Recent Haaretz Article: When Jews Praised Mussolini and Supported Nazis

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The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an article under this title on 20 July 2019.

Ideologically, Stern envisaged in his writings and in his manifesto “Principles of Birth” a national resurgence that corresponded closely with the fascist models of the period (even if in a very romanticized version). In the practical sphere, Stern sought cooperation with the Axis forces in the struggle against the British Mandate.
In January 1941, following a failed attempt to make contact with the Italian representation in Palestine, Stern sent one of his people to approach the German representative in Beirut. That effort also came to nothing (in large measure due to cost-benefit calculations of the German Foreign Ministry), but did prompt the British to step up their hunt for both Stern and members of his organization.

Were the ties between the Revisionist movement and the fascist regimes based on deep, authentic affinity, or only on shared interests in the struggle against Britain’s rule in the Mediterranean?
In the case of Jabotinsky, who was far from being a socialist but espoused the importance and application of liberal democratic values, it can be assumed that it was a temporary nexus of interests.
But to judge by the speeches, articles, songs and motions for the agenda of the members of the circle advocating a maximalist approach in Palestine, and afterward of the Irgun, its members viewed fascism as a worthy and even desirable path to follow.

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Who modified my post?
People know how to use links, after all the Internet has existed for over twenty years.
And It's a knee-jerk reaction because the subject isn't controversial and old news.

From Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli Diplomacy by Sasson Sofer:

Stem put forward one of the wildest plans ever proposed by a Zionist leader, the plan of the 'forty thousand'. His attempts to reach agreement with the Axis powers, Italy and Germany, were similarly audacious in political and moral terms.
Several versions of the plan of the 'forty thousand' appear in Revisionist historiography, but the essence remains the same — gathering together forty thousand young Jews, arming them and bringing them to the shores of Palestine by boat. Once there, they would launch a surprise attack on the British, who were busy fighting Germany. Inspired by Garibaldi and Pilsudski, Stem's idea was both bold and delusive. It required a particularly fevered imagination to believe that during the course of the Second World War it would be possible to gain the support of one of the Axis powers or Poland, overcome the logistical problems involved in sailing hundreds of vessels across the Mediterranean, making an amphibian landing along the coast — from Rosh Hanikra to Gaza — and fighting the British Army.

The aspiration to secure a political alliance with Italy and Germany was also something of a mirage, while indicating adherence to calculating, cynical Realpolitik. Although the members of Lehi built a smokescreen around that diplomatic undertaking, their intentions cannot be concealed. The document known as the Jerusalem Agreement, dating from September 1940, was the result of negotiations with the Italian consul in Jerusalem, Count Quinto Mazzolini, and with intermediaries who, it seems, were agents of British Intelligence. Under the terms of the agreement, in return for Italy's recognition of Jewish sovereignty and help in attaining it, Zionism would come under the aegis of Italian Fascism. The Mediterranean would in effect be recognized as an Italian mare nostrum, and the Jewish state which would arise would make political alliances only with Italy's approval. The model of a corporate economic regime would be reproduced in Palestine, and when the time came to discuss 'the just division of power in the world', the only Jewish political entity in the world would support Mussolini.
Far away in Europe, in the spring of 1940, Eldad wrote:
From a purely Zionist point of view, a pure and consistent point of view, it is not Hitler who is the enemy of the Jews and the Return to Zion, it is not Hitler who condemns us to fall into his hands time and again, but only Britain!

On two occasions Stern tried to establish contact with representatives of the Third Reich, in the hope of making an alliance with Nazi Germany. Late in 1940 a Lehi representative, Naftali Lubenchik, went to Beirut, where he submitted Stern's proposal to the German diplomat Otto Werner von Hentig. The document Lubenchik submitted was unprecedented.
It proposed 'commonality of interests between the intentions of the new order in Germany' and the national aspirations of the Jewish people. The Lehi commander was also extremely radical with regard to the regime of the future Jewish state. It would be based on nationalist and totalitarian principles, and linked to the German Reich by an alliance ...' At the end of 1941 Stern tried again to establish ties with Germany, but his representative, Yellin-Mor, was captured by the British in Syria and prevented from completing his mission. Leaving the ethical aspect of Stern's proposal aside, it indicates total incomprehension of both the character of the Nazi regime and contemporary historical trends.

While the Second World War was being waged, Stem was prepared to believe that the Jewish community of Palestine would be in no danger, even if the Germans occupied the country. His definition of the British as the enemy, and of the Germans as 'the foe', was merely semantic. It made no difference to Stern if the world order was under the hegemony of the democracies or of totalitarian Fascism.

[Dili]

You seem to be mixing Nazism with Fascism - not surprising Journalists doing it since that is their "job" since WW2.
Fascist ideology had no opinion on Jews. Many Jews had important positions in Fascist Italy. Only after influence from Nazi Germany things changed.
And Fascists have always have been Socialists, that is another of journalism jobs to hide since WW2.

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Excerpts from the Lubenchik's document (from The Secret Contacts: Zionism and Nazi Germany, 1933-1941 by Klaus Polkehn):

It is often stated in the speeches and utterances of the leading statesmen of National Socialist Germany that a New Order in Europe requires as a prerequisite the radical solution of the Jewish question through evacuation. ("Judenreines Europa")

The evacuation of the Jewish masses from Europe is a precondition for solving the Jewish question; but this can only be made possible and complete through the settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine, and through the establishment of a Jewish state in its historic boundaries.

The solving in this manner of the Jewish problem and thus the bringing about with it of the liberation of the Jewish people once and for all, is the objective of the political activity and the years-long struggle of the Jewish freedom movement: the National Military Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi) in Palestine.

The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans is of the opinion that:
1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.
2. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed Hebrew nation would be possible and
3. The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would be in the interest of maintaining and strengthening the future German position of power in the Near East.

Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine offers to take an active part in the war on Germany's side, provided the above mentioned national aspirations of the Jewish liberation movement are recognized by the German Reich government.

This offer by the NMO, whose validity extends over the military, political and information levels, inside and also according to certain organizational preparations outside Palestine, would be bound to the military training and organizing of Jewish manpower in Europe, under the leadership and command of the NMO. These military units would take part in the fighting to conquer Palestine, in case such a front is formed.

The indirect participation of the Israeli freedom movement in the drawing up of the New Order in Europe, already in its preparatory stage, would be connected with a positively radical solution of the European Jewish problem in conformity with the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Jewish people. This would strengthen to an uncommon degree the moral basis of the New Order in the eyes of the entire world.
The cooperation of the Israeli freedom movement would also be in line with one of the recent speeches of the German Reich Chancellor in which Herr Hitler stressed that any combination and any alliance would be entered into in order to isolate England and defeat it.

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The Stem Gang was not an ideological offshoot of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (IZL) of the 1930s, but of 'maximalist' Zionist Revisionism, which was itself an off-spring of the inter-war European radical right.

After its revival in 1943, the group created a new ideology which is here designated National Bolshevism.
The latter term is derived from the ideology developed in Weimar Germany, principally by Moeller van den Bruck and Ernst Junger in the 1920s and by Karl Otto Paetel and Ernst Niekisch in the early 1930s.

These men, fearing Germany's collapse under the Republic and its submission to the Western Powers after the 1919 Versailles settlement, developed an ideology which was paradoxical because it attempted to combine elements of both the right and the left.
Simultaneously, it supported anti-capitalism, state planning and an obviously pro-Soviet foreign policy as well as the notion of the organic unity of the nation (Volksgemeinschaft). Thus presented, National Bolshevism symbolized an ideology of distress, itself characteristic of some fringe circles within the German radical right. It expressed a desire to create a 'third force' which would bridge the gap between communism and Nazism.
Its failure, however, was inherent in the dynamics of polarisation which led to the collapse of the Weimar Republic.

Unaware of the German precedent, the Stern Gang developed a Hebrew version of National Bolshevism, projecting a form of leftist chauvinism. This, too, originated as an ideology of distress: faced with the revival of the IZL in 1944, the Sternists had to prove their own raison d'être.
If the Jewish kingdom of Stern's aspirations could not be established with the help of the Axis powers (to whom he originally appealed), then it was necessary to turn to the Soviet Union.
The important point was to accelerate Britain's expulsion from Erete Israel (Hebrew: land of Israel) by forging alliances with victorious powers.
The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940-1949 by Joseph Heller

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In 1934 a Jewish naval training school was established in Civitavecchia, Italy with the agreement of Benito Mussolini.

The Birth of the Israeli Navy begins with the founding of the Betar Naval Academy, a Jewish naval training school established in Civitavecchia, Italy, in 1934 by the Revisionist Zionist movement under the direction of Ze’ev Jabotinsky.
Cadets from Europe, Palestine and South Africa and produced some of the future commanders of the Israeli Navy.

In September 1937, the training ship Sarah I visited Haifa and Tel Aviv as part of a Mediterranean tour. The Academy closed in 1938, just after the fourth course was completed. Nearly 200 Jewish cadets completed the 4 courses.

The first training ship:

Sarah1-1.jpg

Sarah I.jpg

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Beirut , early January 1941.
After an annoying wait in Ankara for the issue of a visa by the French mandate authorities, Dr. Werner Otto von Hentig, head of the Near East Department at the German Foreign Ministry, arrived in the Lebanese capital. A senior diplomat with considerable experience in both overt and clandestine activity in the region, von Hentig was there in order to inspect the local situation in the Levant and report about it to the office in Berlin.

Generally, his tour was successful: within four weeks he had visited large parts of Syria and Lebanon, and received the impression that local political circles were favorable to Germany.

Von Hentig’s attempt to keep his visit low profile, however, turned out to be less successful. The rumor that a senior German official was visiting Lebanon quickly spread; various delegations and representatives of ethnic and political groups in the region soon came to meet him: Muslims and Christians, from Kurdistan to the shores of the Mediterranean.

“The most remarkable delegation came from Palestine,” von Hentig recalled in his autobiography, about 20 years later.
“The head [of the delegation], an impressive young man with the look of an officer, suggested working in cooperation with the National Socialists against their own people, primarily the orthodox Zionists, if Hitler would guarantee the sovereignty of Jewish Palestine.”

That young fellow was Naftali Lubenczik, and the delegation he headed consisted of members of the “National Military Organisation in Israel.”
Hebrew Fascism in Palestine by Dan Tamir

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To imagine ... that [the Arabs] will voluntarily consent to the realisation of Zionism, in return for the moral and material conveniences which the Jewish colonist brings with him, is a childish notion, which has at bottom a kind of contempt for the Arab people; it means that they despise the Arab race, which they regard as a corrupt mob that can be bought and sold, and are willing to give up their fatherland for a good railway system.
...
Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised.
...
We cannot offer any adequate compensation to the Palestinian Arabs in return for Palestine. And therefore, there is no likelihood of any voluntary agreement being reached. So that all those who regard such an agreement as a condition sine qua non for Zionism may as well say "non" and withdraw from Zionism.

Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.
The Iron Wall by Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotisnky (1923)

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Revisionist Zionism was a right-wing (or, more appropriately, fascist) Jewish political mass movement. Its paramilitary organization was called Betar.
Betar, destroyed by both the Nazis and Soviets, didn't survive WW2, except for the two terrorist groups, Irgun and Lehi in Palestine.
They were responsible, among others, for the assassinations of Lord Moyne (1942) and Folke Bernadotte, the bombing of the King David Hotel, the Deir Yassin massacre, and the failed assassination of Konrad Adenauer.
Irgun was one of the predecessors of today's Likud. Prime ministers of Israel - Yitzhak Shamir and Menachem Begin, were both members of Betar - later commanders of respectively Lehi and Irgun.

Third Betar conference in Warsaw (1938)

Third Betar conference Warsaw 1938 1.jpg

Third Betar conference Warsaw 1938 2.jpg

Third Betar conference Warsaw 1938 3.jpg

Menachem Begin (sitting, second from the left) with the heads of Betar headquarters in Poland (1935)

Menachem Begin.png

Betar in Lublin, Poland (1933)

Lublin.jpg

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4.

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In mid-1942, Marian Małowist, a teacher in well-known middle schools in Warsaw (one of his pupils was Richard Pipes), wrote a report for the Ringelblum Archive on pre-war interests and attitudes of young Jews (primarily children of the Jewish bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia).

He noticed that "the most radical slogans" were popular among them, and "particularly successful were Stalinist and revisionist [i.e., fascist] demagogy," resulting "in a profound cultural disparity between the older and the younger generation, making any closer contact virtually impossible."
And then:

As young people are typically prone to radicalism, boys who had long been assimilated and separated from the Jewish masses turned in many cases to fascist nationalism. It seemed to them that the application of fascist methods in the Jewish environment would yield the same excellent results, which, they believed, had been achieved in Germany and Italy.

This group of young people would like to see fascism in Palestine, and they were burning with hatred for the Arabs; in fact, they agreed with Hitler's methods, rejecting only his antisemitism. The interesting thing is that any moral evaluation of political activity was not even an option.

Then he adds that children of "Jewish masses," i.e., the religious Jews, "were not as susceptible to fascism but were rather taken with Stalinism."

He concludes:

[Young Jews] lacked even a modicum of intellectual and moral sophistication. They were characterized by narrow pragmatism and obscurant existential realism, bordering on spiritual and external primitivism.
They never experienced idealistic sentiments. I stress once again that the reasons for this lay beyond the young people themselves. They had absorbed all the negative qualities of social life in the pre-war era. Of course, a certain few groups and individuals were resistant to signs of intellectual and moral degradation, but unfortunately, they were all too rare.

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Marian Małowist writes:

Young people were eager to become members of school sections of academic corporations. They found such affected claptrap appeal-ing. Boys and girls liked all the hats, sashes, rapiers, and other accessories.

Warsaw (1932)
Trainees in Leadership School, Warsaw, raise sticks. Yermiyahu Halperin [aide de camp to Ze'ev Jabotinsky], center, demonstrates exercise with a fencing sword

warsaw.jpg

Tianjin (1931)

Tianjin 1931.jpg

Berlin (1936)

Berlin.jpg

[COmentator]

Betar
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... ar1935.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... 05-081.jpg

Haaretz country's only major left-leaning newspaper. The newspaper opposes retaining control of the territories and consistently supports peace initiatives. The Haaretz editorial line is supportive of weaker elements in Israeli society, such as sex workers, foreign laborers, Israeli Arabs, Ethiopian immigrants, and Russian immigrant..According to The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz editor-in-chief David Landau said at the 2007 Limmud conference in Moscow that he had told his staff not to report on criminal investigations against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in order to promote Sharon's 2004–2005 Gaza disengagement plan.In April 2017, Haaretz published an op-ed by a staff writer that said the Israeli religious right was worse than Hezbollah
ref:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haaretz

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The article was written by a historian (from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) specializing in fascism and movements of the extreme right.
And anyway, except the first, the posts are based on quality Jewish scholarly works or rock-solid Jewish primary sources.

[CogCalgary]

You seem to be mixing Nazism with Fascism - not surprising Journalists doing it since that is their "job" since WW2.
Fascist ideology had no opinion on Jews. Many Jews had important positions in Fascist Italy. Only after influence from Nazi Germany things changed.
And Fascists have always have been Socialists, that is another of journalism jobs to hide since WW2.


.Italian born Jews were in a different class of people compared to North Afrcan Jews.
The hard core were most definitely anti Semitic.

[CogCalgary]

Who modified my post?
People know how to use links, after all the Internet has existed for over twenty years.
And It's a knee-jerk reaction because the subject isn't controversial and old news.

From Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli Diplomacy by Sasson Sofer:

Stem put forward one of the wildest plans ever proposed by a Zionist leader, the plan of the 'forty thousand'. His attempts to reach agreement with the Axis powers, Italy and Germany, were similarly audacious in political and moral terms.
Several versions of the plan of the 'forty thousand' appear in Revisionist historiography, but the essence remains the same — gathering together forty thousand young Jews, arming them and bringing them to the shores of Palestine by boat. Once there, they would launch a surprise attack on the British, who were busy fighting Germany. Inspired by Garibaldi and Pilsudski, Stem's idea was both bold and delusive. It required a particularly fevered imagination to believe that during the course of the Second World War it would be possible to gain the support of one of the Axis powers or Poland, overcome the logistical problems involved in sailing hundreds of vessels across the Mediterranean, making an amphibian landing along the coast — from Rosh Hanikra to Gaza — and fighting the British Army.

The aspiration to secure a political alliance with Italy and Germany was also something of a mirage, while indicating adherence to calculating, cynical Realpolitik. Although the members of Lehi built a smokescreen around that diplomatic undertaking, their intentions cannot be concealed. The document known as the Jerusalem Agreement, dating from September 1940, was the result of negotiations with the Italian consul in Jerusalem, Count Quinto Mazzolini, and with intermediaries who, it seems, were agents of British Intelligence. Under the terms of the agreement, in return for Italy's recognition of Jewish sovereignty and help in attaining it, Zionism would come under the aegis of Italian Fascism. The Mediterranean would in effect be recognized as an Italian mare nostrum, and the Jewish state which would arise would make political alliances only with Italy's approval. The model of a corporate economic regime would be reproduced in Palestine, and when the time came to discuss 'the just division of power in the world', the only Jewish political entity in the world would support Mussolini.
Far away in Europe, in the spring of 1940, Eldad wrote:
From a purely Zionist point of view, a pure and consistent point of view, it is not Hitler who is the enemy of the Jews and the Return to Zion, it is not Hitler who condemns us to fall into his hands time and again, but only Britain!

On two occasions Stern tried to establish contact with representatives of the Third Reich, in the hope of making an alliance with Nazi Germany. Late in 1940 a Lehi representative, Naftali Lubenchik, went to Beirut, where he submitted Stern's proposal to the German diplomat Otto Werner von Hentig. The document Lubenchik submitted was unprecedented.
It proposed 'commonality of interests between the intentions of the new order in Germany' and the national aspirations of the Jewish people. The Lehi commander was also extremely radical with regard to the regime of the future Jewish state. It would be based on nationalist and totalitarian principles, and linked to the German Reich by an alliance ...' At the end of 1941 Stern tried again to establish ties with Germany, but his representative, Yellin-Mor, was captured by the British in Syria and prevented from completing his mission. Leaving the ethical aspect of Stern's proposal aside, it indicates total incomprehension of both the character of the Nazi regime and contemporary historical trends.

While the Second World War was being waged, Stem was prepared to believe that the Jewish community of Palestine would be in no danger, even if the Germans occupied the country. His definition of the British as the enemy, and of the Germans as 'the foe', was merely semantic. It made no difference to Stern if the world order was under the hegemony of the democracies or of totalitarian Fascism.
I

Interesting that Stern again pursued ties with Nazi Germany in late 1941.
Definitely not part of the true inner circle.