Up-front: I am still struggling with my listserve program. Some of you have received two or three ZGrams yesterday; others received none. For those who did receive multiples with different subject headings but identical text, the reason is that I wanted to see which ones made it through. Be patient - I am working at it.
Secondly, there has been a very telling article titled "Did the Holocaust Happen?" - more media fallout from the Beirut cancellation. Please read it at http://spectator.org/special/special010427b.htm
Third, still on the same topic - namely the cancellation of the Beirut conference of Revisionists and the subsequent Arab media reaction: The Jordanian Writers Association issue is still percolating with interesting snippets. Below find one of the journalists' response to AP alterations of the text she submitted, with further explanations. Her name is Hayat Atiyah. I especially liked her response to the Wiesenthal invitation to come and visit the museum for some politically correct indoctrination. She put it succinctly:
"...we don't need to see a museum for something that has happened 50 yrs ago, since we have been living for the past 50 yrs in a daily holocaust by the racist Zionism."
Here is her letter, prefaced by a paragraph by Ibrahim Alloush:
[START]
Dear Readers,
The following is being sent to you as a response by journalist Hayat Atiyah to the Associated Press report that was cited by Haartz on April 20, 2001, and other publications.
Ibrahim Alloush
Media Coordinator of the Association against Zionism and Racism
Statement by Hayat Atiyah on the Release by the Associated Press ======================================================= =========
When a writer gives a news agency a precise statement upon request, and finds the statement altered and distorted in the media the next day, it is only legitimate that we start wondering about the credibility of such agencies and what they feed us through different media.
Consequently, when an Israeli newspaper alters, adds and phrases this statement in the most provoking way, it brings us back to the most prominent feature of Israeli media.
This is what happened to a press release I gave the associated press in Amman about a scheduled meeting in the Jordanian Writers league today (April 22, 2001), entitled "What happened to the Beirut Conference?" Following is a correction I sent to the AP director in Amman to be published according to my right of response:
Dear Mr Jamal Halabi,
Following the broadcasted and published news distributed by your agency on Friday the 20th, that was based on a phone call with your correspondent, Shafiqa Mattar, I would like to clarify the following, as I found deliberate alterations to what I said in the interview:
1. I focused in my answer upon the fact that what we were invited to was a meeting and not a conference.
2. The organizer of such an activity is the Jordanian Writers Association with its executive board and not any other person, definitely not myself.
3. I never said that the state warned us and that we won't yield to any pressures. What I said was that the official authorities asked us to postpone the meeting after we explained the matter to them. Our reply, as guest lecturers, was that we do not have right to carry out such [measures]. Thus it was arranged between the minister of Culture and the executive board of the Association to postpone the meeting. We were informed of the new date consequently. [Other lecturers objected as well to the principle of executive branch interference in cultural activities and to the practice of summoning intellectuals to the Ministry of the Interior - Ibrahim Alloush].
4. In response to a question by another correspondent of yours (whose name was Rania as you told me), I said in very specific words that none of the members of the Beirut conference were taking part in this, and that none of us was part of that conference.
5. On a question about the content of my paper I said:
Our meeting is held under the title: What Happened in Beirut about the Zionism & Historical Revisionism Conference? Please focus on this since the Zionist (and co) media has distorted and altered both titles to say that they were about Holocaust Denial, which is not true. Therefore Iím going to discuss 3 points:
a) The danger behind the foreign and Jewish institutionalized interference to push an Arab government to prohibit a cultural or research activity on its territory (never mind the subject). This is because the campaign against the Beirut Conference started with a news article distributed by Reuters, saying that the head of The World Jewish Council asked the Swedish prime minister (his country being the president of the EU) to interfere with the Lebanese government to ban the conference. This was not denied as Prime Minister Hariri said that Lebanon was undergoing certain pressures.
b) The danger behind using Arab intellectuals as tools to cover up a process of cultural and intellectual oppression through signing what was known as the Paris Declaration. Those were contacted to provide us with a copy of the declaration but said that they gave their signatures by phone and did not have a copy. (Edward Said, however, wrote saying that Francophone intellectuals in Paris deluded him by not reading him the part demanding to ban the conference. When he asked for a copy he was told there was no time)
c) In the 3rd part I will focus on correcting the immense disfiguration done to the revisionists by depicting them as Neo-Nazis, extreme rightists - etc. Anyone with any knowledge of their writings or interviews would know that they don't belong to one political stream, and some of them do not belong to any. What brings them together is their persistence on their right to free scientific research and to the revision of history and anything related to World War II, including the relation between Zionism and Nazism.
Therefore, they do not deny, but rather filter the truths. We stand with revising history and condemning all racism including Nazism and Zionism. We condemn all blackmail that is used to confiscate our land and our rights.
In the end I was asked about the letter by Simon Weisenthal Center and the Holocaust museum. I answered that we don't need to see a museum for something that has happened 50 yrs ago, since we have been living for the past 50 yrs in a daily holocaust by the racist Zionism.
Regards,
Hayat Hwayyek Attieh
A copy for:
-Associated Press
-My legal attorney
-The Jordanian Minister of Culture and Media
-The Board of the Jordanian Writers' League
[END] -----
Thought for the Day:
"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one."
(Edmund Burke)
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