For Brenner, Zionism emerged from within 19th century
conservative nationalism, sharing with it both its ideology of and its racist assumptions. Like classic antisemites, early Zionists, he claims, considered
antisemitism to be the fault of Jews themselves, as putative rootless "intruders" trying to
assimilate and exploiting
socialist movements to do so. Only in Palestine, Zionists argued, could Jews become a healthy race. Brenner notes that
Theodor Herzl himself confided to his diary that he tried to win over
Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm to Zionism by arguing that the movement would subtract Jews from revolutionary parties by relocating them abroad. Zionism's contempt for socialism led its leaders to repeatedly cooperate with conservative nationalist movements to suppress this perceived threat. Brenner charges that the
World Zionist Organization's abandonment of the idea that Jews in the
diaspora were worth helping played a consequential role in the fate that later befel the Jews. To this end he cites several documents, one of which is a memorandum of the
Zionist Federation of Germany sent to the Nazi Party soon after Hitler became
Chancellor. In it German Zionists undertook to ensure that Jews would thenceforth avoid "becoming the
rootless critics of the national foundations of German essence," for a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group. Brenner states that, after the passage of the
Nuremberg Laws in 1935, Zionism was the one Jewish organization permitted to exist in Germany, and
its flag the only one allowed to fly next to the Nazi banner. He reads the
Ha'avara Agreement negotiated between Zionists and the Nazis as a subversion of the
Anti-Nazi boycott promoted by the diaspora Jewish mainstream. Zionists, in Brenner's interpretation, were so intent on colonizing Palestine with Jews, that they prioritized emigration there over any other form of rescuing Jews. To this end, Brenner cites a remark made by
David Ben-Gurion in the wake of
Kristallnacht when great Britain laid out a proposal to
convey thousands of Jewish children at risk to the safety of its shores. Ben-Gurion commented If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to
Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. Likewise, in the United States in 1943 Brenner states that
rabbi Stephen Wise opposed a
congressional bill designed to create a rescue commission for Jews because it failed to mention Palestine. Brenner concludes his book by a chapter on the
Stern gang – which had broken away from the
Irgun – and its efforts to forge an alliance with the Nazis against Great Britain, on the basis that the gang viewed itself as a totalitarian nationalist movement in the German mould. Suppressed as a terrorist group during the war, the reviewer notes, in the postwar era, one of its leaders,
Yitzhak Shamir rose to become
Prime Minister of Israel, and the former Irgun militant,
Menachem Begin, on becoming prime minister, honoured the gang's founder,
Avraham Stern by having a postage stamp with his portrait printed.
Positive reviews Upon its initial publication the book received a positive review in
The Times, with
Edward Mortimer describing it as "crisp and carefully documented". An anonymous
Merip reviewer, himself a refugee from the
Holocaust, called the book extremely important, and "singular" in outlining an argument that Zionism with its intention of ensuring the survival of Jews interacted
symbiotically with antisemites and movements rooted in extreme hatred of Jews. Brenner drew on ample documentation whose contents were known, but existed only in obscure journals and books that were otherwise difficult to access. He was nonetheless critical of Brenner's "hectoring second-guessing of nearly every move made by the Jewish leadership during the fascist and Nazi era", on the grounds that not many options existed in that phase of Jewish history. There was, he concludes, no need for "sledge-hammer moralizing" for "(w)e don't need it. The evidence compiled in this book speaks quite eloquently for itself." Writing for the
Journal of Palestine Studies,
Hilton Obenzinger prefaced his remarks by noting from personal experience the atmosphere of hostility that surrounded any attempt to address the Palestinian issue in public: rational debate quickly broke down into a "screaming bedlam". Reading the book, he opines, will shake the moral credibility of Zionist claims to be defenders of the Jews. For Obenzinger Brenner's meticulous documentation expressed an intention to disarm criticism of a thesis that would be considered controversial, and ward off the "barrage of abuse" its publication would inevitably excite.
Gilbert Achcar, surveying the literature on the period of interaction between Zionists and Germany, argues that both movements deeply disliked each other, each striving to use the other for their respective purposes, which crossed over in a common interest in removing Jews from Germany. While referring the reader to Brenner's work, which he appraises as a "vigorous indictment", he draws attention to
Francis R. Nicosia's critique of Brenner's study.
Negative reviews C.C. Aronsfeld, of the
Institute of Jewish Affairs in a review published in the journal
International Affairs, criticized the book concluding that "Brenner has produced a party political tract that unhinges the balance of history by ignoring too many difficulties, especially psychological. For once Stalinists will be pleased with the work of a Trotskyist." In his review for
The New Republic of
Edwin Black's
The Transfer Agreement,
Eric Breindel accused Brenner of defaming Zionism, of misinterpreting the single Stern gang proposal, and also added that the
Institute for Historical Review, which asserted that the
Holocaust was a hoax, was promoting Brenner's work. Brenner duly replied but The New Republic refused to publish his letter.
Alexander Cockburn, writing in defense of Brenner, stated that Breindel's insinuation that Brenner and the Institute for Historical Review were in sympathy flew in the face of the fact that Brenner acknowledged the slaughter of the
Shoah and had publicly encouraged people to bust up meetings by that institute.
Bryan Cheyette reviewed it for the journal
Patterns of Prejudice. He writes that the book was a "crude ...pseudo-scholarly" piece of left-wing
revisionism, and classified it as an example of a trend towards "pathological anti-Zionism" that arose in the wake of the
UN declaration (1975) equating racism and Zionism, which moreover Brenner indicts for failing to mobilize the working classes against antisemitism. Because Brenner does not discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict he is "fictionalizing Zionism". After listing and disagreeing with Brenner's estimations of several historical figures, Cheyette concludes by deploring in the strongest terms the fact that the book was distributed by a respectable British publisher. In a review for
Fathom magazine, Paul Bogdanor, author of
Kasztner's Crime, describes the book as "an antisemitic hoax". On Lehi's offer to Nazi Germany, Bogdanor argues that Stern believed at the time that Hitler only wanted to deport Jews to Madagascar, not to murder them. During the Holocaust some groups and individuals, like
the Working Group in Slovakia and
Joel Brand, tried to bribe Nazi officials to stop or slow down the Holocaust. Bogdanor argues that the Nazis never intended to actually stop their genocide, and that had Brand 'succeeded',
"precious time would have been squandered in doomed negotiations with the Nazis while the deportations continued, and nothing would have remained of Hungary’s Jewish population by the end of July 1944." In short, he concludes that Brenner falsified history and produced
"hideous libel".
Criticism of Brenner from the left Socialist writer Gerry Ben-Noah wrote a critical review for the Trotskyist ''
Workers' Liberty''. Ben-Noah argues that Brenner "creates a fantasy world in which the Zionists did wish for and expect the Holocaust, and in which the most fanatical Jewish nationalists were in reality, ardent anti-semites". Highly critical of the argument that "Zionists saw anti-semites as nationalists like themselves with a common objective in the removal of Jews from Europe", Ben-Noah asks rhetorically, "Where does one begin to review work like this?" ==Ken Livingstone controversy==