News
Prof Friedman denounces ‘I Love Hitler’
PROFESSOR STEVEN FRIEDMAN
We are entering very dangerous territory when open support for a racist mass murderer is regarded as a contribution to the black struggle against racism.
To state the obvious: If I had lived in Hitler’s Germany, I would have been sent to a death camp simply because I am Jewish. If I was a Slav or a gypsy or gay I would have been sent to the same death camp simply because of who I was.
If I was black I would have been enslaved or worse.
Hitler killed at least 12 million people – millions of whom were not Jewish – simply because of their race and the only reason he didn’t kill millions of blacks is that there weren’t any in the areas he conquered.
And yet we now see attempts to portray support for Hitler as a protest against white racism! It is impossible to support anyone who admired Hitler and still claim to be an anti-racist. Unlike many of those who mouth off about black consciousness, I was privileged to know Steve Biko and he would have been revolted at anything like support for Hitler.
So would Frantz Fanon or any of the other black anti-racist thinkers who are so glibly quoted by those who are so quick to paint racist bigotry as a demand for racial transformation?
We are also entering very dangerous territory when the language used to defend Hitler’s defender comes straight out of crude Nazi texts – I am thinking here of the claim that Wits’s vice-chancellor bowed to “Jewish money power”.
Language like that cost millions of lives in Europe – anyone who uses it is a racist, not a friend of racial transformation. I believe that the sad reality here is that too many who pass themselves off as ‘left’ in this country are actually right-wing racists.
And the other sad reality is that those who have taken over the struggle for Palestinian rights in SA from the anti-racists who used to run it are destroying the movement by allowing it to be linked to crude racial bigotry.
The fight for real racial transformation in this country is important – too important to be sold out by racial bigots pretending to be on the left. The fight for Palestinian rights is also important – too important to be left to those whose failure to distinguish between an ideology (Zionism) and a people (Jews) has brought shame to the movement
Follow Friedman on Facebook for more.
Gary Selikow
May 25, 2015 at 4:34 pm
‘As a racist against Israelis, Steven Friedman has no room to point fingers. Friedman detests all Israelis-he has written an article in the past saying even the Israeli left are not acceptable.
the hard left also today violently suppress any idea that anti-Zionism may be
linked ever to anti-Semitism, disseminating the lie that any reference
to a relationship between the two is a sinister Zionist plot to deflect
condemnation of the occupation and the great Israeli crimes supposedly
committed against the innocent Palestinians.
And yet Anti-Zionism is
the conviction that Israel, of all the world’s countries, does not have
the right to exist. It is the conviction that the determination of what
constitutes Israel’s ‘secure and defensible borders’ should not be made
by the Israeli people, either directly or via representation.
Israel
constitutes today the world’s largest Jewish community , with the
numbers of Jews living in Israel approaching nearly half of the world’s
Jewish population. Any destruction of Israel would mean a second
holocaust of Jews. The anti-Zionists claim that they are not
anti-Semitic as they only hate and want to harm Jews who live in Israel.
This is as absurd as claiming one is not a racist as one only hates and
wants to harm Blacks who live in Africa , not Blacks elsewhere. The
enemies of Israel want the physical elimination of the Jewish people
from the Land of Israel. This constitutes anti-Semitism.
The point is that they want a Judenreihn \”Palestine\” the same way that Hitler wanted a Judenreihn Europe.
Jews in Israel are targeted for one thing , being Jews.
The anti-Zionist believes that the only children, who it is justified to murder are Jewish children (in the Land of Israel).
Someone who is prejudiced against Israel or Israelis is just as much a bigot as someone who is prejudiced against Jews per se.
The
point is that anti-Zionism should be treated the same as anti-Semitism
BECAUSE the aim is to destroy the Jews of Israel the same way the Nazis
destroyed the Jews of Israel.
I just find it interesting that if
somebody is against British Jews they are anti-Semitic, if they are
against American Jews they are anti-Semitic , if they are against
European Jews they are anti-Semitic , but if they hate Israeli Jews they
are merely ‘anti-Zionist’ but not anti-Semitic.
As Judea Pearl
puts it : \”As a form of racism, anti-Zionism is worse than
anti-Semitism. It targets the most vulnerable part of the Jewish people,
namely, the people of Israel, who rely on the sovereignty of their
state for physical safety, national identity and personal dignity. To
put it more bluntly, anti-Zionism condemns 5 million human beings,
mostly refugees or children of refugees, to eternal statelessness,
traumatized by historical images of persecution and genocide. \”‘
nathi kheswa
July 25, 2024 at 3:29 pm
strange that numbers are mentioned as justification for an unjust occupation engineered by those who ignored the rights of indigenous occupants who were not just forcibly removed but killed & maimed for years despite their willingness to live side by side with Jews, until that was not enough.
they had to loose their land in the process thanks to ethno supremacy propagated by the US & their English kins.
Friedman is not hiding behind the fictional romanticism of zionist history
Myron Robinson
May 26, 2015 at 11:33 am
‘Welcome to the real world Steven. Perhaps in time you will realise that when the BDS, COSATU ANCYL & the Liberal left etc. attack Zionism they are merely playing on words when in fact they really mean \”all Jews\”. Do you think that you will be treated different to any other Jew when these anti-Semites eventually get what they want.’
nat cheiman
May 27, 2015 at 7:23 am
‘UCT, WITS & RHODES universities have all been transformed (read trashed).
That is what what many black & white students want’
Dave Bloom
May 28, 2015 at 8:24 am
‘I suggest Friedman needs to highlight in more depth to the so called Hitler-lover from the Wits SRC to do some basic research on the fate of the blacks under Nazi Germany. Start here
\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_black_people_in_Nazi_Germany
\n
\nHitler’s rise to power resulted in the deaths of some 60 million people in World War II – shame on anyone who praises that man. Bigotry is the direct outcome of poor education and a lack of values and South African society must be concerned that its university student leadership is displaying symptoms of both.’
Tabby Katz
May 30, 2015 at 11:12 am
‘Though I do not agree with any of professor Steven Friedman’s views on Israeli-Palestinian issues, he presents an eloquent case in his denouncement of the ‘I love Hitler’ debacle. Sorry Mr Selikow but his right to articulate his views is as inalienable as yours. Ironically, if the controversial Professor was travelling on an Israeli bus or ambling down a Jerusalem or Tel Aviv street, no Palestinian extremist hell bent on carrying out a terror attack would spare his life; even if he was wearing a neon sign that said \”Non subscriber to Zionist ideologies.\”‘
Gary Selikow
June 4, 2015 at 8:37 am
‘Tabby, Friedman’s right to articulate his views does not extend to hate speech against Israelis’
Tabby Katz
June 4, 2015 at 8:02 pm
‘To reiterate what I said in an earlier post I vehemently disagree with all of Friedman’s anti-Zionistic / anti-Israel views. At the same time I strongly doubt whether his opinions can be construed as hate speech. Carefully analyse what he has said about Israeli-Palestinian issues in the past and you’ll find that although his sentiments differ vastly from yours and mine, labelling them as ‘hate speech’ evidences unjustified hysteria. ‘
Gary Selikow
June 5, 2015 at 11:37 am
‘Really what do you call shouting at a pleasantly articulate SAUJS leader at a public debate that he is an ‘evil Zionist’ or writing on hi face book page after the Fogel Family murders that ‘the children of Israel must pay for the sins of their fathers’?’
nat cheiman
June 11, 2015 at 7:34 am
‘An appeaser, (Prof Friedman) is one that feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last .( Winston Churchill)’