Two additional nice little media items this morning - kind of like tremors or aftershocks caused indirectly by our well- known, censor-happy folks who so foolishly aborted the International "Revisionism and Zionism" Conference in Beirut.
The first is a rather long fluff article, titled "Holiday in Beirut", that appeared in the New York Press yesterday, written by Alan Cabal, New York writer who was set to visit Beirut to cover the conference. Since he had already booked his ticket, he thought "...might as well!" and went to the Lebanese capital even after the conference was canceled. Upon his return, he produced a feature for the New York Weekly. If you care the read the entire article - it's girls and booze and ambiance - you can find it at http:// www.nypress.com/14/17/news&columns/feature.cfm
However, as more and more mainstream media indulge in Playing Footsy with the Forbidden Topic, here are a couple of rather nice paragraphs:
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A curious and serendipitous series of events led me to my little holiday in Beirut. Back in January I received an invitation to attend a conference to be held there under the auspices of the California-based Institute for Historical Review and the Swiss organization Verite et Justice. These organizations fall into the category of Holocaust Revisionism, currently the very hottest of hot potatoes on the academic front. I've been following the subject in a casual way since 1994, and with the recent publication of Norman Finkelstein's book, The Holocaust Industry, popular interest in this particular field of inquiry is swelling.
What most Americans don't know is that the topic is entirely off-limits to historical investigation in most of the Western world. In Canada, Australia, France, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, individuals engaged in public debate over the finer points of this issue have been fined and imprisoned. Here in America, teachers and college professors have been summarily dismissed from their posts for expressing heretical views on the subject. Myself, I really don't care to pick over the finer points of an antique atrocity, particularly one that's been so seriously overexposed. There are plenty of underexposed atrocities being perpetrated right now, so many that it's difficult to keep up with them, let alone make an effort to stop them."
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The second item is an interesting item put on the cyber wire by the Institute for Historical Review's public relations man, Mark Weber, who can be reached at weber@ihr.org.
Here goes:
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News from the Institute for Historical Review
INSTITUTE'S OPEN LETTER TO ARAB INTELLECTUALS
PUBLISHED IN ARABIC PERIODICALS
An "Open Letter to 14 Arab Intellectuals," headed "No to Censorship!, No to Bigotry!," by IHR Director Mark Weber, has been published in a leading Jordanian weekly magazine and in a Saudi Arabian daily newspaper.
In mid-March fourteen prominent Arab intellectuals issued a public statement calling on authorities in Lebanon to ban a "Revisionism and Zionism" conference in Beirut, which the IHR had been helping to organize. Shortly before the four-day meeting was to begin on March 31, Lebanon's prime minister announced that it would not be permitted.
The IHR's Open Letter in response to the statement appears in the Assabeel weekly magazine of Amman, Jordan, issue No. 381, April 25-30, in the regular column of Ibrahim Alloush. To find it on line, go to http://www.assabeel.com/ and then click on maqalat (articles).
Assabeel is one of the country's largest circulation magazines. Dr. Alloush, a Jordanian writer, lived for 14 years in the United States. He studied at Ohio University and Oklahoma State University, where he earned a doctorate in economics. In the previous four issues of Assabeel, he devoted his regular weekly column to a four-part series entitled "Revisionist Historians and the Falling of Adonis, Edward Said and Mahmoud Darwish."
The IHR Open Letter was also published in Arabic in the daily Al Watan of Saudi Arabia, on April 25. It can be found on line at http://www.alwatan.com.sa , in the paper's culture section.
The original text of the IHR's Open Letter can be downloaded from the IHR web site: http://ihr.org/conference/ beirutconf/010410mwletter.html
Dr. Alloush can be reached by e-mail at: alloush100@yahoo.com
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"It was not six million dead Jews that invaded Palestine at the end of World War 2?"
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