Remember the story of the sinking Titanic - how the music kept playing and playing while the chairs were being rearranged?
Here's more yet on the Finkelstein Saga, written up by Lorenz Jäger for TAZ and titled: Finkelstein and More: An Ongoing Debate" - dated August 30, 2000" (. . . and remember how Nizkor crowed not all that long ago that there would not ever be a debate. . .?)
TAZ:
FRANKFURT. There will be a gala banquet on Sep. 11 at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and the invited guests will include Bill and Hillary Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu. Elan Steinberg, spokesman for the Jewish World Congress, has announced that the event will celebrate the establishment of the foundation responsible for distributing the 9 billion soon to be collected from Germany and the Swiss banks.
Zundelsite:
So what do we have here? The Shakedown Crew is shamelessly celebrating one more successful operation - with the entire world now having fixed a very jaundiced eye on their disgusting racket!
TAZ:
But not all sides view the event with favor. Gabriel Schoenfeld, a publisher of the conservative Jewish intellectual journal Commentary, has called it a "spectacle" and said he finds the very idea of an "atonement banquet" disturbing. He expects nothing but self-adulation , and politicians whose tears for the victims will flow just in time to fill their reelection campaign coffers.
Zundelsite:
It should help Hillary's election chances in heavily Jewish New York - and help enhance Bill's employment chances once he leaves public housing.
TAZ:
This, however, is virtually the only polemic passage in an article which seriously discusses a subject of heated debate since the publication of Norman G. Finkelstein's book "The Holocaust Industry." Schoenfeld's essay, soon to appear in the September issue of Commentary, is titled "Holocaust Compensation , The Growing Scandal." It paints a more differentiated picture of the role of the Swiss banks, who had been taken to court because of the robbed Nazi gold in their possession. Schoenfeld states that, in addition to the justified claims, there were many claims which proved to be without merit. He believes that a sweeping indictment of Switzerland for its policies during World War II is erroneous.
Zundelsite:
That's nice! We are very glad to hear that. But where was Commentary at the time the squeeze against Switzerland and Germany was on? Now that the money has been browbeaten out of the two countries by threats of boycott and economic sanctions, the Joerg Haider spectacle etc - Commentary is piping in. However, the title is nice - in fact, it just about melts on your tongue!
TAZ:
But Schoenfeld's criticism goes beyond correcting the facts of specific cases. Again rather polemically, he asks whether it is possible that, even as great sums are flowing into Holocaust museums and memorials in virtually every U.S. city and suburb, there are suffering and needy survivors of the politics of extermination somewhere who must wait for their money from the Germans and Swiss? For this justification of need was the rationale put forward solemnly by the victims' organizations, he adds. And he concludes that if the claim is faulty, this casts a bad light on the integrity of the Jewish community; and if it is true, Jewish self-respect is in a sorry state.
Zundelsite:
Integrity? Self-respect? What integrity? What self-respect?
For the umpteenth time: This conniving, threatening and browbeating of Germany - and lately Switzerland and Austria - has been going on since 1945 by a succession of Jewish Diaspora organizations and soon after the Israeli state, beginning with Nahum Goldman in the 1950s and Menachem Begin, the terrorist-turned-Prime Minister, Itzak Shamir, his collegue etc. Continuously! Ever since the end of World War II. To talk about "integrity" and "self-respect" must surely be a joke!
TAZ:
There is indeed an actual reason for these questions. According to Steinberg's announcement, the large sums left over after the planned payments to surviving victims are made , "hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps billions" , will be used for "education," meaning more Holocaust museums. Finkelstein had also criticized that endeavor. But the criticism leveled at Finkelstein does not apply to Schoenfeld. He is not an academic outsider, not an anti-Zionist, and not a left-wing dissident.
Zundelsite:
Education? Brainwashing students and visitors in the museums with the exclusively Jewish version of World War II and Germany's treatment of the Jews under Adolf Hitler's policies is the sole goal. There will be no attempt at balance. The current German and Swiss political leadership is inept and morally bankrupt to have caved in to these tactics. Was it not only yesterday that Mr. Zundel said that an investment of
1,000 or so in stellar Revisionist material could have saved Switzerland billions?
TAZ:
Nonetheless, he reaches conclusions similar to those of the political scientist from New York. Noteworthy is the insistence of Schoenfeld's tone: people speak in that way only when they see themselves as the "most loyal opposition" and wish to prevent someone to whom they feel close from embarking on the wrong path. Schoenfeld believes that the "Holocaust Industry" (which he, of course, never calls by that name) has traded short-term benefits for long-term security.
Zundelsite:
"Short-term benefits for long-term security". Another memorable phrase!
These shake-down tactics have already produced a marked increase in anti-Jewish attitudes in formerly docile Switzerland and in a very angry Austria, not to forget Germany. The Security Chief of the Berlin Jewish community is surrounding himself with 12 - count 'em, 12! - body guards! That ought to tell people something about the paranoia of certain people!
TAZ:
He points out that for many years, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland have been among the most reliable supporters of Israel. He asks whether nations which have just been "humiliated" will continue their support in the future , or whether they might not respond differently to Arab desires for the most modern weapons technology? "It is impossible to state this with certainty, but it seems that moral and political capital were thoughtlessly squandered." Schoenfeld continues that it is extremist rhetoric to accuse Jewish organizations of "gangster tactics" , we can only hope that the venomous nature of such accusations will not inhibit rational voices from expressing the necessary criticism. Until now, only a few of these voices have let themselves be heard, he says, concluding that it is high time to reflect anew on the compensation issue.
Zundelsite:
These rapacious groups, drunk with their own power, were only made possible by constantly wailing about "anti-Semitism", "Nazism" etc. They don't give a damn about the consequences. They honestly believe this postwar condition will last forever. And of course it is going to collapse!
TAZ:
Schoenfeld's article makes clear that the debate kicked off by Finkelstein does not follow the simple pattern of "Germans here, Jews there." However, in Thursday's edition of Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung, Salomon Korn calls on the Piper publishing house not to publish "The Holocaust Industry." There was a similar scene when Daniel Goldhagen's study of Hitler's "willing executioners" was due to be published by Holt, headed at the time by Michael Naumann, now the German chancellor's adviser for cultural affairs. Holt was then subjected to enormous pressure; Naumann said later that he had never before experienced anything like it.
Zundelsite:
That's how the salient detail keep seeping out! So Holt was "subjected to enormous pressure" - but "Jews don't have any power". " And cows can fly as well.
The dike shows ever deeper cracks - because the truth is out there, and people take note of the tactics. What tactics, you ask? Elan Steinberg actually did a genuine Nizkor and called Norman Finkelstein "a shit" on prime time German TV. Now that must have taken some courage! He might have remembered Cicero who advised: "If you have lost an argument, all is not lost . . . you can always call your opponent vile names."
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Thought for the Day:
"'Salon's' unabashed use of that bold header -- "Shoah business" -- is telltale of a new springtime for Revisionism."
(Letter to the Zundelsite)
Back to Table of Contents of the Sept. 2000 ZGrams