CAREFUL - HOT WATER - JEWISH RELIGIOUS HATRED WARNING!!
Inflammatory pictures are intentional to get you thinking!
A Jewish Defector Warns America
Benjamin H. Freedman
Benjamin H. Freedman was one of the most intriguing and amazing individuals of the 20th century. Mr. Freedman, born in 1890, was a successful Jewish businessman of New York City who was at one time the principal owner of the Woodbury Soap Company. He broke with organized Jewry after the Judeo-Communist victory of 1945, and spent the remainder of his life and the great preponderance of his considerable fortune, at least 2.5 million dollars, exposing the Jewish tyranny which has enveloped the United States. Mr. Freedman knew what he was talking about because he had been an insider at the highest levels of Jewish organizations and Jewish machinations to gain power over our nation. Mr. Freedman was personally acquainted with Bernard Baruch, Samuel Untermyer, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy, and many more movers and shakers of our times. This speech was given before a patriotic audience in 1961 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Conde McGinley's patriotic newspaper of that time, Common Sense. Though in some minor ways this wide-ranging and extemporaneous speech has become dated, Mr. Freedman's essential message to us — his warning to the West — is more urgent than ever before.
The audio of the speech in its entirety is 87 minutes long:
Here in the United States, the Zionists and their co-religionists have complete control of our government. For many reasons, too many and too complex to go into here at this time, the Zionists and their co- religionists rule these United States as though they were the absolute monarchs of this country. Now you may say that is a very broad statement, but let me show you what happened while we were all asleep.
What happened? World War I broke out in the summer of 1914. There are few people here my age who remember that. Now that war was waged on one side by Great Britain, France, and Russia; and on the other side by Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey.
Within two years Germany had won that war: not only won it nominally, but won it actually. The German submarines, which were a surprise to the world, had swept all the convoys from the Atlantic Ocean. Great Britain stood there without ammunition for her soldiers, with one week's food supply — and after that, starvation. At that time, the French army had mutinied. They had lost 600,000 of the flower of French youth in the defense of Verdun on the Somme. The Russian army was defecting, they were picking up their toys and going home, they didn't want to play war anymore, they didn't like the Czar. And the Italian army had collapsed.
Not a shot had been fired on German soil. Not one enemy soldier had crossed the border into Germany. And yet, Germany was offering England peace terms. They offered England a negotiated peace on what the lawyers call a status quo ante basis. That means: "Let's call the war off, and let everything be as it was before the war started." England, in the summer of 1916 was considering that — seriously. They had no choice. It was either accepting this negotiated peace that Germany was magnanimously offering them, or going on with the war and being totally defeated.
While that was going on, the Zionists in Germany, who represented the Zionists from Eastern Europe, went to the British War Cabinet and — I am going to be brief because it's a long story, but I have all the documents to prove any statement that I make — they said: "Look here. You can yet win this war. You don't have to give up. You don't have to accept the negotiated peace offered to you now by Germany. You can win this war if the United States will come in as your ally." The United States was not in the war at that time. We were fresh; we were young; we were rich; we were powerful. They told England: "We will guarantee to bring the United States into the war as your ally, to fight with you on your side, if you will promise us Palestine after you win the war." In other words, they made this deal: "We will get the United States into this war as your ally. The price you must pay is Palestine after you have won the war and defeated Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey." Now England had as much right to promise Palestine to anybody, as the United States would have to promise Japan to Ireland for any reason whatsoever. It's absolutely absurd that Great Britain, that never had any connection or any interest or any right in what is known as Palestine should offer it as coin of the realm to pay the Zionists for bringing the United States into the war. However, they did make that promise, in October of 1916. And shortly after that — I don't know how many here remember it — the United States, which was almost totally pro-German, entered the war as Britain's ally.
I say that the United States was almost totally pro-German because the newspapers here were controlled by Jews, the bankers were Jews, all the media of mass communications in this country were controlled by Jews; and they, the Jews, were pro-German. They were pro-German because many of them had come from Germany, and also they wanted to see Germany lick the Czar. The Jews didn't like the Czar, and they didn't want Russia to win this war. These German-Jew bankers, like Kuhn Loeb and the other big banking firms in the United States refused to finance France or England to the extent of one dollar. They stood aside and they said: "As long as France and England are tied up with Russia, not one cent!" But they poured money into Germany, they fought beside Germany against Russia, trying to lick the Czarist regime.
Now those same Jews, when they saw the possibility of getting Palestine, went to England and they made this deal. At that time, everything changed, like a traffic light that changes from red to green. Where the newspapers had been all pro-German, where they'd been telling the people of the difficulties that Germany was having fighting Great Britain commercially and in other respects, all of a sudden the Germans were no good. They were villains. They were Huns. They were shooting Red Cross nurses. They were cutting off babies' hands. They were no good. Shortly after that, Mr. Wilson declared war on Germany.
The Zionists in London had sent cables to the United States, to Justice Brandeis, saying "Go to work on President Wilson. We're getting from England what we want. Now you go to work on President Wilson and get the United States into the war." That's how the United States got into the war. We had no more interest in it; we had no more right to be in it than we have to be on the moon tonight instead of in this room. There was absolutely no reason for World War I to be our war. We were railroaded into — if I can be vulgar, we were suckered into — that war merely so that the Zionists of the world could obtain Palestine. That is something that the people of the United States have never been told. They never knew why we went into World War I.
After we got into the war, the Zionists went to Great Britain and they said: "Well, we performed our part of the agreement. Let's have something in writing that shows that you are going to keep your bargain and give us Palestine after you win the war." They didn't know whether the war would last another year or another ten years. So they started to work out a receipt. The receipt took the form of a letter, which was worded in very cryptic language so that the world at large wouldn't know what it was all about. And that was called the Balfour Declaration.
The Balfour Declaration was merely Great Britain's promise to pay the Zionists what they had agreed upon as a consideration for getting the United States into the war. So this great Balfour Declaration, that you hear so much about, is just as phony as a three dollar bill. I don't think I could make it more emphatic than that.
That is where all the trouble started. The United States got in the war. The United States crushed Germany. You know what happened. When the war ended, and the Germans went to Paris for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 there were 117 Jews there, as a delegation representing the Jews, headed by Bernard Baruch. I was there: I ought to know. Now what happened? The Jews at that peace conference, when they were cutting up Germany and parceling out Europe to all these nations who claimed a right to a certain part of European territory, said, "How about Palestine for us?" And they produced, for the first time to the knowledge of the Germans, this Balfour Declaration. So the Germans, for the first time realized, "Oh, so that was the game! That's why the United States came into the war." The Germans for the first time realized that they were defeated, they suffered the terrific reparations that were slapped onto them, because the Zionists wanted Palestine and were determined to get it at any cost.
(this one is quite interesting actually, google it!)
That brings us to another very interesting point. When the Germans realized this, they naturally resented it. Up to that time, the Jews had never been better off in any country in the world than they had been in Germany. You had Mr. Rathenau there, who was maybe 100 times as important in industry and finance as is Bernard Baruch in this country. You had Mr. Balin, who owned the two big steamship lines, the North German Lloyd's and the Hamburg-American Lines. You had Mr. Bleichroder, who was the banker for the Hohenzollern family. You had the Warburgs in Hamburg, who were the big merchant bankers — the biggest in the world. The Jews were doing very well in Germany. No question about that. The Germans felt: "Well, that was quite a sellout."
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It was a sellout that might be compared to this hypothetical situation: Suppose the United States was at war with the Soviet Union. And we were winning. And we told the Soviet Union: "Well, let's quit. We offer you peace terms. Let's forget the whole thing." And all of a sudden Red China came into the war as an ally of the Soviet Union. And throwing them into the war brought about our defeat. A crushing defeat, with reparations the likes of which man's imagination cannot encompass. Imagine, then, after that defeat, if we found out that it was the Chinese in this country, our Chinese citizens, who all the time we had thought were loyal citizens working with us, were selling us out to the Soviet Union and that it was through them that Red China was brought into the war against us. How would we feel, then, in the United States against Chinese? I don't think that one of them would dare show his face on any street. There wouldn't be enough convenient lampposts to take care of them. Imagine how we would feel.
Well, that's how the Germans felt towards these Jews. They'd been so nice to them: from 1905 on, when the first Communist revolution in Russia failed, and the Jews had to scramble out of Russia, they all went to Germany. And Germany gave them refuge. And they were treated very nicely. And here they had sold Germany down the river for no reason at all other than the fact that they wanted Palestine as a so-called "Jewish commonwealth."
Now Nahum Sokolow, and all the great leaders and great names that you read about in connection with Zionism today, in 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, and 1923 wrote in all their papers — and the press was filled with their statements — that the feeling against the Jews in Germany is due to the fact that they realized that this great defeat was brought about by Jewish intercession in bringing the United States into the war. The Jews themselves admitted that. It wasn't that the Germans in 1919 discovered that a glass of Jewish blood tasted better than Coca-Cola or Muenschner Beer. There was no religious feeling. There was no sentiment against those people merely on account of their religious belief. It was all political. It was economic. It was anything but religious. Nobody cared in Germany whether a Jew went home and pulled down the shades and said "Shema' Yisroel" or "Our Father." Nobody cared in Germany any more than they do in the United States. Now this feeling that developed later in Germany was due to one thing: the Germans held the Jews responsible for their crushing defeat.
And World War I had been started against Germany for no reason for which Germany was responsible. They were guilty of nothing. Only of being successful. They built up a big navy. They built up world trade. You must remember that Germany at the time of the French Revolution consisted of 300 small city-states, principalities, dukedoms, and so forth. Three hundred separate little political entities. And between that time, between the times of Napoleon and Bismarck, they were consolidated into one state. And within 50 years they became one of the world's great powers. Their navy was rivaling Great Britain's, they were doing business all over the world, they could undersell anybody, they could make better products. What happened as a result of that?
There was a conspiracy between England, France, and Russia to slap down Germany. There isn't one historian in the world who can find a valid reason why those three countries decided to wipe Germany off the map politically.
When Germany realized that the Jews were responsible for her defeat, they naturally resented it. But not a hair on the head of any Jew was harmed. Not a single hair. Professor Tansill, of Georgetown University, who had access to all the secret papers of the State Department, wrote in his book, and quoted from a State Department document written by Hugo Schoenfelt, a Jew whom Cordell Hull sent to Europe in 1933 to investigate the so-called camps of political prisoners, who wrote back that he found them in very fine condition. They were in excellent shape, with everybody treated well. And they were filled with Communists. Well, a lot of them were Jews, because the Jews happened to comprise about 98 per cent of the Communists in Europe at that time. And there were some priests there, and ministers, and labor leaders, and Masons, and others who had international affiliations.
Some background is in order: In 1918-1919 the Communists took over Bavaria for a few days. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht and a group of other Jews took over the government for three days. In fact, when the Kaiser ended the war he fled to Holland because he thought the Communists were going to take over Germany as they did Russia and that he was going to meet the same fate as the Czar. So he fled to Holland for safety, for security. After the Communist threat in Germany was quashed, the Jews were still working, trying to get back into their former status, and the Germans fought them in every way they could without hurting a single hair on anyone's head. They fought them the same way that, in this country, the Prohibitionists fought anyone who was interested in liquor. They didn't fight one another with pistols. Well, that's the way they were fighting the Jews in Germany. And at that time, mind you, there were 80 to 90 million Germans, and there were only 460,000 Jews. About one half of one per cent of the population of Germany were Jews. And yet they controlled all the press, and they controlled most of the economy because they had come in with cheap money when the mark was devalued and bought up practically everything.
Israeli Tank Merkava
The Jews tried to keep a lid on this fact. They didn't want the world to really understand that they had sold out Germany, and that the Germans resented that. [...]1
After a while, the Jews of the world called a meeting in Amsterdam. Jews from every country in the world attended this meeting in July 1933. And they said to Germany: "You fire Hitler, and you put every Jew back into his former position, whether he was a Communist or no matter what he was. You can't treat us that way. And we, the Jews of the world, are serving an ultimatum upon you." You can imagine what the Germans told them. So what did the Jews do?
US citizen Rachel Corrie was killed by Caterpillar Bulldozer driven by Israeli Military occupation.
In 1933, when Germany refused to surrender to the world conference of Jews in Amsterdam, the conference broke up, and Mr. Samuel Untermyer, who was the head of the American delegation and the president of the whole conference, came to the United States and went from the steamer to the studios of the Columbia Broadcasting System and made a radio broadcast throughout the United States in which he in effect said, "The Jews of the world now declare a Holy War against Germany. We are now engaged in a sacred conflict against the Germans. And we are going to starve them into surrender. We are going to use a world-wide boycott against them. That will destroy them because they are dependent upon their export business." And it is a fact that two thirds of Germany's food supply had to be imported, and it could only be imported with the proceeds of what they exported. So if Germany could not export, two thirds of Germany's population would have to starve. There was just not enough food for more than one third of the population. Now in this declaration, which I have here, and which was printed in the New York Times on August 7, 1933, Mr. Samuel Untermyer boldly stated that "this economic boycott is our means of self-defense. President Roosevelt has advocated its use in the National Recovery Administration," which some of you may remember, where everybody was to be boycotted unless he followed the rules laid down by the New Deal, and which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of that time. Nevertheless, the Jews of the world declared a boycott against Germany, and it was so effective that you couldn't find one thing in any store anywhere in the world with the words "made in Germany" on it. In fact, an executive of the Woolworth Company told me that they had to dump millions of dollars worth of crockery and dishes into the river; that their stores were boycotted if anyone came in and found a dish marked "made in Germany," they were picketed with signs saying "Hitler," "murderer," and so forth, something like these sit-ins that are taking place in the South. At a store belonging to the R. H. Macy chain, which was controlled by a family called Strauss who also happen to be Jews, a woman found stockings there which came from Chemnitz, marked "made in Germany." Well, they were cotton stockings and they may have been there 20 years, since I've been observing women's legs for many years and it's been a long time since I've seen any cotton stockings on them. I saw Macy's boycotted, with hundreds of people walking around with signs saying "murderers," "Hitlerites," and so forth. Now up to that time, not one hair on the head of any Jew had been hurt in Germany. There was no suffering, there was no starvation, there was no murder, there was nothing.
Naturally, the Germans said, "Who are these people to declare a boycott against us and throw all our people out of work, and make our industries come to a standstill? Who are they to do that to us?" They naturally resented it. Certainly they painted swastikas on stores owned by Jews. Why should a German go in and give his money to a storekeeper who was part of a boycott that was going to starve Germany into surrendering to the Jews of the world, who were going to dictate who their premier or chancellor was to be? Well, it was ridiculous.
The boycott continued for some time, but it wasn't until 1938, when a young Jew from Poland walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot a German official, that the Germans really started to get rough with the Jews in Germany. And you found them then breaking windows and having street fights and so forth.
Now I don't like to use the word "anti-Semitism" because it's meaningless, but it means something to you still, so I'll have to use it. The only reason that there was any feeling in Germany against Jews was that they were responsible for World War I and for this world-wide boycott. Ultimately they were also responsible for World War II, because after this thing got out of hand, it was absolutely necessary for the Jews and Germany to lock horns in a war to see which one was going to survive. In the meanwhile, I had lived in Germany, and I knew that the Germans had decided that Europe is going to be Christian or Communist: there is no in between. And the Germans decided they were going to keep it Christian if possible. And they started to re-arm. In November 1933 the United States recognized the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was becoming very powerful, and Germany realized that "Our turn was going to come soon, unless we are strong." The same as we in this country are saying today, "Our turn is going to come soon, unless we are strong." Our government is spending 83 or 84 billion dollars for defense. Defense against whom? Defense against 40,000 little Jews in Moscow that took over Russia, and then, in their devious ways, took over control of many other countries of the world.
For this country now to be on the verge of a Third World War, from which we cannot emerge a victor, is something that staggers my imagination. I know that nuclear bombs are measured in terms of megatons. A megaton is a term used to describe one million tons of TNT. Our nuclear bombs had a capacity of 10 megatons, or 10 million tons of TNT, when they were first developed. Now, the nuclear bombs that are being developed have a capacity of 200 megatons, and God knows how many megatons the nuclear bombs of the Soviet Union have.
King David Hotel (Irgun Terror)
What do we face now? If we trigger a world war that may develop into a nuclear war, humanity is finished. Why might such a war take place? It will take place as the curtain goes up on Act 3: Act 1 was World War I, Act 2 was World War II, Act 3 is going to be World War III. The Jews of the world, the Zionists and their co-religionists everywhere, are determined that they are going to again use the United States to help them permanently retain Palestine as their foothold for their world government. That is just as true as I am standing here. Not alone have I read it, but many here have also read it, and it is known all over the world.
What are we going to do? The life you save may be your son's. Your boys may be on their way to that war tonight; and you don't know it any more than you knew that in 1916 in London the Zionists made a deal with the British War Cabinet to send your sons to war in Europe. Did you know it at that time? Not a person in the United States knew it. You weren't permitted to know it. Who knew it? President Wilson knew it. Colonel House knew it. Other insiders knew it.
Did I know it? I had a pretty good idea of what was going on: I was liaison to Henry Morgenthau, Sr., in the 1912 campaign when President Wilson was elected, and there was talk around the office there. I was "confidential man" to Henry Morgenthau, Sr., who was chairman of the finance committee, and I was liaison between him and Rollo Wells, the treasurer. So I sat in these meetings with President Wilson at the head of the table, and all the others, and I heard them drum into President Wilson's brain the graduated income tax and what has become the Federal Reserve, and I heard them indoctrinate him with the Zionist movement. Justice Brandeis and President Wilson were just as close as the two fingers on this hand. President Woodrow Wilson was just as incompetent when it came to determining what was going on as a newborn baby. That is how they got us into World War I, while we all slept. They sent our boys over there to be slaughtered. For what? So the Jews can have Palestine as their "commonwealth." They've fooled you so much that you don't know whether you're coming or going.
Now any judge, when he charges a jury, says, "Gentlemen, any witness who you find has told a single lie, you can disregard all his testimony." I don't know what state you come from, but in New York state that is the way a judge addresses a jury. If that witness told one lie, disregard his testimony.
What are the facts about the Jews? [...]2 The eastern European Jews, who form 92 per cent of the world's population of those people who call themselves Jews, were originally Khazars. They were a warlike tribe who lived deep in the heart of Asia. And they were so warlike that even the Asiatics drove them out of Asia into eastern Europe. They set up a large Khazar kingdom of 800,000 square miles. At the time, Russia did not exist, nor did many other European countries. The Khazar kingdom was the biggest country in all Europe — so big and so powerful that when the other monarchs wanted to go to war, the Khazars would lend them 40,000 soldiers. That's how big and powerful they were.
They were phallic worshippers, which is filthy and I do not want to go into the details of that now. But that was their religion, as it was also the religion of many other pagans and barbarians elsewhere in the world. The Khazar king became so disgusted with the degeneracy of his kingdom that he decided to adopt a so-called monotheistic faith — either Christianity, Islam, or what is known today as Judaism, which is really Talmudism. By spinning a top, and calling out "eeny, meeny, miney, moe," he picked out so-called Judaism. And that became the state religion. He sent down to the Talmudic schools of Pumbedita and Sura and brought up thousands of rabbis, and opened up synagogues and schools, and his people became what we call Jews. There wasn't one of them who had an ancestor who ever put a toe in the Holy Land. Not only in Old Testament history, but back to the beginning of time. Not one of them! And yet they come to the Christians and ask us to support their armed insurrections in Palestine by saying, "You want to help repatriate God's Chosen People to their Promised Land, their ancestral home, don't you? It's your Christian duty. We gave you one of our boys as your Lord and Savior. You now go to church on Sunday, and you kneel and you worship a Jew, and we're Jews." But they are pagan Khazars who were converted just the same as the Irish were converted. It is as ridiculous to call them "people of the Holy Land," as it would be to call the 54 million Chinese Moslems "Arabs." Mohammed only died in 620 A.D., and since then 54 million Chinese have accepted Islam as their religious belief. Now imagine, in China, 2,000 miles away from Arabia, from Mecca and Mohammed's birthplace. Imagine if the 54 million Chinese decided to call themselves "Arabs." You would say they were lunatics. Anyone who believes that those 54 million Chinese are Arabs must be crazy. All they did was adopt as a religious faith a belief that had its origin in Mecca, in Arabia. The same as the Irish. When the Irish became Christians, nobody dumped them in the ocean and imported to the Holy Land a new crop of inhabitants. They hadn't become a different people. They were the same people, but they had accepted Christianity as a religious faith.
These Khazars, these pagans, these Asiatics, these Turko-Finns, were a Mongoloid race who were forced out of Asia into eastern Europe. Because their king took the Talmudic faith, they had no choice in the matter. Just the same as in Spain: If the king was Catholic, everybody had to be a Catholic. If not, you had to get out of Spain. So the Khazars became what we call today Jews. Now imagine how silly it was for the great Christian countries of the world to say, "We're going to use our power and prestige to repatriate God's Chosen People to their ancestral homeland, their Promised Land." Could there be a bigger lie than that? Because they control the newspapers, the magazines, the radio, the television, the book publishing business, and because they have the ministers in the pulpit and the politicians on the soapboxes talking the same language, it is not too surprising that you believe that lie. You'd believe black is white if you heard it often enough. You wouldn't call black black anymore — you'd start to call black white. And nobody could blame you.
That is one of the great lies of history. It is the foundation of all the misery that has befallen the world.
Do you know what Jews do on the Day of Atonement, that you think is so sacred to them? I was one of them. This is not hearsay. I'm not here to be a rabble-rouser. I'm here to give you facts. When, on the Day of Atonement, you walk into a synagogue, you stand up for the very first prayer that you recite. It is the only prayer for which you stand. You repeat three times a short prayer called the Kol Nidre. In that prayer, you enter into an agreement with God Almighty that any oath, vow, or pledge that you may make during the next twelve months shall be null and void. The oath shall not be an oath; the vow shall not be a vow; the pledge shall not be a pledge. They shall have no force or effect. And further, the Talmud teaches that whenever you take an oath, vow, or pledge, you are to remember the Kol Nidre prayer that you recited on the Day of Atonement, and you are exempted from fulfilling them. How much can you depend on their loyalty? You can depend upon their loyalty as much as the Germans depended upon it in 1916. We are going to suffer the same fate as Germany suffered, and for the same reason.
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The Benjamin Freedman Speech
From BluWiki
Twenty Five Lies of Benjamin Freedman
NOTE to BlackBay: I don't debate here. I debate at rodoh.us -- come there and offer your counterarguments, OK?
Daryl Bradford Smith makes a big deal out of this speech on his Web site. Here are twenty-five lies told by Freedman -- and repeated by Daryl Bradford Smith:
(1) "In other words, Christian boys are going to be yanked out of their homes, away from their families, and sent abroad to fight in Palestine against the Christian and Moslem Arabs who merely want to return to their homes."
In the forty-six years since this speech was delivered, not one U.S. soldier has fought in Israel or the Palestinian territories.
(2) "[T]he United States will trigger World War III."
Hasn't happened yet.
(3) "[T]he Arab nations called a meeting in Lebanon and there they decided to resurrect, or reactivate, the government of Palestine, which has been dormant more or less, since the 1948 armed insurrection by the Zionists."
There was never a Palestinian government to resurrect. Nominal political control over the Palestinian people had been exercised by Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, but this was during the period that Palestine was still a British colony. That mandate expired on May 15, 1948, and the same day, Israel declared its statehood. The Palestinians, by contrast, when the war was over, were occupied by either Egypt (in the Gaza strip) or Jordan (in the West Bank and East Jerusalem). Neither power offerered the Palestinians autonomy, much less statehoof. King Abdullah of Jordan never even entertained the idea. Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt made moves toward an "All-Palestine Government," but didn't act against Israel militarily until 1967 -- six years after Freedman gave this speech.
(4) "Within two years Germany had won that war [World War I]: not alone won it nominally, but won it actually."
Freedman claims that before August 1, 1916, Germany had won the World War I. This is simply not true.
Germany was fighting a two-front war during World War I. Plus it had soldiers deployed in the Middle East to assist the Ottoman Turks, who were losing badly and would continue to lose until all their territory was gone. During the period that Freedman is discussing, Germany was fighting the combined forces of France and the British Empire (Canadian, Indian, South African, and ANZAC troops were there also) at the Battle of the Somme. The battle went from July 1, 1916, to November 18, 1916, and was declared a stalemate. Losses for both sides were about equal, which means Germany actually lost more troops because it was fighting alone on its own side. At the same time, beginning before the Battle of the Somme and ending afterwards, the Germans lost to the French at Verdun, though they sustained fewer casualties. The losses for Germany were so severe that she changed her position on the Western front from offensive to defensive, which remained the case until surrender in November 1918.
Germany did rather better on the Eastern Front, driving into Poland and ultimately leading to the tsar's overthrow in March 1917. But Germany was still fighting Russia in the summer of 1916, as well as in the Middle East with the Turks.
(5) "At that time, the French army had mutinied. They lost 600,000 of the flower of French youth in the defense of Verdun on the Somme. The Russian army was defecting. They were picking up their toys and going home, they didn't want to play war anymore, they didn't like the Czar. And the Italian army had collapsed."
Neither the French troops nor the Russian troops had mutinied at the time Freedman says they did. French losses at Verdun were around 150,000 -- not 600,000, as Freedman claims. If the Italian army had collapses, that would be a surprise to the Italian soldiers at the Battle or Gorizia, where the Italians defeated Austria-Hungary in eleven days.
(6) "[T]he Zionists in London went to the British war cabinet and they said: 'Look here. You can yet win this war. You don't have to give up. You don't have to accept the negotiated peace offered to you now by Germany. You can win this war if the United States will come in as your ally.'"
There's a staggering amount of disinformation in here. First, there was no German peace offer, and if there were, it would have been coming from a position of weakness to better fight on their Eastern Front.
(7) "They [Zionists] told England: 'We will guarantee to bring the United States into the war as your ally, to fight with you on your side, if you will promise us Palestine after you win the war.'"
This is very interesting given the actual state of affairs in the Middle East at that time. England and France had already divided up the Ottoman holdings in the Middle East. In fact, they had done so the previous year -- with the Sykes-Picot Agreement (Sykes?Picot Agreement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). It hadn't promised Palestine to anyone -- it had left it an issue to be decided in the future.
(8) "However, they [the British] made that promise, in October of 1916"
I have no idea where Freedman gets this date, given that the Sykes-Picot Agreement had been signed in May 1916, and it contravened the only other possible offer on the table at the time, which was the promise by Henry McMahon, British High Commissioner in Egypt, to Sharif Hussein of Mecca (father of Abdullah I of Jordan) that Arab nationalism would be realized with the defeat of the Turks. However, none of McMahon's correspondence ever promises him Palestine.
(9) "Well, shortly after that, Mr. Wilson declared war on Germany."
Actually it was six months later, on April 6, 1917, and it was Congress that declared war, the President not being allowed by the Constitution of the United States to do so. The U.S. declared war on Austria-Hungary in December, with less than a year left in the war. Notably, the U.S. never declared war on the Ottomans? Why not? Because they were finished by then. Given that it was the Ottomans who controlled Palestine up to this point, how could U.S. entry have secured this if it came so late?
The answer is that it couldn't.
Moreover, Freedman completely ignores the importance of the Zimmermann Telegram, a communique sent by the German Foreign Minister, Arthur Zimmermann, to Mexico, urging it to form an alliance against the U.S. This was the smoking gun that led the U.S. into the war. Interventionism was the result of the fear of the Germans (who, remember, were not winning the war -- the telegram dates from January 1917) that the U.S. would enter to stake territory for its Allies. There was, after all, already an Allied Expeditionary Force of American soldiers fighting in Europe.
(10) "After we got into the war, the Zionists went to Great Britain and they said: “Well, we performed our part of the agreement. Let's have something in writing that shows that you are going to keep your bargain and give us Palestine after you win the war.� Because they didn't know whether the war would last another year or another ten years. So they started to work out a receipt. The receipt took the form of a letter, and it was worded in very cryptic language so that the world at large wouldn't know what it was all about. And that was called the Balfour Declaration."
So according to Freedman's chronology, in October 1916, the British promise the Zionists Palestine, it takes them six months to get us into the war, but the Balfour Declaration still wasn't issued until seven months after we declared war on Germany. This doesn't add up.
(11) "Now, when the war was ended, and the Germans went to Paris, to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, there were 117 Jews there, as a delegation representing the Jews, headed by Bernard Baruch. I was there: I ought to know."
Well, Bernard Baruch was certainly at the Paris Peace Conference, but where this figure of 116 other Jews as a separate delegation (Baruch was with the American delegation; after all, he was head of the War Industries Board). As for Freedman being there, I have yet to see a single independent source that verifies he was there. Not one.
(12) "The Jews at that peace conference, when they were cutting up Germany and parceling out Europe to all these nations that claimed a right to a certain part of European territory, the Jews said, 'How about Palestine for us?'"
Well, first of all, the land that was cut out of Germany was land that was, with very few exceptions, populated by non-German people, e.g., Poland. Austria ceded Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, these being Slavic nations whereas Austria was and is a Germanic nation.
But the real kicker is that the "Jewish delegation" demanded Palestine at this point. While it is true that an important agreement on Palestine was made at this point, it was not made between Bernard Baruch and the British government, as Freedman would have us believe. Rather, the agreement was made between Chaim Weizmann and the leader of the Arab delegation. Weizmann was of course a Zionist but a British citizen -- not one of these virtually nonexistent German Zionists that we're told about.
Freedman doesn't tell us about the Arab delegation, but it was led by Sharif Hussein's other son, Faisal, who would become the first King of Iraq. You can read the agreement here: The Weizmann-Faisal Agreement
So Britain didn't hand Palestine over to the Zionists. Ultimately, it was Faisal that did.
(13) "And they produced, for the first time to the knowledge of the Germans, this Balfour Declaration. So the Germans, for the first time realized, 'Oh, that was the game! That's why the United States came into the war.' And the Germans for the first time realized that they were defeated, they suffered this terrific reparation that was slapped onto them, because the Zionists wanted Palestine and they were determined to get it at any cost."
Given that the New York Times published news of the Balfour Declaration a mere twelve days after the declaration was issued, it was a known agreement by the time of the Paris Peace Conference. (There were two more stories in the Times alone before the Peace Conference began.) In other words, Freedman was lying.
Notably, it is on the basis of this lie that Freedman then argues that the Germans were justified in their hatred of Jews. He ignores all evidence of German anti-Semitism between 1871 and 1919.
(14) "When Germany realized that the Jews were responsible for her defeat, they naturally resented it. But not a hair on the head of any Jew was harmed. Not a single hair. Professor Tansill, of Georgetown University, who had access to all the secret papers of the State Department, wrote in his book, and quoted from a State Department document written by Hugo Schoenfelt, a Jew who Cordell Hull sent to Europe in 1933 to investigate the so-called camps of political prisoners. And he wrote back that he found them in very fine condition."
In 1933, the only people in concentration camps were political prisoners and not Jews. More on this below.
(15) "They were in excellent shape; everybody treated well. And they were filled with Communists. Well, a lot of them were Jews, because the Jews happened to be maybe 98 per cent of the Communists in Europe at that time."
That's an exaggeration obviously, but even more so for 1933 in Germany. The KPD (Communist Party) in Germany was led by Ernst Thaelmann, a Gentile. He was arrested and put in Dachau in 1933 and kept in solitary confinement until Hitler had him shot in 1944. But Jews in Germany tended not to vote for the KPD, despite its quite excellent returns in the elections between 1929 and 1932 (it always polled in the top three parties). Most Jews in Germany voted instead for the SPD, the Social-Democratic Party of Germany. This was not a communist party.
An illustrative example can be made with the situation in the Soviet Union, where far more leaders of the Communist Party there were Jews. Even conceding that this is the case, the vast majority of Jews in Russia between March 1917 and November 1917, when the Bolsheviks seized power, were not in communist parties. They tended to be either in Zionist parties or in the Jewish Bund or the PSR (social democrats). These latter two parties were the only parties in the USSR condemn the Bolshevik coup in the Congress of Deputies that had been established after the tsar had been overthrown.
Germany had even fewer Jews and, given the explanation already given that their living standard was better in Germany and that they fled there from Russia in 1905, it is not unreasonable to conclude that fewer Jews were communists in Germany than in Russia, particularly in 1933.
(16) "Well, I don't want to go by what they were called. We're now using English words, and what they were called in Germany is not very material. . . but they were Communists, because in 1917, the Communists took over Germany for a few days."
As already demonstrated, the KPD existed in Germany, as did the SPD, and their platforms were so different, in fact, that the KPD refused to join SPD-led governments.
(17) "Nevertheless, the Jews of the world declared a boycott against Germany, and it was so effective that you couldn't find one thing in any store anywhere in the world with the words 'made in Germany' on it."
The Untermeyer boycott was so incredibly ineffective that Germany had experienced complete economic recovery by 1937.
(18) "The Jews -- I call them Jews to you, because they are known as Jews. I don't call them Jews. I refer to them as so-called Jews, because I know what they are. If Jesus was a Jew, there isn't a Jew in the world today, and if those people are Jews, certainly our Lord and Savior was not one of them, and I can prove that."
The largest Christian organization in the world is the Roman Catholic Church. In his 1965 encyclical Nostra Aetate, Pope Paul VI wrote, "The Church keeps ever in mind the words of the Apostle about his kinsmen: "theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh" (Rom. 9:4-5), the Son of the Virgin Mary. She also recalls that the Apostles, the Church's main-stay and pillars, as well as most of the early disciples who proclaimed Christ's Gospel to the world, sprang from the Jewish people."
I think the Pope probably can speak on greater authority on these matters than Freedman.
(19) "The eastern European Jews, who form 92 per cent of the world's population of those people who call themselves Jews, were originally Khazars."
While there is no doubt that the Khazarian Empire adopted Judaism as its official religion and that this empire stretched into parts of Eastern Europe, there was still a settlement of Jews along the Rhine Valley that pre-dated the Khazars. They did not emigrate to Poland and points east of there until the 16th century, long after the Khazars were gone. These Jews spoke Yiddish, which is based on German, whereas the Khazars spoke a Turkish language.
Furthermore, genetic tests conducted in the last two years indicate that the vast majority of Jews derive from only four women, and that the priestly tribe of Jews, the kohenim, share a Middle Eastern common ancestor.
(20) "When, on the Day of Atonement, you walk into a synagogue, the very first prayer that you recite, you stand -- and it's the only prayer for which you stand -- and you repeat three times a short prayer. The Kol Nidre. In that prayer, you enter into an agreement with God Almighty that any oath, vow, or pledge that you may make during the next twelve months -- any oath, vow or pledge that you may take during the next twelve months shall be null and void."
The Kol Nidrey nullifies only vows made to God. This is one of the oldest libels against Judaism and has been disproven repeatedly.
(21) "And further than that, the Talmud teaches: 'Don't forget -- whenever you take an oath, vow, and pledge -- remember the Kol Nidre prayer that you recited on the Day of Atonement, and that exempts you from fulfilling that.'"
The Talmud says no such thing and I challenge any person to prove otherwise.
(22) "There was no English word because Judea had passed out of existence. There was no Judea. People had long ago forgotten that. So in the first translation he used the word, in referring to Jesus, as 'gyu', 'jew'. At the time, there was no printing press."
Freedman's linguistic analysis of the word "Jew" is so terrible it would make a real linguist laugh in hysterics. Suffice it to say that, yes, there was no letter J in the Roman alphabet, but they did not pronounce their word for Jew (Iudean) with the /j/ phoneme at the beginning.
(23) "Just like 'anti-Semitic'. The Arab is a Semite. And the Christians talk about people who don't like Jews as anti-Semites, and they call all the Arabs anti-Semites. The only Semites in the world are the Arabs. There isn't one Jew who's a Semite. They're all Turkothean Mongoloids. The Eastern european Jews."
Well, Jews are Semites, but that's beside the point. The word coined by Wilhelm Marr nearly a century before Freedman's speech was Antisemitismus and it was coined to apply to Jews only -- not to Arabs.
(24) "They've never been persecuted for their religion. And I wish I had two rows of Rabbis here to challenge me. Never once, in all of history, have they been persecuted for their religion."
Jews were consistently persecuted only on religious grounds until the 19th century. Before then, the charge was "Christ-killer." That is a religious basis.
(25) "But Benjamin Franklin observed, and by hearsay understood, what was happening in Europe."
Freedman is referring to a hoax of an anti-Semitic quote attributed to Ben Franklin that was actually created by William Dudley Pelley in 1933.
Benjamin Harrison Freedman, (1890 – May 1984) was an American businessman known for his antisemitic and anti-Zionist views and writings. A convert from Judaism to Catholicism, Freedman was also a partner in a dermatological institute.
Freedman was born Oct 4, 1890 in New York City. Freedman said that he was present at the 1912 presidential campaign as an assistant to Bernard Baruch, and regularly sat at meetings with candidate Woodrow Wilson. He claimed in a speech that he was a liaison between Rolla Wells and Henry Morgenthau, Sr. His World War I draft registration card states that he was living at 340 West 86th in New York. A few houses away, at 309 lived Samuel D. Leidesdorf. The 1925 New York City directory lists "Benj H Freedman (Freedman-Salisbury Co) h340 W 86th" Also living at the same address is "Mrs Moritz Freedman", his widowed mother. His partner in this company is listed as "Milton S Salisbury imprs 233 Bway R2156".
New York Times, May 10, 1924, pg 21: "Dissolution Notice":
"The co-partnership of Freedman-Salsbury Co., composed of Benjamin H Freedman and Milton S. Salsbury, and also doing business as the Herkules Saw Sales Co. of America with address at 233 Broadway, New York City, has been dissolved." - Milton S Salsbury
He was at one time a partner with Samuel D. Leidesdorf in John H. Woodbury and the John H. Woodbury Laboratories, a dermatological institute and a derivative company of the old Woodbury Soap Company. He states that he was in that business from "I would say 1925 to 1937 or 1938." In 1931, "Benj H Freedman" is listed in the city directory as living at the Paramount Hotel Benjamin H Freedman was listed on the letterhead of the Institute for Arab American Affairs and around 1946, along with his wife, listed as "R M Schoendorf", "sponsored a series of advertisements under the imprint of 'The League for Peace with Justice in Palestine'". In 1946 he sued the American Jewish Committee for $5,000,000 for libel. In 1948, he, through Hallam Richardson, attorney for the League for Peace With Justice in Palestine sued the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League (founded by Samuel Untermyer) for criminal libel, that they had libeled Mr Richardson in a pamphlet by saying he had "long been known in the halls of pro-Fascist propaganda." The case was heard before Hyman Bushel in Mid-Manhattan Court for 23 days and then dismissed.
In 1954, his address is stated to be 960 Park Avenue. He contributed money to the antisemite Conde McGinley, publisher of the periodical Common Sense. In 1955, Rabbi Joachim Prinz (1902–88) (later President of the American Jewish Congress), sued McGinley for branding him a "red rabbi", and Freedman was called as a witness. He also produced several pamphlets over the years. The New York Times reported a meeting at the Henry George School where Benjamin H. Freedman spoke on "The Genesis of Middle East Tensions". And again they reported that "Long John Nebel" on WNBC "will discuss anti-Semitism with Benjamin H. Freedman, industrialist." He continued his political activities until the mid-1970s, when he was well over 85 years old. Benjamin Freedman died in May 1984 at the age of 94. His wife was named Rose.
Freedman as a revisionist
The Casus Belli for the American Entry into WWI
In The Hidden Tyranny Freedman explained the American entry into the war thus: “Congress only declared war against Germany because President Wilson informed Congress that a German submarine had sunk the S.S. Sussex in the English Channel in violation of international law and that United States citizens aboard the S.S. Sussex had perished with the ship.” (This claim can be compared with the text of Wilson’s message to Congress of April 2, 1917, which does not mention the Sussex, here.
"It is a war against all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in the same way." -Woodrow Wison http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=65366
The Zionist plot against Germany
He contended that a conspiracy existed among powerful Zionists in the banking and financial elite to undermine Germany during World War I. He also alleged that a group of Zionists offered to embroil the United States in World War I on the Allied side in return for British support for a Jewish Homeland in Palestine. His support was offered in the form of the Balfour Declaration issued by the British Government to the head of the British Jewish Community Lord Rothschild. He alleges that before the Balfour Declaration, Britain was seriously considering the German offer to unconditionally end hostilities as Britain was exhausting its ammunition and food supplies due to the German submarine's effectiveness in sinking supply ships.
Jewish control of newspapers
Freedman also informed that all the newspapers at the time were owned by Jews. He also contended that their newspapers were pro-German before the war and that after the alleged deal was struck between the Zionists and the British that these newspapers became anti-German.
Blackmailing Woodrow Wilson
Freedman also contended that the prominent lawyer Samuel Untermyer visited President Wilson in the White House and threatened him with a breach of promise suit on behalf of the wife of a Princeton professor with whom Freedman alleged Wilson had carried on an affair and to whom he offered marriage. Untermeyer's client wanted $40,000, which Wilson did not have. Untermeyer offered to pay his client off if Wilson would allow Untermeyer to dictate the next available Supreme Court nomination, which in the event went to Louis Brandeis. For an account of the law involved here, see breach of promise. For a detailed and documented account of Wilson's close relations with Brandeis and his desire to have him as his first Attorney-General, see the first two volumes of Arthur S. Link's Wilson.
Freedman's connections and claimed connections with public figures
* Besides Baruch and Wilson, Freedman claimed to be acquainted with Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Samuel Untermyer, Franklin Roosevelt, Joseph Kennedy, and his son John F. Kennedy, and other influential persons such as H. L. Hunt and son Nelson Bunker; he also claimed to have attended the Versailles Peace Conference.
* Freedman was an advisor to Nelson Bunker Hunt an American businessman most famous for his silver dealings; as he was a friend of his father H. L. Hunt, who was believed to be the richest man in the world at the time of his death.
* In Robert John's Behind the Balfour Declaration, published by the Institute for Historical Review, the only acknowledgment is to Freedman. John says that Freedman "gave me copies of materials on the Balfour Declaration which I might never have found on my own and encouraged my own research."
* Col. Curtis B. Dall put Freedman in a list of unspecified acknowledgments in FDR My Exploited Father-In-Law, a book about his father in law, 32nd President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Publications
Common Sense
Benjamin Freedman contributed funds toward the once-well-known newspaper Common Sense, published by Conde McGinley. In an article in the February 1955 issue of Commentary magazine, he is cited as a financial backer of McGinley. In the libel trial by Rabbi Joachim Prinz against McGinley, Freedman as a witness testified that "he had given Mr. McGinley financial support of 'more than $10,000 but less than $100,000'".
League for Peace With Justice in Palestine
After the demise of Common Sense, Benjamin Freedman continued to write and publish his own broadsheets under the aegis of the League for Peace With Justice in Palestine, which he had founded in 1946.
Facts are Facts
This is a pamphlet purporting to be the text of a 1954 letter from Freedman to David Goldstein, a Jewish convert to Catholicism and an exponent of the idea that Christianity fulfilled Judaism. The text expounds the notion that most people now identified as Jews are the descendants of Khazars, a Turkic people of Central Asia who converted to Judaism. Throughout the text of this pamphlet, the author never refers to "Jews" simpliciter. He always refers to "so-called or self-styled 'Jews'".
Criticisms
Freedman opposed the nomination of Anna M. Rosenberg to be Assistant Secretary of Defense in 1950. An article in the ADL Bulletin entitled The Plot Against Ann Rosenburg attributed the attacks on Rosenberg's loyalty to 'professional anti-Semites and lunatic nationalists,' including the 'Jew-baiting cabal of John Rankin, Benjamin Freedman, and Gerald Smith.'
Freedman, an apostate Jew, was well known to the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee as an active supporter of the Arab cause in the Middle East. (fn 33) In the course of his erratic and often contradictory testimony before the Senate committee, Freedman revealed the roles played by anti-Semitic agitators and right-wing anticommunists — including Gerald L.K. Smith, Conde McGinley, the "Reverend" Wesley Swift, Congressman John Rankin, Senator Joseph McCarthy, and J.B. Matthews — in the campaign against the Rosenberg appointment. (fn 34)
According to American Dissident Voices,
The February 1955 issue of the American Jewish Committee's Commentary magazine included an article attacking Conde McGinley's Common Sense newspaper, which Freedman wrote for and subsidized, saying: "One of McGinley's angels is the Jewish anti-Semite Benjamin Freedman, who told the Armed Services Committee on December 12, 1950 that he had given $15,000 to Common Sense."
That Freedman was the 'financial angel' of Conde McGinley's Common Sense is also confirmed by historian Stuart Svonkin.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs called him a "self-hating Jew" or "Jewish anti-Semite." The House Committee on un-American activities called him a "retired toilet goods manufacturer".
Even his supporters did not assign to him complete reliability. According to the National Vanguard,
When I met him many years ago, he told me - I assume truthfully - that when he and his wife were in an elevator of the very expensive apartment building in New York City in which he then lived, and the very rich Jews who lived in the same building entered the same elevator, they would spit all over his and his wife's clothing to show their disapproval by a typical Jewish gesture. Freedman, however, did not intend to betray his race; on the contrary, he was convinced (it seems, mistakenly) that he was racially a real Jew, whereas most Jews were Turko-Mongolians who had disguised themselves as Jews and cunningly come to dominate the Jewish race, which he certainly did not intend to depreciate, much less betray. On the contrary, he imagined that he was, at great self-sacrifice, protecting his own people from the reprisals that might someday fall upon them.
According to Kevin Alfred Strom,
So, despite our gratitude to Freedman for his insider's revelations of Jewish activities against America and against Whites, and despite our admiration for his courage in defecting from the power structure he served for so many decades, we must essentially discard his religious ramblings and some of his more extreme conclusions dependent on the Khazar hypothesis in its purest form. If in his religious hobbyhorses he displayed a flaw common to almost all of mankind, and if in his adherence to the Khazar theory of Jewish origins he fell prey to a false idea that has charmed even scholars, we may forgive him..
Shlomo Sand
Zionist nationalist myth of enforced exile
Israel deliberately forgets its history
By Schlomo Sand
Every Israeli knows that he or she is the direct and exclusive descendant of a Jewish people which has existed since it received the Torah (1) in Sinai. According to this myth, the Jews escaped from Egypt and settled in the Promised Land, where they built the glorious kingdom of David and Solomon, which subsequently split into the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. They experienced two exiles: after the destruction of the first temple, in the 6th century BC, and of the second temple, in 70 AD.
Two thousand years of wandering brought the Jews to Yemen, Morocco, Spain, Germany, Poland and deep into Russia. But, the story goes, they always managed to preserve blood links between their scattered communities. Their uniqueness was never compromised.
At the end of the 19th century conditions began to favour their return to their ancient homeland. If it had not been for the Nazi genocide, millions of Jews would have fulfilled the dream of 20 centuries and repopulated Eretz Israel, the biblical land of Israel. Palestine, a virgin land, had been waiting for its original inhabitants to return and awaken it. It belonged to the Jews, rather than to an Arab minority that had no history and had arrived there by chance. The wars in which the wandering people reconquered their land were just; the violent opposition of the local population was criminal.
This interpretation of Jewish history was developed as talented, imaginative historians built on surviving fragments of Jewish and Christian religious memory to construct a continuous genealogy for the Jewish people. Judaism’s abundant historiography encompasses many different approaches.
But none have ever questioned the basic concepts developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Discoveries that might threaten this picture of a linear past were marginalised. The national imperative rejected any contradiction of or deviation from the dominant story. University departments exclusively devoted to “the history of the Jewish people”, as distinct from those teaching what is known in Israel as general history, made a significant contribution to this selective vision. The debate on what constitutes Jewishness has obvious legal implications, but historians ignored it: as far as they are concerned, any descendant of the people forced into exile 2,000 years ago is a Jew.
Nor did these official investigators of the past join the controversy provoked by the “new historians” from the late 1980s. Most of the limited number of participants in this public debate were from other disciplines or non-academic circles: sociologists, orientalists, linguists, geographers, political scientists, literary academics and archaeologists developed new perspectives on the Jewish and Zionist past. Departments of Jewish history remained defensive and conservative, basing themselves on received ideas. While there have been few significant developments in national history over the past 60 years (a situation unlikely to change in the short term), the facts that have emerged face any honest historian with fundamental questions.
Founding myths shaken
Is the Bible a historical text? Writing during the early half of the 19th century, the first modern Jewish historians, such as Isaak Markus Jost (1793-1860) and Leopold Zunz (1794-1886), did not think so. They regarded the Old Testament as a theological work reflecting the beliefs of Jewish religious communities after the destruction of the first temple. It was not until the second half of the century that Heinrich Graetz (1817-91) and others developed a “national” vision of the Bible and transformed Abraham’s journey to Canaan, the flight from Egypt and the united kingdom of David and Solomon into an authentic national past. By constant repetition, Zionist historians have subsequently turned these Biblical “truths” into the basis of national education.
But during the 1980s an earthquake shook these founding myths. The discoveries made by the “new archaeology” discredited a great exodus in the 13th century BC. Moses could not have led the Hebrews out of Egypt into the Promised Land, for the good reason that the latter was Egyptian territory at the time. And there is no trace of either a slave revolt against the pharaonic empire or of a sudden conquest of Canaan by outsiders.
Nor is there any trace or memory of the magnificent kingdom of David and Solomon. Recent discoveries point to the existence, at the time, of two small kingdoms: Israel, the more powerful, and Judah, the future Judea. The general population of Judah did not go into 6th century BC exile: only its political and intellectual elite were forced to settle in Babylon. This decisive encounter with Persian religion gave birth to Jewish monotheism.
Then there is the question of the exile of 70 AD. There has been no real research into this turning point in Jewish history, the cause of the diaspora. And for a simple reason: the Romans never exiled any nation from anywhere on the eastern seaboard of the Mediterranean. Apart from enslaved prisoners, the population of Judea continued to live on their lands, even after the destruction of the second temple. Some converted to Christianity in the 4th century, while the majority embraced Islam during the 7th century Arab conquest.
Most Zionist thinkers were aware of this: Yitzhak Ben Zvi, later president of Israel, and David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister, accepted it as late as 1929, the year of the great Palestinian revolt. Both stated on several occasions that the peasants of Palestine were the descendants of the inhabitants of ancient Judea.
Proselytising zeal
But if there was no exile after 70 AD, where did all the Jews who have populated the Mediterranean since antiquity come from? The smokescreen of national historiography hides an astonishing reality. From the Maccabean revolt of the mid-2nd century BC to the Bar Kokhba revolt of the 2nd century AD, Judaism was the most actively proselytising religion. The Judeo-Hellenic Hasmoneans forcibly converted the Idumeans of southern Judea and the Itureans of Galilee and incorporated them into the people of Israel. Judaism spread across the Middle East and round the Mediterranean. The 1st century AD saw the emergence in modern Kurdistan of the Jewish kingdom of Adiabene, just one of many that converted.
The writings of Flavius Josephus are not the only evidence of the proselytising zeal of the Jews. Horace, Seneca, Juvenal and Tacitus were among the Roman writers who feared it. The Mishnah and the Talmud authorised conversion, even if the wise men of the Talmudic tradition expressed reservations in the face of the mounting pressure from Christianity.
Although the early 4th century triumph of Christianity did not mark the end of Jewish expansion, it relegated Jewish proselytism to the margins of the Christian cultural world. During the 5th century, in modern Yemen, a vigorous Jewish kingdom emerged in Himyar, whose descendants preserved their faith through the Islamic conquest and down to the present day. Arab chronicles tell of the existence, during the 7th century, of Judaised Berber tribes; and at the end of the century the legendary Jewish queen Dihya contested the Arab advance into northwest Africa. Jewish Berbers participated in the conquest of the Iberian peninsula and helped establish the unique symbiosis between Jews and Muslims that characterised Hispano-Arabic culture.
The most significant mass conversion occurred in the 8th century, in the massive Khazar kingdom between the Black and Caspian seas. The expansion of Judaism from the Caucasus into modern Ukraine created a multiplicity of communities, many of which retreated from the 13th century Mongol invasions into eastern Europe. There, with Jews from the Slavic lands to the south and from what is now modern Germany, they formed the basis of Yiddish culture (4).
Prism of Zionism
Until about 1960 the complex origins of the Jewish people were more or less reluctantly acknowledged by Zionist historiography. But thereafter they were marginalised and finally erased from Israeli public memory. The Israeli forces who seized Jerusalem in 1967 believed themselves to be the direct descendents of the mythic kingdom of David rather than – God forbid – of Berber warriors or Khazar horsemen. The Jews claimed to constitute a specific ethnic group that had returned to Jerusalem, its capital, from 2,000 years of exile and wandering.
This monolithic, linear edifice is supposed to be supported by biology as well as history. Since the 1970s supposedly scientific research, carried out in Israel, has desperately striven to demonstrate that Jews throughout the world are closely genetically related.
Research into the origins of populations now constitutes a legitimate and popular field in molecular biology and the male Y chromosome has been accorded honoured status in the frenzied search for the unique origin of the “chosen people”. The problem is that this historical fantasy has come to underpin the politics of identity of the state of Israel. By validating an essentialist, ethnocentric definition of Judaism it encourages a segregation that separates Jews from non-Jews – whether Arabs, Russian immigrants or foreign workers.
Sixty years after its foundation, Israel refuses to accept that it should exist for the sake of its citizens. For almost a quarter of the population, who are not regarded as Jews, this is not their state legally. At the same time, Israel presents itself as the homeland of Jews throughout the world, even if these are no longer persecuted refugees, but the full and equal citizens of other countries.
A global ethnocracy invokes the myth of the eternal nation, reconstituted on the land of its ancestors, to justify internal discrimination against its own citizens. It will remain difficult to imagine a new Jewish history while the prism of Zionism continues to fragment everything into an ethnocentric spectrum. But Jews worldwide have always tended to form religious communities, usually by conversion; they cannot be said to share an ethnicity derived from a unique origin and displaced over 20 centuries of wandering.
The development of historiography and the evolution of modernity were consequences of the invention of the nation state, which preoccupied millions during the 19th and 20th centuries. The new millennium has seen these dreams begin to shatter.
And more and more academics are analysing, dissecting and deconstructing the great national stories, especially the myths of common origin so dear to chroniclers of the past.
Shlomo Sand is professor of history at Tel Aviv university and the author of Comment le people juif fut inventé (Fayard, Paris, 2008)
Jewish communities had existed in the Greek cities of the Black Sea coast since late classical times. Chersonesos, Sudak, Kerch and other Crimean cities possessed Jewish communities, as did Gorgippia, and Samkarsh / Tmutarakan was said to have had a Jewish majority as early as the 670s. Jews fled from Byzantium to Khazaria as a consequence of persecution under Heraclius, Justinian II, Leo III, and Romanos I. These were joined by other Jews fleeing from Sassanid Persia (particularly during the Mazdak revolts), and, later, the Islamic world. Jewish merchants such as the Radhanites regularly traded in Khazar territory, and may have wielded significant economic and political influence. Though their origins and history are somewhat unclear, the Mountain Jews also lived in or near Khazar territory and may have been allied with or subject to Khazar overlordship; it is conceivable that they too played a role in the conversion.
At some point in the last decades of the 8th century or the early 9th century, the Khazar royalty and nobility converted to Judaism, and part of the general population followed. The extent of the conversion is debated. Ibn al-Faqih reported in the 10th century that "all the Khazars are Jews." Notwithstanding this statement, some scholars believe that only the upper classes converted to Judaism; there is some support for this in contemporary Muslim texts. However, recent archeological excavations have uncovered widespread shifts in burial practices. Around the mid-800s burials in Khazaria began to take on a decidedly Jewish flavor. Grave goods disappeared almost altogether. Judging by interment evidence, by 950 Judaism had become widespread among all classes of Khazar society.
Essays in the Kuzari, written by Yehuda Halevi, detail a moral liturgical reason for the conversion which some consider a moral tale. Some researchers have suggested part of the reason for this mass conversion was political expediency to maintain a degree of neutrality: the Khazar empire was between growing populations, Muslims to the east and Christians to the west. Both religions recognized Judaism as a forebear and worthy of some respect. The exact date of the conversion is hotly contested. It may have occurred as early as 740 or as late as the mid-800s. Recently discovered numismatic evidence suggests that Judaism was the established state religion by c. 830, and though St. Cyril (who visited Khazaria in 861) did not identify the Khazars as Jews, the khagan of that period, Zachariah, had a biblical Hebrew name. Some medieval sources give the name of the rabbi who oversaw the conversion of the Khazars as Isaac Sangari or Yitzhak ha-Sangari.
The first Jewish Khazar king was named Bulan which means "elk", though some sources give him the Hebrew name Sabriel. A later king, Obadiah, strengthened Judaism, inviting rabbis into the kingdom and built synagogues. Jewish figures such as Saadia Gaon made positive references to the Khazars, and they are excoriated in contemporary Karaite writings as "bastards"; it is therefore unlikely that they adopted Karaism as some (such as Avraham Firkovich) have proposed.
According to the Schechter Letter, early Khazar Judaism was centered on a tabernacle similar to that mentioned in the Book of Exodus. Archaeologists at Rostov-on-Don have tentatively identified a folding altar unearthed at Khumar as part of such a construct.
The Khazars enjoyed close relations with the Jews of the Levant and Persia. The Persian Jews, for example, hoped that the Khazars might succeed in conquering the Caliphate. The high esteem in which the Khazars were held among the Jews of the Orient may be seen in the application to them, in an Arabic commentary on Isaiah ascribed by some to Saadia Gaon, and by others to Benjamin Nahawandi, of Isaiah 48:14: "The Lord hath loved him." "This," says the commentary, "refers to the Khazars, who will go and destroy Babel" (i.e., Babylonia), a name used to designate the country of the Arabs. From the Khazar Correspondence it is apparent that two Spanish Jews, Judah ben Meir ben Nathan and Joseph Gagris, had succeeded in settling in the land of the Khazars. Saadia, who had a fair knowledge of the kingdom of the Khazars, mentions a certain Isaac ben Abraham who had removed from Sura to Khazaria.
Likewise, the Khazar rulers viewed themselves as the protectors of international Jewry, and corresponded with foreign Jewish leaders (the letters exchanged between the Khazar ruler Joseph and the Spanish rabbi Hasdai ibn Shaprut have been preserved). They were known to retaliate against Muslim or Christian interests in Khazaria for persecution of Jews abroad. Ibn Fadlan relates that around 920 the Khazar ruler received information that Muslims had destroyed a synagogue in the land of Babung, in Iran; he gave orders that the minaret of the mosque in his capital should be broken off, and the muezzin executed. He further declared that he would have destroyed the mosque entirely had he not been afraid that the Muslims would in turn destroy all the synagogues in their lands. Similarly, during the persecutions of Byzantine Jews under Romanos I, the Khazar government retaliated by attacking Byzantine interests in the Crimea.
The theory that the majority of Ashkenazic Jews are the descendants of the non-Semitic converted Khazars was advocated by various racial theorists and antisemitic sources in the 20th century, especially following the publication of Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe. Despite recent genetic evidence to the contrary, and a lack of any real mainstream scholarly support, this belief is still popular among groups such as the Christian Identity Movement, Black Hebrews, British Israelitists and others (particularly Arabs) who claim that they, rather than Jews, are the true descendants of the Israelites, or who seek to usurp the connection between Ashkenazi Jews and Israel in favor of their own. For more detail on this controversy, see below.
