"Anti-Zionist" play will mark Holocaust Memorial Day
Michael Givel
anti-semitic themes Submitted on 22 January, 2007 - 11:29 :: Left
anti-semitism | Scotland
By Stan Crooke
In November of last year the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
(SPSC) hosted Gilad Atzmon at one of their fund-raising events.
Apart from being a renowned jazz musician, Atzmon is also
well-known for his own brand of anti-semitism.
Atzmon has variously claimed, for example, that Israel is worse
than Nazi Germany ("Israel is the ultimate evil rather than Nazi
Germany"), that Jews control the world ("American Jews (in fact
Zionists) do control the world"), and that Jews are Christ-killers
("the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus").
Now the SPSC is intending to mark Holocaust Memorial Day (27th
January) by staging readings in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee from
Jim Allen's play "Perdition".
According to Allen, who died in 1999, his play was "the most lethal
attack on Zionism ever written, because it touches at the heart of
the most abiding myth of modern history, the Holocaust. Because it
says quite plainly that privileged Jewish leaders collaborated in
the extermination of their own kind in order to help bring about a
Zionist state, Israel, a state which is itself racist."
This was not a one-off comment by Allen. In later interviews with
journalists about "Perdition" he claimed that all over wartime
Europe "Jews were massacred because their leaders covered up for
the Nazis."
"Perdition" purports to be the dramatisation of a (real) libel case
in Israel in the mid-1950s. The trial involved Rudolf Kastner, a
Zionist leader in war-time Hungary, and Malchiel Grunwald, an
Austrian Jew who had emigrated to Palestine in the late 1930s.
The latter had accused Kastner of having collaborated with the
Nazis in the run-up to their extermination of Hungarian Jewry in
1944. A lower court found in favour of Grunwald, but this was
overturned on appeal to the Supreme Court.
In fact, "Perdition" is a poor-quality dramatisation of one the
themes of the anti-semitic campaign launched by the Soviet
government in the late 1960s: that Zionism collaborated with
Nazism, that Zionism and Nazism were twins, and that Israel is a
product of Nazi-Zionist collaboration.
Allen simply used the Kastner-Grunwald libel case as the 'peg' on
which to hook the Stalinist and anti-semitic theme of 'Nazism
equals Zionism equals Israel'.
(Stalinist 'anti-Zionism' was simply traditional anti-semitism
dressed up in the language of 'anti-imperialism'. For more
information on the Soviet anti-semitic campaign, including quotes
relevant to the theme of "Perdition", see
http://www.workersliberty.org/node/1748)
In summing up the play's central argument, for example, one
character talks of "the Zionist knife in the Nazi fist" and claims:
"To save your hides, you (Zionists) practically led them (Jews) to
the gas chambers of Auschwitz".
Elsewhere in the play, characters use more traditional anti-semitic
imagery, such as references to "all-powerful American Jewry" and
"Jews in fur-lined bunkers hurling money", in order to press home
the attack on Zionism. The play also contains a fair few references
to Golgotha and the crucifixion of Christ, such as the barrister's
congratulation after cross-examination of Kastner: "you crucified
him".
"Perdition" was first due to be performed at the Royal Court
Theatre in London in early 1987. But, at the last minute, the
theatre cancelled the production.
The Royal Court denied that the play was anti-semitic or inaccurate
- although, according to the historian Martin Gilbert, it contained
60 factual inaccuracies - and accepted only that its production
would cause distress to "sections of the community."
"Perdition" was subsequently performed in Edinburgh in the summer
of the same year. A leaflet distributed by "Socialist Organiser",
as the AWL was then called, defended the performance of the play -
the Royal Court had certainly been put under some pressure to call
off the play's production - but also argued that the play contained
anti-semitic language, and that the play's politics constituted
'left anti-semitism'.
In 1999 "a significantly rewritten version" of the play was
performed by the Gate Theatre in London. Allen was still alive at
the time and participated in the changes made to his play. In 2004,
courtesy of the SPSC, "Perdition" was performed in Edinburgh. And
now, to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, the SPSC has brought it back
for an encore.
The 1999 version of the play is a slightly 'cleaned up' version of
the original.
Some (but apparently not all) of the anti-semitic imagery has been
deleted from the 1999 version. The 1999 version also gives Kastner
(the character Yaron in the play) more arguments with which to
defend himself - the original version had read like the script of a
Moscow show trial.
And whereas the original "Perdition" had been silent on Zionist
opposition to the Nazis, the 1999 version recognises - in a
magnificent concession to reality - that Zionists did fight the
Nazis.
But that does not alter the basic argument of the play:
".privileged Jewish leaders collaborated in the extermination of
their own kind in order to help bring about a Zionist state,
Israel." That's what Allen set out to demonstrate in the play. And
that's why the Gilad-Atzmon-cheerleaders of the SPSC are staging
readings from it to mark Holocaust Memorial Day.
The official Holocaust Memorial Day website carries an advert for
the readings of "Perdition". (It appears to be the case that anyone
organising a commemorative event can paste up their own publicity.)
The advert reads:
"Jim Allen's acclaimed play 'Perdition': a devastating work which
reveals the extent of the collaboration between the victims and the
perpetrators of the Holocaust in Hungary towards the end of the
'Final Solution' has been hounded and suppressed for over 20
years."
Wrong as it was for the Royal Court not to have gone ahead with its
performance in 1987, the play has not been "hounded and suppressed"
for the past two decades. In 1999 and 2004, for example, its
performances went ahead without incident (apart from some
leafleting of the 1999 performance by the Union of Jewish
Students).
"Perdition" is neither "devastating" nor "acclaimed". The fact that
the 1999 version had to be "significantly rewritten" is itself an
admission of how very 'un-devastating' the original version was.
And the only people who have actually "acclaimed" the play are
various fascists, neo-Nazi historical revisionists, and sections of
the left. This hardly amounts to a popular acclamation.
As for the reference to "collaboration between the victims and
perpetrators of the Holocaust", one has to assume that the author
of the website advert believes not only that Kastner collaborated
with the Nazis but also that 400,000 Hungarian Jews also
collaborated with the Nazis in their own murder.
Allen's "Perdition" is not the only play to have been written about
the Kastner trial. Two years before "Perdition" was first performed
Motti Lerner's "Kastner" was performed in Tel Aviv. It won that
year's Play of the Year award. 300,000 people in total turned up to
watch performances of it.
A three-part television drama ("Kastner's Trial"), based on
Lerner's play, was later produced by Israeli Television and won the
Israeli Academy Award for that year's best television drama. The
same year Lerner won the Prime Minister of Israel's Award for
Writers.
(Anyone who thinks that "Perdition" deals with some dark secret
which has been "suppressed" up the "Zionist juggernaut" (Allen's
expression) is clearly barking up the wrong tree.)
Lerner's play deals with the same issue as Allen's, in the sense
that it too deals with Kastner's trial. Why - in the 'Zionist
entity' of all places - did it not provoke the controversy which
Allen's play caused?
The answer is simple. Lerner's play is genuine drama. It deals with
a moral dilemma, and with moral (and immoral) choices, in the
situation of Nazi-occupied Hungary in 1944. As one of the Supreme
Court judges put in delivering his verdict on Kastner's appeal:
"A most difficult task has been imposed upon us in this appeal - to
scrutinize deeds and occurrences which seem to have happened on a
different planet, and to pronounce judgment on the behaviour of
men, hovering in the claws of Satan himself. . . . Are we capable -
as fallible human beings - of sitting in judgment on the moral or
immoral actions done by Kastner?"
Allen's "Perdition", however, is something quite different. Allen
misses out all the complexities of the trial and of Kastner's
situation in Hungary in 1944. He sets up Kastner to be found guilty
in order to graft onto that guilt his own crazy ideas about
"privileged Jewish leaders collaborating in the extermination of
their own kind in order to help bring about a Zionist state,
Israel."
Not the least of the idiocies in Allen's argument is that it fails
to take on board the fact that the allegations against Kastner both
before and during the libel trial were made by a defendant and a
lawyer who were every bit as much Zionists as Kastner.
Grunwald was a member of the Mizrahi, which later became the
National Religious Party. The lawyer in the trial, Shmuel Tamir,
was a Zionist Revisionist who later became a founding member of
Likud, and also a cabinet minister in Begin's government.
"Perdition" therefore not only requires its audience to believe
that Zionists helped the Nazis to murder six million Jews in order
win a state for themselves, but also that the Zionists then
conducted a court case in Israel in order to expose and prove .
that they had helped the Nazis to murder six million Jews!
The SPSC's decision to 'commemorate' Holocaust Memorial Day by
staging readings from "Perdition" has been criticised by the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP). A fortnight ago the SWP's paper
printed a letter from two SWP members in Glasgow criticising the
SPSC's decision. This week an SWP member in Dundee resigned from
her officer's positions in the SPSC over the issue.
But the SWP's concerns are tactical rather than ones of principle.
Although the SWP's official line is that it is inaccurate to talk
about Zionist-Nazi collaboration, the SWP has always defended
"Perdition" for showing what Zionism is 'really' all about. The
SWP's current argument is that there is nothing wrong with
"Perdition" itself, but staging readings from it to mark Holocaust
Memorial Day is . insensitive.
No such reservations, however, are to be found in the article on
"Perdition" contained in the current issue of "Scottish Socialist
Voice", the paper of the Socialist Party (SSP). Despite all the
criticisms of the play which have been made on the SSP's electronic
discussion forum, the article is totally uncritical.
According to the article - to be more precise: one of the
participants in the play's readings, who is quoted without
challenge throughout the article - the original Royal Court
performance was cancelled "under huge pressure from the Zionist
lobbies." Holocaust Memorial Week is described as "precisely the
right time" to perform readings from the play.
If Jim Allen was still alive, the article continues, then he could
sue over claims that he had been careless with the truth. (But such
claims were publicly voiced twelve years before Allen died -
without the initiating of any legal action.)
Most ludicrous of all, the article states that a round-table
discussion about "Perdition" will be attended by "representatives
of the Jewish community." The "representatives" in question are in
fact members of the very unrepresentative "Jews Against Zionism".
The main target of criticism in this controversy should be the SPSC
itself and what must be a calculated decision on its part to cause
maximum provocation by staging readings from "Perdition" as a way
of 'commemorating' Holocaust Memorial Day. (To condemn the SPSC for
doing so is not to deny them their right to stage such readings.)
At the same time, however, the uncritical article in the "Voice"
also brings to a head the question of the paper's less than
spotless record in dealing with allegations of Zionist campaigns
and 'conspiracies'.
In June of 2005, for example, a conference of the AUT (now UCU)
trade union voted to drop its recently adopted policy of boycotting
Israeli academics. That reversal of policy was due to work by
"Engage" other grass roots campaigners, and debates amongst the
membership.
The "Voice", however, carried an article giving a very different
explanation for the union's decision: it was "the culmination of a
major Zionist campaign to reverse the policy." Not an iota of
evidence was offered in support of this assertion regarding "a
major Zionist campaign".
In December of the same year the "Voice" carried an article
containing the following allegations:
"If a journalist or columnist working for the corporate media
attempts to tell the truth about the murderous Israeli state then
you will face a behind-the-scenes backlash from the pro-Zionist
lobby. This Zionist lobby's hysterical and often illegal backlash
tries to marginalise or even break outspoken critics of the state
of Israel - by whatever foul and corrupt means they have at their
disposal. ."
"This is why I now have absolute contempt - not just for the
professional Zionist lobby and the murderous Israeli security
services - but also the servile editors and management of 'The
(Glasgow) Herald' newspaper who caved in completely to the
economic/political threats of these fascistic bullyboys."
"As a result - during 2003 for instance, when the Iraq War was
about to kick off - 'The Herald' editors were so afraid of their
own corporate paymasters and Zionist friends that they refused to
print every letter I sent to them. . 'The Herald', like the Israeli
state, can go fuck themselves."
The following issue of the paper carried just one letter
criticising the article - not from any member of the SSP, but from
the Acting Editor of the "Herald", who rightly pointed out: "His
rant about 'Zionist paymasters' reads like something from a BNP
circular."
(By way of contrast, when the "Voice" carried a positive review of
Neil Davidson's Marxist analysis of the Treaty of Union,
"Discovering the Scottish Revolution", subsequent issues of paper
carried a stream of denunciatory letters from members of the
SSP.)
In February of this year, when controversy erupted over some
cartoons of Mohammed published by a Danish newspaper, the "Voice"
carried an article explaining that it was all an Israeli plot:
"The publication of these cartoons has been carefully orchestrated
worldwide by the subversive operatives of US and Israeli
imperialism in cahoots with the millionaire owners of these right
wing newspapers. ."
"America and Israel are gearing up for an imminent military strike
against Iran and the publication of these cartoons has been part of
the pre-war propaganda offensive. Which is why, rather than
abstentionism, I feel protests should have been directed against
Israeli and American embassies, not Danish ones."
The equating of Zionists/Israelis with Nazis has also featured in
articles in the "Voice". According to an article published in
September of last year, for example, "Israel is doing to the
civilian populations of Gaza and Lebanon what Hitler's armies did
to the civilian population of the Soviet Union."
In an article published the following month a description of the
killings at Deir Yassin during the Arab-Israel War of 1948/49
concluded with the following comment: "It could come from an
eyewitness report of Nazi atrocities perpetrated against Jews in
Europe just three years previously. Only the Muslim names give you
the clue that this happened in Palestine, and that the perpetrators
were Jewish."
(According to the same article: "The history of the
Israel/Palestine conflict is not complex at all; it is simple and
abominable." It's certainly simple by the time the "Voice" has
finished with it!)
None of these article are statements of SSP policy. They are what
they are: examples of articles written over a period of months by
various individuals. But they certainly suggest a failure to get to
grips with modern anti-semitism, especially 'left anti-semitism'.
And the article about "Perdition" in the current issue of the paper
confirms that failure in a particularly blatant form.
For anyone who wants to know what the Kastner trial was actually
all about, the trial and Kastner's role in wartime Hungary are
discussed in detail in the following articles
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/lhrtoc/lhr18_3frm.html
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/19.1/luban.html
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/19.1/bilsky2.html
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