Peter Kosminsky, right, in Israel to make his propaganda.
No mention of the Arab mozlems led by Hitler's ally, Haj Amin al Husseini!
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| Haj Amin and Hitler, 1941 |
Full article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/jan/23/peter-kosminsky-palestine-mandate-drama
Peter Kosminsky:
I myself am a second-generation Briton, at least on my mother’s side. She was what would now be called an asylum-seeker, fleeing certain death in Vienna, arriving alone at Victoria station with a label tied around her neck. I only exist because Britain gave her sanctuary. All my life I’ve felt the consequential battle within me. On the one hand, the desire to be accepted – to obscure (if I’m honest, to conceal) my foreignness and out-British the Brits. To dress like them, act like them, react like them, to dig into their society and succeed according to their rules. On the other hand, the competing desire to be true to who I really am, to deny Britishness, on occasion to pour scorn on its arrogance and small-mindedness and, to be faithful, culturally and intellectually, to my immigrant forebears, who, when you get right down to it, weren’t very British at all.
Others might say it’s really not my problem. I didn’t pass these new repressive laws; I don’t support the foreign policy of the British Government. I’m innocent. Are we? Are we innocent? I know the impact the anti-terror laws are having on British Muslims, even if I choose to look away. I know how the attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan and how uncritical support for Israel are seen by Muslims here and overseas but, like so many others, I do nothing; I look away. Can I, under these circumstances, claim to be truly innocent? Can you? Can we really, with honour, complain if we get caught up in the inevitable backlash – here on the streets of our green and sometimes pleasant land?‘Britz’ is on Channel 4 on October 31 and November 1 2009
Between 1945 and 1948, some 100,000 soldiers served in the British-controlled Mandate of Palestine. Kosminsky's team spoke to around 80; he found the men's stories to be both gripping and moving, so he carried on, wading next through letters, diaries, memoirs and history books. Slowly, a theme began to emerge. "The thing that came out most strongly," he says, "was that the men all arrived in Palestine feeling incredibly pro-Jewish. A few of them had helped to liberate the [concentration] camps, so they had seen what had happened [to the Jews] with their own eyes. And everyone had heard the stories and seen the newsreels.
"When Jewish refugees arrived in Palestine off the boats, and were caged and beaten by British forces [the British placed strict limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine], many soldiers didn't like it all. They knew what these people had been through. Over time, though, the soldiers' attitudes changed. Some of this was just the usual British support for the underdog; there's no question that by 1948 [when Israeldeclared itself an independent state] the Arabs were perceived as that. But also, if you're being attacked on a daily basis [by the Jewish resistance]{1}, if you're under constant threat of kidnap, if you're confined to barracks behind a lot of razor wire, your feelings are bound to change."
Kosminsky's first idea was to make a drama about a British soldier who would exemplify this shift. "I suppose it started out as standard Kosminsky fare, which was pointing the finger at Britain. First of all, these men don't have a memorial; they're forgotten. It's only recently that they were allowed to march to the Cenotaph. When they came back to Britain, no one wanted to know; pulling out of Palestine was a terrible humiliation, a total defeat. Second, we were the colonial power in Palestine and, as in so many other examples of our retreat from Empire, we left it totally fucked up. Chaos. We washed our hands of it. I wanted to say: if you think the Israeli-Palestinian situation is not our problem, think again. We were there, we left, and 60 years later, it is still a problem."
By Jeffrey Herf, Published in The Chronicle of Higher Education; November 22, 2009)
"Between 1939 and 1945, shortwave radio transmitters near Berlin broadcast Nazi propaganda in many languages around the world, including Arabic throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and Persian programs in Iran. English-language transcripts of the Arabic broadcasts shed light on a particularly dark chapter in the globalization of pernicious ideas. The transcripts’ significance, however, is not purely historical. Since September 11, 2001, scholars have debated the lineages, similarities, and differences between Nazi anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of Islamic extremists. These radio broadcasts suggest that Nazi Arabic-language propaganda helped introduce radical anti-Semitism into the Middle East, where it found common ground with anti-Jewish currents in Islam.
In a 2007 book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 (Telos Press), the German political scientist Matthias Kuentzel details how Nazi ideology influenced Islamist ideologues like Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as well as the Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini. More recent examples abound. The founding charter of Hamas, the militant Palestinian group, recapitulates conspiracy theories about Jews that were popular in Europe in the 20th century. Al Qaeda’s war against “the Zionist-Crusader Alliance” and the anti-Zionist rants of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran also display a blend of anti-Semitic themes rooted in Nazi and fascist, as well as Islamist, traditions. To be sure, each of these movements and ideologies have non-European, local, and regional causes and inspirations. But the formulation of Nazi propaganda during World War II and its dissemination stand as a decisive episode in the development of radical Islamism."
On the other side stood the Irgun, as ruthless as any 21st-century terrorist organisation.{2} When the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which served as the British Mandatory authorities' headquarters, was bombed in July 1946, 91 people died, many of them civilians. "They were extremely effective. You only have to compare the attack on the King David to something like the Brighton Bomb [in which the IRA killed five people] to see that. There's a moving memoir by the colonial secretary, who survived. He spent a week attending the funerals of his friends, became unhinged and had to be invalided out. He lost his reason."
Somewhere along the line, Kosminsky decided that his film would need to tell two stories: one set in the Mandate of Palestine, the other in Israel, 2011.
{2} They were fighting for survival! What about the muzscum and their murderous terror tactics? Were the Jews supposed to lie down and let themselves be killed, as all Nazis wanted?
Thereafter, Kosminsky tells us two stories: there is Len (Christian Cooke), Erin's grandfather, who will find himself and his men constantly under attack by the Irgun, but who will also have life-changing relationships with both a young Jewish woman, Clara, and a Palestinian man, Hassan, who works as a tea-wallah in his barracks; and there is Erin, whose stay in Israel turns into something rather more than a gap-year adventure, thanks to Paul, Eliza's peace activist brother, {3}and to the diary, whose central secret will lead her to embark on an extraordinary quest. It is Erin who will honour, on behalf of her dying grandfather, the promise of the series' title.
Irgun (Hebrew: ארגון; shorthand for Ha'Irgun HaTzva'i HaLe'umi BeEretz Yisra'el, הארגון הצבאי הלאומי בארץ ישראל, "National Military Organization in the Land of Israel") was a Zionist paramilitary group that operated in the British mandate of Palestine between 1931 and 1948. It was an offshoot of the earlier and larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah (Hebrew: "The Defense", ההגנה). Since the group originally broke from the Haganah it became known as the Haganah Bet (Hebrew: literally "Defense 'B' " or "Second Defense", הגנה ב), or alternatively as Haganah Ha'leumit (ההגנה הלאומית) or Ha'ma'amad (המעמד).[1] Irgun members were absorbed into the Israel Defence Forces at the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. In present-day Israel, the Irgun is commonly referred to as Etzel (אצ"ל), an acronym of the Hebrew initials.
“ For the sake of drama, there are elisions. But critics will struggle if they accuse Kosminsky of exaggeration.” In other words, LIES!! “Elision = omission of sound or syllable.
"In 1929, when Jews sat down while they prayed at the Western Wall, violating Islamic prohibitions against Jews sitting there - a mob of Arabs swarmed over Hebron sadistically killing dozens. The Jewish baker was baked in his own oven. A Jewish scholar's brain was extricated and used as a ball." Personal memory of survivor.
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