Summary
Anti-Zionist Jewish author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983) and The Iron Wall, who argues from Zionist leaders’ own statements that the movement’s founding doctrine treated anti-Semitism as inevitable and sought imperial and right-wing patronage rather than fighting it (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, PDF p.2-3).
Details
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Brenner identifies himself in the Preface as an anti-Zionist Jew, inured to the charge that anti-Zionism is equivalent to anti-Semitism and ‘Jewish self-hatred’, and states that all attempts to equate Jews and Zionists, and therefore to attack Jews as such, are criminal and to be sternly repelled (Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, PDF p.2).
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His stated conclusion, drawn from the evidence he presents, is that Zionism is wholly incorrect; the book attempts an overview of the movement’s world activities in the age of the dictators because no equivalent work exists (PDF p.1, p.3).
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In Chapter 1 of Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, Brenner is quoted from The Iron Wall on Herzl’s dealings with the Ottoman Sultan and von Plevhe: “there were no criteria of ordinary humanism that the World Zionist Organization considered itself bound to respect” (Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, lines 428-442).
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The completed book closes its argument with the Ha’avara (Transfer Agreement): the WZO ‘did not resist Hitler, but sought to collaborate with him’, and only Nazi unwillingness to extend the link prevented even greater co-operation; Nahum Goldmann’s account of Edvard Benes’s 1935 warning on ‘a people’s moral stance’ is the book’s last word (PDF p.58-59).
Related pages
Zionism in the Age of the Dictators: A Reappraisal, Zionism, World Zionist Organization, Theodor Herzl