Deutscher, it would seem, never stopped to consider that European Jews could have still fled as refugees without becoming colonists. - Joseph Massad

What is it about the nature of Zionism, its racism, and its colonial policies that continues to escape the understanding of many European intellectuals on the left?

It was the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husayni, who provided the Israelis with their best propaganda linking the Palestinians with the Nazis and European anti-Semitism. Fleeing British persecution, the mufti ended up in Germany during the war years and attempted to obtain promises from the Germans that they would not support the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine. Documents that the Jewish Agency produced in 1946 purporting to show that the mufti had a role in the extermination of Jews did no such thing; the only thing these unsigned letters by the mufti showed was his opposition to Nazi Germany's and Romania's allowing Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

This is not to say, however, that the leaders of the US pro-Israel lobby do not regularly brag about their crucial influence on US policy in Congress and in the White House. That they have done regularly since the late 1970s.