Dear Friend,

This past year has been a time of struggle for the IHR. And although we’re still understaffed and short of funds, we’re upbeat about the future. We’re encouraged by what we’ve achieved during the past year in spite of adversity, and pleased that our educational outreach has never been greater.

By far the most important way of reaching people has been through our web site. Since we launched www.ihr.org in 1998, our site’s impact has grown steadily. This past year it has ranked among the top one percent of the world’s most-visited sites.

To make it even more effective, a few weeks ago we launched a dramatically redesigned web site. It’s not only more eye-catching and professional-looking, but also, for the first time, the home page has photos and provides a continually updated round-up of current news items from around the world. Also for the first time, it offers audio capability, so that lectures and speeches can be downloaded.

Still accessible, of course, is our tremendous IHR archive, which includes hundreds of articles, essays and reviews from back issues of our Journal of Historical Review.

Encouraged by the very positive response we’ve been getting to the site’s new look, we’re hopeful that viewership will grow significantly this year and, with it, the IHR’s global impact and influence.

Interviews and Media Outreach

• Radio interviews heard by millions across the United States and Canada
  
• Television interviews broadcast nationwide in Canada
  
• Interviews with major short wave stations outside of North America that reached millions of listeners
  
• A lengthy interview on southern California’s influential “progressive” radio station KPFK
  
• Interviews heard on four broadcasts of the weekly “American Dissident Voices” radio series
  
• Five guest appearances on the popular Jeff Rense show, which is heard across the USA on stations of the Talk Radio Network, and online everywhere through the Rense web site.
  

In many of these interviews I provided historical perspective on current events, often stressing the decisive Zionist role in pushing the United States into war in Iraq, and the dangers of Jewish-Zionist power for America and the world.

Most of these interviews focused on the political persecution of our courageous friend, Ernst Zundel.

He was arrested on Feb. 5 at his home in Tennessee — even though he is married to an American citizen, Ingrid Rimland — and then deported to Canada. Since then, authorities there have held him in prison, without bail, on the empty pretext that he’s a threat to national security.

Shortly after his arrest, Ingrid asked for my help as a media spokesman. I readily agreed, of course, and during the past year I’ve spoken about the Zundel case with dozens of newspaper, radio and television reporters, and many talk show hosts, providing news, background information, and pointed commentary.

Ernst is in prison, I repeatedly stress, not because his views are unpopular, or because he’s a security risk, but because powerful Jewish groups want him there. He’s a prisoner because he holds and promotes views that the Jewish-Zionist lobby considers harmful to its interests.

On May 22 we organized a demonstration at the Canadian consulate in downtown Los Angeles demanding freedom for Ernst. This action was coordinated with a simultaneous demonstration in Seattle.

We’ve been gratified by Ernst’s generous appreciation for our work. From his prison cell, he wrote to me on December 14:

“... Your interviews were very fluid, full of essential content, historically accurate, recounting of events in my life. You were polite, respectful to your hosts. I was pleased, and I explained to Ingrid that we all have our own way of answering spontaneously asked questions, and that you always had my admiration and trust because of it. That’s why I asked you... to testify several times in court cases on my behalf, when my very freedom, and my life in North America, was at stake!

“I can think of no greater compliment and expression of trust, bestowed on a man and friend, than being asked to testify in court on occasions like that! This kind of relationship based on intrinsic trust is pretty rare in human relationships! I actually would elevate that relationship, to one only German speakers, among which I count you, will understand, and that is ‘Kameradschaft’ [comradeship]... Ingrid and I appreciate all the work you have done with the media, and amongst revisionists, on my behalf, and therefore also on Ingrid’s behalf.”

Meetings

During the past year we organized two successful IHR meetings.

Tom Sunic, a Croatian-born scholar who has taught in American universities, addressed our February 15 event, and best-selling British historian David Irving spoke at our December 10 meeting.

I also spoke on both occasions, pointing out that the strident claims by President Bush and his government that the US had to go to war because the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein posed an imminent danger to the US have proven to be lies. The most important, and probably decisive, motive for the war, I explained in some detail, has been to further the interests of Israel and Jewish-Zionist power, and to impose a US-Israeli hegemony throughout the Middle East.

Also last month, I addressed a meeting of the Freedom Forum of Orange County (California). My talk, entitled “Behind the Propaganda: The Real Reasons for War in Iraq,” was well received. IHR books and back issues of the IHR Journal were sold at a table manned by Institute staff members.

Our IHR News and Comment service continued to grow in 2003, with the number of subscribers increasing steadily. This free e-mail service regularly distributes selected news and commentary. (To subscribe, just write to news@ihr.org)

Much of our small staff’s time and effort are devoted to the routine but important work of promoting, processing and shipping out great quantities of books, leaflets, tapes and other educational materials. Over the years, we’ve distributed many tens of thousands of books, leaflets, tapes and other educational materials — a record unmatched by any similar center or association.

One telling measure of our Institute’s enduring impact is the vehement hostility we routinely provoke from influential Jewish-Zionist groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The Anti-Defamation League, for example, recently issued yet another diatribe against the IHR. Typically, it’s not only viciously one-sided and misleading, it’s packed with factual errors.

And just a few weeks ago, the “Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies” issued its year-end “Global Survey” on “Holocaust Denial” in 2003. The Jewish authors of this detailed report, which is predictably deceitful and misleading, took special aim at the IHR, citing it as “the leading Holocaust denial organization in the United States.”

Adversity and Criticism

This past year has been a difficult one. Short of both money and staff, we were forced temporarily to suspend publication of The Journal of Historical Review. As painful as that decision has been, realistically it was the only reasonable one we could make under the circumstances. As important as the Journal is, the sheer survival of the IHR is an even higher priority.

Largely in response to that decision, the IHR, and I, have come under criticism from some individuals within the revisionist community. These critics — who have no first-hand understanding of the challenges we face, much less any responsibility for them — overlook some crucial facts.

Only about a year ago did our board of directors name me corporate president, assigning to me, for the first time, overall responsibility and authority for our finances and business operations. With that appointment, I inherited responsibility for large debts and serious legal problems we had incurred as a result of Willis Carto’s massive embezzlement of IHR funds, and his relentless, years-old campaign to destroy the Institute through smears and harassing lawsuits.

During this past year, for example, we’ve had to devote a lot of time, and many thousands of dollars, to defending ourselves against an absurd lawsuit he brought against us in Texas. (Carto’s main complaint is that we defamed him by calling him an embezzler. In fact — and as California judge John Hargrove has explicitly affirmed — Carto is an embezzler.)

As those who are familiar with the facts know, we have made every reasonable effort peacefully to settle the IHR-Carto dispute. We even succeeded in prodding him to sign two formal agreements to end the dispute — but Carto broke both of them. (For more on the Carto ordeal, see the Willis Carto Information Site).

Sacramento Conference in April

An important conference in Sacramento, California, over the weekend of April 24-25 is shaping up as the revisionist event of the year. We’re doing our part to help make it a success. The IHR is providing financial support, and I’m scheduled to participate as a keynote speaker. Among the 14 other scheduled speakers are Horst Mahler (Germany), Paul Fromm (Canada), Dariusz Ratajczak (Poland), Fredrick Töben (Australia), Lady Michele Renouf (England), and Claus Nordbruch (South Africa).

For further information, contact us, or see the notice posted on our web site.

Optimism

As we begin a new year, we are still hard-pressed for both money and resources. But I am confident that we will overcome our current difficulties, just as we surmounted even greater ones in the past.

My optimism is fortified by a dramatically more upbeat and youthful spirit here at our office. During the past year, we brought on two new staff members. In June we hired a Marine Corps veteran from Virginia to serve as our new office manager, and in October we hired another able man to oversee our sales operations, process orders and handle shipping.

Growing Worldwide Awareness

The most important event of 2003 was, of course, the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq. Rarely, if ever, has the US acted with such arrogant contempt for established norms of international law and for the principles this country claims to uphold.

As we have repeatedly stressed, and as the world increasingly understands, the crucial factor in the decision to attack and occupy Iraq was the Jewish-Zionist lobby. This lobby is now pushing the US to remove, by force if necessary, every regime in the area that opposes Israel’s policies, or might potentially do so.

For years the IHR has warned of the great danger of Jewish-Zionist power. Now awareness of this peril is growing everywhere.

In Britain, for example, a prominent Member of Parliament, Tam Dalyell, candidly remarked in May 2003: “A Jewish cabal have taken over the government in the United States and formed an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christians.” The Labour party MP, who is also the parliament’s longest-serving member, added: “There is far too much Jewish influence in the United States.”

In Malaysia, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed pointedly declared in a landmark address on October 16 that “Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.” In the global struggle against Jewish power, he continued in his speech to a meeting of world leaders, “we are up against a people who think... We cannot fight them through brawn alone. We must use our brains also.”

We must build on this growing international awareness.

To counter Jewish-Zionist power is a task of the highest importance — for Americans and for people of good will everywhere. In this struggle, the role of the IHR is critically important.

Our Institute is the only well-established history research and publishing center in America that boldly and conscientiously identifies the enemies of freedom and peace, educating the thoughtful public with solidly referenced books, articles, reviews and tapes. The IHR is virtually alone in opposing Jewish-Zionist power in a way that is not only explicit and forthright, but also thoughtful, scholarly and informed.

We urgently need your help to make the IHR even more influential and effective — by reaching many more people across America and around the world, by expanding our outreach on radio and television, by launching important new books, by hiring new staff members — and much more.

I look forward to your generous response.

Sincerely,

Mark Weber
Director, Institute for Historical Review

P.S. Your tax-deductible donation to the IHR will strengthen our global impact, which is vastly out of proportion to our small staff and very limited budget. It’s easier than ever to donate. Just click on our site’s Support Us page.