Exchange: Tony Greenstein – More Errors Than Paragraphs, Cont. Previous: Tony Greenstein -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Greenstein’s arguments on this page are so preposterous, so utterly illogical and breathtakingly absurd, that one starts to question whether his real inspiration is Trotsky or Orwell. Consider the most egregious example. According to Greenstein, if Zionists fought the Nazis “they did not do so as Zionists.” But if “Zionists did want an army” to fight the Nazis, it was “part of an imperialist war that did not have the objective of rescuing Jews.” In his opinion, the Soviet army deserves great credit because it “tore the guts out of the Wehrmacht” and saved the Jewish people. No mention that the Soviet army’s alliance with the Wehrmacht enabled the Nazis to annihilate the Jewish people in the first place. Of course Greenstein doesn’t explain how the Soviet Union’s alliance with Nazi Germany was part of an anti-imperialist war with the objective of rescuing Jews. According to Greenstein, Jews should be thankful for the “million plus who managed to escape into Russia from Poland and the Ukraine.” So what if the “escape” was a mass deportation carried out by the NKVD in collaboration with the Gestapo, in which “old people, cripples, mothers of children were sent with their children” to “die of hunger, cold and disease”? Source: Yosef Litvak, “The Plight of Refugees From the German-Occupied Territories,” in Keith Sword, ed., The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces, 1939-41 (St. Martin’s Press, 1991), pp. 67-9. Greenstein deplores the Zionist struggle for a Jewish army to fight Nazism while celebrating the mass deportation of Jews to the Gulag as a result of the Soviet alliance with Nazism. But that’s only logical for a Trotskyist who feels free to ignore the Zionist demand to bomb the Nazi death camps because it didn’t involve a class war against the Jewish bourgeoisie. Let’s take another example. According to Greenstein, “It cannot be proved beyond doubt that Kastner dressed up in SS uniform,” but since he went with Becher to arrange the surrender of Belsen, saving a great many Jewish lives, “it stands to reason that he wore a uniform.” By Greenstein’s standards of evidence, since Red Cross workers visited concentration camps with Nazi permission, “it stands to reason” that they too wore SS uniforms. Or since Greenstein’s anti-Zionist agitprop regularly appears in the newspaper of the Communist Party of Great Britain, “it stands to reason” that he likes to dress up as a Cheka torturer or a Gulag camp guard. I could go on. According to Greenstein, Vrba doesn’t call Weissmandel a collaborator. If he described Weissmandel’s escape as “evidence of the collaboration,” that only “comes close to accusing Weissmandel of collaboration.” According to Greenstein, Dobkin is not a reliable source on Kastner because he was a Zionist. But Eichmann is a totally reliable source on Kastner because he was a Nazi. According to Greenstein, Kastner the Zionist is contemptible because he testified for Becher in order to hang Kaltenbrunner. But Kempner the American is admirable when it was his decision to release Becher who testified against Kaltenbrunner. And on. According to Greenstein, my post, which contained no Zionist quotes, didn’t deserve an answer because it contained Zionist quotes. But his arguments are conclusive because he cites Hecht with his far-right Zionist quotes. According to Greenstein, Gutman the Warsaw Ghetto survivor is part of a propaganda outfit that declined to publish Hilberg. But Arendt the philosopher is a great historian although she tried to prevent publication of Hilberg. According to Greenstein, Yad Vashem should be ignored because of a visit from Vorster who liked the Nazis. But Arendt should be read despite her relationship with Heidegger who was in fact a Nazi. According to Greenstein, Hausner’s “Why did you not resist?” was an “unfair question put by a nationalist to those whose circumstances he could not even conceive of.” But Vrba’s “Why did you not warn them so that they would resist?” is a perfectly fair question when put by a non-nationalist to people in exactly the same circumstances. And don’t forget that “Zionism was a movement of collaboration and therefore saw in the Judenrat their own kind.” After all, it was “unfair” for Zionists to advocate resistance, but it was “collaboration” if Zionists attempted compliance. According to Greenstein, the “parlying [sic] and bribing that was a rabbinical tradition” was nothing to admire. Of course, he wants to destroy its antithesis, the “Judeo-Nazi settlers” of Israel. And according to Greenstein, it is Zionist Jews, not those who blame them for the Holocaust, who are guilty of antisemitism. As for Greenstein’s gratuitous attack on a member of my family, what is there to say? What else can you expect from someone who worships the murderer of the Tsar’s children? Posted by: Paul Bogdanor at January 26, 2007 12:08 PM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Next: “Mikey”