If you really want to understand just how ***politicized*** the Holocaust has become, there is one book I highly recommend. It is written by one of Israel's preeminent journalists turned historian, Tom Segev. That book is "The Seventh Million", published by Hill and Wang, 1993.
According to the dust jacket, the author ". . . writes a weekly column on politics and human rights for Haaretz. . . The Seventh Million was a controversial bestseller in Israel."
And no wonder. Ernst becomes rapturous when he talks about Segev and The Seventh Million. This is the book, not incidentally, that was "snook up" on the Canadian Human Rights star prosecution witness, Dr. Schweitzer, in his cross-examination - right in the middle of the Inquisition in Toronto - a svelte story in itself, now part of the Kangaroo Court records! :)
It was this book, more than any other, that so exercised the emotions of the intervenors and the Human Rights Commission's own lawyers that it led to the incredible decision that ". . . truth is no defense" - truth as a defense no longer being open to Ernst Zundel in these proceedings.
What a foul record these Holocaust Enforcers left! I predict generations will shudder!
But moving right along! "The Seventh Million", a title described on the dust cover as a controversial and powerful work and monumental history ". . . is the first to show the decisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology and politics of Israel. (...)
Lifted from the middle of the dust jacket, we have this summary:
"With unflinching honesty, Segev examines the most sensitive and heretofore closed chapters of his country's history: the Zionist's problematic response to the Holocaust while it was happening, the new Jewish state's disturbing reception of Holocaust refugees, who found themselves despised by a society devoted to heroism and the 'new man'; the revenge schemes against former Nazis, including a plot to poison the water systems of major German cities, the secret negotiations between Germany and Israel over reparations payments, and much more. As Segev masterfully traces the nation's struggles with the past - struggles fraught with emotion and saturated with politics - he also reveals how this charged legacy has at critical moments . . . been molded and manipulated in accordance with the ideological requirements of the state."
Let that melt on your tongue: ". . . ***the ideological requirements of the state***""! Of Israel, of course! Lest anyone forget!
And here a glimpse of a footnote, (p.464, with paragraph breaks added for readability and interspersed comments in brackets for spice):
Segev: ". . . any denial of the Holocaust {in Israel} would be seen as an attempt to challenge the right of Israel to exist.
"There is a world conspiracy, financed by those who hate Israel, whose goal is to twist the historical truth about the Holocaust," warned one member of the Knesset. {The first country in the world to do so. . .!}
"In July 1981 the Knesset passed a law that prohibited the denial of the Holocaust.
"The publication, in writing or orally, of work that denies the acts committed during the period of the Nazi rule, which are crimes against the Jewish people or crimes against humanity, or that downplays their dimensions with the intention of defending those who committed these crimes or of expressing support for or identification with them is liable to five years' imprisonment." A proposal to impose ten years' imprisonment was not accepted."
{Ingrid: Interesting from a historical perspective: The German Kohl vassal government in Bonn adopted a Holocaust control law ***within weeks of Ernst Zundel's headline-making Great Holocaust Trial of 1985***. The Toronto Star, the largest Canadian newspaper, showed Ernst's picture, right next to the picture of Helmut Kohl - same size, same place, same date. The Globe and Mail wrote of "The Zundel Gag Law." I mean - why not give credit where credit is due? :) }
Segev: "Thus the extermination of the Jews was no longer a subject for the historians; it was almost as if it had been uprooted from history itself and had become a national doctrine of truth, protected by law, somewhat similar in legal status to religious faith."
{Ingrid: Which is exactly what we have seen happening take place around the world - in France, Canada, Germany, Austria, Spain, Sweden, some South American countries - and lately even Switzerland! To question the Holocaust, or even just one of its quasi-religious tenets, is being treated as a quasi-religious heresy.}
Segev: "Indeed, in one way the Holocaust {in Israel} has even a higher status than religion: The maximum punishment for "crass injury" to religious sensibilities or tradition - including, presumably, any denial of God's existence - is one year in prison."
Ingrid: To some people - and not just Jews, sadly! - the Holocaust has already become their temporal religion with its Temples of "Tolerance", its shrines to martyrs, its holiday ceremonies, its proselytizers like Elie Wiesel, Steven Spielberg, Deborah Lipstadt, its theologians like Raul Hilberg - and not to forget, the Holocaust Enforcers like Rabbi Cooper, Rabbi Hier, B'nai Brith and the ADL. All these are there to watch over the purity of the Faith - and discipline all those who dare to stray from the path.
Thought for the Day:
"To strike at a serpent that hisses may only cause it to spring."
(Frank Frankfort Moore)