Perhaps no time is better than the post-Iran-Israel conflict of June 2025 to explain that Zionists and Jews are not synonymous with each other. Rather, it would not be very much out of place to say that the policy adopted by the former led to the killing of millions of fellow Jews across Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. This can be further understood by the statement of none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made in 2015, when he said that Adolf Hitler only wanted to expel Jews from Germany and not send them to the gas chamber.
According to him, it was none else than the then Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who suggested to Hitler to ‘burn them’ as otherwise these Jews would migrate to Palestine after their expulsion and would intensify their demand for a homeland. The absurd remarks of the Butcher of Gaza were roundly denounced by Jews across the world, including Israel. The then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, also criticized it and said that Hitler was responsible for the Holocaust.
The Grand Mufti met Hitler in Germany in November 1941, when the fact is that the latter came to power way back on January 30, 1933. Like Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, a prominent freedom fighter of India, al-Husseini approached Hitler to seek his support for the creation of Palestine, when Britain and France were hell bent upon creating Israel.
Zionist-Nazi agreement
Netanyahu’s utterances cannot be taken in isolation, as they are very much in line with the stand of David Ben Gurion, the leading light of the Zionist movement, and the first Prime Minister of Israel. The priority of the top leadership of Zionists—both Christians and Jews–was the creation of the Promised Land of Israel, and not the safety of Jews who were being hunted down not only by Nazis but by nationalist Christians across Europe.
On August 25, 1933, the Zionist Federation of Germany signed what is called the Haavara Agreement with the Nazi government that allowed some wealthy German Jews to immigrate to Palestine in exchange for purchasing German goods that were then exported to the Jewish community in Palestine.
As part of the deal, the Zionists also agreed to lobby the global Jewish community to end their boycott of German goods that began when Adolf Hitler came to power earlier the same year.
If the Nazis accept the cooperation of the Zionists, the latter would try to dissuade Jews abroad from supporting the anti-German boycott. This Agreement was endorsed by Hitler and future Israeli prime ministers David Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharett, and Golda Meir.
For the Zionists, the deal allowed affluent German Jews to keep some of their capital and resettle in Palestine. For the Nazis, the agreement not only helped rid Germany of 60,000 Jews between 1933 and 1939 but, critically, it doomed the boycott movement to failure and opened up the global export market for German goods to boost its economy.
For the majority of mostly non- and anti-Zionist Jews around the world, it was a betrayal that deprived them of one of the few weapons they had to fight the Nazis.
Israel in Palestine
This historical fact has further been elaborated by Tony Greenstein, a UK-based left-wing champion of the Palestine cause, though he is himself the son of a Rabbi. His 2022 book, Zionism During the Holocaust, exposed in great detail the role played by the European and American leaders in facilitating the massacre of 60 lakh Jews, as they were more interested in the creation of Israel in Palestine and no other place in the world. Here, it needs to be mentioned that the idea of a homeland for Jews was proposed in Uganda, Argentina, and Manchuria (by Japan in 1938, which had snatched it from China in 1931). But all these offers were rejected by Zionists in favour of Palestine.
British Prime Ministers such as Lord Palmerston, Arthur Balfour, David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, etc., were ardent supporters of Zionism, though they were Protestant Christians, as was Catholic Napoleon of France, as well as former US President Joe Biden. Similarly, the incumbent of the White House, Donald Trump, came to power with the popular support of Christian Evangelists, the greatest champions of the idea of Zionism.
In contrast, the only Jewish minister in David Lloyd George’s government, Edwin Montagu, strongly denounced Zionism and called it anti-Semitic. Though still Secretary of State for India, he strongly opposed the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, which called for the creation of a homeland for Jews in Palestine.
Christian Zionists champion the cause of the return of Jews to Palestine before the advent of the Messiah and Armageddon, the fight between forces of Good and Evil. They are of the view that the Jews would be wiped out in this bloodbath between the two. Many Zionist Christians, who outnumber Jewish Zionists, think that whatever is happening in Gaza is very much in line with the Biblical prophecy.
So, when rampant anti-Jewish pogroms started first in Russia in the 1880s and Germany and many other countries of Europe in the 1930s, the Zionists tried to capitalize on the occasion to step up their campaign for the creation of Israel, rather than sheltering Jews. Instead, many fleeing Jews were not allowed to enter the United States by the Zionists’ lobby (both Jewish and Christian), and their ships were diverted to other places, mostly to Palestine.
Muslims come to rescue of Jews
Tony Greenstein re-established how the nationalist Christians in German-occupied Europe fully cooperated with the Nazis to slaughter the Jews. The Zionists, who then had the support of just two per cent of Jews of Germany, got the full backing of the Western powers.
He cited how in Albania, not a single Jew was killed during the German occupation of the country in the 1940s. This was simply because Albania is overwhelmingly a Muslim country, where the Jews were given shelter by the local population at their own risk. Tunisia is the only Muslim country in Africa that was occupied by the Nazis, and here too the Muslims saved the Jews from the German forces. Turkey, which was a neutral country in World War II and was not invaded by anyone, went out of its way to shelter fleeing Jews. Not only that Turkish-speaking Jews living in countries like France secretly helped to escape from the clutches of the Nazis and their collaborators and enter Turkey. This fact was even highlighted by a Jewish woman in an article in a prominent Western newspaper in 2024 in protest against the Israeli barbarity in Gaza. She wrote that she cannot forget as to how Muslim Turkey gave shelter to her grandparents.
In the rest of German-occupied Europe, barring Denmark, the local authorities fully cooperated with the Nazis in the annihilation of Jews—though it is also true that in some places the Christian population tried to save them. Due to fear of being eliminated, many Jews converted to Christianity, though in some cases this strategy did not work.
The post-World War II Western historians had put all the blame on Adolf Hitler for the extermination of Jews, while the role of the rest of Christianized Europe in the ghastly role has been virtually blacked out. This well-kept secret needs to be exposed. No, not only Hitler, but even Churchill and other leaders of Europe and America cannot be exonerated as they are equally responsible.
Sacrifice of Jews, Muslims
If rulers of these colonial powers allowed six million Jews to be sacrificed for the birth of Israel, essentially a military outpost for the West in the Muslim heartland, they are least interested in saving any baby from starving in a mother’s arms in Gaza, or anywhere else. Mind it, the word Holocaust means in Greek as sacrifice by fire. So, 60 lakh Jews were sacrificed for the creation of Israel. Now it is the Muslims’ turn to let it survive.
Weakening of Zionism
When the about two-century-old Zionist movement started losing its hold in the last couple of years, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, etc., the real creators of Israel had followed the line of Spain, Ireland, and Norway to recognize Palestine. There is absolutely no denying the fact that whatever Israel has been doing till now could not have been possible without the help of the earlier-mentioned countries, as well as the United States and post-war Germany. The last two supplies 66% and 33% weapons to Israel.
If, till the early 1930s, a negligible percentage of Jews were Zionists—as Greenstein rightly claims—then from where this movement gathered so many resources can be easily understood.
Those who are befuddled by the strong opposition of Netanyahu by many Jews in the West need to objectively read the history of Zionism.
Greenstein’s book written just a year before the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent bloodbath, is an eye-opener. Sounds somewhat unusual, Greenstein (71) is the co-founder of Palestine Solidarity Campaign and was charged in November 2024 under the Terrorism Act in England for supporting Hamas. Under British law, he can undergo a jail term of 14 years.
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