Zionism did come first, however, and Nazism was partly an emulation of it and partly a "pre-emptive" response against it.

Under Zionism (or Nazism,) a state would be "redeemed" through violent purification, and new Jewish-only (or German-only) "settlements" would be created through ethnic-cleansing - in Palestine and all the way to the Tigris-Euphrates (or Poland and all the way to the Ural Mountains).

The new state would be a highly egalitarian, worker-friendly, or "socialist" democracy, but it would reject the internationalism that is normally essential to socialist doctrine: the blessings of socialism and democracy would be neatly reserved for one distinct ethnicity, in an officially ethnic-supremacist land, wherein the special ethnic rights of the favored nationality would supercede the human rights of less favored groups. The new state would be a democratic "National Socialism."

The national socialism, which was and remains the Zionist goal, is fundamentally identical to the national socialism we know as Nazism. Zionism is Jewish national socialism, just as Nazism was German national socialism.

Both Nazism and Zionism are based on a fancifully mythic interpretation of history and nationality - one producing a "Master Race," the other producing a "Chosen People" or "Sons of the Covenant" (B'nai B'rith). Both latched onto a simplistic, ancient religious symbol - the swastika and star of David - as if to assume from it some special authority. In both cases, the adopted symbol actually has very little to do with the ethnic group it supposedly represents, and nothing to do with the violent racial or ethnic superiority claimed by those who use it as a banner of ethnic conquest and ethnic-cleansing. (Keep in mind that the Magen David has little to do with ancient Israel and nothing to do with the Eastern Europeans who converted to Judaism several centuries ago.)

In both cases, Zionism and Nazism, the ethno-centric tribal chauvinism and racism commonly found in Eastern Europe was transferred to and adopted by otherwise-modern elements of a broader group - "the Germans" and "the Jews" - and that Eastern European racist ideology would displace what was civilized and decent in the larger groups.

The main difference is, whereas Germans adopted an Eastern European tribal ideology, in the case of Zionism, a racist Eastern European group (Ashkenazim) physically migrated, with their tribal ideology, to Palestine, a totally MYTHIC "promised land," to which they had no hereditary or cultural ties, and found success by imposing their racism on innocent, unarmed, helpless, and non-racist people. (A few mythic references to the Holy Land and its history do NOT constitute a cultural tie.)

Both Nazi Germany and Zionist Israel would build military power, secretly violating international law by manufacturing weapons - including NUCLEAR weapons - which they were not supposed to have, and both would conduct illegal espionage to steal materials they could not otherwise obtain.

Comparing Nazi Germany to IRAQ, on the other hand, is fanciful nonsense.

Neither Saddam Hussein nor Islam espouse any philosophy of ethnic superiority or supremacy, as Zionism does quite explicitly.

If we avoid comparing the credibility of their pretexts, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait CAN be compared with Nazi Germany's taking the Sudetenland - and then it can be compared with every invasion that has ever occurred.

In fact, the current pretexts for invading Iraq give it an equivalence with 1940 Poland, rather than Germany; and the Warsaw Ghetto is quite equivalent to the post-'67 Zionist Israeli occupied parts of Palestine.

The Zionist ethnic conquest of Palestine can be closely compared with the Nazi drive for "lebensraum" in Poland, through the importation of a desired ethnicity (German or "Aryan") at the expense of the indigenous people. And Israel's invasion of Lebanon, in 1982, was primarily a campaign of extermination against Palestinian civilians and national leadership (death toll estimates range between about 19,000 and 30,000), much like the extermination campaigns run by the Nazis in conquered European states.

In both cases, Nazi Germany and Zionist Israel, the official doctrine of ethnic-supremacy would create eternal conflict with all neighboring countries, and much of the world, until such time as the neighbors were totally crushed and dominated and the unwanted ethnicities and religions wiped out or driven far, far away.

In both cases, much of the world would stand by, trying to profit as much as possible from the early "success" of a highly unified and officially racist doctrine, as it massacred tens of thousands of less favored ethnic types - until the danger got way too far out of hand and nuclear combat became inevitable.

Today, he has moderated his stance and merely wants to "transfer" many hundreds of thousands of Israeli Arabs - inevitably by force - to the scraps of remaining land that will be labelled Palestine after Israel has annexed the major illegal settlement blocks. If your name's not on the list, you're not staying in.

His model is Cyprus in the 1970s, where the mixed Turkish and Greek populations were separated out at gunpoint. "The final result was better," he sighs. "Minorities are the biggest problem in the world." He would like to begin these racist expulsions with a simple, swift move: executing Israeli Arab members of the Knesset. Since they have spoken to the democratically elected Palestinian leadership, they are "traitors", Lieberman argues.

His second issue has been an attempt to streamline and centralise power into the hands of one Strong Man. Lieberman grew up in the Soviet Union. His support base is overwhelmingly among the one million Jews who emigrated to Israel after the fall of Communism. Much as they despised Soviet anti-Semitism, many have imbibed Soviet habits of mind and do not see why faffing about with coalitions and supreme courts should be allowed to get in the way of the Great Leader vanquishing the Great Enemy.

It is important to stress that Ehud Olmert, the Prime Minister, says he rejects Lieberman's views, and will not carry out his policies. But he has placed Lieberman in charge of the largest single issue in Israeli politics - how to respond to Iran's imminent nuclear bomb. We already know his views on this: Lieberman was calling for bombing of Iran as long ago as 2001, and says Israel is "on the frontline of the clash of religions".

The silence that has greeted Lieberman's appointment is a bleak sign of how far Israel has drifted to the right. In the 1980s, a fascist called Rabbi Meir Kahane emerged calling for a Lieberman-style "pure Jewish state" that was "cleansed of Arab contaminants" and "stripped of liberal democratic illusions". He was execrated by everyone and banned by the Supreme Court from sitting in the Knesset even as a fringe member. Yet today, only a handful of heroic Israelis have spoken out at the appointment of Lieberman to the deputy premiership. One Labour cabinet minister - one - resigned, saying it would be a betrayal of everything the Jews have learned to sit alongside "a racist".

It is revealing that ethnic cleansing would re-emerge as a mainstream issue in Israel politics now, as the country undergoes a national nervous breakdown. This summer, in the sands of Lebanon, Israel effectively lost a war for the first time. (In his testimony before a Knesset committee last month, Olmert was reduced to defiantly bragging, "Half of Lebanon was destroyed - is that a loss?"). The country's political class is on life support just as surely as Ariel Sharon, with the President facing rape charges and Olmert facing a battery of corruption allegations.

In the midst of all this, a national taboo has melted away. Anybody who studies the history with open eyes can now see that ethnic cleansing of Palestine's indigenous population was Israel's original sin, a prerequisite for the state to come into existence. Today the Israeli people feel their existence is threatened once more, so they are returning in their minds - via Lieberman - to those birth crimes in the search for solutions.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding father, wrote in 1937, "I support compulsory transfer. I do not see in it anything immoral ... The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war." The brave Israeli historian Ilan Pappe's new book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, documents in detail how Ben Gurion's plan was carried out, village by village, town by town, in 1948. The Jewish soldiers who carried out this crime were often still emaciated from the Nazi concentration camps, trying desperately to convince themselves that these totally innocent Arab peasants were somehow akin to Nazis - that Adolf Hitler was hiding in Ramallah, or Bethlehem, or Nablus.

Lieberman's argument is, in essence, that the ethnic cleansing of 1948 did not go far enough. Yes, 800,000 were driven out - but almost as many were left behind, a "fifth column" within Israel, who must now be dealt with.

The best symbol of how Israeli thinking has cracked and reverted to an earlier, base impulse is the historian Benny Morris, who I met up with last time he was in London. In the 1980s, Morris became a hero to the Israeli and international left because he was the first man brave enough to pore into the declassified Israeli military archives from the 1940s and show how Israel's founders carried out the expulsion of the Palestinians.

But then at the height of the second intifada, he gave an interview in which he said he had been misunderstood all these years. All this time he was talking about ethnic cleansing, he didn't mean it was a bad thing. No - "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands," he said. It would have been "much better" if they had driven out all the Arabs, he declared.

The ugliest strains in Israeli political thought are rising to the surface. There have always been some anti-democratic forces in the country - Sharon considered mounting a military coup in 1967, for example. There have always been ethnic cleansers, from Ben Gurion to the politicians who today authorise the blowing up of "unpermitted" Arab (never Jewish) houses in East Jerusalem, a process I have witnessed myself.

But Avigdor Lieberman is a logo for all this at its most extreme, and today he is only a few bullets away from the Premiership. For the sake of the Palestinians, for the sake of Israel itself, now is the time for the world to jolt Israel, just as we jolted Austria back from its dark dance with the far right.

j.hari@independent.co.uk

"It is the Promised Land of God and we can properly carry our religious duties over there. Here it is difficult to practice Judaism properly, so far away," Sela told Reuters in the Mizo capital, Aizawl.

Sela is one of 218 Bnei Menashe, or the "Children of Menashe," due to emigrate in November. She will join 1,000 of her community already in Israel, among them nine of her own children.

JEWISH? WELL, MAYBE

The tale of how the community's ancestors supposedly came to this thin slice of land sandwiched between Bangladesh and Myanmar is grand in its sweep of history, but short on scientific support.

Exiled from ancient Israel by the Assyrian empire around 730 BC, a tribe is forced east and travels through
Afghanistan and China before settling in what is now India's northeast.

Their language, history and traditions forgotten, they now look like their Mongoloid neighbors, speak a Tibeto-Burmese language, rear pigs and eat pork.

What's left is a name -- Manasseh, Menasia or Manmase, an ancestor whose spirit the community invokes to ward off evil.

In 1950, a holy man from a remote village in Mizoram said the Holy Spirit had appeared to him in a vision, to explain that the "children of Manasseh" were in fact the children of Menashe, a forefather of the Israelite tribe of Menashe.

The tribe was one of the biblical "Twelve Tribes of Israel," ten of which disappeared after the Assyrian invasion.

Gradually his ideas took hold among a people converted to Christianity a few decades before. Today, nearly 7,000 Bnei Menashe live in Mizoram and neighboring Manipur, hoping for their chance to join the rest of the community in Israel.

Zaithanchhungi, a Christian woman who has researched and defended the Bnei Menashe claims, says that many of their customs are very similar to those of the ancient Jews.

Some of the practices involved in animal sacrifice were similar to ancient Hebrew traditions, while an ancient song among one tribe talked of "crossing the Red Sea," with enemies in chariots at their heels, she said.

The search for conclusive proof of these claims goes on.

Calcutta's forensic science laboratory found no trace of a typical Jewish genes in the male Y chromosomes of the Kuki, Chin and Mizo people who inhabit the area, but found some evidence of a possible, but diluted, maternal link to the Near East.

Israel's Technion institute is also carrying out research but said it was too early to comment on results.

MIRACLE WORKER

Shavei Israel, a Jerusalem-based organization which has been locating descendents of the lost tribes of Israel and bringing them home, says the Bnei Menashe's return is a miracle.

"Next month (the group) will at last return to Zion. They will return to the land of their forefathers -- the place from which their ancestors had been exiled over 27 centuries ago. This is a miracle of biblical and historic proportions," Shavei Israel's chairman, Michael Freund, said in Jerusalem.

"This is the first time they will be coming here as Jews fully recognised as such by the Israeli rabbinate and the Israeli government," he added.

The 218 newcomers will move to the northern Israeli towns of Karmiel and Upper Nazareth -- areas which were hard hit by rockets fired by the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah this summer during a 34-day conflict with Israel.

In the past, Bnei Menashe members had come to Israel in small groups on tourist visas and converted to Judaism in a deal reached by Jewish supporters and the country's interior ministry.

When the arrangement ended in 2003, Freund approached Israel's Sephardic Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar for help. In March 2005, Amar formally recognised the Bnei Menashe as descendants of the Jewish people and, in September 2005, the 218 were converted.

But more conversions are unlikely to follow any time soon as the Israeli government banned such mass conversions in India following complaints by Indian authorities.

"Absolutely nothing will be done in the future to infringe upon the sovereignty of the Indian government, nor will anything be done that could cause any type of disruption or issue between India and Israel -- that is in no one's interests," an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman told Reuters.

India said it had no problem with genuine Jews leaving for Israel, and Freund said he was confident the remaining 7,000 Bnei Menashe would be brought there.

"We are committed to finding a solution," he said.

"And a good place to start is working together to isolate the country," he said, branding a nuclear-armed Iran as an "incredibly destabilizing, and obviously very threatening to our strong ally," Israel.

Olmert said that he had a "deep conversation" with Bush and that the two leaders had "complete understanding over their objectives" regarding Iran.

Backed by the United States, Israel has said sanctions are necessary following Tehran's failure to suspend uranium enrichment.

The president, who used the meeting with Olmert to divert attention from the situation in Iraq and his Republican Party's humiliating defeat in last week's midterm elections, also rejected direct talks with Tehran unless it freezes its nuclear plans.

"If the Iranians want to have a dialogue with us, we have shown them the way forward, that is, for them to verifiably suspend their enrichment activities," Bush told reporters at the White House.

Speaking in Hebrew after the meeting, Olmert said that "our position is that we must do everything in our power to make sure the Iranians do not cross a technological threshold that would allow them to develop nuclear weapons."

Israel -- widely considered the Middle East's sole, if undeclared, nuclear weapons power -- considers Iran its chief threat, pointing to calls from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.

After the meeting Olmert also said that Israeli and US officials discussed ways to kick start the stalled Middle East peace process.

"The Americans and us have been exchanging ideas that could allow positive developments regarding future negotiations between us and the Palestinians," Olmert told reporters.

That "intensive dialogue ... includes exchanging ideas and thoughts on ways to promote conditions that would allow negotiations with the Palestinians," he said.

Olmert said he remained attached to the internationaly-backed "roadmap to peace" based on Bush's vision of a Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel.

Earlier on US television, Olmert said he hoped diplomacy would dissuade Tehran from pursuing its nuclear program.

"We will not tolerate the possession of nuclear weapons by Iran," he told NBC television.

Asked whether his country was considering a preemptive strike on Tehran's nuclear facilities, Olmert answered: "I hope we don't have to reach that stage."

But the Israel leader said his first choice is a negotiated resolution.

"Every compromise that will stop Iran from acquiring nuclear capabilities, which will be acceptable to President Bush, would be acceptable to me."

Asked what he believed to be the timeline for Iran developing possible nuclear weapons, Olmert responded, "it's a matter of, unfortunately, shorter time than most people think."

"I don't want to measure it in days or weeks, but it's quite close," he said.

Olmert added that he was not seeking Washington's protection from Tehran.

"I am not coming to the United States to ask America to save Israel," he said, saying his country had drawn the lessons of the Holocaust and World War II.

The Israeli leader added: "I am not looking for wars or confrontations. I am looking for the outcome."

He added that, in his view, the only result that matters is "whether it will succeed to stop Iran from possessing nuclear weapons."

On Sunday, Olmert reiterated Israel's position that Iran should be intimidated into halting its nuclear programme.

"Iran will not agree to make compromises if it is not afraid of the options it would face in the absence of a compromise," Olmert told reporters.

He hinted that "Israel has options which I am not ready to specify" regarding Iran's nuclear programme.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Monday that Washington no longer sought direct contacts with Iran to discuss ways to ease unrest in neighboring Iraq, saying that channel of communication "didn't work out."

"We went through a period where there was an offer of that channel of communications," McCormack said.

"It didn't work out for a variety of different reasons," he said.

The Mayor of Beit Hanoun, Muhammad Nazek Al-Kafarneh, said during a press conference he held after the recent massacre, that the Israeli soldiers participating in the so-called "Autumn Clouds" operation in the city used the ocassion to steal Palestinian property: money, gold, cellphones and other valuables.

- The total value of things stolen from private persons and households amounts to over 200,000 dollars.

The mayor also enumerated the loss and damages which the Israeli terrorists caused in the city of Beit Hanoun:

- The loss due to damages to water equipment is 350,000 dollars.
- The loss due to damages to the infrastructure for processing wasted water is 450,000 dollars.
- The loss due to damage and destruction of Palestinian houses amounts to 2,5 million dollars.
- The loss due to damages to road infrastructure amounts to 3,5 million dollars.
- The loss due to damages to the public gardens and the children gardens amounts to 200,000 dollars.
- The loss and the damages of the electricity net are 2,5 million dollars.
- The losses to the economy of the city amounts to one million dollars.
- The loss due to damages to the communication net amounts to 1,5 million dollars.
- The loss due to damages to public property amounts to 1,5 million dollar.

The mayor said that the Israeli terrorists destroyed 25 public facilities of the city, and other 25 facilities were damaged partially. He gives the amount lost due to these damages as half a million dollars.

Further, mayor Al-Kafarneh said that 40 shops were destroyed completely; the loss due to the destruction of these shops is 200.000 dollars.

The losses of the city in the sectors of agriculture and health are not counted among the losses given above.

Salim Abu al-Haija and Mahmud Abu Hassan were killed following a raid in the village of Yamun near West Bank's northern town of Jenin last Wednesday.

B'Tselem said that according to witnesses the two men, wanted by the Israeli security forces, managed to escape the initial encounter with the soldiers and took refuge in a nearby house.

Witnesses "saw soldiers enter a side room, where Abu al-Haija was lying and after a minute or two, heard gunfire. Then, two of the witnesses saw one of the soldiers fire at Abu Hassan."

"The testimonies raise a grave concern that Salim Abu al-Haija and Mahmud Abu Hassan were executed by the soldiers, while they were unarmed, wounded, and posed no risk to the soldiers," it said.

In a statement Tuesday, the army said that "following the exchanges of fire, the force called residents of a structure, in which additional armed gunmen were suspected of staying, to leave it."

The Israeli unit then entered the building "only after the commander of the ... force made sure, by asking the local Palestinians, that there were no other people inside it."

"During the searching, the force identified several suspicious figures inside the structure and fired at them," it said.

"It is important to stress that the local Palestinians who were asked by the force whether all of the structure's resident have left it, not only concealed the fact that the gunmen were inside, but told the force that the structure was totally vacant," it said.

B'Tselem called for the military police to immediately open an investigation into the incident.