Talk followed by Q & A
Zionism - What it is & How to Fight it
Lenni Brenner
author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and other works
Wednesday 8 November 6.45 for 7pm start
Augustine Church, George IV Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1EL
& SPSC Glasgow Office, 180 W Regent St G2 4RW
Facing suspension from the Labour Party for alleged 'anti-semitism', Ken Livingston referenced the work of US (Jewish) historian Lenni Brenner in his defence. Brenner’s major work, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, is freely available on the internet for you to evaluate. The work was greeted on its original 1984 publication by Croom Helm (later merged with leading academic publisher Routledge) with a very positive review in the London Times by a distinguished academic. Edward Mortimer asked:
Who told a Berlin audience in March 1912 that “each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews, if she doesn’t want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews”? No, not Adolf Hitler but Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Organization and later still the first president of the state of Israel.
And where might you find the following assertion, originally composed in 1917 but republished as late as 1936: “The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligation, knows no order nor discipline”? Not in Der Stürmer but in the organ of the Zionist youth organization, Hashomer Hatzair.
Qualified apologies for reproducing such anti-semitic filth for educational purposes. Brenner's work is invaluable in the present climate of intimidation of pro-Palestine voices as anti-semites by leading politicians, the media, police and criminal prosecution authorities. Theresa May today claims to identify "a new and pernicious form of anti-Semitism which uses criticism of the actions of the Israeli government as a despicable justification for questioning the very right of Israel to exist...we will not stand for it. That is why the United Kingdom has been at the forefront of an international effort to create a new definition of anti-Semitism which explicitly calls out this inexcusable attempt to justify hatred".
This definition implies that linking Israel to the Nazis in any way could be criminalised. The bogus definition which May will use is in the name of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and aims to criminalise any body of ideas that see the Zionist project in Palestine as an inherently racist project. Since the project is an inherently racist endeavour the definition will ultimately fall, but it is now being cynically deployed to fight Palestine solidarity efforts.
Pro-Israel groups have floated the same definition already; Prime Minister Gordon Brown signed on behalf of the UK Government in February 2009, a few weeks after Israel had massacred 1,400 Palestinians. May and trhe Tories hope that re-presenting in same bogus definition in the name of 'Holocaust Remembrance' will make critics fall into line. It has already worked with the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government, who have accepted the IHRA's bogus defintion, which calls for any comparison of Israeli crimes to those of the Nazis, such as this speech, or this one, to be the subject of criminal investigation.
So, the nail-studded club being used to silence opponents (4.00 minutes in) of the apartheid and genocidal violence of the State of Israel is the memory of the Nazi genocide of Jews. The exploitation, the abuse, of the victims of Nazi industrial-scale killings to further Israel's anti-Palestinian politics was given an extreme expression when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed in 2015 to a meeting of the World Z|ionist Congress that it was a Palestinian who got Hitler to launch the mass killing of Jews in the Final Solution, the Holocaust.
But the record of the Zionist leaders during the Holocaust is actually a shocking one, as demonstrated by the opening quotes above. Lenni Brenner's Zionism in the Age iof the Dictators is a meticulously referenced record of Zionist collusion with Europe's worst anti-semites during the inter-war years. It is perfectly consistent with the views of the founding father of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, that Zionism could rely on "Christians who wanted to get rid of" Jews since "the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies". Herzl looked forward to this marriage made in hell, but nonetheless a marriage of sorts. Mainstream Zionist leaders have never wavered from this view; the result was tragic in the period coverd by Zionism in the Age of the Dictators and subsequently.
Join us via video link for a talk and audience Q&A with Lenni Brenner, author of 'Zionism in the Age of the Dictators'
Glasgow SPSC will join the video link up - there is limited space so please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or text 07931200361 to book your place.
