January 26, 1998

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Here I was all set to return to some of the fight-censorship posts and take on my nemesis, Jamie McCarthy, who has said some unfriendly things about me - when news started pouring in, delivering some truly delectable quotes.
Haven't I said for some time that there is now no stopping the dissident message?

It is fun to report such good news, especially when it can tickle your funnybone with irony.

First, the Arab countries. According to ClariNews of January 21,

". . . French author Roger Garaudy and Napoleon Bonaparte are hot topics in Egypt's countryside this year at rallies organised by the Islamic Labour Party during the holy Moslem month of Ramadan.

"This year we decided to denounce the trial against Garaudy and the celebrations for the bicentennial of the (French) expedition to Egypt," Labour Party deputy chief Magdi Karkur told AFP on Wednesday. (...)

"Napoleon savagely attacked our country and committed barbaric acts, like destroying the nose of the Sphinx . . . "

And former Marxist and recent convert to Islam, Roger Garaudy, is destroying the nose of Pinnoccio? (sp?)

It gets better, though a tad more somber. On January 24, according to an AFP report,

". . . the Syrian bar association has offered to help defend French writer Roger Garaudy, on trial in France for denying the Nazi Holocaust against Jews, the official SANA news agency said Saturday.

"During a meeting in Damascus, the association said its president Ahmad Ido and six colleagues would take part in Garaudy's defense, according to SANA."

This association is a solemnly outspoken one, unlike some Western associations of intellectual mice and other rodents that merely call themselves fighters for freedom:

"Syrian lawyers are in total solidarity with the philosopher Garaudy against the Zionist organizations which are trying through this trial to snuff out free voices," SANA added.

Closer to the Zundel-Haus, glad tides are floating to the shores as well. Get this:

It now turns out that Canada's foremost "Nazi hunting scholar" is locking horns with Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress.

In one of today's front page Globe and Mail articles by Sean Fine, the following explains what's happening:

"Ruth Bettina Birn is a historian in a mine field. And she is not one to tiptoe her way through it.

"No ordinary academic, Dr. Birn is a Nazi hunter. Since 1991 she has been the chief historian of Canada's war crimes unit, searching international archives for the evidence needed to bring its aging suspects to trial.

"As if that weren't mine field enough, she is now battling representatives of the Jewish community over scholarly writing she does in her spare time. They want the federal Justice Department to persuade her to withdraw an article she wrote from a controversial book to be published this spring."

"Publish," sniffs CJC spokesman Bernie Farber, "but don't publish with somebody who's loathed and despised by the Jewish community."

And Steinberg of the World Jewish Congress, lets go of some Talmudic thunder of his own:

"She has aligned herself with someone who is purporting to write about Germany's history who . . . is known as a virulent anti-Zionist."

Heavens!

The rather principled and brave historian Birn, for her part, according to the Globe and Mail article,

". . . accuses the congress of trying to use its political muscle to intimidate her. 'That is the real story for Canadians. It is really a question of the attempted suppression of fair comment through the exertion of political influence."

Does that not sound like one of Ernst's newsletters or press releases for which he is constantly hauled into court?

And co-author, Finkelstein, too.

The New York based author has called the Holocaust ". . . in effect the Zionist account of the Nazi Holocaust. . . seized upon and methodically marketed because it was politically expedient."

Oy vey!

"To Jewish organizations," writes Fine in her Globe and Mail piece, " comments like these approach hate-mongering, and the CJC is hoping that Birn can be persuaded to withdraw her article from the book, "A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth", which is to appear in April."

Then she gets around to a ZGram I posted just a few days ago. Comments the Globe and Mail's reporter, Fine:

"To an outsider, the dispute is difficult to fathom. On one hand, the Internet website of Ernst Zundel heaps praise on Professor Finkelstein and Dr. Birn. On the other hand, so do some leading historians, including pre-eminent Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg, who have written blurbs for the book's dust jacket."

Only insiders can appreciate how delicious those developments are for the discriminating Revisionist palate. Hilberg, author of the Holocaust Promotion's heaviest gun, "The Destruction of the European Jews" to endorse a "Nazi Hunter" who attacks a smear job on the Germans by another Jew? This is heavy!

What does it all mean? It means simply this:

The Holocaust Myth is coming unraveled.

I see a possibility. This story could be rounded out by Birn appearing in defense of Zundel's right to speak and make critical but fair comment.

Don't laugh! Stranger things are known to have recently happened.

Really, the Birn-Finkelstein story is simple - and poignant.

There are some people in this world who love the truth more than a job, and Ruth Bettina Birn seems to be one of them. Says Birn: "One is left to oneself; one has to guide oneself. There is no authority one could just accept."

"Why," she asks, "would they occupy themselves with books and footnotes and scholarly debate? That's for historians."

And asked to suggest an answer, she responded like a true Revisionist:

"I can only guess it is of political significance how the Holocaust is depicted in books and articles."

Ingrid

Thought for the Day:

"Listen, kid. Take my advice. Never hate a song that has sold a half-million copies."

(Irving Berlin to Cole Porter)

Comments? E-Mail: irimland@cts.com

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