There's a not entirely bad article on the Crooked Timber website by some banker (really) called Daniel. I'm not quite sure what he's saying and frankly I don't really trust him because I think he's saying that there seems to be something in these allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party but he doesn't give many or even any examples. But I'm just grabbing this quote from Hannah Arendt which the commenter seems to think supports Ken:
But quite apart from all slogans and ideological quarrels, it was in those years a fact of everyday life that only Zionists had any chance of negotiating with the German authorities, for the simple reason that their chief Jewish adversary, the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, to which ninety-five per cent of organized Jews in Germany then belonged, specified in its bylaws that its chief task was the “fight against anti-Semitism”; it had suddenly become by definition an organization “hostile to the State,” and would indeed have been persecuted—which it was not—if it had ever dared to do what it was supposed to do. During its first few years, Hitler’s rise to power appeared to the Zionists chiefly as “the decisive defeat of assimilationism.” Hence, the Zionists could, for a time, at least, engage in a certain amount of non-criminal cooperation with the Nazi authorities; the Zionists too believed that “dissimilation,” combined with the emigration to Palestine of Jewish youngsters and, they hoped, Jewish capitalists, could be a “mutually fair solution.” At the time. many German officials held this opinion, and this kind of talk seems to have been quite common up to the end. A letter from a survivor of Theresienstadt, a German Jew, relates that all leading positions in the Nazi- appointed Reichsvereinigung were held by Zionists (whereas the authentically Jewish Reichsvertretung had been composed of both Zionists and non- Zionists), because Zionists, according to the Nazis, were “the ‘decent’ Jews since they too thought in ‘national’ terms.” To be sure, no prominent Nazi ever spoke publicly in this vein; from beginning to end, Nazi propaganda was fiercely, unequivocally, uncompromisingly anti-Semitic, and eventually nothing counted but what people who were still without experience in the mysteries of totalitarian government dismissed as “mere propaganda.” There existed in those first years a mutually highly satisfactory agreement between the Nazi authorities and the Jewish Agency for Palestine—a Ha’avarah, or Transfer Agreement, which provided that an emigrant to Palestine could transfer his money there in German goods and exchange them for pounds upon arrival. It was soon the only legal way for a Jew to take his money with him (the alternative then being the establishment of a blocked account, which could be liquidated abroad only at a loss of between fifty and ninety-five per cent). The result was that ¡n the thirties, when American Jewry took great pains to organize a boycott of German merchandise, Palestine, of all places, was swamped with all kinds of goods “made in Germany.”There's a lot more out there to demonstrate that Hitler supported Zionism from the time he came to power to the outbreak of WWII and if I remember I'll grab it and post it.
Zionists are beside themselves that what Ken Livingstone said, whilst clumsy and wrong in parts, was essentially true and certainly not antisemitic. But of course they could have done without an exercise in Zio-Nazi collaboration getting an airing because as much as they seem to be able to get Labourites suspended with a snap of their fingers, the question has to be asked, what were the Zionists doing collaborating with such a rabid Jew hater?
They were saving Jews of course. But were they? See the deal. Jews could get much more money out of Germany if they went to Palestine than if they went elsewhere. Now if you understand Zionism then you will understand that Zionists prefer to get Jews to Palestine than to anywhere else and the Zionist leadership were clear that they would rather have x amount of Jews in Palestine the twice that number safe elsewhere.
But Hitler had to approve this deal. Why would he approve it? Simples! to get rid of Jews. But why Palestine? Because it was easier. But it wasn't easier. Jews could go to other places. The main difficulty was turning up penniless. The question of why Zionists wanted Jews in Palestine is like asking why Zionists wanted to be Zionists. But the big question and it's still a mystery is why was Hitler so keen not simply to get rid of Jews but to get Jews to go to Palestine.
Perplexing one that and one Zionists aren't too keen to answer. Maybe we'll never know. But what we do know is that for a time back there, Hitler supported Zionism.
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