Durban II: Professor Dershowitz Explains What He Did at Durban II

Take a look at Professor Dershowitz's explanation of his encounter with Durban II. It's quite revealing. http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/dershowitz/entry/confronting_evil_at_durban_ii

HDOT Launches Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Russian Translations

Emory University announces the launch of Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, and Russian translations of material which exposes the charges made by deniers:

Elaine Justice: 404.727.0643 office, 404.276.8263 cell

Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDOT.org), a Web site founded by Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt to teach about the dangers of Holocaust denial and demonstrate how deniers distort historical evidence of the Holocaust, is re-launching in four new languages: Arabic, Farsi, Russian and Turkish. These translations are designed to spread the original site's messages to areas where Holocaust denial goes the most unchallenged.

HDOT.org was founded following the well-known David Irving v. Penguin UK and Deborah Lipstadt libel trial. Holocaust denier Irving sued Lipstadt and her publisher for calling him a denier who knowingly twists and distorts the truth of the Holocaust. A British judge found Irving to be an active Holocaust denier whose writings on the topic included both anti-Semitic and racist elements.

Despite the success of the Irving trial, online Holocaust denial has increased significantly in the past few years, says Lipstadt. "Deniers are attacking the entire history of the Holocaust piece by piece," she says. "Our site puts basic, easily accessible information into the hands of people encountering sophisticated content designed to confuse them."

At each of the new sites, visitors will be greeted by a complete parallel home page, site navigation and content in their language of choice. They will be able to search the site's database in the new languages as well.

The new sites are available at: arabic.hdot.org, farsi.hdot.org, russian.hdot.org and turkish.hdot.org or via www.hdot.org.

"This project significantly expands the reach of HDOT.org in regions of the world where a significant amount of Holocaust denial is happening," says Lipstadt.

In addition, HDOT.org has added significantly to its offering of more than 30 Myth/Fact sheets, available in all five languages. These Myth/Fact sheets address Holocaust denial head-on by listing various claims made about the Holocaust by deniers and providing the historical evidence that shows them to be false. Over the past two years, the Myth/Fact sheets have been HDOT.org's most popular destination.

HDOT creates new podcast series

In conjunction with this launch, HDOT also announces the creation of a new podcast series, available through Emory's iTunes University.

The series includes podcasts featuring such figures as Lipstadt, renowned Holocaust historian Saul Friedlander and professor Ken Waltzer, who uncovered fraud in a recent and highly publicized Holocaust memoir. The series also includes interviews with Michael Shermer, a professional skeptic and author of "Denying History," and Father John Pawlikowski, a veteran of Catholic-Jewish interfaith dialogue, speaking about recent events.

"As so much of the strategy that deniers employ involves spreading their falsehoods on the Internet, we worked with Professor Lipstadt to have scholarly, authoritative resources available in podcasts. Some of the most respected experts on denial on the Internet are interviewed," says Alan Cattier, Emory's director of Academic Technology Services.

The podcasts will form the core of several new lesson plans being produced for advanced high school and college courses that will help educators and the public approach the complex of social, historical, political and ideological issues that emerge in the study of Holocaust denial.

The launch was made possible by grants from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany and the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties and other funders. The Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture helped fund the podcast series. HDOT.org is made possible by significant grants from Angelica Berrie and the Russell Berrie Foundation, Gralla Family Philanthropic Fund, Yvette and Larry Gralla, Fern E. and William J. Lowenberg Fund, Leo Melamed Foundation, Mozel Charitable Trust, Joshua & Nirit Resnick Foundation, Sandler Family Philanthropic Fund and The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.

Delegation from Hollywood Goes to Iran: Did They Ask the Crucial Question?

Seems that a group of Hollywood folks have gone off to Iran to make nice with fellow filmmakers. Iranian filmmakers are hoping to use this opportunity to expose them to Iranian films.

The Hollywood folks probably expected to sit and sing a round of Kumbaya. Instead they Iranian government demanded an apology for films that insulted Iran. Among those films was one about an American woman married to an Iranian man. The mother had to smuggle her daughter out of Iran when the Iranians would not let her leave with her. It's a true story... but I won't be surprised if the Hollywood delegation apologizes for it.

The attack on American films did not seem to phase some of the filmmakers. Phil Alden Robinson, director and writer of Field of Dreams, who rather dreamily declared that "today is my birthday and I cannot think of any other place I wanted to be other than here."

The NYTimes placed the story of the Hollywood folks' visit next to an article about an NPR reporter who has been arrested and detained by the Iranians. As of this morning nothing has been heard from her.

Did/ will the filmmakers ask about her?

Did/ will they make it clear that everything about their profession calls for freedom of creativity and freedom of the press?

Did/ will they even mention her?

Did/ will they say that nothing will change as long as Iran is one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists?

I predict that they will return full of rapture for Iran and the wonderful country that it is. They will probably suggest we should ignore the Holocaust denial and threats against Israel and antisemitism that spews forth from that country. [And the open attacks on homosexuals.]

Iranians Criticize West's Persecution of Holocaust Deniers

MEMRI reports that Iran's official news agency has criticized the west for persecuting Holocaust deniers.

And this from a country that hanged 22 people in one week!

Iranian TV Show on Holocaust [cont.]

I have blogged about this, but for those who want to read more here is a link to a review which appeared in the LA Jewish Journal about the Iranian TV show which supposedly was a response to Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial.

A more critical view of the Iranian TV series on the Holocaust: Not so much to cheer about

Below is a review of the Iranian TV series which created a stir because it dealt with the Holocaust without denying it. [How low we have sunk when a state-run TV production is praised for acknowledging the Holocaust.] The review appeared in Tel Aviv University's Iranian Pulse, which contains updates and annalysis of Iranian affairs.

For those who don't want to work their way through the whole thing here is the author's key finding:

Although Western media outlets (such as BBC, Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel) have lauded the series for its admission that the Holocaust took place, and interpret it as a sympathetic reversal in the Iranian attitude towards Jews, Zero Degree Turn is nevertheless laden with problematic messages regarding Jews. The series purports to reflect the events leading up to World War II, yet it is fraught with anachronistic discrepancies, and blatantly falsifies the historical realities of the era.

This is demonstrated, inter alia, by the false assertion that Zionists and Nazis collaborated in order to provoke Jewish emigration. Also, the series fails to address European anti-Semitism and the rise of the Zionist Movement; it is as if Zionism emerged in a vacuum. While Iranian state TV finally draws a distinction between Jews and Zionists, the series likens Zionism to Nazism by placing them on the same immoral plane—unmistakably an intentional message of the series.

No. 18 January 10, 2008

"A ZERO DEGREE TURN" IN POLICY: IRANIAN STATE-RUN TV PRODUCTION ON THE HOLOCAUST

Rachel Kantz and Miriam Nissimov*

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad captured the world’s attention with his incendiary attacks against Israel and with his Holocaust denial. He shored up his rhetoric by sponsoring a Holocaust cartoon contest in 2006, encouraging a plethora of pseudoacademic inquiries into the genocide, and hosting prominent Holocaust deniers for what the regime claimed was a conference convened in order to check the veracity of historical claims regarding the Holocaust (December 2006).

If Ahmadinejad perpetuates the regime’s traditional attempts to undermine Israel’s right to exist by denying and/or trivializing the Holocaust, then why has Iranian state-run television launched Zero Degree Turn, a high-budget series which is ostensibly sympathetic to the fate of European Jewry during World War II?

Although Ayatollah Khomeini decisively reversed the Mohammad Reza Shah’s pro-Israel policy, he and his cohorts claimed to differentiate between Judaism and Zionism or Jews and Zionists. This, however, has proven to be a formidable task for the revolutionary regime, as Ayatollah Khomeini himself publicly breached the distinction, and state-run publications incessantly blur the two notions.

One such recent example, is the speech commemorating Jerusalem Day by former president and current Head of the Assembly of Experts, `Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani held in October 2007.

Rafsanjani stated that the Nazis’ “first objective was to free Europe from the evils of Zionism,” and that this was justifiable because “the Zionists, as a powerful faction, used to engage in many subversive activities in Europe, thanks to their large assets and propaganda empire.” He asserted that “one of the reasons that the Jews of that era received” the treatment they did was due to prevailing Jewish attitudes. As a result, “the Europeans intended to force the Zionists to leave Europe, because they were always a nuisance for European governments” (BBC Monitoring, October 5, 2007).

While many Iranian leaders blur the distinction between Jews and Zionists, Zero Degree Turn, written and directed by Hassan Fathi, not only conceptualizes the two as distinct and separate communities, but also portrays them in acute conflict with each other. A dominant theme of the series involves a fierce struggle between Jews and Zionists, both in Paris and Iran. In Iran, this struggle reaches its climax when the local Zionist “gang” murders the community’s rabbi, an ardent opponent of the group’s activities, thereby encouraging Jewish immigration to Palestine.

In Paris, a romance develops between Sarah Stark, a young Jewish student, and Habib Parsa, a Muslim Iranian and son of a diplomat. This story line is loosely based on a true story of heroism in which 'Abdul Hossein Sardari, the Iranian chargé d’affaires saved over a thousand European Jews by forging passports and securing them refuge in Iran. The theme of struggle between Judaism and Zionism manifests itself in a conflict between Sarah’s two uncles, ostensibly the prototypes of “Jew” and “Zionist.”

As such, one uncle, Shmuel Weiss, is portrayed as an honest and righteous intellectual who furiously argues with her other uncle, Theodore Stark, a deceptive Zionist, not coincidentally named after Theodore Herzl, the founding father of the Zionist movement. In a dispute with Stark, Weiss states: “following the transgression of the ancients, the faithful suffered long years of exile until they found security and tranquility in their various places, and now you come and encourage the Jewish people to end their exile? No, I’ve enjoyed many great years side by side with my compatriots, the French. It is not decent to abandon them now when they are faced with such an evil threat.”

The differentiation between Judaism and Zionism is accentuated with the addition of a story line “establishing” collusion between Zionist and Nazi forces—a familiar and commonly accepted notion in the Arab world. In order to realize Zionist aspirations, Theodore Stark collaborates with the Nazis and encourages harassment against the Jews in the aim of persuading them to flee Europe.

'Abdollah Shahbazi, the Iranian historian and author who acted as the “scientific” consultant for the series, underscores this claim in his Persian blog: “during World War II, rich Jewish families were party to a secret alliance with Hitler’s Germany,” and “played an important role in building Hitler’s power, [and in] the outbreak of World War II.”

The series’ distinction between Jews and Zionists and its allegation of Zionist-Nazi collusion are nothing new in Iranian public discourse. What is new is the crack in the state’s lack of tolerance for artistic freedom and religious digression regarding social norms in Iran.

This is one of the rare occasions since the Islamic Revolution state TV has invested so much money and effort in programming that contains elements that run counter to the regime’s conception of appropriate social behavior. These include a soap opera-like love story between a secular Muslim and a secular Jew, unveiled Muslim women, famous Iranian Muslim actors and actresses wearing expensive costumes reflecting 1940’s Western attire, and free discussion of life under the Pahlavis. Additionally, Sarah Stark and Habib Parsa’s discussion of respect for each other’s religious views and the need for dialogue between the religions is refreshingly new.

Finally, given the abundance and recent proliferation of anti-Semitic programming, from children’s shows to documentaries, any programming that evokes sympathy for Jews should be seen as an anomaly in the realm of Iranian state-run TV.

Although Western media outlets (such as BBC, Wall Street Journal, Der Spiegel) have lauded the series for its admission that the Holocaust took place, and interpret it as a sympathetic reversal in the Iranian attitude towards Jews, Zero Degree Turn is nevertheless laden with problematic messages regarding Jews. The series purports to reflect the events leading up to World War II, yet it is fraught with anachronistic discrepancies, and blatantly falsifies the historical realities of the era.

This is demonstrated, inter alia, by the false assertion that Zionists and Nazis collaborated in order to provoke Jewish emigration. Also, the series fails to address European anti-Semitism and the rise of the Zionist Movement; it is as if Zionism emerged in a vacuum. While Iranian state TV finally draws a distinction between Jews and Zionists, the series likens Zionism to Nazism by placing them on the same immoral plane—unmistakably an intentional message of the series.

The hard-line Kayhan congratulated the series for conveying this idea: “The ground for [creating] Israel is prepared when Hitler’s army puts pressure on activist Jews. In this sense […] Nazism [is] parallel to Zionism.” (Associated Press, September 16, 2007) Here, Kayhan hits it on the mark: the ultimate goal of the series is to delegitimize the nature of the establishment of Israel, and therefore its right to exist.

A critical viewing of the series reveals that despite the new expressions of artistic freedom, Zero Degree Turn imparts common establishment messages, which are in perfect harmony with Ahmadinejad’s policy of denying the Holocaust in order to undermine Israel’s right to exist. Given that the director has mentioned that the state intends to market the series beyond Iran’s borders, the series should be seen as a sophisticated attempt to showcase the regime’s virulent anti-Israel views abroad.

• Rachel Kantz is a Research Fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.
• Miriam Nissimov is a Research Fellow at the Center for Iranian Studies and a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Historical Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Fred Töben, Australian Holocaust Denier, tries to post on this blog

I feel no need to post on this blog comments sent to me by deniers. I long ago determined that this blog would not be a place for deniers -- through the subterfuge of supposed comments -- to wage their battles against historical accuracy.

Today I received a comment from Fred Töben, the noted Australian Holocaust denier.

[Töben, on right, with Ahmadinejad at Iran conference. Note David Duke over Ahmadinejad's shoulder]

I am posting it here because it demonstrates how deniers have turned on David Irving, even though for all intents and purposes, he continues to deny.

Deniers seem to be eating their young... and their old.

Toben's comment was prompted by my post "David Irving goes to Spain and to the BBC...":

David Irving has always believed in limited gassings and hence he is a Holocaust believer. I refuse to believe, without physical proof, in the systematic extermination of six million European Jews in homicidal gas chambers.

The Holocaust believers have never proven their case but instead use legal means to silence those who refuse to believe in the Jewish Holocaust Shoah.

Fredrick Töben
Adelaide Institute

Oxford Union: Irving and Griffin to appear

Well it looks like it is official. The members of the Oxford Union, one of the most prestigious debating societies in the world, have voted to invite these two men to appear at the Union on Monday night.

The vote was 2-1 in favor.

The Union's president keeps justifying the invitation in that they were not invited to share their views but to speak about free speech. The president of the Union told the BBC that

"They will be speaking in the context of a forum in which there will be other speakers to challenge and attack their views in a head to head manner."

The fallacy is that on issues of free speech I doubt whether there will be any difference of opinion.

In some perverse fashion I would rather they had been invited to express their views and then, rather than to debate them, to have them properly demolished by the students.

Truth be told, neither of these men deserve this platform. Maybe the students who invited them will go study with the professors at Columbia who thought a coveted platform at that university should be extended to Holocaust and homosexuality denier Ahmadinejad....

Denmark and Switzerland: The beginning of a trend or two stupidities in quick succession?

In the previous post I reflected on the Danish Arts Council official who said, regarding a grant to a Holocaust denier, we don't censor opinions. A few weeks ago I posted on the Swiss Foreign Minister who proposed to the Iranians holding a conference at which all views of the Holocaust would be represented... including deniers'.

Is this a disturbing trend or just stupidity on the part of two bureaucrats... or both? I don't mean to suggest that either one is a closet denier. On some level that would be less disturbing. Since they are not, what it suggests is that denial is increasingly being thought of as a "point of view."

These two folks' minds are so open their brains fell out.

BUT HE WON'T SHAKE HANDS WITH A WOMAN??!!

More thoughts on the Neturei Karta so-called rabbis at the Iran Holocaust denial conference.....

Makes me wonder what the so-called rabbi was really doing in Tehran... Maybe Professor Dossa can enlighten us. Of course his reports on the conference have not been too trustworthy.

Canadian Professor Shiraz Dossa goes to a Holocaust denial conference and then denies: Professorial Obfuscations

Shiraz Dossa, a professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada, attended the Holocaust denial conference in Iran. He has now published a lengthy defense of his decision to attend in a small Canadian publication Literary Review of Canada.

His explanation is full of distortions, obfuscations, and simple inventions. Here is one graphic example. Dossa writes:

Iranian president Dr. Ahmadinejad; he did not attend or participate in the conference. It was not a Holocaust-denial conference by any stretch. That’s all false.

Problem for Dossa is that the official website of the President of Iran says otherwise.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that the Zionist regime is a constant threat to the Middle East states. "This threat has caused the regional countries to divert their resources from development to spending them on purchasing arms which will increase discord among them," he told participants of the international conference World Vision on Holocaust who met him in Tehran.

Then, of course, there are the pictures above.

My question is for the Literary Review of Canada. How could it claim that Shiraz's article was subjected to "rigorous fact-checking that went on for a number of weeks"? I found and uploaded this information in about 5 minutes.

Once Shiraz Dossa chose to attend the conference one could get a sense of what kind of man this is. But what can we say about this supposedly cautious and intellectual honest magazine? Clearly it is none of those things, at least in this regard.

Note:It is possible that the conference participants went to a different venue to meet the president. If this is Dossa's way out of his claim that Ahamdinejad did not attend or participate he is even more of an obfuscator [and far less smart] than I originally thought he was.

More on Dossa later.

Al Hurra whitewashes Iran's Holocaust denial confernce and NPR's "On the Media" strange treatment thereof

A few weeks ago I promised to comment further on Al Hurra, the American funded Arabic language station, coverage of the Holocaust denial conference in Iran.

The station was skewered on the pages of the Wall Street Journal by Joel Mowbray for its coverage of the conference.

The station treated the Holocaust as having two sides and that this was a forum to allow historians to air views that are otherwise suppressed.

Mowbray noted that the Al Hurra reporter covering the conference provided one of the organizers an opportunity to say:

"If we actually conclude with our experts through this meeting that the Holocaust is a real incident we will at that time admit its presence."

[Mowbray notes: "Transcript provided by a fluent Arabic-speaking U.S. government employee." Amazingly, Al Hurra does not provide transcripts of its programs.]

This is SOP for deniers, who attempt to show their open mindedness and to present themselves as simply engaged in trying to find out the truth.

Al Hurra also broadcast the remarks of Robert Faurisson:

"Gas chambers and mass killings of the Jews, in the way that it is pretended (by the Jews), is completely untrue, and an historical lie."

Al Hurra called those who are not deniers as "Holocaust supporters," again reinforcing the "two sides" of the issue view.

The reporter went on to say that those people at the conference who were not deniers "didn't enforce their statements with scientific evidence."

This sounds like it could have come straight from David Irving and his ilk.
But Al Hurra did not stop there. Six weeks later it broadcast a story on the Neturei Karta so-called rabbis who attended. Rather than acknowledge that they were a fringe group with a membership of no more than a few thousand, Al Hurra said they had a million members and, according to Mowbray, depicted them as mainstream Modern Orthodox.

NPR's On the Media compounds the problem
Now Mark Lynch of George Washington, a frequent guest on NPR's On the Media and someone who admits on his blog [Abu Aardvark] to be roiled about the criticism of Al Hurra [but seems to offer few specifics about its coverage of the Iranian conference], dismissed the coverage as "appear[ing] to be a mistake." That's it.

A mistake? It was many things but mistake does not sound to me like one of them. The best thing that can be said is that it was a lost opportunity to educate its Arab speaking audience [which apparently is minuscule] about the Holocaust denial movement.

It was a prime opportunity to talk about the fact that the Holocaust has the dubious distinction of being the best documented genocide in the world. Sadly, it was a lost opportunity.

And it was a lost opportunity for NPR to make the point about the spread of Holocaust denial in the Arab/Muslim world. This was far more than a mistake. It demonstrated a certain attitude in the Arab/Muslim world that is deeply troubling.

The Iranian UN Ambassador attempts to burnish Ahmadinejad's record*

In a profile in today's The New York Times, Warren Hoge gives a glowing profile of Iran's UN Ambassador, Javad Zarif. In an almost fawning portrait, Hoge describes how Zarif is so busy giving speeches that he hasn't been on the diplomatic circuit.

For relaxation he does grocery shopping [Fairway?] and walks through Central Park. According to Hoge, Zarif has been "listened to respectfully and often applauded warmly" by American audiences because these audiences suspect that he "contests the extreme views of Mr. Ahmadinejad."

Nothing too remarkable here. Until Mr. Zarif spins Ahmadinejad on the Holocaust.

Mr. Zarif contends Iranian President Ahmadinejad has been misunderstood regarding the Holocaust. According to Mr. Zarif, Mr. Ahmadinejad was not questioning whether the Holocaust had occurred, “but merely saying that the Palestinians wrongly bore the consequences of it.”

Apparently Mr. Zarif simply ignores Mr. Ahmadinejad’s frequent statements to the contrary. And surprisingly Mr. Hoge does not bring them up. The Iranian president has not been shy about raising all sorts of questions about the Holocaust. He has done so in speeches and in writing.

For example: In December 2005 he described the Holocaust as a “legend” that had been “fabricated,” In a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel he said, regarding the Holocaust, that the victorious countries of World War II “create[d] an alibi.” He wrote

But, does it not stand to reason that some victorious countries of World War II intended to create an alibi on the basis of which they could continue keeping the defeated nations of World War II indebted to them. Their purpose has been to weaken their morale and their inspiration in order to obstruct their progress and power.

In a May 2006 interview with the German publication Der Spiegel Mr. Ahmadinejad insisted that there were “two opinions” regarding the Holocaust. He told Der Spiegel

We don't want to confirm or deny the Holocaust. We oppose every type of crime against any people. But we want to know whether this crime actually took place or not.

[....]

But there are two opinions on this in Europe. One group of scholars or persons, most of them politically motivated, say the Holocaust occurred. Then there is the group of scholars who represent the opposite position and have therefore been imprisoned for the most part. Hence, an impartial group has to come together to investigate and to render an opinion on this very important subject, because the clarification of this issue will contribute to the solution of global problems. Under the pretext of the Holocaust, a very strong polarization has taken place in the world and fronts have been formed.

Mr. Zarif also ignores the fact that Mr. Ahmadinejad convened a conference to explore the existence of the Holocaust which was dominated by the appearance of Holocaust deniers. At the conference Ahmadinejad claimed that Western governments did not allow research into the Holocaust.

Mr. Zarif is not the only Iranian official to attempt to reinterpret Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statements. Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi has also argued that the statements were “misunderstood."

Mr. Zarif and his colleagues' know that, while Ahmadinejad's statements may play well with certain audience in Iran, they do him and their country no good in Western eyes. In fact, they make their country's leadership look ridiculous. Hence their efforts to spin his statements.

Their efforts to make Mr. Ahmadinejad sound more reasonable notwithstanding, his statements speak for themselves.

* I orignally posted this blog with the following headline: The New York Times' glowing portrait of Iran's UN Ambassador. I changed it because I decided that it placed the emphasis on the NY Times and not the attempt by Iran to burnish Ahmadinejad's record.

A picture is worth a 1000 words

Mideasttruth.com has collected a series of cartoons on Iran and Ahmadinejad. While I don't agree with those that depict him as a Hitler [I would not give him the preverse pleasure of allowing him to think he is as significant], they make some powerful points.

I think this one by Chris Britt needs no comment.

Iranian TV coverage of Holocaust denial conference

Check out YouTube for clips from the Iranian Holocaust denial conference. It is startling but not surprising the way in which the truth is thrown out the window in order for those interviews to make the claim that the Holocaust is a myth.

Note also the participation in some of the TV discussion after the conference of Norman Finkelstein and Lady Renouf, David Irving's good "friend" and someone my legal team dubbed Brunhilda for her behavior during the trial.

Neturei Karta at MIT: MIT's Jewish Community responds strategically

MIT's Jewish Community has responded in what seems to me, an observor from afar, a strategically well-fashioned style to the appearance of the Neturei Karta so-called rabbi, David Weiss, at MIT. They make a number of important points, two of which jump out at me.

* This was advertised as a "Jewish view" on "Foreign Policy and Social Justice." To describe a view that has been condemned from everyone from the left end of the spectrum to Satmar on the right as a "Jewish view" is ridiculous. These people represent a couple of thousand Neturei Karta, people known for their intense hatred of most other Jews who don't share their views.

* There are groups on the MIT campus who have been actively involved in interfaith dialogue. To invite this guy is a slap in the face at those who have dedicated themselves to constructive dialogue.

Iranian Mullahs on Holocaust denial

According to an oped in today's New York Times The New York Times by Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian studies at Stanford and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution,Iranian officials, despite defying UN resolutions, have been sending another kind of message, a more conciliatory one.

After a meeting with the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader’s chief foreign policy adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, declared last week that the mullahs might agree to certain steps to imporve relations with the west.

These steps include announcing that the Holocaust is a fact of history and chastising those who question its reality. Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, also declared the Holocaust a “historical matter” to be discussed by scholars (and not, he implied, by ignorant politicians).

There seems to be general agreement that this is another chink in the armour of President Ahmadinejad.

From my perspective, it's fascinating and a bit chilling that the existence of the HOlocaust has become a factor in foreign policy and international relations.

Some may cheer this development and I guess it is a good thing. But the fact that acknowledging the existence of the HOlocaust should be a sign of moderation and outreach leaves me dumbfounded.

Boston Jewish Advocate on visit of Neturei Karta rabbi to MIT

Here's the Jewish Advocate story on the visit of this so-called rabbi to MIT.

MIT to host Neturei Karta rabbi who was at Holocaust denial conference in Iran

According to the MIT calendar, tonight at 7 p.m. so-called Rabbi David Weiss of Neturei Karta will be speaking at MIT. So you can rush from hearing Jimmy Carter up to Cambridge to hear another convoluted [you could use a stronger term] version of history.

Actually, I would suggest that people refrain from going and that they certainly NOT demonstrate against Weiss. This is what he wants, media attention. He reminds me, as I have said on this blog before, of what my lawyer Anthony Julius said to me about fighting David Irving, "he is like the dirt [use a different term here as well] you step in on the street. It has no intrinsic importance unless you fail to clean it off your feet."

Go to an Israeli movie, read a book by David Grossman, read Ha'aretz or any one of a myriad other positive and affirmative things about Israel. Ignore this piece of....

The New Republic on Ahmadinejad's Antisemitism

The New Republic on line has an interesting and important article by Bret Stephens on Ahmadinejad's antisemitism or, to be more precise, how we "know" what is and is not antisemitism.