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   for what each community believed was in its own best national   
   interest. The Hitler government vigorously supported Zionism and   
   Jewish emigration to Palestine from 1933 until 1940-41, when the   
   Second World War prevented further extensive collaboration. / 9   
   (During the war years attitudes hardened, and policy shifted   
   drastically. The German policy of collaboration with Zionists and   
   support for Jewish emigration to Palestine gave way to a harsh “final   
   solution” policy.)   
      
   During the 1930s, the central SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps,   
   repeatedly proclaimed its support for Zionism. An article published in   
   1935, for example, told readers: / 10   
      
   “The recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood and not   
   on religion leads the German government to guarantee without   
   reservation the racial separateness of this community. The government   
   finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement   
   within Jewry, the so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the   
   solidarity of Jewry around the world, and its rejection of all   
   assimilationist notions. On this basis, Germany undertakes measures   
   that will surely play a significant role in the future in the handling   
   of the Jewish problem around the world.”   
      
   In late 1933, a leading German shipping line began direct passenger   
   service from Hamburg to Haifa, Palestine, providing “strictly kosher   
   food” on board.   
      
   In September 1935, the German government enacted the “Nuremberg Laws,”   
   which prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and   
   Germans and, in effect, proclaimed the country’s Jews an alien   
   minority group. / 11 A few days after the Nuremberg Laws were enacted,   
   the main German Zionist newspaper, the Jüdische Rundschau, editorially   
   welcomed the new measures. It explained to readers: / 12   
      
   “Germany … is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress when   
   it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority.   
   Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again   
   possible to establish normal relations between the German nation and   
   Jewry. The new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own   
   cultural life, its own national life. In future it will be able to   
   shape its own schools, its own theater, and its own sports   
   associations. In short, it can create its own future in all aspects of   
   national life …”   
      
   During the 1930s, Zionist groups, working together with Third Reich   
   authorities, organized a network of some forty camps and agricultural   
   centers throughout Germany where prospective settlers were trained for   
   their new lives in Palestine.   
      
   The centerpiece of German-Zionist cooperation during the Hitler era   
   was the Transfer Agreement, a pact that enabled tens of thousands of   
   German Jews to migrate to Palestine with their wealth. The Agreement,   
   also known as the Ha’avara – Hebrew for “transfer” – was concluded in   
   August 1933 following talks between German officials and an official   
   of the Jewish Agency, the Palestine center of the World Zionist   
   Organization. / 13   
      
   Between 1933 and 1941, some 60,000 German Jews emigrated to Palestine   
   through the Ha’avara and other German-Zionist arrangements, or about   
   ten percent of Germany’s 1933 Jewish population. Some Ha’avara   
   emigrants transferred considerable personal wealth from Germany to   
   Palestine. As Jewish historian Edwin Black has noted: “Many of these   
   people, especially in the late 1930s, were allowed to transfer actual   
   replicas of their homes and factories – indeed rough replicas of their   
   very existence.” / 14   
      
   The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of   
   cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism.   
   Through this pact, Hitler’s Third Reich did more than any other   
   government during the 1930s to support the Zionist movement and Jewish   
   development in Palestine.   
      
   The essence of Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, is that Jews everywhere   
   – regardless of where they live, regardless of their religious   
   outlook, and regardless of their citizenship – are members of the   
   Jewish “people” or “nation,” to whom all Jews owe a primary loyalty   
   and allegiance.   
      
   The overwhelming majority of Jews in the United States today identify   
   with and support Israel, and are affiliated with Zionist groups and   
   organizations. Every significant Jewish group or association in the   
   United States, and every prominent Jewish American political or   
   community leader supports Israel and Zionism, in most cases fervently   
   so. With very few exceptions, even American Jews who are critical of   
   some of Israel’s more embarrassing policies nonetheless express   
   support for Israel and the nationalist ideology upon which the Zionist   
   state is based.   
      
   A Zionist Jew, by definition, owes his primary loyalty to the Jewish   
   community and to Israel. Zionism is not compatible with patriotism to   
   any country or entity other than Israel and the world Jewish   
   community. That’s why it’s difficult to accept as sincere or honest   
   the pious assurances of Jewish leaders in the United States that   
   American Jews are just as loyal to the US as everyone else.   
      
   In the United States, nearly every prominent political leader – Jewish   
   and non-Jewish, Democrat and Republican – ardently supports Israel and   
   the Jewish nationalist ideology upon which it is based. In Washington,   
   political leaders of both major parties insist on US support for   
   Israel as an ethnically Jewish state. They fervently support, and   
   eagerly seek the favor of, influential Jewish-Zionist groups, such as   
   the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the   
   Anti-Defamation League (ADL).   
      
   Everyone – whether Jewish or non-Jewish – who claims to support Israel   
   should, if he is honest and consistent, endorse the view of Israeli   
   prime minister Sharon, and other Zionist leaders, and support the   
   migration of Jews everywhere to Israel. But of course that’s not what   
   happens.   
      
   With regard to Zionism and Israel, the attitude and policies of nearly   
   all American political leaders, Jewish and non-Jewish, is   
   characterized by hypocrisy and deceit. To put it another way, Zionist   
   Jews and their non-Jewish supporters embrace a blatant double   
   standard. Jewish-Zionist organizations, along with their non-Jewish   
   allies, support one social-political ideology for Israel and the world   
   Jewish community, and a completely different one for the United States   
   and other non-Jewish countries. They insist that ethnic nationalism is   
   evil and bad for non-Jews, while at the same time they vigorously   
   support ethnic nationalism – that is, Zionism – for Jews.   
      
   They insist that Israel is and must be a Jewish nationalist state,   
   with a privileged status for its Jewish population, including   
   immigration laws that discriminate against non-Jews. At the same time,   
   Jewish-Zionist groups and leaders, and the non-Jews who support them,   
   insist that in the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other   
   countries, there must be no privileged status for anyone based on   
   race, ethnicity or religion.   
      
   Our political leaders tell us that American Jews should be encouraged   
   to think of themselves as a distinct national group with an identity   
   and community interests separate from those of other Americans. At the   
   same time American politicians insist that Zionist Jews be given all   
   rights as full and equal US citizens. On the basis of this double   
   standard, Jews often enjoy what amounts to a privileged status in   
   American political and cultural life.   
      
      
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