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This is a guest post by Kenneth Bandler of AJC.
Wrapping up his whirlwind Latin America tour, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must have been very pleased that he had cancelled his previously planned visit to Brazil in May. No doubt his host, Brazilian President President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is similarly delighted. Each is enjoying international attention as leaders in their respective regions of the world.
“Not Gaza, not Lebanon — our life is for Iran,” chanted the demonstrators, as they turned the Iranian regime’s annual Quds Day march into a protest against the tyrannical mullahs who show the same zeal in repressing the Iranian people as they do in supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.
As Basij militia thugs laid into the protesters, Ahmadinejad stated - again - that the Holocaust is “a lie” based upon a “mythical claim.” This latest bout of foulness came just a few hours after he declared that “we do not see any need” for nuclear weapons. I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I’m reluctant to accept any assurances from a Holocaust denier.
Antisemitism was a prominent focus of the American Jewish Committee’s Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. Among the speakers were John Mann, the British MP who has spearheaded the global parliamentary fight against antisemitism, and Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French author and philosopher who has never lost sight of the centrality of antisemitism in his dissection of Islamism and its related ills.
Mindful of his audience, Mann declared: “Let me quote from Rosa Parks: ‘As I got up on the bus I saw that there was only one vacancy, so this was the seat that I took.’ This world and past generations are full of Rosa Parks. People going about their everyday business quietly and with dignity. But people not prepared to be bullied and cowered and intimidated. No doubt a little scared, but those who do their bit by doing what is right.”
You can read the entire speech here and watch highlights of it on YouTube here.
And here are some highlights of what BHL had to say, again on YouTube.
This is a guest post by Walter Reich, Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor of International Affairs, Ethics and Human Behavior at George Washington University and a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Walter is a former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
President Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address at Tuesday’s Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda. The theme for this year’s ceremony is “Never Again: What You Do Matters.” The theme emphasizes individual responsibility.
An anti-racism parley with a Holocaust denier as keynote speaker. Welcome to the UN’s Durban Review Conference. Apparently, the Swiss President might be rolling out the red carpet.
Jenni Frazer in the Jewish Chronicle has a darkly amusing story about yet another hoax perpetrated by the Iranian Holocaust denial outfit, Press TV.
The government of Argentina has decided to expel Richard Williamson, the Holocaust-denying Catholic bishop, from the country. According to Horacio Verbitsky, a veteran journalist with close ties to the present administration, the decision was taken not only because the British cleric had obtained his visa - and subsequently his status as a permanent resident - on the basis of lies about the real nature of his activities here, but also because of his “despicable antisemitic declarations” which have “attacked the deepest feelings of both the Jewish community and society as a whole.”
Continue reading ‘Holocaust Denier Bishop Expelled From Argentina’
Via Johnny Guitar, I’ve come across this recording, which I believe is from 2006, of Christopher Hitchens giving a talk on the question of free speech. Very interesting it is too, especially the part where he talks about David Irving, the notorious antisemite and Holocaust denier.
Continue reading ‘Christopher Hitchens on David Irving and Free Speech’
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
In the winter of 1077, Emperor Henry IV journeyed to Canossa near Reggio nell’Emilia as a simple penitent. On January 28, after waiting for three days, he received absolution from Pope Gregory VII. The name Canossa thus became associated with submission to the church.
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
Reading the news about the reintegration of a notorious Holocaust denier into the Catholic Church, as well as the open letter of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn to the Chief Rabbi of Austria and the Jewish community on the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day, reminded me of my boyhood experiences at the elementary school in Baden bei Wien during the 1930s.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked Holocaust Memorial Day by addressing a conference entitled: “Holocaust: The West’s Sacred Lie.”
The man with his back to the camera is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President. The man warmly hugging him is Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, President of the UN General Assembly. The occasion for their embrace was Ahmadinejad’s viciously antisemitic speech at the UN last September.
Continue reading ‘Holocaust Memorial Day: Embracing the Devil’
The news wires are breathlessly churning out the story about the supermarket which refused to prepare a name-embossed cake for a three year old’s birthday - because he’s called Adolf Hitler Campbell.
This is a guest post by Karl Pfeifer, a veteran anti-fascist and journalist based in Vienna.
In late 2003, the verdict of incitement against Lóránt Hegedüs Jr, a Reformed Church minister who headed the extreme right wing Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP) list for the 2004 European Parliament elections, was annulled.
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