The following list consists of thirty-six topics which one should study if one wishes to learn the history of attempts by Zionists and Jewish people to cooperate, make deals with, or even collaborate with, Nazis and anti-Semites.
I am publishing this list, not to criticize nor condemn the religion of Judaism, nor to condemn Jewish people. Nor do I wish to dismiss the rights of Jewish people to defend themselves when attacked, and to live where they please without harming others. Nor do I wish to pretend that Zionism and Nazism are the exact same ideology; I am only asserting that there is some overlap between the two ideologies.
The purpose of this article is to explain that Jewish people have cooperated with Nazis and anti-Semites, but also that that cooperation has typically and primarily been done for the purposes of saving Jewish lives, and reducing harm and suffering experienced by Jewish people. Secondary goals of that cooperation were promoting Jewish emigration to Palestine, and establishing a Jewish national homeland (i.e., a state) there, goals which were thought to result in the primary goals of reducing Jewish deaths and suffering.
It is a terrible and unfortunate thing that Jewish Holocaust survivors, and other Jewish people, have thought it necessary to turn other Jews in to the authorities, in order to save their own families and themselves. But needless to say, those Jewish people cooperated with their captors only because they were under coercion and pressure. They did what they did out of desperation; from being forced into "cooperating with authority".
The fact that they were under duress from their authoritarian government that wanted them dead, means that most "crimes" or "wrongs" that one Jew committed against another during that time, were likely done for the sake of each person's own individual survival, without consideration for the needs of others. It also means that some of them developed Stockholm Syndrome; they began to identify with their captors. Sometimes that is what happens when we are under other people's control; we justify the condition we're in, by taking genuine pity upon ourselves, and in doing so we identify with the pity which our captors have for us (which, unlike our own self-pity, is merciless and fraudulent).
It is a sad thing that our concerns for other individuals break down when we are pitted against each other for survival; especially when we are forced to work for little reward, and worked to death. These were extenuating circumstances, and the fact that Jewish people were under coercion and slave-like conditions, should be considered a mitigating factor, when considering the actions taken by Holocaust survivors.
This should go, both during the Holocaust itself, as well as afterwards, because survivors who fled Europe still risked arrest as illegal immigrants when they landed in Palestine.
The Israeli Defense Forces were cobbled together out of three paramilitary groups, which would otherwise be considered terrorist groups, if not for a legal declaration of independence as a sovereign power by Israel in May 1948. Holocaust survivors who fled to Palestine only became "terrorists" because that's what they had to do in order to resist British attempts to limit immigration of Jewish refugees into what was then British Mandate Palestine.
To quote comedian George Carlin, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."
To be clear, what I am saying is that very little of what World War II -era Jews did to "cooperate" with the Nazis, should be construed as collaboration (which goes above and beyond cooperation). This is not to say, however, that no Jewish person has ever intentionally cooperated with anti-Semites and Nazis; some have.
Even when Jewish cooperation with anti-Semites appears to be intentional (rather than accidental), it still may be accidental. Such cooperation has usually been motivated by: 1) a desire to set aside differences with anti-Semites and find some common goal that they can advance together, in order to reduce tensions (for example, anti-miscegenation, and assured deportation to Palestine); and/or 2) a perceived need to adopt anti-Jewishness in a limited manner (that is, to promote selective rejection of Jewish characteristics).
The latter has usually been done in order to appease the Judeophobes whom are in charge of the political apparatus of the relevant host-nation. For example, some Western Jews, such as the early Zionist Ze'ev Jabotinsky, have practically adopted the European racists' ideas that the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe look "Asiatic" and ugly.
Sometimes, however, Jews adopt anti-Semitism, in order to increase or exaggerate Jewish suffering, in order to make it more visible. The goal of this is to increase Jewish safety.
It is easy to tell, from studying the stories of Theodor Herzl and Sarah Marshak, why Jewish people would want the suffering of Jewish people to be more noticeable.
Herzl (see #3) sought to make this suffering more noticeable, by forging a sort of alliance with anti-Semites, saying "the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies" and acknowledging that the Zionists' desire to leave Europe coincided with the European Christian anti-Semites' desire to be rid of the Jews.
I do not say this in order to promote the idea that all exaggeration of Jewish suffering is staged, nor to promote the idea that all Jewish suffering is the result of faked or staged hate crimes. College student Sarah Marshak (#30) was accused of faking a hate crime after she drew swastikas on her own college dorm room door. But she only did this after someone else did it first - after the authorities failed to find the original vandal, and seemed to have given up on Marshak's case - a fact which was overlooked in reports about the vandalism.
Marshak certainly exaggerated her victimization, and faked a crime and falsified a police report. But she did it because her previous victimization was being ignored; because the police had not yet found the perpetrator; the one who targeted her specifically, and possibly intended to hurt her. Marshak felt that she needed to manufacture another incident, in order to demonstrate to the police that the threat was still ongoing, rather than an isolated incident that they should treat as if it happened in the past.
There is some similarity between the actions of Sarah Marshak and those of Theodor Herzl; both sought to increase the visibility of Jewish suffering. Herzl could have very well believed that what he was advocating was the course of action most conducive to increasing Jewish safety. But I feel confident in saying that what Sarah Marshak did was probably not as sinister as what Herzl had in mind.
I wouldn't accuse Herzl of trying to promote anti-Jewish violence, but it's not unreasonable to ask whether Herzl would have considered limited violence against Jewish people (whatever that means) to be something conducive to his goals.
Jewish collaboration and cooperation with - and appeasement of - Nazis, anti-Semites, and Judeophobes, happens, and has historically happened, for various reasons. What looks to one person like opportunism and betrayal, may look to another like doing what needs to be done to reduce suffering and to live another day.
To some, the internment of Palestinians in the State of Israel - and Israel's wars with its neighbors - are intolerable, and could not possibly be justified by either the Holocaust nor the need to keep Jews safe in the present.
But to the staunch defenders of Zionism, the need to protect "Israel" is so important, that the need to keep Jewish people safe, is subjugated to the need to promote the national security interests of the State of Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces. The needs of "Israel", meaning "the people of Israel", has been subverted to the needs of the State of Israel.
That is why we must study the above explained and below listed topics, and that is why we must ask whether the militarism of the State of Israel is truly in the interests of the safety of Jewish people.
We must ask whether the I.D.F. is protecting Jewish lives, or instead arming the enemies of Israel in order to provocateur attacks against Jewish people in order to justify increased military budgets and more lashing out disproportionately at Israel's enemies.
Study of these topics are necessary; not only for preventing continued misguided, aggressive Israeli militarism in the name of "keeping Jews safe", but also for understanding how good people, and even Jewish people, can be tricked into complacency with fascism and anti-Semitism.
America has been so eager to "protect Americans and American interests", in fact, that it has resorted to funding its enemies - and even arm and train them, and arm several of its enemies against one another - in order to provocateur them into committing attacks against Americans.
The United States pretends the Iranians are preparing attacks against U.S. military bases, which could not be attacked by Iranians, if only they had never been set up in lands outside U.S. jurisdiction in the first place.
In 2015, the United States sold weapons to terrorist groups in Syria and Ukraine. Senator Rand Paul voted for that weapons sale, but he apologized four years later, in 2019. Between 2015 and 2019, it was reported that the weapons sold to terrorist groups in Ukraine and Syria, were used to attack Israelis. The State of Israel, too, sold weapons to terrorist groups in Ukraine and Syria around the same time.
Here is to the hope that the Israelis will stop emulating America in its penchant for selling weapons to enemies, and here is to the hope that Americans will stop emulating Israel's racist and illiberal surveillance and travel security policies.
I. 1880s-1930s: Jewish Adoption of Zionism and Provocation of Anti-Semitism
1. Frankish Jews (and the possible influence of Frankish Jewish ideas upon Adolf Hitler)