this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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Letter from Einstein where he labels zionist as "terrorist organizations" and "misled and criminal people" (lemmy.ml)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Einstein is known to have supported the Labor Zionism movement, and to have opposed groups such as Irgun (considered to be terrorists by many).

The letter doesn't even have the word Zionist in it

Edit: From Wikipedia:

When Israeli President Chaim Weizmann died in 1952, Einstein was asked to be Israel's second president, but he declined, stating that he had "neither the natural ability nor the experience to deal with human beings." He wrote: "I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it."

Pretty sure he was a Zionist

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Einstein may have supported Labor Zionism, until it betrayed its purported socialist principles.

Labor Zionists played a leading role in the 1947–1949 Palestine War, and had a dominant presence among the leadership of the Israel Defense Forces for decades after the independence of the State of Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.

Zionist Left: The ‘Pacifist’ Arm of the Nakba

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Einstein may have supported Labor Zionism, until it betrayed its purported socialist principles.

You're making shit up

He took the draft of a speech he was preparing for a television appearance commemorating the state of Israel's seventh anniversary with him to the hospital, but he did not live to complete it. In the draft he speaks about the dangers facing Israel and says “It is anomalous that world opinion should only criticize Israel’s response to hostility and should not actively seek to bring an end to the Arab hostility which is the root cause of the tension.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Albert_Einstein#Zionism

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I’m not making shit up, as the letter that OP posted plainly shows. I made no claim that he stopped believing in Zionism as a concept, only that he stopped supporting the actual Zionists in Israel who were ethnically cleansing Palestine in 1948. And if he’d actually actually drafted that supposed 1955 speech as Israel claims, then I’d say that he was no Einstein. That sounds like some hasbara to me.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The letter plainly shows he doesn't support terrorists. As I wrote in my original comment, it makes no reference to Zionism at all.

You're claiming that draft, that I had to tell you about, which was written 7 years after the establishment of the state of Israel (when it was barely a functioning state) is Hasbara?

Edit: Also, if he was against Zionism, why was he ashamed he couldn't accept being Israel's president? Why was he moved by the offer?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You’re claiming that draft, that I had to tell you about, which was written 7 years after the establishment of the state of Israel (when it was barely a functioning state) is Hasbara?

I’m not claiming that the draft speech and its contents are hasbara, only that I suspect they might be, and that if they aren’t, then I think less of Einstein if he wrote that, “the Arab hostility […] is the root cause of the tension,” because I think the root cause is Western settler-colonialism.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I won't tell you what to think of him but honestly, he was a Jew who saw firsthand the rise of violent antisemitism in Europe - he was extremely biased on this subject, his views don't really surprise me.

Edit: Btw after re-reading my replies to you, not sure why I was so hostile, sorry

[–] yesman 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The Haganah could disavow the Irgun (and the Stern Gang) with the same credibility that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp could disavow Hezbollah.

Menachem Begin, who led Irgun also founded Likud and as the sixth Prime Minister of Israel was in command of the IDF . So yes, many people (including the US) considered Irgun a terrorist organization, that didn't put it and it's leaders outside the mainstream of Israeli military, politics, or government. Besides, it's crimes during the Mandate and Nakba always served the Zionist cause, and even if the Haganah or "Consultancy" didn't approve or order their actions, they were happy to take the benefit, and occasionally the credit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

The Stern Gang was declared a terrorist organization when Israel was founded.

Between 5 December 1948 and 25 January 1949, Yellin-Mor and Shmuelevitz were tried in a military court on terrorism charges.[105] The prosecution accused them of the murder of Bernadotte, though they were not specifically charged with it.[105] Senior officers of the IDF, including Yisrael Galili and David Shaltiel, told the court that Lehi had hindered, rather than assisted the fight against the British and the Arabs.[105]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(militant_group)#The_Lehi_trial_and_the_Fighters'_Party

As to the Irgun, the literally had armed conflicts with the Haganah (it is likely that some Irgun members were even kidnapped and tortured by the Haganah between 1944 and 1945, read up on "The Saison").

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

This was dated April 10, 1948, when the Nakba had already begun. https://ifamericansknew.org/history/ter-einstein.html

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Link to source?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

This was dated April 10, 1948, when the Nakba had already begun. https://ifamericansknew.org/history/ter-einstein.html