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for what each community believed was in its own best national
interest. The Hitler government vigorously supported Zionism and
Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until 1940-41, when the
Second World War prevented further extensive collaboration. / 9
(During the war years attitudes hardened, and policy shifted
drastically. The German policy of collaboration with Zionists and
support for Jewish emigration to Palestine gave way to a harsh “final
solution” policy.)

During the 1930s, the central SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps,
repeatedly proclaimed its support for Zionism. An article published in
1935, for example, told readers: / 10

“The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not
on religion leads the German government to guarantee without
reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government
finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement
within Jewry, the so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the
solidarity of Jewry around the world, and its rejection of all
assimilationist notions. On this basis, Germany undertakes measures
that will surely play a significant role in the future in the handling
of the Jewish problem around the world.”

In late 1933, a leading German shipping line began direct passenger
service from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, providing “strictly kosher
food” on board.

In September 1935, the German government enacted the “Nuremberg Laws,”
which prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and
Germans and, in effect, proclaimed the country’s Jews an alien
minority group. / 11 A few days after the Nuremberg Laws were enacted,
the main German Zionist newspaper, the Jüdische Rundschau, editorially
welcomed the new measures. It explained to readers: / 12

“Germany … is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress when
it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority.
Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again
possible to establish normal relations between the German nation and
Jewry. The new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own
cultural life, its own national life. In future it will be able to
shape its own schools, its own theater, and its own sports
associations. In short, it can create its own future in all aspects of
national life …”

During the 1930s, Zionist groups, working together with Third Reich
authorities, organized a network of some forty camps and agricultural
centers throughout Germany where prospective settlers were trained for
their new lives in Palestine.

The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era
was the Transfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of
German Jews to migrate to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement,
also known as the Ha’avara – Hebrew for “transfer” – was concluded in
August 1933 following talks between German officials and an official
of the Jewish Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist
Organization. / 13

Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine
through the Ha’avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about
ten percent of Germany’s 1933 Jewish population. Some Ha’avara
emigrants transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to
Palestine. As Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: “Many of these
people, especially in the late 1930s, were allowed to transfer actual
replicas of their homes and factories – indeed rough replicas of their
very existence.” / 14

The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of
cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism.
Through this pact, Hitler’s Third Reich did more than any other
government during the 1930s to support the Zionist movement and Jewish
development in Palestine.

The essence of Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, is that Jews everywhere
– regardless of where they live, regardless of their religious
outlook, and regardless of their citizenship – are members of the
Jewish “people” or “nation,” to whom all Jews owe a primary loyalty
and allegiance.

The overwhelming majority of Jews in the United States today identify
with and support Israel, and are affiliated with Zionist groups and
organizations. Every significant Jewish group or association in the
United States, and every prominent Jewish American political or
community leader supports Israel and Zionism, in most cases fervently
so. With very few exceptions, even American Jews who are critical of
some of Israel’s more embarrassing policies nonetheless express
support for Israel and the nationalist ideology upon which the Zionist
state is based.

A Zionist Jew, by definition, owes his primary loyalty to the Jewish
community and to Israel. Zionism is not compatible with patriotism to
any country or entity other than Israel and the world Jewish
community. That’s why it’s difficult to accept as sincere or honest
the pious assurances of Jewish leaders in the United States that
American Jews are just as loyal to the US as everyone else.

In the United States, nearly every prominent political leader – Jewish
and non-Jewish, Democrat and Republican – ardently supports Israel and
the Jewish nationalist ideology upon which it is based. In Washington,
political leaders of both major parties insist on US support for
Israel as an ethnically Jewish state. They fervently support, and
eagerly seek the favor of, influential Jewish-Zionist groups, such as
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Everyone – whether Jewish or non-Jewish – who claims to support Israel
should, if he is honest and consistent, endorse the view of Israeli
prime minister Sharon, and other Zionist leaders, and support the
migration of Jews everywhere to Israel. But of course that’s not what
happens.

With regard to Zionism and Israel, the attitude and policies of nearly
all American political leaders, Jewish and non-Jewish, is
characterized by hypocrisy and deceit. To put it another way, Zionist
Jews and their non-Jewish supporters embrace a blatant double
standard. Jewish-Zionist organizations, along with their non-Jewish
allies, support one social-political ideology for Israel and the world
Jewish community, and a completely different one for the United States
and other non-Jewish countries. They insist that ethnic nationalism is
evil and bad for non-Jews, while at the same time they vigorously
support ethnic nationalism – that is, Zionism – for Jews.

They insist that Israel is and must be a Jewish nationalist state,
with a privileged status for its Jewish population, including
immigration laws that discriminate against non-Jews. At the same time,
Jewish-Zionist groups and leaders, and the non-Jews who support them,
insist that in the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other
countries, there must be no privileged status for anyone based on
race, ethnicity or religion.

Our political leaders tell us that American Jews should be encouraged
to think of themselves as a distinct national group with an identity
and community interests separate from those of other Americans. At the
same time American politicians insist that Zionist Jews be given all
rights as full and equal US citizens. On the basis of this double
standard, Jews often enjoy what amounts to a privileged status in
American political and cultural life.


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