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My
previous article, “Achilles’
Heel: the muftí, the Nazis and the ‘Palestinian Authority,” has
been answered by José Hamra Sasson with an article titled “On Heels and Conspiracy Theories.”[1] In this piece, and the next one, I
reply. Hamra
deals with two main issues. The first locks horns with me on the question of
how, on the best evidence, we should represent the historical relations of
German Nazis and Palestinian leaders—and, by derivation, the ideology of PLO/Fatah (i.e. the ‘Palestinian Authority’).
The other issue is that Hamra disputes my version of November
8, when at the Jewish community event of Día Limud, I gave a conference on
the Palestinian Authority’s roots in the Nazi Final Solution. In attendance,
Hamra provoked—according to my
version—a disturbance; in his version, he is the aggrieved party. Seems
awkward: Aren’t we mixing up a trivial subject—mere gossip—with an historical
question? Not at all. As I now explain, both subjects, because of the
political structure that binds them, are weighty. Nothing here is trivial.
But there is altogether too much to contest in Hamra’s confetti of claims
about what happened on Día Limud; I will focus here, therefore, on what is
really of moment: the importance of having a public debate. I
will begin by conceding a point: it is true, as Hamra says, that I left out
some details in my retelling of November 8th. Those omissions are now
pertinent to evaluate his depiction, according to which, after asking
innocently for a bibliographic source, he found himself attacked for no
reason. What I
left out is that, in the days before my conference, Hamra phoned the
organizers and donors of Día Limud, denounced the scandal that I should have
been invited (for a second time...) to present, and recommended that I be
canceled. When that didn’t work, Hamra decided to attend the conference on
Nazi German and Arab Palestinian relations that he couldn’t close to others. By
coincidence, Hamra sat next to a generous donor of Limud who is also a
student, patron, and sponsor of my classes on the history of the Jewish
people, a kind and courteous man of impeccable manners. I never saw my friend
so agitated with offense as when forced—against his very nature—to silence
Hamra so that I could continue. In my version, the entire audience (the
speaker too) reacted this way; in Hamra’s, not so many. But this controversy
concedes the point: but for the intervention of these others, be they many or
few, I could not have resumed. Now,
but why this drive to censor? We may propose a charitable interpretation:
Hamra behaves this way because he thinks I am dangerous—after all, he does
compare me with Hitler, and my efforts to inform the public with the
dissemination of the Protocols of the
Elders of Sion. The
latter comparison is intriguing. The Protocols—a Tsarist imperial fraud concocted at
the turn of the 20th century—transformed the world. It accuses ‘the Jews’ of
being, in secret, a great conspiracy running everything: the financial system, the media, the workers’
movements, industry, and the Western governments. The Jews, it says, will use
this great clandestine power to destroy ‘Christian civilization.’ Upon
becoming the spinal column of antisemitic propaganda worldwide, and
especially Nazi propaganda, The
Protocols caused such anti-Jewish hysteria as to make possible the Third
Reich, World War II, and the Holocaust.[2] The
great mass killings of the Holocaust were relatively easy, for (to a close
approximation) no government supposedly in the thrall of Jewish power agreed
to receive the Jews as refugees, and then (to a close approximation) no
institution supposedly controlled by ‘the Jews’ defended them from their
exterminators. Hence the great irony: it was the very success of The Protocols in tipping Europe—heavy
and drunk already with anti-Jewish hate—toward the Holocaust that
demonstrated the falsity of its accusations. But
that demonstration—notwithstanding its drama—was entirely useless, for The Protocols had become our very
culture and cosmology. This is why today, even many people who do not
recognize the title of the work nevertheless own its arguments: that ‘the
Jews’ control the banks, the media, etc.—and, through the ‘Jewish Lobby,’ the
foreign policy of the US and its allies. Antisemites lovingly husband and
revive these hot embers, which threaten, at any moment, to become a new great
fire. In my
work I have denounced those who, in the last decades, have reanimated The Protocols (see here
and here); I am somewhat taken aback,
therefore, to find that Hamra compares me with them. Moreover, what Hamra came
to denounce was my sharing with the public of the link between the Nazis and
the ‘Palestinian Authority.’ So it is pertinent to ask: What similarity does
Hamra perceive between this latter and the dissemination of The Protocols? According
to him, to link Nazis and Palestinian leaders is to propose ‘conspiracy
theories,’ and, says
Hamra: “conspiracy
theories construct enemies. In point of fact, by means of the conspiracy
theory of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ Hitler built the
Jews up as an enemy to be eradicated. Hence the danger of this kind of theory
in the present context of the Israel/Palestine relationship.” Hamra’s
implicit syllogism is as follows: Premise 1: The
Protocols was an important cause of the Holocaust (for it built ‘the
Jews’ up as an enemy) Premise 2: The
Protocols proposes a ‘conspiracy theory.’ Conclusion: All ‘conspiracy theories’ are dangerous
(because they construct enemies). Political
corollary: All
‘conspiracy theories’ must be censored! Under
this charitable interpretation, then, when Hamra attempts to silence me, he
perceives himself as one who contributes a paternalistic service to the
public. Men
and women are not children, and they hardly need a protector to box their
ears (lest they hear an idea!). But even should we concede this old
paternalistic apology, common to every totalitarianism, we have an additional
problem here: the syllogism is crippled by a basic logical error: it
concludes generally—namely, that all ‘conspiracy
theories’ are dangerous—on the basis of just one case. This
does not yet demonstrate—mind you—that Hamra’s conclusion is false; in
principle, there might exist another syllogism that produces a correct
derivation for it. To refute his conclusion, therefore, we need a sui generis demonstration. The most
useful such demonstration will refer us to the same case: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. At
the turn of the 20th c., as the old imperial Russia shook with social
turmoil, Von Plehve, one of the Tsar’s top policemen, expressed: The
evidence has convinced historians that there
was indeed a conspiracy: that of the Tsarist spies. This later became the
conspiracy in favor of fascism and antisemitism of a coterie of powerful eugenicists at the very top of industry and government
in the West. It was they who disseminated The
Protocols all over the world. At
the time, some cried foul. Phillip Graves from the Times (London), for example, demonstrated in 1921 that The Protocols—which claimed to be the
minutes of a gathering of nefarious ‘super Jews’ who in secret controlled
everything—was in reality a lightly adapted plagiarism from a forgotten work
of fiction by French political thinker Maurice Joly (his text accused
Napoleon III, not ‘the Jews’).[4] Today
this conspiracy has been largely forgotten. The majority remembers only the
Nazis—and Henry Ford, who famously spent a huge chunk of his own fortune
disseminating The Protocols. But
there were others. As
historian Edwin Black has documented, there was a Western
eugenicist cabal—led by the industrial networks of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and
other monopolists—that propped and braced the German Nazi movement with
financial assistance, diplomatic cover, and political support. American
eugenics, as Black documents, gave birth to German Nazism and stood it on its
feet.[5] So
here is the central issue: it cannot be denied that this dangerous text, The Protocols, proposes a ‘conspiracy
theory’; but Graves, Black, and others who blew the whistle on the Tsarist
fraud and on pro-Nazi eugenics have proposed (and documented) another. It
follows, therefore, that if all ‘conspiracy
theories’ are reprehensible, then Hamra must also condemn and censor Graves
and Black. He will then be, simultaneously, adversary and protector of The Protocols, enemy and ally of the
Nazis. But this is absurd. And thus we have shown that Hamra’s conclusion,
and its political corollary, are both false. QED. The
danger of The Protocols lies not in
its being a ‘conspiracy theory’ but in its being an antisemitic libel. Are
antisemites generally dangerous? I say yes—for the Jews and also for others.
And I conclude this not from the special, if dramatic, case of World War II
alone (where the antisemites caused—directly or indirectly—the deaths of more
than 54 million non-Jews), but
after reviewing—as I do in my
book and in
my course—2500 years of this ideology. My corollary? When
antisemites mask themselves in various disguises it is a public service, as a
form of basic self-defense, to make known the best historical documentation. That’s
what I tried to do. The
‘Palestinian Authority’ has been represented as the necessary ‘peace partner’
to the Israeli Jews. So, when the Israeli prime minister
(somewhat late) mentioned the link between the Nazi Final Solution and the
‘Palestinian Authority,’ I republished the documentation on Hajj Amin al
Husseini—founder of the Arab Palestinian movement—and his responsibility for
the Nazi exterminations of the Jews. I explained, also, that Husseini was
mentor to Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the most important leaders of the
‘Palestinian Authority.’[6] The
public is free to reach its own conclusions as to whether I am ‘constructing
enemies’ or identifying enemies that already exist (and from whom we would do
well to defend ourselves). To exercise that freedom, however, the public
needs the facts. For
my troubles in sharing them, Hamra has seen fit to compare me… to Hitler.
Philosophers call this an ad hominem:
the resort to insults when reason fails. Insults don’t compel refutations,
but Hamra has earned the following reminder: Hitler did not promote freedom
of expression on historical questions (or other questions); he burned books,
forbade ideas, and canceled conferences.
No matter. Though an irony, I choose to see in José Hamra
Sasson my accomplice. For here we are, despite his best efforts, debating in
public Hajj Amin al Husseini’s double role, as co-director of the Holocaust
and as creator of the ‘Palestinian Authority.’ Better late than never. Or
rather: better late than after the next
Holocaust. And so long as we debate rather than censor, we are in my
court. Let
us proceed, then, to the presentation of evidence. I
will examine in my next article those arguments and sources that Hamra
recruits to controvert the line that stretches from the Nazi exterminator
Hajj Amin al Husseini to the present ‘Palestinian Authority.’ Notwithstanding
that Hamra claims to be done with all this, I hope, for the public’s benefit,
that he will participate fully and reply. For such give-and-take is at the
very heart of journalism and science. Francisco Gil-White, anthropologist
and historian, is a professor at ITAM (Mexico City) and
author of ‘Hajj Amin al Husseini’, Tome 1 of The
Collapse of the West: The Next Holocaust and its Consequences
(for sale at Amazon). Related Readings The Modern Protocols of Zion Reply to Mearsheimer & Walt's "The Israel
Lobby" THE NETANYAHU BOMBSHELL How did the 'Palestinian movement' emerge? The British
sponsored it. Then the German Nazis, and the US. PLO/Fatah's
Nazi training was CIA-sponsored Gil-White, F. (2014). El Colapso de Occidente: El Siguiente
Holocausto y sus Consecuencias (Tomo 1: Hajj Amin al Husseini). México, DF: FACES (Fundación para el Análisis del
Conflicto, Étnico y Social). Footnotes and Further Reading [1]
My original article: “Achilles’
Heel: The muftí, the Nazis, and the ‘Palestinian Authority’; Historical and Investigative Research;
16 November 2015; by Francisco Gil-White Hamra’s reply: “De talones y teorías de la
conspiración: a los lectores de Enlace Judío”; Enlace Judío; 24 de Noviembre 2015; por José Hamra Sasson [2]
“1. Introduction: The ‘Protocols
of Zion’ in the broadest historical perspective”; from: THE MODERN PROTOCOLS
OF ZION; Historical and Investigative
Research; 25 August 2005; by Francisco Gil-White [3] Ben-Itto, H. (2005). The Lie that
Wouldn't Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. London: Vallentine
Mitchell. (pp. 23-25, 29) [4] “The Protocols of Zion - An
Exposure”; The Times (London);
August 16 through 18, 1921; bv Phillip Graves [5] Black, E. (2003). War against the
weak: Eugenics and America's campaign to create a master race. New York:
Four Walls Eight Windows. [6] “THE NETANYAHU BOMBSHELL: Founder of
Palestinian movement instigated the Holocaust - Part 1: Is this true?”; Historical and Investigative Research;
23 October 2015; by Francisco Gil-White |
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.%20Or%20at%20least%20that%E2%80%99s%20what%20I%20claim.%20Jos%C3%A9%20Hamra%20Sasson%20disputes%20my%20interpretation%20of%20the%20historical%20documentation.%20But%20instead%20of%20trying%20to%20refute%20me,%20he%20preferred%20to%20try%20and%20censor%20my%20acts%20of%20communication.%20I%20published%20a%20report%20on%20this%20in%20Enlace%20Jud%C3%ADo,%20to%20which%20Hamra%20has%20replied.%20I%20welcome%20him%20to%20the%20debate,%20and%20I%20give%20my%20answer.){kind=small}
