Richard Silverstein : Adolf Eichmann , l'estrema destra israeliana , i rapporti con il nazismo
Sintesi personale
Ora voglio offrire un pensiero scioccante e provocatoria suggerito da un seguace su Twitter che ha letto il mio Tweet su un articolo del Guardian nel'30 ° anniversario della impiccagione di Adolf Eichmann. L'articolo si concentra sulla rivelazione che Eichmann scrisse una lettera di richiesta di clemenza al presidente di Israele, Yitzhak Ben Tzvi. La sostanza reale della lettera è abbastanza banale e poco interessante. Ma il fatto che l' abbia scritta è interessante.
Ecco il passo dall'articolo Guardian:
"Eichmann non è cresciuto con un antisemita rabbioso [sic]. E [sic] né, a quanto pare, ha dimostrato un particolare odio personale verso gli ebrei Il titolo del libro americano di Becoming Eichmann, suggerisce che la sua disponibilità a partecipare a un omicidio di massa non è stata sempre data. Prima del 1941, voleva liberare l'Europa dagli ebrei, soprattutto per fare spazio ai tedeschi di razza pura ecco perché voleva eliminare gli ebrei in quanto tali. Ad esempio, nel 1937, Eichmann si è incontrato con l'agente sionista e l' Haganah ebraica Feivel Polkes a Berlino per discutere la possibilità che i nazisti potessero fornire armi per la lotta sionista contro il mandato britannico in Palestina . Eichmann infatti voleva inviare gli ebrei tedeschi in Israele. Più tardi, nel 1937, Eichmann viaggiò su un piroscafo a Haifa per valutare tale possibilità -. Una possibilità in realtà impraticabile "In altre parole prima che Hitler decidesse la Soluzione Finale nel 1942, Eichmann era per un pulizia etnica, non per un genocidio. Le idee pre-1941 erano assolutamente in accordo con quelli di Lehava, Im Tirzu e i rabbini coloni che vogliono liberare Israele dei palestinesi per creare uno Stato ebraico etnicamente puro. Contrariamente a quanto sostenuto da molti dell' 'estrema sinistra pro-palestinesi, nessuno di loro ha dichiarato la volontà di operare un genocidio,ma sono certamente disposti a uccidere i palestinesi in massa e a impegnarsi nella violenza di massa per i loro fini
Non ci volle molto per trasformare la visione di Eichmann "moderata" nella macchina di morte che è diventata.E' bastato un leader forte per determinare la soluzione finale. Una volta che l'ordine è stato dato, Eichmann ha organizzato l'apparato di sterminio efficiente che ha permesso l'Olocausto.
Adolf Eichmann in Palestina nel 1937
Fino al 1939, entrambe le fazioni sioniste, i revisionisti e la leadership laburista sionista Yishuv, hanno condotto negoziati con i nazisti in base alla tesi che il nemico del mio nemico potrebbe essere il mio amico. Chaim Arlosoroff, leader dei sionisti Labor, fu assassinato nel 1933 pochi giorni dopo il suo ritorno da un incontro con i nazisti in Germania e ciò determinò l'accordo infame Haavara. La collaborazione nazi-sionista è durata almeno fino al 1941 nel caso della Banda Stern,che consegnò una proposta per i nazisti alla fine del 1940.
Yitzhak Ben Tzvi, David Ben Gurion e Yosef Haim Brenner nel 1913, undici anni prima che Ben Zvi ordinasse l'esecuzione di de Haan.
Il presidente Yitzhak Ben Tzvi che ha ordinato l'esecuzione di Eichmann è lo stesso leader che nel 1924 ordinò l'assassinio dell' olandese Ebreo, Jacob de Haan, il principale promotore degli ortodossi antisionisti dell'epoca.
Né ho mai sentito dire che Ben Zvi si pentì dei suoi ordini.
falsetheguardian.com|Di Giles Fraser
Had it not been for an unguarded conversation between Adolf Eichmann’s son and the Argentinian girl he was dating, the chances are that the shabby “Ricardo Klement” would have lived out his days in obscurity a few miles north of Buenos Aires. Unlike Josef Mengele, the sadistic camp doctor at Auschwitz, who was feted in the more glamorous circles of Argentinian society, Klement was a failure in his adopted country. He ran a laundry business for a while but it went bankrupt. He lurched from job to job. And when he was captured by Mossad agents on 11 May 1960, shuffling home from the bus stop, they couldn’t quite believe that this was the high-ranking Nazi officer who was responsible for the deportation of millions of Jews to the death camps.
Since his trial in Jerusalem in 1961, Eichmann has become the subject of continued controversy – much of it not so much about the man himself, but often more about the very nature of evil. Yesterday’s release of a hand-written letter from Eichmann to the then Israeli president, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, requesting clemency, will only continue the debate. “There is a need to draw a line between the leaders responsible and the people like me forced to serve as mere instruments in the hands of the leaders,” Eichmann’s letter pleaded. “I was not a responsible leader, and as such do not feel myself guilty.”In other words: not my fault, I was only obeying orders. His self-delusion was unassailable, even at the end. Eichmann’s request was denied and two days later he was hanged in Ramla prison.In her famous account of the trial, the philosopher Hannah Arendt described Eichmann as a small-minded functionary, more concerned with the managerial hows of his job than the moral or existential whys. According to Arendt, Eichmann wasn’t a man for asking difficult questions, he just got on with the job of managing timetables and calculating travel costs – thus her famous phrase “the banality of evil”.
Irrespective of the accuracy of Arendt’s disputed portrait, the importance of her account was that it expanded our moral grammar of evil. She persuaded many that moral evil did not need to have all the central-casting Gothic intensity of a horror movie. Evil could be ponderous and bureaucratic. It could be the work of a desk-bound pen-pusher whose emotional range didn’t extend much towards hate and who didn’t particularly care for the sight of blood. But this estimation didn’t fit with what a lot of people wanted to find. Which is why some felt that Arendt was letting Eichmann off the hook.
Despite his best efforts, Eichmann’s English biographer, the late David Cesarani, struggled to distinguish his 2004 portrait of Eichmann from the more philosophical interpretation given by Arendt. Eichmann did not grow up a rabid antisemite. And nor, it seems, did he harbour any particular personal hatred towards Jews, other than the casual default racism common among Austrians in the 1920s. The US title of Cesarani’s book, Becoming Eichmann, suggests that his willingness to participate in mass murder was not always a given. Before 1941, he wanted to rid Europe of its Jews, but more as a way of making space for pure-bred Germans than because he wanted to eliminate Jews per se. For example, in 1937, Eichmann met with the Jewish Zionist and Haganah agent Feivel Polkes in Berlin to discuss the possibility that the Nazis might supply weapons for the Zionist fight against the British Mandate in Palestine, and that Eichmann might arrange for Germany’s Jews to be deported to Israel. Later in 1937, Eichmann travelled on a steamer to Haifa to assess the possibility – a possibility he eventually realised was impractical.All of which doesn’t make Eichmann any less disturbing. It makes him more so. For what Arendt’s Eichmann did was to demonstrate that ordinariness is no protection against doing great evil. Cesarani too, sees Eichmann as a sort of “everyman”. No, he wasn’t just a travel agent, indifferent to the destination of his passengers. He was personally responsible, a responsibility he blindly denied right to the end. Which is precisely why the moral message of his story remains profoundly unsettling: if ordinary people were capable of such great evil, then, given the right circumstances, so are the rest of us.
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Now that I've got your attention, I want to suggest a shocking and provocative thought first suggested by a Twitter follower who read my tweet featuring a…WordPress
Now that I’ve got your attention, I want to offer a shocking and provocative thought first suggested by a Twitter follower who read my tweet featuring a Guardian article about the 30th anniversary of Adolf Eichmann’s hanging. The article focuses on the revelation that Eichmann wrote a letter requesting clemency to Israel’s president, Yitzhak Ben Tzvi. The actual substance of the letter is quite banal and uninteresting. But the fact that he wrote it at all is interesting.Here is the operative passage from the Guardian article: Eichmann Was an Ethnic Cleanser, So is Israeli Extreme-Right
“Eichmann did not grow up a rabid antisemite [sic]. And [sic] nor, it seems, did he harbour any particular personal hatred towards Jews, other than the casual default racism common among Austrians in the 1920s. The US title of Cesarani’s book, Becoming Eichmann, suggests that his willingness to participate in mass murder was not always a given. Before 1941, he wanted to rid Europe of its Jews, but more as a way of making space for pure-bred Germans than because he wanted to eliminate Jews per se. For example, in 1937, Eichmann met with the Jewish Zionist and Haganah agent Feivel Polkes in Berlin to discuss the possibility that the Nazis might supply weapons for the Zionist fight against the British Mandate in Palestine, and that Eichmann might arrange for Germany’s Jews to be deported to Israel. Later in 1937, Eichmann travelled on a steamer to Haifa to assess the possibility – a possibility he eventually realised was impractical.”In other words, before Hitler decreed the Final Solution at the Wansee Conference in 1942, Eichmann was an ethnic cleanser, not a genocidaire. To put this is an Israeli context, his pre-1941 views were absolutely in accord with those of Lehava, Im Tirzu, and settler rabbis, who wish to rid Israel of Palestinians to create an ethnically pure Jewish state. Contrary to the claims of many on the far-left of the pro-Palestinian cause, none of them advance the notion of mass murder or genocide. But they are certainly willing to kill Palestinians en masse and engage in mass violence in order to achieve an Arab-rein State.
But there’s a bitter irony here as well. It did not take much to transform Eichmann’s more “moderate” views into the killing machine he became. All it took was a strong leader, determined to implement a Final Solution. Once the order was given, Eichmann fell into line and organized the efficient extermination apparatus that enabled the Holocaust.
Think what that could mean in the Israeli context…
Adolf Eichmann in Palestine in 1937
Another thought to contemplate is that right up till 1939, both Zionist factions, the Revisionists and the Labor Zionist Yishuv leadership, conducted negotiations with the Nazis, under the rubric that the enemy of my enemy could be my friend. Chaim Arlosoroff, leader of the Labor Zionists, was assassinated in 1933 only days after he returned from a negotiating session with the Nazis in Germany that eventually resulted in the infamous Haavara Agreement. The Nazi-Zionist collaboration lasted until at least 1941 in the case of the Stern Gang, which delivered a proposal to the Nazis in late 1940. What could they possibly have been thinking to make such dirty alliances?
(Seated from L.) Yitzhak Ben Tzvi, David Ben Gurion and Yosef Haim Brenner in 1913, eleven years before Ben Zvi ordered the execution of de Haan.
Another bitter irony: the President Yitzhak Ben Tzvi who ordered Eichmann’s execution is the same leader who in 1924 ordered the assassination of Dutch Jew, Jacob de Haan, the leading proponent of the Orthodox anti-Zionism of the era. By what right does a man with Jewish blood on his hands order the execution of an enemy of the Jewish people?
Nor have I ever heard that Ben Zvi repented of his orders. He too, like Eichmann was a killer. Only Ben Tzvi murdered his own, while Eichmann murdered another people and another race.
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