Love of the Land: Why Serge Klarsfeld is on a fool's errand

Why Serge Klarsfeld is on a fool's errand

Bataween
Point of No Return
11 February '10

You know that feeling of exasperation you get when some bumbling but well-meaning old relative tries to intervene in a family row, but only manages to make things worse? That was how I felt when I read news of Serge Klarsfeld's latest tour of the Arab world.

Under the auspices of the Aladdin project, sponsored by UNESCO, the French veteran Nazi hunter, whose father was deported to a death camp, has just concluded in Baghdad a series of talks on the Holocaust in Tunis, Cairo, Amman, Istanbul, Rabat, Jerusalem and Nazareth in northern Israel. His purpose? To fight Holocaust denial in the Arab world.

In itself, that is a perfectly laudable objective. We know that Holocaust denial has reached epidemic proportions in Arab and Muslim countries. Only through Holocaust education might a future Holocaust be prevented. And Arabs who understand the full extent of the mass murder by industrialised methods of a third of the Jewish people might just begin to appreciate the need for a Jewish state.

Except that the 73-year-old Klarsfeld went further, and set up a false moral equivalence between Jewish suffering under the Nazis and Muslim suffering at the hands of the Israelis. In Baghdad on Monday he urged Muslims and Jews 'to learn about their mutual suffering as a way to bring them closer.'

"We must spread knowledge about works showing the common ties between Jews and Muslims, because Muslims also suffered from colonialism and humiliation...I understand that those who have lived under English and French colonialism would also want to speak of their suffering and of those who suffer Israel's presence on what they consider their land.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Why Serge Klarsfeld is on a fool's errand

Love of the Land: AFP Whitewashes Ahmadinejad's Holocaust Denial

AFP Whitewashes Ahmadinejad's Holocaust Denial

TS
CAMERA/Snapshots
26 January '10

In an article today, Agence France Presse whitewashes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial, stating:

Ahmadinejad has earned the wrath of Israel and Western powers for repeatedly refusing to acknowledge the scale of the Holocaust . . . ("Iran hails Mauritania's decision to cut ties with Israel," emphasis added)

Ahmadinejad has not merely questioned the "scale" of the Holocaust. Rather, the Iranian president has repeatedly declared the World War II genocide of the Jews a "myth." Consider the following articles from AFP's very own archives:

Ahmedinejad [sic] used the Quds Day rally in Tehran, an annual display of solidarity with the Palestinians, to once again lay into arch-foe Israel.
"The very existence of this regime is an insult to the dignity of the people. They (Western powers) launched the myth of the Holocaust. They lied, they put on a shoe and then they support the Jews," he said. . . ("US slams Iran leader's 'hateful' remarks on Holocaust," Sept. 18, 2009)

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: AFP Whitewashes Ahmadinejad's Holocaust Denial

Love of the Land: BBC slams “racist” Jewish settlers on West Bank while continuing to censor Arab and Palestinian anti-Semitism

BBC slams “racist” Jewish settlers on West Bank while continuing to censor Arab and Palestinian anti-Semitism

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
22 January '10

Posted before Shabbat

Coming hard on the heels of this week’s appalling Panorama documentary on Jerusalem (see last post but one), the BBC is now giving major prominence to a story about the alleged desecration of a Palestinian cemetery in the West Bank by a group of racist Jewish pilgrims.

The story stands in sharp and striking contrast with the policy of de facto censorship operated by the BBC on almost all instances of the deep-seated anti-Semitism that is a central feature of the political culture in the Palestinian territories, in Arab countries and in the wider Muslim world.

The incident in question is said to have taken place in the northern West Bank village of Awarta after a group of Jewish pilgrims were taken to nearby Jewish tombs by a settler group. Opening the piece on its website, the BBC, which is the world’s most powerful English language media outlet, said:

“Damaged graves and racist graffiti have been found in the Palestinian village of Awarta in the northern West Bank after a Jewish group visited the area.”

Now, from a journalistic point of view this is certainly a reasonable story to cover since it follows the arrest of 10 Israeli settlers earlier this week in connection with the arson attack on a mosque in the village of Yasuf in December, and the threats by some maverick settlers to respond to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s settlement freeze with attacks on Palestinians.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: BBC slams “racist” Jewish settlers on West Bank while continuing to censor Arab and Palestinian anti-Semitism

Israel Matzav: Spanish newspaper calls David Irving 'expert' on WWII

Spanish newspaper calls David Irving 'expert' on WWII

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo is including convicted Holocaust denier David Irving (pictured) among its 'experts' in a series of interviews marking the 70th anniversary of World War II's outbreak. The interview is scheduled to appear in Saturday's editions of the paper, one day after an interview with Yad Vashem director Avner Shalev.

El Mundo is the second largest daily newspaper in Spain, with a print circulation of more than 330,000.

In a letter responding to the expected appearance of the interview with David Irving, Israel's ambassador to Spain, Raphael Schutz, correctly described the cultural problem with our post-modern society. The letter appeared in El Mundo on Wednesday.

Read All at :

Israel Matzav: Spanish newspaper calls David Irving 'expert' on WWII

Love of the Land: Top Spanish newspaper to run “expert” interview with Holocaust denier David Irving in WWII anniversary week

Top Spanish newspaper to run “expert” interview with Holocaust denier David Irving in WWII anniversary week

Robin Shepherd
Think Tank Blog
03 September 09

David Irving, Europe’s most prominent Holocaust denier, is fond of arguing that time is on his side. “All that interests me now,” he said on his website in August, “is the question, whose books will scholars be using in a hundred years’ time — mine, or those of the conformist historians like Sir Ian Kershaw and Sir Martin Gilbert?”

But why wait a hundred years? On Saturday this week, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo is set to run an interview with Irving as part of a series of stories with “experts” for the 70th anniversray of the start of World War II. Irving, always keen to portray himself as a kind of hunted hero, gleefully reports on the controversy that the article has aroused in Israel with a headline in his online newsletter saying: “Israel’s Ambassador to Spain pleads wth Madrid’s leading daily newspaper El Mundo not to publish their major interview with British Historian David Irving.” (My italics)

It is only a matter of weeks since Sweden’s top selling newspaper Aftonbladet published a two-page spread of its own alleging that American Jews and Israeli soldiers were involved in a conspiracy to harvest the bodily organs of Palestinian children and sell them on the international black market. Is there something in the air?

I have said before that, for those who follow such matters, there is always a danger of getting too close to one’s subject. But it certainly seems that the boundaries of acceptable discourse about Israel and the Jews in Europe have widened considerably in recent months. Apartheid analogies now look routine. The attempt to compare Israel with Nazi Germany is heading in the same direction.

Events in Sweden and Spain may indicate that conspiracy theories, blood libels and Holocaust denial are on the verge of a resurgence of their own. It is too early to tell. But the general drift is surely cause for concern.

According to the Jerusalem Post, El Mundo plans to run the interview with Irving the day after an interview with Avner Shalev, the chairman of Yad Vashem. The timeline will not be coincidental. It is a standard technique in journalism to run opposing viewpoints on consecutive days in order to provide a rounded picture to readers. So, for readers of El Mundo, Friday’s edition will assert that the Holocaust did happen. Saturday’s will assert that it did not. Who knows, perhaps the truth lies somewhere in the middle?

Read All at :

Love of the Land: Top Spanish newspaper to run “expert” interview with Holocaust denier David Irving in WWII anniversary week

Israel Matzav: Merkel: No connection between Iran and Holocaust?

Merkel: No connection between Iran and Holocaust?

Coming from the Chancellor of the country that perpetrated the Holocaust at a press conference with the leader of the country that most embodies its survivors regarding the country that denies the Holocaust and threatens to produce another one, this statement is simply incredible.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in response to a question about the analogy being made between Iran and Nazism, "There is no comparison between the Holocaust and the Iranian nuclear program. Things have changed since then.

Read All at :

Israel Matzav: Merkel: No connection between Iran and Holocaust?

Israel Matzav: What Holocaust denial among 'Palestinians' and other Arabs means for peace prospects

What Holocaust denial among 'Palestinians' and other Arabs means for peace prospects

In Wednesday's Washington Post, Michael Gerson does a survey of the prevalence of Holocaust denial among the 'Palestinians' and in the Arab world generally, and then reaches a conclusion regarding the prospects for 'peace' that appears to be spot on.

The politics of conspiracy and victimhood makes it infinitely more difficult to confront the real sources of social, economic and political dysfunction in the broader Middle East.

Read All at :

Israel Matzav: What Holocaust denial among 'Palestinians' and other Arabs means for peace prospects