Click here for the pdf from the Simon Wiesenthal Center
1. “I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and the birthplace of Jesus Christ peace be upon him, to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people…”
– Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at his UN General Assembly address, September 23, 2011. Speaking to the world, Abbas omitted any reference to the Jewish people’s connection to the Holy Land. No reference to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, nor King David, King Solomon, or Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. READ SOURCE…
2. “I would like to see accurate statistics of how many Israelis have been killed by the bombs thrown by Palestinians or with the rockets that were launched by them?…. we know that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were killed… neitherTurkey nor the Muslims in the region have exerted such cruelty on Israel… Israel is inexplicably cruel, against innocent Palestinians, hiding behind the Nazi Holocaust and seeking victimhood…. Everybody knows what Israel is about.”
– Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during CNN Interview with Fareed Zakaria, September 25, 2011. READ SOURCE…
3. “Everything that happens today in the world has to do with the Zionists… American Jews are behind the world economic crisis that has hit Greece also.”
– Zorba The Greek composer, Mikis Theodorakis, winner of the International Music Council-UNESCO International Music Prize, also told Greek TV that he was “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic,” February 15, 2011. READ SOURCE…
4. “I love Hitler…People like you would be dead.Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f****** gassed,”
– The renowned Christian Dior fashion designer John Galliano was fired and later convicted in a French court for his anti-Semitic rants screamed at Jews in a Paris bar. Galliano later apologized. READ SOURCE…
5. “I understand Hitler… He’s not what you would call a good guy, but yeah, I understand much about him and I sympathize with him a little bit. But come on, I’m not for the Second World War, and I’m not against Jews… I am of course, very much for Jews. No, not too much, because Israel is a pain in the ass… I’m very much for Speer. Albert Speer [Hitler’s Architect]… He was also maybe one of God’s best children… Okay, I’m a Nazi.”
– Director Lars Von Trier was thrown out of the Cannes Film Festival after this rant, May 18, 2011. He later apologized. READ SOURCE…
6. “[Jews] want that sucker of Syrian blood to remain and continue to prey and suck blood.They not only want their security, but also to enjoy the sight of Syrian blood being spilled…. Asking myself why Jewish support of Bashar [Assad] increased after they saw the rivers of Syrian blood this mass-murderer spilled in Syrian towns, an old image leapt to my mind, of Jews bleeding people and using their blood to prepare matzas. Logic does not accept this, but the facts prove it.”
– Syrian writer Osama Al-Malouhi, an opponent of President Bashar Assad, posted on an opposition website, October 26, 2011, The Middle East Media Research Institute. READ SOURCE…
7. “Not all the Jews in the world are evil….The ratio is 60-40. Sixty percent are evil to varying degrees, all the way to a level that words cannot describe, while 40 percent are not evil.”
– Tawfiq Okasha, a presidential candidate in post-Mubarak Egypt added that among the 40% of ‘non-evil’ Jews there is only one in a million who is blameless and that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is “one of those Jews who adhere to the Zionist ideology…one of the worst ideologies,” Al-Faraeen TV, October 31, 2011. READ SOURCE…
#6 and #7 originally reported in “Praise Arab Spring, Except for Anti-Semitism” by Jeffrey Goldberg. Bloomberg, November 28, 2011
8. “The source that finances and incites all these international organizations… especially in the Arab world… are led by a single, evil organization, known as Zionism. It is behind all these movements, all these civil wars, and all these evils… Jesus Christ healed the sick among the Jews… and resurrected their dead. [How did they repay him?] “They strived to crucify him until he died…”
“Do the people of the opposition [today]… belong to Christianity or to Islam? No. They are deeply rooted in Judaism and in Zionism… Any intelligent person who reads The Protocols of the Elders of Zion will see the extent of its influence on the politics of our region and the world.”
– George Saliba, Bishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Lebanon, Al-Dunya TV, July 24, 2011. The Middle East Media Research Institute. READ SOURCE…
9. “Oppose the moral blackmail of the so-called Holocaust! [“Arbeit macht Frei!”]Truth makes free!”
– Hermann Dierkes, leader of the Left Party in Duisburg, Germany, April 2011. Dierkes posted a flyer on the website with a swatiska morphing into a Star of David and called for a boycott of Israeli products, labelling Israel a “rogue state” and a “warmonger.” “Arbeit macht Frei!” is inscribed on the gates of Nazi concentration camps including Auschwitz and Dachau. READ SOURCE…
10. “The state of Israel is an illegal, genocidal place… to equate Judaism with the state of Israel is to equate Christianity with [rapper] Flavor Flav.”
– Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a speech to thousands of people, June 14, 2011, Baltimore, Maryland. READ SOURCE…
Engage 
December 14, 2011 at 2:17 pm
“Abbas omitted any reference to the Jewish people’s connection to the Holy Land.”
I protest! He mentioned Jesus Christ, did he? And the latter wasn’t a Palestinian as far as I know. At least not to start with.
December 15, 2011 at 6:13 pm
I think
a) ‘messages’ = ‘messengers’ i.e. prophets
b) the Quran does not have the key events of Abraham’s life; and the would-be sacrifice of Ishmael etc occur in the land of Canaan, rather Arabia.
I’m not sure it is antisemitism per se rather than simply Islamic tradition, since Abbas is a Muslim. It could be argued to be anti-Christian as much as anti-Jewish in its undermining of the Judeo-Christian historical tradition.
December 19, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Snoop: It is ironic that in bibical accounts, Jesus of Nazareth is taunted as the King of the Jews by the Roman troops holding him under arrest, yet the likes of the late Christopher Hitchens insisted on identifying him as a “Palestinian” because the Roman occupiers renamed the land of his birth about 100 years earlier in an act of vindictiveness.
December 20, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Ironic indeed Lynne, though I think you mean “100 years later” 🙂
January 3, 2012 at 7:34 pm
Yes, indeed, James, making Hitchens — he who decried lying about history — looking even more foolish.
December 14, 2011 at 3:18 pm
I deplore the levity of the response above. I am also very shocked by Mikis Theodorakis. Quite apart from the prejudice, what he says is just so ignorant. I am not Jewish and I think Israel’s settlement policy is wrong and the Netanyahu government a disaster. But I would like to see anti-semitism punishable by law. With stiff setences. Lars Von Trier and John Galliano should be behind bars – despite the latter’s “apology”.
RW Johnson
December 14, 2011 at 3:49 pm
I am a bit surprised about Hermann Dierkes’s comments, you might think that German politicians (of all people) would have learnt some sensitivity in this area?
Although from a brief scan on Google I can see that some “Anti-Zionists” seem to think he was being attacked, unjustifiably. No surprise there.
December 14, 2011 at 4:59 pm
He’s a member of an extreme-left party that’s nostalgic for the days of the Stasi. I think his standards are, shall we say, “different”.
December 14, 2011 at 9:27 pm
Erdogan’s comments are truly vile and unpleasant. Perhaps he should reflect on the Turkish government’s genocide of the Armenian people during WW1 before he makes such comments about Israel. However this is unlikely especially as the present day government denies that a genocide was committed against the Armenians. Turkey dismisses the evidence about the atrocities as mere allegations.
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html#acknowledged
December 15, 2011 at 7:22 am
soupyone – I was surprised by that one for the same reasons. I don’t quite understand the ‘arbeit macht frei’ bit, and I can’t seem to acces the link. I mean – I know it means ‘work makes you free’ – but – did he use that phrase and then also say ‘truth makes free’ in German? ‘Wahrheit macht frei’?
December 15, 2011 at 1:35 pm
No, Sarah, (from the linked source) he used (only) “Truth makes Free”. But the echo of “Work makes Free” is, of course, deliberate, especially after referring to “the so-called Holocaust”. Utterly despicable… but less and less surprising from some quarters. “The German Left Party is an amalgamation of former East German communists, disaffected former Social Democrats and western German Marxists.”
December 15, 2011 at 1:46 pm
The link worked for me, and I quote the relevant passage:
‘The flyer, which calls Israel a “rogue state” and a “warmonger” states: “Oppose the moral blackmail of the so-called Holocaust! Truth makes free!” This is a pun on the “Arbeit macht Frei!” sign which is located above the entrance gate to the Auschwitz concentration camp.’
Evidently, as you suspected, Sarah, it did say ‘Wahrheit macht frei’. There may or may not also be an allusion to John 8:32 (“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”) – part of that very nasty passage in which the Jews are told that they are offspring of the Devil (8:44).
December 15, 2011 at 6:15 pm
So closely associating the message of Auschwitz with the Gospel is obscene.
December 15, 2011 at 1:47 pm
The German text reads: „Tretet der moralischen Erpressung durch den sogenannten Holocaust entgegen! Wahrheit macht Frei!“
December 15, 2011 at 6:09 pm
If there is a pun there, and the close association with the Holocaust and such a similar sounding phrase suggests there is, that is inexcusably vicious, particularly from a German.
December 15, 2011 at 8:14 pm
Thanks everyone. The ‘pun’ indeed seems both inescapable and inexcusable.
December 16, 2011 at 4:22 am
I feel like the Abbas one at the top qualitatively doesn’t approach the rest of the list. All the rest are vicious and vile on face, and Abbas is a sin of omission. I can understand why it’s offensive, but it’s not in the same league as its competition.
December 17, 2011 at 8:04 am
The significance of Abbas’ omission didn’t slip by Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor. Addressing the UN General Assembly on Nov 29, he noted:
“This was not an oversight. It was not a slip of the tongue. It was yet another deliberate attempt to deny and erase more than 3,000 years of Jewish history. The Arab leaders from those two nations that sought peace have offered a different message.
“For example, in 1995, King Hussein came to the United States and said (quote): ‘For our part, we shall continue to work for the new dawn when all the Children of Abraham and their descendants are living together in the birthplace of their three great monotheistic religions.’
“In 1977, President Sadat came to Israel’s Knesset and quoted this verse from the Koran: ‘We believe in God and in what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and the tribes and in the books given to Moses, Jesus, and the prophets from their lord.’
“President Sadat and King Hussein spoke of THREE monotheistic religions, not ONE or TWO.”
December 16, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Actually it’s the worst of all. It completely erases Jews out of history; their own ancient history, their continued history in Jerusalem and Palestine after the exile and their current and future history in Israel.
The erasure of the history of a people is a facet of the erasure of a people themselves; in this instance, not from the entire world, but from what is currently its most important centre.
As such, it is neither an ‘omission’ nor a ‘sin’. It is far worse than either.
December 19, 2011 at 2:08 pm
Abbas is a piece of work at every level. His doctoral thesis was a work of Holocaust denial, and he certainly must be happy that most of the world is ignorant of the pogrom against his native Safed’s Jewish community in the 1830s remain unknown.
December 20, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Spare a thought, ladies and gentlemen, for poor old Gilad Atzmon, who is probably sitting at home right now reading this list and weeping into his coffee because he didn’t get on it…
December 20, 2011 at 10:47 pm
‘Speaking to the world, Abbas omitted any reference to the Jewish people’s connection to the Holy Land. No reference to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, nor King David, King Solomon, or Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel.’
I haven’t seen the rest of the speech, but it’s a bit OTT to put Abbas’s quoted sentence in the same category as the anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi statements below it. Portraying Palestine as a country with a Christian and Muslim heritage, without reference to its Jewish heritage, is broadly equivalent to describing Israel as a Jewish state, without reference to its Muslim and Arab elements. Or describing Spain as a Christian country, without reference to its Muslim past.
Of course, in an ideal world, Palestinian leaders would proudly acknowledge their country’s Jewish heritage and Israeli leaders would proudly acknowledge their country’s Arab and Muslim heritage. Unfortunately, nationalists generally prefer to impose an imagined homogeneity on their national pasts, and to write The Other out of it. But equating that sort of thing with defending Hitler simply makes the struggle against anti-Semitism look silly. Nobody seriously believes that
‘I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him and the birthplace of Jesus Christ peace be upon him, to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people’
is equivalent to ‘I love Hitler…People like you would be dead.Your mothers, your forefathers, would all be f****** gassed’.
They’re not remotely comparable.
December 22, 2011 at 12:50 am
1. No one said Abbas’s comment is ‘equivalent’ to the others. If ‘equivalence’ were the criterion, then, only exterminatory antisemitism would count as antisemitism and would make the struggle of antisemitism look silly.
2. Abbas was not talking about a Palestinian ‘state’, he spoke of the ‘Land of Palestine’ and included that ‘land’s’ Christian and Muslim ‘heritage’. He excluded that land’s Jewish presence (theological or otherwise) entirely.
3. As someone noted above, he erased Jews from Palestine. A more apt comparison would be when Canadians spoke of Canada mentioning the English and French, but not the indigenous population. Likewise, it would be no different (i.e. as racist and exclusionary as well as nationalist) from an Israeli denying the presence of Christians and Muslims in the ‘land of Israel’s’ past and present (as opposed to describing Israel as a Jewish state).
December 22, 2011 at 5:57 pm
Marko:
Regardless of the absence of outright antisemitic talk or genocidal threats, what gives importance to such omissions is that Abbas was speaking at the UN, as the head of the PA, in support of the demand that Palestine be granted full recognition as an independent state, with undefined borders, without further negotiations with Israel, arguing that Israel is impossible to deal with. Hard not to be very cynical about any promises to respect Israel’s right to exist within secure borders on the pre-’67 borders if he cannot bring himself to acknowledge the continuing presence of Jews and Judaism in “the Holy Land” in such a context, on such an occasion.
December 24, 2011 at 11:53 am
The attribution to Dierkes is a flat-out lie, as pretty much everyone in Germany knows by now, even people who oppose Dierkes.
The website of Die Linke in Duisburg was an open posting forum. An anti-semitic flyer was posted to the website, and the actual scandal was about how a left-wing party could allow something like that onto its webpages.
The configuration of the Wiesenthal Center list makes it seem like it was something Dierkes said. Even saying that he posted the flyer is a lie.
Talk about Stalinist methods…
December 24, 2011 at 4:18 pm
Negative Potential:
It is true that there is some question about who posted the flyer on Die Linke’s website, but it is not exactly an “open posting” site. Dierkes has claimed innocence and has implied that it was posted as some sort of “false flag” dirty trick by “Ruhr Barons” who were in a “crusade” against Die Linke. If so, Dierkes himself has provided a pretty big target. Some of what the flyer says is pretty close to what Dierkes is on record as saying in the past.
“German politician belittles Holocaust”
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=170899
December 25, 2011 at 2:17 am
negative potential, whose link goes back to http://communism.blogsport.eu/ – thus hardly making her/him a neutral observer – avers that “The attribution to Dierkes is a flat-out lie, as pretty much everyone in Germany knows by now, even people who oppose Dierkes.” This may well be the case (that antisemitism is misattributed to Dierkes) but n.g.’s response hardly constitutes evidence for this, merely an assertion. That this is what n.g. is doing (assert) becomes even clearer when considers the wording of the original source.
The relevant part of that source given in the extract (http://soerenkern.com/web/?p=646) is as follows:
“Also in May, Hermann Dierkes, the leader of the Left Party in Duisburg, penned an “Open Letter” in which he compared Israeli policy towards the Palestinians with the Nazi regime. Dierkes accused the Israelis of using methods against Palestinians that look “damn close to what the Nazis did in the 30s.” In 2010, Dierkes termed Israel’s right to exist as “petty.”
In April, the Duisburg branch of the German Left Party posted a flyer on its website with a swastika morphing into a Star of David, and called for a boycott of Israeli products. The flyer, which calls Israel a “rogue state” and a “warmonger” states: “Oppose the moral blackmail of the so-called Holocaust! Truth makes free!” This is a pun on the “Arbeit macht Frei!” sign which is located above the entrance gate to the Auschwitz concentration camp.”
If it is true that Dierkes is the leader of the Duisburg branch of the Left Party, then he had the opportunity in May to denounce or apologise or otherwise distance himself and the party from the flyer, which n.g. does not say happened or has happened since.
The important part is the direct quote from the original website, which negative potential does nothing to disprove, preferring to badmouth the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
December 25, 2011 at 1:00 pm
David D.,
So you acknowledge that there is an open question as to who posted the flyer, yet you continue to defend the SWC’s attribution of the flyer’s text to Dierkes himself. How sleazy is that? This is a classical Stalinist tactic.
And then you say that the material is substantively “pretty close” to other things Dierkes has said. But the other quotations you provide are just Dierkes offering boilerplate anti-imperialist rhetoric. That kind of clunky old-school anti-imperialism might be irritating, but it’s not in any way comparable to an openly anti-semitic flyer affixing the adjective “so-called” to the noun “Holocaust”. If you can’t tell the difference, you’re either politically tone deaf, or deeply cynical.
Brian Goldfarb,
There is no such thing as a “neutral observer” in any political discussion, so can the pretense already. Everyone has a political perspective, and everyone is equally entitled to argue for that perspective. To argue that my calling out the SWC on its factual error is somehow politically “tainted” because I’m a socialist is to basically assert that no one has the right to make any political judgements if they already have a political perspective. What an odd assumption.
And I didn’t say that “antisemitism” is being falsely attributed to Dierkes. I SAID THAT IN THIS PARTICULAR INSTANCE, A QUOTATION IS BEING FALSELY ATTRIBUTED TO HIM. That’s rather substantially worse. Attributions of antisemitism are often a question of interpretation, inference, and it’s a more general accusation that has to be supported or refuted according to different individual pieces of evidence. However, that isn’t what the SWC list does. It manifestly attributes a particular quotation to Dierkes that he himself did not say. That is slander, pure and simple.
“The relevant part of that source given in the extract (http://soerenkern.com/web/?p=646) is as follows”
Uh, no, sorry, but that source does not support the quotation given by the SWC in the list. Try again.
“then he had the opportunity in May to denounce or apologise or otherwise distance himself and the party from the flyer, which n.g. does not say happened or has happened since.”
Actually, Die Linke, both at the local and national level, distanced itself from the flyer and initiated legal steps against the person or persons who posted it to the website (“Anzeige gegen Unbekannte” it’s called in German, basically “Fililng charges against unknown persons”, which initiates a police investigation).
Presumably, the SWC employs people who are capable of reading German, rather than relying on political Internet blogs as a source of information. With some savvy Googling, they could have found all of this out in 30 seconds. Instead, they chose to discredit themselves by attributing a false quotation.
December 25, 2011 at 10:01 pm
” To argue that my calling out the SWC on its factual error is somehow politically “tainted” because I’m a socialist is to basically assert that no one has the right to make any political judgements if they already have a political perspective. What an odd assumption.”
1. Actually, you are, by virtue of your link, not a socialist, but a communist – a very different matter. Or are you asserting that words mean what you want them to mean, not what the dictionary and common usage says they mean?
2. ““The relevant part of that source given in the extract (http://soerenkern.com/web/?p=646) is as follows” Uh, no, sorry, but that source does not support the quotation given by the SWC in the list. Try again.” I don’t have to try anything again: what I quoted is exactly what soerenkern…is quoted as saying. If that source didn’t say that, then demonstrate the fact, don’t, in effect, call me a fabricator of the truth. Further, if a quote is being falsely attributed, how do we know? And why should we take the word of someone who is, by virtue of their link, in total sympathy with the “accused”?
3. _Now_, when the matter is raised, negative potential tells us that Die Linke is, supposedly, taking action against whoever posted the offending symbol. So why didn’t n.g. say so before?
4. So far, no-one has produced any evidence that Dierkes didn’t write what the original source (NOT the Simon Wiesenthal Center) claims he wrote. And what was allegedly written is plainly so close to antisemitism as to be indistinguishable from it.
5. All in all, negative potential continues to assert, not produce evidence in refutation.
December 26, 2011 at 8:29 pm
Brian,
1. In what way does NP’s communism or socialism make them an unreliable informant on this issue? The relevant info is that NP is active on the German left, and therefore has access to the primary material that we in the UK (and apparently the SWC over there) don’t have.
2. Again , Brian the burden of proof must be on someone who says the source says something, when just looking at it makes it clear it doesn’t/
3. NP adds info on how the branch dealt with the leaflet the moment in his second comment, when you (quite rightly) said: “then he had the opportunity in May to denounce or apologise or otherwise distance himself and the party from the flyer, which n.g. does not say happened or has happened since.” i.e. NP mentions it when it becomes relevant. I’d like more information about this, and am not simply taking NP’s word for it, but if it is true it makes the SWC claim more problematic.
4. Soeren K claims that Dierkes said Israel is basically Nazi.He paraphrases, not quotes, and he links to a source that does not support his paraphrase. He needs to provide a better source, or there is no reason to believe him.
December 25, 2011 at 6:08 pm
It is undeniable that there is a problem with antisemitism within Die Linke, and the SWC are not wrong to draw attention to it. However, in this case, they seem to have been extremely sloppy in their research and even more so in their presentation of the evidence. This is compounded by the fact that they have aimed their allegation at a named individual who does not appear to have said the hateful thing they claim he said.
The source quoted by SWC, soerenkern.com, says this: “Also in May, Hermann Dierkes, the leader of the Left Party in Duisburg, penned an “Open Letter” in which he compared Israeli policy towards the Palestinians with the Nazi regime.” The open letter soerenkern.com links to however says nothing of the kind as far as I can see. The source then in a following paragraph says: “In April, the Duisburg branch of the German Left Party posted a flyer on its website with a swastika morphing into a Star of David, and called for a boycott of Israeli products. The flyer, which calls Israel a “rogue state” and a “warmonger” states: “Oppose the moral blackmail of the so-called Holocaust! Truth makes free!” This is a pun on the “Arbeit macht Frei!” sign which is located above the entrance gate to the Auschwitz concentration camp.” This is what the SWC should be getting upset about, not Dierkes’ open letter. However, even here soerenkern.com simplifies the story, making it seem as if the whole branch was responsible, which I don’t think any other evidence confirms. Dierkes’ open letter was a response to the leaflet. His open letter is an utterly inadequate response to the leaflet, but he says nothing anything close to what SWC says he said.
Is Soeren Kern even a reliable source? His site says “Soeren Kern is the Senior Analyst for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group.” So, he’s not just some blogger, but nor is he either a primary source or a newspaper of record.
The lack of evidence in a claim by the SWC seriously undermines their credibility. If they had done this in a blog post, say, this would be bad enough. But they have done is in a top ten of 2010 document that is circulating extremely widely, and this makes it an even more serious mis-step. In my view, they either need to show us evidence for Dierke saying this, or withdrawn and apologise.
From the perspective of fighting antisemitism, what makes this affair even worse is that it is fuel for those who would attempt to avoid any scrutiny of left antisemitism in general or in Die Linke in particular. It makes it easier for left antisemites and their enablers to get away with hateful statements.
December 25, 2011 at 8:36 pm
#2 about Erdogan’s fulminations had a follow up, correcting a mistranslation:
“One note about last week’s interview with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan before we get on with the show. The translation heard on the show had Mr. Erdogan saying that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been killed by Israel. That’s how Mr. Erdogan own official translator translated his boss’ words. We had an outside translator to check the translation, and that’s how she translated it, as well. There was critical reaction to the remarks, including from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu who told the “Jerusalem Post” that Israel, quote, “Certainly has not taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,” unquote. That prompted us to seek a new translation and a re-examination of the tape shows that Mr. Erdogan actually said, quote, “Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed,” unquote. Not, “hundreds of thousands.” We hope this clarifies the matter, and we regret the error. ”
http://blog.camera.org/archives/2011/10/cnn_corrects_mistranslation_of.html
http://blog.camera.org/archives/2011/10/should_fareed_zakaria_have_all.html
December 25, 2011 at 11:05 pm
“So far, no-one has produced any evidence that Dierkes didn’t write what the original source (NOT the Simon Wiesenthal Center) claims he wrote.”
Holy smokes, you’re straight out of a Kafka novel!
How’s this: Brian Goldfarb told me he likes to fill up his grocery shopping cart with products from the dairy and frozen foods section, and then just leave it standing in the supermarket aisle. Oh, and he shits in the subway.
It doesn’t matter if Brian claims that he never said it, because no one will be able to produce any evidence that he *didn’t* say it!
December 26, 2011 at 9:21 am
This demonstrates that Dierkes didn’t write what is claimed? I still don’t have to prove anything, least of all that n.g. uses scatological language. All is still assertion, despite what BobFromBrockley says. With or without a swastika morphing into a Star of David, what Dierkes is reported as writing on the Die Linke website is as close to antisemitism as makes no difference. Is he correctly translated or not? Has he denied that he actually wrote that? Is there evidence that whoever wrote it is not a member of the Left Party of Duisberg or anywhere else in Germany?
Given that we’re talking about what was written, not what was said (and thus leaves a trail of a very different kind), this is what is important, not what n.g. would wish had been written, because, so far, I see no evidence that Dierkes (or any other member of the Left party with official and proper access to the website) was not the writer of the words quoted above at http://soerenkern.com/web/?p=646.
December 26, 2011 at 12:33 pm
You’re either stupid or malicious. I’m going to recapitulate one more time. After that, I’m not going to bother to respond, since you’ve demonstrated you have no interet in the facts.
Dierkes did not say the quote atributed to him in the SWC list. That quote is from an antisemitic flyer posted to the Duisburg website of Die Linke. The party in Duisburg and nationally condemned the flyer and filed charges against the anonymous author.
This is all well-documented in German-language media. And no, I’m not going to do your homework for you. Learn to use Google.
Finally, I don’t know if you ever took any took any type of elementary argument course in school, but you should look up “can’t prove a negative.”
December 26, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Brian, surely when there is a claim about something a named individual said or wrote, the burden of proof should be on the one who says he said it? First, look at the SWC quote and then the source they cite and tell me you really think that is a proper use of quotation? Then, even if you do, follow the links from Soeren K. The second link is dead, but the first one is live, where he supposedly says Israel is as bad as the Nazis. You can use google translate to get a gist of what he said if, like me, your German is not good enough. It looks to me like a woefully inadequate response to the antisemitic leaflet, and it contains the Israeli apartheid claim, but it does not seem to me to say anything like Israel is as bad as the Nazis, which is a very serious thing to say. There is no evidence whatsoever that Dierkes had anything to do with the leaflet. If there is such evidence, surely it wouldn’t be hard to find?
December 26, 2011 at 6:25 pm
Thank you, Bob. I refuse to respond to someone who tells me that I’m “either stupid or malicious.” Such a person is incapable of reasoned argument. You have provided the argument to seriously suggest that Dierkes almost certainly did not write what the original site said he did. Fair enough.
Old, unreconstructed communists who can’t cope with disagreement or requests for evidence are best treated with as dignified a silence as possible, especially when they resort to foaming at the mouth.
December 27, 2011 at 11:51 am
However, of course, it is interesting to note that negative potential has not, so far, attempted to refute the content of
http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=170899
which is headlined: “German politician belittles Holocaust” and is linked to by David D. on 24 December, above.
Dierkes may not have written what soerenkern claims he did, but did he write/say what the Jerusalem Post says he wrote/said?
December 27, 2011 at 4:57 pm
Taking a quick glance, as far as I can tell, all of those quotes are accurate.
And so what? None of it is antisemitic. It’s standard old school anti-imperialist boilerplate. Not my politics, but also not anything I would deem antisemitic.
Interesting how your mind functions, though. Because Dierkes says things you don’t agree with, you’re totally ok with the lying attribution of a false quotation to him.
I see why you want to divert the conversation from a discussion of the SWC’s screw-up into a discussion of Dierkes’ politics, but I won’t have any part of it. If you’re not honorable enough to call out the SWC on their slander, then I stand by my statement that you’re either stupid or malicious.
December 27, 2011 at 7:03 pm
I just saw that David D comment linking to the 2010 JPost article. The articles makes a strong case for Dierkes himself and his branch of Die Linke being virulently, even antisemitically, anti-Israel. (It also makes it clear that the party at a national level has been highly critical of him.)
For those who haven’t read it, here is the key bit:
In his roughly seven-minute tirade, [Dierkes] slammed Israel for “defining itself as a Jewish state” and compared it to the former South African apartheid regime. “Palestinians have the right to armed resistance” against Israelis, said Dierkes. He played down Palestinian rocket attacks against Israeli civilians as “chemical fertilizer missiles,” suggesting that the rockets cause no damage…
and
According to Dierkes, Germany’s 1941-1945 war against the Soviet Union involved a loss of 21 million Russians, and “where is the voice today that we should have a special relationship to the Soviet Union or to the successor states of the Soviet Union?”
As I said before, there is a serious problem with these sorts of views in Die Linke. However, by listing something in a “top ten slurs” that is either incredibly sloppy or maliciously libellous or both, the SWC seriously undermine the possibility of combating this sort of thing.
(Also, apologies, Brian, if I appeared to be hectoring, due to reading comments out of order due to moderation. On the other hand, I can vouch for NP as someone who takes left antisemitism extremely seriously, and think that in this case he was correct to insist the burden of proof must be on those who make specific allegations of left antisemitism.)
December 27, 2011 at 10:59 pm
So, negative potential acknowledges that Dierkes has made remarks that are viciously anti-Israel and so close to antisemitic as to be virtually indistinguishable from it, and also, therefore accepts the apartheid analogy. S/he then goes on to repeat his/her slur against me, that “[S/he] stand[s] by my statement that you’re either stupid or malicious.” This, note, after my comment directed to Bob, immediately above accepting that Bob, unlike n.p., has actually produced evidence suggesting very strongly that Dierkes didn’t write the comments attributed to him by soerenkern and repeated by the SWC.
N.p. prefers to ignore this in favour of an attack on my character and motives. Prefers, in fact, to mount an ad hominem attack: the defence of the person who believes themself to be right, but can’t find the evidence to demonstrate this; alternatively, the defence of the person who knows themself to be wrong but will never admit it. Either course taken on the basis that unwarranted attack may divert attention from either of the above positions, or that a well-aimed ad hominem attack will so enrage or otherwise upset the opponent they they will respond appropriately: i.e., by making a counter ad hominem attack or by otherwise “losing it” and perhaps being as rude or ruder.
Bob, having just read your latest comment, I must regretfully disagree that n.p. shows, at least in this exchange, much indication of taking anything anyone says which undermines groups such as Die Linke other than badly. S/he has certainly not read my previous response to you at all carefully, preferring to repeat a slur on my character and motivation. How can I see this as anything other than ad hominem attack on me, designed, as I have already said, to either shut me up or cause me to overreact.
I leave overreacting to those of my opponents who prefer assertion and invective to discussion and debate.
And, no, Bob, I didn’t take you as hectoring me. Perish the thought.