February 13, 2006
SOME BLASPHEMIES ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS:
The Trial of Ernest Zundel (Dr. Alex Grobman, February 12, 2006, Arutz Sheva)
The trial of Holocaust denier Ernest Zundel in the Mannheim state court on charges of libel, incitement and disparaging the dead provides us with another opportunity to examine who the deniers are, their goals and how we should respond to them. Coming after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent statement on Iranian national TV that leaders in the West "have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets," this is especially important.Zundel, who failed to obtain Canadian citizenship, was deported from Canada last year to his native Germany. [...]
Confronting the lies of Holocaust deniers in public is imperative. Otherwise, people might assume we have no answers.
Holocaust deniers also pose a physical threat to Jews, because they want to rehabilitate anti-Semitism and make it more respectable in "civilized discourse", Pierre Vidal-Naquet reminds us. They want anti-Semitism to be used as an acceptable policy of governments. What better way to do so, then by proving that the Holocaust never occurred?
Holocaust denial must also be seen as a danger to the free world and to our way of life. The goal is to make National Socialism and Fascism legitimate alternatives to democracy. Holocaust deniers believe that both are the wave of the future. If the Holocaust is a myth, then these non-democratic forms of government are no longer tainted with the systematic mass murder of six million Jews.
The deniers have convinced the media that this is a free speech issue, which it is not.
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 13, 2006 8:27 AM
REmember he was in the Canadian Liberal party
Posted by: narciso at February 13, 2006 8:48 AMMore basically, Nazi anti-semitism was a well-scripted strategy (even if it also, more purely, reflected Nazi principles) to distract the nations of Europe, and the larger world, from Nazi aims.
So that they were encouraged--and many enthusiastically assented--to watch the birdie; to take their eyes off the ball.
Until Europe was almost destroyed.
A point not lost on other eager acolytes (with equally virtuous principles).
Posted by: Barry Meislin at February 13, 2006 10:22 AMAuberon Waugh wrote:
"Obviously, it does not influence the truth or falsehood of the original proposition by one jot that various governments are prepared to impose criminal sanctions against anyone who questions or denies it. But I cannot help asking myself what sort of truth it is that requires these sanctions. Mr. Irving's suggestion is that there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz under the German dispensation, but they were added later as a tourist attraction. I expect he is wrong, but I not think that criminal prosecution is any sort of way to win a historical argument. Tourists undoubtedly have strange tastes, after all, and host countries seem prepared to go to almost any lengths to keep them amused. Look at France and Euro Disney."
Ahmadinejad was asked in an interview by USA Today why he wouldn't visit Auschwitz to see for himself (after stating that Israel was founded on the propaganda of the Holocaust).
His reply: "My going there won't help the problem".
Gas him.
Posted by: jim hamlen at February 13, 2006 7:17 PM