I have spent the last few weeks, along with Jonathan Hoffman, ‘fact-checking’, ‘State of Terror’ by Tom Suarez. This meant retracing some of the authors steps, accessing his source files and reading several key texts in his autobiography.
The book is all about how ‘Zionist terrorism’ was behind everything, both before and after 1948, and how manipulative monster Jews stole the land from Arabs, ‘hijacked’ Judaism, ‘kidnapped’ Jewish orphans and ‘coerced’ Displaced Persons. At one point, Suarez implies that were it not for Zionists, World War Two may not have happened. The book is dripping with antisemitism.
Suarez had claimed the book was based on diligent research. Inside the book is a daunting bibliography, 680 end notes, and lists of hundreds of files from the National (British) Archives at Kew. It allowed for Publishers Weekly to claim the book was the product of ‘meticulous research’.
Today we published the findings in our report. I have read some badly researched pieces of work, NEVER have I read anything that so blatantly distorts the source material. We found every type of error imaginable. As you turn each page of the book, there is yet another distortion, yet another lie.
Suarez isn’t a historian, so there are the basic mistakes you would expect from a rabid Jew hater who is just grabbing at archive files, looking for extracts he can use against Zionism. For example, there is no attempt to provide context. And there is an absolute over-dependence on the few files that contain details of Zionist violence.
These are errors of commission. But then there are errors of omission. Arab violence is entirely overlooked. At one point, Suarez even informs the reader that the British placed Haifa under a curfew, implying it was to stop another Irgun attack (in 1938). Yet the document cited, explicitly states the curfew was to stop Arab retaliation. I found that near the beginning of my research. At the time, it seemed like a major error, but in the wider context of what I found later, it seems like a minor issue now. That is how bad the book is.
The report needs to be read for the scale of the problem to be digested properly. Suarez messes up the first quote and the errors run throughout the book. The report is over 20,000 words. Even then, we stopped because we had run out of time, with dozens of suspect claims still left unchecked.
There is a difference between having an opinion and deliberate distortion of the facts. What Suarez has done is academically unforgivable. On top of this, the writing is racist. The target of the racism is the Jews, which means antisemitic is a fair description of the work.
The authors hatred of Jews runs through the book. Like blood in an animal, the book has no life without it. The dark antisemitic undercurrent is truly sickening. Suarez paints every Jew who ever landed in British Palestine as a monster.
The book was called a ‘tour de force’ by Ilan Pappe. Given Pappe thinks it is okay to lie for his cause, perhaps that should be no surprise. Suarez has just finished a tour of Scotland. Soon he is taking this vile antisemitic work on a tour of the United States.
Here is one example. It is the morning after resolution 181. Jews are partying in the street. Suarez describes it like this:
‘What Cunningham described as “hysterical celebrations of victory” in the settlements following the passage of Resolution 181 were not about having won a Zionist state in more than half of Palestine. The celebrations were rather because 181 ‘was a preliminary step to a Jewish state in the fullest extent of its historical (biblical) bounds’ (Suarez, State of Terror, P236).
What Suarez is saying is clear. The Jewish party was not about Resolution 181, but about what the Jews would manage to take, that had not been given to them: ‘steal’ in other words. Notice too, Suarez is not talking about some Jews, about Zionist leaders, or just attacking Zionist policy. Suarez has swept the brush on every Jew, ‘hysterically celebrating’ victory. Suarez would have you believe that *all* the Jews on the street are Zealots, land thieves and desperate to ethnically cleanse the Arabs. A clearly racist (anti-Jewish) and therefore blatantly antisemitic claim. But did he make it up, or was it in the files?
CO 141/14284 Monthly Report for November. Front page. Part one Political. Image below, relevant text follows:
‘The gratification of the Yishuv was immediately manifested in public rejoicings in all Jewish centres: drinks were on the house in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Even the factions of extreme left and extreme right welcomed the outcome, as ensuring large scale immigration, the former viewing the establishment of a Jewish state by partition as a transition state to a bi-national Palestine, the latter as a preliminary step to a Jewish state in the fullest extent of its historical bounds.’
Suarez has use the very quote from this text (‘a preliminary step to a Jewish state in the fullest extent of its historical (biblical) bounds’) and clearly he has negated this entire piece, which suggests widespread rejoicing covering the entire political spectrum – even by those who favored a ‘bi-National’ state. Suarez extracts only the quote used to describe the ‘extreme right’, and then uses it to taint everyone.
How do you make mistakes like this, one after another, unless it is deliberate. This example, like the entire book, is an antisemitic fraud.
You can read more here, or download the full report.
