* A lead editorial in the National Post, June 2, 2000 makes the point that many leading Revisionists have made all along:
"The simplest way to advance (an argument), lazy ideologues have found, is to draw Hitler's mustache on their enemies."
See? How many thinking people are going to accept that kind of mental cudgel and let themselves be driven into silence? Not all. More and more "defamation" suits are being launched against that shabby weapon - and not by Revisionists, either. The National Ballet of Canada is suing Toronto's Now Magazine, and a Montreal stockbroker has been found to "defame" Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard, the former and present premier of the Province of Quebec.
Fine legal precedents for Mr. Zundel - who was carelessly labeled a "second Adolf Hitler" by the Canadian Human Rights Commission's government expert, Dr. Frederick Schweitzer of New York.
* The Israeli Supreme Court, revising ancient discrimination habits, ruled recently that women are entitled to read from the Torah and wear prayer shawls at the Western Wall. Orthodox lawmakers don't like that one bit and have initiated legislation that would imprison for seven years any woman who dares to ask for such egalitarian favors.
Rabbi Avi Shafran, a spokesman for the fervently Orthodox Agudath Israel of America, feels that the Israeli Supreme Court decision "could spur groups such as humanistic Jews and Hebrew Christians to demand prayer space and - get this! - '. . . lead to the balkanization of the Kotel.'" ("Kotel"=Wall)
* In a June 3, 2000 article by Modris Eksteins, who teaches history at the University of Toronto, we find these interesting words:
"(T)he Holocaust was not always in the cards. . . The early imagery of the Second World War would come out of the victorious West, principally out of Washington and Hollywood, from a culture of plenty that had played a huge role in the victory but had not been at the centre of the nihilistic death-dealing experience."
* Obviously not all are that easily fooled by Holocaustomania. Michael Smith of London's Telegraph of June 3, 2000 reminded its readers that stories of "traveling gas chambers" in which approximately 1000 Jews were said to have been gassed each day, as well as other ". . . reports of the killings, smuggled into Britain by the Polish resistance, were disbelieved by a skeptical public swamped with anti-Nazi propaganda."
Another reporter who followed this story for another newspaper suggested that the Polish courier should "drop a zero or two."
* From Moscow comes word that the Stockholm "Holocaust Education" Conference was snubbed by the Russian media who are
". . . too busy discussing Russian President Vladimir Putin's ongoing crackdown on Jewish media tycoons," according to Lew Gorodetsky of the JTA, June 4, 2000. Gorodetsky reports that only 5% out of 200 students polled could even explain what the Holocaust was or understood the word.
Russians "don't see the value of teaching the Holocaust," according to a Moscow high school teacher, who lamented the fact that both students and their parents opposed introducing a Holocaust course. For us in the West it is comforting to know that at least Russian parents care more for the mental health of their offspring than do the sorry products of Dr. Freud and Dr. Spock.
* More guilt trips for the Germans. A new Goldhagen-type book has been published by Eric Johnson, a professor of history at Central Michigan University. The Germans committed their "atrocities", according to Johnson, because of their "deeply flawed culture" and an "excessive acceptance of the law" - something ". . . you still see in Germany today."
* Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the enfant terrible of the Russian legislature known for his outspoken views, has done it again. During a recent address by President Clinton to the Russian Parliament, he claimed that the Russian government had to bring in people, even cleaning women, to pad the audience.
Did the new Russian president take his cue from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum where school classes are bussed in to keep the attendance figures artificially high? Inquiring minds want to know.
"There were practically no deputies in the hall - only hired people brought in from the Foreign Ministry and the Federal Security Service," Zhirinovsky told reporters. "Clinton thought he was speaking to members of the Russian parliament!"
Zhirinovsky claimed that so strong was the dislike of President Clinton that only 120 of the 450 deputies were present. Government officials, however, denied the snub and explained away the phenomenon of the missing legislators, claiming that "some deputies were erroneously told that the speech would start an hour after it actually did."
* Now the Pentagon is in the business of Revisionism - revising downward the number of US troops who died in the Korean War to 36,940 killed, compared to a previously announced death toll of 54,246 - an inflated number of about 17,000. It took 50 years to get to the truth about Korea. How about the Auschwitz figures?
* Ephrim Zuroff, the author of "The Response of Orthodox Jewry in the United States to the Holocaust", claims that "Orthodox Jews do not stand on Holocaust Remembrance Day out of embarrassment over their wartime failures," according to a book review by Jonathan Rosenblum of the Jewish World Review. <http://www.jewishworldreview.com/jonathan/rosenblum.html>
Could it be that the Orthodox do not wish to pay homage and reverence to an invented history of non-existent deaths or victims? The Zundelsite was told on more than one occasion that Orthodox Jews are not at all impressed by the Six Million figure, fear for their safety because of Holocaustomania pushed by the Big-H Lobby and wish the hype would lessen.
* NATO has broken "the rules of war in its air campaign against Yugoslavia last year, and the suspects must be brought to justice," according to an Amnesty International statement released June 6, 2000.
This usually ever-so-politically-correct human rights organization seems to read the writing on the wall. It has called on other countries and the UN criminal tribunal on the former Yugoslavia to "investigate". This will be interesting - but please don't hold your breath!
* The British Broadcasting Corporation has launched a compensation lawsuit against the State of Israel on behalf of a BBC driver who was killed by an Israeli tank. Sam Kiley, reporting from Jerusalem for the London Times, wrote that the driver's death of "one of a series of incidents which Amnesty International said yesterday might be war crimes."
"Senior members of the Israeli Defence Force and civilians connected with the incident in which Mr Takkoush died said that "things don't look that good" for the Army after the BBC sent videotape of Mr Takkoush's death." Will the Israeli court assign one shekel (one-third of a cent) as they did for a Palestinian murdered by an Israeli soldier a few years ago?
* In "News at a Glance" (JTA, June 8, 2000), we spot this:
"B'nai Brith Canada proposed to a legislative panel that a Holocaust exhibit in the Canadian Museum of Civilization also focus on other crimes against humanity in the 20th century. In 1998, a plan to add a Holocaust Gallery to the Canadian War Museum was derailed after Canadian veterans objected on the grounds that the Holocaust had little to do with the experience of the Canadian military during the war."
Back pedaling? Eh? Hypocrites!
* Dr. Prytulak, a Polish scholar living in Canada, is quoted as having told the Canadian Jewish Congress Chairman, Moshe Ronen:
"[O]f interest would be a CJC discussion of whether the best place to begin any attack on hate propaganda might not be the teachings of Judaism." <http://www.ukar.org/ronen12.shtml>
* Robert Fisk, a courageous British journalist reporting from Beirut, went on record in the June issue of The Nation with the following:
". . . Israel's SLA militia fought for money - $400 a month, often paid in fake $100 bills. And they fought because they were blackmailed into service - brothers and sisters would be jailed in the notorious Israeli torture prison at Khiam if their siblings did not enlist."
$100 fake bills? Printed by whom? Where? Issued to the Israeli military commanders by the Israeli Defense Ministry? Maybe the US Treasury Department and the FBI might want to take a closer look?
* The stories of threats, blackmail, and extortion do not seem to end. Germany's third-largest bank, Dresdner Bank AG, wishing to open a branch in Toronto, found itself locking horns with Canadian Jewish groups who want the federal government to block the deal because of yet another enormous class action suit filed by the ever-multiplying Holocaust survivors.
=====
Thought for the Day:
". . . it's worth reminding readers that for Hindus, Buddhists and Jains the world over, the swastika is a positive symbol for health, happiness and good fortune.
"According to The World Book Encyclopedia, swastikas have been found on Byzantine buildings, Buddhist inscriptions, Celtic monuments and Greek coins.
"The word comes from the Sanskrit svastika, meaning 'conducive to well-being,' says The Encyclopedia Britannica."
(Source: An otherwise negative editorial in the Toronto Star, June 10, 2000)
=====