What is treason?

PM Netanyahu, in his second Bar Iran speech, talked about the Nazi connection with the PLO and the PA. Francisco Gil-White wrote that the Jewish leaders who started Oslo and maintained it, were guilty of treason because they helped supporters of the “final solution” come to Israel. I begged to differ. In this article posted at Historical Investigative Research, Gil-White makes his case. I will respond to it tomorrow. Ted Belman

by Francisco Gil-White

Did you know…?

Did you know that the man who launched the Palestinian movement, the creator and father of PLO/Fatah (now better known as the ‘Palestinian Authority’) also ran the German Nazi system of death camps that murdered the European Jews?

Netanyahu does.

Hajj Amin al Husseini, ‘Grand Mufti’ of Jerusalem in the first half of the 20th c., was an internationally famous anti-Semite who organized mass killings of Jews in British Mandate Palestine.

Hajj Amin al Husseini

In a speech last month at Bar Ilan University, Benjamin Netanyahu shared “facts about the Mufti’s activities that are less well known” by the public—in no small measure because Netanyahu never shared them before—.

The Israeli prime minister spoke of Husseini’s pilgrimage to the Third Reich after the start of World War II. Received with honors in Berlin, Husseini remained in Nazi-controlled Europe until the end, and was given important responsibilities in the machinery of the Holocaust, such as organizing entire divisions of Heinrich Himmler’s SS. If that were not already enough, according to testimony delivered to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, added Netanyahu, Husseini was co-architect and co-administrator—with his best friend Adolf Eichmann—of the death-camp system that exterminated most of the European Jews (see video).

Husseini meets Hitler (November, 1941)

Perhaps most amazing—in the context of the last 20 years in Israel—Husseini (as Netanyahu also explained) is who fathered the Arab Palestinian movement.

That would be the same Palestinian movement that now negotiates with Netanyahu for a State in the strategic territories of Judea and Samaria (‘West Bank’).

As I explained in a reaction piece (Part 1), the Israeli prime minister neglected to share two important facts:

1)     Husseini’s first priority was in fact to exterminate the Jews of British Mandate Palestine, and to this end he extracted promises from Hitler forthwith.[1]

2)     But Hitler did not conquer the Middle East. So after the war Husseini launched a new project to exterminate the Jews of the new State of Israel. In Cairo, his new base, Husseini recruited and trained—with the help of German Nazi refugees—a group of young Arabs, among whom Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. They became the founding core of Al Fatah, later better known as the PLO, and more recently as the ‘Palestinian Authority.’

So Benjamin Netanyahu is about to hand over strategic Israeli territory to PLO/Fatah, created by Husseini to continue the Final Solution in Israel.

I asked (mouth agape): Why would Netanyahu now share information that opens him to the charge of treason?

My friend Ted Belman of Israpundit published my piece but took exception to my language. Neither Netanyahu nor anybody else in the Israeli leadership, he averred, is guilty of treason:

“I disagree with Gil-White’s conclusion.  Everyone involved with [the] Oslo [Process] from the start knew of the Nazi connection and chose to ignore it.  I don’t see continuing [the Oslo Process] as treason but as stupidity or naivete.”

I have long argued that Jews are acutely vulnerable in part due to historical, cultural, and psychological peculiarities that make it difficult for them to reason about their self-defense, and about their own leaders (HIR has an entire series on the question [2]). I am thus grateful for the opportunity to reply, which Ted Belman, following a private phone conversation, has graciously extended. I hope this is the beginning of a fruitful dialogue on this important question.

Ted and I are having a controversy over the meaning of ‘treason.’

Merriam Webster defines ‘treason’ as:

1)     Trying to overthrow your country’s government; or

2)     Helping your country’s enemies during war

But what if the government is helping the enemy? This special case brings the two meanings into conflict. It is simple to resolve. Whoever tries to overthrow a treasonous government is a patriot, not a traitor, so the second meaning above is primary: ‘treason’ means helping your country’s enemies during war.

But intentions matter. To help your country’s enemy inadvertently or accidentally is not treason (which is why Ted brings the lesser charge of “stupidity or naïveté” to exonerate Netanyahu and others). Hence,

Treason: knowingly helping your country’s enemies during war.

Now, all of the words above matter in the scientific investigation of possible treason:

1)     Is the purported enemy an enemy of the country?

2)     Is a war really taking place?

3)     Is the person accused of treason really helping the enemy?

4)     Does s/he help knowingly?

I shall seek to answer these questions in order to reach a conclusion. I hope Ted will look carefully for errors of fact or reasoning as we continue our dialogue.

Country: Israel

The UN voted in 1947, immediately after the Holocaust, in favor of creating the State of Israel.  A key argument in favor was that the Jewish people needed its own national State in which to protect itself from genocide.

PLO/Fatah: Enemy of the Jewish people and State

In the same category with Hitler, Eichmann, and Himmler, Husseini masterminded the German Nazi death-camp system that ground between 5 and 6 million European Jews to death. After the war, Husseini created Al Fatah to continue his grisly work with the Jewish people now gathered in the State of Israel (see video).

One may argue, on the above, that PLO/Fatah therefore has the highest possible claim to “enemy of the Jewish people and State.”

However, because of PLO/Fatah’s famous offer of peace in exchange for land, there is a controversy over whether it is still an enemy, and still at war. It is simple to resolve.

PLO/Fatah: Enemy at war

As historian Kenneth Levin explains, within the Palestine National Council, in 1974, Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Arafat established “the so-called Plan of Phases, according to which the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] would acquire whatever territory it could by negotiations, then use that land as a base for pursuing its ultimate goal of Israel’s annihilation.” Immediately after the signing of the Declaration of Principles that launched the Oslo Accords in 1993, “Arafat was declaring to his Palestinian constituency over Jordanian television that Oslo was to be understood in terms of the Palestine National Council’s 1974 decision.”[3] Over the years, PLO/Fatah has actually repeated this over and over again.[3a]

It follows, therefore, that any promises made in English for the Western cameras are part of a ruse.

PLO/Fatah is at war with the Jewish people and State.

Israeli leaders: Helping the enemy

Netanyahu, like many others in the Israeli ruling elite, has been assisting the Oslo Process, the purpose of which is to bring PLO/Fatah into the Jewish State and give it ever increasing power over the Arab Muslim population in Judea and Samaria. So Netanyahu, like others in the Israeli ruling elite, has been helping an enemy at war with the Jewish State—an enemy, in fact, dedicated to the wholesale slaughter of the Jewish people—.

Israeli leaders: Helping knowingly

Ted Belman agrees that “everyone involved with [the] Oslo [Process] from the start knew of the Nazi connection.”

Let us be clear: Ted Belman has stipulated that Israeli leaders responsible for Oslo always knew that PLO/Fatah was created by a top leader of the Holocaust.

And how could they not? These are public facts, available in libraries (and aired publicly at Adolf Eichmann’s Jerusalem trial in 1961). Ordinary Israelis, as Netanyahu pointed out, are mostly unaware of these facts, but an Israeli leader, as Netanyahu demonstrated in the same speech, is much better informed.

As outlined in the Plan of Phases, PLO/Fatah’s true intentions were always to promise peace in order to acquire territory from which to exterminate the Israeli Jews. Again, these are public facts, explained by PLO/Fatah on Jordanian television (see above). Granted, ordinary Israelis aren’t usually glued to the TV for Jordanian shows featuring PLO/Fatahleaders, but Israeli intelligence must be. And Israeli intelligence briefs Israel’s leaders.

Israeli leaders understood PLO/Fatah’s intentions when they signed Oslo.

Israeli leaders: Lying to the Israelis

This is first and foremost a propaganda war.

For the Oslo Process to happen, those Western leaders who bully Israel, and Israeli leaders who collaborate with this pressure, must have sufficient support among their citizens. For that to happen, PLO/Fatahmust appear as the representative of a suffering, deserving people, not the German Nazi-trained followers of a Holocaust leader!

So stopping Oslo was easy.

Prior to 1993, when the pressure began, Israeli leaders could have used the enormous media power of the State to inform Israelis and Westerners that PLO/Fatah was created by Husseini—a top leader of the German Nazi Final Solution (no less!)—to continue the Final Solution in Israel.

This would have changed the political grammar completely.

Instantaneously, Oslo would have become unthinkable.

PLO/Fatah at the time was a defeated organization. Menachem Begin had mauled it and sent it into Tunisian exile way back in 1982. It was not in a position of strength. It was moribund. The revelations of its Nazi origins would have slammed the last nail in its coffin and simultaneously opened the door for a reasonable solution on Israel’s terms.

So why didn’t Israeli leaders stick a wrench in the Oslo wheel, prior to 1993, by making PLO/Fatah’s Nazi origins famous? Why instead did they revive this defeated organization, created only to kill Jews, and bring it into the bosom of the Jewish State? I asked Ted Belman to share his hypothesis with me.

On the phone he replied: “Because they wanted peace.”

In an email he elaborated: “Those who supported Oslo followed the principle that one makes peace with one’s enemies. Everyone wanted to believe that peace was possible so they went for it and ignored the reality that the PLO was a terrorist group whose Charter calls for Israel’s destruction.”

But Israeli leaders didn’t “ignore. . . the reality.” They kept quiet about PLO/Fatah’s Nazi origins and insisted forcefully that PLO/Fatah wanted peace.

So they lied.

And why did they lie? They lied because it was the only way to advance Oslo and bring PLO/Fatah into Israel. They lied because the truth would have stopped Oslo.

Israel’s leaders lied.

Ted Belman has already stipulated to this as well, because “Leaders lied, Jews died” is the title of an article published on HIR and Israpundit that Ted helped me co-edit.

Conclusion

To claim that Israeli leaders pushed for Oslo out of “stupidity or naïveté” is to say that those who actually run things, who hold the reins of power, are a lot stupider than Ted Belman and me. But I find it implausible that world leaders are imbeciles who need us to lecture them on basic geopolitical reasoning.

If Israeli leaders had first shared with the public that PLO/Fatah was the spawn of the Final Solution, and then tried to push Oslo, I could agree with the “stupidity or naïveté” hypothesis. But they lied. And why? Because the truth would have killed Oslo. That is consistent with malice, not “stupidity or naïveté.”

So why is this not treason?

I ask Ted Belman: To knowingly bring into strategic territory of the Jewish State—created to safeguard Jews from genocide—a group trained and chartered by a top Holocaust leader to continue the German Nazigenocide. . .—this is not treason?

Can Ted please give us an example of what he would consider treason? (Just to have a benchmark.)

And while we are at it, how about an explanation of the political benefits that Ted perceives, for opponents of the Oslo Process such as Ted Belman, of defending Netanyahu from this charge?

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