A RESPONSE
to allegations against me
in a complaint filed by Jonathan Hoffman
with the House of Lords
and dismissed by that body
Tom Suárez
to allegations against me
in a complaint filed by Jonathan Hoffman
with the House of Lords
and dismissed by that body
Tom Suárez
Background:
In December 2016, one Jonathan Hoffman filed a formal complaint with the House of Lords alleging that a talk I gave at that institution (at which Mr. Hoffman was not present) was "anti-Semitic".
His allegations have also appeared online and in the media.
After a three month inquiry, on 15 March 2017, The House of Lords' Committee for Privileges and Conduct published HL Paper 142, which dismissed his complaints, as did the Charity Commission in a previous, similar complaint.
Since he and other pro-Israel saboteurs continue to smear me to bar me from speaking, the HOL complaint merits my specific response beyond the HoL paper clearing my name.
Following are the points of the complaint exactly as they appears in HL Paper 142, followed by my responses. (For clarity, I have moved superfluous content of his complaint to here.)
— Tom Suarez, 4 May, 2017
In December 2016, one Jonathan Hoffman filed a formal complaint with the House of Lords alleging that a talk I gave at that institution (at which Mr. Hoffman was not present) was "anti-Semitic".
His allegations have also appeared online and in the media.
After a three month inquiry, on 15 March 2017, The House of Lords' Committee for Privileges and Conduct published HL Paper 142, which dismissed his complaints, as did the Charity Commission in a previous, similar complaint.
Since he and other pro-Israel saboteurs continue to smear me to bar me from speaking, the HOL complaint merits my specific response beyond the HoL paper clearing my name.
Following are the points of the complaint exactly as they appears in HL Paper 142, followed by my responses. (For clarity, I have moved superfluous content of his complaint to here.)
— Tom Suarez, 4 May, 2017
● In black are Mr. Hoffman's allegations (from House of Lords Paper 142, Apendix O: "Letter from Jonathan Hoffman to the Commissioner for Standards, 16 December 2016")
•• In blue are my responses
(Mr. Hoffman writes:)
● The book “State of Terror” is a vile book full of antisemitic tropes. It contains antisemitic material.
(I reply:)
•• It is Mr. Hoffman's views that are antisemitic, exploiting Jewish identity to shield the crimes of the Israeli state. Quite the opposite, my book details Zionist terrorism, of which Jews were a principal target. Much of what Mr. Hoffman defames as "anti-Semitic" are the voices of Jews fleeing the Nazis in the early 1940s, of Jewish Agency officials, and of members of the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine). It is, rather, anti-Semitic to try to bury this history in order to safeguard the Israeli narrative, which is the single reality behind the entire complaint.
● No mention of the Hebron massacre of 1929 which left 67 Jews dead;
•• Wrong. On page 46 this Palestinian terror attack, and its sixty-seven Jewish victims, is indeed recorded.
● No mention of Haj Amin al-Husseini’s meetings with Hitler to try to persuade him to extend his anti-Jewish campaign into Arab lands.
•• Wrong. The infamous Mufti’s well-known meeting with Hitler is cited on page 353 (endnote 137). Indeed I bring to light the Mufti’s collaboration with the Italian fascists (page 71) based on previously unpublished documents that I had declassified (TNA, CO 733/420/19). Yet the complaint itself is gratuitous: it is peripheral to the subject of the book, just as I do not cite every Zionist-Nazi meeting.
● First, the description of Deir Yassin. Suarez fails to mention that residents and foreign troops opened fire on the attackers. Dr. Uri Milstein has written that Deir Yassin was hardly a peaceful village. Arab attacks against Jewish transportation in western Jerusalem emanated from Deir Yassin in 1948 and it was therefore necessary to take measures to take over the village.
•• This is a rewriting of history similar to that used by the Israel Ministry of Defence (in Kister, Irgun), which is wholly at odds with contemporary accounts, most modern scholarship, and indeed with Zionist records; and which, even if true, fail to explain the wholesale gratuiutous slaughter, amply recorded by early eyewitnesses. The debuncked claim of "Arab attacks against Jewish transportation in western Jerusalem" is also internally disingenuous, as the Zionists had supposedly agreed to Resolution 181, in which Jerusalem and Bethlehem would not be part of the Israeli state.
● Page 10: Endnote #8 suggests that Weizmann said ‘Arabs are inferior people and do not deserve a vote’. No source is given.
•• Wrong. The source is explicitly cited in my book: TNA, FO 608/99. This is Weizman’s own correspondence, which anyone can go to the National Achives and read. I do not understand why endnote 8 is mentioned, as it is from the Introduction. not from the quote in the main text.
● Page 13: Suarez writes ‘UN Resolution 181 can fairly be described as a scam’. No evidence is offered for this statement—simply an assertion that ‘no Israeli leader had any intention of honouring Partition’.
•• Wrong. The evidence is overwhelming and meticulously cited. It includes British and US intelligence documents, British Cabinet papers, and published accounts. It is Chapter 7 of the book. The quote in the complaint is, rather, from my Introduction, which lays out my book’s purpose and methodology.
● Pages 15/16: Suarez states that ‘gazan fishermen are killed for fishing in their own waters and gazan farmers blown up for farming their own soils.’ No evidence is provided—because it isn’t true.
•• An extraordinary statement, as this is simple current events. It is not only amply recorded by human rights organisations and activists with video cameras, but will be witnessed by anyone who can penetrate Israel’s deadly siege. I was there in early 2009, after the Cast Lead attacks, and watched Isreli military vessels firing on Palestinian fishing vessels, and I ventured as close to the eastern border as possible without risking the "buffer" death zone. I challenge Mr. Hoffman to walk onto Gaza's fertile agricultural grounds near the de facto border — but don't actually do it, because you WILL be shot by Israel’s remotely controlled towers. I challenge Mr. Hoffman to try to fish in Gaza's legal, fertile fishing grounds beyond Israel’s illegally imposed and ever changing “limits” — but don't actually do it, because you WILL be shot by Israeli patrols. You may even find yourself being ordered by armed Israeli patrols to go further west, so that they can claim you violated their "limits".
● Page 25: Suarez writes that ‘Israel wields ‘the Jewish state’ as a talisman fending off censure: critics hesitate to fire accusatory words at such a state for fear of hitting this three-word human shield, alleged to be the embodiment of Jews and Judaism, that the state holds out in front.’ This is patently not true. The accusation that critics of Israel are deterred by the possibility of being accused of being antisemitic is a time-worn device beloved of antisemites. None of them can ever give an example of a supporter of Israel misusing the charge of antisemitism in this way.
•• The very reason I am having to write this rebuttal is, ironically, an example “of a supporter of Israel misusing the charge of antisemitism”. Otherwise, there’s nothing tangible here to refute as it is a circular argument.
● Page 27: Suarez suggests that the World Zionist Organisation refused to participate in the 1938 Evian conference for resettling refugees, because it was not predicated on a Zionist State in Palestine. That is not true. The WZO was not invited—the conference was for states only.
•• The statement that the Evian Conference was "for states only" is patently untrue. There were non-state delegations and participants. This is not even contentious.
● Page 28: Suarez says that Ben gurion argued that rather than seeing all the Jewish children in germany escape to England, it was better that half of them should be slaughtered by the Nazis if that meant that the other half could go to Palestine. Endnote #24 has the precise quote. It is a hugely offensive canard, as camera.org has explained—deriving from taking a single quote out of context and ignoring other comments made by Ben gurion that directly contradict this interpretation.
•• Ben-Gurion’s actions consistently lived up to those words; and I interviewed Hagana member Hanna Braun, who said (and wrote) that it was not an isolated, odd quote, but that Ben-Gurion repeated and meant this.
● Page 28: Suarez claims that ‘Jewish orphans … became targets of a formal kidnapping campaign launched to snatch them from their adoptive European homes to ship them to Palestine as demographic facts-on-the-ground.’ There is no evidence for this blatantly antisemitic assertion .
•• Firstly, the allegation is either true or it is not true. There is nothing “anti-Semitic” about documenting it. Rather, it is anti-Semitic to lie about and bury this terrible history of anti-Jewish persecution.
•• Indeed I cite from a transcript of Rabbi Herzog’s own records, held by the National Archives, CO 537/1705. This is amply cited in my book. That the kidnapping trip took place is even recorded by the New York Times, whom Herzog spoke to when he set off.
● Similarly for the claim (same page) that ‘ When in 1944 President Roosevelt provisionally secured safe haven for a half million Displaced Persons, outraged Zionist leaders sabotaged it .’
•• All my information is directly from Morris Ernst, who was the aide to Roosevelt who set up the program. I cite both Ernst’s published first-hand record of this, and from discussions he had with British officials, recorded in documents in the National Archives. This is all cited.
● And for the similar claim on page 48: “ rescue for its own sake was never part of Jewish Agency policy”.
•• This was in fact a constant theme, stated bluntly or indirectly by various Zionist leaders, including Ben-Gurion, Eliezer Livneh, and Yitzhak Gruenbaum; as well as by Jewish survivors such as Robert Weltsch, and the journal Jewish Daily Forward in 1943. (See State of Terror, page 82).
● Page 68: Suarez recounts the story of the Patria. The Patria was a ship that was ordered by the British in 1940 to take back Jews fleeing Europe. The Haganah wanted to damage the ship so that it could not sail. Unfortunately the operation went wrong and 267 people died and 172 were injured. But Suarez simply suggests that Jewish terrorists blew up the ship, without relating the context. And then he suggests that there was a ’cover-up’ by the Israeli government which suggested that the passengers committed suicide, rather than being taken back to Europe. Again—no evidence.
•• The Patria was not bringing the DPs back to Europe. It was bringing them to Mauritius, where there were facilities for them, and where they would be safe. The Jewish Agency explanation for bombing the vessel (which I also cite) is disingenuous: inescapably, it was willing to risk killing hundreds of Jewish survivors — which it did — in the cause of the settler state. When you blow up a ship, you can not then say you didn’t meant to hurt anyone. The National Archives holds entire folders dedicated to the Patria disaster; these were my main source. Nor was the Patria the only Jewish immigrant ship the Jew Agency blew up for political reasons.
•• As for the “suicide” cover-up, this is not even controversial. Koestler’s Promise and Fulfilment (1949), which I cite as spreading the lie well after the truth was known, is readily available in the used book market.
● Page 78: Suarez writes ‘The Jewish Agency maintained its opposition to Jews joining the Allied struggle against the Nazis’. There is no evidence for this.
•• The Jewish Agency’s opposition to Jews joining the Allied struggle is explicitly cited in several British and Jewish Agency records. Even May Day in 1940, well into the war, was used by the Jewish Agency to lecture the Yishuv not to join the Allies. Zionist opposition to helping the Allies was bitterly protested by Jews in Palestine who fled the Nazis (e.g., Robert Weltsch). Finally, if one claims that this evidence is wrong, then one would have to explain the advent of the Jewish Brigade (the history of which I also cover based on British source documents).
● Page 79: Suarez quotes Henry Hunloke, Defence Security Officer in Palestine, who reported ‘mutilated bodies are found with labels tied to them saying ‘This is what happens to an informer’.’Hunloke also reportedly said that the Jewish Agency stirred up antisemitism, in order to force Jews … to come to Palestine. Both statements are accepted without question even though there is no evidence of either from any other source.
•• Hunloke's words are indeed documented and cited (TNA, KV 5/33, 35a). The vast majority of related evidence wholly supports his statements.
● Page 120: Suarez asserts that to address the (supposed) ‘problem’ of the displaced Jews not wanting to go to Palestine, a triple campaign was waged: the forceful isolation and coercion of the survivors themselves, the sabotage of international safe havens for them and the kidnapping of Jewish or phans .’ His assertion about the coercion of Displaced Persons relies on a book by Yosef g rodzinsky (‘In the Shadow of the Holocaust’). But many Displaced Persons have challenged the assertions in that book, see Elhanan Yakira (‘Post-Zionism, Post-Holocaust’). grodzinsky is also the source for the lie proposed by Suarez, that Chief Rabbi Herzog ‘kidnapped’ Jewish orphans in Europe after the War.
•• First, Prof Grodzinsky was not my source for the Herzog kidnappings. Indeed Prof Grodzinsky was unaware of the Herzog records I found in the National Archives.
•• Prof Grodzinsky was an additional source the for kidnapping campaigns, and for the DP camps. I consider Prof Grodzinsky's scholarship to be reliable, an opinion reinforced by my correspondence with him and independent corroboration. But this is all irrelevant; an individual's dislike of Prof Grodzinsky's conclusions is not a reason to claim to the House of Lords that I am anti-Semitic.
•• Prof Grodzinsky and I are both well aware of contary claims by some DPs. See page 366 in State of Terror.
•• It is worth noting that even the editor of the New York Times at the time, Sulzberger, complained about the DPs being held hostage to the Zionist project.
•• As for the bizarre, suicidal change in the attitude of the DPs, this was publicly reported by the joint US-UK committee that visited the camps in 1946. It is all cited.
● Page 211: Suarez asserts that the State of Israel systematically stole german reparation money intended for survivors who continued to live in poverty. The source for this is Norman Finkelstein (‘The Holocaust Industry’)—a book which has no credibility whatsoever.
•• The complanant dismisses Prof Finkelstein's widely respected research by saying that it "has no credibility whatsoever". Why is this relevant to a complaint against me with the House of Lords? Must the HoL first clear academic material with the complanant before it can be spoken?
● Page 257: It is stated that the Jewish Agency opposed the Marshall Plan because it would have made the lives of Jews in Europe more comfortable. This is unsubstantiated nonsense.
•• It is true and explicitly substantiated. Indeed, according to documents in the National Archives, Ben-Gurion himself initiated a policy of non-cooperation with plans for post-war reconstruction even as the war still raged, beginning in 1943 (TNA, FO 371/45377). This caused the resignation of the only remaining non-Zionist in the Agency. Opposition to reconstruction continued as the war ended in 1945 (CO 733/456/4). As late as 1948, the US media were reporting that US politicians are being criticized by Zionist leaders, saying that they cannot be both pro-Marshall [Plan] and pro-Zionist (FO 371/68649).
● Page 276: Suarez quotes from Israel Archives, saying that the Israeli Foreign Ministry said the fleeing of Arabs would reduce the refugees to “a human heap, the scum of the earth”. But Suarez does not tell us who said it. It is perfectly possible that the Foreign Ministry kept a record of a statement made by someone not connected with government.
•• To understand: By merely alleging that it is "perfectly possible" that the Foreign Ministry was quoting someone else (a very odd hyposthesis), I am to be censored? I am unsure what to respond to here.
● Page 282: Suarez suggests that Israel destroyed the Iraqi Jewish community and blocked other countries from helping Jews who wanted to leave Iraq. Neither is true. Iraq destroyed the Iraqi Jewish Community, in the Farhud in 1941.
•• The complanant confuses two issues: [1] the anti-Jewish violence in Iraq in 1941; and [2] Israel’s role in the anti-Jewish violence in Iraq in the early 1950s.
•• As for the 1941 attacks, I cite the two basic theories: one, that is was unprovoked Arab violence against Jews; and two, that it was a false-flag British operation. In support of the latter, I cite three sources: [1] claims of a Jewish eye-witness, [2] a secret British document that I had declassified (but is still heavily redacted), and [3] ironically, a Lehi newsletter.
•• As for the terror attacks a decade later that led to the effective destruction of the Iraqi Jewish community, I can only repeat myself. I cite British, US, Israeli, and Iraqi sources, some published, some held by the British government.
•• I also record the all but unknown role of Near East Air Transport in the cynical methodology of Israel's ethnic cleansing of Iraqi Jews.
● Page 286: Suarez says that ‘ Israel kidnapped Mizrahi newborns, giving the babies to Ashkenazi couples and telling the children’s parents that the child had died. This practice persisted at least through Israel’s first decade. The final cynical irony of Israel’s uprooting of Middle Eastern and North African Jews from their homelands is that the state now uses it as a racial ‘settling of scores’ for its own ethnic cleansing of Palestinians .’ There was never a conspiracy to kidnap Mizrahi babies. This trope is sourced by Suarez from Jonathan Cook—who of course has a history of anti-Israel falsehoods and bigotry.
•• The excellent journalist Jonathan Cook is hardly the only source for Mizrahi newborns scandal. It is rather an increasing scandal well covered by the Israeli media.
•• As for the ‘settling of scores’ issues, this is indeed used by Israeli officials, and it is wholly relevant to my book. See, e.g., Haaretz, 11 Sep 2012, in which Israeli diplomats are instructed to use this device.
● Page 286: Suarez suggest that UN Resolution 194 gave unqualified right to Arab refugees to return home. That is plain wrong.
•• As for UN Resolution 194, I assume (since there was no explanation) that the complanant is referring to the usual 'catch' that it empowered those refugees who wish to return and live in peace — and Israel, seizing on the final four words, has decided on Palestinians’ behalf that they do not wish to live in peace. Sorry, this is an immoral argument, and one that would be universally condemned as outrageous and racist if the situation were reversed.
● Page 291: Suarez cites Chris Mc greal in support of a story about the rape of a Palestinian woman. Chris Mc greal again has a history of false reports that traduce Israel. He achieved the rare distinction of being singled out by the CST (the British charity that protects the Jewish community) in their 2011 report on antisemitic discourse.
•• There is some tricky wording here. I am said to cite Chris McGreal “in support” of this instance of rape, but then as though he were THE source. He was not. The source I quote is Benny Morris. I cite an article about the rape by McGreal as an example of how the media played the story.
● Lord Montagu (the sole Jew in Lloyd george’s government), supported by other Jewish leaders, viewed the Zionists as antisemites because they collaborated with antisemitic leaders in Europe who wanted to expel Jews;
•• No. I said Lord Montagu was strongly anti-Zionist and accused the British government of anti-Semitism for collaborating with the Zionists in the Balfour Declaration. The rest ("collaborated with antisemitic leaders in Europe who wanted to expel Jew") is the complanant's invention.
● The Zionists persuaded the US to enter World War One.
•• I never said that, nor does my book say that. To quote from my book (page 37), "Some documents suggest, but do not prove, a connection between Britain and the Zionists regarding US involvement in World War I". I then go on to discuss some of those sources.
•• In my talk at SOAS as well, I explicitly said that while some connection between WWI and Zionists is explicit in British Cabinet papers, the nature of that connection is unproven.
● Jewish terrorists bombed the Patria (truth is, the ship was ordered by the British to take back Jews fleeing Europe and the Haganah wanted to damage the ship so that it could not sail);
•• I have already addressed this complaint and its misinformation. I don't know why it is raised twice in the complaint to the House of Lords. Please see above. (The Patria was not bringing the DPs back to Europe. It was bringing them to Mauritous, where there were facilities for them and where they would be safe.)
● Weizmann demanded special privileges for Jews in Palestine and spoke of inferior human beings;
•• Absolutely true. Read Weizmann's own letters, held by the National Archives in Kew, FO 608/99, from which I quote.
● Between the Balfour Declaration and the Declaration of Independence, Zionists achieved their aims by radicalising their children and teaching them to betray their parents if they were not Zionist enough—and Zionists assassinated non-Zionist Jews;
•• No. What I said is that the Zionist system in place radicalised children even when their parents tried to instill some moderation.
•• As for the Zionist assassination of non-Zionist Jews, what I said, and wrote, is that non–Zionist Jews were tolerated until they became influential. The roster of Zionist assassination of Jews is extensive, and amply documented. An Israeli professor, Nachman Ben-Yahuda, even authored an entire book cataloguing Zionist assassinations, which I used as a secondary source.
● On 8 July 1938 a 12 year old girl in the Irgun blew up a bus [no evidence];
•• Wrong. The incident is clearly cited in my book: the NY Times of 9 July, 1938, ‘Arabs in Palestine Begin Wide Strike [etc] ... 12-Year-Old Girl Held as Thrower’.
● Norman Bentwich said that the way that Zionists in Palestine behaved was comparable to Nazism;
•• The complanant has his Bentwiches mixed up. Norman Bentwich was the staunchly Zionist attorney-general of Palestine who had helped champion the Balfour. I was quoting, rather, J.S. Bentwich, the Senior Inspector of Jewish Schools in Palestine. Source: National Archives, FO 1093/330.
● According to Suarez the history surrounding the Exodus ship—that it was turned back from Palestine by the British—is not true. It was the Jewish Agency that turned it back because it wanted to encourage antiSemitism;
•• This is an especially confused allegation. First: no, I did not say the Jewish Agency turned back the Exodus. What I said is that the Jewish Agency knew that the British would do so (send its DPs back, though on three other ships, not on the Exodus). Pages 210-212.
•• Secondly, the purpose of returning the passengers was not “to encourage anti-Semitism”. This is the complanant’s invention — I have never made such a statement, in speech or print.
● Zionist leaders sabotaged proposals for safe havens for Jews in the US and Europe in the 1930s (the truth of course was that the Allies at the infamous Evian Conference in 1938 agreed to take hardly any of the Jewish refugees).
•• The complanant is repeating issues. I have already addressed the Evian Conference, above. Zionist leaders did not embrace, and often blocked, safe have outside of Palestine.
● It gets worse. He said that a “Rabbi Herzog” kidnapped Jewish children in Europe and took them to Palestine.
•• I don't understand why this issue is being raised twice in the same complaint. I've already addressed this. Plerase see my response regarding Rabbi Herzog, above.
● The Zionists controlled the Displaced Persons’ camps after the War and brainwashed Jews in them. The DPs first wanted to go to the US and UK but were so brainwashed by the Jewish Agency that they threatened to commit suicide if they were not sent to Israel. Ben gurion was worried by the fall in antisemitism in Europe and tried to increase it. The Jewish Agency opposed the Marshall Plan because it would have made the lives of Jews in Europe more comfortable.
•• Jewish DPs were segregated in Zionist camps at the Zionists' insistance. This is standard history.
•• About the brainwashing and threats of mass suicide, I have already addressed this. It was reported by the Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry when they visited the camps in 1946. The fanaticism is well documented independently.
•• Ben-Gurion was indeed concerned about the fall in anti-Semitism. I cite Jewish Agency meetings, among other evidence.
•• As for Zionist opposition to European reconstruction, I've already addressed this. Please see above.
● And of course his choice of words was poisonous. “Apartheid”, “Zionist terrorists”, “Zionism a racist fascist movement” and so on.
•• The terms “Zionist terrorists” and “Zionism a racist fascist movement” are directly quoted or paraphrased from numerous contemporary sources, including Jewish survivors of the Nazis, as my book makes clear. Indeed for the several years before the establishment of the Israeli state, the terms "Zionist terrorism" and "Jewish terrorism" were common parts of the daily news (though I dislike the term "Jewish terrorism" and never use it unless in a quote).
•• I used the term “apartheid” speaking for myself, not from Mandate-era sources. I stand by the accuracy of the term to describe the Israeli state.
● Suarez spoke about Israel now. He said that Judaism is not the national faith of Israel
•• The Wikipedia entry on state religions states that “from a constitutional point of view Judaism is not the state religion in Israel” (accessed again 3 May 2017). But that said, the complanant has taken this from my earlier talk at SOAS (which he disrupted), not from my book or my talk at the House of Lords. It was a passing point that arose in context and which I qualified as "as far as I know" [etc], since I avoid relying on Wikipedia.