Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: per Namib (se hai tempo)

http://jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=253&PID=0&IID=2011&TTL=The_Holocaust_as_an_Anti-Zionist_and_Anti-Imperialist_Tool_for_the_Left
Dave Rich
Holocaust Denial as an Anti-Zionist and Anti-Imperialist Tool for the
European Far Left
Introduction
The promotion of Holocaust denial by Iran's President Ahmadinejad as
part of his policy toward Israel has significant consequences for the
Jewish world, Holocaust commemoration, and the struggle against anti-
Semitism. Although Holocaust denial is commonplace in the Arab and
Muslim world, it is still largely taboo in Europe and the West.
However, among European anti-Zionists there is a deep-rooted and
growing suspicion of official Holocaust remembrance, which is viewed
as part of Israel's propaganda armory, despite the fact that many of
these anti-Zionists also consider themselves to be antifascists.
It is the utility of Holocaust denial as an anti-Zionist propaganda
weapon that leaves European leftists vulnerable to Iranian
encouragement to challenge the scale, nature, meaning, and
consequences of the Holocaust. This is not the usual dynamic of anti-
Zionism leading to anti-Semitism; this is anti-Semitism being used to
generate anti-Zionism, which could profoundly affect the direction and
tone of anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic activity in the West.
Holocaust Denial and the Iranian State
Given the extent of outrage and media attention attracted by Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad's repeated denial of the Holocaust, one might think this
was a new development in Iranian politics. However, the Iranian
president is merely repeating an opinion that has been common in Iran
for many years. Ahmadinejad's main rival in the 2005 presidential
elections, Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, whom much of the Western media
portrayed during the election campaign as a relative moderate, is also
a Holocaust denier. He marked the Iranian Quds Day rally in 1998 with
a speech claiming that only two hundred thousand Jews died during the
war.[1] In 2000, the Swiss denier Jurgen Graf absconded to Iran after
a Swiss court sentenced him to fifteen months in prison. That same
year the Iranian embassy in Vienna had given refuge to an Austrian
denier, Wolfgang Frohlich.[2]
Western Holocaust deniers frequently appear in the Iranian media where
they are treated as experts not just on the Holocaust but on other
subjects as well. Mark Weber, director of the Institute for Historical
Review in California, was interviewed by Iran's Mehr news agency to
give his thoughts on Israel's war against Hizballah in 2006.[3]
Michele Renouf, who has become Britain's foremost Holocaust-denial
activist, appeared on Iran's Sahar TV to discuss the French
presidential elections.[4]
What is perhaps different about President Ahmadinejad's approach is
that he has promoted Holocaust denial as a centerpiece of his stated
policy on Israel. In his 2007 Quds Day speech, Ahmadinejad repeated
his view that the Holocaust is a "myth" and that Western governments
"are in the grips of the claws of Zionism," before proposing that
Israeli Jews be deported en masse to Canada and Alaska.[5]
The high point of his strategy was the hosting in Tehran of the
International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust
in December 2006, attended by notorious Holocaust deniers from around
the world including Robert Faurisson, David Duke, Michele Renouf,
Fredrick Toben, and Ahmed Rami. The conference was organized by the
previously well-respected Institute for Political and International
Studies, which is linked to the Iranian Foreign Ministry, and much of
the financial cost was covered by the Iranian government. The
conference program included discussion of whether the Holocaust
happened and sessions on anti-Semitism, Nazi-Zionist collaboration,
and what has been dubbed "the Holocaust industry."
Holocaust Denial after Tehran
The most significant outcome of the conference was the establishment
of the World Foundation for Holocaust Studies, to be run by a five-
person committee who are all Holocaust deniers from Western countries:
Michele Renouf of Britain, Fredrick Toben of Australia, Serge Thion of
France, Christian Lindtner of Denmark, and Bernhard Schaub of
Switzerland. The Iranian official appointed as general secretary of
the foundation, Mohammad Ali Ramin, is not only a Holocaust denier but
also claims that AIDS, SARS, and bird flu are "interrelated" with the
Holocaust story.[6] The foundation's plans include holding another
conference, the production and distribution of denial propaganda, and
other activities all potentially funded by the Iranian government.
Michele Renouf first came to prominence as a regular observer in court
during David Irving's failed libel trial against Deborah Lipstadt in
2000. The following year, she was at the center of an ambitious plan
to secure funding for Irving from Prince Fahd bin Salman of Saudi
Arabia, son of the governor of Riyadh and eldest nephew of King Fahd.
Renouf arranged for Irving and Fahd to meet and terms for the funding
were agreed, but the prince died before any money changed hands.[7]
Since then Irving has spent time in an Austrian prison for denying the
Holocaust in a 1989 speech, but since his release he has wasted no
time resuming activity. He visited Hungary, where he has a new
publisher, in March 2007, and addressed a public rally organized by
the far-Right Hungarian Justice and Life Party to mark Hungary's
National Day. The rally later degenerated into a riot between far-
Right supporters and the police.[8]
Irving also has visited Poland, twice, where he was expelled from the
International Book Fair in Warsaw, and Spain, and most recently
embarked on a speaker tour of the UK with the intention of relaunching
his career in his home country. This included a controversial, and
fiercely protested, appearance at the prestigious Oxford Union on 26
November 2007 along with the leader of the far-Right British National
Party, Nick Griffin.
This has been accompanied by an attempt by Irving to refine his views
on the Holocaust. He has conceded that somewhere in the region of 2.5
million Jews were killed in Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka, but not at
Auschwitz-and Hitler was "completely in the dark" about these killings.
[9] This marks something of a return for Irving to his position on
publication of his Hitler's War in 1977-that there were mass killings
of Jews of which Hitler was entirely ignorant-before his shift to
outright Holocaust denial on publication of The Leuchter Report[10] in
1988. Irving has presumably made this concession for tactical reasons
as he tries to recover his shattered reputation, but his website is
still full of Holocaust- denial material.[11]
There is no evidence of Iranian backing for Irving, who raises all his
money from private donations and book sales. It seems, though, that
Iranian promotion of Holocaust denial has breathed new life into a
movement that was, in Europe at least, moribund. International denial
conferences have since been proposed-though not, at the time of
writing, convened-in Argentina and Italy, where Robert Faurisson was
prevented from delivering a lecture at the University of Teramo when
the university authorities closed the campus for the day.[12]
Anti-Zionism and the Holocaust
The idea that Holocaust denial is a way to undermine Israel's
legitimacy is a seductive one, and not just for Iran. Official
Holocaust commemoration in Britain was formalized in 2001 around
Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), but is under attack from many in the
Muslim community and on the far Left who see it as being linked to
support for Israel. In January 2007, the local authority in Bolton, a
town in the northwest of England, canceled the town's HMD event in
favor of a more general Genocide Memorial Day, a move that the Muslim
Council of Britain and others have called for on a national scale for
some time. Bolton's Genocide Memorial Day-Britain's first-was held in
June 2007 and organized as a multifaith event.[13] That Bolton
Council's decision to cancel their HMD event was, in part, a protest
against Israeli policy was made clear by the secretary of the local
interfaith council who said "the war in Lebanon had influenced my
decision and others."[14]
The British government is firm in its commitment to Holocaust Memorial
Day as a national event. Nevertheless, Bolton is unlikely to be the
last place to accede to Muslim requests for a local Genocide Memorial
Day, whether as a replacement for Holocaust Memorial Day or as an
addition to the civic calendar.
Despite its establishment origins, the creation of Holocaust Memorial
Day would appear to be a victory, and a useful tool, for antifascist
campaigning. But the growing hostility of parts of the Left to
official Holocaust commemorations reveals much about changing
attitudes toward Jews.
In January 2007, during Holocaust Memorial Week (HMW), the Scottish
Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) organized a series of readings of
Jim Allen's play Perdition, which uses the complex case of Rudolf
Kastner and the destruction of Hungarian Jewry to charge that Zionists
collaborated with the Nazis in implementing the Holocaust.[15] The
play has been comprehensively debunked, most notably by Sir Martin
Gilbert[16] and David Cesarani,[17] but remains a powerful piece of
anti-Zionist propaganda. The allegation of collaboration between
Zionists and Nazis as "a means of morally discrediting the Jewish
people and delegitimizing the state of Israel"[18] is an invention of
Soviet anti-Zionism that has outlived its creator.
In addition to readings of Perdition, the SPSC also organized meetings
featuring Lenni Brenner, author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators,
[19] which formed the basis for much of Perdition. Brighton and Hove
PSC did the same, inviting Brenner to speak on "Zionist Collaboration
with Nazi Germany." It may well be that the current Iranian promotion
of outright Holocaust denial, and the growing support in parts of the
British Left for Hizballah and Iran, is what has given the SPSC and
others the confidence to challenge mainstream Holocaust commemoration
head-on.
The recasting of Holocaust commemoration from an anti-Zionist
perspective is more than just an anti-Israeli propaganda tactic.
Holocaust denial and Holocaust commemoration possibly constitute the
last taboo in the Left's attitude toward Jews, and it is being broken.
The Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK)[20] has suffered no
political cost whatsoever within the anti-Zionist world for the
financial support given to David Irving by its founder and leading
activist, Asghar Bukhari.[21] George Galloway's Respect Party and the
Stop the War Coalition have nothing to say about Iranian state support
for Holocaust denial.
The anti-Zionist utility of Holocaust denial increasingly outweighs
the need to remember the victims of Nazism in some political circles,
where subverting mainstream Holocaust remembrance is seen as an anti-
Israeli act. Even those within the anti-Zionist Left who object to
this rarely do so on principle. One Socialist Workers Party (SWP)
activist who publicly objected to the SPSC's plans wrote that: "My
qualms about the staging of Perdition during HMW are tactical. The
Zionists have certainly controlled the discourse about Holocaust
remembrance for many years, and have aggressively quashed the truth
about Zionist collaboration with Nazis."[22]
The truth about Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist behavior during
the Holocaust has been researched and written about extensively
elsewhere. The aim here is not to set straight the distortions of
Brenner, Allen, and others but to shed some light on where their
obsessions might lead. For while the SWP worried about tactics, the
strategic aims of the SPSC were revealed by its chair, Mick Napier, in
a letter to Socialist Worker defending the SPSC's actions. Napier
argued that Holocaust commemoration was used "to 'justify' the mass
murder and expropriation of the Palestinians," and that "An accurate
understanding of the Nazi Holocaust is essential to grasp modern
Israeli savagery towards the Palestinian people. The political link
between Palestine and the Nazi mass murder of Jews in 1942-5 is not
the prerogative of the SPSC."[23]
Anti-Imperialism and the Holocaust
The idea that Holocaust denial can be a central part of the struggle
against Israel has long been the basis of a sustained marketing
campaign by neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers to potential sources of
funding and support in the Arab and Muslim world. Typical of this was
Ernst Zundel's open letter to the Muslim world, The West, War, and
Islam, which set out the full scope of the international Jewish
conspiracy under such headings as "The International Zionists," "The
International Secret Societies," "The International Bankers," and
"International Communism," and then concluded with an appeal for
funds:
    The Islamic world has the financial means to publish, broadcast or
otherwise disseminate the historical, factual data leading to the
truth.... There are at this moment already in existence organizations
which, if properly funded, could become the nucleus of an independent,
worldwide information network capable of countering the now virtually
unopposed Zionist disinformation and hate propaganda networks. One
such example is the Zundelsite, a United States based website that has
exposed the so-called "Holocaust" as an extortion tool...that yields
Israel the money, power and excuse to occupy the Palestinians and to
intimidate its neighbours such as Syria, Lebanon, Iran and other Arab
nations.... Take the Holocaust away, and you will have severed the
financial water well that feeds an evil oligarchy and repressive
system![24]
For neo-Nazis, Zionism encompasses much more than just Israel and its
supporters, and Holocaust denial is about much more than just
undermining Israel. The Western response to the Holocaust forms the
basis of the entire postwar European liberal consensus and the
multiethnic societies that neo-Nazis so despise. As British National
Party (BNP) leader Nick Griffin wrote, in the days before he felt it
politically expedient to mask his party's anti-Semitism:
    For the last fifty years the vision underlying all the vile
sickness of this Age of Ruins has been the so-called "Holocaust."
There is no need to elaborate on the way in which the work of
revisionist historians and forensic examinations have nailed the
absurd lie that Nazi Germany, in the midst of a wartime shortage of
labour and materials, gassed or otherwise systematically exterminated
six million Jews. What does need to be stressed is the extent to which
this nonsense underpins not just the Zionist state of Israel and
Jewish power worldwide but the entire edifice of global liberalism....
The New World struggling to be born cannot do so until this lie is
publicly exposed, ridiculed and destroyed...members of the British
National Party have a duty to be involved as active participants in
the revisionist struggle.[25]
Hatred of liberal democracies is not limited to the far Right, and
Holocaust denial has more than just an anti-Zionist utility. The high-
profile promotion of Holocaust denial by President Ahmadinejad has
taken Holocaust denial out of the hands of the far Right and put it
firmly on the agenda of the leftists and Islamists who make up the new
global anti-imperialism. Some, like Paul Eisen of Deir Yassin
Remembered, are sympathetic to outright Holocaust denial.[26] Most,
like Norman Finkelstein, do not deny the facts of the Holocaust but
have the same political purpose: to attack the "Holocaust industry"
that they see as propping up Israel, Zionism, and organized Jewish
power. In this formulation, Holocaust denial is about denying the
meaning and consequences of the Holocaust rather than necessarily
denying the facts of the Holocaust itself. For the SPSC, Holocaust
commemoration is little more than a cynical propaganda tool of the
Western powers:
    Increasingly, Holocaust Commemoration has become a travesty,
devoid of any moral compass that condemns today's mass killing of
brown-skinned people for oil or srategic goals. Holocaust
commemoration has been embraced by our Government, currently involved
in the genocidal occupation of Iraq, and Zionists who defend Israel's
ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The Israeli Declaration of Independence
claims the Holocaust as a justification for this apartheid state. Tony
Blair's ministers attend Holocaust Commemorations one day and then the
next day they ratchet up the rhetoric against asylum seekers and
immigrants that the extreme right, including the Nazi BNP, are feeding
on.[27]
The collapse of traditional divisions between Right and Left and the
political confusion engendered by 9/11 and subsequent events, have led
to the growth of a political subculture that is home to the antiwar
movement, antiglobalizers, radical street politics, and populist
political leaders. The appetite within this amorphous movement for
conspiracy theories and the instinctive mistrust of official accounts
of contemporary and historical events has opened up a political space
beyond the far Right in which questioning and denying the Holocaust is
no longer the anathema it once was.
Gilad Atzmon regularly performs musically at Socialist Workers Party
events despite having called for Holocaust deniers to be encouraged as
assets in the struggle against Anglo-American policy in the Middle
East.[28] The newly-formed Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism-"a
group of scholars, campaigners and lawyers...which aims to defend the
principle of free speech on debate over Israel,"[29] is eerily
reminiscent of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, one of
the oldest Holocaust-denial websites. Few on the anti-Zionist Left are
ready to denounce Holocaust denial-or indeed any form of anti-Semitism-
when it comes in anti-imperialist packaging.
Contemporary Leftist Attitudes toward Jews
Older generations on the Left took part in a sympathy for Israel that
was linked to the emotional power of the Holocaust. Whereas, for these
generations, the Holocaust and subsequent birth of Israel were
tangible events, for the younger generation it is increasingly a
source of resentment. This is a generation for whom the universal
messages of the Holocaust are axiomatic, but the particularist Jewish
messages are poorly understood and seem anachronistic and unnecessary.
The image of Israel as a perpetrator of "Nazi-lite" ethnic cleansing
facilitates the role-reversal in Napier's claim that "An accurate
understanding of the Nazi Holocaust is essential to grasp modern
Israeli savagery towards the Palestinian people." In this version of
Holocaust remembrance, history is not studied so as to understand
Jewish suffering at the hands of European anti-Semitism. Instead it is
the Palestinians who are the true victims of the Holocaust, are still
suffering its consequences today, and to whom Europe owes its historic
moral debt. This is particularly the case in Britain, which has no
history of Nazi occupation and collaboration but instead carries the
colonial guilt of the Balfour Declaration.
The claim that Zionists, having collaborated with Nazis in
perpetrating the Holocaust, are now inflicting similar misery on the
Palestinians, neatly solves the contradiction between the Left's
antifascism and its anti-Zionism. Reinterpreting the Holocaust as a
Zionist crime is in itself a form of Holocaust denial, the purpose of
which is to erase the link between the destruction of European Jewry
and its rebirth in Israel.
This also profoundly affects attitudes toward Jews within parts of the
Left. First, the notion that the Zionist movement could act as equal
partners with Nazi Germany, at a time when ordinary Jews were at their
most powerless and desperate, raises Zionism to a level of power and
malevolence that traces a direct line to Protocols-style conspiracy
theories. This has strong resonance in a political milieu that accepts
conspiracy theories about Zionist or Jewish control of American
foreign policy and the Iraq war.
Second, this determination to bracket together Zionism and Nazism has
led to inevitable claims that their contemporary adherents, in the
form of Israel and its supporters on the one hand, and neo-Nazis on
the other, are in practical alliance. Thus the SPSC website gave these
three reasons for the importance of their Holocaust Memorial Week
events: "Open, ethnic cleansers now occupy senior positions in the
nuclear-armed Israel government; Racist, extreme-right parties
inspired by the Nazis are now growing across Europe; Political Zionism
and extreme right-wing parties have usually cooperated against the
left."[30]
Articles in the far-Left press have even suggested the prospect of
British Jews voting in significant numbers for the British National
Party.[31] It is true that the BNP currently claims that its obsessive
anti-Semitism is now consigned to its past. In a bizarre twist,
however, the only people who take this seriously are anti-Zionists
excited by the illusory prospect of such an alliance, which would
allow them to marry together the two sides of their political
identity.
The significance of this is more than just rhetorical. Leftists view
Nazism as the ultimate evil and neo-Nazism as a movement that must be
opposed at all costs. That Zionists could, in the leftist imagination,
cooperate with and support the contemporary far Right, just as their
forebears are accused of doing during the Holocaust, is proof that
Zionists are beyond redemption.
Furthermore, in Western Europe neo-Nazis are regularly denied the same
freedom of association and freedom of speech that others enjoy, as
part of the legal and policing framework that exists in many countries
to prevent Nazism's return to power. By associating Israel and its
supporters-in reality, the overwhelming majority of Jews and their
mainstream institutions-with the contemporary far Right, and thereby
labeling them as racists or fascists, anti-Zionists build the
rationale for arguing that Jews, too, should be denied these basic
rights unless they disassociate themselves from Israel and Zionism.
This has been the logic behind repeated attempts to ban, or severely
limit the activities of, Jewish societies at British universities
since the 1970s.[32]
Conclusion: Legal and Educational Responses
If the memory and meaning of the Holocaust has become a key
battleground, then Jewish communities need to recognize that and
prepare accordingly. Responses to Holocaust denial traditionally
follow two paths: prosecution and education. Many European countries
have laws against Holocaust denial that were introduced in the early
1990s to combat a resurgent neo-Nazi movement, and there have been
prosecutions for Holocaust denial in several European countries. All
EU states are now required to have laws that are capable of
prosecuting Holocaust denial where it can be shown to be inciting
racial hatred.
It is questionable, though, whether this approach is the most
appropriate way to deal with those who question or deny the Holocaust
so as to attack Zionism and Israel. Prosecutions for Holocaust denial
can even be counterproductive in a post-Danish-cartoons world,
allowing Islamist groups to argue, however inaccurately, that Europe
has double standards when it comes to free speech.[33]
For this and other reasons, prosecutions are probably not the right
way to counter this new assault on the memory of the Holocaust.
Education will bring greater benefits; but, again, the Holocaust
education that has won the Jewish community allies against neo-Nazi
anti-Semitism is not necessarily appropriate for dealing with those
who attack the memory of the Holocaust as a way of undermining Israel.
Holocaust education has always emphasized its universalist messages,
to great effect in building broad coalitions against the far Right.
However, the specifically Jewish messages about the Holocaust and its
meaning for Diaspora Jewish life, Zionism, and the need for Israel are
not widely understood outside the Jewish world.
To counter the anti-Zionist interpretations, distortions, and denial
of the Holocaust, Jewish communities should be bolder in promoting
these messages alongside their existing educational work. Holocaust
denial, like much of contemporary anti-Semitism, may look as it always
has done, but it has adapted subtly to fit the times. The Jewish
response needs to do the same if it is to meet this challenge.
*    *    *
Notes
Publication of this issue was made possible in part by the support of
the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Rabbi Israel
Miller Fund for Shoah Research, Documentation and Education) for the
JCPA program on Contemporary Holocaust Distortion.
[1] "Rafsanjani Supports French Muslim Author, Condemns 'Zionist
Propaganda,'" BBC Monitoring, 26 January 1998, transcribed and
translated from a speech broadcast on Voice of the Islamic Republic of
Iran, 23 January 1998.
[2] "Swiss Revisionist Forced into Exile for 'Thought Crime,'"
Institute for Historical Review website 
http://www.ihr.org/
, 24
December 2000.
[3] "Hezbollah Fights with Remarkable Determination against Zionist
Enemy," Mehr news agency, 1 August 2006.
[4] See 
www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FC70E9DF0175965C
 (viewed 19
October 2007).
[5] "The Holocaust an 'Infallible Fabrication' of the West-Iran
President," BBC Monitoring, 5 October 2007, transcribed and translated
from a speech broadcast on Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
[6] MEMRI Special Dispatch Series 1186, "Iranian Presidential Advisor
Mohammad Ali Ramin: 'The Resolution of the Holocaust Issue Will End in
the Destruction of Israel,'" 15 June 2006.
[7] D. D. Guttenplan and Martin Bright, "David Irving's Secret
Backers," The Observer, 3 March 2002.
[8] "Hungarian Protests Turn Violent," BBC Online, 15 March 2007.
[9] Matthew Taylor, "Discredited Irving Plans Comeback Tour," The
Guardian, 29 September 2007.
[10] A work by Fred A. Leuchter claiming there were no homicidal gas
chambers at Auschwitz. Irving published the book in the UK, writing a
foreword for it.
[11] 
http://www.fpp.co.uk/
.
[12] Marta Falconi, "Italian University Bars Holocaust Denier,"
Associated Press, 18 May 2007.
[13] Amanda Smith, "Town Marks Genocide Memorial Day," Bolton News, 15
July 2007.
[14] Rachel Fletcher, "'Sacks Told Blair: We Do Not Need Holocaust
Day,'" Jewish Chronicle, 2 February 2007.
[15] Jim Allen, Perdition (London: Ithaca Press, 1987).
[16] Martin Gilbert, "To Stage or Not to Stage: The Case of
Perdition," Britain/Israel Public Affairs Committee, March 1987.
[17] David Cesarani, "The Perdition Affair," in Robert Wistrich, ed.,
Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in the Contemporary World (London:
Macmillan, 1991), 53-60.
[18] Robert Wistrich, "The New War against the Jews," Commentary, May
1985.
[19] Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (London: Croom
Helm, 1983).
[20] Not related to the American organization of the same name.
[21] Jamie Doward, "Muslim Leader Sent Funds to Irving," The Observer,
19 November 2006.
[22] "SWP Force Resignation of Member from the Scottish PSC over
Perdition," Harry's Place, 19 January 2007.
[23] Mick Napier, "Raising the Issues over Holocaust Memorial Day,"
Socialist Worker, 27 January 2007.
[24] Ernst Zundel, The West, War, and Islam, 1980; updated (2005)
edition available at 
www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres5/zunwestwarislam.pdf
(viewed 29 November 2007).
[25] Nick Griffin, "'Populism' or Power?" Spearhead, 324, February
1996.
[26] "...Palestinians must know that they are not just facing the
might of the Israeli state but also the power of organized world Jewry
and its primary arm, the Holocaust. Perhaps Palestinians should
consider lobbing a few stones in that direction. Perhaps we all
should." Paul Eisen, "The Holocaust Wars," 20 May 2005,
www.zundelsite.org/zundel_persecuted/may20-05_eisen.html
 (viewed 29
November 2007).
[27] "Holocaust Commemoration Week Events in Scotland, 2007 Jan
20-28," Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, 
http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/
(viewed 13 December 2006).
[28] I tend to believe that the Holocaust narrative that is forcefully
imposed on us all is there to silence some alternative interpretations
of WWII events. I do believe that if we really want to stop Anglo-
Americans from killing in the name of democracy we better re-open a
genuine debate. Stopping Bush and Blair in Iraq, stopping those
warmongers from proceeding to Iran and Syria is a must. If history
shapes the future, we need to liberate our perspective of the past,
rather than arresting revisionists, we simply need many more of them.
We must let go; we must Re-arrange the 20th century.
Gilad Atzmon, "Re-Arranging the 20th Century: Allegro, Non Troppo,"
http://www.gilad.co.uk/
, 23 February 2006 (viewed 19 October 2007).
[29] David Castle, "Pluto Threatened over Israel Book,"
www.redpepper.org.uk/article609.html
 (viewed 25 October 2007).
[30] 
http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/
 (viewed 22 January 2007).
[31] It remains to be seen how the BNP will continue to evolve under
Griffin's leadership.   However, given its current political
trajectory, the possibility of the BNP making a pitch for the support
of a right-wing minority within the Jewish community on an anti-Muslim
programme, as the far-right party Vlaams Belang has successfully done
in Belgium, cannot be excluded. Indeed, BNP member and veteran fascist
John Bean recently made the point that,"minus the anti-semitism," a
section of the Jewish community will "like much of what we have to
say. The mere fact of our opposition to the Muslim threat, which lusts
to wipe them off the face of the earth, guarantees some do." Such an
alliance is, at any rate, a lot more likely than the so-called
"symbiotic relationship" between the BNP and Muslim extremists that
exists only in the imagination of the all-party parliamentary inquiry
into anti-semitism.
Geoff Brown, "Why Muslims Are These Men's Current Target," Morning
Star, 20 September 2006.
[32] Most British university student unions, including the National
Union of Students, have policies that prevent racists or fascists from
organizing or speaking on campus. The 1975 United Nations resolution
3379 that defined Zionism as a form of racism enabled anti-Zionist
activists to argue that Zionist speakers and organizations-in
practice, the Union of Jewish Students and individual Jewish societies-
should be prevented from operating on university campuses under this
"no platform" policy.
There have been two waves of explicit attempts to ban Jewish societies
at British universities: 1977 (Brighton Polytechnic, the School of
Oriental and African Studies, Warwick University, Salford University,
Bristol University, Hatfield Polytechnic, North London Polytechnic,
and York University) and 1985-1986 (Sunderland Polytechnic, Birmingham
University, the School of Oriental and African Studies, South Bank
Polytechnic, City of London Polytechnic, and Heriot-Watt University).
Other attempts to ban Jewish societies or limit their activities to
exclude anything related to Israel and Zionism have included Warwick
University (1974 and 1981), Coventry Polytechnic (1975), Wolverhampton
Polytechnic (1979), North London Polytechnic (1980), South Bank
Polytechnic (1983), the London School of Economics (1989), and Leeds
University (2006).
These lists are not exhaustive. It should be noted that most of these
efforts failed when put to the vote in their student unions. There
have been many more motions put to student unions that have branded
Zionism as racism but not explicitly called for the Jewish society to
be excluded.
[33] It is worth noting that Holocaust denial is subject to
prosecution not because it offends Jews but in cases where it
potentially incites anti-Semitism and encourages neo-Nazism among non-
Jews. This is an important distinction when compared to the Danish
cartoons of Mohammed, which provoked protests from Muslim communities
on the basis that they offended their religious sensibilities.

   
Caro Nahum, solo ora ho avuto modo di guardare il lungo art. che hai 
inviato (thanx), un art. che non mi convince affatto, per varie ragioni. 
Nel titolo, si parla dell'importanza (tattico-strategica) del "tool" 
antirevisionista in ambiti che poi risultano intonsi da testimoniate 
attitudini a questo riguardo, salvo ridurre la "European Far Left" alla 
Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, che è il principale obiettivo 
dell'art., e che non va nemmeno d'accordo con il locale partito 
socialista. Il referente logico dell'antisemitismo resta, in UK, il BNP. 
E, nonostante tutte le chiacchiere su una presunta "imagination" 
antisemita della "far left" "europea", non si troverà, manco a pagarla 
oro, una dichiarazione antisemita di un leader della sx (per quanto 
"far") europea. Inter alia, l'"imperialismo" non lo nomina nessuno, 
anche se è usato dal fantasioso articolista per descrivere la far left 
(così descrivendo solo la propria propensione per i luoghi comuni). Bye.
Namib