of Israeli Politics
III - The Political Use of the Myth
1 - The Israeli-Zionist Lobby in the United States
"The Israeli Prime Minister has a lot more influence over the foreign policy of the United States in the Middle East than he has in his own country."
Source: Paul Findley, "They Dare to Speak Out", p. 92
How were such myths able to lead to such deep-rooted beliefs in millions of sincere people?
- By the creation of all-powerful "lobbies" capable of influencing the action of politicians and of conditioning public opinion.
The modes of action are adapted to the country. In the United States, where 6 million Jews live, the "Jewish vote" can be an important factor in determining the electoral majority where (because of the high number of abstentions and the absence of major policy differences between the two parties) victory can often be had with a margin of 3% or 4%.
"What's more, the volatility of public opinion, which depends to a large extent on the "look" of the candidate or on his performance on television, depends on the budget of his committees and of the potential of his marketing policy.'In 1988 the American Senate elections required an advertising budget of 500 million dollars.'"
Source: Alain COTTA, "Capitalism in all its States," Ed. FAYARD 1991. p. 158
The most powerful officially listed lobby on the Capitol is the A.I.P.A.C. ("American Israel Public Affairs Committee")
The strength of the Israelis in the U.S. as early as 1942, is such that at the Biltmore Hotel in New York a maximalist convention decides that it is necessary to move from the "Jewish homeland in Palestine" (promised by Balfour: a slow colonization by buying land under British or American protection) to the creation of a "sovereign Jewish state".
The duplicity which characterizes the whole history of political zionism is expressed in the "interpretations" of what was to be the outcome of Herzl's efforts : "The Balfour Declaration" (in 1917). The formula of a "national Jewish homeland" is taken up again at the Congress of Basle. Lord Rothschild had prepared a declaration advocating "the national principle of the Jewish people". Balfour's final declaration does not talk any more about all Palestine, but only about the "establishment in Palestine of a national homeland for the Jewish people". In actual fact everybody says "homeland" (as if it were a spiritual and cultural center), and, in reality, thinks "State", as did Herzl himself. Lloyd George wrote in his book : "The Truth About the Peace Treaties", (Ed. Gollancz 1938, vol. 2, pp. 1138 39) : "There could be no doubt about what the members of the cabinet had in mind at the time... Palestine would become an independent state." It is significant that General Smuts, a member of the War Cabinet, declared in Johannesburg on 3 November 1915: "Over the coming generations, you will see the emergence over there (in Palestine) once again, of a great Jewish state."
On 26 January 1919 Lord Curzon wrote: "While Weizman is telling you one thing, and you are thinking "Jewish national homeland", he has something completely different in mind. He is envisaging a Jewish state and a subjugated Arab population governed by Jews. He is trying to realize this behind the protective screen of the British guarantee."
Weizman had clearly explained to the British government that the objective of zionism was to create a "Jewish state" (with 4 or 5 million Jews). Lloyd George and Balfour gave him the assurance"that by using the term "national homeland" in the Balfour Declaration, we did indeed mean a Jewish state."
On 14 May 1948 Ben Gurion proclaims independence at Tel Aviv:
"The Jewish state in Palestine will be called Israel"."
Despite the divergence between those who, like Ben Gurion, considered it a duty for every Jew in the world to come and live in Israel, and those who thought that the action of the Jews in America was more important, in the very interest of Israel, it was the latter tendency which was to be more powerful : out of the 35,000 Americans or Canadians who immigrated into Israel, only 5,400 stayed there.
Source: Melvin I. Wofsky: "We are one! American Jewry and Israel", New York, 1978 Pub. Ander Press - Doubleday pp. 265 - 266
The State of Israel was admitted to the United Nations thanks to brazen pressure from the lobby.
Eisenhower didn't want to alienate the oil producing Arab countries: "A prodigious source of strategic power and one of the greatest sources of wealth in the history of the world", he said.
Source: Bick, "Ethnic Linkage and Foreign Policy", p. 81
Truman swept aside his scruples for electoral reasons and it was to be the same with his successors. On the subject of the power of the Zionist lobby and of the "Jewish vote", President Truman himself had declared in 1946, to a group of diplomats: "I am sorry gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands of people who are expecting the success of Zionism. I don't have thousands of Arabs among my electors."
Source: William Eddy, F.P. Roosevelt and Ibn Saoud, N.Y. "American Friends of the Middle East", 1954 p. 31 (or 39)
The former British Prime Minister Clement Atlee gives this testimony: " U.S. policy in Palestine was shaped by the Jewish vote and by the subsidies of several large Jewish companies."
Source: Clement Atlee, "A Prime Minister Remembers", Pub. Heinemann, London 1961, p. 181.
Eisenhower had, in agreement with the Russians, stopped the Israeli aggression (supported by the British and French leaders) against the Suez Canal in 1956.
Senator J.F. Kennedy had, in this matter, shown no enthusiasm.
In 1958 the "Conference of Presidents" of the Jewish associations charges its president, Klutznik, with contacting Kennedy, a possible candidate. He declared to him plainly, "If you say what you have to say, you can count on me. If not, I will not be the only one to turn his back on you."
Source: Melvin I. Wofsky, "We Are One", p. 265 - 266
Klutznik summed up for him what he had to say : The attitude of Eisenhower in the Suez affair was wrong but in '48 Truman was on the right track. Kennedy followed this "advice" in 1960 when he was designated as candidate by the democratic convention. After his declarations in front of Jewish V.I.P.'s in New York he got 500,000 dollars for his campaign, Klutz as adviser and 80% of the Jewish vote.
Source: Ibidem, p. 271 to 280
During his first meeting with Ben Gurion in the New York Astoria Waldorf Hotel in spring 1961, John F. Kennedy said to him: "I know that I have been elected thanks to the votes of American Jews. I owe my election to them. Tell me what I have to do for the Jewish people."
Source: Edward Tivnan, "The Lobby", p. 56 (quoting the biographer of Ben Gurion, Michel Bar Zohar)
After Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson went even farther. An Israeli diplomat wrote: "We lost a good friend. But we have found an even better one... Johnson is the best friend the Jewish State has ever had in the White House."
Source: I. L. Kenen, "Israel's Defense Line", Prometheus Book, 1981. pp. 66 - 67
Johnson did indeed give strong support during the "six day war" of 1967. From then on, 99% of American Jews would support Israeli zionism. "To be a Jew today means to be tied to Israel."
Source: Schlomo Avineri: "The Making of Modern Zionism", N.Y., Basis Book, 1981, p. 219
U.N. resolution 242 of November 1967 demanded the evacuation of the territories occupied during the war and De Gaulle, after this aggression, declared an embargo on arms destined for Israel. The American congress followed. But Johnson lifted it in December and, under pressure from the A.I.P.A.C., delivered the Phantom planes ordered by Israel.
Source: Bick, p. 65 and 66 or 166
As a consequence of this Israel didn't criticize the war in Vietnam.
Source: Abba Eban, autobiography. D. 460
When Golda Meir came to the U.S. in 1979, Nixon compared her to "biblical Deborah" and smothered her in praise for Israel's economic boom.
Source: Steven L.S. Spiegel: "The Other Arab-Israeli Conflict", University of Chicago Press, 1985, p. 185
The "Rogers Plan", taking up again the essence of U.N. Resolution 242, was rejected by Golda Meir.
Source: Kenen, p. 239
Nixon delivered 45 Phantoms and more than 80 Skylark bombers to Israel.
Nasser died on 8 September 1970 and Sadat proposed peace with Israel. Moshe Dayan, Minister of Defense, refused, in spite of the views of the Minister for Foreign Affairs Abba Eban.
So on 6 October 1973 Sadat launched the offensive which was to be known as the Yom Kippur War and destroyed the reputation of both Golda Meir, who had to resign on 10 April 1974, and Moshe Dayan.
Nevertheless, the Jewish lobby on the Capitol won a great success for the accelerated rearmament of Israel: 2 billion dollars, on the pretext of fighting a competing Arab lobby.
Source: Neff, "Warriors of Jerusalem" (p. 217)
Money from the Jewish banks of Wall Street was added to the governmental aid.
Source: Bick, p. 65 and Abba Eban, p. 460.
Of the 21 people who contributed more than 100,000 dollars to Senator Hubert Humphrey, 15 were Jews, at their forefront the bosses of the "Hollywood Jewish mafia" like Wasserman. Overall, they contributed more than 30% of the Democrats' election fund.
Source: Stephen D. Isaacs, "Jews and American Politics" (N.Y. pub. Doubleday, 1974, chapter 8)
The A.I.P.A.C. mobilized again and got in three weeks, for 21 May 1975, the signatures of 76 senators asking President Ford to support Israel, as they did.
Source: Full text in Shechan, "Arabs, Israelis and Kissinger", Reader's Digest Press (p. 175)
Jimmy Carter's path was marked out for him: at the Synagogue of Elizabeth in New Jersey, dressed in the blue velvet toga, he proclaimed:
"I honor the same God as you. We (The Baptists) study the same Bible as you." And he concluded,"The survival of Israel does not come down to politics. It is a moral duty."Source: "Time", 21 June, 1976
This was the period when Begin and the religious parties had taken power from the Labor Party in Israel:"Begin considered himself more as a Jew than as an Israeli", wrote his biographer.
Source: Silver, "Begin: The Haunted Prophet", p. 164
In November 1976 Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Jewish Congress, came to Washington to see the President, Vance and Brzezinski and gave the Carter administration this unexpected advice: "smash the Zionist lobby in the United States".
Source: "Stern", New York, 24 April 1978
Goldmann had dedicated his life to zionism and played a key role in the "lobby" since the time of Truman and he said now that his own creation, The Presidents' Conference, was a "destructive force" and a "major obstacle" to Peace in the Middle East.
Begin was in power and Goldmann was determined to undermine his policy, even if this meant destroying his own pressure group.
Six years later Cyrus Vance, one of the interlocutors at this meeting, confirmed Goldmann's proposals: "Goldmann suggested to us to smash the lobby but The President and The Secretary of State replied that they didn't have the power and that, besides, this could open the way to anti semitism."
Source: Interview with Cyrus Vance by Edward Tivnan, "The Lobby", pub. Simon and Schuster, 1987, p. 123
Begin, sharing power with Labor, appointed Moshe Dayan as Minister for Foreign Affairs in place of Shimon Peres. The President of the Jewish Presidents' Conference in the U.S Schindler, had this turn in favor of the extremists accepted, stressing the pragmatism of Dayan. Begin, for a while, hardly had to worry about the American zionists whom he considered to be Labour's supporters.
But American businessmen, noticing the influence of the rabbis on Begin and especially the latter's attachment to "free enterprise" (contrary to the state intervention of Labour), welcomed the Camp David Agreement (September 1978). Sadat, making a separate peace with Israel, did not get to touch. The West Bank (Judea and Sumeria, "biblical" lands according to Begin) and only kept Sinai which, for Begin, was not "biblical land".
Source: Stephen D. Isaacs: "Jews and American Policy", Doubleday. 1974 D. 122
In 1976 Carter got 68% of the Jewish vote; in 1980 he only got 45% of it having, in the meantime, sold F15 planes to Egypt and "AWACS" planes to Saudi Arabia, ensuring, however, that these would never be used against Israel as the American Army controlled all the system's data from the ground.
In 1980 he was, however, beaten by Reagan who, on the contrary, extended 600 million dollars of military credit for the following 2 years.
Begin, reassured after Camp David of not being attacked from behind by the Egyptians and also by the fact that the AWACS sold to Saudi Arabia were entirely under American control, was able to show the Americans his capacity for a preventive war (like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and the Israelis with the Egyptian aviation during the Six Day War) by proceeding to destroy, without a declaration of war, the Iraqi power station of Ozirak which had been built by the French. Begin always invoked the same sacred myth:
"There will never again be another Holocaust."
Source: "The Washington Post", 10 June 1981
Encouraged by the weakness of the American protesters who feared an escalation in the Middle East situation, Begin, one month later, on 17 July 1981, bombarded West Beirut to destroy, he said, P.L.O. bases.
Reagan then announced the project to sell 8 billion dollars worth of AWACS along with missiles to Saudi Arabia, still under conditions that in no way threatened Israel as American control was total.
To such an extent that a Senate majority accepted this good economic deal and reinforcement of American control in The Gulf. (The Saudis had to bind themselves to overfly neither Syria nor Jordan, and therefore not Israel.)
Source: Facts and Files, 20 September 1981, p. 705
Begin, still possessed by the vision of "Greater Israel" of biblical legend, continued with the establishment of Israeli colonies in The West Bank (begun by Labour) which Carter had declared "illegal" and which were in breach of U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338. But Reagan saw in Israel a way of blocking Soviet designs on the oil of The Gulf. In November 1981 Ariel Sharon, Begin's Minister of War, met his American opposite number Casper Weinberger and drew up with him a "strategic cooperation" plan to dissuade any Soviet threat in the region.
Source: "N.Y. Times", 1 December 1981
On 14 December Begin annexes The Golan. Reagan protests against this new violation of Resolution 242. Begin flares up: "Are we a banana republic ? A vassal state of yours ?""
Source: Steven Emerson, "Dutton of Arabia" in "New Republic", 16 June 1982
The following year Begin invaded Lebanon. General Haig, at the head of the war department, gives the "go ahead" for this invasion destined to set up a Christian government in Beirut.
Source: Ze'ev Shiff and Ehud Ya'ari: "Israel's Lebanon War", N.Y., Simon and Shuster, 1984
Few Americans criticized this invasion just as few Israelis had criticized that of Vietnam. But the massacres of Sabra and Chatila (carried out under the eyes of, and with the complicity of, Sharon and Eytan) and the images which were given to television, forced the Jewish lobby to break the silence.
The Vice-President of the World Jewish Congress, Hertzberg, and many rabbis criticized Begin in October 1982. Begin reproached rabbi Schindler who had made his criticism on television, for being "more American than Jewish" and one of his assistants denounced him as a "traitor".
Source: Michael Kremer, "American Jews and Israel. The Schism", N.Y., 18 October 1982
A spokesman for A.I.P.A.C. explained the strategy of those who, like him, approved of the invasion:
"We want to reinforce our support for Israel on the right wing - with people who aren't worried about what's going on on the West Bank but who target the Soviet Union."Source: interview recorded by Tivnan, p. 181.
On this occasion the Zionist christians supported the Israeli aggression and their leader, Jerry Falwell, whom Begin called "the man who represents 60 million American Christians" in a country where there are only 6 million Jews, received the highest Zionist honor: The Jabotinski Prize for services rendered to Israel, plus 100 million dollars from the State of Israel and 140 million dollars from the Swaggert donation.
Source: "Time", "Power, glory, politics", 17 February 1986
Financial power and, consequently, political power, in a world where everything is bought and sold, is becoming more and more decisive.
Since 1948 the U.S. has supplied Israel with 28 billion dollars in military and economic aid.
Source: "Time" magazine of June 1994
1 - From German and Austrian "reparations";
2 - Because of unconditional American generosity;
3 - From payments from the Diaspora;
the Israeli leaders could consider, in foreign policy, the most ambitious aims of a "greater Israel".
We have an accurate testimony from an article of the revue "Kivounim" (Orientations) published in Jerusalem by "The World Zionist Organization" on "the strategic plans of Israel for the 80's":
"As a centralized body, Egypt is already a corpse, especially if one takes account of the ever more violent confrontation between muslims and christians. Its division into distinct geographical provinces must be our political objective for the 90's, on the western front.
Once Egypt has been thus dislocated and deprived of central power, countries like Libya, Sudan and others farther away will experience the same dissolution. The formation of a Coptic state in Upper Egypt, and of small regional entities of little size is the key to a historic development which has been slowed down by the peace agreement, but is inescapable in the long term.
In spite of appearances, the western front presents fewer problems than the one in the east. The partition of Lebanon into five provinces... Will prefigure what will happen all over the Arab world. The disintegration of Syria and Iraq into regions, based on ethnic or religious criteria, must be, in the long term, a primary goal for Israel, the first step being the destruction of the military power of these states.
The ethnic structures of Syria expose it to a dismantling which could lead to the creation of a Shiite state along the coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo region and another one in Damascus, and a Druze entity which might hope to constitute its own state - perhaps on our Golan - in any case with Houran and the north of Jordan... Such a state would be, in the long term, a guarantee of peace and security in the region. It is an objective which is already within our reach.
Oil-rich, and victim of internal strife, Iraq is in the Israeli firing line. Its dissolution would be, for us, more important than Syria's, because it is Iraq which, in the short term, represents the more serious threat for Israel."
Source: "Kivounim", Jerusalem, No. 14, February 1982, pp. 49 - 59
(The integral text, in its Hebrew original, is reproduced in my book: "Palestine, terre des messages divins", Pub. Albatros, Paris, 1986, pp. 137 to 387, and in its French translation starting on page 315.)
For the realization of this enormous project the Israeli leaders had at their disposal limitless American aid. Of the 507 planes which they had on the eve of the invasion of Lebanon, 457 came from the U.S. thanks to gifts and loans sanctioned by Washington. The American lobby took it on itself to obtain the necessary means even if this meant going against the national interest, under pressure from the Zionist lobby.
When the objectives of the Kivounim plan were too far away and the confrontation too risky, the Israeli lobby succeeded in having the job done by the U.S. The war against Iraq is a striking example.
"Two powerful pressure groups push the U.S. to opening of hostilities.
1 - The "Jewish lobby", because the elimination of Saddam Hussein would do away with the threat of the most powerful Arab country.. The American Jews play a key role in the North American media. The permanent state of compromise between the President and Congress leads the White House to pay serious attention to their entreaties.
2 - The "business lobby"... has got to the stage of thinking that war could relaunch the economy. Didn't the Second World War, and the enormous orders which it generated for the U.S put an end to the crisis of 1929 out of which it hadn't really emerged? Didn't the Korean War provoke a new boom?
Oh happy war which would bring prosperity back to America..."
Source: Alain Peyrefitte, "Le Figaro", 5 November 1990
"It is difficult to overestimate the political influence of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (A.I.P.A.C.)... which has a budget which quadrupled between 1982 and 1986 (1,600,000 dollars in 1982 ; 6,900,000 dollars in 1988)."
Source: "Wall Street Journal", 24 June 1987
The Zionist leaders didn't hide the role of their lobby. Ben Gurion stated clearly: "When a Jew, in America or in South Africa, talks to his Jewish companions about 'our' government, he means the government of Israel."
Source: "Rebirth and Destiny of Israel", 1954, p. 489
At the 23rd congress of the World Zionist Organization he stipulates that the duty of a jew abroad includes "the collective obligation of every Zionist organization in various countries to help the Jewish State unconditionally and in all circumstances even if such a stance is in contradiction with the authorities of their respective nations."
Source: Ben Gurion: "Tasks and Character of a Modern Zionist", "Jerusalem Post", 17 August 1952 and "Jewish Telegraphic Agency", 8 August 1951
This confusion of Judaism as a religion (worthy of respect like all others) with political zionism including unconditional allegiance to the State of Israel (substituting for the God of Israel), can only feed anti-semitism.
The State Department was forced to react. In a letter addressed to the "American Council for Judaism", made public by the latter on 7 May 1964, Secretary of State Talbot, referring to the very principles of the American Constitution, regarding which the demands of the Zionist leaders constituted a challenge, reminded us that his country"recognizes the State of Israel as a sovereign state, and the citizenship of the State of Israel. It "recognizes no other sovereignty or citizenship in this regard. It doesn't recognize any politico-legal relationship founded on a religious identification of American citizens. It doesn't discriminate between American citizens on religious grounds. Consequently, it should be clear that the State Department doesn't consider the concept of a "Jewish people" to be a concept of international law."
Source: Quoted by Georges Friedman in "Fin du peuple juif", (Gallimard, 1956), Idees poche, p. 292
A strictly platonic declaration, besides, as this obvious legal reminder was followed up by no measure against the lobby.
The Pollard affair gives us an example.
In November 1985 an American Zionist militant, Jonathan Pollard, an analyst at navy headquarters, was arrested while taking home some secret documents. Interrogated by the F.B.I., he admits having received 50,000 dollars since the beginning of 1984 for sending these documents to Israel.
"The Pollard affair didn't come out of nowhere. It is in keeping with the current system of American-Israeli relations, more and more unwholesome, characterized by an excessive dependence which favorizes brazen attitudes.
This situation was created in 1981, when the Reagan administration gave Israel what was interpreted as a "carte blanche" to its military adventurism, under the pretext of self-defense. The first result of this was the invasion of Lebanon.
...It was predictable that such complacency from Washington would encourage arrogance in Jerusalem. It is well known that ties of close dependence sow resentment and aggression. In Israel's case, this resentment takes ill-considered forms ; the attack on Tunis is one. It is possible that the Pollard affair is another."
Source: "Washington Post", 5 December 1985
"For decades American Jews have been trying hard to convince American public opinion that their unconditional support for Israel didn't effect their loyalty to the U.S.. It now seems that it will be difficult to trust them on this point, and those who talk about "double allegiance" will find an understanding ear."
Source: "Haaretz", 1 December 1985
There is no shortage of examples where the israeli-Zionist lobby succeeds in imposing on the U.S. an attitude which is unfavorable to American interests but useful for Israeli policy.
Here are some examples:
The president of the Senate Foreign Affairs Commission, Senator Fullbright, decided to summon the main Zionist leaders before a committee which threw some light on their underground activities. He summed up the results of his enquiry in a "Face the Nation" interview on C.B.S., 7 October 1973: "The Israelis control policy in Congress and in the Senate". He added:"Our colleagues in the Senate, about 70% of them, make up their minds more under the pressure of a lobby than from their own vision of what they consider to be the principles of liberty and justice."
In the next elections Fullbright lost his seat as senator.
Since Senator Fullbright's enquiry, the Zionist "lobby" has continued to strengthen its grip on American policy. In his book, "They Dare to Speak Out", (published in 1985 by Lawrence Hill and Co.) Paul Findley, who had a seat in the U.S. Congress for 22 years, described the current working and power of the Zionist "lobby". This veritable "branch of the Israeli government" controls Congress and Senate, the Presidency of the Republic, the State Department and the Pentagon as well as the media and it exercises its influence in the universities as well as in the churches.
There is no shortage of examples showing how the Israelis' demands take priority over the interests of the U.S.: On 3 October 1984 the House of Representatives repealed, by a majority of 98%, all limitations to exchanges between Israel and the U.S. in spite of the unfavorable report of the Ministry of Commerce and the opposition of all the unions (p. 31). Every year, whatever the restrictions on other areas of the budget, credit for Israel is increased. The degree of espionage is such that the most secret dossiers fall into the hands of the Israeli government. Adlai Stevenson (former presidential candidate in the U.S.) wrote in the winter '75 - '76 issue of "Foreign Affairs": "Practically no decision concerning Israel can be taken, or even discussed, at executive level, without being immediately known about by the Israeli government." (p. 126) In spite of the refusal of the Secretary of State for Defense, founded on American law, to deliver to Israel, during its offensive in Lebanon, fragmentation bombs (a weapon used against civilians), the Israelis get them from Reagan and use them on two occasions in Beirut to massacre the population. (p. 143)
In 1973 the American admiral Thomas Moorer (head of combined military H.Q.) testifies: The Israeli military attache in Washington, Mordecai Gur (future commander-in-chief of the Israeli forces), asks for planes armed with a very sophisticated missile (called "Maverick") from the U.S.. Admiral Moorer remembers that he said to Gur:"I cannot deliver these planes to you. We only have one squadron. And we swore to congress that we needed them." Gur said to me, "Give us the planes. As for Congress, I'll take care of it." That's how", the Admiral adds, "the only squadron equipped with Mavericks went to Israel." (p. 161)
On 8 June 1967 the Israeli air force and navy bombard the American ship "Liberty" (equipped with very sophisticated detectors) to prevent it from detecting their invasion plans for the Golan. 34 sailors are killed and 171 wounded. The ship is overflown for 6 hours and bombarded for 70 minutes. The Israeli government excuses itself for this "error" and the matter is closed. It is only in 1980 that one of the eyewitnesses, Ennes, an officer on the bridge of the Liberty, can establish the truth, destroying the "official" version of the "error", ratified by the "commission of enquiry" at the time, chaired by Admiral Isaac Kid. Ennes proves that the attack was deliberate and that it was a question of murder. Admiral Thomas Moorer, while Ennes' book was smothered by the Zionist "lobby", explains why this crime was kept quiet: "President Johnson feared the reaction of the Jewish electorate..." . The Admiral adds: "The American people would go crazy if they knew what had happened." (p. 179)
In 1980 Adlai Stevenson, having sponsored an amendment demanding a reduction of 10% in military aid to Israel in order to force them to stop setting up colonies in the occupied territories, reminded us that 43% of American aid went to Israel (3 million inhabitants) for its arms, to the detriment of 3 billion people starving in the world.
Adlai Stevenson concluded,"The Prime Minister of Israel has a lot more influence over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East than he has in his own country." (p. 92)
Any thing goes for the Zionist lobby: from financial pressure to blackmail, from boycotting the media and publishers to death threats.
Paul Findley concludes: "Whoever criticizes Israeli policy can expect painful and incessant reprisals and even the loss of his means of existence by the pressure of the Israeli "lobby". The President is afraid of it. Congress gives in to all its demands. The most prestigious universities see to it that in their programs there is nothing which opposes it. The media giants and the military chiefs give in to its pressure." (p. 315)
Source: Hearings, Part 9, 23 May, 1963
2 - The Israeli-Zionist Lobby in France
"There is in France a powerful pro-Israeli lobby exercising its influence especially in the domain of information."
(General De Gaulle)
Source: Philippe Alexandre. "Le préjugé pro-israélien", "Le Parisien Libéré", 29 February, 1988
In France, General De Gaulle was the only one to dare to say: "that there was in France a powerful pro-Israeli lobby exercising its influence especially in the domain of information. This affirmation. at the time, caused an uproar. However, it contains an element of truth which is still relevant today."
Source: Philippe Alexandre. "Le préjugé pro-israélien", "Le Parisien Libéré", 29 February, 1988
Since then there hasn't been a single candidate for the Presidency of the French Republic, whatever his party, from Michel Rocard to Jacques Chirac, by way of Mitterand, who hasn't gone to Israel to get the media investiture.
The media power of the lobby, the controlling center of which is constituted by the "LICRA" (League against racism and anti-semitism), is such that it can freely manipulate opinion. Although the Jewish community constitutes about 2% of the French population, zionism reigns over the majority of decision makers in the media, on television and radio, in the press, weeklies or dailies, the cinema (especially with the Hollywood invasion) and even publishing is in their hands (by the reading committees where they can impose their veto) as is advertising, financial regent of the media.
The proof is the general alignment of the media where it's a case of reversing, in Israel's favor, the nature of events: The violence of the weak is called "terrorism" and the violence of the strong is called "fight against terrorism".
An invalid jew is thrown overboard from the "Achille Lauro" by a P.L.O. renegade. It is, incontestably, terrorism. But when, by way of reprisal, an Israeli bombardment of Tunis causes 50 deaths, including several children, this is called "fight against terrorism", defense of "law and order".
As if under the baton of a clandestine conductor, we hear the same music in all the media, whether it is attacks on the synagogue of rue Copernic or the desecration of the graveyard at Carpentras, the invasion of Lebanon or the destruction of Iraq.
I can contribute my personal testimony: Until 1982 I had free access to the biggest publishing houses, T.V., radio and press.
At the time of the invasion of, and massacres in, Lebanon I got the publication of a full page (paid) in "Le Monde", 17 June 1982, from the Director, Jacques Fauvet, where, with Father Michel Lelong and Pastor Matthiot, we drew a conclusion "after the massacres in Lebanon" about "the meaning of Israeli aggressions".
We showed that it wasn't a momentary lapse but the internal logic of political zionism on which the State of Israel is founded.
I received, by anonymous letters and by phone calls, nine death threats.
L.I.C.R.A. instituted proceedings against us for "anti-semitism and provocation of racial discrimination".
Jacques Fauvet's lawyer reiterated that one cannot confuse the Jewish community, and even less, its faith, with the State of Israel, the exactions of which in Lebanon were denounced by Jewish people of great standing such as Mendes France and Nahum Goldman.
Our defense (Father Lelong's, Pastor Matthiot's and mine) comes from the text itself: we reiterate what our lives owe to the faith of the Jewish prophets.
But political zionism has replaced the God of Israel with the State of Israel.
Its behavior, in Lebanon and in Palestine, by creating odious hodge-podges, dishonors judaism in the eyes of the world. Our fight against political zionism is, therefore, inseparable from our fight against anti-semitism.
For my part, I reiterated, in front of the court, the analyses of my study on "La Palestine, terre des messages divins": Political zionism, founded by Theodor Herzl (and condemned at the time by every rabbi in the world as a betrayal of the Jewish faith), flows, not from the Jewish faith but from l9th century European colonialism and nationalism.
The last vestiges of colonialism by settlement, in Palestine like in South Africa, come up against, by their racism (officially denounced by the U.N.), the resistance of the native inhabitants to the colonial occupier.
As with any colonialism and any regime of occupation (we experienced it in France under Hitler), repression is called "maintenance of order" and resistance is called "terrorism".
Listening to the judge of the L.I.C.R.A. trying to portray me as an anti semite, I could see myself in Jerusalem, at the Wailing Wall accompanied by the Israeli minister Barzilai in 1970, and then in Nahum Goldmann's house (at the time president of the World Jewish Congress), in 1967.
I see myself at the concentration camp with my friend Bernard Lacache (founder of the L.I.C.R.A.), who was helping me to prepare my classes to our comrades, deported like us, on "Les Prophètes d'Israël."
The almost total domination of the French and American media by Israeli zionism imposes on the world this subversion of meaning: An Israeli diplomat is attacked in London (Mrs. Thatcher herself proves, in the House of Commons, that the author of the attack wasn't from the P.L.O.), it's "terrorism". The Israeli army invades Lebanon and cause thousands of deaths: the operation is called "Peace in Galilee"!
On 1 January 1989 I hear of the toll of the "revolt of stones" on the television: 327 killed on the Palestinian side (mostly children, throwing stones) and 8 on the Israeli side (mostly soldiers, firing bullets). The same day an Israeli minister declares: "Negotiation will only be possible when the Palestinians renounce violence." Is it me who is dreaming? Or is this anaesthesia of the critical spirit a collective nightmare?: the triumph of nonsense!
As early as 1969 General de Gaulle was denouncing the "excessive influence" of the Zionist lobby in all the media: From the press to television, from cinema to publishing. Today this "excessive influence" has succeeded in effecting a total inversion of meaning, calling the artisan resistance of the poor "terrorism" and the infinitely more murderous violence of the strong "fight against terrorism".
We were wrong, Father Lelong, Pastor Matthiot and myself, to denounce the lie of this subversion of meaning. The 'High Court' in Paris, in it's ruling of 24 March 1983"considering that it was a case of legitimate criticism of the policy of a state and of the ideology which inspires it, and not of racial provocation... "Nonsuits the L.I.C.R.A. of all its requests and orders it to pay costs".
The L.I.C.R.A. appeals the decision. On 11 January 1984, the "Haute Chambre" of the Court of Paris pronounced its judgement.
The appeal court quotes a passage of our article where we accuse the State of Israel of racism.
The court "considering that the opinion given by the signatories only concerns the restrictive definition of judaism held by Israeli legislation... confirms the referred judgement where it nonsuited the L.I.C.R.A. of its requests and orders the L.I.C.R.A. to pay costs".
The L.I.C.R.A. goes to the Court of Appeal. The ruling of the Appeal Court of 4 November 1987 destroys the hope of the zionists of legally dishonoring us : The Court "rejects the appeal and orders the plaintiff to pay costs".
The smothering operation continues above the legal domain. The Zionist lobby has the means. If we had been found guilty, we would have had the right to appear on the front page of every paper to be pilloried as anti semites. However, the L.I.C.R.A.'s condemnation by the courts was systematically hushed up - even 'Le Monde', whose former director, Fauvet, is involved with us in this fight, contented itself with a bland statement.
However, the blockade I had been hoping for was realized masterfully. At the time of the appearance of the page in "Le Monde" on the logic of Zionist colonialism, I added two lines asking the readers to make contributions to pay for the cost of the advertisement. This had cost five million centimes. I received seven, in hundreds of small checks. Almost a third of the donors were Jews, two of them rabbis.
But, from this point, the media asphyxiation begins: no more access to television, my articles refused. I had published forty books in all the great publishing houses, from Gallimard to Seuil, from Plon to Grasset and Laffont. They had been translated into twenty-seven languages. From now on, all the big doors are closed: One of my biggest publishers is heard to say to his adviser: "If you publish a book by Garaudy, you will no longer have the right to translate American works." To have accepted me would have brought the firm down. Another "big wheel", about another work, said to his literary director (who, impassioned by the book, worked for three months to help me to finish it): "I don't want any Garaudy in the house."
Such is the story of the walling up of a man.
Our networks of resistance to nonsense are condemned to secrecy. And myself to literary death. For the crime of hoping.
This is just one example, on which I can personally testify, of the "inversion of meaning" of zionism.
We could give many more examples but every day we all witness it: It is the very meaning of Hitler's crime against all humanity which is perverted by Zionist propaganda, which reduces this crime against humanity to a vast pogrom of which only the Jews were victim.
The crime of opinion is henceforth on the statute books thanks to the Fabius law (no. 43), (the so-called "Gayssot Law", after the communist deputy who accepted to sponsor this wicked law), in May 1990.
It consists of inserting into the law on the freedom of the press of 1881, article 24b, saying:
Source: Proposition for adoption by the National Assembly, transmitted by the President of the National Assembly to the President of the Senate, no. 278, an annex to the minutes of the sitting of 3 May 1990.
"They will be punished according to the sixth paragraph of article 24, those who contest... the existence of one or several crimes against humanity, as defined by article 6 of the statute of the International Military Tribunal annexed to the London Agreement of 8 August 1945."
Mr. Aseni's (deputy) report stipulated (p. 21): "You are asked to create a new means of incrimination regarding 'revisionism'".
Furthermore, it recommended "enhancing the possibility for associations to legally pursue in the case of infraction." (article 7)
At the moment of its introduction the reporter defined the goal: "To complete the existing repressive arsenal, to see to it that the criminal law... fully plays its role of intimidation and repression." (p.5)
Source: Report no. 1296, annex to the minutes of the sitting of 26 April 1990
The Nuremberg Trials, as we have shown, deserve less than any other to make jurisprudence.
A year later an amendment to the law was proposed by Mr. Toubon:
"Article 24b of the law of 29 July 1981 on press freedom is repealed." This canceled the repression proposed by Mr. Gayssot against "revisionist" historians", and refused to put historical criticism in the same camp as racism or Hitler's apologists.
His argument went as follows:
"When we discussed it in 1990, on the basis of a bill proposed by the communist group, of which the first signatory was Mr. Gayssot, I had challenged - and I wasn't the only one - the principle of this text, which consists of fixing historical truth by means of the law instead of letting history reveal it.Source: "Journal Officiel", of 22 June 1991, p. 3571, Parliamentary Debates, 2nd sitting of 21 June 1991
Certain people object that if it is history which reveals the truth, it is not up to the law to impose it. Certain proposals go to far and they must not be allowed to be expressed. This would be to slip imperceptibly towards making politics a crime and opinion a crime
Article 24b represents in my opinion, a very grave political and legal error. In reality, it constitutes a "law of circumstance", and this saddens me greatly. A year has passed. We are not a month away from the events of Carpentras. There is no need to examine a text which the 'Presidents' Conference' had, I remember, hastily registered on the day's agenda, 48 hours after its deposition, and which had been discussed immediately because the President of the Assembly, Mr. Fabius, had decided to subscribe himself. One year later, we can, as I have just done, calmly examine the validity of this law, the validity of this offence of 'revisionism' presented by Article 24b and conclude, with Simone Veil, that this offence is ill-timed."
In effect, it was forbidden, from then on, for any historian to question the conclusions of the Nuremberg Trials which the American President had, nevertheless, sincerely recognized to be "the last act of the war" and as such"wasn't bound to the legal rules of ordinary courts on matters of proof or conviction."
* First, by talking of Vichy as a 'French State', thereby giving it legitimacy;
* Next, by degrading the French people by confusing them with the servile leaders who served the occupier. And so in this way was rendered official the conception of zionism defended by Bernard-Henri Levy in his book,"L'Idéologie Francaise", where he writes: "It's the whole of French culture... it is our most cherished French traditions which, one by one, testify to our long history of abjection."
Source: Bernard-Henri Levy, "L'Idéologie Francaise", where he writes: "The icing on the cake was that the ceremony was presided over by the Chief Rabbi of France, Sitruk, who, on 8 July 1990, declared to Yitzhak Shamir in Israel (the very man who offered his services to Hitler and whose policy, that of the State of Israel which he presided over, hasn't stopped violating international law and takes no notice of decisions of the U.N.O.): "Every French Jew is a representative of Israel... Rest assured that every Jew in France is a defender of that which you defend."
"Without, however", he said on his return, "thinking of a 'double allegiance'."
Source: "Le Monde", 9 July, 1990
Such remarks to Shamir (who offered his collaboration to Hitler) would have rightly earned him his place among the penitents rather than the presidents.
Of course, this smearing of the French people was greeted with enthusiasm by the leaders of the C.R.I.F. (Representative council of Jewish Institutions in France) who expressed their "intense satisfaction to see the continuity of the "État Francais" between 1940 and 1944 at last recognized by the highest French authority."
The shame is that the leaders of all the French parties approved this denial of Chirac's in all the public organs, from "Le Figaro" to "L'Humanité."
De Gaulle never considered Vichy to be a state. "Hitler", he said, "created Vichy" (Memoirs I, p. 389) and he talked of the "stooges of Vichy" (idem. p. 130).
"I proclaimed the illegitimacy of a regime which was at the discretion of the enemy" (I, p. 107)."A truly French government doesn't exist." (I, p. 388, Brazzaville).
Referring to the agreement of 28 March 1940 with Britain, excluding any suspension of separate arms (I, p. 74), he said clearly: "The organ located at Vichy, and which claims to carry this name (State), is unconstitutional and is subjected to the invader... This organ is only, and can only be, an instrument used by the enemies of France." (I, p. 342)
De Gaulle stuck to this attitude for the whole war. On 23 September 1941, in the order creating the "Comité National Francais" he proclaimed:
"Given our orders of 27 October and of 12 November 1940, together with our organic declaration of 16 November 1940 ;Source: "Memoires", I p. 394
Considering that the situation resulting from the state of war continues to prevent any reunion or free expression of national representation ;
Considering that the Constitution and the laws of the French Republic have been, and are still being, violated over the whole metropolitan area and in the Empire, as much by the action of the enemy as by the usurpation of the authorities which collaborate with it ;
Considering that many instances of proof establish that the massive majority of the French Nation, far from accepting a regime imposed by violence and treason, sees in the authority of "Free France" the expression of its wishes and free will..."
He thus dissociated the French People from the servility of its leaders.
"The condemnation of Vichy in the person of its leaders dissociated France from a policy which was one of national renunciation." (III, p. 301)
Evoking the uprising of the people of Paris, he wrote:
"Nobody could ignore, neither in our enemy's camp nor in our own, that four years of oppression hadn't been able to grind down the soul of the capital, that the treason was only the vile scum on the surface of a body which had remained healthy, that the streets, houses, factories, workshops, offices and building sites of Paris had seen the heroic acts of the Resistance in the gun battles, torture, imprisonment."
Source: III, p. 442
"Even in the worst moments, our people never gave up." (III, p. 494)
That is what Chirac, in a few words, denied in order to pander to the media power of the Zionist leaders and , by the same token, the vassalage vis-a-vis the U.S. stronghold of the Zionist lobby, which had already made him abandon his opposition to Maestricht, ruin of France, and confirm his submission to the American dictates of G.A.T.T. (rebaptized "World Trade Organization") destroying the possibility of independence and of a renewal of France by the radical transformation of its relationship with the Third World.
"There are coincidences which, by virtue of repeating themselves, end up becoming a major clue. At the present time we know what purpose an anti-semitic attack in Europe serves, and who benefits from the crime: It serves to mask a deliberate massacre of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians.Source: "Le Monde" Wednesday 22 September 1982. p. 2
One can remark that these attacks preceded, followed or coincided with a blood bath in Beirut. These terrorist operations are mounted in such a way and executed with such perfection that they have, until now, directly or indirectly met the political objective: To divert attention every time the Palestinian question gains a little more understanding or even sympathy. Is this not a case of systematically turning the situation upside down in order to turn the victims into torturers and terrorists? By turning the Palestinians into terrorists, they are expelled from history and, consequently, deprived of their rights.
Didn't the killing of rue des Rosiers on 9 August precede by a few hours the deluge of all sorts of bombs on Beirut ?
Wasn't the assassination of Bashir Gemayel followed, two hours later, by the entry into West Beirut of the Israeli army (which, in the same way, eclipsed Yasser Arafat's historic meeting with the Pope) ?
Didn't the explosion of the booby-trapped car in rue Cardinet and the gun battle the following day coincide with the unprecedented massacre in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Chatila ?"
There are historical precedents from which we should learn lessons: a systematic effort to shape opinion by saturating it with "information" of ethnocentric inspiration fans antisemitism.
"In Berlin the theater, journalism, etc... was a Jewish business. The "Berliner Tageblatt" was the biggest German newspaper and, after it, the "Vosiche Zeitung". The first belonged to Mese, the second to Ulstein, both of them Jews. The director of "Worwartz", the main socio-democrat paper, was a Jew. When the Germans accused the press of being Jewish - "juden press" - it was the pure truth."
Source: Y. Leibowitz: "Israel et Judaisme", Desclée de Brouwer, 1993, p.
113 (chapter on the sources of anti-semitism.)
The most recent example of these maneuvers and their media exploitation is that of Carpentras.
In May 1990 in the Jewish cemetery of Carpentras, tombs were desecrated. A corpse was impaled and transported onto another tomb.
The Minister of the Interior, Pierre Joxe, declared immediately: "There is no need for a police enquiry to know what criminals are guilty of this 'racist abomination'." And yet, five years later, despite the involvement of dozens of investigators, judicial or police, nobody can say for sure who the perpetrators of this vile deed are.
All that we know is that there was desecration in the Jewish cemetery, that there was a "stating", because the body of Mr. Germon hadn't been impaled, as the enquirers admitted a few days later. So, one might wonder by whom? Why? In whose interest was this "staging" to increase the horror of the event and to stir up the hatred of public opinion?
The method was practiced at Timisoara where corpses were taken out of the morgue so that photographs sent all over the world might provoke more indignation and hatred against so-called massive massacres.
Jean-Marie Domenach (former director of the magazine "Esprit") wrote in "Le Monde" of Wednesday 31 October 1990, under the heading "Silence on Carpentras": "It is almost six months since the desecration of the Jewish cemetery of Carpentras... Six months later we still don't know who the criminals are. There is something more disturbing: the written and audiovisual media, who had made from this abominable event a scandal which brought hundreds of thousands of protesters onto the streets and tarnished France's reputation abroad, have not sought to pursue the enquiry and have fallen silent. No parliamentarian, no moral or intellectual authority dares to question the government. Carpentras seems to be definitively part of the black legend of the nation without our knowing the guilty and without our knowing exactly what happened. Nobody yet can, or dares, speak the truth about Carpentras."
The strange "silence on Carpentras", denounced by Jean-Marie Domenach, contrasts with the racket made by the media in the early days.
At the time of the organized demonstration of 14 May 1990, 80,000 people, according to the police, (200,000 according to the organizers) had marched in the streets of Paris. The great bell of Notre Dame was rung in their honor.
In reality, nobody knew who the authors of the terrible act of Carpentras were. So whom were they protesting against ?
Against whom? Only the enquiry could have told us but it didn't.
But who gains ?
It was obvious: the flag of Israel stood out in all its splendor at the head of the demonstration.
This strange "Union Nationale" during this demonstration where Georges Marchais ostentatiously shook the hand of Francois Leotard, set the stage for the launching of a global attack against anyone who questioned the dogmas which put Israel above any international law. Chief Rabbi Sitruk, who gave a short speech defining the meaning of the demonstration, was able to shout: "Let's not allow any old thing to be said. Let's give a lesson to the "revisionist" professors and the irresponsible politicians."
Source: Le "Méridional". Monday, 14 May, 1990
However the truth about the desecration of Carpentras still hasn't been established because of all the leads suggested to the investigators, only one has been ignored, the one which is the most likely.
Why were those who could have been the most necessary witnesses ordered to be quiet ?
"The caretaker of the Carpentras synagogue and keyholder for the cemetery, Mr. Kouhana, who had been one of the first to discover the body of Felix Germon, refuses to talk to us : "Even if you were the Prefect, I got the order to say nothing. the President of the Consistory forbade him to talk "because he would have said any old thing to the T.V. people", argues Dr. Freddym Haddad, himself very reticent to talk about the desecration, as is Rabbi Amar."
Source: "Var Matin" magazine, Monday 15 April 1995, an article by reporters Michel Letereux and Michel Brault
Why did the Carpentras Rabbi, who was asked if the place would be resanctified, reply :"It is not my resort !", the President of the Consistory: "There's no reason it should be !" and the Mayor :"No one has asked me." Why didn't any French newspaper refer to a totally similar precedent - that of a "desecration" which happened in the Israeli cemetery of Rishon Letzion near Tel Aviv during the night of 2 March 1984: the body of a woman had been dug up and thrown out of the Jewish cemetery. "Barbaric anti-semitic act" proclaimed Jewish communities around the world immediately. A few days later the Israeli police, after an enquiry, revealed the true meaning of this abjection: The body which had been so shamefully treated was Mrs. Teresa Engelowicz's, the wife of a jew but of christian origin. The Jewish fundamentalists considered her presence in the Jewish cemetery contaminated the purity of the place and the rabbi of Rishon Letzion had already called for her exhumation.
Why did no French newspaper point out this parallel? Mr. Germon, whose body had also been exhumed during the night and subjected to the sinister "staging" of the impaling, was also "guilty" of having married a christian, and his body was transported onto a neighboring tomb, that of Mrs. Emma Ullma, "guilty", too, of having married a catholic. Why did nobody remind us that in Israel, in order to convince that before Israel Palestine was a "desert", hundreds of villages were razed by bulldozers - their houses, their walls, their cemeteries and their tombs.
Source: Israel Shahak, "Le racisme et l'État d'Israel", p. 152 and after.
The day after the "Day of Democracy" in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jewish students put the real question:
" Why do you not protest when you know that Agron Street in Jerusalem and the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv are constructed on destroyed muslim cemeteries ?"Source: "Students of The Israeli Socialist Organization (Matzpen)", P.O.B. 2234, Jerusalem
3 - The myth of the "Miracle of Israel": The External Financing of Israel.
"The power of the Jewish fist comes from the American steel glove which
covers it and the dollars which line it."
Source: Yeshavahou Leibowitz in "Judaism and Israel", p. 253
As far as the sums paid to the State of Israel by Germany are concerned, I'll let Nahum Goldmann (the principal negotiator on the amount of reparations) speak. He gives the details in his "autobiography" which he kindly signed for me on 23 April 1971 to thank me for the work which I had carried out, at his request, two years earlier, with Nasser after the "SIX DAY WAR".
"At the beginning of 1951 Israel entered the stage for the first time, sending two notes to the four allies in which the Jewish claim for compensation from the new Germany came to the sum of a billion and a half dollars of which one half should be paid by West Germany and the other by East Germany. This total was based on the following calculation :
Israel had taken in 500,000 Jews and the economic reintegration of a refugee cost about 3,000 dollars. Having saved these victims from the nazis, having personally assumed an enormous financial burden, Israel considered itself within its rights to make these demands in the name of the Jewish people, albeit without a legal basis, as the Jewish State didn't exist under the nazi regime." (p. 262)
It is in these circumstances that the Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs contacted me, during the summer of 1951, as President of the "Jewish Agency for Palestine" and asked me to invite to a conference the big Jewish organizations of the U.S., of the countries of the British Commonwealth and of France, in order to support the Israeli claims and to find a way to have them accepted. (p. 263)
The negotiation which we had in mind would have to be of a very special nature. They had no legal basis whatsoever. (p. 268)
With a lot of courage and magnanimity the Federal Chancellor had accepted the sum of a billion dollars as starting point for the discussion but l knew that a group hostile to such a huge bill had already formed within the government, among the leaders of the political parties and in the world of banking and industry. It was repeated to me from very different quarters that it was useless to count on a sum even close to this.
In the first phase of negotiations between the Germans and the delegation of the Claims Conference a general agreement is reached on the matter of reparations and the legislation regulating it. We put off until another phase the issue of the global claim coming to five hundred million marks.
After long conversations, this series of meeting ended with the agreement of the German delegation which undertook to recommend to the government an Israeli claim of three billion marks (25% less than what we had asked for). (p. 272)
I had to return to Bonn on 3 July where I made the following concession: 10% of the five hundred million would be destined for the non-jewish victims of the nazis and distributed by the German government itself. (p. 282)
The agreement was signed on 10 September 1952 in Luxembourg: The Chancellor represented Germany, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Israel, and myself, the 'Claims Conference'. (p. 283)
The German payments have been a decisive factor in Israel's economic boom over the last few years. I don't know what the fate of Israel would have been at certain critical moments in its economic development if Germany hadn't respected its undertaking. The railroads, the telephones, the infrastructure of the ports, the irrigation systems, whole sectors of industry and agriculture wouldn't be in their current state without the German reparations. Finally, hundreds of thousands of Jewish victims of the nazis have received, over the last few years, significant amounts under the indemnity law. (p. 286)
When, on the morning of my arrival, I went to the house of the Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, he came to me solemnly: 'You and I have had the pleasure of experiencing two miracles: The creation of the State of Israel and the signing of the agreement with Germany. I was responsible for the first and you for the second'. (p. 284)
Source: Nahum Goldmann, "Autobiographie", Pub. Fayard, Paris 1969
In another one of his books, "The Jewish Paradox", Nahum Goldmann talks not only about his negotiations with Germany but also how he got reparations from Austria and from Chancellor Raab. He said to the Chancellor: "You must pay reparations to the Jews !"
"But we were victims of the Germans !" said Raab.
And Goldmann replied: "In that case, I'll hire out the biggest cinema in Vienna and every day I'll show the film of the German troops and Hitler entering Vienna in March 1938."
Raab then said: "All right, you'll get your money !"
It was in the order of 30 million dollars. After a while Goldmann came back: "We need another 30 million !"
"But," said Raab, "we agreed on just 30 million."
"Now, you have to give more !", said Goldmann and he got it. He came back
a third time and got the same amount. (31.8507)
There were two other sources of financing of what some people call "the Israeli miracle" in the economic field and also of the enormous arsenal (including nuclear) of the State of Israel, which renders laughable the image so often used of a little David with his catapult facing the giant Goliath. In modern warfare strength is not measured in the number of soldiers mobilized but in the technical equipment of the army. Israel's, thanks to the flow of capital into the country, has an attack capability infinitely superior to that of all the Arab states together.
Apart from the "reparations", Israel benefits from an almost unlimited supply of arms and money coming, principally, from the U.S., where its all powerful lobby has shown itself to be particularly efficient, and also from the "diaspora".
Mr. Pinhas Sapir, at the time Minister for Finance, revealed in 1967 in Jerusalem at the "Conference of Jewish Billionaires" (sic) that from 1949 to 1966 the State of Israel received 7 billion dollars.
Source: "The Israeli Economist", September 1967, vol. 9
Doctor Yaakov Herzog, Director-General of the Israeli Prime Minister's cabinet, defined as follows the goal of these meetings: "To examine how to attract greater investment to Israel and to closely associate Jewish holders of capital resident abroad with the Israeli economy in such a way that they have an immediate feeling of responsibility and participation... We are now planning something else: a sort of dialogue on a grand scale on the identification of the Diaspora with Israel, in the framework of the struggle against assimilation abroad."
The operation proved to be lucrative as American Jewish organizations sent, on average, a billion dollars each year to Israel. (These contributions, regarded as "charitable", are deductible from the income tax returns of the donor, in other words, they cost American taxpayers even if they go to support the Israeli "war effort".)
But the greatest share comes directly from the American State, whose "aid" amounts to more than three billion dollars each year. Almost half of this "official" aid consists of gifts and "loans" which are quickly "forgotten"... The rest is added onto the Israeli foreign debt, which is growing rapidly and is now approaching twenty billion dollars - that's to say, an unprecedented average of five thousand dollars per head of population.
The main part of this annual aid is made up of arms deliveries for which Congress, anxious to limit their dramatic nature and to avoid public criticism, organized a special means of finance through its Arms Export Control Act of 1976.
To measure the significance of these figures of external financial aid, we need only remember that the aid of the Marshall Plan, given out from 1948 to 1954 to western Europe, reached thirteen billion dollars. In other words, the State of Israel received for fewer than two million inhabitants, more than half of what two hundred million Europeans received. That means one hundred times more, per head of population, than the Europeans.
Second element for comparison: The average annual aid received by the "underdeveloped countries" for the period 1951 - 1959 didn't exceed 3.164 billion dollars while Israel with, at the time, 1.7 million inhabitants, received 400 million, in other words, with less than a thousandth of the population of the "underdeveloped" countries of the world, Israel received a tenth of the total. Two million Israelis received, per head of population, one hundred times more than two billion inhabitants of the third world.
If we take only the American contribution into account, we see that between 1945 and 1967, the United States gave 435 dollars to each Israeli and 36 dollars to each Arab, in other words that 2.5% of the population gets 30% of the aid attributed to the remaining 97.5%.
Source: Drawn from UN statistics published in "Le courant international des capitaux a long terme et les donations publiques" (1951-1959). Quoted by Georges Corm in "Les finances d'Israel" (IPS, 1968)
But the financing methods of the State of Israel are even more ambitious still: they tend to create, in favor of that State, a world financial network whose investments they orientate (On the occasion, in 1967, of the first "Conference of Jewish billionaires").
A recent doctor's thesis, presented at Paris II University by Jacques Bendelac, published under the title of "Les fonds extérieurs d'Israël" [examines different aspects of Israeli finances with precise information from impeccable sources].
Source: Jacques Bendélac: "Les fonds extérieurs d'Israël", Ed. "Economica". Paris, 1982
The author chiefly studies the relations between the contributions of the Diaspora and the direct aid of the American government.
This is how he defines these relations: "If the Diaspora was, until recently (the 70s), the main supplier of Israeli capital, the present tendency indicates that American government aid (about 2 billion dollars per year) largely outstrips the financial contributions of the Diaspora (about 900 million dollars per year)."
Thus, for the tax year of 1980, the sale of one billion dollars in armament was authorized to Israel. But, immediately after these deliveries, half the sum five hundred million in the form of loans - was wiped out...and the remainder simply added to Israel's debt towards the American government...A debt with a delay for reimbursement of over ten years. Furthermore, taking into account the constant worsening of Israel's economic situation since 1973, these reimbursements are fictitious insofar as the payments are immediately compensated by an increase in U.S. Yearly aid.
Source: T. Stauffer. Christian Science Monitor, December 20th 1981
Already, at the time of the 1956 Israeli aggression against Egypt, the American aid in weapons was huge; the Zionist, Michel Bar Zohar, wrote: "From the month of June on, enormous quantities of weapons began to flow into Israel as a result of a top-secret agreement, and these deliveries would not be known about either in Washington or at the Anglo-Franco American organization in charge of watching over the balance of power in the Middle East, or by the Quai d'Orsay, jealously opposed to a rapprochement with Israel, regarded as too risky, which would compromise France's remaining links with its Arab clientele".
Source: Michel Bar Zohar: "Ben Gourion, le Prophète armé", Ed. Fayard, Paris, 1966, chapter 27.
A second financial source comes from the Israeli State Bonds, in dollars, that are sold abroad but are refunded in Israeli currency, as are the interests.
These bonds (of which 99.8% were sold in the United States in 1951, and still 80% in 1978) have placed more than 5 billion dollars at the disposition of the Israeli economy.
Source: State of Israel Bonds, Jerusalem-New York, American.Jewish yearbook 1972, p. 273 ; 1978, p. 205 ; 1980, p. 153
Between "gifts" and "bonds", the Zionist State received almost eleven and a half billion dollars between 1948 and 1982.
Source: Statistical abstract of Israel (annual) and Bank of Israel, Annual Reports
Such efficiency implies what Mr. Bendelac calls the"collusion between power and the world of finance" in the Zionist movement. He gives a striking illustration for 1982:
"Guy de Rothschild is president of the Unified Social Fund and the AUJF ;Source: Bendelac, op.cit. p.76.
David is treasurer of the FSJU and French member of the Administrative Council of the Jewish Agency;
Alain has been president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France and of the Israeli Central Consistory;
Elie is president of the executive Committee of the AUIF ;
Edmond is president of the European Organization of Israel Bonds ;
Finally, Alix de Rothschild was world president of the "Youth "Aliya"."
But dependence on the American government has been even greater, especially since the 70s.
"At the time of the Six-Day War,the external deficit reached 700 million dollars, and exceeded one billion dollars at the beginning of the 70s. The financial contribution of world Judaism no longer sufficed to fulfill the needs in capital of the lsraeli economy ; it therefore became necessary to appeal to the American government for aid, which started off by supplying military credits, before extending its aid to the economic sector, after the Yom Kippur war. This contribution of capital by the American government led to a spectacular increase in Israel's foreign debt, which rose above 20 million dollars in 1982. Thus, the deterioration in the financial aid of the Diaspora since the early 70s can be analyzed in two ways regarding the economic dependence of Israel: American government aid and the weight of the foreign debt."
Source: Bendelac. Op.cit. p.79.
Since 1948, American government aid to Israel has reached almost 18 billion dollars, equally divided between loans and gifts, two thirds of which were destined for military purposes.
Source: until 1977: "Trésor, Division des échanges extérieurs" from 1978 to 1981, US Embassy (Tel Aviv)
The acceleration of this aid is breathtaking: usually inferior to 100 million dollars in 1975, and 2 billion dollars in 1981. In January 1985, the State of Israel, demanded a further 12 billion dollars over eight years.
As for the external debt, it rose from 6 billion dollars in 1973, 10 billion dollars in 1976, to 17 billions dollars by January 1st 1981, in other words a record figure of 4,350 dollars per inhabitant!
Aid increases with sub contracting deals, especially in the field of aviation (for example,Israel Aircraft Industries receives manufacturing contracts for elements for F4s and F15s).
Finally, economic aid includes facilities granted to Israeli exports to the USA, with preferential tariffs of developing countries, so that 96% of these exports (1 billion dollars) enters the USA tax-free.
In a word, only one figure is enough to define the nature of the Zionist State of Israel: the total official US aid which it receives corresponds alone to over 1,000 dollars per head, in other words as a bonus added to its national revenue, more than three times the net national income per inhabitant of Egypt or most African countries.
Professor Yeshayahou Leibowitz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who wrote a major work on "the faith of Maimonides". (translated into French in 1992, in Paris, Editions du Cerf), and who edited the "Hebrew Encyclopedia" for twenty years, summed up the attitude of a Jew living in Palestine since 1934, whose religious Zionist faith has been outraged by political Zionism, in "Israel and Judaism", published in Hebrew at Jerusalem in 1987:
"Our system is rotten at the core" (page 245). And this for two reasons:
1-"The misfortune comes from the fact that everything is articulated around the problem of the nation and the state." (page 182) "If the state and the nation are held to be an end in themselves, then "Judaism" is rejected since the State of Israel is the most important." (p.182) " Nationalism is the essence of the destruction of mankind." (p.182) "The State of Israel is not a state which possesses an army, but an army which possesses a state." (p.31)
2 - The dependence of this state on the United States :"here, total collapse could occur overnight: consequence of the total stupidity which makes our whole existence depend on American economic aid." (p.225) "The Americans are interested only by the idea of maintaining an army of American mercenaries here under the uniform of Tsahal." (p.226)" The strength of the Jewish fist comes from the iron glove of America which covers it,and from the dollars which cushion it." (p.253)
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