Source: WINDS, http://thewinds.arcsnet.net/archive/religion/bnai_brith08-98.html
B'nai B'rith and ADL Hypocritical, Say Critics
"They say, but they do not do what they say" - Jesus Christ
Source: WINDS, http://thewinds.arcsnet.net/archive/religion/bnai_brith08-98.html
"They say, but they do not do what they say" - Jesus Christ
On June 18th the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a powerful political advocacy wing of B'nai B'rith that focuses largely on suppression of anti-Semitic "hate-groups", flexed its considerable political muscle against an organization whose only crime they claim is "refuting the Holocaust."
B'nai B'rith's ADL, ignoring that glowingly obsolete and irrelevant document called the First Article of Amendment to the Constitution, has issued a press release stating that they have "urged the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the non-profit status granted to a Holocaust-denying organization. The California-based Institute for Historical Review (IHR) and its parent organization, Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Inc., have recently been granted 501(c)(3) status."[1]
IHR claims that there are two lies in that statement alone. The first being that the Institute, according to its director Mark Weber, does not deny the Holocaust, only some of the numbers and many of the traditional historically accepted incidents surrounding it. Secondly, again according to IHR, they were not "recently" granted tax-exempt status but IHR and its parent organization have held that not-for-profit standing for over forty years.
Weber, director of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), took his master's degree in European History from Indiana University, has been certified by Canadian courts as an expert on the Holocaust, the "Final Solution" and modern Jewish history, and has taught English, history and geography to African children in Ghana.
"I grew up very pro-Israeli," Weber told The WINDS, then he encountered the culture shock of truth "that anyone who spends any time overseas understands very quickly that the way we look at the whole Middle East is very different in our media, compared even to, say, the British media or any other country. When talking with others it took no great amount of time for me--or anyone for that matter,--to disabuse me of my really sterling views I had on such matters."
Mr. Weber's observations about the American media were strongly reminiscent of the interview this reporter had with the British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard who told The WINDS that even compared to England, let alone the rest of the world, the American press is very highly controlled.
"Concerning B'nai B'rith, the ADL and others, I'm just struck over and over again how these Jewish organizations condemn and denounce practices done in this country that they passionately defend when they're done in Israel. It's a tremendous double standard.
"I'm not at all against the Jews having a state of their own. What I am against is that the U.S. supports policies in Israel that we wouldn't support in any other country.
"Just the other week there was a vote in the United Nations on upgrading the observer status of the Palestinian Delegation. The vote was 124 to 4 in favor of the Palestinians. The only country voting against was the United States, Israel, Micronesia and the Federated Pacific States--two dependencies of the the United States. Essentially, the whole rest of the world took a different view than the United States."
Those of the Jewish community who see the truth of this, Weber says, and speak out against it--and there are many--are called "self-hating Jews" by such organizations as ADL.
"I'm especially appalled at what I regard as the prostitution of our political leadership to these interests. They just fall over each other. Gingrich, Gore, Clinton--they just prostrate themselves in a shameless bid for Jewish money and support.
"The proof of the power of the Jewish lobby in Washington is that unlike other lobbies that might arguably be very powerful--like the tobacco lobby and the gun-control lobby--the Jewish lobby has no effective opposition. The NRA may be a powerful lobby but there are plenty of voices that oppose the NRA. There is nothing comparable to that in opposition to the Jewish lobby.
B'nai B'rith and the ADL have labeled the Institute for Historical Review as anti-Semitic because it expresses apparently documented disagreement with ADL's position on the Holocaust. Whether or not that documentation is genuine, or even if IHR's motives are anti-Semitic, is not at issue. What is at issue is whether they have the right to express them.
B'nai B'rith claims it "is the only Jewish organization to maintain a full-time presence in the United Nations..." seemingly to imply that they are the only legitimate voice of the Jewish people in the UN, yet its practices seem to defy the very tenets they have helped establish in that international body.
Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." [2]
"'It is very troubling to us," ADL's complaint to the IRS continues, 'that a group whose identity centers on refuting the Holocaust should be granted tax-exempt status,' wrote Elizabeth Coleman, ADL Director, Civil Rights Division, in a letter to Charles O. Rossotti, Commissioner, IRS."
It might logically be asked what legal difference the IRS could possibly see between two groups claiming tax-exempt status, one promoting the conventional view of the Holocaust and the other refuting that view.
"'Far from being an educational or public-service organization committed to exploring historical events, IHR is the major center for Holocaust-denial propaganda and anti-Semitic vitriol,' continued Ms. Coleman. 'We question the decision granting this group the benefits afforded to legitimate non-profit educational institutions and urge you to reconsider.'"
Additionally, B'nai B'rith's ADL accuses the Institute of distributing "a number of books and propaganda materials saturated with anti-Semitic innuendo."
Is it not interesting how one's own position consists of solid data and information while the opposing faction's material is just "propaganda"? Perusing IHR's materials and website, this agency was unable to uncover any expressions of "anti-Semitic vitriol" or even "Holocaust-denial propaganda."
Unparalleled Ability to Monitor and Shape Events
B'nai B'rith, whose name in Hebrew means "Brotherhood of the Covenant," was founded over 150 years ago and is primarily a political and social advocacy organization for Jewish people and causes around the world.
"B'nai B'rith is a network of members in 55 nations around the world," the organization claims, "providing us with an unparalleled ability to monitor and shape events." [3] Those last two words, "shape events," are indeed, as shall be seen, an apt description of the consummate abilities of B'nai B'rith and the Anti-Defamation League.
There are apparently a growing number of prominent Jews, many of respected academic achievement, who are strongly opposed to much of what is being practiced publicly in the name of Judaism. Among those, according to Ha'aretz, a Jewish daily newspaper published in Israel, are Ruth Bettina Birn of Canada, "a German living in Toronto...recognized as an international expert on Nazi war crimes,"[4] and Norman J. Finkelstein of Hunter College, University of New York.
In a feature article published by Ha'aretz, the author, Tom Segev, quotes Birn and Finkelstein in their scathing critique of a best-selling book on the Holocaust by Daniel Goldhagen entitled Hitler's Willing Executioners. So popular has Goldhagen's book become in Judaism that in many circles he is referred to as "Mr. Holocaust."[ibid]
Accosted as a supremely unacademic piece of work, the newspaper claims, "Many scholars have attacked [Goldhagen's] thesis, which boils down to this: all the Germans took part in the murder of the Jews because all of them are anti-Semitic." That "thesis" by Goldhagen seems to be the embodiment, in a few words, of the prevailing technique used to slur and discredit anyone who lays a finger on the sacred cow of the Holocaust.
The Ha'aretz columnist says that, in reviewing Goldhagen's book, Birn and Finkelstein "have done the unthinkable: they have checked his references, one by one, and reached the conclusion that Hitler's Willing Executioners is not worthy of being called an academic text. It is a tiresome task," the author continues, "requiring a comparison of texts and a careful examination of sources...." [ibid.]
It should be noted that Ha'aretz is a major Jewish newspaper published in Israel even though it seems to have little tolerance for any academic and intellectual dishonesty on the part of its fellow countrymen. The Ha'aretz writer goes on to make the claim that is most certainly at the heart of nearly every controversy and dispute surrounding Jewish/Holocaust issues. "As things stand now," Segev says, "anyone who criticizes Goldhagen is an anti-Semite, possibly a Holocaust-denier, and certainly an opponent of the State of Israel."
That term "Holocaust-denier" is one with which the Institute for Historical Review is most painfully aware. As pointed out earlier, even though they do not in any way deny the existence of the Holocaust, they do challenge many of the claims of its appalling intensity asserting that the numbers and incidents were greatly exaggerated. And that has been the source of their troubles with the Jewish community. It must again be noted that what is truly at contest is not whether the IHR's claims about the Holocaust are true or false, but whether they, or anyone else, have the right to even express ideas dissonant to the conventional mindset of that terrible period of history.
So riddled, it seems, with academic dishonesty and error is Goldhagen's book that Metropolitan Books in New York published a small volume entitled A Nation on Trial in which it includes "Birn's and Finkelstein's critiques of Goldhagen's book. All the claims are backed up." However, according to Ha'aretz, there has been "tremendous pressure exerted on the publishing company to keep it from coming out." [ibid.]
"At a certain point," the Ha'aretz columnist continues, the assault on Metropolitan Books "bordered on cultural terrorism." The apparent source of that "cultural terrorism", Abraham H. Foxman, National Director for the Anti-Defamation League, drafted a letter to the the publisher supporting Goldhagen's book. Foxman stated that "the issue is not whether Goldhagen's thesis is right or wrong, but what is legitimate criticism". Please excuse the impertinence, but when is ANY "legitimate criticism" not based on what is right or wrong?[4]
"Historians all over the world, including Israel, agree that [Goldhagen] has written a bad book" but, apparently, facts do not sway those who would seek to eliminate any opinion but their own.[ibid.]
Ha'aretz's Segev concludes that "the formula goes like this: not only the Germans, but all the gentiles hate the Jews. Hence the need for Jewish unity and solidarity. Hence the need for more and more books about Jewish hatred, and the simpler and shallower they are, the better."
Marco Polo Takes a Poison Pill
In the firestorm of these Jewish organ Color izations' exceedingly effective programs of censorship, few compare with the resulting destruction of the highly respected world magazine Marco Polo. In the February 1995 issue of the 250,000-circulation monthly was published a ten-page article by Japanese neurologist Dr. Masanori Nishioka entitled, "The Greatest Taboo of Postwar World History: There were no Nazi 'Gas Chambers.'"
Publisher Bungei Shunju, who also issues the Japanese language version of The Diary of Anne Frank, allowed Nishioka's article into print "only after Marco Polo staff members spent five months checking the author's sources, conducting additional research, and carefully editing the text." [5]
While Dr. Nishioka does not deny the Holocaust, he strenuously refutes its degree and intensity. "Comparing the wartime fate of Europe's Jews with that of Chinese killed by Japanese troops and the victims of American atomic bombings of Japanese cities, Nishioka concludes his article with an expression of sympathy for the 'tragic deaths' of many European Jews." [ibid.] The result of this apparently meticulous piece of research was seppuku or, as the Japanese ritual of suicide is better known in the West, hara-kiri. It proved the death of the publication.
Through its embassy in Tokyo, the Israeli government formally protested to the Japanese government, while the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles mounted a boycott campaign against the Bungei Shunju company.
The magazine's initial response was a statement defending the provocative article. In explaining his decision to publish it, Marco Polo editor Kazuyoshi Hanada - one of Japan's most prominent journalists - said that Dr. Nishioka had found evidence to show that standard views about gassings of Jews are not accurate. 'We would not run an article we thought was wrong,' Hanada said...."
Marco Polo also generously announced that it would welcome a rebuttal of Nishioka's article, offering both the Wiesenthal Center and the Israeli embassy an opportunity to respond with a ten-page article of its own." That is a total of twenty pages of rebuttal to a ten-page article. "The offer was promptly and predictably rejected.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, deputy chief of the Wiesenthal Center, said: 'Their [the revisionist's] goal is to get debate going. They're seeking to give legitimacy to their view.' In a Jan. 25 letter, the Israeli embassy wrote to the publisher: 'If your magazine is going to take a neutral observer position, that of a courtroom trial, in which both sides' arguments and claims are to be introduced, we must decline.'
The Wiesenthal Center mounted an international boycott campaign against Marco Polo advertisers, and quickly succeeded in persuading major firms - including Volkswagen, Cartier, Philip Morris, Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Electric - to cancel their advertising." [With that kind of heavy-hitting advertising money you don't mess around].
As a result of the campaign, the Japanese government on January 30 issued a statement calling the Marco Polo article 'extremely improper.' A Foreign Ministry official added that Japanese embassies and consulates around the world would be instructed about the government's 'position on the Holocaust.'
At a packed news conference...with Wiesenthal Center deputy director Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Bungei company president Kengo Tanaka formally apologized for causing Jews 'immeasurable pain' by publishing Nishioka's article. To atone for its grievous sin, Tanaka said he had closed down the offending magazine for good, and had relieved the responsible staff members of their duties. All remaining copies of the February issue were being recalled and destroyed. Tanaka resigned a few days after the news conference.
A dissenting voice broke the tranquility of the canned news conference. Journalist, author and revisionist researcher Aiji Kimura loudly harangued Cooper and demanded that the company president explain specifically what was inaccurate about Nishioka's article. Kimura also defended historical revisionism, speaking of its peaceful, truth-seeking motivation. Hundreds of fellow journalists responded to his remarks with spontaneous applause and expressions of agreement.
'Marco Polo was crushed,' Dr. Nishioka responded, 'by Jewish organizations using advertising [pressure]....'[5]
It should be noted at this juncture that The WINDS takes no position either refuting or accepting "Holocaust revision" nor is this said out of fear of reprisal by any of the political organizations mentioned that are the focus of this article--but, rather, because The WINDS has not researched the available material sufficiently to take a position on the issue. The focus of this news agency, rather, is the unfair and hypocritical posture taken by those Jewish organizations against those who do take the unpopular position of revisionism or even denial. That, while claiming reverence for freedom of speech and the press, they apparently leave no means unexploited to deny that freedom to those who disagree with them on the "sacred" matter of their Holocaust.
The opinion has been expressed that the First Amendment was placed in the number one position because of its relative importance to the rest of the Bill of Rights. It now seems that it is there as the number one target for extinction. The extinction of the document, however, is not being accomplished by open assault but, rather, by groups and powerful individuals who masquerade as those venerating the Bill of Rights while simultaneously, under cover of hypocritical pretensions, are shredding it by their actions. Groups with these well-disguised motives appear to be such as B'nai B'rith, its Anti-Defamation League and its foreign affiliates, along with the Jewish Defense League and others.
A Jewish Activist Takes on Jewish Activist Organizations
"The ADL did a lot of good in this country up until they took a sharp turn to the left," says Aaron Zelman, a soft-spoken, articulate Jewish activist for Second Amendment rights. "They became a tool of left-wing politics. Once they did that they quit being objective."
Mr. Zelman, himself a conservative Jew, the son of orthodox parents, sends his two children to orthodox schools, he says, in hopes of their learning about and keeping in touch with their Jewish heritage. At the same time, he heads an organization called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JFPO) and is quite outspoken about what he perceives as the extreme damage groups like B'nai B'rith and the Anti-Defamation League do--and have done--to Judaism--especially in the approach they take against those who oppose their views on the Holocaust.
"The Holocaust in Germany," Mr. Zelman says, "was just one of several holocausts--against humanity in general."
While he does not dispute the popular Jewish/world doctrine on the event, Zelman's position about the "Jewish" Holocaust is that, in the overall picture, it is not nearly as significant as the vast majority of his fellow Jews make it out to be.
"Holocaust, slash, genocides have happened to lots of people--not just Jews....In fact if you look at the Nazi genocide, the records indicate they murdered more non-Jews than Jews."
"Some of the methods the ADL uses are despicable," Zelman claims. "We've locked horns with them in the past and confronted them suggesting that they shouldn't consider themselves a Jewish organization."
Those at Marco Polo are not the only ones with which ADL has refused to enter into meaningful dialogue. "We've claimed that they lie about the militia movement in America. We challenged them to a public debate and they wouldn't do it" -- perhaps, somewhat in the manner in which they will not engage in public debate about Holocaust history and figures, according to the Institute for Historical Review. They are unwilling to debate the issues but prefer, rather, to attack the people presenting them--a somewhat modified take on killing the messenger because of the contents of the message.
"I think people need to start challenging them to public debates," Zelman says. "If they're not going to do it then they must not have much to stand on."
Mr. Zelman Speaks His Mind
"The ADL is essentially a misguided organization and dangerously stupid. One of the problems with a lot of the Jewish leaders (and I use the word "leaders" in double quotes) is that they don't understand or appreciate the Bill of Rights.
...On Jewish-American History:
"The majority of Jews have come to America over the last 150 years or so and they come from socialist societies and they believe in big government--they are comfortable with big government. They came to America primarily for two reasons,"--the same two reasons, it seems, which originally drew our first European settlers. "One--to be able to practice Judaism [freedom of religion?]; two--to be able to earn a living.
"But what they don't do," Zelman observes, "is they don't embrace American ideals that are embodied in the Bill of Rights. They don't understand the Bill of Rights. Abe Foxman [head of the Anti-Defamation League] does not understand the Bill of Rights--he fundamentally does not grasp the Bill of Rights. He does not have the intellectual capability to appreciate the Bill of Rights.
"He's not alone," Zelman adds. "This is typical of the majority of Jewish leaders in this country even if they were born here. They do not appreciate, they do not grasp, they do not comprehend all of the Bill of Rights for all citizens. They don't understand the document. We say around here it's sort of a defect in the gene-pool. In other words, they brought this lack of understanding and appreciation for liberty with them--and then passed it on to their children, their grandkids, great-grandkids and so on. This is one of the problems that Americans have in trying to figure out 'What's with these Jews? Don't they like America? Don't they like the freedom that America offers people?'
"Most of these Jewish leaders don't understand that it was a Jew by the name of Hiem Solomon, a personal friend of George Washington, who helped raise money to back the American Revolution. He was a Jew who believed so much in freedom and liberty that he personally gave $640,000 over 200 years ago for the American Revolution.
"The point I'm making is that if you talk about Hiem Solomon to the American Jewish community today, they don't care. They don't appreciate the sacrifice--they really don't.
"To quote Michael Medved, an orthodox Jewish talk-show host, he says reformed Judaism is essentially the Democratic Party with holidays. There are Jews who appreciate the Bill of Rights, and then there are Jews like Abe Foxman, and the leaders of the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, who don't have a clue about what the Bill of Rights means. Not a clue! And that's why they're more concerned with ingratiating themselves with whomever's in power -- even if the people in power are evil. They will do this rather than to take a position that is in the best interest of all Americans.
"If you study the history of the Jewish leadership in Nazi Germany, the leaders of the Udronaut, the Jewish council, they collaborated with the Nazis. These are the people who made lists of Jews to put on the cattle cars to go to their deaths. They did this because the Jews have always mistakenly felt that if you collaborate with evil--whoever is running the government--things will be better for you.
...On Modern Judaism:
"The leadership of the Jewish community today is so far removed from basic Jewish concepts that for them to call themselves Jews is the equivalent of Adolf Hitler calling himself a Jew. These people haven't got a clue about real Judaism--not a clue. They know more about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches than they do about Judaism."
...On the UN:
"The world needs the United Nations like it needs a syphilis epidemic."
When asked what he thought of the conspiracy theories that point to Jewish Zionists as the driving force behind the New World Order and a world government, Mr. Zelman responded that he did not believe in such a movement. "How can a people that comprise less than two percent of the population," he questioned, "wield such power?"
B'nai B'rith's own figures, in answer to Mr. Zelman's rhetorical question, list the current number of senators and congressmen they claim are Jewish. The names on that list (ten senators and twenty-four representatives) comprise fully ten percent of the Senate and nearly six percent in the House, which gives them three to five times that of their percentage in the general population.
IHR's Mark Weber concurs with B'nai B'rith in this matter. "Jews make up about two percent of the population," he said, "but have something like six times that representation in places like the Presidential Cabinet, the Executive Branch overall--and of course in media its just unbelievable."
"Spinning" The Middle East Issues
B'nai B'rith seemingly attempts to engender a form of political tunnel vision among not only the Jewish people, but the world at large as to who really counts in the Middle East. A typical example of this is illustrated in the first press release listed on their web site under the heading "B'nai B'rith Speaks Out" entitled "B'nai B'rith Calls On Arafat To Eliminate Anti-Israel, Antisemitic [sic] References From Palestinian Broadcasts".
It cannot be imagined that B'nai B'rith has forgotten that Yasser Arafat is the acknowledged spokesman for a people as fully Semitic as the Jews, therefore, in this instance, not only rendering the epithet of "antisemitic" meaningless, but ridiculous as well. This appears to be part of an ongoing effort to define Semites as Jews only and a standard approach Israel has always taken with Palestinians--to deny by inference and direct attack that they are somehow of lesser humanity than themselves.
B'nai B'rith also projects the image that they, and they alone, are the definitive source of information on how history should be viewed--especially when any aspect of the Holocaust is involved. An example of this can be found in a B'nai B'rith press release in which the organization's president, Tommy Baer took extreme exception to a statement made by Nagasaki Mayor Hitoshi Motoshima in which the mayor stated that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was "one of the two greatest crimes against humanity in the 20th century, along with the Holocaust."
In Baer's response he stated that "the bombings and the Holocaust cannot be compared and should not be linked."
Why? "The U.S. bombing was undertaken," Baer remonstrated, "after the sovereign government of the Japanese people...refused repeated U.S. offers of peace....The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a last-ditch act of war."
Translation: "They" deserved to have their innocent men, women and children incinerated. "We" did not.
That the statements by B'nai B'rith are historically untrue is no hidden fact to anyone willing to do some reading. Documents all along the historic time line from August of 1945 to the present clearly show that Japan began as early as August of 1944 to make peace overtures toward the United States. This historical "revision" is clearly set forth, among others, by a Jewish historian Gar Alperovitz in his meticulously documented 850-page tome, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb."[6]
In documented opposition to B'nai B'rith's claim, Alperovitz's and other's research show clearly that President Truman, urged on by Secretary of State James Byrnes, fully intended that the atomic bomb should be used as both a live field-test on a virgin target to determine its results on human subjects and, also, to intimidate the Soviets into greater submission in postwar negotiations. Those documents also show that, with the exception of Byrnes, none of Truman's advisors, even in the military, had any objection to acceding to Japan's only provision to "unconditional surrender"--that the Emperor would not be punished or removed.
Even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during World War II, Fleet Admiral William Leahy, said the use of the atomic bomb on Japan was barbarous because "the Japanese were almost defeated and ready to surrender....in being the first to use [the atomic bomb] we...adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages." [emphasis supplied]. This makes B'nai B'rith's rebuke of the Japanese mayor nonsense and blatant historical re-revisionism.
Apparently, no one has the privilege of invoking the Holocaust as a genuine tragedy except B'nai B'rith, or at least in a context approved by them and compatible with their "dictionary".
The Anti-Defamation League, B'nai B'rith and their political arms do not target only the non-Jewish population with their opinion-shaping efforts. They have been quite successful in manipulating the outlook of their Jewish brethren also. So effective has the campaign been to label Jews as the constant target of discrimination and bigotry, that most of them actually believe it themselves. According to IHR's Weber, "A poll taken in the San Francisco area indicated that fully one-third of Jews surveyed thought that anti-Semitism was so strong that a Jew could not be elected to the U.S. Congress. The survey was taken at the very time when three of the four congressional representatives were Jewish and the mayor of San Francisco was Jewish--and well identified as Jewish."
Censorship by Filter
There are organizations who attempt to dictate exactly to what information the poor, terminally ignorant Gentile and Jewish public should have access. They do this by, among other means, pressuring Internet servers into refusing to continue hosting "hateful Web sites". MSNBC columnist Brock Meeks says, "This is a tactic the Simon Wiesenthal Center has chosen to use and for which it has been soundly, and rightly, thrashed."
Meeks, however, goes on to laud the ADL for their "even-handed approach" toward "High Tech Hate" on the Internet. He quotes them as saying, "'Hate must be countered with information that promotes understanding, tolerance and truth.' In other words," Meeks translates, "the best way to fight hate speech is with more speech."
The ADL themselves make the statement that they are "a staunch advocate of the First Amendment, [and] the League has never advocated the censorship of controversial literature, no matter how offensive." [7]
Will someone please 'splain how the foregoing harmonizes with ADL's attempt at getting the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Institute for Historical Review? Is this countering hate "with information that promotes understanding, tolerance and truth"? Or is it a very real attempt at practical censorship? Would Mr. Rogers respond with, "Can you spell hypocrisy"?
A recent alliance between the ADL and software maker Cyber Patrol resulted in an announcement of "a new filter that will bar access to anti-Semitic, racist, and other forms of hate speech online."[8] On last check, the First Amendment makes no differentiation in its "freedom of speech" clause between "anti-Semitic, racist, and other forms" of speech and what ADL would call legitimate freedom of expression--which seems more and more to be that which is defined only by them. They are, however, quite willing to share their dictionary with the rest of the world--whether or not the world wants it.
Typical of the standards of Internet filter software manufacturers is the censorship criteria published by SurfWatch. Their blocking criteria is broken down into four major categories:
Under the "Violence/Hate Speech" category are listed ten subheadings, the last of which is "Holocaust revision/denial sites." It must be asked why and how they arrived at the conclusion that the entire category of the Holocaust not included within traditional historical thinking is a taboo subject? Did those writing the software, or those publishing or commissioning it, check out the growing mountain of evidence against the currently accepted view of that event, and did they find it to be specious and wanting in credibility?
How does "Holocaust revision/denial sites" harmonize with the intensity and moral turpitude inherent in SurfWatch's other listings in the same subheading?
[Oops! Someone apparently forgot about Saturday morning children's cartoons].
In the seemingly endless attempts by these organizations to engage in functional censorship, a large and reputable publisher, St. Martin's Press, has come under considerable fire for its decision to publish Goebbels a David Irving book about Hitler's propaganda minister.
In the book Irving makes several controversial statements strenuously objected to by the ADL and other Jewish organizations. Consistently enough, the debate over the book does not center around the factualness of its content, but the author himself.
The Washington Post quotes St. Martin's publisher Thomas Dunne as saying, "Joseph Goebbels is doubtless laughing in Hell. He, after all, was the man who loved nothing better than burning books, threatening publishers, suppressing ideas, and judging the merits of ideas based not on their content but by their author's racial, ethnic or political purity. That is indeed a sad irony."
How did this publisher fare in standing up against their opposition? Strangely, the very next day after The Washington Post published Dunne's statement, St. Martin's cancelled the publication of Irving's book. "A humiliated St. Martin's Press yesterday cancelled publication of its new book by historian David Irving, admitting that the work it had so righteously defended is in fact 'an insidious' piece of anti-Semitic propaganda." [The Washington Post, April 3, 1996].
"'It's not a question of book burning or censorship,' said ADL Director Abraham Foxman. 'That's just poppycock. It's a question of responsibility. I think they finally made the right decision.'" [ibid.]
Jewish Terrorism! Isn't that Stretching Things a Bit?
Another organization of apparently the same stripe as ADL is the Jewish Defense League (JDL). Although ADL claims that JDL's philosophy of terrorism is at odds with ADL's non-violent approach, some have likened the difference as to that between Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army.
The Institute for Historical Review has been accused repeatedly of being an anti-Semitic hate group. In fact, historical revision of the Holocaust is only a part of their agenda--but it is the part that constantly gets them in trouble with Jewish watchdog groups like B'nai B'rith, ADL--and--the Jewish Defense League.
The IHR claims that, "Far from being a fomenter of hate, the Institute has been a target of hate groups. During the 1980s, the Jewish Defense League [JDL]...repeatedly assaulted Institute offices and staff members. Following numerous death threats by telephone and mail, extensive property damage, five relatively minor fire bombings, one drive-by shooting and two physical assaults, the Institute's office-warehouse was destroyed in an arson attack on July 4, 1984. Estimated property loss was more than $400,000, including tens of thousands of books, rare documents, irreplaceable files and expensive office equipment."[9]
The Los Angeles Times reports that "the Jewish Defense League...is the second most active terrorist group in the United States, according to FBI reports."[10]
The Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center was established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier under a grant from Jewish businessman Samuel Belzberg. Naming the Center after the famous "Nazi Hunter" Hier parlayed Belzberg's grant into one of the most powerful of Jewish organizations. The Los Angeles Times in a 1990 story claimed at that time that "...second in membership only to B'nai B'rith International with 380,000 members, the Simon Wiesenthal Center at times rivals the venerable American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League and the World Jewish Congress for its impact and access to world leaders." [11]
Alfred Lilienthal, a well known Jewish/American historian once said that this country is absorbed in what he calls "Holocaustomania." The Wiesenthal Center is apparently foremost among peers in promoting this form of backdoor racism and in marginalizing the need for any debate of historical issues with which it disagrees. The director of Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Center was quoted in the Jewish Press and Ha'aretz Daily newspaper as saying that "Rabbi Hier and the Wiesenthal Center are, in my opinion, the most extreme of those who utilize the Holocaust....The Jewish people do many vulgar things," he continued, "but the Wiesenthal Center raised it to a complete level: The optimum use of sensitive issues in order to raise money...." [12]
"The enormous success of the Simon Wiesenthal Center," says New York Times Deputy Media Editor Judith Miller in her book One by One by One: Facing the Holocaust, [13]"has given new meaning to what was once a macabre in-house joke...'There's no business like shoah business'" shoah, of course, is the Hebrew word for Holocaust.
So influential have these Zionist organizations been in establishing their singular agenda for Holocaust definition that, "to dispute Holocaust claims," according to Mark Weber, "is a crime in, among others, France, Germany, Austria and Spain."
In France, for instance, the Fabius-Gayssot Law (13 July 1990), makes a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment for up to a year and a fine up to 300,000 Franks ($50,000) to openly deny or dispute the Holocaust as defined in "crimes against humanity" by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg following World War II.
Voltaire, arguably the most famous of French philosophers, once said, "I do not agree with a thing you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Now, in Voltaire's homeland, that philosophical right to freedom of speech has indeed been relegated to just that--philosophy.
If the Holocaust and its purported six million Jewish victims is provable fact, as the vast majority believe it to be, then it will stand against all who oppose it, and will do so by merely presentation and debate of the evidence. But when an individual or group seeks to close off debate and examination of evidence, they give another kind of evidence--that they, themselves, do not fully believe their claims.
Some will read the foregoing and conclude that the author is anti-Semitic. Some will know better. What is, in reality, presented here is nothing more or less than humanity. It is the nature of man to control all he can and to destroy all he cannot. This nature is based on fear. One does not need to be Nazi, Communist, Zionist, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or anything else in order to express this degeneracy. All one needs for the fruition of that nature is to be born on this planet. This is where lies the true defect in the gene pool. The sum of all disputes among men amounts to no more than two children holding the opposite ends of the same rope arguing who has the longest piece.