Ken Livingston

Prestwich_Blue said:
No we don't know it. What he was saying or inferring was that Hitler wasn't that ill disposed to Jews initially and wanted to help them emigrate from Germany to what was then Palestine (although he used the word 'Israel' which completely demonstrates his lack of any grasp of historical facts and kills his argument stone dead).

He's also saying that somehow Hitler went mad later on and ordered the extermination of the Jews. Again, this simply isn't true. Hitler made his views on Jews clear in Mein Kampf and that it had to be (in his eyes) 'them' or 'us'. The Holocaust came about as part of an escalating process which involved the start of the war and the invasion of Poland in 1939, when Jews were herded into ghettos and then Russia, when mass killings started. But Hitler was still afraid of upsetting the USA. Once the USA was in the war, there was no further barrier to mass extermination and the orders to start the industrialised killing of Jews were given.

Galloway and Livingstone claim and probably genuinely believe they aren't anti-semitic. But they're like people who say (and I've heard people say this) "Well I don't like Jews but you're one of the OK ones".

Now instead of just saying they're right, like a parrot or broken record, how about using some facts to back up your argument that they are indeed right? Good luck with that.
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The old bloke from goggle box is Jewish - he is absolutely brilliant! And the old city fan you interviewed who recently passed was a diamond. You have your moments but even you are ok. So on that basis - up the Jews.
 
Bluebee2 said:
The facts are there that as the German leader he oversaw and let his Government sign an agreement to assist with Jews moving to Palestine.
Like I said earlier Livingstone said this in a ham fisted way and now the media are out to get him.
That's my opinion of how it's come about anyway, take it of leave it
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Hitler oversaw and signed an agreement with Stalin. So does that make him a communist? Or if you support the deportation of suspected ISIS sympathisers to Syria, does that imply you're actively encouraging Islamic fundamentalism? Neither act proves the other but are the result of people seeing mutual benefit even where there is total antipathy between the parties.

Your "facts" are wrong, as I've already explained but you've clearly not read or understood. The arrangement was not signed by Hitler or even supported by him. It was done between the Reich Economics Ministry and the Jewish Agency. At the time, there was a severe economic crisis in Germany as a result of the Great Depression and the reparations demanded under the Treaty of Versailles. There were tight controls over the movement of capital out of the country and this agreement was seen as a way of getting round that. It was a bit round-the-houses but basically, the German Jews bought German goods for export and took them out of the country with them as their assets. When they arrived in Palestine, the merchants bought the goods off them, meaning they'd effectively taken their money out of Germany but that Germany had benefited from much needed economic stimulus. Everyone got something out of it.

Hitler wasn't desperately supportive of this arrangement but was prepared to tolerate it, mainly because there was no particular practical plan at the time to set up a Jewish state and because he had no intention of provoking the British, who were the colonial power in Palestine. Also he simply wasn't in anywhere near a strong enough position to start killing his Jews, which ideally he probably would have preferred to do. The best he could do at the time was encourage them to leave. He couldn't even risk expelling them all.

So it suited all parties to let Jews leave Germany for Palestine (and anywhere else they wanted to go). However once the Peel plan for partition was put forward in 1936 and it became clear that there was the prospect of an autonomous Jewish state. As they became strengthened by the apparent lack of desire of the European powers to go to war and also were economically stronger, the German position hardened. They then simply confiscated the assets of any German Jews, cutting out the middle man.

So to say that Hitler was supportive of a Jewish state is quite simply wrong. He was resolutely against such a thing and to try to infer that the Ha'avara agreement did indicate his support is simply as wrong as it could be.
 
Bluebee2 said:
The facts are there that as the German leader he oversaw and let his Government sign an agreement to assist with Jews moving to Palestine.
Like I said earlier Livingstone said this in a ham fisted way and now the media are out to get him.
That's my opinion of how it's come about anyway, take it of leave it
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You have to ask yourself why he said it.
He was trying to give support to Naz Shah who had supported the idea of relocating Israel to the USA, which actually means the deportation and ethnic cleansing of all Israeli Jews from Israel. Livingstone thinks that by equating Zionism with Nazism it makes Israel a legitimate target for anyone to say what they want. What he's unwittingly managed to do is equate the idea of moving Israeli Jews from Israel to the USA with the idea of moving German Jews from Germany to Palestine. I'm sure he didn't mean to imply that Naz Shah supported the same ideas as the Nazis but that's what he's done.
 
Where have I said he was in support of a Jewish state ? I have said he allowed the agreement between the two parties and as you rightly point out it benefitted both those parties for a while. Less of the personal attacks for no reason or can't you help it ?
 
Bluebee2 said:
Where have I said he was in support of a Jewish state ? I have said he allowed the agreement between the two parties and as you rightly point out it benefitted both those parties for a while. Less of the personal attacks for no reason or can't you help it ?
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You said he supported Zionism which is the same thing.
 
Where have I said he was in support of a Jewish state ? I have said he allowed the agreement between the two parties and as you rightly point out it benefitted both those parties for a while. Less of the personal attacks for no reason or can't you help it
west didsblue said:
You have to ask yourself why he said it.
He was trying to give support to Naz Shah who had supported the idea of relocating Israel to the USA, which actually means the deportation and ethnic cleansing of all Israeli Jews from Israel. Livingstone thinks that by equating Zionism with Nazism it makes Israel a legitimate target for anyone to say what they want. What he's unwittingly managed to do is equate the idea of moving Israeli Jews from Israel to the USA with the idea of moving German Jews from Germany to Palestine. I'm sure he didn't mean to imply that Naz Shah supported the same ideas as the Nazis but that's what he's done.
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That's why I said he went about it in a ham fisted way.
 
Bluebee2 said:
Where have I said he was in support of a Jewish state ? I have said he allowed the agreement between the two parties and as you rightly point out it benefitted both those parties for a while. Less of the personal attacks for no reason or can't you help it ?
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You're just obfuscating and deflecting any facts quoted against you. It's the classic trick of letting others make the argument and just ignoring it.

Let's make this as simple as we can. Livingstone said "When Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews."

1) There was no Israel until 1948. Prior to that it was a British-administered territory. So he's wrong on that.
2) Zionism at that time was the desire for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and Hitler DID NOT want or support the establishment of a Jewish homeland. So he's wrong on that.
4) Hitler didn't suddenly go mad and decide to kill Jews. He always had the desire to exterminate the Jewish race but the circumstances or opportunity to do simply didn't occur until 1941. So he's wrong on that.

Does that in itself make him an anti-semite? No it doesn't but he poured fuel on a fire ignited by someone who probably is. I think we do agree he would have been better keeping his mouth shut.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
You're just obfuscating and deflecting any facts quoted against you. It's the classic trick of letting others make the argument and just ignoring it.

Let's make this as simple as we can. Livingstone said "When Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews."

1) There was no Israel until 1948. Prior to that it was a British-administered territory. So he's wrong on that.
2) Zionism at that time was the desire for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and Hitler DID NOT want or support the establishment of a Jewish homeland. So he's wrong on that.
4) Hitler didn't suddenly go mad and decide to kill Jews. He always had the desire to exterminate the Jewish race but the circumstances or opportunity to do simply didn't occur until 1941. So he's wrong on that.

Does that in itself make him an anti-semite? No it doesn't but he poured fuel on a fire ignited by someone who probably is. I think we do agree he would have been better keeping his mouth shut.
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Spot on mate, it's not as if he's been running around in a Nazi uniform is it, oh wait that was Prince Harry but that was swept under the carpet in haste.
 
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