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Thursday, March 11, 2004  David
Irving comments: MAX Hastings has occasionally been
scoffed at by punier writers for his war
reporting from the Falklands, but nobody
can gainsay the quality and courage of his
writing.
He made fine (and lucrative) use of the
immense files I turned over to him for his
book on the D-day landings, and in his
book on Bomber Command he was the first to
reveal an official
document which briefed the seven
thousand British airmen attacking Dresden
on Feb 13, 1945, that the true explanation
was that the city was "far the largest
unbombed built-up area the enemy has got."
One of "the intentions of the attack", the
document added, was "incidentally to show
the Russians when they arrive what Bomber
Command can do."
With equal courage he now joins those who
do not hesitate to expose the manner in
which certain Jews -- in this case our old
foes, the Board
of Deputies of British Jews --
generate anti-Semitism, perhaps wilfully,
by their clandestine attempts to control
the news media and smear those who
continue to print the truth.
Although Max was in earlier years an
occasional guest at my own social
functions in Duke Street, I hasten to add
that the dinner party from which he claims
to have prematurely fled was not one of
these.  MAX mentions the anti-Semitism of
authors like John Buchan (later
Governor-General of Canada). I ventured
during the Lipstadt trial, on
Day 18, when trying to establish a
scale of "acceptable" anti-Semitism, to
put to the witness Richard "Skunky"
Evans a particularly anti-Semitic
passage from Buchan's pre-war novel The
Thirty Nine Steps -- published by none
other than Penguin Books Ltd, Lipstadt's
mega-wealthy co-defendants in the action,
who were accusing me of anti-Semitism;
they were on that day still peddling that
book unchanged in Oxford Street
bookstores.
Mr Justice Gray swiftly
intervened to rule the question out of
order. Ah. I see. I think I do, anyway.
 |
A
grotesque choice Israel's
repression of the Palestinian people is fuelling a
resurgence of anti-semitism by Max
Hastings IT is impossible to doubt that
genuine anti-semitism -- racial antipathy towards
Jews -- is resurgent in Europe and even, in some
circles, becoming respectable. A few years ago, my
wife and I found ourselves at a dinner party that
included several Austrian guests. Mischievously, I
asked a female member of the Vienna government
sitting opposite me how her country was coping with
the Nazi embarrassments of its president, Kurt
Waldheim. She stiffened. "President Waldheim is a fine and
good man, who has been grossly traduced by a
conspiracy of Jews," she said severely. Her husband
interjected: "My father always told me that most of
the things the Jews say about the war are lies."
Our English host added supportively: "Jews cause
most of the trouble in the world, what?" At this point, the Hastingses departed without
explanation. In the car, still shaking with rage,
my wife said: "They weren't just pretending to be
anti-semitic, were they? They were the real thing."
It is rare to encounter such unashamed malevolence
at a modern English dinner table, and thus all the
more shocking when it happens. Before the second world war, such sentiments
were commonplace, not least in the "Clubland Hero"
thrillers of Buchan, Sapper and Dornford
Yates. "Bolshevik Jews" were responsible for
many of the villainous conspiracies frustrated by
Richard Hannay, Bulldog Drummond and Jonah Mansell,
before they gave the culprits a good flogging. It has often been observed that Hitler
did the British ruling classes a favour by making
anti-semitism no longer respectable. Yet as late as
September 1944, a Foreign Office official named
Arminius Dew minuted: "In my opinion, a
disproportionate amount of the time of the Office
is wasted on dealing with these wailing Jews." Only
in April 1945, when the concentration camps were
revealed to the world, did the historic sea change
in sentiment take place.
I WOULD suggest that the first stirrings of renewed
animosity towards Jews in Europe emerged in the
70s. When I made this point to an Israeli
acquaintance, he observed sourly: "Yeah, when the
world stopped seeing us losers on trains to the
death camps." For it is, of course, the issue of
Israel that has provoked some change of
sentiment. Many of the remarks that Jewish critics denounce
as anti-semitic are, in reality, criticisms of
Israel or its government. Five years ago, when I
was editing the Evening Standard, the
Board of Deputies
of British Jews asked to send a delegation to
my office to protest at our coverage of the Middle
East. I refused, saying that I would meet at any
time to discuss matters pertaining to British Jews,
but that Israeli affairs were the province of the
Israeli ambassador. A month or so later, I was lunching with Vere
Rothermere, then chairman of the family
newspaper company. "I had a visit on your account
yesterday," he said with a quixotic grin. "From the
Board of Deputies. They said you wouldn't see them.
They say you are anti-semitic. They warned me that
the Israeli Likud wants to organise a boycott of
the Evening Standard." I asked how he had responded. "I told them that
such a boycott would be a very good story for the
Standard," said Lord Rothermere, which helps to
explain why, as an editor, I held his family in
such respect as proprietors.
IN general, across the British media, managerial
attitudes are less robust. Several proprietors are
fervent Zionists, while rather more take the
cynical view that the Middle East is an intractable
issue of no more interest to their readers than
Northern Ireland. Palestinians present an
unsympathetic face to the western world. Given the
ferocity with which some Jewish readers respond to
criticism of Israel, many executives perceive
sceptical coverage of Israel's excesses as more
trouble than it is worth. In this country, only the Guardian and
Independent deal thoroughly with what is
taking place, and display real sympathy for the
plight of the Palestinians. Elsewhere a lot of
space is given to apologias for Israeli conduct,
some of which reveal a contempt for Palestinian
human rights that invites the most baleful of
historical comparisons. It is a tribute to Israeli propaganda success
that many commentators seem happy to regard as just
a possible peace deal that would leave Israel in
control of settlements and strategic roads in a
Palestinian state. It is a measure of how far
matters have gone that when Ariel Sharon
announced the closure of some settlements in Gaza,
it was hailed as a historic breakthrough. In the eyes of some of us, even the Oslo accords
promised no realistic prospect of a viable
Palestinian society. They represented the outer
limit of what Israeli liberals believed they could
sell to their own nation, but they offered the
Palestinians no chance of economic, social or
political lift-off because the terms denied any
hope of self-respect. I reply to every
reader's letter accusing me of anti-semitism
because the issue seems so important. They make
the cardinal error of identifying the Jewish
people with the Israeli government, wilfully
confusing anti-semitism and anti-Zionism. Often,
they seem to demand that the behaviour of Israel
should be judged by a special standard, that
allows the likes of Sharon and Netanyahu a
special quota of excesses, in compensation for
past sufferings. For many years, Israelis in debating
difficulties have played a decisive trump: "You
have no right to criticise our actions, because of
the Holocaust." Ruthless exploitation of the
Holocaust card has been successful in deflecting
much international criticism, especially from
European democracies. Charges of anti-semitism are not infrequently
levelled against the growing number of Jews who
express dismay about the behaviour of the Israeli
government; they are "self-hating Jews", who betray
their own kin. Yet surely it is those who make such
cruel allegations who bring shame upon
themselves. Jewish genius through the centuries has been
reflected in the highest intellectual standards.
Attempts to equate anti-Zionism, or even criticism
of Israeli policy, with anti-semitism reflect a
pitiful intellectual sloth, an abandonment of
reasoned attempts to justify Israeli actions in
favour of moral blackmail. In the short run, such
intimidation is not unsuccessful, especially in
America. Yet in the long term, grave consequences
may ensue. In much of the world, including Europe,
a huge head of steam is building against Israeli
behaviour. More than a few governments are cooperating less
than wholeheartedly with America's war on terror
because they are unwilling to be associated with
what they see as an unholy alliance of the Sharon
and Bush governments. One of Germany's most
distinguished postwar leaders expressed to me a few
months ago his frustration that, as a German, he is
unable to vent his feelings about the wickedness of
what is being done in Israel's name. I feel a commitment to the Jewish people,
founded on awareness partly of their history,
partly of their genius. Yet I see no reason why
this should prevent me from asserting that the
policies of Sharon and Netanyahu bring shame upon
Israel. It is ironic that Israel's domestic critics --
former intelligence chiefs and serving fighter
pilots -- have shown themselves much braver than
overseas Jews. If Israel persists with its current
policies, and Jewish lobbies around the world
continue to express solidarity with repression of
the Palestinians, then genuine anti-semitism is
bound to increase. Herein lies the lobbyists'
recklessness. By insisting that those who denounce
the Israeli state's behaviour are enemies of the
Jewish people, they seek to impose a grotesque
choice. The Israeli government's behaviour to the
Palestinians breeds a despair that finds its only
outlet in terrorism. No one can ever criticise the
Jewish diaspora for asserting Israel's right to
exist. But the most important service the world's
Jews can render to Israel today is to persuade its
people that the only plausible result of their
government's behaviour is a terrible loneliness in
the world. Max Hastings is a former
editor of the Daily Telegraph and the London
Evening Standard [email protected] 
Guardian
review of Max Hasting's memoirs,
Editor
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