By Barry Dalgleish, Environmental Activist and Global Citizen. In March 2009, I started a blog called Greener Planet. I have since transitioned to this platform

Oct 26, 2017

Anti-Semitism And The Pro Israel Lobby � 1

In this 3 part report I�ll investigate the powerful pro Israel lobby, which has had an impressive global presence almost since the inception of Israel as a state.

In the first part I�ll look at the history of anti-Semitism and how it became deeply ingrained within Christianity, leading to widespread persecution of Jews.

After citing an overview of Paulo Freire�s work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I discuss how this could be relevant to the emergence of the Zionist movement and also how it could equally offer a foundation for a non violent reconstruction of Palestinian society.

I then look at how a modern more sophisticated globalised Israel lobby emerged in the wake of the second Intifada.

The second part will look at what makes the Israel lobby tick, the various techniques and tactics used by Public Relations actors and how anti-Semitism is being used as a tool to distract attention away from Israeli atrocities.

Part 3 analyses the media approach to the conflict and how a complicit corporate media disseminates �fake news� and propaganda.

According to the Israel lobby, criticism of the State of Israel constitutes anti Semitism. It is a charge that is completely irrational and has no context whatsoever. It effectively means that taking a political viewpoint on Israeli policies constitutes a form of racism. It is a charge that is both arrogant and dangerous.

A definition

According to the UK Government there is an �absence of an agreed international definition of antisemitism.� On the website, the Government reproduces a �working definition of antisemitism� from the UK�s College of Policing. It makes references to criticism of the State of Israel. However it does make this clear statement that:

�criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitic acts are criminal when they are so defined by law (for example, denial of the Holocaust or distribution of antisemitic materials in some countries).�

It goes on to say that

�Antisemitic discrimination is the denial to Jews of opportunities or services available to others and is illegal in many countries.�

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is another body that has adopted a working definition of anti-Semitism. The role of the IHRA is to �place political and social leaders� support behind the need for Holocaust education, remembrance and research both nationally and internationally.�

The definition is as follows:

�Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.�

Not surprisingly, Israel is a member of the IHRA. As such, the country would have agreed to the adoption of the above definition. However just like the police definition above, criticism of the State of Israel is linked into the guidance:

�Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Antisemitism frequently charges Jews with conspiring to harm humanity, and it is often used to blame Jews for �why things go wrong.� It is expressed in speech, writing, visual forms and action, and employs sinister stereotypes and negative character traits.�

Its pretty clear from the above definitions that criticism of Israel can only be regarded as anti-Semitic if there is an element of racism that targets Jews specifically. More often than not, criticism of Israel falls into the �similar to that levelled against any other country� category, but is then intentionally or otherwise conflated with anti-Semitism.

The Holocaust

The Nazi Holocaust and persecution of Jews before and during world war 2 is a vital essence of Israeli culture. And of course it has a great deal of significance to Jews, regardless of their association with Israel. The word �shoah� has become the Hebrew term for the holocaust and is used to specifically refer to the Nazi holocaust.

However from a historical perspective, limiting the definition of the holocaust to encompass Jews only, could be regarded as a narrow definition. A broader definition encompasses other ethnic groups such as Romani, Poles, other Slavic ethnic groups, mentally and physically disabled people, Soviets, prisoners of war, homosexuals, black people, political opponents of the Nazis, and members of other groups that didn�t measure up to the Nazis racial profiling. In other words a more accurate definition of the holocaust would account for the full spectrum of persecution of all peoples targeted by the Nazis.

The book The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust considers many aspects of the holocaust.

This does not of course detract from the deliberate, systematic and specific treatment of Jews within the context of the �final solution�, a Nazi term used in the phrase �Final Solution to the Jewish Question�. This was actually a Nazi code name for the plan to murder all Jews within reach, and was not limited to the European continent. This form of �industrialised murder� where Jews were rounded up en masse and sent to extermination camps was unprecedented in history.

There�s no doubt that an extreme form of anti-Semitism had developed in Germany. Understanding the roots of this issue is an important prerequisite in understanding the status of Israel as a �Jewish state�.

Historic Persecution

The roots of anti-Semitism stem from the Christian belief that the Jews were responsible for rejecting and killing Jesus Christ.

In A viewers Guide to contemporary Passion Plays, an explanation is offered on the background to productions such as The Passion of Christ. The paper goes on to define anti-Semitism and the reasons behind Jewish persecution. In essence, Jewish persecution had become a component of the Christian faith. It is defined thus:

�In the Gospel of Matthew, when Pilate declares himself innocent of Jesus� death, it is said, �And all the people answered, �His blood be on us and on our children!� (Mtth 27:25). Over the course of time, Christians began to accept this interpretation of the crucifixion to mean that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for killing Jesus. According to this interpretation, both the Jews present at Jesus� death and the Jewish people collectively and for all time, have committed the sin of deicide, or God- killing. For 1900 years of Christian-Jewish history, the charge of deicide has led to hatred, violence against and murder of Jews in Europe and America.

The charge that the Jews killed Christ/God gave rise to a belief that Jews were inhuman. They were often portrayed in Christian art and commentary as demons, complete with fangs and hooves, committing hideous crimes against Christians. The Jew, historically the object of derision and animosity, became the living incarnation of Satan. Holy Week, the week beginning with Palm Sunday and culminating with Easter, became a particularly dangerous time for Jews, as Christians perpetrated violence against Jews living in their communities.�

As a result, anti-Semitism became deeply rooted in Christian culture and its influences. The fall out from this was widespread persecution of Jews through the middle ages and beyond up until the present day, where Jews were used as scapegoats whenever some calamity occurred.

The paper points out though that from a historical perspective, Jesus was tried and convicted under Roman law. Jews played no part in that process.

In 1962, the Vatican �officially repudiated the charge of deicide against the Jews, as well as all forms of anti-Semitism.� Other Christian Groups followed suit following this high level decision within the Catholic Church.

But despite recognition of historical misinterpretations, including references within the Gospels, anti-Semitism still prevails within certain Groups.

Taking account of the widespread historical persecution of Jewish communities, the actions of Nazi Germany are not unique.

Another key component that played a role in Jewish persecution was the accusation of blood libel.

In essence, blood libel (or accusation) is an accusation that Jews kidnapped and murdered the children of Christians in order to use their blood as part of their religious rituals during Jewish holidays. This revolved around the baking of matzos (an unleavened flatbread that is used during Passover) using the blood as an ingredient in the bread.

This accusation has no basis in fact and is based on heresy, surrounded by stereotypical notions of Jews. Origins of the phenomenon are discussed in the article Blood Accussation from the Jewish Encyclopedia. The article notes:

�The origin of the blood accusation has not yet been discovered. The annals of Erfurt state that the Jews used waxed sacks (�in saccis cera linitis�) for collecting the blood of the children killed at Fulda in Dec., 1235. According to the Marbach annals (also contemporaneous with the event) the Jews confessed that they wished to utilize the blood for remedial purposes. The annals also state that the emperor Frederick II. (as mentioned above) consulted a number of distinguished converted Jews in order to ascertain whether the Jews required Christian blood on Parasceve � a term frequently used to designate Good Friday. As early as the twelfth century it was several times reported that the Jews had crucified Christian children during Easter (e.g., William of Norwich, 1144, see above; Gloucester, 1171; Blois, 1179; Richard of Paris, in Pontoise). Whether all or part of these reports agree with the facts, or are alike unworthy of credence, the theory of a ritual murder is in no case justified; and, if the accounts are historical, it can only be assumed that the Jews in one instance or on several occasions put Christians to death. A ritualistic feature was imparted to these real or supposed crucifixions or other murders of Christians, and especially of Christian children, by the suggestions: (1) that the murders involved the acquisition of blood; and (2) that the crimes were related to the Passover festival.�

Another slant at Jewish persecution and its origins comes from this article from National Geographic. It describes the discovery of The Judas Gospel, which along with other Gospels not published in the Bible offers a different portrayal of early Christianity.

The article sums up the contrasting role of Judas as Christ�s closest Apostle compared to the accepted narrative and how he became a scapegoat for the Jews:

�There is a sinister backdrop to traditional depictions of Judas. As Christianity distanced itself from its origins as a Jewish sect, Christian thinkers found it increasingly convenient to blame the Jews as a people for the arrest and execution of Christ, and to cast Judas as the archetypal Jew. The four Gospels, for example, treat Roman governor Pontius Pilate gently while condemning Judas and the Jewish high priests.

The �secret account� gives us a very different Judas. In this version, he is a hero. Unlike the other disciples, he truly understands Christ�s message. In handing Jesus over to the authorities, he is doing his leader�s bidding, knowing full well the fate he will bring on himself. Jesus warns him: �You will be cursed.��

In essence, Christianity was a breakaway sect of Judaism, which in turn formed other factions with different views of Jesus and His relationship with the Apostles, especially Judas. That was ultimately reflected in the dominant hierarchical Group, which painted Judas into a corner as a despicable Jew in order to vilify the religion they rejected. As such, anything that contradicted that narrative was rejected. The rest � as they say � is history.

A translation of the Gospel was published by National Geographic.

The Oppressed Become The Oppressor

One of the most important works in the realm of oppression, is Paulo Freire�s, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

In his book, Freire analyses the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed.

He argues that through the process of liberation �the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or �sub-oppressors.� He goes on to say:

�Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors. This is their model of humanity. This phenomenon derives from the fact that the oppressed, at a certain moment of their existential experience, adopt an attitude of �adhesion� to the oppressor. Under these circumstances they cannot �consider� him sufficiently clearly to objectivize him � to discover him �outside� themselves. This does not necessarily mean that the oppressed are unaware that they are downtrodden. But their perception of themselves as oppressed is impaired by their submersion in the reality of oppression. At this level, their perception of themselves as opposites of the oppressor does not yet signify engagement in a struggle to overcome the contradiction; the one pole aspires not to liberation, but to identification with its opposite pole.�

Essentially, because people have been exposed persistently to oppression, they know nothing else. As such they have adopted the mindset of the oppressor. They then model their own existence on that of the oppressor.

Freire discusses the paradox of freedom. Freedom being the ultimate goal, it nevertheless becomes something to be feared. Having developed a dependency on the oppressor, how does freedom transform into independence? Ultimately this boils down to education � something that Freire goes into considerable detail in his book � and the perception of a critical reality that Freire calls the oppressor-oppressed contradiction.

The oppressor also needs to change his outlook. That means breaking the chains of power and altering what is essentially a false reality, a condition that affects oppressed and oppressor alike:

�A different type of false perception occurs when a change in objective reality would threaten the individual or class interests of the perceiver. In the first instance, there is no critical intervention in reality because that reality is fictitious; there is none in the second instance because intervention would contradict the class interests of the perceiver In the latter case the tendency of the perceiver is to behave �neurotically.� The fact exists; but both the fact and
what may result from it may be prejudicial to the person. Thus it becomes necessary not precisely to deny the fact, but to �see it differently.� This rationalization as a defense mechanism coincides in the end with subjectivism. A fact which is not denied but whose truths are rationalized loses its objective base. It ceases to be concrete and becomes a myth created in defense of the class of the perceiver.

Herein lies one of the reasons for the prohibitions and the difficulties designed to dissuade the people from critical intervention in reality. The oppressor knows full well that this intervention would not be to his interest. What is to his interest is for the people to continue in a state of submersion, impotent in the face of oppressive reality.�

Freire discusses the root source of oppression as coming from the ruling classes, who impose their power through the use of violence. �Once a situation of violence and oppression has been established, it engenders an entire way of life and behavior for those caught up in it � oppressors and oppressed alike. Both are submerged in this situation, and both bear the marks of oppression.�

Freire then sums the mindset of the oppressor perfectly:

�The oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creations of people, people themselves, time � everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal.�

He notes their �strictly materialistic concept of existence� and the fact that �Money is the measure of all things, and profit the primary goal�.

�As beneficiaries of a situation of oppression, the oppressors cannot perceive that if having is a condition of being, it is a necessary condition for all women and men. This is why their generosity is false. Humanity is a �thing� and they possess it as an exclusive right, as inherited property. To the oppressor consciousness, the humanization of the �others,� of the people, appears not as the pursuit of full humanity; but as subversion.�

Freire then analyses the student/teacher relationship. The terms student/teacher can have a universal context. His key analysis is the sterility of education, in which a narrative is dispensed to the student. As such:

�Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into �containers,� into �receptacles� to be �filled� by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.

Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the �banking� concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits.�

This Freire argues is a process of

�Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence.�

In short, the dissemination of information is controlled by the ruling classes through a narrative that is designed to further their own interests (see below).

Having been systematically �programmed�, those who have been �educated� will then disseminate the �program� to others as they have no other base from which to refer to.

The solution to this problem is to alter the relationship between Teacher/Student where �no one teaches another, nor is anyone self-taught. People teach each other�. This means

�They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. In this process, arguments based on �authority�are no longer valid.�

Freire sums up his analysis:

�Once again, the two educational concepts and practices under analysis come into conflict. Banking education (for obvious reasons) attempts, by mythicizing reality, to conceal certain facts which explain the way human beings exist in the world; problem-posing education sets itself the task of demythologizing. Banking education resists dialogue; problem-posing education regards dialogue as indispensable to the act of cognition which unveils reality. Banking education treats students as objects of assistance; problem-posing education makes them critical thinkers. Banking education inhibits creativity and domesticates (although it cannot completely destroy) the intentionality of consciousness by isolating consciousness from the world, thereby denying people their ontological and historical vocation of becoming more fully human. Problem-posing education bases itself on creativity and stimulates true reflection and action upon reality, thereby responding to the vocation of persons as beings who are authentic only when engaged in inquiry and creative transformation.�

There is a parallel in Freire�s analysis to the emergence of the Zionist movement. Then there is the development of the state of Israel itself, where ordinary Israeli�s may not be repressed but are kept in ignorance from the roots of Israel�s formation.

Freire also speaks in terms of what he calls �reversing the poles� in which the oppressed become what they have tried to escape. The subjugation of the Palestinians is such an example, which ultimately led to the �Jewish State,� a phrase that implies a form of racial superiority.

Freire�s narrative can also be relevant to the Palestinians in seeking to break the yolk of the occupation, in building a transformative grassroots movement that is non violent and may lead to genuine freedom for the Palestinians. Indeed such a process is already underway, as will be discussed later below.

Much of what Freire focuses on would be regarded as propaganda. That�s the subject of the next section.

The Pro Israel Lobby

Public Relations and propaganda is almost as old as history itself. The term propaganda comes from Pope Gregory XV, when he created the Congregatio de Propaganda (�congregation for propagating the faith�).

Modern PR emerged early in the last century. An article from the New York Times looks at some of the pioneers of PR in the 20th Century.

Ivy Lee was one of the earlier developers of PR. Lee was hired by John D. Rockefeller, who established the Standard Oil Company, which ultimately became one of the most successful corporate entities in the world.

�Mr. Lee tried to repackage the industrialist as a humane philanthropist, and in so doing became an important counsel to John D. Rockefeller Jr. as well. Mr. Lee, whose career later foundered when it was revealed that he did promotional work for the Nazis, advised the Rockefellers to be frank and direct when discussing their business practices with the press � a relief to a family averse to the practice, then common, of bribing reporters for coverage.�

Another key figure was Edward Bernays, who was a nephew of Sigmund Freud. Bernays was strongly influenced by his uncles work in psychology and began to apply psychology within the context of PR, seeing PR as an applied social science that uses insights from psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to scientifically manage and manipulate the thinking and behaviour of an irrational and �herdlike� public.

He was the author of several books on the subject, including The Engineering of Consent (1947) (Noam Chomsky later picked up the notion with Manufactured Consent). In addition, the New York Times notes that �He professionalized the business while introducing other new forms of manipulation, like establishing bogus front groups to promote the benefits of smoking.�

The article The History of Public Relations gives a good overview of the history of PR. The article points out how Ivy Lee placed emphasis on openness and transparency, with the belief that being honest with the public was a sure winner and that way trust could be built. Not-for-Profit Organizations and Social Movements tended towards Lees version of PR.

Edward Bernays by comparison applied the art of persuasion within PR, what to today might be referred to as �spin�. As the article notes:

�Bernays understood that publics could be persuaded if the message supported their values and interests. In many ways, the thrust of his philosophy is made clear in his first book, Crystallizing Public Opinion. At the time, he saw public relations as being more or less synonymous with propaganda, which he defined as �the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses.��

The post-war period saw the rapid expansion of modern PR. Many proponents learnt their trade during the war from wartime propaganda campaigns. Many of the now well established PR companies cut their teeth during this period. The article outlines how all this came together:

��the hallmark of postwar public relations growth took place in the private
sector, in corporations and agencies. A consumer economy made use of both public relations and advertising to market products. Agencies came into full being, providing media relations and media contact capabilities not always available on the corporate side. The need for these skills was driven in part by the explosive growth of media outlets not available before the war � including FM radio, general magazines, suburban community newspapers, and trade and professional association publications. Their services expanded from a base of counselling and media relations to include public affairs or government relations, financial and investor relations, crisis communication, and media relations training for executives.�

But PR was not the sole province of Corporations and individuals. Countries would use the expertise of PR companies to sanitise their image. Israel is amongst those countries. Indeed the Israel lobby has become a potent force over the years.

This was highlighted in a report published in 2006 by John J. Mearsheimer, Department of Political Science, University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, called The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. The report investigates the unique relationship between the US and Israel that is unparalleled in global affairs.

There are some eye opening revelations within the report. Perhaps the most remarkable is the basic assertion that the US is sacrificing its own national security by supporting Israel. And it isn�t cheap:

�Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one‐fifth of America�s foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year.�

And Israel doesn�t have to account its spending to Washington, it can ironically invest in projects that run counter to US policy �like building settlements in the West Bank.�

But perhaps one of the most sinister aspects of US support is Israel�s access to advanced US intelligence facilities:

�The United States gives Israel access to intelligence that it denies its NATO allies and has turned a blind eye towards Israel�s acquisition of nuclear weapons.�

�According to the American‐Israel Public Affairs Committee�s (AIPAC) website,
�the United States and Israel have formed a unique partnership to meet the
growing strategic threats in the Middle East . . . . This cooperative effort provides significant benefits for both the United States and Israel.� This claim is an article of faith among Israel�s supporters and is routinely invoked by Israeli politicians and pro‐Israel Americans.�

This � on the surface � gives the impression of a sound stable relationship between the US and Israel. But there�s a catch. The US wants to maintain its influence in the Middle East, with the support of Arab allies. But US support of Israel during the 1973 war �triggered an OPEC oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies.�

During the 1991 Gulf war, the US could not deploy forces in Israel, otherwise it would have lost the coalition support against Saddam Hussain�s Iraq. Similarly, the so called �war against terror� that followed the twin tower attacks on 9/11, was in a manner of speaking, the closing of a circle generated by US support of Israel:

�According to the U.S. 9/11 Commission, bin Laden explicitly sought to punish the United States for its policies in the Middle East, including its support for Israel, and he even tried to time the attacks to highlight this issue.�

Israel likes to paint itself as the underdog, surrounded by hostile Arabs and exaggerating the threat posed by Palestinians. But Israel�s military prowess out-guns just about every country in the Middle East put together. This has been the case right from the beginning when Israel deflected the Arab offensive after Israel was created. And the Palestinians have no military capability whatsoever. Indeed:

�According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University�s prestigious
Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, �the strategic balance decidedly favors Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbors.� If backing the underdog were a compelling rationale, the United States would be supporting Israel�s opponents.�

Then of course there�s the argument that Israel is a democracy. But that�s knocked on the head:

�Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this conception of citizenship, it is not surprising that Israel�s 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second‐class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a �neglectful and discriminatory� manner towards them.�

As noted above, the holocaust played a critical role in Israel�s existence. The report suggests that this and historic persecution of Jews serves as a moral justification for Israel�s existence. That may be debatable. But does the ends justify the means?

Israel attempts to cover up its past misdemeanour�s and will deny displacing the Palestinians and committing ethnic cleansing. Yet the early leadership in Israel admitted as much:

�The mainstream Zionist leadership was not interested in establishing a bi‐
national state or accepting a permanent partition of Palestine. The Zionist
leadership was sometimes willing to accept partition as a first step, but this was a tactical maneuver and not their real objective. As David Ben‐Gurion put it in the late 1930s, �After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.�

To achieve this goal, the Zionists had to expel large numbers of Arabs from the territory that would eventually become Israel. There was simply no other way to accomplish their objective. Ben‐Gurion saw the problem clearly, writing in 1941 that �it is impossible to imagine general evacuation [of the Arab population] without compulsion, and brutal compulsion.� Or as Israeli historian Benny Morris puts it, �the idea of transfer is as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past century.� �

Ben-Gurion went on to say:

�If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti‐Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?�

The report is frank about the atrocities that Israel has committed. To document everything in detail would fill a separate article. But suffice to say those atrocities were both confirmed and affirmed by the Israeli leadership:

�These facts about Israel�s conduct have been amply documented by numerous
human rights organizations � including prominent Israeli groups � and are not disputed by fair‐minded observers. And that is why four former officials of Shin Bet (the Israeli domestic security organization) condemned Israel�s conduct during the Second Intifada in November 2003. One of them declared �we are behaving disgracefully,� and another termed Israel�s conduct �patently immoral.� �

And:

�As former Prime Minister Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he �would have joined a terrorist organization.� �

Israel Past & Present � A post Colonial Apartheid State
Last year�s bombardment of Gaza (2014) was flashed around the world and through the social media landscape via the�medium.com

Israel�s influence is not restricted to the US. It very much operates on a global scale, thanks on large part to the �Israel Lobby�, which the Report goes into in some detail (see below).

The UK is a productive hunting ground for the Israel lobby. In 2013, a report was published in collaboration by Spinwatch and Middle East Monitor, The Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre: Giving peace a chance? The Report scrutinises the activities of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM).

In short:

�BICOM is an important pro-Israel grouping that focuses on managing the British media. It is important because it is at the more sophisticated end of the pro-Israel lobby and because it works behind the scenes to cultivate elite opinion on Israel. BICOM is primarily about taking standard pro-Israel arguments, but repackaging them in ways that resonate with opinion-forming elites, and teaching other activists to do the same. So, although it focuses on the media and communications its main audience is not public opinion but a political elite that is insulated from the public.�

BICOM emerged during the second intifada, with Finnish financier Poju Zabludowicz at the helm. Its roots stem from his father�s role in the arms trade, during which Shlomo Zabludowicz forged links with key contacts within Israel.

Shlomo Zabludowicz was a Polish holocaust survivor from Aucshwitz. After repatriation he moved to Israel. But subsequently moved to Finland, where he got involved with arms company Tampella. This eventually led to deals being forged with Israel.

Over the years he developed close relationships with Israeli politicians, including Shimon Peres. This ultimately became very lucrative and as a result Shlomo Zabludowicz amassed a fortune and a well established business base that was succeeded by his son following his death in 1994.

However, following the end of the cold war and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the global arms industry had gone into decline. This also impacted Israel. The result was a diversification of the business into other areas such as property.

The 1990�s also saw other changes taking place. There was the steady expansion of the global neoliberal economic system that began to consolidate itself following the cold war. Indeed Israel itself became host to over 600,000 Russian immigrants. This provided the impetus for change within Israel.

Israel had an image problem. From a Global economic perspective, Israel was regarded as a war zone. Israel wanted to join the neoliberal �club�. When the Oslo peace process began during this period this presented an opportunity for Israel to �normalise� itself. In addition there was the Arab league boycott of Israeli companies that has been in effect practically since Israel�s inception:

�A key objective for the business sector was the lifting of the Arab League�s boycott of Israeli companies and especially the so-called �secondary boycott�, under which companies doing business with Israel or Israeli companies were barred from business with Arab countries and companies. Shafir and Peled note that: Many Israeli business leaders realized that the Arab boycott was an obstacle on the road to integrating the Israeli economy into the world market; that while it was in effect all efforts in this direction would yield only limited results. Similarly, only the stability ensured by peace could bring foreign investment and foreign corporations into Israel in significant numbers.�

This was the image of Israel of a country seeking peace that was fostered during the Oslo peace process. But the underlying objective was economic expansion and Israel�s integration into the global economy.

With agreements secured between the PLO and Israel, with both factions recognising each other, it wouldn�t be long before Israeli�s could order Big Macs in their local McDonald�s or buying western cars and investing their money in global financial institutions. Not everyone in Israel agreed with the peace accords. But the economy took off.

During this period, relations between Israel and the UK strengthened. In 1995, Prime Minister John Major �visited Israel with a group of British business people and jointly with the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin
established the Israel-Britain Business Council, which was backed by public funds and tasked with promoting business relations between the two countries.�

Poju Zabludowicz became involved in the process. He became chair of the Britain-Israel Parliamentary Group�s (BIPG) newly formed business advisory group, �a �lobbying forum� established to promote commercial and technological links between Israel and the UK.� He also joined the advisory board of the Israel-Britain Business Council. This allowed him to link up with well placed people in the business community as well as political.

The original business set up by his father had became absorbed into the Tamares Group, now run by Poju Zabludowicz, that consists of various holding�s around the world that includes real estate and media interests. The main centre of operations though appear to be based in Israel.

From 2002 to 2007, Tamares Capital was managed by Pinchas Buchris, a retired Israeli Brigadier General who headed the IDF�s Unit 8200 (also called the Central Unit of Technology Intelligence). He left when he was appointed Director-General of the Israeli Defense Ministry.

�This revolving door, whereby individuals traverse multiple public and private roles, is familiar in the UK and the US and is an indication of closely intermeshed networks operating between business and the state.�

Zabludowicz also moved into the venture capital and Hedge fund sector. Some of his contacts there would go on to become involved with BICOM. Zabludowicz had now positioned himself as a key business operator between the UK and Israel. Indeed:

�In March 2011, he hosted secret talks between Shimon Peres and the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas at his North London home. The meeting was one of several reportedly arranged by the venture capitalist Sir Ronald Cohen, the UK�s leading exponent of Peres-style neoliberalisation through peace.�

Although it would appear that Zabludowicz�s relationship with the political elites in London and Tel Aviv are primarily business oriented, he nevertheless has integrated himself well. Even though current Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu is a hard liner and no great fan of the peace process, Zabludowicz �compares him favourably to Thatcher and Reagan.�

Although the peace process had the intended effect of improving Israel�s image on the global stage, the Palestinian�s did not benefit. On the ground it was business as usual as far as the occupation went. Indeed the economic position of the Palestinians stagnated during this period.

The closer relationship with the UK:

�ended the arms embargo on Israel imposed by the Thatcher Government in 1982, and worked to end the Arab boycott (encouraged in both initiatives
by business orientated pro-Israel groups in the UK). Economic relations with Israel were stepped up, with imports and exports more than doubling during the decade, and a relationship �blossomed� between the UK and Israeli arms
industries.�

Ironically during the peace process, the Israel lobby had declined somewhat:

�Organisations working to secure support for the country in the UK were increasingly considered redundant. In 1999, the forerunner to BICOM, the British-Israel Public Affairs Committee (BIPAC), was closed.�

However, trouble was brewing. Discontent was simmering amongst Palestinians:

�The Oslo process did not bring an end to Israel�s occupation or to the construction of illegal settlements on occupied land. The Netanyahu government had demolished Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem and approved plans for new settlements in the area around the city.�

�Under the Oslo Accords Israel had pledged to withdraw from 90 per cent of the occupied territories by the beginning of 2000, but by that time they had in fact withdrawn from only 18 per cent. The �final status� talks held at Camp David in July 2000 ended with no agreement between Barak and Arafat, each side blaming the other for the failure.�

The Second intifada was about to erupt. A provocative visit to the Al Aqsa mosque by Ariel Sharon triggered widespread protest that was initially non violent. But these were �met with excessive and lethal force by Israel, whose reaction to the uprising has been characterised as one of �brutal repression�.�

The force implemented by the IDF against the Palestinians triggered terrorist reprisals from Palestinian extremists. It wasn�t until 2005 that the violence began to recede.

�Taking stock, human rights groups concluded that the vast majority of Palestinians killed had been unarmed civilians. Most saliently for our purposes, the intifada had also been a �public relations disaster� for Israel.�

The Israel lobby was about to crawl back out of the woodwork. The establishment of BICOM would be an important vehicle for a UK based PR network that would develop �a war room to ensure correct information and solidarity with Israel is maintained.�

The report sums up BICOM�s creation:

�As a permanent organisation, it emerged out of the Emergency Co-ordinating
Group�s �British Israel Communications Office�, which had used the acronym �BICOM� for several months before the organisation was formally created. Mick Davis, chair of the United Jewish Israel Appeal, later recalled: �Poju had a vision of a new era in Israel advocacy for the UK. He took the fledgling crisis room created in response to the outbreak of the second intifada and turned
it into the renowned and respected organisation that BICOM is today.� �

The key figures involved in its founding were:

�Poju Zabludowicz, Philip Rubenstein (a marketing consultant who at that
time worked at the accountancy firm BDO), David Green (a businessman who became the organisation�s treasurer) and the joint chairs of the Emergency Co-ordinating Group, Jo Wagerman and Brian Kerner.�

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was also closely associated with BICOM. It was also supported by the Israeli Embassy in London and the � �highest level� of the Israeli foreign ministry.�

The Israeli PR machine would begin its global march, lobbying the UK, the US and Europe, with the EU as an important target.

In an article published by Spinwatch in 2014, David Cronin investigates the European Friends of Israel: Founded by Tories, funded by big business. Its perhaps not surprising that a key PR group in the EU has its roots in the UK.

In 2006, the European Friends of Israel (EFI) was founded. It was modeled on the UK Conservatives Friends of Israel (CFI). Driving its formation was Stuart Polak, a former director of CFI.

Other key figures involved with EFI are Hannu Takkula, a Finnish Liberal MEP. Three Tory MEP�s; Charles Tannock, Geoffrey Van Orden and Timothy Kirkhope.

Tannock was a foreign affairs specialist who �sat on the EFI�s political board between 2006 and 2011.�

Van Orden was �a retired brigadier-general in the British Army who served in NATO�s headquarters during the 1990s.� He was �a strong advocate for UK industry, including the arms industry�.

Timothy Kirkhope is the Chair of CFI.

To sum up:

�Papers filed with the Belgian authorities state that EFI was officially established as a not-for-profit association by Stuart Polak, along with Marc Cogen, a Belgian academic, and Jean-Pierre Haber, a veteran Brussels official. Its stated objective was to �unify� the various pro-Israel groups within the national parliaments of EU countries by coordinating their activities. Such groups would be linked to one in the European Parliament, according to these papers.�

Cogen, a professor of international law, has a rather chequered history. He supports the �war on terror� and he �signed a letter to Flemish newspapers defending Israel�s attack on Gaza� in 2008. Although he left the EFI (along with Polak). However:

�Cogen remains in contact with the Zionist lobby. The 2013 annual report of NGO Monitor lists him as a member of its legal advisory board. Run by Israeli academic Gerard Steinberg, NGO Monitor is dedicated to preserving Israel as an apartheid state, in which Palestinians face systematic discrimination. It campaigns against the public financing of human rights and peace activists who promote a �one-state solution� based on full equality for Jews, Muslims, Christians and non-believers, accusing such activists of striving to �eliminate� Israel.�

After the end of the second intifada, the Israeli arms industry picked up again. The EFI received support from the (re)emerging industry:

�During the first nine months of 2006, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) reported a profit of $115 million, a 247 per cent increase over the same period in 2005. As one of the largest suppliers of weapons to the Israeli military, IAI evidently did well from the attack on Lebanon in the summer of that year. The offensive enabled Israel to �battle-test� its armed drones for the first time. Since then IAI has become one of the world�s top drone manufacturers.

IAI (then called Israel Aircraft Industries) was among the sponsors for the EFI�s launch; the company�s information stall can be seen in a video taken at the event. Stuart Polak, meanwhile, doubles up as an arms industry lobbyist. The Westminster Connection, a consulting firm that he set up, puts �defence� at the top of the list of the sectors to which it has provided advice. Elbit, another Israeli warplane-maker, has been named by The Sunday Times as one of his clients.�

One of the most influential lobbying Groups in the US is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC has had some influence on EFI. Ranaan Eliaz a former staff member of AIPAC in 2004 was involved in the creation of EFI. Dimitri Dombret, EFI�s first director confirmed �that he had met AIPAC representatives in Washington a number of times. More recently, EFI has sent as many as 70 delegates to the annual AIPAC conference.� Elinadav Heymann, the group�s current director, had spoke �at a side event held during the conference in March 2014.�

As EFI gained a secure foothold within EU affairs it started attracting some big business backers. Yaron (Ronny) Bruckner, one of EFI�s founders had become administrator of the Group before his death. He had founded a company called Eastbridge. At the same time �Marc Grosman became EFI�s vice-president and treasurer.� He had served on Eastbridge�s supervisory board.

Another prominent member of EFI is Vladimir Sloutsker, the EFI�s president. He is also a co-founder and President of the Israeli Jewish congress and was vice president of the European Jewish congress:

�A Russian senator from 2002 to 2006, he has a background in banking and private equity. He also has a reputation for giving generous assistance to causes and individuals. He reportedly donated $250,000 per year to the Russian Jewish Congress in 2005 and 2006.�

Another key supporter of EFI was Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford, who defied party policy by aligning herself with the far right in the EU. She is also involved in a pro Zionist faction within the Lib Dems.

EFI began to focus on achieving closer trade ties between the EU and Israel. This was achieved with the Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA), which was the culmination of a sequence of agreements designed to pivot Israel into the EU single market. It has also established close relations with openly racist politicians from Israel:

�In April 2014, EFI hosted a lunch for Naftali Bennett, Israel�s economy minister. The leader of the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party, Bennett had been a vociferous opponent of EU moves during 2013 to bar firms and institutions based in Israel�s West Bank settlements from receiving scientific research grants. Settlers should respond to such efforts with �more kids, more trees, more vineyards, more homes� on occupied Palestinian land, he argued. Bennett�s advocacy of perpetual colonisation did not deter Sarah Ludford from dining with him in a gesture of solidarity despite how she had previously acknowledged that the settlements are illegal.�

David Rotem was another close ally of EFI. He represents the far-right Yisrael Beitenu (Israel Our Home) party and is a Knesset member:

�Described as a �one-man legislative machine� in Max Blumenthal�s book Goliath, Rotem has authored a series of measures aimed at making Palestinians face new types of discrimination. Among them were a bill requiring Palestinian citizens of Israel to sign an oath of allegiance to a �Jewish and democratic state� and a ban on funding organisations deemed to clash with Israeli values. The latter initiative was originally known as the �Nakba law� after the Arabic word for catastrophe; it targeted Palestinian groups who held events which recognised that some 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in the Nakba, the wave of ethnic cleansing at the time of Israel�s establishment in 1948.�

Rotems� association with EFI was arranged by Dutch MEP Bastiaan Belder, a Christian Zionist, who �has supported almost every Israeli act of aggression. Israel, he has claimed, displayed a �real concern for Palestinian lives� when it bombed Gaza for three consecutive weeks in late 2008 and early 2009. �Look at all the precautions they [Israel] took during the operation,� he added.�

He was also serving chair of the European Parliament�s committee, tasked with handling its relations with the Knesset, along with other members of EFI, who sit on the Parliament�s official delegation to Israel.

EFI is closely linked to the Israeli Embassy in Brussels:

�At least three of the staff in Israel�s Brussels embassy have been assigned the task of cultivating a good relationship with MEPs. One of the three, David Saranga, has trained EFI staff on how to make optimal use of �social media� websites like Twitter and Facebook. And when Israel began a new round of airstrikes against Gaza in October 2012, Saranga travelled to Strasbourg, where the Parliament was meeting, so that he could brief EFI stalwarts. His key messages were that Israel was seeking to avoid harming civilians and that it was providing Gaza with humanitarian assistance. Both messages were dishonest: Israel soon launched an all-out attack, while Israel�s siege of Gaza has created a situation where 80 per cent of its inhabitants have become dependent on aid for survival.�

Saranga has also been �portrayed as a �rebranding� specialist by The Jewish Chronicle. During a previous stint as a media officer in Israel�s New York consulate, he placed a feature in �lad�s magazine� Maxim in which women who had served in the Israeli military were photographed in skimpy swimwear.�

By 2013, EFI had adopted the �tricks of the trade�. It went out of its way to push �brand Israel�. In so doing it hosted �a conference within the European Parliament titled �Humanitarian aid � Israel as a world leader�.�

As part of its PR campaign it claimed that �whenever disasters occur around the world, Israel has teams ready to assist rescue efforts. One of these teams was first on the ground after an earthquake devastated Haiti in 2010, invitees were informed�. The PR blurb is also played out on social media.

The EFI has now become a powerful voice and vehicle for the pro Israel lobby within the EU. As Cronin sums up in his article:

�Its ability to convince elected representatives to bolster an apartheid state indicates it is a very dangerous organisation.�

Part 2

Peter Hitchens � Daily Mail Sept 8, 2018

In a chilly, high-ceilinged room in a Sussex preparatory school in the winter of 1959, I work intently on my model of the destroyer HMS Cossack. Such models come in lurid cardboard boxes illustrated with pictures of aircraft, tanks and warships, amid scenes of fiery melodrama, guns emitting orange streaks of flame, and the smoke of battle. With these and our imaginations, we seek to recreate the thrill of the war we have just missed, in which our fathers fought and our mothers endured privations.

This is a war just over the horizon of time in which we wish we had taken part, and which dominates our boyish minds above all things. Courage in pursuit of goodness, in the face of a terrible enemy, was what we most believed in. Even the Crucifixion grew pale and faint in the lurid light of air raids and great columns of burning oil at Dunkirk.

But the Second World War, like all events that have become myths, has become a dangerous subject. As a nation, we are enthralled by the belief that it was an unequivocally �Good War�, a belief that has grown with extraordinary speed. Yet I did not have to look far to see a rather different picture. My parents were brought together by the tempest of that war and were marked by it for the rest of their lives.

British troops cheer the news on May 8, 1945, that the war in Europe is over. Click to enlarge

My father, Commander Eric Hitchens, who served in the Royal Navy for 30 years, was never wholly sure who had won. He neither felt he was living in a victorious country nor felt it had rewarded him justly. I remember well how, sometimes, late in the evening, he would look thoughtfully into the middle distance and say: �Ah, well, we won the war� or did we?�

My mother, too, who had served in the Women�s Royal Naval Service and endured the Blitz, experienced the peacetime of victory as a disappointment, into which the ghosts of a more inspiring past sometimes intruded quite a lot.

Enough time has surely passed for us to admit that the military and political conduct of the war by our leaders was not always as good as it should have been, that the �Good War� was often incompetently fought, with outdated equipment, by a country in decline. Events of the war, often minimised or avoided in popular or school histories, reveal a country seeking to be more important, rich and powerful than it was, and failing in all cases.

The myth that it was all glorious, and that it saved the world, is a comforting old muffler keeping out the clammy draughts of economic failure and political weakness.

Even today, the self-flattering fantasy that we won it, and the nonsensical but common belief that we did so more or less alone, still leads to foolish economic and diplomatic policies based on a huge overestimate of our real significance as a country. One day, this dangerous fable of the glorious anti-fascist war against evil may destroy us simply because we have a government too vain and inexperienced to restrain itself. That is why it is so important to dispel it.

The myths go right back to the start of the war. The uncomfortable truth is that from the very beginning, it was Britain which sought a conflict with Germany, not Germany with Britain. Hitler�s real targets lay elsewhere, in Ukraine and Russia, and he was much less interested in us than we like to think.

Nor did we go to war, as many like to believe, to save or even help the endangered Jews of Europe. The veteran Labour MP Frank Field�s claim in his recent resignation letter that �Britain fought the Second World War to banish these [anti-Semitic] views from our politics� is the most recent example of this common but mistaken belief.

Britain simply did not declare war in 1939 to save Europe�s Jews � indeed, our government was indifferent to their plight and blocked one of their main escape routes, to what was then British-ruled Palestine. We also did nothing to help Poland, for whose sake we supposedly declared war.

Forget, too, the �special relationship� with the US: America was a jealous and resentful rival to whom we ceded our global status and naval supremacy. And Washington�s grudging backing came at a huge price � we were made to hand over the life savings of the Empire to stave off bankruptcy and surrender.

Even the threat of a German invasion was never a reality, more a convenient idea which suited the propaganda purposes of Hitler and Churchill. What began as a phoney war led in the end to a phoney victory, in which the real winners were Washington and Moscow, not us � and an unsatisfactory, uncomfortable and unhappy peace.

It led to a permanent decline in our status and a much accelerated, violent and badly managed collapse of our Empire.

I recently obtained, long after his death, the medal my father should have received for his service on the Russian convoys while he was still alive. It came in a cheap plastic case, like a tourist trinket, emphasising our decline in the long years since. Beyond doubt, there were many acts of noble courage by our people, civilians and servicemen and women during that war. It is absolutely not my purpose to diminish these acts or to show disrespect to those who fought and endured.

Eric Hitchens features in the front row, second left, as a naval officer in Malta in about 1950. Click to enlarge

But the sad truth is that this country deliberately sought a war in the vain hope of preserving a Great Power status our rulers knew in their hearts it had already lost. The resulting war turned us into a second-rate power.

MYTH 1: WE WERE FORCED INTO WAR BY THE GERMANS

Britain actively sought a war with Germany from the moment Hitler invaded Prague in March 1939. Even before then, there were powerful voices in the Foreign Office urging the need to assert ourselves as a Great Power.

Poland was a pretext for that war, not a reason � as was demonstrated by the fact that we did nothing to help Poland when Hitler invaded. It was an excuse for an essentially irrational, idealistic, nostalgic impulse, built largely on a need to assert Britain�s standing as a Great Power.

This goes against everything we�ve been taught to believe. But the behaviour of the Foreign Office between March 1939 � when Britain pledged to guarantee Polish independence in the Anglo-Polish alliance � and the declaration of war in September 1939 strongly backs this up. Lord Halifax�s Foreign Office, contrary to the myth that it was a nest of appeasement, had for some time been keen on a showdown with Germany, despite our grave military weakness. During this period, British officialdom descended into childish frenzies over baseless frights about non-existent German invasions of several countries in Europe.

One such scare may have actually given Hitler the idea for threatening Czechoslovakia, until then not one of his major objectives. He then began, for the first time, to consider such a policy seriously.

As for Poland, Warsaw�s military government had, since 1934, had surprisingly good relations with Hitler. And many in Britain feared there was a real possibility Poland might make a deal with Germany, leaving Britain with no immediate reason to go to war in Europe.

At the end of March 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was reported to be �uneasy� that our Ambassador in Warsaw could obtain no information as to the progress of negotiations during this time between Germany and Poland. Simon Newman, in his book March 1939: The British Guarantee To Poland, records Chamberlain telling the Cabinet on March 30, 1939, of his fears Polish negotiators were giving way to Germany. The British government, so often portrayed as anxious for a way out of war, was worried it would be cheated out of a confrontation it wanted to have.

The British people, who had mostly supported the Munich climbdown in September 1938, and turned out in their thousands to cheer it, were now persuaded war was at least a tolerable policy. This was achieved by the dubious claim we must stand firm over Poland or lose all honour.

How strange, in retrospect, that the USA managed to remain aloof from all this and came out of the war stronger and richer rather than (as we did) weaker and poorer, and seldom if ever, has it had its honour impugned for waiting till it was ready to fight. Might we, too, have done better to wait?

The Polish guarantee transformed Britain from a nervous spectator of central European diplomatic manoeuvres into an active participant, reluctantly but resolutely accepting the need for war.

MYTH 2: POLAND WAS A BASTION OF DEMOCRACY

From the outbreak of war to the surrender of Warsaw in 1939 and the disappearance soon afterwards of the entire Polish nation, we did nothing to help the Poles. Cabinet minutes ahead of the declaration of war reveal a refusal to discuss the fact that British forces were quite incapable of coming to Poland�s aid if it were attacked. Why? Because, although we wanted war, we never intended to fight.

Poland mattered hardly at all to the government. Britain had no major interests in Poland, which was not a particularly democratic or free country. Since a violent military putsch in May 1926, Poland had been an authoritarian state without true free elections.

In 1939, it was not the martyred hero nation, champion of freedom, justice and democracy, of propaganda myth. It was deeply anti-Semitic in practice. Far from being �Plucky Little Poland�, Warsaw�s military junta selfishly joined in with the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia after Munich.

The truth is our over-confident and poorly informed government believed blockade and the economic and numerical superiority of France and Britain would teach Germany a lesson about the limits of power and force Hitler to negotiate. Yet our supposedly moral position involved knowingly giving a false promise to a country we did not much like or trust.

MYTH 3: WE FOUGHT TO PROTECT THE JEWS

The industrial mass murder of European Jews did not begin until after the war had started. It may even have been made easier by the night and fog of secrecy which war makes possible.

For years before the war, the persecution of Jews in German territory was obvious to the world and nobody doubted that the Nazi state was directly responsible. Yet we did not go to war or even break off diplomatic relations.

Even the complete unmasking of the Nazis� murderous intentions towards Europe�s Jews during the Kristallnacht pogroms of November 9-10, 1938, does not feature anywhere in explanations of British, French or American changes of foreign policy towards Germany.

Britain and other free countries took in very few fleeing Jews, even in the much celebrated Kindertransport programme. It had, in fact, severely restricted Jewish migration to Palestine following Arab and Muslim pressure, just when they most needed such a refuge.

Nobody could have known this would end in the extermination camps. Yet, when confronted with undoubted evidence of the Holocaust, later in the war, Britain and the US took no direct action to prevent it. The official view remained throughout that the best response to this horror would be to win the war, which was what the various governments involved were already seeking to do anyway.

MYTH 4: CHAMBERLAIN WAS NOTHING BUT AN APPEASER

The Left still like to think that it was their outrage at Hitler which finally drove the appeasers, including Chamberlain, into action.

But it was Chamberlain�s Tories who rearmed the country and manoeuvred Britain into its first People�s War. Despite the Munich Agreement of 1938, when Chamberlain returned to London to rapturous crowds following a negotiated peace with Hitler, he had already begun an ambitious programme of rearmament, including the development of radar capabilities.

By the summer of 1939, he was quietly certain of war because, heavily influenced by the other supposed pacific appeaser, Lord Halifax, he had decided to bring it about. To reassert Britain�s status as a Great Power, there must be war or at least a declaration. No doubt he hoped and expected that it would be either brief or static, confined to the high seas. Crucially, the rearming was not intended for a continental land war but for imperial and national defence. But without it, we would have been sunk.

Expenditure on the Navy increased from �56,626,000 in 1934-5 to �149,339,000 in 1939-40. The naval building programme from 1936 to 1939 included six capital ships, six aircraft carriers, 25 cruisers, 49 destroyers and 22 submarines.

Army spending rose from �39,604,000 in 1934-5 to �227,261,000 in 1939-40. RAF spending went up from �17,617,000 to �248,561,000 in the same period. All these figures are equivalent to many billions now. Labour opposed almost all this rearmament at the time, only later claiming the moral high ground.

MYTH 5: WE STOOD ALONE AGAINST THE NAZI MENACE

The whole edifice of modern British patriotism and pride is based upon the belief that Britain stood alone against the Nazi menace after the fall of France. But it is a romantic myth. Not only did French and Belgian troops (often wholly selflessly) help British troops to escape through Dunkirk, but Britain also had a large and loyal Empire behind it throughout the war. And the part we played after 1940 is far less than we would have liked. Just nine months after it had begun, Britain had lost the war it declared. It had been driven from continental Europe, penniless and stripped of most of its military hardware.

British troops would not be in contact with the main body of the principal enemy again for four whole years � in a six-year war. Our role on land, between 1940 and 1944 in colonial or sideshow wars on the fringes of the conflict and even after D-Day, was as an increasingly junior partner to the USA and the USSR.

The prospect of peace with Germany on humiliating terms would linger like a nasty smell until the Battle of Stalingrad and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor made eventual German defeat certain. In the end, we were rescued by others, and remain rescued � perhaps more rescued than many of us would like.

MYTH 6: THE LOOMING SHADOW OF INVASION

The threat of German invasion was never a reality but served as propaganda which suited both Hitler and Churchill at the time.

For Hitler it was a way of persuading a battered, unhappy British populace to press their leaders to give in. For Churchill, more successfully, it was a way to raise morale, production and military effectiveness by creating an atmosphere of tension and danger.

Despite their might on land, the Germans in 1940 did not possess a single landing craft, as we understand the term. Their small navy had been devastated by the Norwegian campaign, losing ten destroyers in two battles at Narvik. There had never been sufficient concentrations of German troops in France for such a huge operation. Hitler�s famous directive of July 16, 1940, sounds menacing because of its use of the deeply shocking phrase �to occupy [England] completely�. But it is subtly cautious, plainly intended to persuade Britain to �come to terms�.

Hitler was cool towards an invasion, and serious plans for a cross-Channel attack were sketchy. Major forces were never assembled or trained for such an enormous and risky operation.

But appearances had to be maintained. In the post-Dunkirk months, Germany attacked coastal convoys, military industries and eventually centres of population.

British pilots, and allies of many nations fought with extreme bravery in the air in 1940. But the belief it was an all-or-nothing struggle in which every sinew was strained is undermined by the fact that in September 1940, 30 Hurricanes, with their pilots, were ordered to Khartoum in the Sudan.

Tellingly, too, Churchill�s private secretary, Jock Colville, heard the premier refer to �the great invasion scare� in conversation with Generals Paget and Auchinleck in July 1940, and imply that it was serving a useful purpose.

Later actions we took, especially the bombing of German civilians from 1942 to 1945, are often justified by the plea that our very existence was in peril when by then it was not. Hitler�s real aim, especially after 1941, was the conquest of Ukraine and Russia.

MYTH 7: WE CAN THANK THE �SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP�

Hitler had well-founded suspicions that the USA, far from being a friend to this country, was hostile to and jealous of the British Empire. Indeed, the Anglo-American alliance refused to solidify as long as Britain still appeared to Americans as a selfish, mean and bullying Great Power quite capable of looking after itself. Attitudes began to change only when Britain, admitting it was running out of money, came to America�s doorstep as a penniless supplicant, offering America the chance to save the world.

The extraordinary (and all but unknown) transfer of Britain�s gold to the USA throughout 1939 and 1940 was the lasting proof that a deliberate, harsh British humiliation had to precede any real alliance. The stripping of Britain�s life savings was an enormous event.

Secret convoys of warships were hurrying across the Atlantic loaded down with Britain�s gold reserves and packed with stacks of negotiable paper securities, first to Canada and then to Fort Knox in Kentucky, where much of it still remains. It was not for safekeeping, but to pay for the war. Before Britain could become the USA�s pensioner, we had to prove we had nothing left to sell.

The �Lend-Lease� system, which provided limited American material aid to Britain, was far from the act of selfless generosity Churchill proclaimed it to be. Even the Americans� Bill had a gloating, anti-British tinge, given the number H.R. 1776 in reference to the year of the US Declaration of Independence.

The Destroyers for Bases Agreement, too, was quite grudging. It led to 50 decrepit American First World War destroyers being handed over in return for the USA obtaining bases in several British territories on the Western side of the Atlantic.

This shocking surrender of sovereignty indicates Britain was, piece by piece, handing naval and imperial supremacy to its former colony. It symbolises the true relationship between the USA and Britain in the post-Dunkirk months, as opposed to the sentimental fable still believed.

MYTH 8: BRITISH BOMBING OF GERMANY WAS JUSTIFIED

MANY believe British bombing in the Second World War killed German civilians only by accident, in what would now be called �collateral damage�. But documents and recorded remarks reveal this was not so.

The policy of bombing German civilians, mostly working-class opponents of Hitler in dense, poor housing, was adopted after a confidential report showed the RAF simply could not bomb accurately by night. Bombing was not confined to such moments as the Hamburg and Dresden firestorms but sustained and directed at almost every major German city.

None of the justifications for this policy stands up. It did surprisingly little damage to German war production. It was incredibly wasteful of the brave young aircrews, who had no choice in the matter, who died in appalling numbers night after night.

It did not save us from invasion. Systematic large-scale bombing did not really begin until March 1943, by which time Hitler was in retreat in the East and in no position to invade Britain.

While it did draw guns and planes from the Eastern Front, the same effect would have been achieved by attacks on military and industrial sites, which were highly effective when tried, and would have ended the war much more quickly.

It also removed vital aircraft from the Battle of the Atlantic, in which the Royal Navy grappled with German U-boats and came dangerously close to defeat. This is not hindsight. Powerful voices were raised against it at the time, some on moral grounds, some pointing out that it was militarily unjustified. But they were over-ruled and mocked.

MYTH 9: HEROIC BRITAIN WON THE WAR

Britain played a surprisingly small part in the overthrow of Hitler. It was not British troops who stormed Hitler�s bunker or planted their flag on the ruins of the Reichstag.

Chamberlain and Daladier, the French Prime Minister, started a war which Stalin and Roosevelt would later take over and finish. It destroyed the Third Reich and created a new order in Europe in which Britain and France would be second-rate powers.

It may be the only case in history of a second-hand war being taken over by other belligerents and used for their own purposes. Certainly, Britain and France did not achieve their aim in declaring war. Both sought to stay in the club of Great Powers and found themselves being asked to leave.

The devastating cultural revolution of the past 50 years would not have happened in a country where the victorious governing classes were confident and assured. And our absorption into the EU � which is the continuation of Germany by other means � is not the fate of a dominant victor nation.

MYTH 10: WE WERE GLORIOUS IN VICTORY

The general impression is that the end of hostilities brought a new sunlit era of optimism in a ravaged continent. Yet victory led swiftly to an appeasement of Stalin at least as bad as our appeasement of Hitler in 1938, with nations handed over bound and gagged to the Kremlin�s secret police regime. And the following months and years brought death on a colossal scale, of which we nowadays know almost nothing.

Under the Potsdam Agreement, between 12 and 14 million ethnic Germans were driven from Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. We shall never know how many died � estimates vary from 500,000 to 1.5 million. Most were women and children, defenceless civilians. In one incident, 265 Germans, including 120 women and 74 children, were killed by Czech troops. They were removed from a train, shot in the back of the neck and buried in a mass grave they had been forced to dig.

These disgusting slaughters were not the result of enraged citizens taking their revenge on former oppressors, but state-sponsored and centrally controlled. There are many more examples, but most of them, recorded in Professor R. M. Douglas�s harrowing and distressing book Orderly And Humane (the phrase comes from the Potsdam Agreement itself) are known, in this country at least, only to professional historians.

A whole page of horror in European history, from which we have much to learn, has been erased. And, as so often in these matters, those who raise these matters can expect to be falsely accused of minimising the crimes of the Nazis, as some in Germany have sought to do. But this is a stupid lie.

As Prof Douglas says: �Whatever occurred after the war cannot possibly be equated to the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans during it, and suggestions to the contrary are deeply offensive and historically illiterate.� But the fact that a respectable academic has to make this point illustrates how very difficult it still is, nearly 80 years later, to look objectively at the Second World War.

Later still, as our diminished power and influence became clear in so many ways, the ghost of our 1940 defeat � and the necessary but reluctant compromises we had to make in order to survive it � still haunts our lives.

The most popular film in British cinemas of summer 2017 was Dunkirk. But it made no attempt to explain to a new generation why the entire British Army was standing up to its armpits in salt water, being strafed by the German air force, having wrecked, burned or dumped arms and equipment worth billions in today�s money.

Nobody wants to know. Perhaps it is time they did.

Source

England our England

By

Reason No 288 (out of 300 reasons)

FROM

It's one of Europe's most proudly liberal nations. So why is Denmark

banning the burka and

threatening to end benefits for migrants whose children

don't integrate?

At last! A man who dares to tell the truth about race: Ex-race tsar says silencing of debate has done devastating harm to Britain

The Muslim cleric who blames British mosques for the 7/7 bombings, says multiculturalism is a disaster and would throw Islamic fanatics out