Saturday, October 31, 2009

Bill Moyers bought?

Subsequent to Bill Moyer's interview with Judge Goldstone, his blog erupted with criticism of perceived pro-Israel bias.

Personally I was inclined to allow Bill the benefit of the doubt and assume he was acting devil's advocate, an acceptable journalistic technique. This despite my unease that he had neglected to mention the truce that Hamas had observed (despite the Israeli blockade and continued hostility):

The debate on Bill's blog soon became a troll-fest with the usual memes being trotted out. In response to one particularly offensive poster, I wrote a rebuttal of an entry maligning the activities of the Mufti - an evergreen and (in my view unsupported) theme of the hasbara. The site did not post it. I tried again a few days later and found the post blocked again.
Here is what I wrote:

Despite the fact that I do not condone the slanging match that this conversation has become, I cannot let phil's smear of Husseini go unchallenged. It is, at the least, a contested issue and probably historically inaccurate. The accusations against the Mufti stem from the evidence of one Dieter Wisliceny:

"Hannah Arendt, who attended the complete Eichmann trial, concluded in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil that, "The trial revealed only that all rumours about Eichmann's connection with Haj Amin el Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, were unfounded."[124] Rafael Medoff concludes that "actually there is no evidence that the Mufti's presence was a factor at all; the Wisliceny hearsay is not merely uncorroborated, but conflicts with everything else that is known about the origins of the Final Solution."[125] Bernard Lewis also called Wisliceny's testimony into doubt: "There is no independent documentary confirmation of Wisliceny's statements, and it seems unlikely that the Nazis needed any such additional encouragement from the outside."[126]"
-Wikipedia.

The simple fact is that Husseini, facing arrest by the British, took sanctuary with Britain's enemy and continued resistance to Zionism from there. Lenni Brenner has this to say:

"The Mufti gained nothing, then or later, from his collaboration with either Rome or Berlin, nor could the Palestinian interest ever have been served by the two dictators.... The Mufti was an incompetent reactionary who was driven into his anti-Semitism by the Zionists. It was Zionism itself, in its blatant attempt to turn Palestine from an Arab land into a Jewish state, and then use it for the yet further exploitation of the Arab nation, that generated Palestinian Jew-hatred."
(Chapter 8, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.)

The Germans had a dollar each way. On one hand, they accomodated Husseini but they also encouraged Zionism - even setting up training farms for Jews to fit them for emigration to Israel.
See:
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/holocaust_and_genocide_studies/v019/19.3nicosia.html
http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/september/05.asp

Hannah Arendt (Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 59-61.) says this:
"Of greater importance for Eichmann were the emissaries from Palestine, who would approach the Gestapo and the S.S. on their own initiative, without taking orders from either the German Zionists or the Jewish Agency for Palestine. They came in order to enlist help for the illegal immigration of Jews into British-ruled Palestine, and both the Gestapo and the S.S were helpful.
They negotiated with Eichmann in Vienna, and they reported that he was ‘polite’, ‘not the shouting type’, and that he even provided them with farms and facilities for setting up vocational training camps for prospective immigrants. (‘On one occasion, he expelled a group of nuns from a convent to provide a training farm for young Jews’, and on another ‘a special train was made available and Nazi officials accompanied’ a group of emigrants, ostensibly headed for Zionist training farms in Yugoslavia, to see them safely across the border.) "

Here is an extract from the offer made to Germany by, among others, Yitzak Shamir:

"The solving in this manner of the Jewish problem, thus bringing with it once and for all the liberation of the Jewish people, is the objective of the political activity and the years-long struggle of the Israeli freedom movement, the National Military Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi) in Palestine.

The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that:

1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.
2. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed folkish-national Hebraium would be possible and,
3. The establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.

Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively lake part in the war on Germany’s side."
Lenni Brenner: The Iron Wall. Appendix II.

I invite Bill or his gatekeeper to explain what is objectionable about this post.