By Angelo Giuliano
The history of the Jewish people in the 20th and 21st centuries is not only one of unimaginable suffering but also one of repeated betrayal from within. At every decisive moment, a small class of Zionist elites—wealthy financiers, political operatives, and organizational leaders—placed the long-term project of building and defending a Jewish state above the immediate survival and well-being of the Jewish masses. Ordinary Jews were treated as expendable instruments: demographic material to populate Palestine, bargaining chips in geopolitical games, or simply left to their fate when rescue conflicted with strategic goals. This pattern did not end in 1948. It continues today in the indifference or active defense of Gaza's devastation and in the protection of corrupt networks tied to figures like Jeffrey Epstein. The time has come for ordinary Jews to stop shielding these elites and recognize them for what they have been: the greatest internal enemies the Jewish people have faced.
The Holocaust: Elites Escaped, Masses Perished
During the Nazi genocide, the contrast between the fate of the Jewish elites and the Jewish masses could not have been starker. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and the other death camps claimed over one million Jewish lives at Auschwitz alone—overwhelmingly ordinary people: shopkeepers, tailors, teachers, laborers, mothers, fathers, and children who had no influential friends, no foreign bank accounts, no diplomatic passports. The ultra-wealthy bankers, industrialists, and high-level Zionist functionaries almost never ended up on those trains. With connections, money, and advance warning, they secured exit visas, passage to Palestine, safe havens in neutral countries, or refuge in the United States long before the borders slammed shut. The masses had no such doors. They were the ones herded into ghettos, starved, deported, and gassed while the elites who claimed to represent them were already safe. This was not a mere coincidence; it was the predictable outcome of a hierarchy that always valued its own survival above collective solidarity.
Blocking Rescue: Prioritizing Palestine Over Lives
In the 1930s and 1940s, some of the most influential American Jewish leaders—deeply committed Zionists—actively worked against large-scale rescue of European Jews into the United States. Their reasoning was brutally clear: mass immigration to America would scatter the Jewish population and weaken the demographic base needed for the future state in Palestine. Better to keep the pressure on for Palestine, even if it meant fewer Jews survived the war. They lobbied Washington against raising immigration quotas, against admitting more refugees on temporary visas, against chartering extra ships. Organizations tied to the Zionist mainstream often downplayed or opposed emergency rescue proposals that did not serve the Palestine project. The result was catastrophic: thousands who might have reached safety perished because the priority was land, not lives. This was not passive negligence. It was a deliberate policy by elites who saw the masses as means to an end.
Haavara Agreement: Collaboration with the Nazis for Strategic Gain
Perhaps the most glaring example of elite betrayal came in August 1933 with the Haavara Agreement. Zionist organizations signed a formal economic pact with Hitler's regime, allowing roughly 60,000 German Jews—primarily those who could transfer significant capital—to emigrate to Palestine with a portion of their assets converted into German goods. In exchange, the Zionists helped break the international Jewish boycott of Nazi Germany, providing an early economic lifeline to the regime at the very moment world Jewry was trying to strangle it financially. This was not a humanitarian rescue in the pure sense; it was a calculated trade-off. The elites secured settlers and capital for their state-building enterprise while undermining the unified Jewish resistance to Nazism. For the broader Jewish people, it was a stab in the back dressed up as pragmatism.
Today's Echoes: Gaza, Epstein, and the Weaponization of "Antisemitism"
The same dynamic repeats in our time. In Gaza, thousands of Jews courageously protest through groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, declaring "Not in our name" and facing arrest to demand an end to the violence. Yet the majority of the community remains silent or defensive, conditioned to view any fundamental criticism of Israeli policy as dangerous. Meanwhile, networks linked to Zionist-connected elites—exemplified by Jeffrey Epstein's documented ties to figures such as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak—are minimized or excused. The elites protect their own, just as they always have.
The most effective tool keeping ordinary Jews in line is the cynical overuse of the "antisemitism" accusation. Genuine antisemitism exists and must be fought, but today the label is deployed almost reflexively against anyone who questions the Zionist project itself—whether the Gaza campaign, settlement expansion, or elite corruption. Real, violent antisemitism remains extremely marginal in most Western societies. The exaggerated charge serves one purpose: to demonize dissent, divide the community, and prevent the masses from uniting against those who have historically exploited them.
The Verdict of History
If ordinary Jews continue to stay silent or defensive about Gaza's horrors, about Epstein-linked scandals, and about the century-long record of elite betrayal, history will not be kind. It will record that the Jewish masses, once again, allowed themselves to be led—and sacrificed—by the very class that has always put power, ideology, and the state above human lives. The Zionist project, including its uncompromising defense of Israel at whatever cost, was constructed on this foundation of internal betrayal. No more excuses. No more hiding behind fear. The elites were never protectors; they were users. Ordinary Jews must finally reject them, speak without apology, and demand accountability—or history will conclude that the greatest enemies of the Jewish people were never only external. They were inside the gates all along.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Angelo Giuliano:
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