Nazis and Arab Nationalists Can Speak the Truth – Jeffrey Herf Can Distort Reality

By Paul Grubach-

Preface: Professor Jeffrey Herf is a widely acclaimed Holocaust historian and academic authority on National Socialist Germany and its relationship with the Arab/Muslim world.  Unfortunately, his books suffer from the same fallacies and spurious arguments that plague much of the pro-Zionist literature that is put out by mainstream, establishment sources on this issue.  With that being said, we would like to share with our readers a letter that Inconvenient History researcher Paul Grubach sent to Mr. Herf.

October 28, 2012

Re: Nazis and Arab Nationalists Can Speak the Truth: Jeffrey Herf Can Distort Reality.

Mr. Herf;

As always, I have a legitimate reason to contact you.  I am writing an analysis of your widely acclaimed book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, for the online Revisionist journal, Inconvenient History (www.inconvenienthistory.com).  In the interests of fairness and truth, you are being given an opportunity to view my arguments and evidence prior to publication, even though I do not expect you to respond.  With that being said, consider the following important issues.

Your books are sometimes plagued with a fallacy that philosophers label as the “emotional language fallacy.”  To be specific: some claims and statements that are viewed as dangerous and threatening to Jewish-Zionist interests are simply labeled with emotionally charged phrases, such as: “anti-Semitic abuse,” “Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda,” “absurd hatreds,” or “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.”  In this context, what you wrote in the “Preface” of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World is very revealing: “In postwar Europe, on the whole, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and equally absurd hatreds rooted in ancient religious texts became a disgraced and dead relic buried in the ruins of the Third Reich.  But in the postwar Middle East, these notions persisted in elements of radical [Arab] nationalist and Islamist politics.”

You must be fully aware that since Nazis and “radical” Arab nationalists have been so demonized by the American mainstream media, many people will immediately dismiss whatever they say as false, regardless of the fact that the claims they make may be true.  Your emotion-laden epithets–“Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda,” “anti-Semitic abuse,” “anti-Semitic conspiracy theories”–conjure up all of the negative thoughts that are linked with these terms and induce the listener to reject as “false” any claim that is classified under these terms.  In short, instead of offering good reasons or evidence to disprove the claims of the Nazis and “radical” Arab nationalists, this tactic places an emotive label (a code word which elicits automatic, negative responses) on the claims, thereby magically, through an illogical sleight of hand, disposing of them.  Let me offer some specific examples.

On page 26 of your book, you refer to a Nazi and Arab nationalist “propaganda” claim of the 1930s.  To wit: Nazis and their Arab nationalist allies believed there was a “British-Jewish conspiracy to take over Palestine from its inhabitants [verbatim quote].”  After reading your subsequent discussion, the reader is left with the impression that this was just another blatantly false and wildly inaccurate, anti-Semitic propaganda lie that was propagated by Nazis and Arab nationalists.  Quite the contrary, Mr. Herf.  Winston Churchill and Chaim Weizmann made it perfectly clear in 1919 and 1921 that there was indeed a British plan/conspiracy for Jewish-Zionists to take control of the land and government of Palestine.

I direct your attention to Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship, the enlightening work by the Jewish historian and Churchill biographer, Martin Gilbert. As Gilbert points out (p.35), when Winston Churchill was Secretary of State for War in October 1919, he wrote a very revealing memorandum, which touched upon his beliefs about how Palestine would be ultimately conquered by Jewish Zionists.  Churchill stated: “Lastly, there are the Jews, whom we [the British government] are pledged to introduce into Palestine and who [the Jews] take it for granted that the local population [the Palestinian Arabs] will be cleared out to suit their [the Jews] convenience.”

On pages 69-71, Gilbert discusses a 22 June 1921, conversation about the fate of Palestine between Canadian Prime Minister Arthur Meighen and Winston Churchill, which was recorded in the Imperial Cabinet Minutes of the Lloyd George Papers.  Prime Minister Meighen questioned Churchill about the meaning of the term, “a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine.”  He wanted to know if this actually meant giving the Jewish Zionists control of the government of Palestine.  Churchill responded by saying (verbatim quote): “If, in the course of many, many years, they [the Jews] become a majority in the country, they [the Jews] naturally would take it [Palestine] over.”  One month later, 22 July 1921, Churchill met with Jewish-Zionist diplomat Chaim Weizmann.  Gilbert points out that Weizmann explained that the Balfour Declaration “meant an ultimate Jewish majority [in Palestine].”  That is to say, the Balfour Declaration “justified” a continuous influx of Jewish immigrants into Palestine that would ultimately result in a Jewish majority in the land, and the native Palestinian Arabs would become a minority.

Do you now see, Mr. Herf, that there was a British and Jewish-Zionist plan/conspiracy to take over Palestine from its Palestinian Arab inhabitants?  Weizmann wanted the Jews to become a majority in Palestine by way of Jewish immigration, and Churchill said that when the Jews become a majority they will take control of the government.

So you see, Mr. Herf, the claim of a “British-Jewish conspiracy to take over Palestine from its inhabitants” was not a Nazi and Arab nationalist “propaganda lie” as you clearly insinuate.  On this issue at least the Nazis and Arab nationalists were telling the truth, and Jeffrey Herf distorted reality.  There was a powerful element in the British government and the international Zionist movement who were both planning for Jewish-Zionists to take control of Palestine.  Let us move onto another example to illustrate my points.

Again in your book, Nazi propaganda For The Arab World (p.175), you speak of a 26 June 1943, German “propaganda” broadcast to Arab people.  The National Socialist broadcasters stated that “the Jews want the whole of Palestine exclusively for the sons of Israel without a single Arab remaining in the country.”  Your readers are left with the impression that this is simply “false Nazi propaganda” that should be immediately dismissed.  In your own words, it is part of a “flood of anti-Semitic abuse.”  What you failed to note is that there is good reason to believe that the “Nazi propaganda claim” is indeed true!  Herewith.

Consider the following observation made by United States presidential adviser and political scholar George W. Ball in The Passionate Attachment, regarding Zionist plans for the deportation of Arabs from Palestine.  He wrote: “The Jewish plan for an exclusively Jewish nation, free of the inconvenient presence of native peoples, was scarcely new.  Theodor Herzl had laid out the framework for such a system in 1898, when he sought a charter from the Ottoman Sultan, Abdul Hamid II, for the Jewish Colonial Society, a precursor of the Jewish Colonial Trust established in 1899. One of the provisions of the abortive charter gave the Society the power to deport the natives, and Herzl sought such powers whether the new Jewish homeland was to be in Argentina, Kenya, Cyprus, or Palestine.  The Jewish Land Trust incorporated the doctrine in its rules, which designated all its properties exclusively for Jewish use and even prohibited the employment by the Jewish tenants of non-Jews, thereby forcing such persons to seek employment abroad.”  So Mr. Herf, long before the Second World War even began, there were influential Jewish Zionists who wanted to remove Arabs from Palestine and create a “racially pure” Jewish state.

With that being said, let us move onto the year of 1940.  I direct your attention to findings of Dr. Uri Davis, the renowned Israeli-Jewish scholar and author of Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within.  He points out that one of the main goals of the Zionist movement was to drive the indigenous Arabs out of Palestine and transform it into an exclusively Jewish state (pp. 19-20, 160).  He quotes one of the chief architects of Zionist settlement, Joseph Weitz (1890-1973), deputy chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) from 1951 to 1973.  According to Davis, Weitz made the following statement in 1940, three years prior to German radio broadcast mentioned previously: “Among ourselves [Jews] it must be clear that there is no place in the country for both peoples [Jews and Arabs] together…With the Arabs we shall not achieve our aim of being independent people in this country.  The only solution is Eretz Israel  [Palestine], at least the west part of Eretz Israel, without Arabs…and there is no other way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, transfer all of them, not one village or tribe should remain, and the transfer must aim at Iraq, Syria, and even Transjordan.  For this purpose money will be found, much money; and only with this transfer could the country absorb millions of our brothers [Jews].  Their is no other alternative.”

So there you have it, Mr. Herf.  The claim–“”the Jews want the whole of Palestine exclusively for the sons of Israel without a single Arab remaining in the country.”–was not a “Nazi propaganda lie.”  There were Jewish Zionists in powerful places who were thinking along these lines since the time of Theodor Herzl.  And it your duty to tell your readers this truth.

In closing, I hope that this missive induces you to become more objective in regard to your subject matter.

Paul Grubach