Guardian commentary berates Netanyahu for using “Nazi language”

By Robin Sheperd

Robin Shepherd, Director, International Affairs at the Henry Jackson Society in London, has held senior fellowships at some of the world’s most prestigious public policy institutes since leaving international journalism in 2003 when his last position was Moscow Bureau Chief for The Times of London.

For starters consider the headline: “Netanyahu turns to Nazi language”. Before you read the piece what would you assume from that? Most would agree, I think, that the Israeli Prime Minister is being accused of talking like a Nazi. There is, after all, an entire edifice of anti-Israel discourse in Europe which seeks to portray Israelis as Nazis. The Guardian has no problem giving space to writers who compare Israel with Apartheid South Africa (see previous entries) so perhaps they have upped the ante?

In fact, the piece takes a different tack. Netanyahu is not being accused of talking like a Nazi, though the use of such an incendiary headline is a disgrace in itself.* He is accused of using the Nazi term Judenrein — which designates a piece of land cleansed of Jews — to describe the mentality which calls for all Jews to be removed from the West Bank. It is alleged that Netanyahu warned German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier at a recent meeting that calls for all Israeli settlements to be removed from the West Bank could indeed be understood as a form of Judenrein.

The writer, Peter Beaumont — foreign affairs editor of the Guardian’s sister paper on Sunday, the Observer — effectively accuses Netanyahu of using the term as a form of moral blackmail. Steinmeier, he says, “was compelled to nod in embarrassed silence.” And, he continues:

“As frustration among Israeli rightists has been mounting against the new policies of President Obama, the word has been creeping into the discourse, first in the rightwing blogosphere and now penetrating the mainstream media in Israel.”

Beaumont is quite wrong in this. The term Judenrein has been used in this context for years. It has not crept into the discourse because of Obama. But Beaumont’s error is much greater than a mere misreading of the terms of the discourse. His outrage betrays a profound misunderstanding of the core issues at the heart of the conflict in general and the dispute over settlements in particular.


Beaumont’s argument is straightforward. International law, he says, condemns the settlements as illegal. It is because they are settlers, not because they are Jewish settlers that they have no right to be there. Beaumont is also astute enough to refer to the fact that Jews lived in the West Bank for thousands of years, apart from the period between 1948 and 1967 when Jordanian control ensured that the land was free of Jews. He might also have referred to the Jews of Hebron who were expelled from their homes following a vicious anti-Semitic pogrom perpetrated by Palestinians in 1929 in which 63 Jews were killed.

But this would take him too close to the core issue that his piece ignores. For it is precisely the hatred of Jews qua Jews that has always lain at the heart of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim opposition to the existence of any Jewish state, whatever its borders, and regardless of who does or does not live in the West Bank. It was this hatred that led Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the leading Palestinian political figure of the 1930s, to join up with the Nazis in World War II.

Here is an example of what Husseini said about the Jews of Palestine:

“Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany,” Husseini said, “was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: “The Jews are yours”‘

It was this hatred which led to Palestinian and Arab rejection of UN Resolution 181 which would have led to a two-state solution as far back as 1947. It was this hatred which led Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, to write a doctoral thesis denying the extent of the Holocaust and pushing the obnoxious allegation that Jews participated in whatever Holocaust in fact took place to curry favour for Zionism. And it is this hatred which today lies behind the Palestinian leadership’s outright opposition to recognition of Israel as a specifically Jewish state.

The fear that the underlying maxim defining Palestinian opposition to the settlements is the same “no Jews allowed” maxim that has defined Palestinian rejectionism of the Jewish presence in Palestine for decades is very real and fully justified by a rounded reading of the historical context.

This does not mean that deals cannot or should not be done on the settlements. It does not mean that Israel settlement policy has been right. But it does mean that to portray Netanyahu’s use of the word Judenrein as “the most cynical of ploys” represents a deep-seated misunderstanding of the underlying issues.

But all Beaumont can see in the Israeli position is cynicism. Concluding his piece, he says: “To use “Judenrein” so cheaply to score a political point dishonours the memory of history and its victims. It shames Israel’s prime minister.”

It does nothing of the sort. And, on the evidence of his piece, Peter Beaumont is in no position to be delivering lectures on what does or does not dishonour “the memory of history”.

*NB: Journalists rarely write their own headlines. It should not be assumed, therefore, that Beaumont either wrote the headline or approved it. The fault lies with the Guardian’s editorial team for allowing such an appallingly ambiguous headline to front the commentary.
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