Saul Asks A Question.

Saul by email asks :

John Demjanjuk is accused of the murder of 29,500 people in Poland in
1943 as part of the planned systematic extermination of Jews.

Antisemites deny the Holocaust happened.

I have two genuine questions about this letter published in today’s Guardian.

“What kind of justice is it that proscribes the normally accepted
right of the accused to challenge the assumption that a crime had, in
fact, occurred? Normally the prosecution is obliged to prove beyond
reasonable doubt that the crime of murder had taken place. This is not
the case in the trial of Demjanjuk. The court will, without proof,
arbitrarily accept that the crime took place. Being stripped of his
most powerful defence, the accused is reduced to pleading mistaken
identity or that he had nothing to do with an unproved murder.”

1. Is this letter doing what I think it is doing, that is, denying the
facts of the Holocaust? Or is some other interpretation possible?

2. If so, why did the Guardian think it fir to publish? or is
Holocaust Denial now part of “legiitimate debate”?

Saul.

UPDATE. Modernity sheds some light on the letter writer’s views.

SAUL ADDS : On an update at Modernity, this has now been placed on the relevant letter’s page at the Guardian,

“Editor’s statement: We published a letter by John Mortl in the Guardian of Thursday 3 December and on this site relating to the case of John Demjanjuk, who is accused of assisting in the murder of 27,900 people in Poland. Unfortunately, we misread the letter. The underlying meaning, we now realise, implied Holocaust denial. As soon as we realised our mistake, we removed the letter from the site. It should never have been published and we apologise unreservedly that it was.”

I’d like to thank Modernity for the information he has thrown on this matter, as well as those who posted their comments, especially Jeremy.
Regards,
Saul

“Somewhere between a flat earthist and a holocaust denier”

Something on Greens Engage.

New fronts

Jogo, a correspondent, points us in the direction of a piece on the Institute for Global Jewish Studies on Holocaust Denial on Facebook, the online social networking site. As at Comment Is Free, ‘freedom to …’ butts up against ‘freedom from …’.

Naomi Klein and the “get-away-with- genocide free card” and the boycott of Israel

Naomi Klein :

“[Some Jews] even think we get one get-away-with-genocide-free-card.”

“the decision isn’t to boycott Israel but rather to oppose official relationships with Israeli institutions.”

ON the UN Durban Review Conference held in Geneva in April, Klein says that she was disturbed by “the Jewish students’ lack of respect for the representatives from Africa and Asia who came to speak about issues like compensation for slavery and the rise of racism around the world.”

Klein described the Jewish students who protested against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at the conference as “truly awful” – in the same breath as she described Ahmadinejad as “truly awful.”

Read Noam Schimmel’s reply Here.

David Hirsh on why Naomi Klein is wrong to call for a boycott of Israel.

Understanding and Addressing ‘The Nazi card’

The European Institute For The Study Of Contemporary Antisemitism has a new report out Understanding and Addressing ‘The Nazi card’.

Read Winston Picket Let’s use the law to halt these Nazi slurs in the Jewish Chronicle.

Ben White’s questionable book

This is a guest post by Modernity , who blogs at Modernity Blog

Ben White should be known to Engage readers, in the past he often commented and debated issues here.

White’s column at Comment is Free is fairly popular and an outlet for his journalistic endeavours.

More recently White has published a book on Israel, a novice’s guide, entitled “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide”.

Not unsurprisingly with such a provocative title White’s book has aroused much interest and criticism.

A sample of the book can be found here.

It even has its own Facebook page, White updates readers from his blog and main site.

Jews for Justice for Palestinians and War on Want are both advocates for the book.

Criticism of White’s book is varied, but of interest to academics is White’s use of doctored quotes and the inclusion of Roger Garaudy, the well-known Holocaust denier, as an apparently authoritative source on Israel and Zionism.

Discussions on White’s book and how it was promoted can be found at Zblog in several threads.

Seismic Shock has also detailed criticism of White’s handling of material and other matters.

Additionally, my own blog includes a few short pieces, not forgetting Liberal Conspiracy and Mondoweiss.

White’s response to the initial review by Jonathan Hoffman is here.

Eric Lee’s An East London horror story.

Shuggy on Understanding anti-Semitism and Ben White.

“Antiracists” think Ahmadinejad was right

“…Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s UN speech on 21 April struck many as obnoxious, but in terms of understanding the 1948 roots of the Middle East conflict he was spot on. Vilifying him may feel good, but it is a diversion form the real issue.”

Ghada Karmi, Author, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine

“However we may deplore the tone of President Ahmadinejad’s speech at the UN conference on racism, it is difficult to deny the principal facts that he presented…”

Geoff Simons, Author, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

Karmi thinks Ahmadinejad was “spot on” in his understanding of the roots of the Middle East conflict.

Simons agrees with the “principal facts” that he presented.

Neither stops to wonder why it is they agree with a genocidal anti-Jewish racist on the central question concerning Jews in the contemporary world.  Perhaps it is just a coincidence?  A stopped clock is right twice a day?

But perhaps there are other lessons to be learnt from the fact that they agree with Ahmadinejad.

And why is the Guardian printing this support for the understanding and analysis of the world’s most powerful antisemite on its letters page?

If people don’t understand what is racist about holocaust denial then they should make use of Deborah Lipstadt’s magnificent website, which is an excellent resource, Holocaust Denial On Trial.  http://www.hdot.org/

Holocaust denial is antisemitic firstly because denial was part of the crime itself.  Those who were murdered were told that nobody would ever believe that this happened and that nobody would ever know that they even existed.  Denial is not a response to the Holocaust but it is part of the Holocaust.

Secondly because Holocaust denial necessarily assumes that the Jews are sufficiently powerful and sufficiently evil to have invented such a horrible lie and to have made believing it a precondition for acceptability in public life.  It is antisemitic conspiracy theory.

John Strawson

UPDATE – John Strawson adds:

Karmi and Simons rely on ignorance of history  in order to make their case: a case that Ahmadnejad is able to trade on.

“Their” history is that Western guilt for the Holocaust meant that the Jews were given Palestine in order to make amends.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Reading the United Nations documents that led to the partition plan – debate in the General Assembly May through November 1947 and the report of United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) – there are no Western expression of guilt whatsoever. The only speeches that linked the creation of a Jewish State to the Holocaust were from the Soviet Union and Poland.

Indeed what is striking is that despite many anti-Semitic remarks, not one Western country rises to object. The partition plan itself explicitly stated that it was plan for the future of government of Palestine and not a solution to the “Jewish question” – the latter formulation being a reference to the survivors of the Holocaust in displaced peoples’ camps.  Far from guilt there is indifference bordering on callousness.  The Jewish population of between 600,00-650,000 (and 18,000 in detention in in Cyprus) [UN figures]) were of course in Palestine in 1947.

They constituted a clearly constituted a national community.  It is this national identity that the Karmi et al wish to deny. Modern anti-Semitism mainly takes the form of discrimination against Jews as national community – something that the Durban II statement reinforces when it places anti-Semitism between “Islamaphobia” and “Christianophobia.” (draft article 10)

John Strawson

Holocaust denier Ahmadinejad speaks at UN antiracist conference on Holocaust Rememberance Day

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour MP, is working for Press TV, the propaganda wing of the Iranian regime

Jeremy Corbyn presenting on Press TV

From Harry’s Place:

Here he is, standing in for George Galloway.

Press TV publishes, approvingly, Holocaust denial material. Recently, it published an essay by the disgraced Holocaust Denier and neo-Nazi, Nicolas Kollerstrom, that concludes “that the alleged massacre of Jewish people by gassing during World War II was scientifically impossible”. PressTV’s introductory comment is as follows:

The distinguished academic was dismissed on April 22, 2008 without any explanation and a Holocaust conference held on 16-18 May in Berlin refused his article and warned that he would be arrested if he attended the conference and presented his essay.

The West punishes people for their scientific research on Holocaust but the same western countries allow insults to prophets and religious beliefs…

More recently, it published this:

Press TV has excelled itself by running a story that no reputable news outlet had reported: a supposed CIA study predicting the collapse of Israel within 20 years. The only authority cited for this study was “international lawyer Franklin Lamb”. Lamb is a political activist described by Hizbollah’s TV station in Lebanon as “persistent in his support for the just cause of the Lebanese people’s resistance”.

You can contact Jeremy Corbyn at corbynj@parliament.uk. His TheyWorkForYou page is here.

Good things

On Harry’s Place, Gene. An orchestra from Jenin performs for Holocaust survivors. A new project initiated by prominent figures in Europe and the Muslim world will combat Holocaust denial and emphasise good Muslim-Jewish relations.

UPDATE: Commenters below link to news items reporting that the orchestra from Jenin has been disbanded by the Palestinian Authority as a direct consequence of the performance. More from Ben Cohen.

“Adnan Hindi of the Jenin camp called the Holocaust a “political issue” and accused conductor Wafa Younis of unknowingly dragging the children into a political dispute.”

The lines are being drawn -  it’s peace-makers like Wafa Younis against war-makers like Adnan Hindi. And the Holocaust is used as a bargaining chip again.