Iranian Holocaust Denial Confab Draws David Duke, Protests

[RebLem]

In Corlyss's scurrilous thread on the Wm Jefferson election in Lousiana, jbuck mentioned David Duke's recent attendance @ a Holocaust denial conference in Iran. I thought the subject deserved its own thread. Here it is. RebLem


Tue 12 Dec 2006 || The Scotsman

Protesters condemn Holocaust conference

MICHAEL THEODOULOU

A CONFERENCE of the world's most prominent Holocaust deniers opened in Iran yesterday amid international condemnation and protests by dozens of Iranian students, who burned pictures of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and chanted "death to the dictator".

Never has the hardline leader, who was giving a speech at a university in Tehran yesterday, faced such open hostility at home.

Professors and researchers from France to Indonesia arrived at the plush conference centre in an upmarket north Tehran suburb to give papers on topics such as "Irrational Vocabulary of the American Professorial Class with Regards to the Holocaust".

The conference has embarrassed many ordinary Iranians, who are aware of the damage such events are inflicting on their country's image.

Mr Ahmadinejad responded to the burning of his pictures by protesters at Amir Kabir University by saying: "Everyone should know that Ahmadinejad is prepared to be burned in the path of true freedom, independence and justice."

Welcoming the participants, Manouchehr Mottaki, the foreign minister, said: "The aim of this conference is not to deny or confirm the Holocaust. Its main aim is to create an opportunity for thinkers who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust."

Mr Duke said: "There must be freedom of speech, it is scandalous that the Holocaust cannot be discussed freely. It makes people turn a blind eye to Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people."

Several ultra-Orthodox rabbis from Europe and the US sported a flag of Israel with a red line through it on their cloaks and the slogan: "We are Jews, not Zionists" in Hebrew, Arabic and Farsi.

"We came here to put the Orthodox Jewish viewpoint," Ahron Cohen, a British rabbi said. "We certainly say there was a Holocaust... but in no way can it be used as a justification for perpetrating unjust acts against the Palestinians."

In Israel, the official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, issued a statement condemning the Tehran conference as an attempt to "paint an extremist agenda with a scholarly brush".

IN DENIAL

THE conference has proved to be a magnet for holocaust deniers worldwide. Some of the leading figures include:

• David Duke, a US academic [where is this, the Wilfrid Academy? The Moler Barber College?--RebLem], a former Louisiana Republic Representative and former member of the Ku Klux Klan.

• Fredrick Toeben, a German-born Australian known for denying the scale of the Holocaust. He has spent time in a German jail for inciting racial hatred.

He brought to the Tehran conference a large model of the Treblinka extermination camp to argue his claim gas chambers did not exist.

• Georges Thiel, a French writer who has been convicted in France for spreading revisionist theories about the mass extermination of Jews. He told the conference the Holocaust was "an enormous lie".

• David Irving, a British historian, is believed to have been invited but is serving a three-year jail term in Austria for denying there were gas chambers in Auschwitz.

• Lady Michele Renouf, an Australian socialite and friend of Irving's, was due to attend. She was ejected from London's Reform Club three years ago after trying to get Irving invited to speak there.

In a 2003 interview, she described Judaism as a "creed of domination and racial superiority" and was last month banned from addressing the far-right British National Party as it thought her views extreme. [ --RebLem]
http://news.scotsman.com/international. ... rmat=print

[Ralph]

This conference is an obscenity, a parody of an academic convocation or seminar.

[Ted]

This conference is an obscenity,

Equally obscene is the fact that Ahmadinejad somehow feels he looks good in a “Members Only Jacket” from the early 80’s

[Lark Ascending]

Holocaust denial makes me want to vomit. Good on the Iranians courageous enough to show their displeasure of this hate fest - all its attendees deserve a damn good kicking.

[living_stradivarius]

Mr Duke said: "There must be freedom of speech, it is scandalous that the Holocaust cannot be discussed freely. It makes people turn a blind eye to Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people."

Free speech my a**. When your values are backwards, so is the value of free speech. A true upholding of free speech would be an open debate between those who speculate and the facts available.

[Teresa B]

What sends a chill up my spine is that there are entire world conferences made up of people whose reason for being is hatred--in this case of Jews. These people have made up conspiracy theories as to why the rest of us have been fooled into believing the Holocaust happened. It amazes me no end how they can manufacture "facts" to back up their lies and even believe it themselves.

Teresa

[Ralph]

What sends a chill up my spine is that there are entire world conferences made up of people whose reason for being is hatred--in this case of Jews. These people have made up conspiracy theories as to why the rest of us have been fooled into believing the Holocaust happened. It amazes me no end how they can manufacture "facts" to back up their lies and even believe it themselves.

Teresa

*****

And that is why I have so vehemently and publicly disagreed with scholars and others who argue that these deniers should be ignored, not answered and refuted.

[Ted]

Ralph Wrote:

And that is why I have so vehemently and publicly disagreed with scholars and others who argue that these deniers should be ignored, not answered and refuted.

“The power of the vampire is that people won’t believe in him”
Bram Stoker

[Brendan]

History really does matter. What we in Australia have been calling "The History Wars" has been going on for quite some time.

Simplistically speaking, there are basically three ways to view the study of history: narcissistically, positivistically and reconstructively. The narcissistic view is that historians reconstruct a past to suit themselves. Since we can never truly experience or know the cultural context of the past it’s an exercise in vanity or power politics, so history can (should) be reconstructed to suit current political circumstances/causes or expose how un-PC folk in the past were.

Positivism believes that we can actually know what really happened. That there is one true set of facts that historians accurately rediscover.

Reconstruction is a method that takes both positions into account and seeks to glean the most from them. To deny the Holocaust or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as a political “truth” that suits only some is insane. Hiroshima really was bombed atomically. Jews really were butchered in their millions. Of course we read the past through modern cognitive filters and prejudices, but with awareness we can attempt to minimize this as much as possible and engage the imagination to create the most accurate possible reconstruction, knowing it will soon be outdated/improved.

The move from politically expedient propaganda to actual—or even attempted—objective history is one of the critical shifts in Western thinking. The Confusionists, Hindus and Buddhists, Aztecs and so forth never discovered the idea. Islam tried it in the fourteenth century and promptly gave it away. We think it automatic, when in fact it is a rare and precious way of thought that creates political freedoms in and of itself: it is a truism that history is written by the victors, but if an objective standard must even be seen to be maintained it alters the type and scope of propaganda. Churchill could not deny his role in the Dardanelles Campaign however much spin he tried to put on it.

But modern, or more accurately postmodern, academics often claim that “truth” is always relative, always politicized and therefore nothing more than propaganda, so invent politically correct history to advance their "noble" cause. We always see history through the filters of our own culture and so distort analyses of others, particularly other cultures and minorities within our own. That no other culture even bothers with the attempt to be objective is rarely noted.

Even if we cannot know 100% Truth, does that mean that no truth whatsoever is just as good as 89%? On the face of it, I think it is an attitude that needs justification. Why wouldn’t half a truth be better - or of some use - than no truth at all? Just saying that history can never be 100% accurate is not a valid argument against the attempt to get close.

Surely adopting a relativist position would encourage this. Instead, “relativism” usually means abandoning all pretense to objectivity and adopting a political cause or stance to which all “truth” is then enslaved and abused. Atrocities are invented to justify current attitudes, as in the case of the fabrication of Australian Aboriginal “History” to justify fashionable PC causes. Entire tribes were invented just to be slaughtered by European settlers who equally never existed, all in order to convey and reinforce the myth of “genocide” against Aborigines, which also never happened. But these fictions are what Australian Universities and schools often teach as their “truth”.

History - a Western concept in and of itself - really does matter to the present, let alone the future.

[Agnes Selby]

Never mind all the theories of denial. What has happened to my
entire family? Did they vanish into thin air?

There are actual films of the holocaust, not the ones made in Hollywood. There are still a few people alive who survived it. Iran is preaching to the converted, it is unlikely to convince the world, perhaps not even its own people.

Regards,
Agnes.

[Ted]

I have a pile of black and white photos personally taken by my wife’s father from a just liberated Polish concentration camp—the photos are mostly 5 foot high piles of bodies
I’ve often thought of posting them when this awful topic has come up in the past but they’re to gruesome and too sacred to use for any purpose

[Corlyss_D]

In Corlyss's scurrilous thread on the Wm Jefferson election in Lousiana

And just what was 'scurrilous' about it? You must think it's a good idea for an known crook to be re-elected to the congress and to sit on the Ways and Means committee just because he's black? What are you drinking down there in New Mexico?

[anasazi]

This conference is an obscenity, a parody of an academic convocation or seminar.

Agreed, but don't forget, we're now in the time of truthiness. Or was that Wikiality? Can't quite forget.

[Corlyss_D]

Jews really were butchered in their millions.

I predict that the conference will issue findings at its conclusion to the effect that the holocaust never happened and the Jews had it coming anyway.

But modern, or more accurately postmodern, academics often claim that “truth” is always relative, always politicized and therefore nothing more than propaganda, so invent politically correct history to advance their "noble" cause. We always see history through the filters of our own culture and so distort analyses of others, particularly other cultures and minorities within our own. That no other culture even bothers with the attempt to be objective is rarely noted.

This relativism is the most dangerous development of post-WW2 philosophy. It's one thing to encourage the celebration of other folkways. It's quite another to say that all cultures are equal but that all other cultures are superior to western culture. We may not be able to get that genie back in the bottle.

[Corlyss_D]

Ahmadinejad at Holocaust conference: Israel will 'soon be wiped out'
By Haaretz Service and Agencies

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days were numbered.

Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the systematic murder of six million Jews in World War II as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map", launched another verbal attack on Israel.

"Thanks to people's wishes and God's will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is [headed] downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he said.

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"Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added.

His words received warm applause from delegates at the Holocaust conference, who included ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist Jews and European and American writers who argue the Holocaust was either fabricated or exaggerated.

The White House on Tuesday condemned the gathering of Holocaust deniers in Tehran as "an affront to the entire civilized world as well as to the traditional Iranian values of tolerance and respect."

A statement from White House Press Secretary Tony Snow noted the meeting coincided with International Human Rights Week, which renews the pledges of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights drafted in the wake of World War II atrocities.

"The Iranian regime perversely seeks to call the historical fact of those atrocities into question and provide a platform for hatred," Snow said.

He said the United States will continue to support those in Iran and elsewhere who seek to promote human rights "and will stand with them in their efforts to overcome oppression, injustice and tyranny."

On Monday the U.S. State Department dismissed the conference as "just awful."

Participants at the conference praised Iran's hard-line president Tuesday, saying the gathering gave them the opportunity to air theories that cast doubt on the Nazis' attempt to eradicate the Jewish people, something that is banned in parts of Europe.

The government-sponsored conference in Tehran, which has drawn Holocaust deniers from around the world, has continued to be the focus of international condemnation.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the conference "shocking beyond belief" and branded it "a symbol of sectarianism and hatred."

He said he saw little hope of engaging Iran in constructive action in the Middle East, saying, "I look around the region at the moment, and everything Iran is doing is negative."

Ahmadinejad initiated the two-day gathering in an attempt to bolster his image as a leader standing up to Israel, Europe and the U.S. - an image he has used to whip up support at home and abroad.

"Ahmadinejad's Holocaust comment opened a new window in international relations on this issue. Twenty years ago, it was not possible to talk about the Holocaust and any scientific study was subject to punishment. This taboo has been broken, thanks to Mr. Ahmadinejad's initiative," Georges Theil of France told conference delegates on Tuesday.

Theil was convicted earlier this year in France for "contesting the truth of crimes against humanity" after he said the Nazis never used poison gas against Jews.

Michele Renouf, an Australian socialite supporter of "Holocaust skeptics," called Ahmadinejad "a hero" for opening a debate about the Holocaust. Renouf, a blonde former beauty queen, addressed the audience wearing a green robe and Islamic headscarf, abiding by Iranian law requiring women to cover their hair.

The 67 participants from 30 countries - who include some of Europe's most prominent Holocaust deniers - were expected to meet Ahmadinejad later Tuesday.

"This conference has an incredible impact on Holocaust studies all over the world," said American David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and former state representative in Louisiana.

"The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder," Duke told The Associated Press.

In Germany, Austria and France, it is illegal to deny the Holocaust or question some aspects of it, and several of the Tehran conference participants have been prosecuted. They and the conference organizers have touted the gathering as an expression of academic free speech.

Participants milled around a model of the Auschwitz concentration camp brought by one speaker, Australian Frederick Toben, who uses the mock-up in lectures contending that the camp was too small to kill mass numbers of Jews. More than 1 million people are estimated to have been killed there.

Toben, who was jailed in Germany in 1999 for questioning the Holocaust, has toured Iranian universities in the past, delivering lectures.

Also among the participants are two rabbis and four other members of the group Jews United Against Zionism, who were dressed in the traditional long black coats and black hats of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Members of the delegation, representatives of the Neturei Karta group, say the existence of the state of Israel violates Jewish law and argues that the Holocaust should not be used to justify its founding.

Many of the speakers at the conference insisted the extent of the Holocaust had been largely exaggerated, some contending Jews had exploited it to win backing for the creation of Israel.

In response to the forum, the Vatican issued a statement calling the Holocaust an "immense tragedy before which we cannot remain indifferent ... The memory of those horrible events must remain as a warning for people's consciences."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, "we reject with all our strength the conference taking place in Iran about the supposed nonexistence of the Holocaust."

"We absolutely reject this; Germany will never accept this and will act against it with all the means that we have," Merkel said at a news conference alongside visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

The gathering coincided with an independently convened academic conference on the Holocaust in Berlin, Germany, where historians affirmed the accuracy of the Nazi genocide data and questioned the motives of those behind the Tehran forum.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/800098.html

[Corlyss_D]

These people have made up conspiracy theories as to why the rest of us have been fooled into believing the Holocaust happened. It amazes me no end how they can manufacture "facts" to back up their lies and even believe it themselves.

The triumph of interest groups married to activism. If they can say it often enough more people will believe them.

[Ralph]

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Rabbi among the rabble-rousers
BY BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, December 13th, 2006

Among the throng applauding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel tirade in Tehran yesterday was a Brooklyn-born Orthodox Jewish rabbi whose grandparents were exterminated at Auschwitz.

Needless to say, Yisroel Dovid Weiss is not your average rabbi sporting a black hat. As the head of the Neturei Karta sect in Monsey, Rockland County, Weiss proudly calls himself an anti-Zionist, and regularly burns the Israeli flag at demonstrations.

He's embraced Muslim leaders and went to Washington last year to greet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Yesterday, he was front and center at a conference denying the Holocaust took place. He applauded Ahmadinejad's keynote address urging Israel be "wiped off the map."

While Ahmadinejad has also called the Holocaust a "myth," Weiss has stopped short of agreeing with him.

"We don't want to deny the killing of Jews in World War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for how many people were killed," Weiss said yesterday. "They have used the Holocaust as a device to justify their oppression."

The only "myth" Weiss insists on dispelling is that Judaism and Zionism are the same.

"Judaism is a religion of spirituality, to serve God. ... Zionism is an apostasy, it is a rebellion against God, and a rebellion against the Torah, it is blasphemous," Weiss said in a 2003 interview.

But Weiss' critics have called him anti-Semitic.

Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League branded Rabbi Weiss' group "Jews who hate Jews" and accused them of selling themselves as props for anti-Semitic groups worldwide.

"They are such perverters of what Judaism is all about they have to embrace all the enemies of Jews," said Foxman. "They dance at every wedding of Jew-haters."

On its Web site, Weiss' Neturei Karta boasts having thousands of followers and temples in Brooklyn and upstate. But Orthodox Jews in Borough Park said Weiss was off his rocker.

"He's acting like a non-Jew," said Simon Akerman, 19, of the large Bobov Hasidic community.

Another Bobov, Mark Berkowitz, 29, added, "I've heard of people like that but not around here. Someone should really explain to him that you don't join the enemy."

[Donald Isler]

With creeps like this Rabbi Weiss, and the almost Governor of Louisiana the world will never be a dull place. Unfortunately it's not getting to be a better place.