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Francisco Gil-White: Scientific Historian or Dangerous Fraud?

A debate

Introduction by Jared Israel
Editor, Emperor's Clothes

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1.

2.
 

3.
 

4.  'Rvictor' praises Gil-White.
 

Gil-White’s work should be a wakeup call to all of us, especially the Jewish people!

Comment by rvictor — June 14, 2006 @ 3:36 pm

5. Nathan Pearlstein praises Gil-White effusively and toasts Israpundit editor Ted Belman for posting Gil-White's article.
 

Ted,

this article by Dr. Gil-White that you have posted is suberb. Every pro-Arab, pro-Islamist argument given by the Western media and many Western intellectuals and political leaders is completely demolished.

What argument is this? The oft-repeated argument that claims that the Palestinian Arabs are “an oppressed people” and that supposedly, “…the Zionist Jews stole their land and have oppressed the Palestinians ever since”.

An honest Gentile scholar like Dr.Gil-White - an immensely great friend of the Jewish people and Israel - who knows the truth and can irrefutably prove it too with cold hard facts and rigorously documented, impeccable research (and is not afraid to do so) is what the Jewish people and Israel need so much right now.

The indisputable fact demonstrated by Dr. Gil-White, that the Zionist Jews did NOT steal the Palestinian Arabs’ land and that Jews have NOT been oppressing Palestinian Arabs ever since the creation of the state of Israel (more like the other way around) is a timely reminder of how the Western media repeats the same lies over and over thousands of times until these lies become their version of “the truth”.

All of the anti-Israeli,anti-Jewish/anti-Semitic lies propagated by the Western media, intellectuals and politicians: e.g., the justifications/reasons given for the Arabs’/Islamists’ terrorism against Israel and the West and the suicidal appeasement of the Arab-Islamists is thrown out the window.

Ted Belman’s decision to have Dr. Gil White’s vastly important work published on IsraPundit is to be deeply commended,being crucial at this moment in Israel’s history and is an absolutely essential service for not only all of our fellow Jews both living in and outside Israel, but also for the Gentile Western public that has been so thoroughly duped and misled by their media and political leaders.

WELL DONE, Ted, Dr. Gil-White and Israpundit!!

Shalom,

Nathan Pearlstein.

Comment by Nathan Pearlstein — June 14, 2006 @ 6:16 pm

6. Nathan Pearlstein says that Jews and Serbs need fear nothing, for Gil-White is on the case.

Ted,

I almost forgot. To our Serbian friends of Israel reading Israpundit (I know there are quite a few of you out there!) PLEASE don’t get discouraged,good Serbian people! Dr. Gil-White, being dedicated to the truth, will also continue to defend your people from the easily disproven lies of the Islamist terrorists, Western media, intellectuals and politicians!

The Jewish and Serbian people have the same enemies today as they did sixty years ago: primarily Islamists and Nazis and their despicable (albeit politically correct and fashionable) lies spread by the Western mass media.

Keep visiting and contributing financially to Dr.Gil-White’s vastly important work at HIR in the defense of Israel and Jewry, everyone!!!

Shalom,

Nathan Pearlstein.

Comment by Nathan Pearlstein — June 14, 2006 @ 6:37 pm

7. 'Peter Robert North' praises Gil-White and toasts those who praise him.

Nathan,

a great big DITTO from me on both your comments!! I couldn’t have said it better myself!! Well done Ted, IsraPundit and Francisco Gil-White.

Long live Israel and Jewry!!!

Peter Robert North.
 

8.

9. Alex Eisenberg praises the preceding comments and goes further, extolling Gil-White as the greatest of historians
 

Dear all,

All you say above is correct. But there is one thing, one particular characteristic, which sets Gil-White’s work apart from other pro-Jewish authors that I know of, and that characteristic, should be clearly noted: Gil-White’s research on Israel has NEVER been consistently refuted by any other scholar or specialist. And this is not new, because before I read his extensive work on Israel and the relationship between Jewish and Western civilizations I had already read his work on Yugoslavia and the 1990s war, which struck me deeply, and has never been refuted.

In fact, his work is not “only” a defense of the Jewish people as such. It is part of a broad research which encompasses the entire history of the Western civilization based on the most recent advancements in the field of evolutionary anthropology. Although thinking Jews may tend to view his work emotionally, given our desperate need for a minimally fair approach to the Arab-Israel conflict, the strength of his work, as opposed to those of Pipes or Dershovitz, is precisely in its scientific approach. He is no political activist. He is a scientist, which means he could only be possibly refuted by a fellow scientist. In this regard I think it is much worth reading his debate with some other specialists in Middle East history. As soon as I find the link, I’ll post it here.

Comment by Alex [Alex Eisenberg] — June 15, 2006 @ 3:52 am

10. Peretz Rickett refers to Gil-White's boosters as "Gil-White co-religionists" and dismisses the claim that Gil-White is scientific

Alex, is there a building that you meet in with your fellow Gil-White co-religionists? Holy moly… There is nothing scientific about opinions and interpretation. He does good research and brings many facts to the table and I appreciate that in his writing. But I’m still capable of recognizing the he weaves his research and presentation with his own opinions and interpretation - which I agree with in many cases, but not all. You couch your praise of him as “scientific” and therefore make him out to irrefutable, which would be a direct contradiction of “scientific” to begin with. He presents his thesis and backs it up with good data. But at the end of the day, it’s still only a thesis.

Comment by Peretz Rickett — June 15, 2006 @ 4:11 am

11.

12.

13.
 

14.
 

15. Alex Eisenberg defends Gil-White's supporters from the charge of religious-like adoration, dancing Peretz Rickett's critique of Gil-White into seeming endorsement

Peretz,

You wrote:

Alex, is there a building that you meet in with your fellow Gil-White co-religionists? Holy moly… There is nothing scientific about opinions and interpretation. He does good research and brings many facts to the table and I appreciate that in his writing. But I’m still capable of recognizing the he weaves his research and presentation with his own opinions and interpretation - which I agree with in many cases, but not all. You couch your praise of him as “scientific” and therefore make him out to irrefutable, which would be a direct contradiction of “scientific” to begin with. He presents his thesis and backs it up with good data. But at the end of the day, it’s still only a thesis.

It is regrettable that you interpreted what I said negatively. I never said that a ’scientific approach’ is perfect or needs no improvement. What I said is that it takes a scientist - or, I should have added, any person who studies the subject in question seriously - to refute him. To be honest, I never met or had any significant exchange with Gil-White’s acquaintances. If you view his work as arousing a ‘religion’ type of reaction, then YOU are probably projecting your own impression on people who admire his work. In fact what you say adds nothing to my position, for example, since I myself do not agree with some of Gil-White’s interpretations. But here we are wasting time with hairsplitting, since you appreciate his work and agree with a lot of his conclusions, isn’t it? After all, if you don’t know, as you certainly don’t, whether or not Gil-White’s admirers agree with all his interpretations, then your position, judging from what you stated above, is just as much that of a ‘co-religionist’ (to use your pejorative term) as that of those you call ‘co-religionists,’ isn’t it? So your overreaction to my post would only make any sense if you at least provided us with some refutation of Gil-White’s work, so we could discuss it (although you could easily do that without overreacting just as well).

As far as your reasoning above about opinions, interpretations and science, I find a little flaw on it: you start off by stating that there is nothing scientific about opinions and interpretation. Then, after explaining why you appreciate Gil-White’s work, you conclude by saying that irrefutability is unscientific. This makes your reader wonder what science means for you. You give us a hint by saying that “…he does good research and brings many facts…but I’m still capable of recognizing that he weaves his research…with his own opinions and interpretations.” Your text suggests that ‘research and facts’ constitute science, while opinions and interpretations don’t. But how is your reader to reconcile this with your conclusion that irrefutability is unscientific? If irrefutability is unscientific and refutability is a condition for interpretation, it follows that science is [at least partly] based on interpretation, isn’t it? Therefore, you contradict yourself by saying that “there is nothing scientific about interpretation.”

Now to the point: since facts alone are not science (but rather the way we analytically connect them, that is, interpretation); since research is a means to achieve an end, namely a thesis; and since a thesis is in principle refutable (as your expression “only a thesis” indicates), it follows that science is necessarily ALSO interpretation. Now, having established this, it is important to define what differentiates Gil-White’s work from those of other social scientists (or journalists or political activists for that matter), for THIS is the point of our discussion.

My view, as the result of having read a lot of his work as well as works by authors who defend theses opposite to his: HE IS HONEST. What does that mean in this case? It means that he doesn’t create proses [sic!] that purposely contradict the logical connection between facts, as Nathan Weinstock - an anti-Zionist author he has cited from a lot lately - did. For example, if a collection of facts clearly allows us to establish that the British allied with the Arabs, cooperating with them to destroy the Zionist project, it takes dishonesty to distort it into concluding that the British colluded with the Jews to strip the Arabs of their rights over ‘their’ land. Nevertheless, this is what some increasingly popular scholars do, whom Gil-White exposes and refutes by showing us that they contradict themselves.

Finally, I have taken the burden myself of checking Gil-White’s sources and have been able to find about 95% of them to be authentic (the remaining 5% were not available at the places I had access to). Then I checked for coherence of his interpretations. Sometimes I wouldn’t like his style, which is at times agressive and overemphatic, but no consistency problems and no sophistry aimed at alleviating obvious contradictions. To me what that means is that he is more of a real scientist than most other people dealing with the problem in question. Therefore, his ‘interpretations’ are much more likely closer to reality than his opponents’.

It also follows from the above that serious refutations or critiques of Gil-White’s work are most welcome and needed, for they may contribute to improve even more the accuracy of his work.

Alex [Eisenberg]

Comment by Alex — June 16, 2006 @ 2:32 am

16. Jared Israel charges Francisco Gil-White with lying, writing in ignorance and slandering Jewish intellectuals and Zionist leaders

Contrary to the adoring comments about Francisco Gil-White, some reminiscent of the North Korean media describing Kim Il Sung, Francisco Gil-White is often remarkably ignorant about the Mid East, and all too often, he is also an ugly liar.

Ignorance: A few months ago Gil-White wrote a piece in which he said that by rejecting the British government’s late 1930s offers to settle European Jews in Tanganyika and elsewhere in Africa, Jewish leaders were welcoming the Holocaust. Only after I attacked him on Arutz Sheva, did Gil-White make a slight addition to said article, inserting a note stating that he had been unaware that, around the time of the so-called settlement offers, the British had issued the (famous) White paper banning Jewish settlement in Palestine! Gil-White supposedly did not know that the government’s so-called offers were a PR trick, so that when British Zionists said “No! Give us immigration to Palestine!” the government could portray them as not caring how many Jews died. So the British government’s attack on Jewish leaders in 1939 was very much the same as what Gil-White argues (still!) in his article about the land settlement offers.

Ugly lies: An example of what is unquestionably Gil-White’s intentional deception is his series on the Palestinian Movement, of which Part 4 was posted on this page. This series revolves around an endless attack on Nathan Weinstock, who more than 37 years ago wrote “Le Sionisme contre Israël” [”Zionism against Israel”], half of which was translated into English under the inaccurate title, “Zionism False Messiah.”

There are sufficient errors and distortions in Gil-White’s treatment of Weinstock to fill a book. For example, he neglects to even mention that “Le Sionisme contre Israël” had a second half, which dealt with post 1948 Israel. This second half was deliberately omitted by the English publishers, because in it Weinstock wrote that any leftwing position on the Middle East had to start with full support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to exist. Why does Gil-White likewise omit mention of this text? Will he again plead ignorance, as he did regarding the British White Paper? The omnipotent scholar, who fails to know only the most basic facts about his subject matter.

But Gil-White is worse than ignorant; he unquestionably deceives when he creates the impression that Weinstock today thinks the way he thought in 1969, when “Le Sionisme contre Israël” appeared.

Writing about Weinstock, often in the present tense, Gil-White never tells us that Weinstock has done a complete about face on the Middle East, specifically rejecting the arguments he made in his late 20s.

This is most serous. A central rule of academic scholarship is that in critiquing another scholar’s views, one must – of course! – acknowledge an about-face. For a supposed scholar not to tell readers that an opponent has reversed his opinions is the same as for a butcher to give false weight. The intellectual equivalent of a crime; in both cases, the public is robbed.

In 1969 Weinstock thought the Palestinians had a national movement. In 2003, he publicly stated that this was not a national movement at all, but a “movement” motivated by hate, with the goal of slaughtering the Jews.

Gil-White cannot this time plead ignorance, because when the website I edit, Emperor’s Clothes, published the first news in English of Weinstock’s very important about-face, Gil-White was my assistant editor. He proof read the text of my introduction to Weinstock’s article, “Stories of Dogs,” which TENC translated from the original French, and which we put on the internet in English, German and Italian.

So Gil-White knows that, as an appendix to “Stories of Dogs,” we published a letter from Weinstock where he wrote, addressing the editors of the Metula News Agency:

[Quote from Weinstock’s letter starts here]

Since you quote me in passing, I feel I have to make it clear that I formally and explicitly disassociate myself from all these pseudo-analyses tending, directly or indirectly, to justify (to call things by their real names), the liquidation of Israel, while implicitly accepting “incidentally” that of the Israelis themselves.

This is why I have prohibited my publisher from reissuing “Zionism - False Messiah.” Let me add that, while I naively believed - an error of youth - that this book could fuel a constructive discussion leading to Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, I came to realise that this had been unforgivable naivety on my part: the book served only to salve the conscience of avowed and unconscious anti-Semites.

Finally, time did not stop in 1969 and I have not remained motionless like a pillar of salt. Since then I have in fact published a number of things of a different kind of interest. I will take the liberty of mentioning only one here: the translation of the Warsaw ghetto diaries of Hillel Seidman, archivist of the kehilla (Du fond de l’abîme, published by Plon, “Terre humaine”). —

[Quote from Weinstock’s letter ends here]

As if Francisco Gil-White’s suppression of this information was not sufficiently mind boggling, Gil-White does more. He attacks Weinstock for failing to discuss the very issues that are the focus of Weinstock’s 2003 article, which Gil-White proofread in 2003, and of Weinstock’s subsequent book, which I mentioned in my introduction [to Weinstock's article]!

Case in point: Gil-White attacks Weinstock for failing to discuss the horrible abuse of Jews in mid-19th century Palestine. Gil-White quotes historian Arnold Blumberg, by way of illustrating what Weinstock has supposedly not discussed, and then Gil-White writes:

“[…] I want you to stay with this image: the landless, property-less Jewish worshippers climbing just the allowed few steps at the Temple Mount, accosted with flying garbage by gleeful Arabs who taunt them as the Turkish authorities smile with ‘amused contempt.’”

If, as I hope, you will read Weinstock’s piece, you will see that it begins with Weinstock stating that, despite Karl Marx’s hostility to Jews, even Marx told the truth about the suffering of the Jews in mid- 19th century Palestine! Here is Weinstock’s quote from Marx, who was writing in 1859:

“Nothing equals the misery and suffering of the Jews at Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth-el-yahoud, this quarter of dirt between Mount Zion and Mount Moriah, where their synagogues are situated - the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins and living only upon the scanty alms transmitted by their European brethren. […] ‘Attending their death,’ says a French author, ‘they suffer and pray. Their regards turned to that mountain of Moriah, where once rose the temple of Solomon, and which they dare not approach, they shed tears on the misfortunes of Zion, and their dispersion over the world.’”

Similarly, Gil-White faults Weinstock for not presenting defense of dhimmitude as a key basis of the Arab movement. But again, Weinstock in fact makes this very argument – and indeed, makes it a good deal better than Gil-White - in “Stories of Dogs”.

Along with lying about Weinstock’s views, Gil-White slanders him, suggesting that Weinstock relishes the deaths of Jews. (This is a charge Gil-White often makes against Jews he attacks.) This charge is particularly noxious in the case of Weinstock, who is perhaps the greatest Holocaust scholar writing in French. This is documented by TENC editor Samantha Criscione in a work she is now completing, and which I hope to post on Israpundit, thus undoing some of the harm done by Israpundit’s publication and adoration of Gil-White’s anti-scholarly attack on Weinstock.

In conclusion, we know why the antisemitic left denies Weinstock’s current views. They do not want people to know that left wing intellectuals, such as Weinstock (and, to offer another, of course more modest, example, myself) can defend Israel against the fascism of the Arab movement. Yes, we know full well why the pro-fascist left lies. What’s Gil-White’s motive?

Jared Israel
Emperor’s Clothes

Comment by Jared Israel — June 16, 2006 @ 5:50 am

17.

18.
 

19.  Francisco Gil-White admits his ferocious attack on Jewish Zionist leaders, regarding Britain's proposals to supposedly resettle European Jews,  was written in ignorance, but that's OK because that's what scientists do. Gil-White defends his accusation that the late US Zionist leader, Rabbi Stephen Wise, wanted the Holocaust and states that he was justified in not telling readers that Nathan Weinstock has changed his views because in fact he has not.

REPLY TO JARED ISRAEL, by Francisco Gil-White

I don’t remember seeing ad hominem attacks on Jared Israel’s website Emperor’s Clothes. What I have seen there is rather excellent documentation and analysis. So I find what Jared Israel has written here surprising. He compares me to Kim Il Sung in order apparently to suggest that my readers cannot honestly like me, though he paradoxically describes their behavior as “adoration.” It appears that Jared Israel is upset that anybody should approve of me. But these are not scientific issues, so I will focus on the substance of Jared Israel’s criticisms.

Jared Israel begins by attacking my “ignorance.” This one is a fair criticism (notwithstanding the less-than-urbane manner in which he makes it). It is true that when I wrote my piece on the failures of the mainstream Jewish leadership in the United States and Britain during the Shoah, I missed one very important fact: Malcolm MacDonald, the Colonial Secretary, was not trying to help any Jews when he suggested a settlement scheme for Jewish refugees in Northern Rhodesia (modern Zambia). He was, as Jared Israel correctly says here, attacking the Jews, deflecting the fact that he was forbidding Jewish refugees to settle in British Mandate ‘Palestine.’ It was, indeed, a trick. My mistake was a consequence of the fact that I was relying on the work of historian Frank Shapiro, who did not make a point of Malcolm MacDonald’s duplicity, and also a consequence that, at the time, I had not studied British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ and hence was ill-informed about Malcolm Macdonald in general. Due to my ignorance, at the time, I had represented Malcolm MacDonald as “well meaning.” When Jared Israel pointed the error on Arutz Sheva (though he did not call it an error, but imputed to me a desire to apologize for an antisemite), I corrected it immediately.

This sort of thing will happen again. And it has happened before. For example, I misidentified Edgar Bronfman Sr. as Edgar Bronfman Jr., in another piece, and even used Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s picture. A reader pointed out the error, and I corrected it. I have never made a claim to infallibility, or to omniscience. No scientist can. But I do my best to tell the truth. When I make a mistake, and somebody points it out, I correct it. I make it very easy for readers to spot any mistakes in my work, and my readers (including Jared Israel) point them out, so they are corrected, and over time the website becomes more and more accurate, though I try to be as accurate as I can in the first place. This is what scientists do. There is no requirement that scientists be perfect. On the contrary: science works because, as a community, we are looking for mistakes in our colleagues’ work, and then we point out the errors. One hopes this can be done politely.  

Now it is my turn to point out an error, concerning Jared Israel’s remarks about my piece on the Jewish leadership in the US and Britain during the Holocaust. [The text to which Gil-White refers was archived at the time of this debate. It can be read at http://emperor.vwh.net/fgw.htm  ]

According to Jared Israel, I said that “Jewish leaders were welcoming the Holocaust.” I did not. What I did was quote what Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise replied to Neville Chamberlain when Chamberlain (who was certainly an antisemite, there is no implied apology for Chamberlain here) suggested to Wise that Jewish refugees from Hitler might settle in Tanganyika. Stephen Wise’s reply was the following: “I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany…” Notice that Stephen Wise did not say, “I would rather have my fellow Jews settle in Palestine.” And I point out also that the quote is documented in a book written by an admirer of Stephen Wise: Urofsky, M. I. 1982. A voice that spoke for justice: The life and times of Stephen S. Wise. Albany: State University of New York Press. (p.304).

In my piece, I commented that “Stephen Wise got his wish.” My remark was therefore specific to Stephen Wise, not to Jewish leaders in general. Jared Israel has taken offense at this comment, but I didn’t invent what Stephen Wise said. If Jared Israel wants to give Stephen Wise’s words a different interpretation, he is welcome to defend it. However, I think this will be difficult, because Stephen Wise, after the Holocaust had begun and everybody knew it (in fact, Stephen Wise was the first American Jew to know this was happening), allied with the antisemites in the Roosevelt administration and moved heaven and earth to sabotage Peter Bergson’s (alias Hillel Kook’s) effort to rescue the desperate European Jews. The documentation on Stephen Wise’s activities makes it easy to defend the view that he had zero concern for the Jewish lives that were being lost to Hitler’s slaughter in Europe, and I have presented this documentation in my piece. Jared Israel is welcome to defend a different hypothesis, if he thinks this is possible.

One of the points I make in that piece is that in order to defend the Jewish people, those Jewish leaders who attack the Jewish people must be opposed. To defend treasonous Jewish leaders is to attack the Jewish people, and this is a moment when the Jewish people needs to defend itself from its current leaders, who are giving away the Jewish state to a movement spawned by Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, as I document in Part 4 of “Understanding the Palestinian Movement.”
Jared Israel also accuses me of “ugly lies.” This is in reference to my repeated criticisms of historian Nathan Weinstock. As if he had peered into my own mind, Jared Israel confidently asserts that my writings on Weinstock are “an example of what is unquestionably Gil-White’s intentional deception.” This is once again an ad hominem attack. It is also a remarkably strong charge; Jared Israel’s defense of it is, by contrast, weak.

By way of defending Nathan Weinstock, Jared Israel begins by objecting to the English translation of Weinstock’s book: “Zionism: False Messiah.” I doubt that this translation did not have Weinstock’s approval, but in any case the title certainly does agree with the content of the book, which is an attack on Zionism. One only has to read Alan Adler’s 1978 interview of Moshe Machover, which Weinstock places first by way of introduction to his book, to get the feel. Adler begins by stating that “Israel has in the past played a vital role in securing Western interests in the Arab world.” This is utterly false, and it was as obvious in 1978 as it is now. The claim that Israel advances imperialist US interests in the Middle East is part of the continuation of the Czarist Russian and German Nazi (Protocols of Zion) propaganda that made a lot of absurdly frightened gentiles think that the Jews were everywhere secretly in power, and which produced the Shoah. I have refuted such views in my book “Is the US an Ally of Israel.”

In that book, I show that the US was opposed to the creation of Israel, and voted in favor only because the Soviet Union was going to vote in favor. I also document that the US tried to destroy Israel in the war of 1948 by placing an arms embargo on the Israelis (while stating in public that it no longer recognized the Jewish state), a policy that was in tandem with the British policy of using their yet-unevacuated troops to assist the Arab offensive, and to send captured Nazi officers to lead and advise the genocidal Arab armies of 1948 (the British policy was documented on the internet for the first time by Jared Israel on Emperor’s Clothes). I also show in my book that US foreign policy continued along the same lines, allied with the Arabs against Israel, year after numbing year.

So Weinstock’s book opens with an outright lie that is the most dangerous kind of antisemitic propaganda. Adler’s interview with Machover continues by offering an interpretation of Israel as a colonialist state, and a defense of so-called “Arab nationalism.” Enough said.

As I show in my series on the Palestinian movement, Nathan Weinstock’s book is one attack after another against the Zionist movement, which he claims was a colonialist movement in alliance with the British that was oppressing the Arabs, and one defense after another of what he calls the “Palestinian anti-colonialist movement” which, according to him, was an expression of Arab “national consciousness.” Nathan Weinstock does this in utter defiance of the facts that he himself presents, and despite Nathan Weinstock’s own admission that the so-called “Palestinian anti-colonialist movement” flew under the flag of anti-Jewish racism.

Jared Israel asserts that the second half of Weinstock’s book (which he says the publishers omitted in the English translation) was not as bad as the first half because Weinstock defended “Israel’s right to exist.” Jared Israel asks whether I will again plead ignorance. I will. I didn’t know the second half had been omitted from the English translation. When I take a book out of the library the first thing that occurs to me is not that the book is missing its second half. But it hardly matters, here. If in the omitted second half of the book Weinstock defended Israel’s right to exist, Weinstock once again attacked Israel. To defend Israel’s right to exist is to raise the question in the reader’s mind of the legitimacy of Israel. If somebody were to defend France’s right to exist people would begin wondering whether France has a right to exist. The reason nobody wonders is that nobody defends France’s right to exist. What Nathan Weinstock should have done is demonstrate the illegitimacy of the so-called ‘Palestinian movement.’ It is the ‘Palestinian movement’ that has no right to exist, for the following reasons:

1) The so-called ‘Palestinians’ do not exist.
2) ‘Palestine’ does not exist.
3) The leaders of the ‘Palestinian’ movement have themselves explained that ‘Palestine’ does not exist.
4) The ‘Palestinian’ movement was spawned by an architect of Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, and its only goal is the extermination of the Jewish people.

All four points above are demonstrated in my series “Understanding the Palestinian Movement.”

Finally, Jared Israel says that Nathan Weinstock has done an about face, and he characterizes it as a very serious breach of scientific ethics that I don’t point this out. What I think is a serious breach of scientific ethics is Nathan Weinstock’s book, and whether or not he has made an about-face, his book (and many books like it), have done serious damage to the Jewish people, so they need to be refuted, whether or not the author has made an about face. Jared Israel is correct that I am aware of Nathan Weinstock’s about face, but I have made no reference to it because I do not have good reasons to think that it is sincere. In my view, anybody who takes the trouble to read Nathan Weinstock’s book will likewise be skeptical of this about face, because Nathan Weinstock’s own documentation in “Zionism: False Messiah” already roundly refuted Nathan Weinstock’s own interpretations in “Zionism: False Messiah.”

In his passionate defense of Nathan Weinstock, Jared Israel’s urges us to read Weinstock’s recent letter, where Weinstock disavows his earlier work. I think people indeed ought to read this letter. In it, Weinstock says:

“I naively believed — an error of youth — that this book [“Zionism: False Messiah”] could fuel a constructive discussion leading to Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, I came to realise that this had been unforgivable naivety on my part: the book served only to salve the conscience of avowed and unconscious anti-Semites.”

Those who read Weinstock’s book will be able to form their own opinion concerning the plausibility that Weinstock’s absurd and antisemitic interpretations could possibly be a consequence of his “naiveté.” An “error of youth”? How can “youth” explain the fact that Weinstock’s interpretations obviously contradicted his own data in such a way that he attacked the Jewish state and people. For that, an ideology is needed; “youth” will not suffice.

Francisco Gil-White

Comment by gilwhite — June 16, 2006 @ 1:01 pm

20. Alex Eisenberg argues that Gil-White's failure to quote Weinstock's rejection of his former views is OK because Weinstock didn't really change, and Gil-White is really just like Jared Israel so the latter must really be upset for personal reasons

It’s been a rather sad experience to see a great scholar like Jared Israel violently attacking another great scholar, Francisco Gil-White, whose work has so much in common, so many of the qualities of Jared Israel. Since I’ve been following and trying to keep up with the hard work of these two remarkable men for the last five years, I will address a couple of issues arising from the dispute above.

The works of the two scholars above are so rare, so completely independent from any of the current political trends, and they have been revealing so many facts and realities unknown by the public (mostly due to deceptive propaganda put together by the Western ruling elites and their collaborators) that it makes no sense for one to speak of the other’s ‘ignorance.’ After all, if most Jews of today knew and understood only half of Gil-White’s knowledge (and the same holds about Jared Israel), Jews in Israel and the Diaspora would probably not be so appallingly unprepared to fight this century’s increasingly fiery antisemitic tide.

It is true, as Jared Israel says, that Francisco Gil-White did not mention Nathan Weinstock’s late work Histoire de Chiens, in which Weinstock discusses the role played by ‘dhimmitude’ in the Arab total rejection of the State of Israel. However, it is NOT true that Nathan Weinstock did a complete about-face on the Middle East, as Jared Israel argues. Jared Israel refers us to an article by Weinstock which was published in a French magazine, carrying the same title as Weinstock’s book Histoire de Chiens (‘Stories of Dogs’), then translated into English and published by Emperor’s Clothes (link is provided by Jared Israel in his post above). But that article is only an abstract of Weinstock’s book. And those who read the entire book (as I did), only available in French, will realize that, despite Weinstock’s correction of his own old errors, he repeats in the new book some of the deceptive proceedings criticized by Francisco Gil-White in the old one.

According to Gil-White it is remarkable that an author who identifies the fact that the British colluded with the Arabs to destroy Zionism and kill Palestinian Jews (as Weinstock does in his old book) would conclude, in the same book, that Zionism was a colonial enterprise aiming at dispossessing Palestinian Arabs.

Well, in Histoire de Chiens Weinstock corrects that old mistake and attributes it to his old blind Trotskyism (Weinstock, 2004, p. 189), but in order for one to identify this as a “complete about-face” it is necessary that one not accept as a fait accompli, much less a morally correct condition, the establishment of an ‘Arab Palestinian state,’ the purpose of which is the destruction of the Jewish state. Nevertheless, this is precisely what Nathan Weinstock does in Histoire de Chiens, thus making the same kind of mistake that Francisco Gil-White correctly identifies in the earlier Zionism, False Messiah. If Weinstock describes dhimmitude, attributing the Arab rejection of any Jewish rights over their old land to it, and identifies Arafat – the PLO-Fatah leader of Palestinian Arabs – as an incurable terrorist (Weinstock 2004,ps. 173-179), how can Weinstock then defend the idea of a ‘Palestinian state’ which he knows would at best be ruled by the PLO-Fatah? Given that Weinstock is a highly regarded intellectual, how could he simply fail to connect these most basic dots?

The answer is in Weinstock’s understanding of the 1948 war. His main source for that crucial period in Israel’s history is Benny Morris’s Righteous Victims – an extensive book dedicated to accusing Zionist Jews of creating most of the problems that Palestinian Arabs have had ever since 1948. Therefore, even if one concedes that Weinstock has done an about-face of some sort (abandoning the cult of Trotskyism for example), the only consequence of such about-face is to tell people that Israel has a right to exist and is not a colonial power fully responsible for Palestinian Arab misfortune.

The fact that Jared Israel publicly abhors Morris’s work reveals an apparently insoluble contradiction in his attack against Gil-White. After all, how is it possible to defend that Weinstock really did “a complete about-face” if Weinstock’s main source about the most crucial period in Israel’s history is a historian that Jared Israel himself has proved to be dishonest?

Given the above, it seems to me that Jared Israel has not read Weinstock’s Histoire de Chiens, having relied only on the abstract of the book that Weinstock published in the French magazine that Jared Israel provides the link for.

Despite all my huge respect for Jared Israel’s unique work, the above shows that Gil-White is nothing like a liar or ignorant of his subject matter. Since the works of both Jared Israel and Francisco Gil-White have much more in common than they have differences, my conclusion is that Jared Israel’s disproportionate attack against Gil-White is motivated by personal issues unrelated to their (in fact our) subject matter.

Alex Eisenberg

Comment by Alex — June 17, 2006 @ 3:01 am

21.

22.  Jared Israel argues that Eisenberg is trying to divert attention from Gil-White's disastrous response; Israel quotes two passages from Histoire des Chiens in which Weinstock rejects his former ideology.

Note: In my response, below, I have posted lengthy quotations from Nathan Weinstock’s book, “Histoire de chiens” (”History of Dogs”), which is the subject of several of the comments, but which nobody has quoted.

In his apologia for Francisco Gil-White (comment #20), Alex Eisenberg tries to do two things:

1) He tries to identify me with Gil-White. This is absurd. It is true that for a couple of years I rewrote a large part of Gil-White’s work. (E.g., I wrote some of the well-known piece on Israel, posted on Arutz Sheva, e.g., the section on dhimmitude, and exhaustively rewrote the rest.) But Gil-White and I are now profoundly different. For example, I consider his claim, that the US is trying to destroy Israel, to be ludicrous. Yes, the US has an Islamism-encouraging policy which is quite dangerous to Israel. But this is a far cry from Gil-White’s insupportable assertion, that the US has had, for many years, the goal of destroying Israel. (If the US did, Israel would very possibly have been destroyed long ago.)

2) Eisenberg’s second goal is, by making a big attack on Nathan Weinstock’s book, “Histoire de chiens” (”Story of Dogs”) to divert attention from Gil-White’s disastrous response to my charges (see Gil-White’s comment #19). Gil-White openly confirms my accusation that he often writes in ignorance and spreads ugly lies; moreover, he provides evidence of worse.

I do not make these charges from personal pique, as Eisenberg absurdly claims, but because Gil-White and his Moonie-like followers (see for example Pearlstein, comment #5) are a danger to the defense of Israel, a danger for whose existence I, alas, bear some responsibility, since for some time I made the error of promoting Gil-White, who was under attack at University of Pennsylvania.

Even if Alex Eisenberg were right about Weinstock’s current book - I have translated some of the book, below, so you can see that Eisenberg is not right - it would not, as Eisenberg claims, refute my charge that Gil-White often writes from ignorance. Gil-White admits that until two months ago: “I had not studied British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ and hence was ill-informed about Malcolm Macdonald in general.” (Comment #19)

Let that sink in. Gil-White’s followers refer to him as one of a select few “specialists in Middle East history,” who is better than “Pipes or Dershovitz” (Alex, comment #9). And this great scholar confesses to having written about all aspects of Middle East history when he “had not studied British Mandate ‘Palestine,’” – meaning, he had not studied Arab-Jewish relations from 1919 to 1948.

Gil-White confesses to being “ill-informed about Malcolm Macdonald in general,” precisely when he wrote an article attacking Jewish leaders (e.g., Baron Rothschild) for rejecting Secretary of State for the Colonies MacDonald’s phony land offers!

This is not some “great scholar” (Alex Eisenberg, comment #20). This is, in the most generous interpretation, a dangerously loose cannon.

More: In comment #19, Gil-White explicitly defends the practice of writing without knowledge, calling it “science” and then, compounding the felony, he equates the errors that result from his lack of knowledge to the corrective process involved in scientific experiment. With that, Gil-White could be dismissed as another post-modern fruitcake, except that unfortunately he is dangerous. A serious problem.

I have posted excerpts from his piece dealing with British land resettlement offers at These excerpts are most revealing. As you read them, mentally edit out the militantly pro-Jewish rhetorical flourishes, and what is left? What is left is the charge, made in common by Gil-White, by fascist Arabs, and by the antisemitic right and left, that Zionists rejected British offers to resettle Jews even though this would have saved Jewish lives, and did so either because they preferred to see the Jews dead (Gil-White makes this claim regarding Rabbi Wise) or they didn’t care (that’s essentially Gil-White’s attack on Baron Rothschild.) The only thing Gil-White doesn’t say is that the Zionists supposedly wanted Jews to die in order to create sympathy for Israel. But that anti-Israel accusation, which has been repeated so many times, would occur to many Gentiles – especially since Gil-White implies that Rothschild had some devious, hidden purpose. (Precisely the way in which antisemites always attack Rothschild…)

When I attacked Gil-White on Arutz Sheva for repeating these antisemitic slanders, he did not correct the error. He only inserted a little box criticizing Malcolm MacDonald, and kept everything else the same. The excerpts I have posted on TENC were copied minutes ago from his website.

So to give Gil-White’s writing the kindest spin, his is an ignorance that sometimes spontaneously supports the most antisemitic arguments.

Alex Eisenberg writes (comment #20) that in the book “Story of Dogs,” Weinstock supposedly calls for the creation of a fascist Palestinian state – this is blatantly false – and that therefore Gil-White cannot be called a liar.

But I didn’t say Gil-White lied about the book; I said he lied by intentionally withholding the fact that Weinstock had reversed his views, a fact known to Gil-White because he was helping with Emperor’s Clothes in 2003 when we learned of the change. Gil-White openly admits that he decided not to tell people about Weinstock’s about-face because, he claims, he knew Weinstock could not be sincere, given what he wrote 37 years ago (See Gil-White’s comment #19). So Gil-White rejected Weinstock’s new book a priori.

The imperative to acknowledge an opposing scholar’s current views – especially if he says he has changed his mind – is not obviated by a claim that said scholar is still wrong (Eisenberg’s claim) or that he is insincere (Gil-White’s claim). One may make such accusations, of course, but first one must quote the content of the opponent’s views, so that people know what he is saying now.

This Gil-White did not do. He attacked Weinstock in the present tense about what he wrote 37 years ago, without even mentioning that Weinstock says he now rejects those views and has published a major book renouncing his former views and prohibited the publication of “Zionism: False Messiah.” (I have translated the section of Weinstock’s current book, where he discusses “Zionism: False Messiah,” in Excerpt 2, below). By not telling people about Weinstock’s avowed change, Gil-White was lying in a way that fundamentally violates academic standards. An academic proven to have done such a thing could be in the gravest trouble, for example, losing tenure. And correctly so.

As for Gil-White’s argument that because, 37 years ago, Weinstock presented correct facts but wrong conclusions, and that therefore Gil-White knows Weinstock cannot have sincerely changed his mind – this argument is simply bizarre. The only way to KNOW what is in a book is to read it. Yet Gil-White refused to do so, he says, because he knows, a priori, that Weinstock is insincere.

Alex Eisenberg, who says he has read the book, claims Weinstock supposedly does not make a complete about face because he still supports a Palestinian fascist state. Here’s Eisenberg:

“[…]in order for one to identify this [i.e., Weinstock’s stance in his current book - ji] as a “complete about-face” it is necessary that one [he means Weinstock –ji] not accept as a fait accompli, much less a morally correct condition, the establishment of an ‘Arab Palestinian state,’ the purpose of which is the destruction of the Jewish state. Nevertheless, this is precisely what Nathan Weinstock does in Histoire de Chiens, thus making the same kind of mistake that Francisco Gil-White correctly identifies in the earlier Zionism, False Messiah.” (Comment #20)

But now look – here is what Alex Eisenberg wrote me and Gil-White on December 21, 2005:

“Dear Jared and Francisco,

“After our last exchange about Morris and Weinstock (back in September), I didn’t have much time to work on the Weinstock until this week, when I finally did it. I took my whole day to scan “History of Dogs” from a copy borrowed from a friend. Jared, I apologize for taking so long to provide the Weinstock text you were asking for.

Weinstock does NOT call for a PLO state. He just implicitly speaks of a future “Palestinian state” when he wrote ‘it is another challenge that they should work on now: the challenge of living for their country.’ (my translation from the highlighted portion below) […] “

I have posted Alex Eisenberg’s email in full at http://emperor.vwh.net/gilwhite.htm#2 

Here is the translation of the text from “Story of Dogs,” which Eisenberg posts in French in his email:

Excerpt 1 from Nathan Weinstock’s current book, “Story of Dogs”

“[…] Must the Palestinians really confirm one more time the word of diplomat Abba Eban who regretted that they ‘have never missed the opportunity to miss an opportunity’?

That necessitates an effort at rectification. It is time for the Palestinians to tear themselves away from the morbid self indulgence which they maintain with respect to their condition as victims. To break with their erotically charged worship of death. To turn to the future. To move away from policies which offer as their horizon only the prospect of making new massacres. They have amply proved that they can die for their cause. It is a different challenge which they are called upon to face up to at present: that of living for their country. And that which says life, says compromise, accommodations, concessions, realism. Because, just like policy, life is the art of the possible.”

As you can see, Weinstock does not call for a PLO state. It’s just not what he’s talking about. He does use the French word, “pays,” which may be translated country, home, region, nation, or state. I translated it ‘country’ but it could arguably be translated ‘home area.’ In any case, he certainly does not a call for a state run by the PLO, as Alex Eisenberg now claims (comment #20).

Below is my translation of the concluding page of Weinstock’s “Story of Dogs.” It is clear that Weinstock is addressing the extreme Left, trying to undo the damage he has done. Here’s Weinstock:

Excerpt 2 from Nathan Weinstock’s current book, “Story of Dogs”

[p. 189] Subhead: A Slow Process of Clarification [literally ‘a slow decantation,’ as with the decantation of wine - ji]

This study will probably disconcert some people who will remember that I have published thirty five years ago a hefty tome which has been serving as a reserve of ammunition to the anti-Zionist Left1. [1. Le Sionisme contre Israël , Paris, François Maspero, 1969] It was the day after May 68 [i.e., the big French student rebellion -ji] At the time I was subjugated by Trotskyism and applied myself consequently, as the perfect dogmatist, not to analyze facts, but to mentally channel them according to my preconceived and reductive schemas. Sectarianism which has driven me to simplistic and abusive conclusions and [p.190] even to some propositions which I cannot reread without shame. Worse than these genuflections before Leftist schematism was my total unawareness of the misuse of this simplistic work by the antisemitic upsurge that has arisen within the sphere of the extreme Left . Artificially disguised behind the screen of anti-Zionism (and similar in this to its [the Troskyist Left’s - ji] Stalinist opponents during the time of the Prague trial and of the “conspiracy of the white jackets” [Soviet trial of Jewish doctors in ’53 - ji), it [the extreme left] used me as a “useful idiot” whose Judaism washed it in advance of every suspicion.

My current vision is the result of a slow process of clarification [decantation]. It owes a lot to dialogues and exchanges born within the framework of my family; with my wife Micheline, who has helped me understand the universe of the Sephardic Jews who have been subject to dhimmitude in the flesh; with my daughter Tamara, who has transmitted to me her experience as an Israeli; with my son Lev, who has communicated to me his experience of life within the Muslim world and its Islamic sphere.

I dedicate this reflection to the memory of all victims – Israelis and Palestinians – of the violence which tears to pieces the Holy Land/Eretz Israël/Israel-Palestine, hoping that an era of peace and quiet will come after the time of explosions. That peace and reconciliation reign at last over this country, drowned in tears. And that these happen according to the ancient formula of Jewish supplications, bimhérou beyaménou, promptly and during our lifetime.

[End of book]

Weinstock addresses himself to the extreme Left because he wants to make good a terrible mistake he made almost four decades ago. Thus his book does not deal, one way or another, with the issue of a Palestinian state. It addresses itself instead to the reality of life-on-the-ground, to the horrible nature of the Palestinian movement, worshipping death, and to the extreme Left’s stance, which neatly dispenses with Israel, justifying what is in fact antisemitic murder, behind a screen of dogmatic political formulas, babbling about Zionism – murder justified by ancient cant.

Without the support of the extreme Left, the Palestinian Arab fascists would lose their phony ‘Marxist-Leninist’ cover. If Gil-White were sincerely interested in helping Israel, why didn’t he embrace “Story of Dogs” - written by the man best positioned of anyone in the world to reach extreme Leftists - this text in which, without restraint, Weinstock renounces his past positions and, by doing this with generosity and honesty of feeling, gives Leftists an example of how to withdraw in dignity from their disastrous endorsement of genocide?

Why did Gil-White, whom his groupies say is the greatest of all possible friends of the Jews, hide from his readers what Weinstock has now written? Why do he and his groupies fight to smear Weinstock’s new book, lying, as Alex Eisenberg does, about the contents of “Story of Dogs”? Isn’t it interesting that, claiming to write from ignorance, Gil-White just happens to denounce Rothschild, favorite target of the Catholic Church and other antisemites, while supporting Malcolm Macdonald, thus taking the central antisemitic stance used to attack the creation of Israel? Isn’t it noteworthy that he recently spent four articles attacking Weinstock – the most important convert to the pro-Israel side from the extreme Left - without so much as mentioning that Weinstock has given us a book that is, in itself, the best argument against the stance of the extreme Left, coming, as it does, from the man who was its leading scholarly source?

If our enemies did not have Gil-White, they would invent him..

Jared Israel
Emperors Clothes

Comment by Jared Israel — June 17, 2006 @ 4:11 pm

23.

24.
 

25. Someone with the user name Bill Narvey suggests that Jared Israel's critique of Gil-White is overly harsh, perhaps personally motivated, and states that he finds Gil-White extreme in his views but factually informative

I am not familiar with the writing of Jared Israel.

I have read some of Prof. Gil-White’s work. I have disagreed with the conclusions Gil-White comes to when they are bound up in conspiracy theories and that there has been an ongoing anti-Semitic cabal in successive American Administrations with considerable influence in the Oval Offic which has as its objective the destruction of Israel or that that objective has been the goal of all Presidents.

In spite of not agreeing with how Prof. Gil-White intereprets the facts he states, I am always nonetheless better informed for having read his work than not.

Given that others have spoken well of Jared Israel’s academic and scholarly qualifications, I will be making a point of reading his articles as well. Whether I am in agreement with Jared Israel’s conclusions, I expect I will have benefited from the read just as I have with reading Prof. Gil-White’s work.

Reading between the lines however of Jared Israel’s comments regarding Prof. Gil-White, it is fairly clear they did not part company on good terms.

Jared Israel might be right that Prof. Gil-White’s scholarship abilities may be somewhat lacking or inferior to his. Even Prof. Gil-White appears to acknolwedge Jared Israel’s great intellect, insight and abilities as do many in this forum.

There is however much hostility and arrogance pouring forth from Jared Israel against Prof. Gil-White.

Jared Israel seems to have lost some perspective and proportionality for he puts his academic sniping against Prof. Gill-White ahead of the fact that both he and Prof. Gill-White are pro-Israel advocates.

Regardless of his obvious great intellect and abilities Jared Israel has convinced me by his diatribes against Prof. Gill-White that he is an arrogant bully when it comes to attacking those he disagrees with and furthermore he has demonstrated an abysmal lack of good manners.

Nonetheless, I intend to start reading what Jared Israel has to say, because I can only become better informed in the process. I will just have to be careful not to get on Jared Israel’s bad side.

Comment by Bill Narvey — June 18, 2006 @ 11:32 am

26.
 

27.
 

28.
 

29. A poster calling himself  'Witch-king of Angmar ' writes that he was surprised by Gil-White's condemnation of Weinstock since Emperor's Clothes had reported Weinstock's rejection of Zionism: False Messiah, and Gil-White was then associated with Emperor's Clothes; nevertheless Jared Israel's harshness is counterproductive

When it comes to Nathan Weinstock issue I must say I agree with Jared Israel. I have read Francisco Gil-White’s work and knowing from Mr.Israel’s site that Mr.Weinstock has admitted he had done an about face since the book “Zionism - the false messiah” was first published, I was surprised that Mr.Gil-White was quoting from that book without mentioning the change of heart from Weinstock’s side. In my humble opinion it was a dishonest thing to do. Mr. Gil-White is perfectly free not to believe the sincerity of Mr.Weinstock’s about face and there is absolutely nothing wrong in that, but he should let the readers know that Nathan Weinstock has in fact changed his opinion on the Middle East crisis and then give his reasons as to why he(Gil-White) is sceptical.

That said, I believe that some of the language Mr.Israel uses in inappropriate and does him no favours at all. Mr.Israel, what is the point in calling some of the readers who commented favourably Mr.Gil-White’s text “moonie-like followers” and “groupies”? Has it not occured to you that their favourable comment came precisely because they were not aware of the facts about Nathan Weinstock you revealed?

Comment by Witch-king of Angmar — June 19, 2006 @ 6:55 am

30. Jared Israel replies, explaining why he compares those exalting Gil-White with those exalting Kim Il Sung
 

From Jared Israel to Witch-king of Angmar:

You write that you agree with me that Francisco Gil-White was dishonest in suppressing the news that Nathan Weinstock had completely changed his views. On the other hand, you criticize me for calling some supporters of Gil-White “Moonie-like”:

“Has it not occured to you that their favourable comment came precisely because they were not aware of the facts about Nathan Weinstock you revealed?” (Comment 29)

It is probable that most of Gil-White’s readers did not know the facts about Weinstock and therefore were taken in by what you correctly describe as Gil-White’s dishonesty. But didn’t you notice that not all who praised Gil-White were honest? For example, Alex (that’s Alex Eisenberg) wrote:

My view, as the result of having read a lot of his [i.e., Gil-White’s] work as well as works by authors who defend theses opposite to his: HE IS HONEST. What does that mean in this case? It means that he doesn’t create proses [sic!] that purposely contradict the logical connection between facts, as Nathan Weinstock - an anti-Zionist author he has cited from a lot lately - did. (Alex, comment 15)

Alex Eisenberg, author of the above, translated a few articles for Emperor’s Clothes and even corresponded with me and Gil-White about Weinstock, so of course he knew that Nathan Weinstock had publicly about-faced on the PLO as early as 2003. Alex Eisenberg’s December 21 email to me and Gil-White included, as an attachment, his scan of the last two chapters of Weinstock’s latest book, “Story of Dogs,” including material from p.184 and pages 189-190. I have posted this material in comment 22, in boxes labeled Excerpt 1 and Excerpt 2. This material shows that Weinstock explicitly rejected the politics of the Palestinian Arab movement with its “erotically charged worship of death.” And Alex knew, from this material, that Weinstock had repudiated his youthful book, “Zionism False Messiah,” with its “propositions which I cannot reread without shame,” saying that the neo-Left had used him as “a ‘useful idiot’ whose Judaism washed it in advance of every suspicion [of antisemitism].”

Since Alex had sent this research to Gil-White 7 months ago, Alex knew that Gil-White had lied by writing four articles slandering Weinstock as currently supporting the PLO. Fully aware that Gil-White slandered Weinstock, Alex praised Gil-White, writing - and this is really something - that the big difference between Gil-White and Weinstock is that “HE [GIL-WHITE] IS HONEST.” And then, later, when I raised my criticism of Gil-White’s suppression of the truth about Weinstock, Alex passively lied by failing to tell us that 7 months ago he emailed Gil-White the scan of Weinstock’s last two chapters, meaning that Gil-White knew what was in Weinstock’s book. And Alex actively lied by claiming that Weinstock had called for a PLO state.

The behavior of Alex Eisenberg is not the behavior of someone who was misled by Gil-White, but of someone who is working with Gil-White to mislead others.

When I referred to some of Gil-White’s supporters as “Moonie-like,” I had in mind comments 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9. Why did I use that term? For the same reason, I believe, that Peretz Rickett wrote:

“Alex, is there a building that you meet in with your fellow Gil-White co-religionists?” (Comment 10)

I referred to them as “Moonie-like” first of all because the language they used is the language of hyper-enthusiasm for The Leader, typical of sects. Hence we are subjected to adjectival inflation, with “Dr. Gil-White - an immensely great friend of the Jewish people” (comment 5) and “Dr. Gil-White’s vastly important work” (comment 6); with the chanting of slogans of praise, such as “WELL DONE, Ted, Dr.Gil-White and Israpundit!! “ (Comment 5) and “Long live Israel and Jewry!!! “ (comment 7); and with the statement – a warning to potential dissenters – that the Leader is infallible, from Alex Eisenberg, who, having approved comments 4, 5, 6 and 7 by stating that “All you say above is correct,“ writes, in comment 9, that Gil-White is unique because his “research on Israel has NEVER been consistently refuted by any other scholar or specialist“ and that “he could only be possibly refuted by a fellow scientist.“ Why write this, if not to warn us ordinary mortals not to dare to challenge Gil-White?

In all the discussion groups I read, and I read many, I never see anyone anywhere make these kinds of sect-like comments about a pro-Israel writer. Never. And these frankly chilling comments were made in regard to Gil-White, who has admitted, on this very page, that as of 4 April 2006, when I attacked him on Arutz Sheva:

“I had not studied British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ and hence was ill-informed about Malcolm Macdonald in general. “ – Francisco Gil-White referring, in comment 19, to the period before 4 April 2006.

I also compared comments 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 to the North Korean media. Why? Because in both cases the purpose is to create an atmosphere of intimidation in which people naturally hesitate to entertain critical thoughts. Having observed the performance of sect-like political groups for many years, it was my educated guess that comments 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9 represented an organized effort to create a wave of intimidation surrounding Gil-White. Having observed this, I therefore intervened.

Next I will post a response to Bill Narvey, in which I will show how Francisco Gil-White falsified documentation in order to smear Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leader of the Zionist movement in the US in the 1930s and early-mid 1940s, accusing him of wanting the Holocaust, which is exactly what is said by the worst antisemites about pre-World War II Zionist leaders.

And then, examining Gil-White’s patronizing and antisemitic dismissal of Dr. Raphael Medoff, chairman of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, I will offer my answer to the question: ‘Why does Gil-White falsify data to smear well-known Jews?’

Jared Israel
Emperor’s Clothes

Comment by Jared Israel — June 19, 2006 @ 1:51 pm

31. Jared Israel makes the case that Francisco Gil-White fabricated a 'quote' from Rabbi Stephen Wise, so that he could make the claim that when the Holocaust occurred,  "Stephen Wise got his wish."

How Francisco Gil-White Falsified Documentation to Slander Rabbi Stephen Wise as Wanting the Holocaust

To Bill Narvey,

Bill, responding to my accusations against Francisco Gil-White, you wrote:

In spite of not agreeing with how Prof. Gil-White interprets the facts he states, I am always nonetheless better informed for having read his work than not. […]

Jared Israel seems to have lost some perspective and proportionality for he puts his academic sniping against Prof. Gil-White ahead of the fact that both he and Prof. Gil-White are pro-Israel advocates. (Comment 25)

I understand that when bitter conflicts occur, it is natural to suspect personal motives. However, I am not engaged in academic sniping, nor is this a personal conflict. In your comment, you suggest that you a) trust Gil-White’s facts and b) you consider him to be motivated by a desire to defend Israel.

Reading Gil-White’s recent work, I have found that a) he deceives his readers, going so far as to falsify documentation in order b) to slander prominent Jews. This is not something he has done just once, with Nathan Weinstock. It is something he has done as a pattern.

I will for the moment reserve my opinion as to what is behind Francisco Gil-White’s pattern of deception. For now, let me present more evidence that he does do it. (I have already presented evidence that he did this with Nathan Weinstock. See my comments #16, #22 and #30.)

I will prove that Gil-White lied in at least three ways when he attacked Rabbi Stephen Wise.

In the article in question, entitled “How the mainstream Jewish leadership failed the Jewish people in World War II,” and archived here solely for educational purposes (i.e., so that you may study this text exactly as it is now, whatever changes may be made on Gil-White’s website) – in it, Gil-White argues that Rabbi Stephen Wise wanted the Holocaust. This charge is important not only because it smears a deceased leader of world Zionism, but because it thereby lends the support of a supposedly pro-Israel writer (Gil-White) to the accusation, made by antisemites, e.g., PLO leaders, that Zionists wanted the Holocaust. (The accusation, which we have all heard, is that Zionists wanted a Holocaust so there would be world sympathy for the creation of a Jewish State.)

Gil-White starts his article in the most sensational way, with the following block of text, indented, in italics, right at the beginning:

“I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany…” [1]

Said on the eve of the Nazi genocide by “Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise, the undisputed leader of organized American Jewry” [19], and “probably the most influential and well-respected American Jew of his generation” [24a], in reply to British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s suggestion that Jewish refugees from Hitler might settle in Tanganyika.

Stephen Wise got his wish.

Am I being fair? Did Gil-White really mean to say Wise wanted the Holocaust? On the Israpundit discussion Website, Gil-White wrote:

“According to Jared Israel, I said that ‘Jewish leaders were welcoming the Holocaust.’ I did not. What I did was quote what Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise replied to Neville Chamberlain when Chamberlain (who was certainly an antisemite, there is no implied apology for Chamberlain here) suggested to Wise that Jewish refugees from Hitler might settle in Tanganyika. Stephen Wise’s reply was the following: ‘I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany…’ Notice that Stephen Wise did not say, ‘I would rather have my fellow Jews settle in Palestine.’ And I point out also that the quote is documented in a book written by an admirer of Stephen Wise: Urofsky, M. I. 1982. A voice that spoke for justice: The life and times of Stephen S. Wise. Albany: State University of New York Press. (p.304).

In my piece, I commented that ‘Stephen Wise got his wish.’ My remark was therefore specific to Stephen Wise, not to Jewish leaders in general. Jared Israel has taken offense at this comment, but I didn’t invent what Stephen Wise said. If Jared Israel wants to give Stephen Wise’s words a different interpretation, he is welcome to defend it.” (Comment 19)

Three quick points. First, when Francisco Gil-White slanders Rabbi Wise, head of the American Jewish Congress and the leading Zionist in the USA for many years, he is not slandering only Rabbi Wise. Indeed, Gil-White’s article is entitled “How the mainstream Jewish leadership failed the Jewish people in World War II,” and by stating in his opening words that when the Holocaust occurred, the leading American Zionist “got his wish,” Gil-White is clearly suggesting that Wise was not alone.

Second, please note that in his statement, quoted above, Francisco Gil-White refers to Rabbi Wise’s “remark.” Keep that term “remark” in mind, because we shall refer back to it when we get to Lie #3.

And third, in his article, as it was originally posted, and as it is still posted today (21 June), Francisco Gil-White said nothing about Chamberlain being an antisemite. That description appears only in Gil-White’s comment on Israpundit, as quoted above. And notice that, even in the Israpundit comment, where Gil-White states that Chamberlain was an antisemite, Gil-White still insists that Rabbi Wise wanted the Holocaust.

Francisco Gil-White’s slander of Rabbi Stephen Wise includes at least three forms of deception:

1) A lie by false implication of expert knowledge;

2) A lie by diverting readers through sensationalism; and

3) Lies by falsification of documentation.

The lies in group #3 may be the most blatant, but these are all lies, and their existence necessitates an answer to the question: why did Gil-White lie with such energy in order to slander Rabbi Wise?

Lie #1: Lie by false implication of expert knowledge, namely, that of course Gil-White wouldn’t make such an accusation unless he knew what he was talking about.

To claim that Rabbi Wise, a world Zionist leader, wanted the Holocaust is to make the most extreme accusation. Neo-Nazis and anti-Israel Arab leaders accuse pre-war Zionist leaders of wanting the Holocaust in order to justify the creation of Israel. These people are motivated not by knowledge but by a desire to undermine support for Israel. But other than them, nobody I know of except Gil-White has charged that a Zionist leader such as Rabbi Wise wanted the Shoah.

And unlike the Arab leaders, Francisco Gil-White presents himself as a supporter of Israel and an historian. Indeed, on his website he flaunts his supposed status, emphasizing how far removed he and his colleagues are from ordinary people:

“Laypeople, it now dawns on me, find it quite difficult to grasp what historians do, and have a quite mistaken picture of it. I will do my best here briefly to explain how proper historiography — the very thing this website aims to produce — ought to work.” (Source: Francisco Gil-White, “About the HIR method,” 17 Dec 2005)

And Francisco Gil-White does not present himself as just any historian. On his website he has posted a book, or the first chapters of a book, which will, we are told, encompass several thousand years of history and span the globe. It has the modest title, “The Crux of World history.”

Gil-White’s ultra-elevated status has been asserted on Israpundit, for example by his close associate, Alex Eisenberg, and by others, apparently swept up in Gil-White fever.

Alex Eisenberg writes:

“…the strength of his work, as opposed to those [sic] of Pipes or Dershovitz, is precisely in its scientific approach.” (Comment 9)

And:

“In fact, his work is not ‘only’ a defense of the Jewish people as such. It is part of a broad research which encompasses the entire history of the [sic] Western civilization based on the most recent advancements in the field of evolutionary anthropology.” (Comment 9) [My emphasis – J.I.]

This hyperbole is apparently infectious. Texts are generally presented in a matter-of-fact fashion on Israpundit. But in his introduction to part 4 of Gil-White’s four-part series on the Palestinians, throughout which series Gil-White misportrays Holocaust scholar Nathan Weinstock as rejoicing in the deaths of Jews, Israpundit editor Ted Belman describes Gil-White’s writing as “revolutionary,” calling him “a fierce defender of the Jewish people” and telling readers, “Take the time to read all parts and for that matter also read his other articles…”

With all this hype, one would naturally assume that Gil-White’s comments about Rabbi Wise were based on considerable knowledge of British policy, which of course is what Rabbi Wise was responding to.

One would be wrong.

On 16 June 2006, Gil-White stated that when he wrote this article, in January 2006, and indeed, as late as April 2006, when I attacked him on the Arutz Sheva website:

“…at the time, I had not studied British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ and hence was ill-informed about [British Colonial Secretary] Malcolm Macdonald in general.” (Gil-White in comment 19)

He didn’t know about Palestine Mandate history and Malcolm MacDonald when he wrote an article half of which was about British government conflicts with Jewish leaders over offers to resettle Jews in Africa, conflicts directly related to Palestine Mandate history and Malcolm MacDonald.

By failing to tell his readers that when he accused Rabbi Wise of being an advocate of the Nazi’s Final Solution, he did not know about the issues, Gil-White was of course deceiving his readers. This is worsened by the fact that, at the same time, his website (i.e., he himself) and his followers and others were praising him as the most knowledgeable, indeed, scientific and revolutionary of historians, one who was writing a book called “The Crux of History.”

Lie #2: Lie by using sensationalism to divert from having presented zero evidence.

As noted, Gil-White presents his claim that Rabbi Wise wanted the Holocaust in the most dramatic way: as a block of text, indented, in italics, at the start of the article. He has a set-up, then some white space, and then the portentous statement: “Rabbi Wise got his wish.” And on the side of the page, there is a picture of a grim-faced man, identified as Rabbi Wise.

The effect of this presentation is so chilling that one may be excused for not noticing the paucity of evidence. For example, nowhere in the article does Gil-White tell us when Rabbi Wise allegedly made this statement. Was it immediately after the Evian Conference? During that 1938 affair, convened to discuss the problem of where to send Jewish refugees from Hitler, the British had made clear that they did not want any Jews sent to Britain. If, after the British performance at Evian, British Prime Minister Chamberlain, notorious as the appeaser of Hitler, had made some flippant and perhaps, in context, insulting suggestion to Rabbi Wise about settling Jews in Tanganyika, one might even forgive Rabbi Wise for punching Chamberlain in the face, let alone giving him an “over-my-dead-body” response. Similarly, if the alleged confrontation between the two men had occurred shortly after the announcement of the White Paper, eliminating Palestine as an escape destination, one could imagine a similar response to such a Chamberlain remark.

Moreover, there is something else Gil-White’s sensationalism causes one not to notice: Gil-White never quotes Chamberlain. Exactly what did Chamberlain allegedly say? What were his exact words? Does Gil-White know? If he does, why doesn’t he quote him? And if he does not, how can he gauge Rabbi Wise’s alleged response?

As demonstrated below by my detective hunt starting from Gil-White’s cited source, apparently there was no direct confrontation between Wise and Chamberlain about this issue. But I am getting ahead of myself. The point here is that, by presenting the alleged confrontation, and Rabbi Wise’s alleged statement, in such a sensationalist manner, Gil-White diverts attention from the fact that he hasn’t fulfilled the most minimal requirement of “proper historiography” - mentioning the date when something has allegedly occurred, and telling us what both sides allegedly said!

So here we have a second kind of lie – the disguising of a lack of basic information, by means of sensationalism worthy of the lowest, gutter-rag journalism.

Lie #3: Lies by direct falsification of documentation.

One is so conditioned to accept uncritically the printed word, that it was only after looking at the alleged quote from Rabbi Wise a dozen times that I noticed that it ends in three dots – an ellipse! Some of the text has been removed.

Using a truncated quotation may be perfectly honorable, or it may constitute the worst kind of deceit.

It constitutes falsification if, by quoting partially, one hides any information that might to any extent possibly be construed as contradicting anything one is trying to prove. This is true in direct proportion to the extremity of one’s argument. And in this case, of course, Francisco Gil-White’s argument is of the most extreme.

In order to determine whether Gil-White has falsified by deletion of text, we have to look at his source. I went to footnote [1] and found that Gil-White does not simply list his source, he emphasizes its credibility, writing:

This quote is reported, I should note, by an admirer of Stephen Wise. It will be found here:

Urofsky, M. I. 1982. A voice that spoke for justice: The life and times of Stephen S. Wise. Albany: State University of New York Press. (p.304)

I searched for the Urofsky book in the online library database, the ‘Minuteman Catalogue,’ which covers most school and public libraries in Eastern Massachusetts. It gave 20 listings for Urofsky, a nonfiction writer specializing in Jewish and legal issues, but there was nothing about Rabbi Wise. One fellow who works on Emperor’s Clothes suggested that from what he’d observed about Francisco Gil-White, he had probably found the quote in an online fishing expedition. I searched online but couldn’t find the Urofsky book – and then I remembered. I had introduced Gil-White to Questia, an online archive that allows one to search through hundreds of thousands of books and documents looking for a phrase or phrases. For example, if one wanted to find something that could be used to make Rabbi Wise appear to be calling for the Holocaust, one could enter “Rabbi Wise” and “death” or “dead,” etc. You get the idea.

I went to Questia and sure enough, they had the Urofsky book. On p. 304, I found the quote, including the part that Gil-White had deleted. Here it is with the deleted part in bold:

“When Chamberlain suggested that Jews go to the former German colony of Tanganyika, Wise bitterly rejected the plan. ‘I would rather have my fellow-Jews die in Germany than live in lands which bear the imprint of yesterday’s occupation by Germany and which may tomorrow be yielded back.’”

Restoring the part that Gil-White had deleted, the quote makes sense. Wise was apparently outraged because Chamberlain was suggesting that Jews should go to a colony that Chamberlain, the notorious appeaser, might very well turn over to Germany as soon as the Jews arrived. In any case, Rabbi Wise obviously was not calling for the deaths of Jews. Rather, he was making an “over-my-dead-body” statement. If, as Gil-White suggested in his 16 June comment (#19), Rabbi Wise had instead responded, “‘I would rather have my fellow Jews settle in Palestine,’” even though Chamberlain’s government had cut immigration to Palestine to a trickle and refused to let refugee Jews into Britain, Wise would have been kissing Chamberlain’s fanny. You know, being an Uncle Tom, a step-and-fetch-it kind of Jew.

Gil-White had indeed falsified the quotation, the better to falsely portray Rabbi Wise’s tough defense of Jews as being a violent attack on Jews. He had doctored the evidence in order to slander a key Jewish leader.

But it gets worse.

In general, and especially when considering the validity of an extreme accusation, the rule of thumb is to dig down as close to a primary source as possible. In footnote 38, Urofsky, a popular biographer, gives his source for the Wise quotation, so of course, Gil-White had this information.

[Footnote] 38. Feingold, Politics of Rescue, pp. 124-25

I searched Questia for Feingold’s book, and in a short time was looking at page 124.

Examining the Rabbi Wise quote in Feingold’s book, I found that Urofsky had slightly miscopied Feingold’s text; a few words were different. None of it altered the meaning, but one change did indeed matter. As is not shown in Urofsky’s book, there is an ellipse. In other words, Feingold had deleted something else when he copied the quotation from wherever.

Here is Feingold’s quote, with the second half, the part cut by Gil-White, highlighted in bold:

“I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany than live somehow, anyhow, in the lands which bear the imprint of yesterday’s occupation by Germany, in lands which may tomorrow be yielded back . . . to Germany.118″

So far Gil-White’s “proper historiography” has him making the most extreme accusation even though, he now states, he knew nothing about the subject matter; doctoring Rabbi Wise’s alleged statement to hide the reasons for his anger; and using Urofsky when in fact Urofsky was just passing along a quote miscopied from somebody else who, it turns out, had also deleted material from the original.

And it gets worse.

Feingold’s source for the quotation is indicated in footnote 118:

[Footnote] 118. Wise, Stephen S. As I See It. New York: Jewish Opinion Publishing Corp., 1944.

So, without much trouble, we get to the original source - Rabbi Wise.

This book is a 1944 compilation of over a decade of Rabbi Wise’s articles from the Jewish magazine, Opinion. This indicates another Gil-White falsehood: the Wise quote, thrice altered and thrice removed from the original source, was not, as Gil-White wrote in his comment #19, a “remark.” It was not, as he wrote in his article, something Rabbi Wise “said on the eve of the Nazi genocide.” (My emphasis) Based on a trail of evidence easily followed from the Urofsky book, it was not said at all. It was part of a magazine article, included in a book.

Stephen Wise’s 1938 article, entitled “America Has Spoken,” is worth reading (though I do not claim it is the “Crux of History”), so I have posted it on Emperor’s Clothes. I hope that reading his words will wipe out the effect on Jews of the hideous accusation, now circulating the Internet, that, according to Gil-White, supposedly “a fierce defender of the Jewish people,” Zionist leader Wise wanted the Holocaust. You can read Rabbi Wise’s article in full on Emperor’s Clothes. Or you can go to Questia and get a free week’s subscription, and access the whole book.

Below I have posted two paragraph’s from Rabbi Wise’s article. But first, let me once again post Gil-White’s doctored version of the Rabbi Wise quotation, falsely presented as something he said and then give you the real quotation.

First the doctored version, courtesy of Gil-White:

“I would rather have my fellow-Jews die in Germany…” [9 words]

Now Rabbi Wise, undoctored:

“I would rather have my fellow-Jews die in Germany than live somehow, anyhow, in lands which bear the imprint of yesterday’s occupation by Germany, in lands which may tomorrow be yielded back by England and France to Germany, as all other conceivable concessions are being made to the Nazi Reich.” [50 words]

I think you will agree that these read like the words of a man committed to the defense and dignity of his people, the modern equivalent of the Jews who died rather than submit to Roman slavery at Masada. And this is especially true when you read the words in context. To provide that context let us first look at another paragraph from the same article. This is quoted from p. 109 of Rabbi Wise’s book:

“Not being a race of beggars, though we are wanderers, we must make clear to the world that we are resolved that we are not to become, nor to be dealt with as a refugee people, even though the German-speaking peoples are forcing our brother-Jews into exile. The refuges for Jews are the lands in which they have lived for centuries and millennia. We raise our voice today against every proposal and program which deals with Jewish migrants or exiles as if they were to be further penalized by being settled in uninhabited lands, lands of doubtful title, lands of uncertain capacity for colonization and resettlement.” [Emphasis as in original. – J.I.]

And then this section, from page 110, including the text Francisco Gil-White falsified in order to slander Rabbi Wise. I have indicated the part omitted by Gil-White by putting it in bold:

“We lift up our voice in most solemn protest against any and every thought of settling Jews in the German colonies of yesterday. Having lived under the blight and burden of the Swastika, no Jew must ever again be compelled to touch the soil over which the German flag has been lifted up. Moreover, we Jews do not believe in reprisal or in vindictiveness. We do not wish even the German people to believe that we desire to possess ourselves of lands of which they have by war been dispossessed. Moreover, the destruction of any Jewish-occupied, one-time German colony would become the supreme objective of Germany. We would have Jews live anywhere outside of the Nazi Reich, live under almost any conditions, but we will never give approval or sanction to any plan which dooms Jews to live again in a land defiled up to the days of peace by that government which has sought to destroy them. I would rather have my fellow-Jews die in Germany than live somehow, anyhow, in lands which bear the imprint of yesterday’s occupation by Germany, in lands which may tomorrow be yielded back by England and France to Germany, as all other conceivable concessions are being made to the Nazi Reich.”

I will continue my discussion of Francisco Gil-White’s falsifications, aimed at slandering prominent Jews, in my next comment. Yes, there are more. As I said, it is a pattern.

Jared Israel.
Emperor’s Clothes

Comment by Jared Israel — June 21, 2006 @ 7:32 am

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36.Francisco Gil-White replies, but does not discuss the charge that he slandered Rabbi Wise
 

REPLY TO JARED ISRAEL (CONCERNING NATHAN WEINSTOCK), by Francisco Gil-White

There are a number of things that Jared Israel writes above that require a reply. Here, I will address Jared Israel’s defense of Nathan Weinstock. I will stray from the personal issues and stick to questions of logic and evidence.

According to Jared Israel, I am guilty of serious lapses in scientific ethics because I attacked Nathan Weinstock’s 1979 book “Zionism: False Messiah” and did not recognize that Nathan Weinstock has recently made what Jared Israel calls an ‘about face’ in his 2004 book “Histoire de Chiens.” I replied, above, that I did not have good reasons to think that Nathan Weinstock’s ‘about face’ was genuine.

In the following piece, entitled “On the Supposed ‘About Face’ of Some anti-Israeli Historians,” I demonstrate that Jared Israel is wrong about Nathan Weinstock:

http://www.hirhome.com/israel/about_face.htm

The demonstration is not difficult. What I show is that, according to Jared Israel’s own published standards, Nathan Weinstock is “worse than Arafat.”

Why do I say this? Because Jared Israel wrote a piece for Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) in which he attacked Benny Morris’ fraudulent representation of the War of 1948, where, with distortions, lies, and fabrications, Morris accused the Israeli Jews of supposedly carrying out a campaign of atrocities and ethnic cleansing. In Jared Israel’s view, this makes Benny Morris “worse than Arafat,” he explains, because it is one thing for an antisemitic terrorist gentile to attack the Jews, but Benny Morris is Jewish.

In “Histoire de Chiens,” Nathan Weinstock makes a passionate defense of Benny Morris’s interpretation of the War of 1948. And he does this, mind you, despite the fact that Efraim Karsh’s refutation of Morris’s lies, which Jared Israel extolled in his Arutz Sheva piece, was published in 1999, whereas Weinstock’s “Histoire de Chiens” was published in 2004, giving Weinstock plenty of time to notice. This is not the only demonstration in my piece that Nathan Weinstock’s supposed ‘about face’ is a phony.

As I pointed out above, scientists can commit errors. What is unethical is when they make a defense of something that they know is not true. If Jared Israel finds my demonstration that he has made an error satisfactory, then I will expect him (at least) to remove his defense of Nathan Weinstock from Emperor’s Clothes:

http://www.tenc.net/letters/vilkelis.htm

In other words, I will expect him to do what I did when Jared Israel pointed out that my interpretation of Malcolm MacDonald’s offer to settle refugees from Hitler in Northern Rhodesia as “well meaning” was in error: I corrected this interpretation.

If Jared Israel finds my demonstration insufficient, then I will expect him to explain why.

Francisco Gil-White, Historical and Investigative Research
www.hirhome.com

Comment by gilwhite — June 22, 2006 @ 8:17 pm

Note from Jared Israel - added 20 Feb. 2007:  I didn't write a rebuttal to the piece Gil-White refers to above, attacking Nathan Weinstock. However, 6 points about it:

1) By focusing on Nathan Weinstock Gil-White was trying to divert readers from my proof that he had falsified documentation to slander Rabbi Stephen Wise; it was only because, following this post, others returned to the question of Gil-White's Rabbi Wise lies, and because I did not retreat, following a weirdly threatening email I received from Gil-White (that email is posted below) that Gil-White finally did answer, saying he had done the right thing. (His answer is Comment #55

2) To divert the discussion, Gil-White produced an article in which he defends his claim that Nathan Weinstock never changed his views. In this article, Gil-White refers to Weinstock's book, Histoire de Chiens (Story of Dogs), claiming to show that, contrary to Weinstock's statements fiercely attacking his own earlier work, he has not really changed his mind - that he still supports the Palestinian Arab movement's attack on Israel. To support his case, Gil-White posts a number of his own translations of Weinstock's French text. I will not  in this space make a detailed refutation of Gil-White's arguments, which are, at best sophistry, because his arguments rest on his translations, and since we know that even where a text is published in English, he may falsify it - witness what he did to Rabbi Stephen Wise's fierce defense of the Jews, presenting it as a call for the slaughter of the Jews -  there is no reason to trust and every reason not  to trust his translations, where, of course, falsification is so much easier.  The point is: Gil-White does not hesitate to publish the most outrageous slanders, based on lies.  Why then waste a lot of time checking his translations?

3) In the article in question, Gil-White still fails to quote Weinstock's remarks repudiating Zionism: False Messiah, even though I had provided translations of these remarks in this very thread, attacking Gil-White for failing to cite them when discussing Weinstock! So he still does not directly deal with Weinstock's firm assertion, that what he wrote in the past is wrong, and his scathing critique of the death-loving Palestinian Arab movement.

- End of inserted comment, 20 February 2007 -

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42. Jared Israel claims that he has received a threatening email from Francisco Gil-White. (In a later comment, #55, Gil-White confirms that he sent the email.)

I have received a threat from Francisco Gil-White.

Bill, in your last comment, #41, you wrote, regarding the points I raised in my comment #31 and comment #40, that:

In any event what you pointed out about Gil White’s edited quote from Rabbi Wise, could only have been deliberate. As I said, I hope Gil White does respond to that charge for that so far is the most serious one. [Bill Narvey, Comment #41]

Well, checking my email box, I find that Gil-White has, in a manner of speaking, ‘responded’ to my charges, although not out in the open, on Israpundit.

Below is the text of the unsolicited email I have received from him, in full. I have put his text in bold to separate his words from the header information. I have not replied privately to this email.

Return-Path:
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for ; Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:38:28 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id:
X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 6.2.1.2
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:38:15 -0400
To: Emperors1000@aol.com
From: Francisco Gil-White
Subject: an important observation
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=”us-ascii”; format=flowed
X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.53 on 128.91.55.26
X-AOL-IP: 128.91.55.26
X-AOL-SCOLL-SCORE: 0:2:399072048:20401094
X-AOL-SCOLL-URL_COUNT: 0

At any moment of my choosing, I can insert a certain piece of text at the
bottom of this piece:
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/about_face.htm

That piece of text reads as follows:

“The proof that the Pied Piper of the ‘political right’ is Benny Morris,
and that the Pied Piper of the political left is Nathan Weinstock, is that
Jared Israel, and arch-leftist who has been known to call himself a
Marxist, is not fooled by Benny Morris, but has been seduced by his fellow
Marxist Nathan Weinstock, whom he can be found defending, and with some
energy.”
 

Ted Belman is so mad at you that it will stay up…forever.

Think carefully about your next move.

Francisco
 

Three points about this.

1) For purposes of authentication, if anyone wishes, they may write to me at emperors-clothes.com and I will forward them Gil-White’s email.

2) Gil-White’s threat appears to be that he will circulate online, including on Israpundit, a statement that I am an “arch-leftist who has been known to call himself a Marxist.” Based on this threat he warns me to “Think carefully about your next move.”

Regarding my “next move” I don’t make “moves.” I expose lies.

As for being ‘outed’ as a Leftist, let me say for the record that I proudly consider myself part of the anti-Fascist Left, which hopefully will some day replace the Fascist Left (e.g., Ramsey Clark) or what Felix Quigley calls the neo-Left. The Anti-Fascist Left is IMHO best reflected by the 1948 Nation magazine Memorandum to the UN, which I have posted online. My politics are no secret - I wrote a two-part article on Arutz Sheva called “Confessions of a Once-Hopeful Leftist.”

From my experience, two things reveal the most about public people. One is what they lie about. This is because lies are dangerous to the liar - there is always the possibility of exposure. And therefore, when public people lie it is because the lie is important. So that tells me it was important for Gil-White to get people to believe that when the Holocaust happened, in Gil-White’s words, “Rabbi Wise got his wish.” The second thing that is most revealing about public people is when they resort to threats, since this also puts them at risk - i.e., a threat may backfire. That Francisco Gil-White would take the considerable risk of threatening me now by email suggests that he is afraid of what may yet be exposed.

Jared Israel
Emperors Clothes

Comment by Jared Israel — June 24, 2006 @ 3:03 am

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55. Gil-White responds to Jared Israel's accusation that he slandered Rabbi Stephen Wise, arguing that there is nothing wrong with the way he quoted Wise and that if there were, it would  not reflect badly on him: he would just correct the 'error.' In any case he claims that the rest of his article supports his characterization of Wise.

REPLY TO JARED ISRAEL (CONCERNING STEPHEN WISE), by Francisco Gil-White

I notice that Jared Israel has not replied to my demonstration that he is wrong about Nathan Weinstock.

I shall now reply to his comments regarding Stephen Wise. In Comment #31, above, Jared Israel accuses me of having presented “falsified documentation” in order “to slander Rabbi Stephen Wise as wanting the Holocaust.”

What is the criticism, specifically? At the top of an article that I wrote on Stephen Wise and other American and British Jewish leaders during the Holocaust, entitled “How the Mainstream Jewish Leadership Failed the Jewish People in WWII,” I quoted Rabbi Stephen Wise saying, “I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany…” Jared Israel claims that I quoted Stephen Wise out of context.

In other words, Jared Israel believes it is possible to apologize for what Stephen Wise said.

I hold that the following statement is true by inspection (that is, true without requiring an explanation):

OBVIOUSLY TRUE STATEMENT: On the eve of the German Nazi extermination of the European Jewish population, which this was, it is unacceptable for the foremost leader of the Jewish community in the United States, which Stephen Wise was, to begin a sentence with, “I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany…”

In other words, there simply is no context that one can provide, before or after the sentence fragment that I quoted, that will render Stephen Wise’s sentence acceptable to anybody who does not already feel contempt for Jews. For demonstration, I submit Jared Israel’s heroic display of his talents in the service of rendering what Stephen Wise said
acceptable, and which fails.

In conclusion, since no context can make what Stephen Wise said acceptable, I quoted just the beginning of his sentence, which economically and dramatically communicates the contempt that Stephen Wise felt for the Jewish people. What I did was fine.

But what really matters, in the end, is not whether I misused that particular quote. If had done so I would simply remove it and issue a retraction. Nothing much hangs on it, and my article would remain.

What does my article show? That Stephen Wise, this man whom Jared Israel has attempted to defend, moved heaven and earth to sabotage the effort to rescue the desperate European Jews, even as the ovens were burning. This means that, according to Jared Israel’s own published standards, Stephen Wise is worse than Adolf Hitler. I shall now demonstrate this.

(I emphasize, however, that I will demonstrate that Wise is worse than Hitler according to Jared Israel’s published standards, not my own; if I myself was forced at gunpoint to choose between Wise and Hitler to be locked in a room with, I would choose Wise).

Jared Israel wrote an article for Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) entitled; “Benny Morris: The Kiss that Kills”; where he attacked Benny Morris.

This Jared Israel did with justice, because Benny Morris wrote a fraudulent history of the War of 1948, where Morris literally made up stuff in order to attack the Israeli Jews with the accusation that they had supposedly had a policy of ethnic cleansing against the Arabs. In Jared Israel’s judgment, this makes Benny Morris “worse than Arafat.” Here is his reasoning:

“It was [Benny Morris’s] lies, his manufactured ‘scholarship,’ which was picked up and spread worldwide by an eager media, and which poisoned the thinking of millions of people against Israel. Here was a Jewish scholar, supposedly driven by a passion for truth wherever it might lead, who accused Israel of terrible crimes. I was one of the people affected by Morris.

In large measure it was because of him that — and I am ashamed to have to say this — I once supported the PLO.

When I read [historian Efraim] Karsh [who unmasked Benny Morris] and realized Morris had lied — not made mistakes, but fabricated evidence — I was sickened. Morris’ lies were criminal, just as much as if he had attacked Israel with bombs. He helped undercut worldwide disgust for Palestinian terror; he helped create the political basis for a Palestinian terror state next door to Israel. Morris is responsible, like Yasser Arafat, for the murder of thousands of Israelis. But Arafat is not an Israeli Jew. Morally, Morris is worse than Arafat.”

In the middle of a terrorist war against the Israeli Jews, Benny Morris wrote lies that help the terrorists who murder innocent Jews, and which make the defense of Israel difficult. In Jared Israel’s opinion, this makes him “worse than Arafat” because “Arafat is not an Israeli Jew.”

Well, as bad as Benny Morris is, what Stephen Wise did is worse. Stephen Wise energetically sabotaged the defense of desperate European Jews who were being slaughtered by Hitler during the Holocaust, even as they were being slaughtered; in other words, Stephen Wise materially assisted one of the greatest catastrophes ever to befall humankind. In Jared Israel’s view, the fact that Stephen Wise was Jewish should increase, not decrease, his guilt. At least this would be consistent with the way he has judged Benny Morris. This would then make Stephen Wise, according to Jared Israel’s standards, worse than Adolf Hitler.

So Jared Israel has attempted to defend a man who, according to his own published standards, is worse than Adolf Hitler. Anybody who thinks that I am exaggerating is invited to read my article on Stephen Wise.

The reason that I wrote my piece on Stephen Wise is that there is widespread ignorance about him among Jews, in part because the organizations that he founded, such as the World Jewish Congress, are powerful in the world of today’s Jews, and these organizations have therefore kept most Jews from understanding what he did. Another reason is that current Jewish leaders, who inherited Wise’s position of leadership and even his specific institutional offices, are behaving much in the manner of Stephen Wise, as I have explained in a companion piece: http://www.hirhome.com/israel/leaders2.htm

Unless the Jewish people wake up to this, such Jewish ‘leaders’ will once again succeed in sabotaging the defense of the Jewish people, and we will once again face Catastrophe — all of us, not just the Jews, because when antisemites acquire enough power to kill millions of Jews, as they did in WWII, everybody else pays a cost, too.

Finally, concerning the email that Jared Israel has characterized as a threat (see Comment #42), I certainly did send it, but it is not a threat. I was within my rights to post the paragraph in question at the bottom of my demonstration that he is wrong about Nathan Weinstock. But I didn’t, not right away. Why? Because without that final paragraph, my demonstration that Jared Israel is wrong about Nathan Weinstock is a celebration of Jared Israel’s work, and not yet an open attack on him. The reason I wrote my piece like that is that I wanted to give Jared Israel an opportunity to make a public retraction. He has refused this opportunity, and so I have now posted the paragraph.

Francisco Gil-White, Historical and Investigative Research

The Emperor's New Clothes (TENC) *  www.tenc.net