Jewish refugees from the Nazi's Fascist tyranny in Europe have introduced into Palestine a good few of the methods employed to regiment the German masses by Himmler's hoodlums.

Again no hint of why the comparison was raised. And on to Sir Edward Grigg who, at a Cairo press conference, reported on

establishment of a kind of Nazi gangsterism in the Holy Land

and Sir Edward Spears who said in 1945 that

political Zionism as it is manifested in Palestine today preaches very much the same doctrines as Hitler....Zionist policy in Palestine has many features similar to Nazi philosophy…the politics of Herrenvolk…the Nazi idea of Lebensraum, is also very in evidence in the Zionist philosophy...the training of youth is very similar under both organisations that have designed this one and the Nazi one.

At a talk in 1947, Robert Maugham "drew attention to"

the stare of hatred...the patriotic songs...the pride and confidence...are all the same as in the Germany of Hitler

Dr Miller then rounds up by pointing out that it wasn't just British officials and commentators who compared zionism to nazism. The Arab League also published articles and pamphlets saying the same thing. This is from 1945:

to the Arabs indeed Zionism seems as hideous as anything the Nazis conceived in the way of racial expansion at the expense of others. The Zionist claim to have brought prosperity to the country sounds to the Arab ears very much like Hitler's talk of the blessings of the New Order, and the historical, legal and moral arguments adduced to support he Zionist case… appear in the same light as those used by the Nazis to justify the spoliation or destruction of the nations they attacked…while the novel contention that the matter is not one of rights but of the greater need of the Jews…smacks unmistakably of the Lebensraum doctrine.

Now, what I find peculiar about this is that, nowhere does it seek to actually refute what is being said in the various quotes. It seems clear that the comparison of zionists with nazis arises because, like the nazis, the zionists believe that statehood and nationality should be based on ethnicity. Of course, zionism's dependence on imperial patronage means that it has to wear a liberal mask but pre-Israel zionist groups often assimilated to their home country's political culture or that of its patrons. If zionism has a liberal complexion now it's because its main backers have that complexion too. We shouldn't be complacent about this, its main backer now is the USA and the USA is hardly becoming more liberal.

UPDATE: The article on which this post was based has now been moved to here:
http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2005/03/the-israel-nazi-slander-in-historical-context.html