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Red's avatar

As you well know the first casualty of war is truth. Another great picture of the eclipse John. I and a friend have spent many hours at the eye piece of our scopes. I have a 90mm refractor and by star gazing partner has a six inch refractor with solar filter. We've taken some good shots of past eclipses both solar and lunar and lots of deep space as well as some comets. I have a number of 8x10's of our work, very satisfying. Certainly more rewarding than following world events, the slow motion train wreck thingy. As always all the best!

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Stegiel's avatar

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/mideast/agedict/index.htm

(1983) "History Rhymes. "

It is true that only an extreme lunatic fringe of Zionism went so far as to offer to join the war on Germany’s side in 1941, in the hope of establishing “the historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich”. Unfortunately this was the group which the present Prime Minister of Israel chose to join.

That fact gives an extra edge of topicality to what would in any case be a highly controversial study of the Zionist record in the heyday of European fascism by Lenni Brenner, and American Trotskyist writer who happens also to be Jewish. It is short (250 pages), crisp and carefully documented. Mr Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler’s; he is careful also to put on record the opposition to such policies within the Zionist movement.

In retrospect these activities have been defended as a distasteful but necessary expedient to save Jewish lives. But Brenner shows that most of the time this aim was secondary. The Zionist leaders wanted to help young, skilled and able-bodied Jews to emigrate to Palestine. They were never in the forefront of the struggle against fascism in Europe.

That in no way absolves the wartime Allies for their callous refusal to make any serious effort to save European Jewry. As Brenner says, “Britain must be condemned for abandoning the Jews of Europe”; but, “it is not for the Zionists to do it.”

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