Great col­lage of old­er broad­casts weav­ing them togeth­er though time.

As Dav­e’s said, quot­ing William Faulkn­er: ‘the past is not dead it is not even past.’

The Zion­ist Move­ment orig­i­nat­ed as one of two ways to deal with the anti­semitism that flour­ished in Europe as a response to the fram­ing of Drey­fus. The Zion­ists, in effect, sided with the anti­semites in agree­ing with them that Jews don’t belong in Euro­pean coun­tries, but instead should have their own sep­a­rate coun­try. The Jew­ish social­ists, on the oth­er hand, went on to form the Jew­ish Bund or joined mul­ti-eth­nic social­ist orga­ni­za­tions. Of course, there were also non-Zion­ist, non-social­ist Haskalah (renais­sance) Jews, and devout­ly reli­gious Jews who were nei­ther. The main avowed ene­my of Hitler’s Nazis was­n’t the Jews, as much as the Nazis embraced and aug­ment­ed the already ram­pant anti­semitism among Catholics and Luther­ans, but Marx­ism. This can be seen from the huge ban­ner drap­ing Hitler’s first pub­lic speech as Chan­cel­lor of Ger­many, which reads, “Make Ger­many Marx­ism-free!”, NOT “Make Ger­many Jew-free!”, here (at the 5:00 minute mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnpTWKKWQ1o&t=05m00s

@ Atlanta Bill–

A more com­plete exam­i­na­tion of this top­ic is con­tained in FTR #838 https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-838-interview-1-with-peter-levenda-about-the-hitler-legacy/

and FTR # 839 https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-839-interview-2-with-peter-levenda-about-the-hitler-legacy/

Best,

Dave

@ Dave Emory -
Thanks. I’ve heard both inter­views, in fact all 10 of them. I have the links in a text file handy for copy­ing and past­ing into com­ments. They’re ter­rif­ic, and I think you should be com­mend­ed for defer­ring so much to Peter since you’ve been research­ing the top­ic for so much longer than he has, and for hold­ing back and let­ting him do the talk­ing. The inter­est­ing thing about Peter is that it was serendip­i­tous per­son­al encoun­ters that got him inter­est­ed in the Under­ground Reich; gives him cred­i­bil­i­ty, even more than the tone of sin­cer­i­ty that he projects. It was watch­ing videos of Peter’s ear­li­er inter­views and pre­sen­ta­tions that had me search­ing for more on the top­ic in the way he laid it out, which in a very short time led me to you and Spit­fire List.
[You need­n’t post this]

Here’s a pair of sto­ries that high­lights one of the more unex­pect­ed forces that has helped fuel the growth of gov­ern­ment-backed Holo­caust revi­sion­ism and denial across East­ern Europe: the de fac­to endorse­ment of this trend by Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu.

First, here’s an arti­cle about the crit­i­cisms Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu is receiv­ing for his warm wel­come to Prime Min­is­ter Saulius Skver­nelis of Lithua­nia, one of the Euro­pean coun­tries that’s most aggres­sive­ly embraced Holo­caust revi­sion­ism in recent years. Part of the rea­son for this crit­i­cism is that it comes a week after Netanyahu gave a sim­i­lar warm wel­come to Petro Poroshenko, the Pres­i­dent of Ukraine where Holo­caust revi­sion­ism has been ram­pant and backed by the state. And then there’s Netanyahu’s back­ing of Vik­tor Orban in Hun­gary and the lead­ers of Poland. So, basi­cal­ly, there’s noth­ing these Euro­pean coun­tries can do in terms of offi­cial Holo­caust revi­sion­ism that would cause Netan­hayu to refuse rolling out the red car­pet for the lead­ers who are pre­sid­ing over these poli­cies. But as the arti­cle notes, there are some groups Netanyahu will crit­i­cize for anti-Semi­tism: Mus­lims and left-wingers:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

Israel leader scorned for woo­ing Holo­caust-dis­tort­ing allies

By ARON HELLER
Jan­u­ary 30, 2019

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu’s warm wel­come to Lithuania’s prime min­is­ter marks his lat­est embrace of an east­ern Euro­pean leader who has offered strong polit­i­cal sup­port while pro­mot­ing a dis­tort­ed image of the Holo­caust.

Lithua­nia is among a slew of for­mer com­mu­nist nations swept up in a wave of World War II-era revi­sion­ism that seeks to dimin­ish their cul­pa­bil­i­ty in the Holo­caust while mak­ing heroes out of anti-Sovi­et nation­al­ists involved in the mass killing of Jews. In Israel, estab­lished in the wake of the Nazi geno­cide of 6 mil­lion Jews, many say Netanyahu is cyn­i­cal­ly betray­ing the vic­tims’ mem­o­ry.

Lithua­nia, for instance, has been a lead­ing force behind cre­at­ing a joint memo­r­i­al day for all vic­tims of total­i­tar­i­an­ism, blur­ring the dis­tinc­tion between the crimes of the Nazis and the com­mu­nists who fought them.

It also has pushed for leg­is­la­tion to pro­hib­it the sale of books that “dis­tort Lithuan­ian his­to­ry” by cit­ing the ram­pant, doc­u­ment­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion of the local pop­u­la­tion with Nazis. Most recent­ly it has resist­ed calls to remove the var­i­ous plaques com­mem­o­rat­ing anti-Sovi­et fight­er Jonas Nor­ei­ka, despite recent rev­e­la­tions by his own grand­daugh­ter, Sil­via Foti, that he was a fierce anti-Semi­te who had a role in the mur­der of thou­sands of Jews.

Near­ly all of Lithuania’s 200,000 Jews were killed in the Holo­caust.

When Netanyahu, who has Lithuan­ian roots, vis­it­ed Vil­nius last year, he praised Prime Min­is­ter Saulius Skver­nelis for tak­ing “great steps to com­mem­o­rate the vic­tims of the Holo­caust” and for fight­ing mod­ern-day anti-Semi­tism.

“It’s unfor­giv­able. Netanyahu is giv­ing them a green light,” said Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter. “It’s like prais­ing the Ku Klux Klan for improv­ing racial rela­tions in the South.”

“We have to say the truth. We owe it to the vic­tims,” he added.

In a meet­ing with Israeli Pres­i­dent Reuven Rivlin on Tues­day, Skver­nelis said “Lithua­nia has been learn­ing the lessons of the past” and was “improv­ing the life of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and restor­ing his­tor­i­cal sites.”

At Tuesday’s meet­ing, Netanyahu tread­ed cau­tious­ly. He referred to the “tragedies of the past” but steered clear of any crit­i­cism of mod­ern Lithua­nia, prais­ing the “spir­it of friend­ship” and “a bridge from the past to a future.”

Skver­nelis’ vis­it comes a week after Netanyahu sim­i­lar­ly rolled out the red car­pet for Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, whose par­lia­ment just des­ig­nat­ed the birth­day of Ukrain­ian wartime col­lab­o­ra­tor Stepan Ban­dera a nation­al hol­i­day. A region­al leg­is­la­ture declared 2019 “the year of Stepan Ban­dera.”

Bandera’s forces fought along­side the Nazis and were impli­cat­ed in the mur­der of thou­sands of Jews. As Poroshenko was vis­it­ing Israel, anoth­er memo­r­i­al was being erect­ed in Kiev for Symon Petliu­ra, whose troops are linked to pogroms that killed as many as 50,000 Jews after World War I.

Netanyahu’s out­reach in east­ern Europe is part of his larg­er strat­e­gy of forg­ing alliances to counter the crit­i­cism Israel faces in the Unit­ed Nations and oth­er inter­na­tion­al forums over its treat­ment of the Pales­tini­ans.

Crit­ics con­sid­er it a deal with the dev­il. They say Netanyahu — who often invokes the Holo­caust when inveigh­ing against archri­val Iran — turns a blind eye when it comes to like-mind­ed allies.

“It’s a spe­cif­ic maneu­ver that legit­imizes anti-Semi­tism and bor­ders on Holo­caust denial,” said Tamar Zand­berg, leader of the dovish Meretz par­ty.

...

Under com­mu­nist rule, the Holo­caust was not seri­ous­ly dealt with and, upon inde­pen­dence, the new­found east­ern and cen­tral Euro­pean nations sought to can­on­ize nation­al­ist icons who resist­ed the Sovi­ets, while large­ly ignor­ing their crimes along­side the Nazis. Domes­tic aca­d­e­mics who have chal­lenged the false nar­ra­tive have been shamed, and exter­nal crit­i­cism has often been met with new anti-Semit­ic out­bursts.

For coun­tries like Lithua­nia and Ukraine, the warm embrace of the Israeli leader pro­vides a strong defense against accu­sa­tion of anti-Semi­tism while also strength­en­ing ties with a close U.S. ally.

Netanyahu has also formed a close alliance with Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban, who has lav­ished praise on Mik­los Hor­thy, Hungary’s World War II-era ruler, who intro­duced anti-Semit­ic laws and col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis. Orban has also employed anti-Semit­ic tropes against the Jew­ish Hun­gar­i­an-Amer­i­can bil­lion­aire phil­an­thropist George Soros and backed a state-fund­ed muse­um that experts say plays down the role of Hun­gar­i­an col­lab­o­ra­tors.

Netanyahu also struck a deal with Pol­ish lead­ers over their country’s con­tro­ver­sial Holo­caust speech law, which would have crim­i­nal­ized blam­ing the Pol­ish nation for crimes com­mit­ted against Jews dur­ing World War II.

Israeli Holo­caust his­to­ri­ans slammed the agree­ment, which seemed to accept a Pol­ish nar­ra­tive that they were only vic­tims of the Nazis. Schol­ars say anti-Semi­tism was deeply root­ed in pre-war Poland and Poles might have either killed or helped Ger­mans kill up to 200,000 Jews.

Still, Netanyahu has invit­ed Orban and Pol­ish Prime Min­is­ter Mateusz Moraw­iec­ki — who last year equat­ed Pol­ish per­pe­tra­tors in the Holo­caust to sup­posed “Jew­ish per­pe­tra­tors” — to Israel in Feb­ru­ary for a sum­mit with the lead­ers of the Czech Repub­lic and Slo­va­kia.

Yair Lapid, leader of the cen­trist Yesh Atid par­ty and the son of a Holo­caust sur­vivor, called on Netanyahu to can­cel the meet­ing, say­ing one prime min­is­ter has “pub­lished anti-Semit­ic con­tent” and anoth­er “passed a law des­e­crat­ing the mem­o­ry of Holo­caust vic­tims.”

In an annu­al report Sun­day, Israel’s Min­istry of Dias­po­ra Affairs said 2018 saw a record num­ber of world­wide anti-Semit­ic attacks, with most car­ried out by neo-Nazis in Europe and white suprema­cists.

But at his Cab­i­net meet­ing lat­er in the day, Netanyahu sin­gled out “Islam­ic anti-Semi­tism and the anti-Semi­tism of the extreme left, which includes anti-Zion­ism.”

Israel’s Yad Vashem Holo­caust memo­r­i­al, which hosts all vis­it­ing for­eign dig­ni­taries, has been thrust into the con­tro­ver­sy.

While it says it will nev­er dis­qual­i­fy any­one wish­ing to vis­it, Yad Vashem insists it will “force­ful­ly” address any denial or dis­tor­tion. Yad Vashem said the Lithuan­ian leader received a com­pre­hen­sive expla­na­tion of the Holo­caust, includ­ing details about “the mur­der of Jews of Lithua­nia by the Nazis and their Lithuan­ian col­lab­o­ra­tors.”

———-

“Israel leader scorned for woo­ing Holo­caust-dis­tort­ing allies” by ARON HELLER; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 01/30/2019

““It’s unfor­giv­able. Netanyahu is giv­ing them a green light,” said Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesen­thal Cen­ter. “It’s like prais­ing the Ku Klux Klan for improv­ing racial rela­tions in the South.””

It’s like prais­ing the Ku Klux Klan for improv­ing racial rela­tions in the South. That’s a pret­ty good way to describe Netanyahu’s warm embrace of one EU leader after anoth­er who is cur­rent­ly lead­ing the way on the offi­cial Holo­caust revi­sion­ism sweep­ing Europe. But it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious in the case of Lithua­nia, where laws now exist to ban any men­tion of the role local pop­u­la­tions played in the mur­der of near­ly all of the coun­try’s Jews:

...
Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu’s warm wel­come to Lithuania’s prime min­is­ter marks his lat­est embrace of an east­ern Euro­pean leader who has offered strong polit­i­cal sup­port while pro­mot­ing a dis­tort­ed image of the Holo­caust.

Lithua­nia is among a slew of for­mer com­mu­nist nations swept up in a wave of World War II-era revi­sion­ism that seeks to dimin­ish their cul­pa­bil­i­ty in the Holo­caust while mak­ing heroes out of anti-Sovi­et nation­al­ists involved in the mass killing of Jews. In Israel, estab­lished in the wake of the Nazi geno­cide of 6 mil­lion Jews, many say Netanyahu is cyn­i­cal­ly betray­ing the vic­tims’ mem­o­ry.

Lithua­nia, for instance, has been a lead­ing force behind cre­at­ing a joint memo­r­i­al day for all vic­tims of total­i­tar­i­an­ism, blur­ring the dis­tinc­tion between the crimes of the Nazis and the com­mu­nists who fought them.

It also has pushed for leg­is­la­tion to pro­hib­it the sale of books that “dis­tort Lithuan­ian his­to­ry” by cit­ing the ram­pant, doc­u­ment­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion of the local pop­u­la­tion with Nazis. Most recent­ly it has resist­ed calls to remove the var­i­ous plaques com­mem­o­rat­ing anti-Sovi­et fight­er Jonas Nor­ei­ka, despite recent rev­e­la­tions by his own grand­daugh­ter, Sil­via Foti, that he was a fierce anti-Semi­te who had a role in the mur­der of thou­sands of Jews.

Near­ly all of Lithuania’s 200,000 Jews were killed in the Holo­caust.
...

When Netanyahu vis­it­ed Lithua­nia last year, he praised Prime Min­is­ter Saulius Skver­nelis for tak­ing “great steps to com­mem­o­rate the vic­tims of the Holo­caust” and for fight­ing mod­ern-day anti-Semi­tism. And Skver­nelis returned the per­verse favor when vis­it­ing Israel list week and declar­ing that “Lithua­nia has been learn­ing the lessons of the past” and was “improv­ing the life of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and restor­ing his­tor­i­cal sites”:

...
When Netanyahu, who has Lithuan­ian roots, vis­it­ed Vil­nius last year, he praised Prime Min­is­ter Saulius Skver­nelis for tak­ing “great steps to com­mem­o­rate the vic­tims of the Holo­caust” and for fight­ing mod­ern-day anti-Semi­tism.

...

In a meet­ing with Israeli Pres­i­dent Reuven Rivlin on Tues­day, Skver­nelis said “Lithua­nia has been learn­ing the lessons of the past” and was “improv­ing the life of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and restor­ing his­tor­i­cal sites.”

At Tuesday’s meet­ing, Netanyahu tread­ed cau­tious­ly. He referred to the “tragedies of the past” but steered clear of any crit­i­cism of mod­ern Lithua­nia, prais­ing the “spir­it of friend­ship” and “a bridge from the past to a future.”
...

And then there’s the warm wel­come giv­en to Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko last week at the same time Ukraine was erect­ing a memo­r­i­al to Symon Petliu­ra in Kiev. As the arti­cle notes, for coun­tries’s engaged in the kind of crass overt Holo­caust denial like Lithua­nia and Ukraine, a warm embrace by Netanyahu is exact­ly what they need­ed to defend against accu­sa­tion of anti-Semi­tism:

...
Skver­nelis’ vis­it comes a week after Netanyahu sim­i­lar­ly rolled out the red car­pet for Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, whose par­lia­ment just des­ig­nat­ed the birth­day of Ukrain­ian wartime col­lab­o­ra­tor Stepan Ban­dera a nation­al hol­i­day. A region­al leg­is­la­ture declared 2019 “the year of Stepan Ban­dera.”

Bandera’s forces fought along­side the Nazis and were impli­cat­ed in the mur­der of thou­sands of Jews. As Poroshenko was vis­it­ing Israel, anoth­er memo­r­i­al was being erect­ed in Kiev for Symon Petliu­ra, whose troops are linked to pogroms that killed as many as 50,000 Jews after World War I.

Netanyahu’s out­reach in east­ern Europe is part of his larg­er strat­e­gy of forg­ing alliances to counter the crit­i­cism Israel faces in the Unit­ed Nations and oth­er inter­na­tion­al forums over its treat­ment of the Pales­tini­ans.

Crit­ics con­sid­er it a deal with the dev­il. They say Netanyahu — who often invokes the Holo­caust when inveigh­ing against archri­val Iran — turns a blind eye when it comes to like-mind­ed allies.

“It’s a spe­cif­ic maneu­ver that legit­imizes anti-Semi­tism and bor­ders on Holo­caust denial,” said Tamar Zand­berg, leader of the dovish Meretz par­ty.

...

Under com­mu­nist rule, the Holo­caust was not seri­ous­ly dealt with and, upon inde­pen­dence, the new­found east­ern and cen­tral Euro­pean nations sought to can­on­ize nation­al­ist icons who resist­ed the Sovi­ets, while large­ly ignor­ing their crimes along­side the Nazis. Domes­tic aca­d­e­mics who have chal­lenged the false nar­ra­tive have been shamed, and exter­nal crit­i­cism has often been met with new anti-Semit­ic out­bursts.

For coun­tries like Lithua­nia and Ukraine, the warm embrace of the Israeli leader pro­vides a strong defense against accu­sa­tion of anti-Semi­tism while also strength­en­ing ties with a close U.S. ally.
...

And we can’t for­get Netanyahu’s close ties to Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban and the lead­ers of Poland. It’s like a giant act of mali­cious trolling and Netanyahu is lead­ing it:

...
Netanyahu has also formed a close alliance with Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban, who has lav­ished praise on Mik­los Hor­thy, Hungary’s World War II-era ruler, who intro­duced anti-Semit­ic laws and col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Nazis. Orban has also employed anti-Semit­ic tropes against the Jew­ish Hun­gar­i­an-Amer­i­can bil­lion­aire phil­an­thropist George Soros and backed a state-fund­ed muse­um that experts say plays down the role of Hun­gar­i­an col­lab­o­ra­tors.

Netanyahu also struck a deal with Pol­ish lead­ers over their country’s con­tro­ver­sial Holo­caust speech law, which would have crim­i­nal­ized blam­ing the Pol­ish nation for crimes com­mit­ted against Jews dur­ing World War II.

Israeli Holo­caust his­to­ri­ans slammed the agree­ment, which seemed to accept a Pol­ish nar­ra­tive that they were only vic­tims of the Nazis. Schol­ars say anti-Semi­tism was deeply root­ed in pre-war Poland and Poles might have either killed or helped Ger­mans kill up to 200,000 Jews.

Still, Netanyahu has invit­ed Orban and Pol­ish Prime Min­is­ter Mateusz Moraw­iec­ki — who last year equat­ed Pol­ish per­pe­tra­tors in the Holo­caust to sup­posed “Jew­ish per­pe­tra­tors” — to Israel in Feb­ru­ary for a sum­mit with the lead­ers of the Czech Repub­lic and Slo­va­kia.
...

But Netanyahu does at least con­demn some instances of anti-Semitism...as long as it comes from Mus­lims or left-wingers:

...
Yair Lapid, leader of the cen­trist Yesh Atid par­ty and the son of a Holo­caust sur­vivor, called on Netanyahu to can­cel the meet­ing, say­ing one prime min­is­ter has “pub­lished anti-Semit­ic con­tent” and anoth­er “passed a law des­e­crat­ing the mem­o­ry of Holo­caust vic­tims.”

In an annu­al report Sun­day, Israel’s Min­istry of Dias­po­ra Affairs said 2018 saw a record num­ber of world­wide anti-Semit­ic attacks, with most car­ried out by neo-Nazis in Europe and white suprema­cists.

But at his Cab­i­net meet­ing lat­er in the day, Netanyahu sin­gled out “Islam­ic anti-Semi­tism and the anti-Semi­tism of the extreme left, which includes anti-Zion­ism.”
...

So as we can see, Ben­jamin Netanyahu has more or less giv­en his bless­ing to the increas­ing­ly aggres­sive Holo­caust denial and revi­sion­ism sweep­ing East­ern Europe.

And in relat­ed news, Ben­jamin Netanyan­hu claims to be very con­cerned about polls show­ing both ris­ing anti-Semi­tism in Europe and that a third of respon­dents bare­ly knew any­thing about the Holo­caust at all

CNN

Netanyahu joins world lead­ers in lament­ing results of CNN poll on anti-Semi­tism

By James Mas­ters,

Updat­ed 1306 GMT (2106 HKT) Novem­ber 28, 2018

(CNN)Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu has joined law­mak­ers and lead­ing fig­ures involved in the fight against anti-Semi­tism by say­ing he is “con­cerned” about the results of CNN’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Euro­pean atti­tudes toward Jews.

“I’m con­cerned, because I think anti-Semi­tism is an ancient dis­ease and when it rears its ugly head, it first attacks the Jews, but it nev­er stops with that, and then it sweeps entire soci­eties, as hap­pened obvi­ous­ly in mid-cen­tu­ry Europe,” he told CNN’s Oren Lieber­mann. “First in Ger­many and then through­out all of Europe and the con­se­quences were hor­ri­ble.”

Accord­ing to the poll, more than a quar­ter of Euro­peans sur­veyed believe Jews have too much influ­ence in busi­ness and finance. Near­ly one in four said Jews have too much influ­ence in con­flict and wars across the world.

Mean­while, a third of Euro­peans polled said they knew just a lit­tle or noth­ing at all about the Holo­caust, the mass mur­der of some six mil­lion Jews in lands con­trolled by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s.

Netanyahu said while he is con­cerned about CNN’s results, he was not sur­prised. He said that soci­ety needs to con­tin­ue the fight against the rise in anti-Semi­tism — espe­cial­ly with edu­ca­tion.

“In your sur­vey, a good chunk — a third of peo­ple — hard­ly knew any­thing about the Holo­caust,” he said.

“I think edu­ca­tion is impor­tant and I think a strong, force­ful posi­tion is impor­tant.”

Mean­while, the Israeli Prime Min­is­ter com­mend­ed Euro­pean lead­ers for fight­ing anti-Semi­tism.

“I spoke to Merkel, Macron, May and oth­ers — they’re putting up a fight,” Netanyahu said refer­ring to Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel, French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Min­is­ter There­sa May.

He also praised lead­ers who have faced crit­i­cism on this issue.

“I’m see­ing this in East­ern Europe. I saw Vik­tor Orban in Hun­gary — he’s opened up a cen­ter against anti-Semi­tism. I saw Sebas­t­ian Kurz in Aus­tria — he just held a con­fer­ence against anti-Semi­tism, and that’s encour­ag­ing.”

Hun­gary has pre­vi­ous­ly faced accu­sa­tions of anti-Semi­tism in the lead-up to this year’s elec­tion, with crit­ics of Pres­i­dent Orban claim­ing he has used anti-Semit­ic tropes dur­ing his cam­paign.

Mean­while in Aus­tria, the far-right Free­dom Par­ty was wel­comed into the gov­ern­ing coali­tion with Chan­cel­lor Kurz’s Peo­ple’s Par­ty, much to the con­ster­na­tion of the coun­try’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty.

Felix Klein, who was appoint­ed as Ger­many’s fed­er­al gov­ern­ment com­mis­sion­er for Jew­ish life in April, said that while he was upset by the pol­l’s find­ings, they did not sur­prise him. “The results of the CNN sur­vey are appalling.”

In a state­ment sent to CNN, Klein said: “For com­bat­ing anti-Semi­tism, it is fun­da­men­tal to keep the mem­o­ry of the Shoah (Holo­caust) alive and nur­ture a vivid cul­ture of remem­brance.

“On a Euro­pean lev­el, I am going to encour­age oth­er states to cre­ate nation­al func­tions sim­i­lar to mine. We have already start­ed to fight anti-Semi­tism on the lev­el of the EU, for exam­ple by call­ing for the mem­ber states to adopt the def­i­n­i­tion for anti-Semi­tism that the (Inter­na­tion­al Holo­caust Remem­brance Alliance) has for­mu­lat­ed.

“The Ger­man Bun­destag and the Ger­man gov­ern­ment have adopt­ed this def­i­n­i­tion in 2017. Our biggest chal­lenge, how­ev­er, will be to change the views peo­ple hold about Jews. This is a task for all of us, and for the sake of soci­ety as a whole — because anti-Semi­tism is a threat for any demo­c­ra­t­ic, open soci­ety.”

‘Not sur­pris­ing’

The CNN/ComRes poll poll inter­viewed more than 7,000 peo­ple across Europe, with more than 1,000 respon­dents each in Aus­tria, France, Ger­many, Great Britain, Hun­gary, Poland and Swe­den.

Amer­i­can his­to­ri­an Deb­o­rah Lip­stadt, author of the forth­com­ing book “Anti­semitism: Here and Now,” said the poll showed in “fright­en­ing detail, how tra­di­tion­al anti-Semit­ic motifs per­sist in Europe.”

“While, giv­en recent devel­op­ments, this is not entire­ly sur­pris­ing, it is dis­heart­en­ing,” she said of the results.

“Step­ping back from the spe­cif­ic find­ings of the study, it is imper­a­tive to note that anti-Semi­tism con­sti­tutes a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, i.e. an irra­tional evi­dence-free per­spec­tive that attrib­ut­es to all Jews — irre­spec­tive of their loca­tion, sta­tus, age, nation­al­i­ty, world view — the same qual­i­ties and stereo­types. Anti-Semi­tism makes as much sense as attribut­ing to all left-hand­ed peo­ple or all blonds sim­i­lar attrib­ut­es and behav­iors.”

Lip­stadt, one of the world’s pre-emi­nent Holo­caust his­to­ri­ans, says she was also dis­turbed by the igno­rance that sur­rounds the sys­tem­at­ic mur­der of Europe’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion dur­ing World War II.

“This is not some­thing that should so eas­i­ly be for­got­ten. It should be some­thing about which Euro­peans should still be grap­pling. Not because of guilt — today’s Euro­peans are clear­ly not guilty of any­thing — but in terms of the soci­ety with­in which they live.”

Karen Pol­lock, chief exec­u­tive of the UK Holo­caust Edu­ca­tion­al Trust, said the poll con­firmed “a wor­ry­ing increase in the num­ber of peo­ple who believe tra­di­tion­al anti-Semit­ic tropes or hold anti-Semit­ic views, as well as a dis­ap­point­ing lack of knowl­edge about the Holo­caust.”

“Sur­vivors like Susan Pol­lack do an incred­i­ble job of shar­ing their tes­ti­monies, but they can­not do this for­ev­er. So, we will redou­ble our efforts to make sure that her sto­ry, along with all oth­er sur­vivors and the vic­tims of the Holo­caust, lives on and con­tin­ue to edu­cate where hate can ulti­mate­ly lead.”

The poll also high­light­ed a sharp­en­ing of atti­tudes when it comes to the rela­tion­ship between the Holo­caust, Israel, Jews and anti-Semi­tism.

A third of sur­vey respon­dents believe that crit­i­cism of Israel tends to be moti­vat­ed by anti-Semi­tism, while only one in five said it does not.

How­ev­er, a third of peo­ple CNN sur­veyed said that Israel uses the Holo­caust to jus­ti­fy its actions, with half the respon­dents in Poland agree­ing. Only one in five dis­agreed.

A third of Euro­peans said sup­port­ers of Israel use accu­sa­tions of anti-Semi­tism to shut down crit­i­cism of Israel, while only one in 10 said that was not true.

“We have always known that for many, being anti-Israel is a nat­ur­al exten­sion of their anti-Semit­ic beliefs. This has an impact both on their atti­tudes to his­to­ry and to the present,” Israel’s Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion and Min­is­ter of Dias­po­ra Affairs, Naf­tali Ben­nett, told CNN.

“What is clear is that it is not only impor­tant that peo­ple know about the Holo­caust, but that they under­stand the lessons of the Holo­caust. The same deeply anti­se­mit­ic stereo­types and accu­sa­tions we hear today were the same fuel which pow­ered the death camps.”

Dan­ny Danon, Israel’s Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations, told CNN that the poll find­ings showed how easy it was for peo­ple to for­get his­to­ry.

“We are bare­ly a few gen­er­a­tions removed from the Holo­caust, and yet these num­bers are alarm­ing. Anti-Semi­tism can take many forms, includ­ing deny­ing the Holo­caust and ques­tion­ing Israel’s right to exist,” Danon told CNN in an email.

“There is a direct con­nec­tion between not know­ing your his­to­ry, and the rise in anti-Semi­tism and ani­mos­i­ty towards Israel. We need to be more vig­i­lant to ensure we do not for­get our past, and pro­tect against this most ancient form of big­otry.”

...

‘Entrenched’

Accord­ing to the poll, 34% of Euro­peans sur­veyed know just a lit­tle or have nev­er heard of the Holo­caust, while 20% of French peo­ple between the ages of 18 and 34 said they had nev­er heard of the Holo­caust.

And 31% of Euro­peans polled believe com­mem­o­rat­ing the Holo­caust dis­tracts from oth­er atroc­i­ties and injus­tices today.

“The sur­vey high­lights the trou­bling fact that many entrenched hate­ful anti-Semit­ic tropes per­sist in Euro­pean civ­i­liza­tion, 75 years after the end of the Holo­caust,” said Avn­er Shalev, chair­man of Yad Vashem, the World Holo­caust Remem­brance Cen­ter in Jerusalem.

“The result of this sur­vey proves the neces­si­ty to inten­si­fy broad-based efforts in the area of Holo­caust edu­ca­tion and aware­ness, which is essen­tial to any effort to con­tend with anti-Semi­tism.”

Piotr M. A. Cywin­s­ki, direc­tor of the Auschwitz Memo­r­i­al, said the poll results under­lined the impor­tance of edu­ca­tion in tack­ling hate.

“The anti-Semit­ic or xeno­pho­bic ide­olo­gies that in the past led to the human cat­a­stro­phe of Auschwitz, seem not to have been erased from our lives today. They still poi­son peo­ple’s minds and influ­ence our con­tem­po­rary atti­tudes in social, polit­i­cal, eth­i­cal, and oth­er aspects.”

———–

“Netanyahu joins world lead­ers in lament­ing results of CNN poll on anti-Semi­tism” by James Mas­ters; CNN; 11/28/2018

“Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu has joined law­mak­ers and lead­ing fig­ures involved in the fight against anti-Semi­tism by say­ing he is “con­cerned” about the results of CNN’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Euro­pean atti­tudes toward Jews.”

It’s quite a mys­tery. Despite giv­ing aid and com­fort to the EU lead­ers lead­ing the way on dis­tort­ing the his­to­ry of the Holo­caust, Netanyahu claims to be very con­cerned and points to the impor­tance of edu­ca­tion.

But putting Netanyahu’s hypocrisy aside, this was a pret­ty shock­ing poll, with a third claim­ing to know lit­tle or noth­ing at all about the Holo­caust and 31% believ­ing that com­mem­o­rat­ing the Holo­caust dis­tracts from oth­er atroc­i­ties and injus­tices today:

...
“I’m con­cerned, because I think anti-Semi­tism is an ancient dis­ease and when it rears its ugly head, it first attacks the Jews, but it nev­er stops with that, and then it sweeps entire soci­eties, as hap­pened obvi­ous­ly in mid-cen­tu­ry Europe,” he told CNN’s Oren Lieber­mann. “First in Ger­many and then through­out all of Europe and the con­se­quences were hor­ri­ble.”

Accord­ing to the poll, more than a quar­ter of Euro­peans sur­veyed believe Jews have too much influ­ence in busi­ness and finance. Near­ly one in four said Jews have too much influ­ence in con­flict and wars across the world.

Mean­while, a third of Euro­peans polled said they knew just a lit­tle or noth­ing at all about the Holo­caust, the mass mur­der of some six mil­lion Jews in lands con­trolled by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in the 1930s and 1940s.

Netanyahu said while he is con­cerned about CNN’s results, he was not sur­prised. He said that soci­ety needs to con­tin­ue the fight against the rise in anti-Semi­tism — espe­cial­ly with edu­ca­tion.

“In your sur­vey, a good chunk — a third of peo­ple — hard­ly knew any­thing about the Holo­caust,” he said.

“I think edu­ca­tion is impor­tant and I think a strong, force­ful posi­tion is impor­tant.”

...

Accord­ing to the poll, 34% of Euro­peans sur­veyed know just a lit­tle or have nev­er heard of the Holo­caust, while 20% of French peo­ple between the ages of 18 and 34 said they had nev­er heard of the Holo­caust.

And 31% of Euro­peans polled believe com­mem­o­rat­ing the Holo­caust dis­tracts from oth­er atroc­i­ties and injus­tices today.
...

So we’ll see how this cur­rent wave of gov­ern­ment-backed Holo­caust revi­sion­ism plays out, but we can be con­fi­dent that the Euro­pean politi­cians lead­ing this effort will have at least one friend in Israel no mat­ter how bad this gets.

@Pterrafractyl–

This is Netanyahu being Netanyahu.

Loy­al to his roots: https://spitfirelist.com/news/team-netanyahu-and-thyssenkrupp-bormann-jews-in-action/

Bibi’s father, Ben­zion Netanyahu was the per­son­al sec­re­tary to Vladimir Jabotin­sky, the founder of the Betar–the pri­ma­ry fas­cist ele­ment in the Zion­ist move­ment.

Jabotin­sky was an ally of the pogromist butch­er Semi­on Pet­lyu­ra, whose stat­ue is being erect­ed in Kiev.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/jabotinsky-s-embarrassing-offer‑1.280234

Not sur­pris­ing to see Netanyahu act­ing like this.

Best,

Dave

What’s next for Israel and Gaza? It’s one of the meta-ques­tions loom­ing over the region fol­low­ing Hamas’s unprece­dent­ed mass ter­ror attack. We more or less know the imme­di­ate answer to what’s next: a mas­sive Israeli mil­i­tary cam­paign designed to inflict as much dam­age as pos­si­ble on Hamas as pos­si­ble. But what then? What hap­pens if Israel does man­age to large­ly suc­cess in wip­ing out Hamas after an extend­ed bout of bru­tal urban war­fare? Who steps into that vac­u­um of Gazan lead­er­ship to pick up the pieces? Lit­er­al pieces of rub­ble that will like­ly be all that remains in much of Gaza by the time Israel is done with this oper­a­tion. What pos­si­ble path for­ward is there after that?

It’s a ques­tion both star­ing Israel in the face and yet, iron­i­cal­ly, easy to put off answer­ing for now. Because you don’t real­ly HAVE to answer the ques­tion of ‘what comes after Hamas’ until you’ve wiped out Hamas. But it would obvi­ous­ly be a good idea to have a plan. So what’s that plan? What comes next, after the bru­tal urban con­flict?

And that brings us to one of the oth­er mas­sive ques­tions loom­ing over this sto­ry: how did this hap­pen? How could Israel have been total­ly caught off guard like this? Espe­cial­ly since, as we’ve seen, there were signs of some­thing big com­ing like direct warn­ings from Egypt­ian intel­li­gence.

Now, the expla­na­tion for ‘how did this hap­pen’ that we’ve large­ly heard so far come down to two pri­ma­ry excus­es:

1. Netanyahu’s gov­ern­ment was dis­tract­ed by all the con­flicts involv­ing his aggres­sive West Bank set­tler pol­i­cy.

and

2. Netanyahu’s rad­i­cal con­sti­tu­tion­al reforms polar­ized the coun­try to such an extent that the abil­i­ty of IDF to func­tion coher­ent­ly was com­pro­mised.

Expla­na­tions that don’t exact­ly depict the Netanyahu gov­ern­ment as a sta­bi­liz­ing force in Israel. Which points towards a poten­tial­ly potent ele­ment of any ‘what’s next?’ path for­wards for Israel and the Pales­tini­ans: a polit­i­cal rejec­tion of Netanyahu and the set­tler extrem­ists. Wipe them out, polit­i­cal­ly speak­ing, and replace them with politi­cians ded­i­cat­ed to find­ing a peace­ful vision for the future of region. Hamas isn’t the only enti­ty in the con­flict ded­i­cat­ed to wip­ing the oth­er side out.

Now, obvi­ous­ly, the Israeli far right has zero inten­tion of going any­where. But with the for­ma­tion of an emer­gency ‘uni­ty gov­ern­ment’ that installed Ben­ny Gantz as Defense Min­is­ter, and ongo­ing out­rage over the Netanyahu gov­ern­men­t’s appar­ent blind­ness in the lead up to this attack, it’s not hard to imag­ine there’s some polit­i­cal tur­moil in store for Israel’s future. Yes, it’s the kind of tur­moil that could result in an even more extreme gov­ern­ment at the end of this. But that does­n’t have to be the out­come. While Israel was a cap­tive of its hyper-polar­ized pol­i­tics head­ing into this emer­gency con­flict, Netanyahu’s gov­ern­ment of extrem­ists real­ly screw up mas­sive­ly here and there’s no rea­son the pol­i­tics will nec­es­sar­i­ly remain as polar­ized by the time this is over. In oth­er words, there’s noth­ing quite like a bru­tal con­flict for forg­ing a new polit­i­cal con­sen­sus.

So with a mil­i­tary cam­paign osten­si­bly ded­i­cat­ed to the wip­ing out of Hamas now get­ting under­way with no real ‘end game’ sce­nario in sight, it’s going to be worth keep­ing in mind that the most pow­er­ful and durable long-term response to the wip­ing out of Hamas would be a new polit­i­cal Israeli con­sen­sus that rejects the abso­lutist pol­i­tics that ani­mat­ed much of Netanyahu’s pol­i­tics and those of his set­tler extrem­ist allies. A new pol­i­tics for Gaza will be a lot more like­ly to ‘stick’ if it came at the same time Israel had its own sea change. Yes, that’s pie in the sky think­ing. But there’s noth­ing quite like a nation­al exis­ten­tial cri­sis of vicious war­fare with no end in sight for turn­ing pie in sky think­ing into a real­i­ty.

And that’s all part of what the ongo­ing ques­tions about the alleged intel­li­gence fail­ures could end up being extreme­ly impor­tant in terms of how this con­flict is ulti­mate­ly resolved. Because the more we learn about these intel­li­gence fail­ures, the more out­ra­geous it gets. For exam­ple, on Octo­ber 4, days before the attack, we got reports of a mas­sive Hamas intel­li­gence fail­ure. Yes, it turns out Israel has had a high lev­el mole close to Hamas’s lead­er­ship for years. This mole was only in late Sep­tem­ber, which would put it at around two weeks before the attack. An attack that clear­ly took much more than a cou­ple weeks for plan­ning and train­ing.

So if Israel had a high lev­el mole near Hamas’s lead­er­ship just last month, what are the odds that Israeli intel­li­gence real­ly did­n’t have any sign this attack was com­ing? Was the worst ter­ror attack in Israel’s his­to­ry allowed to hap­pen for polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy? Or was the Netanyahu gov­ern­ment tru­ly so dis­tract­ed with its cam­paign in West Bank that it just could­n’t be both­ered to pay atten­tion to the warn­ings? We still don’t know. But there were warn­ings. And the more we learn about these warn­ings, the worse it looks. Bad enough to foment a polit­i­cal sea change for Israel? Time will tell, but let’s hope so. Because right now, we can rea­son­ably pre­dict a bru­tal cam­paign in Gaza with mas­sive casu­al­ties on all side, and can’t real­ly pre­dict what comes next oth­er than it’s going to prob­a­bly get a lot worse.

Ok, first, here’s anoth­er look at the ‘intel­li­gence fail­ure’ nar­ra­tive that we were get­ting in the days fol­low­ing the attack. A nar­ra­tive that points to an over-reliance of tech­nol­o­gy over human intel­li­gence. And a nar­ra­tive that sug­gests Netanyahu’s gov­ern­ment was too ‘dis­tract­ed’ with its deeply unpop­u­lar judi­cial reforms and Netanyahu’s cor­rup­tion charges to take the warn­ings it was actu­al­ly receiv­ing seri­ous. A nar­ra­tive of ‘there were no warn­ings, except for the warn­ings we got that were ignored because of all the gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion and extrem­ism.’ Which is the kind of nar­ra­tive that sug­gests get­ting rid of Netanyahu and the cor­rupt extrem­ists in his orbit would be great for Israel’s secu­ri­ty:

Asso­ci­at­ed Press

What went wrong? Ques­tions emerge over Israel’s intel­li­gence prowess after Hamas attack

By TIA GOLDENBERG
Updat­ed 2:47 AM CDT, Octo­ber 9, 2023

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — For Pales­tini­ans in Gaza, Israel’s eyes are nev­er very far away. Sur­veil­lance drones buzz con­stant­ly from the skies. The high­ly-secured bor­der is awash with secu­ri­ty cam­eras and sol­diers on guard. Intel­li­gence agen­cies work sources and cyber capa­bil­i­ties to draw out a bevy of infor­ma­tion.

But Israel’s eyes appeared to have been closed in the lead-up to an unprece­dent­ed onslaught by the mil­i­tant Hamas group, which broke down Israeli bor­der bar­ri­ers and sent hun­dreds of mil­i­tants into Israel to car­ry out a brazen attack that has killed hun­dreds and pushed the region toward con­flict.

Israel’s intel­li­gence agen­cies have gained an aura of invin­ci­bil­i­ty over the decades because of a string of achieve­ments. Israel has foiled plots seed­ed in the West Bank, alleged­ly hunt­ed down Hamas oper­a­tives in Dubai and has been accused of killing Iran­ian nuclear sci­en­tists in the heart of Iran. Even when their efforts have stum­bled, agen­cies like the Mossad, Shin Bet and mil­i­tary intel­li­gence have main­tained their mys­tique.

But the weekend’s assault, which caught Israel off guard on a major Jew­ish hol­i­day, plunges that rep­u­ta­tion into doubt and rais­es ques­tions about the country’s readi­ness in the face of a weak­er but deter­mined foe. Over 48 hours lat­er, Hamas mil­i­tants con­tin­ued to bat­tle Israeli forces inside Israeli ter­ri­to­ry, and dozens of Israelis were in Hamas cap­tiv­i­ty in Gaza.

“This is a major fail­ure,” said Yaakov Amidror, a for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er to Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu. “This oper­a­tion actu­al­ly proves that the (intel­li­gence) abil­i­ties in Gaza were no good.”

...

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief mil­i­tary spokesman, acknowl­edged the army owes the pub­lic an expla­na­tion. But he said now is not the time. “First, we fight, then we inves­ti­gate,” he said.

Some say it is too ear­ly to pin the blame sole­ly on an intel­li­gence fault. They point to a wave of low-lev­el vio­lence in the West Bank that shift­ed some mil­i­tary resources there and the polit­i­cal chaos roil­ing Israel over steps by Netanyahu’s far-right gov­ern­ment to over­haul the judi­cia­ry. The con­tro­ver­sial plan has threat­ened the cohe­sion of the country’s pow­er­ful mil­i­tary.

But the appar­ent lack of pri­or knowl­edge of Hamas’ plot will like­ly be seen as a prime cul­prit in the chain of events that led to the dead­liest attack against Israelis in decades.

Israel with­drew troops and set­tlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, strip­ping it of a close han­dle on the hap­pen­ings in the ter­ri­to­ry. But even after Hamas over­ran Gaza in 2007, Israel appeared to main­tain its edge, using tech­no­log­i­cal and human intel­li­gence.

It claimed to know the pre­cise loca­tions of Hamas lead­er­ship and appeared to prove it through the assas­si­na­tions of mil­i­tant lead­ers in sur­gi­cal strikes, some­times while they slept in their bed­rooms. Israel has known where to strike under­ground tun­nels used by Hamas to fer­ry around fight­ers and arms, destroy­ing miles (kilo­me­ters) of the con­cealed pas­sage­ways.

Despite those abil­i­ties, Hamas was able to keep its plan under wraps. The fero­cious attack, which like­ly took months of plan­ning and metic­u­lous train­ing and involved coor­di­na­tion among mul­ti­ple mil­i­tant groups, appeared to have gone under Israel’s intel­li­gence radar.

Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli gen­er­al, said that with­out a foothold inside Gaza, Israel’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices have come to rely increas­ing­ly on tech­no­log­i­cal means to gain intel­li­gence. He said mil­i­tants in Gaza have found ways to evade that tech­no­log­i­cal intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, giv­ing Israel an incom­plete pic­ture of their inten­tions.

“The oth­er side learned to deal with our tech­no­log­i­cal dom­i­nance and they stopped using tech­nol­o­gy that could expose it,” said Avivi, who served as a con­duit for intel­li­gence mate­ri­als under a for­mer mil­i­tary chief of staff. Avivi is pres­i­dent and founder of Israel Defense and Secu­ri­ty Forum, a hawk­ish group of for­mer mil­i­tary com­man­ders.

“They’ve gone back to the Stone Age,” he said, explain­ing that mil­i­tants weren’t using phones or com­put­ers and were con­duct­ing their sen­si­tive busi­ness in rooms spe­cial­ly guard­ed from tech­no­log­i­cal espi­onage or going under­ground.

But Avivi said the fail­ure extends beyond just intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and Israel’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices failed to put togeth­er an accu­rate pic­ture from the intel­li­gence they were receiv­ing, based on what he said was a mis­con­cep­tion sur­round­ing Hamas’ inten­tions.

Israel’s secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment has in recent years increas­ing­ly seen Hamas as an actor inter­est­ed in gov­ern­ing, seek­ing to devel­op Gaza’s econ­o­my and improv­ing the stan­dard of liv­ing of Gaza’s 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple. Avivi and oth­ers say the truth is that Hamas, which calls for Israel’s destruc­tion, still sees that aim as its pri­or­i­ty.

Israel in recent years has allowed up to 18,000 Pales­tin­ian labor­ers from Gaza to work in Israel, where they can earn a salary about 10 times high­er than in the impov­er­ished coastal enclave. The secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment saw that car­rot as a way to main­tain rel­a­tive calm.

“In prac­tice, hun­dreds if not thou­sands of Hamas men were prepar­ing for a sur­prise attack for months, with­out that hav­ing leaked,” wrote Amos Harel, a defense com­men­ta­tor, in the dai­ly Haaretz. “The results are cat­a­stroph­ic.”

...

An Egypt­ian intel­li­gence offi­cial said Egypt, which often serves as a medi­a­tor between Israel and Hamas, had spo­ken repeat­ed­ly with the Israelis about “some­thing big,” with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

He said Israeli offi­cials were focused on the West Bank and played down the threat from Gaza. Netanyahu’s gov­ern­ment is made up of sup­port­ers of Jew­ish West Bank set­tlers who have demand­ed a secu­ri­ty crack­down in the face of a ris­ing tide of vio­lence there over the last 18 months.

“We have warned them an explo­sion of the sit­u­a­tion is com­ing, and very soon, and it would be big. But they under­es­ti­mat­ed such warn­ings,” said the offi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because he wasn’t autho­rized to dis­cuss the con­tent of sen­si­tive intel­li­gence dis­cus­sions with the media.

Israel has also been pre­oc­cu­pied and torn apart by Netanyahu’s judi­cial over­haul plan. Netanyahu had received repeat­ed warn­ings by his defense chiefs, as well as sev­er­al for­mer lead­ers of the country’s intel­li­gence agen­cies, that the divi­sive plan was chip­ping away at the cohe­sion of the country’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices.

Mar­tin Indyk, who served as a spe­cial envoy for Israeli-Pales­tin­ian nego­ti­a­tions dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, said inter­nal divi­sions over the legal changes was an aggra­vat­ing fac­tor that con­tributed to the Israelis being caught off guard.

“That roiled the IDF in a way that was, I think, we dis­cov­ered was a huge dis­trac­tion,” he said.

———-

“What went wrong? Ques­tions emerge over Israel’s intel­li­gence prowess after Hamas attack” By TIA GOLDENBERG; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 10/09/2023

“But the appar­ent lack of pri­or knowl­edge of Hamas’ plot will like­ly be seen as a prime cul­prit in the chain of events that led to the dead­liest attack against Israelis in decades.”

No one in Israel’s secu­ri­ty forces knew the largest ter­ror attack in Israel’s his­to­ry was com­ing. Well, not no one. Egypt saw it com­ing and warned Israel. Warn­ings that were ignored with the Netanyahu’s gov­ern­ment focus on expand­ing set­tle­ments in the West Bank. That’s the expla­na­tion we’ve been giv­en. Which obvi­ous­ly isn’t a great expla­na­tion. It’s quite an awful expla­na­tion when you think about it. But it’s not the worst pos­si­ble expla­na­tion. It’s not as bad as, say, know­ing the attack was com­ing and allow­ing it to hap­pen:

...
An Egypt­ian intel­li­gence offi­cial said Egypt, which often serves as a medi­a­tor between Israel and Hamas, had spo­ken repeat­ed­ly with the Israelis about “some­thing big,” with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

He said Israeli offi­cials were focused on the West Bank and played down the threat from Gaza. Netanyahu’s gov­ern­ment is made up of sup­port­ers of Jew­ish West Bank set­tlers who have demand­ed a secu­ri­ty crack­down in the face of a ris­ing tide of vio­lence there over the last 18 months.

“We have warned them an explo­sion of the sit­u­a­tion is com­ing, and very soon, and it would be big. But they under­es­ti­mat­ed such warn­ings,” said the offi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because he wasn’t autho­rized to dis­cuss the con­tent of sen­si­tive intel­li­gence dis­cus­sions with the media.

Israel has also been pre­oc­cu­pied and torn apart by Netanyahu’s judi­cial over­haul plan. Netanyahu had received repeat­ed warn­ings by his defense chiefs, as well as sev­er­al for­mer lead­ers of the country’s intel­li­gence agen­cies, that the divi­sive plan was chip­ping away at the cohe­sion of the country’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices.

Mar­tin Indyk, who served as a spe­cial envoy for Israeli-Pales­tin­ian nego­ti­a­tions dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, said inter­nal divi­sions over the legal changes was an aggra­vat­ing fac­tor that con­tributed to the Israelis being caught off guard.

“That roiled the IDF in a way that was, I think, we dis­cov­ered was a huge dis­trac­tion,” he said.
...

And note the oth­er expla­na­tion we’re hear­ing: Israel’s reliance on tech­no­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance, and a par­al­lel decline in its human intel­li­gence col­lec­tion, allowed Hamas to keep the plot entire­ly off Israel’s radar by adopt­ing ‘stone age’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion meth­ods:

...
Amir Avivi, a retired Israeli gen­er­al, said that with­out a foothold inside Gaza, Israel’s secu­ri­ty ser­vices have come to rely increas­ing­ly on tech­no­log­i­cal means to gain intel­li­gence. He said mil­i­tants in Gaza have found ways to evade that tech­no­log­i­cal intel­li­gence gath­er­ing, giv­ing Israel an incom­plete pic­ture of their inten­tions.

“The oth­er side learned to deal with our tech­no­log­i­cal dom­i­nance and they stopped using tech­nol­o­gy that could expose it,” said Avivi, who served as a con­duit for intel­li­gence mate­ri­als under a for­mer mil­i­tary chief of staff. Avivi is pres­i­dent and founder of Israel Defense and Secu­ri­ty Forum, a hawk­ish group of for­mer mil­i­tary com­man­ders.

“They’ve gone back to the Stone Age,” he said, explain­ing that mil­i­tants weren’t using phones or com­put­ers and were con­duct­ing their sen­si­tive busi­ness in rooms spe­cial­ly guard­ed from tech­no­log­i­cal espi­onage or going under­ground.
...

And that brings us to the fol­low­ing sto­ry pub­lished on Octo­ber 4, days before the attack. A sto­ry about about a stun­ning Israeli intel­li­gence vic­to­ry against Hamas at the high­est lev­els: Hamas caught an Israeli dou­ble agent, iden­ti­fied as Khalil Abu Ma’za, who had spent years work­ing close­ly with Hamas’s lead­er­ship. Abu Ma’za was even­tu­al­ly caught, but only in the last week of Sep­tem­ber. So when it comes to claims about Israeli intel­li­gence over­ly rely­ing on tech­no­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance and ignor­ing the need for col­lect­ing human intel­li­gence, it’s hard to ignore the report of a high lev­el dou­ble agent who was only caught weeks ear­li­er. What are the odds Abu Ma’za knew noth­ing about this attack?:

Tazpit Press Ser­vice

Hamas rocked by Israeli spy pen­e­trat­ing its high­est ranks

Octo­ber 4, 2023 by Baruch Yedid — TPS

An Israeli intel­li­gence agent suc­cess­ful­ly infil­trat­ed the upper ech­e­lons of Hamas in Lebanon, send­ing shock­waves through the ter­ror orga­ni­za­tion and caus­ing sig­nif­i­cant embar­rass­ment.

The agent in ques­tion, iden­ti­fied as Khalil Abu Ma’za, a Hamas oper­a­tive from the Gaza Strip, had been oper­at­ing under­cov­er for years, work­ing close­ly with Israeli intel­li­gence.

The reports say he was arrest­ed by Lebanese author­i­ties towards the end of Sep­tem­ber. He appar­ent­ly came to the atten­tion of Lebanese offi­cials work­ing to calm an out­break of fight­ing in the Ain al-Hilweh Pales­tin­ian refugee camp in August.

...

Saleh Arouri, who is believed to be a top tar­get for Israeli assas­si­na­tion, is said to be par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about the secu­ri­ty breach.

Accord­ing to Lebanese intel­li­gence reports, Abu Ma’za was orig­i­nal­ly tasked with infil­trat­ing the lead­er­ship of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a mis­sion he car­ried out with remark­able suc­cess. Under the guid­ance of his Israeli han­dlers, he climbed the ranks of Hamas, espe­cial­ly with­in its Izz a‑Din al-Qas­sam Brigades mil­i­tary wing.

Four years ago, Abu Ma’za was instruct­ed to relo­cate to Turkey, where he was aid­ed by his father, who had close ties to the Hamas lead­er­ship. In Istan­bul, he claimed to be work­ing for a Turk­ish char­i­ty, using this cov­er to con­nect with senior Hamas offi­cials in Gaza. His finan­cial sit­u­a­tion improved sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and when ques­tioned, Abu Ma’za attrib­uted it to his char­i­ta­ble work — an expla­na­tion that went unques­tioned in the impov­er­ished Gaza Strip.

Abu Ma’za’s rise with­in the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion allowed him to gain access to sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion, includ­ing details about weapons depots. One such depot was sub­se­quent­ly tar­get­ed and bombed by Israel, leav­ing Hamas stunned and unable to com­ment on the attack due to the shock it had caused.

Abu Ma’za’s prox­im­i­ty to the top lead­er­ship of Hamas also pro­vid­ed him with valu­able insights into the organization’s activ­i­ties in Judea and Samaria.

Lebanese reports sug­gest that Abu Ma’za was not lim­it­ed to his activ­i­ties with­in Gaza but also main­tained con­tacts with the “Hega­da Head­quar­ters,” which was based in Gaza and Turkey and over­saw ter­ror attacks in Judea and Samaria.

As part of his mis­sion, Abu Ma’za was instruct­ed by his Israeli han­dlers to request a trans­fer to Lebanon. How­ev­er, when Hamas in Lebanon declined to accept him from Turkey, Israeli intel­li­gence inter­vened. They informed Turk­ish author­i­ties that Abu Ma’za was a ter­ror­ist oper­a­tive, poten­tial­ly jeop­ar­diz­ing Turk­ish-Israeli rela­tions. Turkey deport­ed Abu Ma’za to Lebanon, align­ing with Israel’s orig­i­nal plan.

Close to the High­est Lev­els

Hamas con­tends that Abu Ma’za nev­er under­went a secu­ri­ty inves­ti­ga­tion dur­ing his time in Turkey and was ques­tioned upon arrival in Lebanon. When asked to name ter­ror­ist oper­a­tives with whom he had been in con­tact, Abu Ma’za was unable to pro­vide any names, sug­gest­ing he lacked such con­nec­tions.

Nev­er­the­less, Abu Ma’za resided in close prox­im­i­ty to senior Hamas offi­cials, includ­ing Saleh Arouri, the over­all com­man­der of Hamas activ­i­ties in Judea and Samaria, and Samir Pan­di, the ter­ror group’s top fig­ure in Lebanon.

Abu Ma’za alleged­ly passed on valu­able infor­ma­tion to Israeli intel­li­gence regard­ing oper­a­tions being con­duct­ed from Lebanese soil and the influx of new recruits from Gaza into Lebanon. He also oper­at­ed with­in Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty refugee camps in Lebanon on behalf of Hamas, sup­ply­ing weapons and funds. He even attempt­ed to thwart the cease­fire agree­ment between Hamas and Fatah, all at the behest of Israeli intel­li­gence, accord­ing to Lebanese sources.

Notably, Abu Ma’za had con­nec­tions with Hamza Shahin, a promi­nent Hamas fig­ure who died in a mys­te­ri­ous explo­sion at a weapons ware­house under­neath a mosque in the Burj al-She­mali refugee camp in south­ern Lebanon on Dec. 10, 2021. While Hamas attrib­uted the inci­dent to a gas cylin­der explo­sion, Lebanese sources sug­gest it was a sig­nif­i­cant weapons depot held by Hamas.

Hamas offi­cials have down­played Abu Ma’za’s activ­i­ties, with one senior offi­cial claim­ing to have encoun­tered him by chance in Turkey and not­ing that he had pri­mar­i­ly worked in non-mil­i­tary sec­tors. Anoth­er Hamas mem­ber, Akram Ajouri, com­ment­ed on the sit­u­a­tion, empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of main­tain­ing the rep­u­ta­tion of Abu Ma’za’s father, a respect­ed mem­ber of the orga­ni­za­tion.

Now, author­i­ties in Lebanon are inves­ti­gat­ing whether Abu Ma’za man­aged to estab­lish addi­tion­al cells and whether he pos­es a threat to the top lead­er­ship of Hamas in future con­flicts.

———

“Hamas rocked by Israeli spy pen­e­trat­ing its high­est ranks” by Baruch Yedid; Tazpit Press Ser­vice; 10/04/2023

“The agent in ques­tion, iden­ti­fied as Khalil Abu Ma’za, a Hamas oper­a­tive from the Gaza Strip, had been oper­at­ing under­cov­er for years, work­ing close­ly with Israeli intel­li­gence.”

Yes, just two days before the his­to­ry unprece­dent­ed mass ter­ror attack, we got reports about Hamas being rocked by reports of an Israeli dou­ble agent caught in its lead­er­ship ranks. And Khalil Abu Ma’za was only caught towards the end of Sep­tem­ber. In oth­er words, the Israeli intel­li­gence had a high lev­el mole in Hamas up until a few weeks ago. Some­one involved with Hamas’s mil­i­tary plan­ning and oper­a­tions across the bor­der in Lebanon. So giv­en that this mass attack had to have been planned for months and like­ly involved train­ing train­ing place in loca­tions out­side of Gaza, what are the odds that Khalil Abu Ma’za nev­er learned about this giant unprece­dent­ed attack and nev­er tipped off Israel?

...
The reports say he was arrest­ed by Lebanese author­i­ties towards the end of Sep­tem­ber. He appar­ent­ly came to the atten­tion of Lebanese offi­cials work­ing to calm an out­break of fight­ing in the Ain al-Hilweh Pales­tin­ian refugee camp in August.

...

Accord­ing to Lebanese intel­li­gence reports, Abu Ma’za was orig­i­nal­ly tasked with infil­trat­ing the lead­er­ship of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, a mis­sion he car­ried out with remark­able suc­cess. Under the guid­ance of his Israeli han­dlers, he climbed the ranks of Hamas, espe­cial­ly with­in its Izz a‑Din al-Qas­sam Brigades mil­i­tary wing.

Four years ago, Abu Ma’za was instruct­ed to relo­cate to Turkey, where he was aid­ed by his father, who had close ties to the Hamas lead­er­ship. In Istan­bul, he claimed to be work­ing for a Turk­ish char­i­ty, using this cov­er to con­nect with senior Hamas offi­cials in Gaza. His finan­cial sit­u­a­tion improved sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and when ques­tioned, Abu Ma’za attrib­uted it to his char­i­ta­ble work — an expla­na­tion that went unques­tioned in the impov­er­ished Gaza Strip.

Abu Ma’za’s rise with­in the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion allowed him to gain access to sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion, includ­ing details about weapons depots. One such depot was sub­se­quent­ly tar­get­ed and bombed by Israel, leav­ing Hamas stunned and unable to com­ment on the attack due to the shock it had caused.

Abu Ma’za’s prox­im­i­ty to the top lead­er­ship of Hamas also pro­vid­ed him with valu­able insights into the organization’s activ­i­ties in Judea and Samaria.

...

Abu Ma’za alleged­ly passed on valu­able infor­ma­tion to Israeli intel­li­gence regard­ing oper­a­tions being con­duct­ed from Lebanese soil and the influx of new recruits from Gaza into Lebanon. He also oper­at­ed with­in Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty refugee camps in Lebanon on behalf of Hamas, sup­ply­ing weapons and funds. He even attempt­ed to thwart the cease­fire agree­ment between Hamas and Fatah, all at the behest of Israeli intel­li­gence, accord­ing to Lebanese sources.

Notably, Abu Ma’za had con­nec­tions with Hamza Shahin, a promi­nent Hamas fig­ure who died in a mys­te­ri­ous explo­sion at a weapons ware­house under­neath a mosque in the Burj al-She­mali refugee camp in south­ern Lebanon on Dec. 10, 2021. While Hamas attrib­uted the inci­dent to a gas cylin­der explo­sion, Lebanese sources sug­gest it was a sig­nif­i­cant weapons depot held by Hamas.
...

It’s going to be very inter­est­ing to learn if Abu Ma’za ever tipped off the Israelis about these attacks. Was Hamas per­haps using his to feed bad intel near the end? If not, what was he telling the Netanyahu gov­ern­ment about what was in the works? Sure­ly he had to have some idea of what was being planned.

And let’s not assume that this guy was the only Israeli spy in Hamas. Is it real­ly pos­si­ble Israel did­n’t know this was com­ing? Because the more we’re learn­ing, the more impos­si­ble that seems. No viable good expla­na­tion for what tran­spired is pos­si­ble based on the avail­able facts.

And yet here we are with the Netanyahu gov­ern­ment poised to ‘wipe out Hamas’ with not plans for what comes next. Or at least no pub­licly stat­ed plans. It’s the kind of insane sit­u­a­tion where a long-term peace­ful out­come seems less and less pos­si­ble as the inten­si­ty of a con­flict dri­ven by mad­men on all sides only deep­ens. Which is anoth­er rea­son why now might be a good time for Israel to con­sid­er some seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions of its own.