I don’t think you were “too soft on him.”

I am glad that you opened a discussion on the subject. I have been writing to the Boston Globe and other publications pointing out some glaring omissions in his articles on Zionism but so far to no avail. He seems to have set himself up as “an authority on Zionism” and since he is a conservative thinker he is thought to be less biased on the subject than some “wild eyed radical.”

I hope other people will weigh in and hopefully it will come to the attention of editors that Wheatcroft does not have the last word on Zionism.

Thanks for your article, Ben.

In other words Wheatcroft appeals to an historical context when it suits his purpose but some historical events such as the Shoah are verboten.

The writer also has the habit of using of quotes taken from Jews like Jacqueline Rose to attack Zionism rather than speaking in his own voice. This is an old technique used by antisemites since time immemorial.

It is obvious to me from reading his book and articles that Wheatcroft finds Zionism quite distasteful and that he uses the so called “controversy of Zion,” i.e. the notion that not all Jews supported Zionism in order to delegitimize it.

In this particular article he will quote someone like Kurt Weill on Israel in the mid 30’s who found Jewish nationalism similar to German nationalism (this was of course before the Holocaust) but does not tell us that Weill’s parents stayed on in Israel and hence did not have the same view about that country that he did at that time. Nor does he tell us that Weill refused to speak or write in German after the Holocaust with the exception of the letters he wrote to his parents who lived in Israel. In other words he takes quotes out of context in order to show that intellectual Jews too saw Zionism as a kind of Fascist movement.

I also found Wheatcroft’s conclusion that Jabotinsky was more “honest” than Ben-Gurion pretty bizarre. Firstly, while Jabotinsky is not the monster he has been made out to be, it was Ben Gurion who insisted on making Israel the kind of liberal democracy it became giving the same civil rights to all its citizens Arabs as well as Jews. (This is stated in Israel’s founding document.) Wheatcroft of course lives this out too from his tendentious screed on Jabotinsky and Zionism.

I find the fact that this author is being published in respectable magazines very disturbing.