A Turk Calls Israel "Israel"---recognizes the Land's Jewish/Israelite Past -- Part Two

The British role in the Holocaust is a heavy topic, as we used to say. That goes too for the BBC's role --as a British government agency-- in the Holocaust. In a desire for some lightness, we will come back to the BBC during the Holocaust after continuing with Evliya Chelebi's description of the Land of Israel while under Ottoman dominion in the 17th century.

Chelebi [Celebi, with a cedilla under the C] was a wealthy, educated Turk who traveled through his empire, his mind stuffed with all sorts of Muslim traditional geographical lore. The traditional Muslim lore was often confused --the Quran confuses Miriam sister of Moses with Mary, the New Testamant's mother of Jesus. But the traditional Muslim history and lore are much preferable to the blatant, extreme lies that Arab spokesmen make up today to undermine Israel. So Chelebi recognized the Land of Israel as the homeland of the Jews, of Israel.

In the city of Safed in Galilee, he recognizes the castle as Jewish [p12]:

. . . this castle was built by the Children of Israel

He goes on to describe Safed:

Asqalan, Beisan, Filistin, Tabaristan, and Jerusalem were not so prosperous as this city of Safed

So Safed with its largely Jewish population at that time, was more prosperous than other cities in the country. His mention of "Filistin" is interesting yet bewildering. Asqalan [Ashqelon], Beisan [Beyt Sh'an], and Jerusalem are cities of course. Tabaristan seems to indicate --to me-- the area around Tiberias [Tabariya in Arabic], although it may refer to the city of Tiberias alone. In either case, when he writes "Filistin," is he referring to a city --whereas there is no known city by that name-- or to a district? Now, the Jund Filastin --Filastin military district-- set up by the early Arab conquerors before the Crusades was the southern part of Israel, what the Byzantine empire had called Palaestina Prima, one of three parts of "Palaestina" on both sides of the Jordan. Like Palaestina Prima, Filastin included southern Samaria, the southern coastal plain, and the area of the former kingdom of Judah. Hence, Jund Filastin included Jerusalem and Ashqelon. So it is unclear what Chelebi meant by Filistin. Now back to Safed. Safed, he writes, is

a sanjaq [Ottoman administrative district] in the province (eyalet) of Saida [=Sidon]. . . Previously it belonged to the province of Damascus [= al-Sham].[pp 18-19]

Chelebi's accuracy for the situation in his own time is reliable. Here he demonstrates that the Land of Israel, what the West called "Palestine," was divided into several districts governed from outside the country and was not a single geographic entity for administrative purposes. Hence, there was no "Palestine" for the Ottoman Empire or for the Arabs, for that matter, in his time.
Safed is described as prosperous,

Yet, because of oppression, the inhabitants of the city are poor. The Jews are more numerous than the Mohammedans. The capitation tax [jizya] from all the seven Jewish quarters is paid for 9,000 [male persons]. With previously 70,000 Jews living here, this was a magnificent city. Now. . . there is no outstanding person amongst them. All have moved off to the city of Saloniki. . . The reason for the large number of Jewish inhabitants is this, that it was the original home of the Children of Israel. . . Above the Jewish quarter are two Kurdish quarters" [p 24]

Here Chelebi points to a Jewish majority in the town when he visited it, 1648-1650, most likely getting some of his information from the local Ottoman officials, who may have been Turks, Arabs, or other Muslims. Further, part or most of the Muslim population in the town was not Arab but was rather Kurdish. Are we allowed to say that these Kurds were not "Palestinians"? Chelebi also states that this was "the original home of the Children of Israel." By the way, the Quran too refers several times to the Children of Israel. It is curious how Arabs today "forget" or overlook what is written in their own holy book. For more on the Quran and Israel as a Jewish land, see here.
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Coming: BBC & the Holocaust, Assyrians enjoy Iraqi tolerance in the 1930s, Jews in Jerusalem, etc.

A Turkish Muslim Calls Israel "Israel" -- Recognizes Its Jewish Identity

Before continuing with our account of the BBC and the Holocaust, we will pause for a change of pace. Today's post quotes from the travel account of Evliya Chelebi [Celebi], an educated Turk who came to Israel in the middle of the seventeenth century --1648-1650. Chelebi frankly recognized the Israelite history and ancient Jewish identity of the Land of Israel.

First, he applies the name "the province of Kan`an" [Canaan] to the vilayet of Tabaristan. This was the district around Tiberias [Tabariya in Arabic]. Then:

For this country is the Province of the Children of Israel. Here their prophets and their [prophets'] sons are met with [that is, in their graves], and individual shrines have been built here as their monuments. They are all mentioned in the chronicles.

In fact, the area around Tiberias, the Galilee, abounds in notable old Jewish tombs, although these are more often tombs of famous Talmudic era rabbis than of the prophets. However, there are many tombs throughout the country --north, south, and center-- ascribed to the Biblical prophets of Israel. Celebi uses the names of prophets invented by the Arab-Muslims, such as "the prophet Kan`an" in addtion to the Biblical prophets. Bear in mind too, that the Muslims call certain Biblical personalities prophets who in the Bible may be kings or generals, but not prophets, such as Adam, David and Solomon.

He also reports that at least one Jewish festival was, in part, celebrated by non-Jews as well, in the Galilee.

When the time of the Jewish feast approaches, i.e., the notorious Tabernacles [Sukkot], all people (`Arab ve-`ajem), mostly Druzes, Timanis, Yezidis, and Mervanis, are wont to assemble there. . . several thousand

Unfortunately, Celebi demonstrates the peculiar Muslim distortions of Biblical Israelite history in his account:

After the Deluge. . . Sam son of Nuh [Shem son of Noah] built Damascus and this town of Safad [in the Galilee]. . . It was the original home of the Children of Israel

Reporting on the taxes collected in various districts, and taxes kept the Ottoman Empire going, just like any other government, Celebi writes:

. . . there are many Jews [in Safad]

So at the time of his visit, around 1650, there were many Jews in Safad and they were paying taxes. In another place he writes:

Today between 70,000 and 80,000 Jews live there

This number is not accepted by today's authorities. The accounts given by medieval minds often highly inflated numbers. The numbers that Celebi gives of Jews in Safad at the time are probably at least twice the correct number, although Jews may have still been a majority there as they seem to have been in the 1500s. His description of Safad goes on:

The town consists entirely of Jewish houses. According to their vain belief, a Jew cannot be considered anything but a 'black Jew' (qara jifut) if he does not visit this city once in his life. . .

In the Jewish tradition Safad is considered one of four Jewish holy cities, although there is no rule about visiting it once in one's lifetime, that is commonly spoken of nowadays [Eliyahu m'Tsiyon has been there].

There are three caravanserais [in Safad]. One, the Pasha Khan. . . Previously 12,000 Jews lived in it. But at present they number only 2,000
[Evliya Celebi, Travels in Palestine, 1648-1650 (Jerusalem: Ariel 1980), pp 9, 10-12, 17-19, 23]

Right here we have enough information from a Muslim report to totally invalidate the claims made nowadays of a "Palestinian people" living alone and unbothered in "Palestine" from "time immemorial" until disturbed by Jewish-Zionist invaders. Celebi recognizes the Jews as the indigenous people of the Land.
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More to follow from Celebi's account. More on the BBC and the Holocaust, Jews in the Land of Israel, the British-aided Holocaust in Bagdad, etc.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Zigelboym's Comrades, Allied Disinterest

Bibliog added 8-8-2010

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is one the most remarkable events of the Holocaust. The downtrodden, oppressed Jews of the Ghetto rose up with weapons against their enemies. Yet the Allies were not interested in helping the Ghetto warriors, despite excuses made to Shmul Zigelboym in London before the Uprising that the reason that the Allies were not helping the Jews being sent to the death camps was because the Jews were not fighting. So when the Jews did fight [in fact, Jewish partisans fought and ghetto revolts took place not only in Warsaw], the major Allies still did not help the Jews. Can someone explain this failure or reluctance to act?

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began in its full force on April 19, 1943 [Hebrew calendar: 14 Nisan תש'ג-5703], on the eve of Pesah [Passover], although there had been some minor skirmishing in January. So Pesah this year is an appropriate time to commemorate the Uprising. Zigelboym's comrades still in Poland took part in the fighting. This experience is described from inside by Bernard Goldstein [Zigelboym's comrade in the Jewish Socialist League, the Bund] in his book, Five Years in the Warsaw Ghetto [also called The Stars Bear Witness]. One of the obstacles to starting a Jewish uprising was the quarrels between Communists, Bundists and Zionist-socialists, as well as Revisionist-Zionists [Jabotinsky's followers]. The Communists were loyal first of all to the Workers' Paradise, the USSR, of course. They claimed to be more universalist than the Zionist-socialists, or even the Bundists, whom Lenin once mocked as Zionists who were afraid of sea voyage, since the Bundists promoted Jewish culture in Yiddish, secular culture of course. The Communists may have all too easily forgotten that the Soviet Union had made the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August 1939, which enabled the war to get started. The USSR had invaded Poland and grabbed parts of its territory. At that time, the USSR was not so very fussy about ideological purity. In fact, in the fall of 1939, the Soviet government newspaper, Izvestya, wrote that Nazi ideology "is a matter of taste." As long as the pact between the Nazis and Communists lasted, the Communists in the Ghetto did not want to join resistance actions. Then the Germans attacked the USSR in June 1941, breaking the Nazi-Soviet Pact. As should have been expected. Finally, the Communists were ready to resist. In fact, the Communists in many countries engaged in peace propaganda in favor of the Nazis until June 1941, not least in Britain and France where Communist deputies in the parliaments tried to prevent resistance to the Nazis by their governments [In France, Petain's Vichy state was set up in 1940 with the participation of Communists, socialists, Trotskyists].

So within the so-called "left," divisions, partly based on ideological rigidity leading to immobility, were rife. Moreover, the "left" as a whole loathed the more nationalistic Zionists, mainly followers of Jabotinsky who had frankly said all along that military force was necessary in human affairs, and of course for defense. Yet the nationalist Zionists, connected with the Betar youth group and the Revisionist Zionist movement, had close ties with certain Polish military men. In fact, the Polish government in the 1930s had reached agreement with Jabotinsky on teaching military skills to his followers. So there were at least two Jewish armed political-ideological underground groups in the Ghetto [there were also members of the pre-war Jewish underworld/gangsters who had weapons]. The nationalists, organized in the Ghetto as the Jewish Military Organization, got weapons from a certain friendly Polish military man named Major Henryk Iwanski. They were better armed than the "left," and in fact probably did more damage to the German Nazi forces. The "left" was organized as the Jewish Fighting Organization, led by Mordekhai Anilevitsh [Anielewicz]. The JFO, although probably doing less damage to the Germans than the JMO, has gotten the lion's share of favorable publicity. One book serving as a partial corrective to this neglect of the JMO is by David Wdowinski, And We Are Not Saved (New York: Philsophical Library 1963; repr. 1985).

Today, of course, what is called the "left" is frequently Nazi-like [that is, favors mass murder of Jews]. It is mainly a manipulated body of public opinion, fed with Nazi-like ideas by skilled practitioners of psychological warfare. Further, funding of "leftist" anti-Israel activities often comes from wealthy, pro-Arab sources. The fact that today's Left usually supports Arab nationalists who practice mass murder, whereas during the Holocaust [and the 2nd World War] the Arab nationalists overwhelmingly supported the Nazis, demonstrates the Nazi leanings of most of today's "left."

Here are some books that may be helpful for further study. Most are relatively little known compared to other books on the subject:
Reuben Ainsztein, The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt (New York: Holocaust Library 1979)
. . . . . .Part of a much larger work on Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust
Moshe Arens, Flags over the Ghetto (2009?; Hebrew edition published first; English ed. should be out by now)
Moshe Arens, "The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising -- A Reappraisal" Yad vaShem Studies, 33.
Lester Eckman & Chaim Lazar, The Jewish Resistance (New York: Shengold 1977)
Philip Friedman, ed., Martyrs and Fighters (New York: Praeger 1954)
. . . . . .An anthology of personal, eyewitness accounts of Jewish resistance
Feliks Gross & Basil Vlavianos, Struggle for Tomorrow: Modern Political Ideologies of the Jewish People (New York: Arts 1954)
. . . . . .Separate chapters --written by adherents-- describe the ideologies of various Jewish political factions, including the Bund
Jan Karski, The Story of a Secret State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1944)
. . . . .Author was a courier for the Polish underground. Met Pres. Franklin Roosevelt and witnessed his coldness toward rescuing Jews.
Chaim Lazar, Muranowska 7: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Tel Aviv: Massada 1966)
The Massacre of European Jewry (Kibbutz Merchavia, Israel: World Hashomer Hatzair 1963)
Arthur D Morse, While Six Million Died (New York: Random House 1967, 1968)
. . . . .An easily read popular account of the failure to stop the massacres
Lucien Steinberg, Not as a Lamb (Farnsborough, Hants.: Saxon House, 1974) translated from
______. La Revolte des Justes (Paris: Fayard, 1970)
David Wdowinski, And We Are Not Saved (New York: Philosophical Library 1963)
Laurence Weinbaum, A Marriage of Convenience: The New Zionist Organization and the Polish Government, 1936-1939 (New York: Columbia University Press 1993).
Yad vaShem, Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust:Proceedings of the Conference on Manifestations of Jewish Resistance, Jerusalem April 7-11, 1968 (Jerusalem: Yad vaShem 1971)
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Coming: More on the BBC, Zigelboym, the UK govt today and Israel, the UK govt supports "Peace Now"

In Despair over BBC & Official British Disregarding of Holocaust, Zigelboym Commits Suicide -- Part Three

It is believed that Shmuel Mordecai Zigelboym committed suicide on the night between May 11 and May 12, 1942, in London. He was in despair over the reluctance of the Allied governments, of which the leading ones were Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union, to do anything concrete to stop the mass murder proceedings being conducted by the German Nazis. Allied reluctance to help the Jews was confirmed several times later in the war. For instance, Hayyim Weizmann made appeals to Churchill, and Weizmann was known to be very sympathetic to the British, especially compared with Ze'ev Jabotinsky, or even David Ben-Gurion. The American policy of not helping was sketched in books by Arthur Morse, David Wyman [see the Wyman Institute link at right], Monty Penkower, Hillel Zeidman and other researchers.

Here is the last, the farewell letter of Shmul Zigelboym to the world:

I permit myself to address to you my last words, and through you to the Polish government and the Polish people, to the governments and peoples of all Allied countries and to the conscience of the world.

The latest reports from Poland make clear that the Germans are now killing with their horrible cruelty, the few Jews remaining in Poland. The last act of a tragedy which has no equal in history is now taking place behind the walls of the Ghetto.

The responsibility for the crime of murdering the whole Jewish population in Poland falls in the first place on the murderers themselves, but indirectly the responsibility also burdens all mankind. It burdens the peoples and governments of the Allied states, which have till now not made any efforts towards concrete action for stopping the crime. By passively watching the murder of defenseless millions of tormented children, women, and men, these countries have become partners of the criminals.

I cannot remain silent. I cannot live while the remnants of the Jewish people of Poland, whose representative I am, are being destroyed. My friends in the Warsaw Ghetto died with weapons in their hands in the recent heroic struggle [= the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]. I was not fated to die as they did, together with them. But I belong to them and to their mass graves.

By my death I want to express the strongest protest possible against the passivity with which the world looks on and allows the extermination of the Jewish people.

I know how little a human life is worth in our times, but because I have been able to do nothing during my life, I may help by my death in breaking the indifference of those who have the capability of saving, now, perhaps at the last moment, the still-remaining Polish Jews.

My life belongs to the Jewish people in Poland, and therefore I give it away to them. My wish is that the few who will remain of the couple of millon Polish Jews will survive to see, together with the Polish population, the deliverance which can be realized in Poland in a world of freedom and in the justice of socialism. I believe that such a Poland will arise and that such a world will come.

I am sure that the President and Prime Minister [of Poland] will deliver my words to all those to whom they are addressed and that the Polish government will soon begin the appropriate promised actions in the diplomatic area for those who are still alive. I say my "Be Well" to everyone, to all who are dear to me and whom I loved.

[Zigelboym- Bukh, ed. Y.S. Hertz, in Yiddish; p 364-5]

To the last Zigelboym believed in socialism in Poland and --in this letter-- disregarded Zionism.

Britain, the BBC & the Holocaust -- the Suicide of Shmul Zigelboym -- Part Two

The BBC did not exert itself to report news of the Holocaust, although there were a few skimpy notices, as Zigelboym reported to his associate, the Jewish Socialist League delegate in New York, in December 1942 [see the previous post at Emet m'Tsiyon]. On the other hand, the BBC has for many years favored Arab terrorism against Israel, giving a voice to terrorist spokesmen, while usually denying a voice to any Israeli spokesman, even the most sympathetic to the Arab side. As an example, on 6 April 2006, BBC TV from Jerusalem reported that a Hamas jihadist appointed as a cabinet member of the Palestinian Authority, for Jerusalem Affairs, was arrested by Israeli armed forces. The BBC correspondent falsely claimed that Hamas only wanted "East Jerusalem" for a future Arab state to be called "Palestine." In fact, Hamas is quite frank in its charter, stating unequivocally that Hamas wants to destroy the State of Israel in toto. They claim that all of the Land of Israel is territory belonging to Islam.

The BBC also forgets that: 1-Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem since the 1850s; 2-Muslims have been a minority in Jerusalem since at least 1800, since Jews and Christians together made up a majority; 3- Arabs drove Jews out of what became "East Jerusalem" in 1948 starting in December 1947 with the expulsion of Jews from the Shimon haTsadiq quarter [a neighborhood around the Jewish holy place, the Tomb of Simon the Just]; 4- British troops collaborated with Arabs to drive out Jews from various places in the country in the 1947-48 war, just as British troops had allowed a massacre of an estimated 600 Jews in Baghdad in the spring of 1941; 5- the religious and national-historical importance of many East Jerusalem sites to the Jews; 6- the "moderate" Arafat claimed all of Jerusalem, could the Hamas want any less?

Whereas the BBC was overtly "lukewarm" towards the Jews during the Holocaust, and in practice Britain did little to help the Jews and much to prevent Jews from finding refuge in the Land of Israel, the internationally designated Jewish National Home, the BBC today, with the approval of its guides in the Foreign Office, is a staunch supporter of Arab nationalism, endorsing atrocity tales invented by anti-Israel Arabs.

Two authors who discuss British failure [in fact, refusal] to help Jews during the Holocaust were the Poles, Jan Karski and Irenek-Osmecki. There is a very large literature on the subject of British de facto, external collaboration with the Holocaust, but I mention these two Poles while thinking of Zigelboym who was a member of the Polish National Council.

Zigelboym became more and more frustrated with BBC and other British refusal to help the Jews. One excuse that he was given was that it was British policy to help those who were fighting, and the Jews supposedly were not fighting. Then, when the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising broke out in April 1943, and the Jews were indeed fighting, Zigelboym went back to the British officials and pointed this out to them. However, the changed facts on the ground in Poland did not change British policy. In despair, Shmul Zigelboym committed suicide in May 1943. We present below the beginning of his farewell letter to the world, which was in fact addressed to the officials of the Polish National Council, Wladyslaw Raczkiewicz, president, and Wladyslaw Sikorski, prime minister.

I permit myself to address to you my last words, and through you to the Polish government and the Polish people, to the governments and peoples of all Allied countries and to the conscience of the world.
[Zigelboym- Bukh, ed. Y.S. Hertz, in Yiddish; p 364] [to be continued]

Zigelboym's last message to the world will be continued in the next post. Note above his photo with a caption from the book, The Jewish Labor Bund, edited by Y.S. Hertz (in Yiddish and English). At the bottom of this post, see photos from a memorial meeting helf for Shmul Zigelboym at which he was eulogized by the famous socialists, Camille Huysmans and Adam Ciolkosz. Click on the photos to enlarge them. Let it be understood that the international socialist
movement did little to help the Jews during the Holocaust, whether they were incapable or unwilling. And I refer more to the prominent socialists in the free countries that were fighting the Nazis, rather than to those in the Nazi-occupied lands. They were unable or unwilling to force the free world Allies to take concrete steps to stop or hinder the German massacres of Jews, such as bombing the crematoria and the railroad tracks leading to the death camps, like Auschwitz. The socialists, like others, like Roosevelt and Churchill, produced a lot of fine rhetoric.

The BBC today --in the post-9/11 world-- has been called an accessory to Islamist terrorism by none other than a Muslim writer, named Mamoun Fandy, quoted by David Bukay, an expert on Arab-Islamic terrorism.

Fandy called on Muslims to issue a fatwa against terrorism. He went on to criticize CNN and BBC, not to mention certain politicians.

"It is not helpful when London Mayor Ken Livingstone invites al-Qaradawi, just as it is not helpful when Tony Blair and George Bush invite people who are likely to become terrorists. It is regrettable that Western media channels, particularly CCN and the BBC, host radical Islamists who support terrorism and treat them as experts and analysts."
[quoted in David Bukay, Facts and Fables in the Mythology of Islamic and Palestinian Terrorism (Shaarei Tikva, Israel: Ariel Center 2006), pp 38-39]

The BBC & the Holocaust - Was It Reported or Disregarded? - Was It British Policy? - Part One

The BBC deliberately overlooked the Holocaust, while it was going on, as a matter of policy. BBC policy, for those who may be unaware, was and is dictated by the British Foreign Office. The BBC was instructed during World War 2 to overlook Jewish sufferings, not to report them at all, or to report them scantily at best. There have been some British academic studies that mention this fact, and anyone who knows of them is welcome to discuss them with us in our Comments section.

We are going to illustrate BBC policy however, by quoting several passages from the writings of Shmul Zigelboym. Zigelboym [or Zygelboim or Zygelbojm or Szmul Zygielbojm or Siegelbaum or Zigelbaum], also known as Comrade Artur, was the delegate of the Jewish Socialist League of Poland to the Polish National Council, that is, the Polish government-in-exile in London during the Second World War. The Jewish Socialist League, commonly called the "Bund" [or often, the Jewish Labor Bund] was a socialist party represented in the Polish parliament between the two world wars, a partner of the Polish Socialist Party, and a member of the Socialist International. The party conducted its organizing and educational work primarily in Yiddish, and championed Jewish secular culture in the Yiddish language. Yet, the party took a clearly anti-Zionist position, seeing the future of the Polish Jews in Poland. By today's standards, nevertheless, the Bund might be considered Zionist, if only because it considered Jews to be human beings, unlike today's overwhelmingly Nazi-like anti-Zionists. Nevertheless, because it advocated that the Polish Jews stay in Poland, it left them like sitting ducks when the Nazi armies invaded Poland [in collaboration with the Soviet Red Army, also ostensibly socialist like the Bund]. Hence, the Bund objectively set up the Jews for the Holocaust which the Bund's leaders did not see coming.

Yet, subjectively, the Bund fought to save Jews. Zigelboym considered himself the representative of the Jewish workers in Poland. He was smuggled out of Poland to London towards the beginning of the war. Much of his time in London was taken up with pleading the case of the Jews threatened with mass murder, to the British officials in London. The BBC too disappointed him since it had to be urged over and over to report the Holocaust before giving any information about it whatsoever.

Here are excerpts from a letter by Zigelboym to the Bund's representative in New York, dated 17 December 1942. The events described took place after his previous letter dated 28 November 1942:

I held special conferences with the political editor of the London Times, with the sub-editor of the Reuters Agency, with the London correspondent of the New York Times, and with the director of the British Radio [BBC].

My conferences had the result that in the London Times there were large excerpts from our report [on the massacre of Jews {in Poland}] for three days in succession, and on Sunday -- a long editorial. The Reuters Agency distributed a large summary of the report to the press; a long cable was sent to the New York Times, my proposals in the Polish National Council were printed in the Daily Telegraph, with the newspaper taking a positive position. On the British Radio [BBC], they began to give very skimpy notices about the massacres, and this -- only in the broadcasts for Europe, and not for England.
אין בריטישן ראדיא (ב.ב.סי.)
האט מען אנגעהויבן צו געבן זייער קארגע ידיעות וועגן די שחיטות, און דאס -- בלויז אין
די אוידיציעס פאר איראפע און נישט פאר ענגלאנד

Through the British Labour Party, I was connected with the British Foreign Ministry directly. I met three times with a person whom foreign minister Eden {Anthony Eden} had specially selected for the purpose and who is the expert on Polish affairs.

Monday afternoon, I again met Raczynski {foreign minister in the Polish Government-in-exile} who informed me about his talks with Eden. I proposed to Raczynski that he should immediately communicate all information to the governments {the British, other allied governments, and the governments in exile} in an official note and request action from them.

In Polish government circles . . . it was now agreed to deal with the matter as an action against the extermination of the Jewish population.

In British government circles, the information was still not believed. The British Radio had received secret instructions not to make any big propaganda about the whole issue. I spoke about this matter with the representative of the British Foreign Ministry. He denied it but the same evening, one of my friends --who belongs to the inner staff of the British Radio [BBC]-- related to me confidentially that he himself was at a staff meeting that evening at which a directive was read out from the British Foreign Ministry, to give very cautious reports about Poland and not much.
עס איז איבערגעלייענט אן אינסטרוקציע פון בריטישן אויסערן מיניסטעריום צו געבן זייער פארזיכטיק ידיעות וועגן פוילן און נישט קיין סך

[Shmul Zigelboym, Zigelboym-Bukh, edited by Y.S. Hertz (New York: Unser Tsait, 1957), pp 358-359; in Yiddish]

One thing that Zigelboym is saying is that the BBC did not report the massacres of Jews until December 1942, whereas the massacres of Jews started with the invasion of Poland in 1939 in the form of special air raids on the poor and religious Jewish neighborhoods, later continuing in other forms. Here we note a very big contrast between the way the BBC --and most other Western news/press outlets-- reported the Holocaust, and the way that the same news outlets and press agencies reported --for example-- the Israeli anti-PLO, anti-terrorist, and anti-Syrian expedition in Lebanon in 1982. In the latter case, gross comparisons were made between Israel's operation in Beirut in 1982 with the Nazi attack on the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Yet there were many many differences that the Western press commonly overlooked in 1982. For one thing, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 got very little press attention compared with that given to the PLO's travails in Lebanon in 1982. Right there we have a very big difference that the sob sisters over the PLO's suffering in Lebanon did not seem to be aware of.

It is also noteworthy that the BBC and the British Foreign Ministry, which had the superb resources of British intelligence at their disposal, did not want to believe the reports of massacres of Jews supplied by Zigelboym and the Polish underground courier, Jan Karski, among others. Somehow the Foreign Office and Anthony Eden in particular did not know or did not want to know or did not want to acknowledge that they knew about the ongoing Holocaust. This was the same Anthony Eden who favored pan-Arab nationalism by promoting formation of the Arab League [see the previous post]. The attitude toward reports of Jewish suffering contrasts with the attitude toward Arab suffering, whether real or exaggerated or wholly invented. When the suffering is alleged to be Arab, then the BBC joins in, cooperates and may even invent on its own. Consider the BBC attitude to the Jenin massacre hoax. BBC TV anchormen openly relished the story of the Jenin massacre, impatiently asking BBC correspondents on the ground in Jenin whether the bodies had yet been found. In fact, the bodies were never found because the Jenin massacre was a hoax, invented and spread by Arafat and his cronies, such as Sa'eb Erikat.
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Coming: The BBC and Britain during the Holocaust, part 2, etc.