Karl Pfeifer has kindly given Z Word permission to publish the following email correspondence between himself and Tikkun assistant editor Dimitri Zagoroff (see my previous post).

After receiving Zagoroff’s initial reply which poked fun at his command of English, Karl, a veteran anti-fascist, replied:

Mr. Dimitri Zagoroff, thank you for your observation. It was late in the evening in Vienna when I wrote to you and I was very tired. I am 80 years old, a survivor of Holocaust and I am fighting in my country against Racism and Antisemitism. I have recently won a case at the European Court of Human Rights against Austria, which is connected with my work as a journalist, who confronts people with philonazi views. However you published the article of Adam Ermash, formerly Jöran Jermas (Israel Shamir) a man who writes about ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government), who is a friend of Horst Mahler, David Duke and Mark Weber and who is claiming, that Jews commit ritual murders. Karl Pfeifer

Zagoroff then replied as follows:

Karl,
thanks again for bringing “Israel Shamir’s” real identity to our attention. However I think it’s unlikely that the article will be removed from our website. I’ve included below the Editor’s Note that precedes the article, explaining why it has been posted even though our staff strongly disagrees with “Shamir’s” positions.
If you’re not familiar with Tikkun, our commitment is to providing a variety of perspectives that are not generally available through the press (perhaps the clearest example is the range of opinions we published with regard to Israel’s 60th anniversary in our May/June issue this year-I’d be happy to send you a copy). Often we disagree with the positions of our writers, but feel it necessary to publish them, not simply for abstract rights of free speech, but to engage ourselves with the ideas that we must counter.
[Editor’s note: Like most of what Israel Shamir writes about Israel, this article reflects a perspective that has far too little sympathy for the fate of those killed and wounded when the Palestinian named Hosam charged his huge tractor into a bus in the center of Jerusalem. We publish it here nevertheless because of our commitment to provide our readers with perspectives that they are unlikely to hear in the mainstream media and which present ideas with which we must grapple. In this case, the attempt to humanize the Palestinian is part of our discourse–a Tikkun commitment to see the spirit of God in every human being, even those who do hurtful or muderous acts. We only wish Shamir could do the same thing for Israelis as he does so well here for Palestinians. And his hatred of Judaism itself might have been grounds to simply dismiss the article, except that it represents a growing sentiment among many Israeli secularists. ]

thanks again,
Dimitri Zagoroff

Not a very satisfactory reply. So Karl wrote back:

Mr. Dimitri Zagoroff

Thank you for your mail. Could you answer my following questions?

1) Was this Note published with the article? Or did you insert it later?

2) Did you knowingly publish an article of the Swedish-Russian antisemite Adam Ermash (who is writing under the name Israel Shamir)?

3) If you did not check, whom you publish, will you inform your readers about this friend of David Duke, Horst Mahler and other Neonazi?

4) You imply that Ermash’ views are representative of many secularist Jews. Do you have any representative opinion poll on which you relied? How many secularist Jews share the views of this antisemite?

Karl Pfeifer

PS Being a journalist I may publish any mail which is not marked “confidential” or “off record”

Shortly after, this came through to Karl’s in-box:

Mr. Pfeifer,