Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 20. August 27 1979
Hermann Attacked
Hermann Attacked
Dear Peter,
Heymann's contradictions are threatening to become legendary in Salient's letters columns. On the one hand he ridicules the Salient review's assertion of the uniquely massive scale of Hitler's death camps and then says they were "the most horrifying event in the history of mankind."
He pretends that the original Zionists never intended to drive out the Palestinians from their country, and then contradicts himself by upholding a racist right for Jews to constitute a majority in one country.
Team-mate Hochberg's reference to this rather than them living in the "graveyards of Europe" is just as much a travesty of logic. It is only Zionists who claim rights of citizenship for a country neither they nor their families have ever seen. Jewish nationalism is fascism simply because of this "racial" exclusiveness. Non-fascist nationalism is based on the people within a geographical area fighting against external control — not importing foreigners or expelling indigenous inhabitants.
Making the excuse that Zionism is a subjective reaction is no defence either. Just as the subjective response by Germany to the harsh conditions imposed upon it after World War I was Nazism, so too is Zionism an unjustifiable reaction to anti-semitism. Two wrongs don't make a right and La Heymann's appeal to the senses do not make the crimes of the Israelis any more acceptible.
Yours,
Barry Durruti