When Jews Praised Mussolini and Supported Nazis: Meet Israel’s First Fascists

• When Jews Praised Mussolini and Supported Nazis: Meet Israel’s First Fascists
  by Dan Tamir, https://www.haaretz.com/
  Some worrying components of Hebrew fascism are still evident in Israel’s right wing, 80 years on.
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  A mixture of repulsion and weird fascination was the reaction of many to the advertisement in the last election campaign in which Israel’s minister of justice modeled a vial of fictional perfume that bore a literally ideological label. It was a nifty idea, all in all, and the message was obvious: What her adversaries were smelling was not “fascism” but proper administration and a solid government. The clip, as we know, did not salvage Ayelet Shaked’s campaign: Her party, Hayamin Hehadash, did not cross the electoral threshold this past April. However, the ad did raise a number of questions of both historical and contemporary interest: What is the “smell” of fascism? Can it be “smelled” at all? Has there ever been fascism in Israel, and if so, is it on its way back?
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• Paper Breaks Taboo on Shamir, Nazi Link : Jerusalem Post Cites Stern Gang Past, Hits Stance on Peace Now
  FROM REUTERS, MARCH 7, 1989, https://www.latimes.com/
  JERUSALEM — Israel’s Jerusalem Post broke a national taboo today by writing of a 1941 link between Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Stern Gang guerrillas and Nazi Germany.
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  The episode, known to historians, is almost never mentioned … The respected English-language daily, which bitterly opposes Shamir, broke the silence in an editorial blasting “obscene attacks” by the premier and other right-wingers on the Peace Now movement’s contacts with Palestinians. Noting that Shamir said there would be “no KGB in Israel” to hunt down Peace Now activists, the Post commented:
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  “That might be reassuring, but for the disturbing memory (of the Stern Gang) . . . which, with the Final Solution already under way in all but name, sought out German cooperation in the setting up here of a Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis.”
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  The Stern Gang was an underground group of which Shamir was a leader. It tried to make an alliance with Nazi Germany in 1941 to oppose British rule in Palestine in exchange for the release of Jews from Nazi hands.
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  Mainstream Jewish leaders in Palestine condemned the idea of a Nazi alliance. They considered the Sternists fanatics and outcasts and were at that time raising troops for the Allies.
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  With the exception of a hostile statement by concentration camp survivors against Shamir when he first took power in 1983, the Israeli press virtually never mentions the episode.
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  Stern Gang memories caused controversy in January when British Foreign Office Minister William Waldegrave recalled Shamir’s role in the 1944 assassination of Lord Moyne, Britain’s minister-resident for the Middle East.
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