I have brought you bits and pieces from the Human Rights Commission Tribunal hearings for the past three days where the government's top "expert" on the history of anti-Semitism, Dr. Frederick Schweitzer, is testifying against Ernst Zundel. Here is a more complete summary and amplification of what has happened so far, some of it already mentioned before but added here for newcomers to the ZGram list, especially media:
Day One started with a claim by Dr. Schweitzer under oath that he is "judenrein" in his family tree. "Judenrein" means "clean of Jews" and was an official designation in Third Reich Germany. He actually used the "Nazi" term as he was being "led in evidence", as the legal profession calls it.
This claim asserts that he is German and not Jewish - at least racially and ethnically and, so he claims, in his religion. He stated that he is a Christian - nominally, that is.
Professor Schweitzer made it clear that he is of the Christian heritage but not very religious. He is not sure about the "divinity of Christ", and he volunteered that ". . . Christianity is not a great world religion". He believes that Christianity is working toward becoming a great world religion, but it can only succeed if it "purges itself" of its anti-Semitism.
One wonders why somebody that ambivalent about his own alleged faith would seek a lifelong career in a Christian/Catholic college - and find his crowning achievement in running a Holocaust Survivors' speakers bureau and a 40 book (!) Holocaust Resource Center. (Dr. Schweitzer said at one point that Elie Wiesel wanted $5,000 for an appearance as a speaker, which he could not raise.)
Schweitzer stated that he is is a lifelong Zionist. Israel is the second home of Christianity - "a light among the nations"! He wrote a book for the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith way back in the 1970s - for which he got paid $1,000. Significantly, B'nai Brith owns the copyright.
This man is the government's chief witness. He is the man they feel will supply them with the excuse to curtail Ernst's Zundel's freedom to have a voice on the Net.
This will be done by judicial order of a quasi court where the Rules of Evidence, as in criminal cases, do not apply and where ". . . truth is not a defense" - as the Canadian Human Rights Commission lawyers never tire telling the public and the Tribunal.
The attorneys for the Government of Canada point out to all with ears that ***the Tribunal does not have to accept anything it does not want to accept***- and who cares about what is said might be true? (The Tribunal did not accept the document from the US Library of Congress stating clearly that I held the copyright to my ZGrams from Day One - the contents of which are now blamed on Ernst Zundel! I have been told one-third of the challenged documents are, in fact, daily ZGram editorials!)
The criterion applied against Ernst Zundel seems to be: If those people discussed in some writings on the Zundelsite are "discomforted" or "feel discriminated against" - then that must be proof of "racism" of the author(s) - chiefly, of course, Mr. Zundel's. Dr. Schweitzer actually made some statements to the effect that Ernst Zundel is "Hitler No. II" - in fact, he is the composite anti-Semite of all times. Zundel embodies within him all the streams of anti-Semitism of the past 2,000 years!
The Zundel writings, he proclaims, are clearly a continuum and a progression from well beyond the Dark Middle Ages - all the way to Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and Streicher - and beyond! More yet, Schweitzer is sweeping and vitriolic in the condemnation of not only Zundel, the object of his ire, but every nation, emperor and pope, thinker, writer and philosopher of all ages - if they ever criticized anything that had to do with Jews!
To Dr. Schweitzer, it seems, the Jews are always innocent! Also, he stated that Hitler had actually said: "You can't be a Christian and also a German."
Even when the most outrageous things were said and, of course, published about Gentiles and Christians during Europe's long history - and even Christ himself! - and the objects of Jewish vitriol or denigration took action in the past to defend themselves, their reputations or their countries, and to punish Jewish transgressions of laws and traditions - it was always the Gentiles, the Christians, the anti-Semites at work, according to Dr. Schweitzer.
The criterion seems to be, pertaining to Ernst Zundel, that he is not a Jew and is not disposed favorably toward Jews. Thus, his ideas are, by definition, simply anti-Semitic from the word go.
States Zundel:
"It is my opinion that even though Dr. Schweitzer claims to be a Christian and of German origin, he is without a doubt one of the most philosemitic people you will ever meet. He is nothing but an intellectual groupie for Jewish causes, ideas and policies. He is the Zionist Holocaust Lobby's dream!"
When questioned on it, Dr. Schweitzer found nothing wrong with the Talmud. He stated he has "dipped around in it". He knows there was a Babylonian and a Palestinian Talmud. He lamented earlier Christian research into the Talmud in the 17th century and said disdainfully that Christians had "dredged around in it" - as evidenced by a bestseller in the 17th century called "Talmud erklärt" ("Talmud Explained"). He says that the study of the Talmud was "a lifetime affair" and that Jewish Talmudists had told him "if you have not studied the Talmud, you have not eaten."
About selecting texts out of context - which is what he had done by criticizing and condemning parts of the Zundelsite posts - he stated that all historians had to be selective. That was the only way they could work. He saw no contradiction if "medieval anti-Semites" - like Ernst Zundel - want to claim that right to be selective to make their points as well. In that case, ". . . you have to see the whole story".
"Tone" is a big word with Schweitzer. Zundel has a "tone" straight from the 12th and 13th century!
When confronted with the writings not of Gentiles but of Jews who seem to have similar "tones" - even through the ages and in our own time - and who have criticized some aspects of Jewish life, behavior or thought, Schweitzer simply shrugs and brazenly calls it an "an intra-familial dispute" or polemic. Even when the gravest accusation of conduct ***by Jews against Jews*** or "goyim" are shown to him, the good professor is quick and glib with an answer and ready with an excuse for the object of his uncritical adoration.
He says that the Jews are part of the "providential theme" and must be preserved. Dr. Schweitzer goes so far as to insist that anti-Semitism is "progressive deicide"!
Sometimes he is redundant. Lethal anti-semitism, he says, is fatal anti-Semitism! For Zundel to say that some Jews have a day of reckoning coming for some of their immoral or even criminal behavior and actions is "ominous".
Schweitzer makes a big deal about this "judgment day prophesy" claimed to have made by Ernst Zundel and says it is "Hitlerian" - because that is what Hitler said, way back in 1939, when he is quoted as having said that the Jewish "race" would be wiped out in Europe if they fomented another war. Therefore, in a mighty leap of logic, he states that Ernst is ushering in the "new Armageddon" with this thoughts and writings on the Net.
Dr. Schweitzer loves the topic of "ritual murder" and of "blood cannibalism", as he calls it. He rails against Voltaire who allegedly stated that the Jews should be crushed - that they were dirty, arrogant, money grubbers, eternally alien, vagabonds fleecing people and then nomadically moving on.
He got into Richard Wagner's concept of the "Verjudung" - the Jewification of Germany and of our civilization. None of these themes or topics are on the Zundelsite.
He brought up some weird comparisons, talking about a concept of a German stallion and Jewish mares, supposedly advanced by the thinker Treitschke. He really got off on Karl Marx - whom he calls not a thinker but an agitator and a mere pamphleteer! (One really wonders why...)
The "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" are to Schweitzer what the red cape of the matador is to the bull in the ring. Over and over he returns to his theme of themes - much to the Zundel team's delight. (The "Protocols" are not on the Zundelsite either!)
The "Protocols", in his view, are a forgery. The Jews are the world's Number One victims of a never-ending chain of evil. Throughout the ages, in the professor's view, anti-Semites had only one thought on their minds - and that was to kill Jews for no other reason than that they were Jews.
Next to the "Protocols", Hitler figures big in this pantheon of evil that Dr. Schweitzer paints for the Tribunal - and snippets and quotes from the "Protocols" to Fuehrer speeches and "Mein Kampf" rain down on a panel that seems often bored out of their skulls.
Schweitzer quotes "Mein Kampf", page 462, where, like Ernst Zundel, Hitler says: "We are on to them . . . " - meaning the Jews of course. He quotes Hitler as having allegedly said: "Communism is nothing but Judaism with a little tinsel."
He says that Goebbels told the German people over and over that ". . . 300 secret plotters rule the world." This is to infer that ". . . if we nail them, we can save the world - which is, of course, a mere echo of what Ernst Zundel believes . . ."
(. . . at which point Christie leaped to his feet and asked rhetorically: "Is Dr. Schweitzer now an expert in echoes as well?" A bemused Tribunal chairman, smiling benignly, looked on. . .)
Three dozen documents on the Zundelsite are being meticulously dissected, word for word, line for line - out of context, of course. Context is reserved for Jews.
In Dr. Schweitzer's mental construct, only Jews can criticize Jews - or, at best, in some exceptions, proven friends and allies of Jews, who can be neutral in such a case when it involves the interests and the survival of Israel.
There are only friends of "Yisroel" and, on the other side, "anti-Semites", "racists", "lethal anti-Semites" with nothing but hate and murder in their hearts. They are ". . . a pogrom in the making!"
More about this so-called "Human Rights" Tribunal Hearing tomorrow.
Ingrid
Thought for the Day (brought here for the second time):
"It is legal in Israel to torture Christians but not Jews."
(The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 1998, p. 59)