U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote: Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
 "United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam."
- Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled, 'U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' September 4, 1967.
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Barber to the SS, Witness to the Holocaust
 With commentary by historian David Irving
Joszef Paczynski remembers the day in 1942 when he saw a group of fellow prisoners at Auschwitz being gassed and cremated. He was working as a barber to SS officers, including Nazi camp commander Rudolf Höss. It was a job that helped save his life -- and gave him a unique vantage point on the death factory Höss was creating at the concentration camp.
"Höss was an expert at gassing people," Paczynski says. "The Germans were constantly searching for a way to kill as many people at a time as quickly as possible."
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Holocaust Remembrance and Jewish Supremacism
 Is 'Holocaust Remembrance' tied to Jewish supremacist domination of the United States? Is it an honest commemoration of a terrible ordeal, or a tool used to dominate others? Why does 'The Holocaust' apparently become more significant and receive even greater attention as it recedes into the past, contrary to most such events? Today historian Mark Weber, of the Institute for Historical Review, discusses these and other questions with host Kevin Strom.
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"The 27 January has become the all-European Holocaust day," one commentator says in the popular Maariv, but warns that simply holding ceremonies may not be enough.
"If those ceremonies are summed up in rituals of formally doing one's duty, we do not need them. We do not need forgiveness ceremonies. Especially since we are not allowed to forgive."
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Neocons Make Case for Military Draft in Open Letter
 Dear Senator Frist, Senator Reid, Speaker Hastert, and Representative Pelosi:
The United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume. The administration has unfortunately resisted increasing our ground forces to the size needed to meet today's (and tomorrow's) missions and challenges. So we write to ask you and your colleagues in the legislative branch to take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps.
It is our judgment that we should aim for an increase in the active duty Army and Marine Corps, together, of at least 25,000 troops each year over the next several years. There is abundant evidence that the demands of the ongoing missions in the greater Middle East, along with our continuing defense and alliance commitments elsewhere in the world, are close to exhausting current U.S. ground forces.
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 Ingrid Rimland Zundel to Address IHR Meeting, Feb. 3
'Free Zundel' Demonstration in Los Angeles, Feb. 4
For nearly two years now, Ernst Zundel — German-born civil rights activist, writer and publisher — has been held in solitary confinement in a Canadian prison on the empty pretext that he is a threat to national security. So blatant is the injustice of his incarceration that even Canada's most prestigious daily paper, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and other independent observers, have condemned it.
To mark the second anniversary of his detention, his wife, Ingrid Rimland Zundel, will address a special IHR meeting on February 3 in southern California.
And the next day, she and others will meet at the Canadian Consulate in downtown Los Angeles to demand freedom for the man who has become the most prominent political prisoner in North America. Similar demonstrations will be held at the same time in other American cities.
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 IHR Employment Opportunity
The Institute for Historical Review needs another full-time staff member to join our team here in southern California. |
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| 60th Anniversary
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German Leader Admits to Shame as he Speaks to Holocaust Survivors
 Before a crowd Tuesday that included elderly survivors as well as German high school students, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder declared his “shame before those who were murdered — and to you, who survived the hell of the concentration camps,” adding, “We carry this burden in mourning, but also with a serious sense of responsibility.”
Tuesday’s event, a Holocaust remembrance program attended by several hundred guests at the Deutsches Theater, was one of several programs across Germany marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet soldiers.
Kurt Julius Goldstein, who was deported to Auschwitz as a teenager and returned to live in Berlin, said he was shocked that Germany’s highest courts continue to protect the rights of neo-Nazis to demonstrate publicly — and, he said, to spread Holocaust denial.
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Recalling the Anti-Imperialist League
Within a few months of the American bombardment at Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, a group of prominent New Englanders established the first American peace movement of national scope in response to a foreign war. It was called the Anti-Imperialist League. Although their members were derided as a collection of "mugwumps" – irascible political independents – their ranks would soon include such celebrated figures as Mark Twain, William James, and Andrew Carnegie. These notables would eventually expand their provincial and social base to include local leaguers from throughout the Midwest clear to the West Coast, ultimately including prominent members such as labor leader Samuel Gompers and progressive reformer Jane Addams. Eventually, the national League would number nearly 50,000, before commencing a decline in membership with the eventual "pacification" of the Philippines in 1901. In one form or another, the anti-imperialist movement that sprang from the Spanish-American War would continue public education campaigns until the Red Scare of the late 1910s.
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Should Freedom of Speech Stop at 'Holocaust Denial?'
 ...The first argument is that "Holocaust denial" is a form of racial abuse directed not just at Jews but at a particularly vulnerable subset of Jews. As someone who spent more time than I liked reading the works of Robert Faurisson, Arthur Butz and David Irving I can attest that this is the case.
For all their pseudo-scholarly decoration, the deniers’ devotion to historical argument is on a par with Terminiello’s contribution to theological disputation. To fail to acknowledge the pain felt by Holocaust survivors at the negation of their own experience — or to treat such pain as a particularly Jewish problem which need not trouble anyone else — is to deny our common humanity.
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Our Worst Enemy
 Rabbi Daniel Lapin
I am an Orthodox Jewish rabbi sadly denouncing one of the box office hits of 2004. Which movie has earned my wrath? Here is a clue—it surprised everyone by selling over one hundred million dollars of tickets in its first week in theaters. No, it’s not Mel Gibson’s Passion. The movie causing me deep distress is a Rosenthal/Tenenbaum production starring Dustin Hoffman, and Barbra Streisand.
I am reluctant to name the movie [Meet the Fokkers] on account of the implied vulgarity of its title. If you are reluctant to part with good money for the privilege of seeing the Jewish people being defamed, you should abstain from this movie. In spite of having several Jewish producers and several Jewish stars, this film’s vile notions of Jews are not too different from those used by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
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Cheney Says Holocaust Is Reminder of Evil
 Vice President Dick Cheney remembered the Holocaust on Thursday, saying that the mass murder that went unanswered until Nazi death camps were liberated exactly 60 years ago is a reminder that evil must be faced down in the world today.
"The story of the camps remind us that evil is real and must be called by its name and must be confronted," Cheney said at a forum in
Krakow
, where he spoke before attending an anniversary program at the concentration camps here. "We are reminded that anti-Semitism may begin with words but rarely stops with words and the message of intolerance and hatred must be opposed before it turns into acts of horror."
While he didn't draw the comparison directly, the subtext of Cheney's message melded with the theme of President Bush's Inauguration Day speech about freedom versus tyranny as well as one of his previous State of the Union addresses when he called
Iraq
,
North Korea
and
Iran
the "axis of evil."
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ADL: Ted Turner Hasn't Learned From His Mistakes
 Reacting to Ted Turner's latest remark invoking Hitler and the Holocaust to attack a media rival, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called Mr. Turner "a recidivist who hasn't learned from his past mistakes." According to reports, Mr. Turner this week lashed out at Fox News, telling an audience of programming executives in Las Vegas that the network's popularity among Americans has similarities to Hitler's rise to power in prewar Germany.
"Once again, Ted Turner can't seem to learn his lesson," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "You tell him it's wrong, it's offensive, it's inappropriate, it's degrading to the memory of the six million. He apologizes – then does it again. He's a recidivist who hasn't learned from his past mistakes. Well, Mr. Turner, apologies are good, but learning from your mistakes is better."
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Some Jewish Groups Wary of Expanded Study of Genocide
 Illinois students would have to study all acts of genocide, not just the Holocaust as state law currently requires, under a proposal being pushed by two Chicago area legislators.
But some Jewish groups blasted the proposed legislation Monday, saying the plan would minimize the mass murder of European Jews and other groups by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.
"The Holocaust — that's capital-letter-H Holocaust — stands as a singularly unique tragedy in the course of human history," said Richard Hirschhaut, executive director of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation in Skokie. "It represents the first instance of a highly sophisticated and technologically advanced society applying all of its resources toward the elimination of an entire people."
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At special General Assembly Session, United Nations Remembers Holocaust
 For the first time in its history, the United Nations allowed a prayer service on its premises. But perhaps even more surprising was the prayer itself — the Jewish hymn for martyrs — followed by the Israeli national anthem.
UN on Holocaust: Evil Wins When the Good Are Quiet
"How could such evil happen in a cultured and highly sophisticated nation-state in the heart of Europe whose artists and thinkers had given the world so much," Kofi Annan asked. "Truly is has been said: "All that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing."
'It is Not too Late for Today's Children'
 Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel joined world leaders on Monday in asking whether the United Nations is ready to prevent a future genocide, as the UN General Assembly convened a first-of-its-kind session to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps.
"We know that for the dead it is too late," Wiesel said of the Holocaust's victims. "But it is not too late for today's children, ours and yours. It is for their sake alone that we bear witness."
I Remember
Elie Wiesel
At a certain point in time and by all accounts, Hitler's Germany already had lost the war. But that didn't keep Germany from pursuing its program for our elimination.
A Prominent False Witness: Elie Wiesel
Robert Faurisson
Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. He is generally accepted as a witness to the Jewish "Holocaust," and, more specifically, as a witness to the legendary Nazi extermination gas chambers. The Paris daily Le Monde emphasized at the time that Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Prize because:
These last years have seen, in the name of so-called "historical revisionism," the elaboration of theses, especially in France, questioning the existence of the Nazi gas chambers and, perhaps beyond that, of the genocide of the Jews itself.
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Russian Lawmakers: Ban Jewish Groups
 A group of nationalist lawmakers is calling for an investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations in Russia, accusing Jews of inciting ethnic hatred and provoking anti-Semitism.
In a letter dated January 13, about 20 members of the lower parliament house, the State Duma, asked Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov to investigate their claims and, if they are confirmed, to launch proceedings "on the prohibition in our country of all religious and ethnic Jewish organizations as extremist."
Arguing that Jews were to blame for anti-Semitism, the authors of the letter want Jewish groups outlawed based on legislation against extremism and fomenting ethnic discord.
"The negative assessments by Russian patriots of the qualities and actions against non-Jews that are typical of Jews correspond to the truth, indeed these actions are not random but prescribed in Judaism and have been practiced for two centuries," says the letter, faxed in part to The Associated Press by the office of lawmaker Alexander Krutov.
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Analysis: Iraqi Insurgency Growing Larger, More Effective
 The United States is steadily losing ground to the Iraqi insurgency, according to every key military yardstick.
A Knight Ridder analysis of U.S. government statistics shows that through all the major turning points that raised hopes of peace in Iraq, including the arrest of Saddam Hussein and the handover of sovereignty at the end of June, the insurgency, led mainly by Sunni Muslims, has become deadlier and more effective.
Report: Iraq Now Tops Afghanistan as Terror Central
 In what appears to be a devastating two-part blow to the Bush administration's prewar case for toppling Saddam Hussein, the U.S. military has called off its failed two-year search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and a CIA-linked report claims that the Middle East country has replaced Afghanistan as the main training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists.
"Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself," warns a report released last week by the National Intelligence Council, a CIA-affiliated think tank.
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And Another Thing — Why Not Stop Abusing Prince Harry and Start Thinking?
 Paul Johnson
We can be sure that, in treating Nazi insignia as a party joke, Harry reflects the instincts of his generation, no more nor less. As a visual and exciting phenomenon, with no more contemporary and political relevance than Alexander the Great or Bonaparte, the Nazis do have an undoubted fascination for many young people, brought up in the boredom of politically correct sentimental do-gooding. There is, to them, something shockingly romantic about that weird phenomenon. It is no accident that television, in its endless search for ratings among the young, is always going on about Hitler and the Nazis. The number of times old newsreels are shown of him suggests that he still exerts some of the dread appeal he exercised in his lifetime. It is worth remembering that he was voted into office, quite lawfully and constitutionally, by what was then the best-educated people in the world, and that he and his Nazis always scored higher ratings among the educated young, and among university students and graduates — and professors — than among the population as a whole.
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Cheney Says Israel "Might Well Decide to Act First."
 Vice President Dick Cheney said on Thursday that Iran was at the top of the administration's list of world trouble spots and expressed concern that Israel "might well decide to act first" to eliminate any nuclear threat from Tehran.
"You look around the world at potential trouble spots, Iran is right at the top of the list," Cheney said in an interview aired on MSNBC.
"Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards," he said.
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Does Wilson's Fate Await Bush?
 by Patrick J. Buchanan
Will the Bush presidency end as did Wilson's?
Will George W. Bush be defending to his dying day, against the pitiless evidence of events, his "global democratic revolution"?
Contingent upon what happens in Afghanistan and Iraq, that may well be his fate. For, as Bush's strength is Wilson's strength, his flaw is Wilson's flaw. Both men promised an earthly utopia through liberty and free elections. Both worshipped the golden calf called democracy.
...Wilson did not live to see the consequences of the disastrous peace he brought home from Versailles. President Bush, however, will likely reap the fruits, or witness the futility and failure of his great gamble, before he leaves office.
President Clinton's Distortion of History
 The Danger of Historical Lies
by Mark Weber
On January 20, 1997, Bill Clinton began his second term as President with a swearing-in ceremony at the White House followed by an inaugural address. During the first few minutes of this speech, Clinton briefly surveyed the history of the past ten decades:
What a century it has been. America became the world's mightiest industrial power; saved the world from tyranny in two world wars and a long Cold War; and time and again, reached across the globe to millions who longed for the blessings of liberty.
Not only do these proud, even boastful words contain historical lies, they manifest an arrogance that lays the groundwork for future calamity. In truth, in neither the first nor the second world wars did the United States "save the world from tyranny."
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German Jews Slammed by Simon Wiesenthal Center for Opposing Latest Nazi Hunt
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which on Wednesday is kicking off a final effort to track down and prosecute Nazi war criminals in Germany, is fuming at the organized German Jewish community for refusing to cooperate with the campaign.
Under the German phase of "Operation: Last Chance," to be launched the day before the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and Germany's Holocaust Remembrance Day, Germans are to be offered Euro10,000 for information that leads to the arrest and prosecution of those involved in the murder of Jews. The campaign includes an ad blitz and a hot line for tips.
Operation: Last Chance has been running and being fine-tuned in eight countries leading up to the launch of the German component.
"This is really the culmination of the operation," Zuroff said. "In terms of the potential for success, Germany is head and shoulders above any other country."
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The Coming Wars
 What the Pentagon Can Now do in Secret
by Seymour M. Hersh
George W. Bush’s reelection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control — against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism — during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.
Pentagon Lashes Out at Iran Claim
Pentagon officials on Monday lashed out at a US magazine report which claimed they were preparing for possible strikes on Iran by carrying out secret reconnaissance missions inside the country, saying the article contained "fantastic claims" about programmes that do not exist.
The article, written by veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh for The New Yorker magazine, claims that President George W. Bush plans to drastically expand the war on terrorism, and has already signed executive orders authorising secret commando operations against terrorist targets in as many as ten middle eastern and south Asian nations, including Iran.
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German Roots Still a Royal Embarrassment
When Harry appeared in Nazi uniform it left the rest of his family suddenly looking naked. In an instant, years of painstaking effort to smooth over the royals' past were stripped away as memories and suspicions of royal links to Hitler's Germany were resurrected. |
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Defending Prince Harry
 Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey, Pravda.Ru
Prince Harry was invited to a party whose theme was Colonialists and Natives, a bit of fun, pastiche, nothing too serious. Some people turned up as natives, complete perhaps with spears, but nobody took photos of them and called them racists.
... If Prince Harry had arrived dressed as a Maori, nobody would have accused him of wanting to undermine the government of New Zealand. If he had gone as a British colonial explorer with a cork hat, nobody would have accused him of taking the pith.
Yet the Israeli lobby was ready with an instant hail of stones, without even mentioning the humanitarian crimes committed by Tel Aviv in the last fifty years. Perhaps Prince Harry should have worn the uniform of Sharon's units in Lebanon as they were committing their massacres of civilians. Then nobody would have said anything.
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ADL Saddened by Actions of Prince Harry
 Abraham Foxman, ADL Director, issued the following statement:
The appearance of Prince Harry in a Nazi costume only points up the fact that 60 years after the Holocaust and World War II there is a need for intensive education about the Nazis and their attempt to impose their racially based ideology on the world.
How sad it is that a member of the British royal family would ever consider such an action, given history and the Nazis' attacks on Britain. This certainly would be an affront to all those who lived under the Blitzkrieg and fought against the Nazis in World War II.
We find Prince Harry's apology somewhat lacking and hope that he will be thoroughly educated on why impersonating a Nazi is insensitive and offensive, not a joke.
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Historian David Irving Comments on Prince Harry:
 ... Earlier today I expressed on this website the hope that nobody will remember that Prince Philip (the Duke of Edinburgh) has or had four sisters all of whom were in Nazi Germany during WWII, married either to SS-Obergruppenführers, Nazi gauleiters, or Hermann Göring's chief of Intelligence, the Prince Christian von Hesse; and that as for the father of Princess Michael of Kent, he was of course an Austrian SS Obergruppenführer.
Yes, there is lots that still has to come out. King George VI loathed Winston Churchill (see the papers of Harry Hopkins and the diary of Mackenzie-King); his Queen Elizabeth plotted secretly with certain British admirals to overthrow Winston in the summer of 1940 and accept Hitler's peace offer. This is what the secret records will eventually reveal.
... I rather fear that they have achieved the unique feat of turning the young man who is third in line for the British Throne into a committed anti-Semite, from this day on.
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Bush: Iraq Invasion Worth It Despite No Trace of WMD
 President Bush Speaks With Barbara Walters
The invasion of Iraq, which ousted Saddam Hussein and has cost the lives of some 1,300 U.S. military personnel and billions of dollars, was "absolutely" worth it, despite the absence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, President Bush told ABC News' Barbara Walters in an exclusive interview that will air this Friday.
Bush told Walters, "I felt like we'd find weapons of mass destruction — like many here in the United States, many around the world. The United Nations thought he had weapons of mass destruction. So, therefore: one, we need to find out what went wrong in the intelligence gathering. … Saddam was dangerous and the world is safer without him in power."
When asked if the war was worth it even if there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush responded, "Oh, absolutely."
Iraq: A War For Israel?
By Mark Weber
... Whatever the secondary reasons for the Iraq war, the crucial factor in President Bush’s decision to attack was to help Israel. With support from Israel and America’s Jewish-Zionist lobby, and prodded by Jewish "neo-conservatives" holding high-level positions in his administration, President Bush — who was already fervently committed to Israel — resolved to invade and subdue one of Israel’s chief regional enemies.
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Le Pen Irks French Government with Nazi Remarks
 The government, anti-racism organisations and Jewish groups sharply condemned Le Pen's latest controversial comments, made in an interview with right-wing weekly magazine Rivarol.
"It's not only the European Union and globalisation we have to free our country of. It's also the lies about its history, lies that are protected by exceptional measures," Le Pen said in comments published in Rivarol's Jan. 7 edition.
"In France, at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhumane, although there were some blunders, inevitable in a country of 550,000 sq km."
The Justice Ministry called for a preliminary police inquiry to determine whether Le Pen's comments broke the law.
Le-Pen's Notorious 'Detail' Remark About World War II
On two or three occasions Le Pen has referred to Nazi “gas chambers” — not “the Holocaust” — as a “detail” or “minor point” (point de detail) of World War II. During an interview in September 1987, he said: “Do you want me to say it is a revealed truth that everyone has to believe? That it’s a moral obligation? I say there are historians who are debating these questions. I am not saying that the gas chambers did not exist. I did not see them myself. I haven’t studied the questions specially. But I believe that it is a minor point [point de detail] in the history of the Second World War.”
Le Pen was brought to trial. In France, as in several other European countries, “Holocaust denial” is a crime. After a drawn-out court battle, he was convicted and fined $200,000.
What is Holocaust Denial?
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Simon Wiesenthal Center Outraged by Britain's Prince Harry
 The Simon Wiesenthal Center said today that it was outraged by the actions of Prince Harry who donned a Nazi uniform at a masquerade party. "This was a shameful act displaying insensitivity for the victims, not just for those soldiers of his own country who gave their lives to defeat Nazism, but to the victims of the Holocaust who were the principal victims of the Nazis," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
"We strongly urge Prince Harry to accompany the British delegation on January 27th to the Auschwitz death camp to commemorate 60 years since liberation. There he will see the results of the hated symbol he so foolishly and brazenly chose to wear," Rabbi Hier concluded.
Poll: 'Innocent Mistake'
A snap poll today showed that most people are not outraged by Prince Harry turning up to a fancy dress party dressed as a Nazi.
In the This is London survey, 63% of the 1,500 who voted felt Harry had either been 'badly advised' or had just 'made an innocent mistake'. Only 37% of those taking part said they had been 'disgusted' by his actions.
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How the Anti-Defamation League Controls its Opposition
Chuck Carlson
The Anti-Defamation League is one of the most aggressive protectors of Jewish and Israeli interests. Its name is an oxymoron, for the ADL does its work almost exclusively through the practice of defamation and intimidation. ...They irrationally support Israel’s occupation and prison wall agenda in Palestine. We Hold These Truths and this writer have recently found ourselves a front row center target of an Anti-Defamation League attack. It defamed us to obscure our message from the students, why Judaized Christians are Israel’s most radical cheerleaders.
Machinations of the Anti-Defamation League
 Former US Congressman Pete McCloskey
Until 1980, when I first spoke out against Israel, I had been known as a relative friend of Israel. On issues like Vietnam or a woman's right of choice, things of that kind, I shared views with most Jews. But once I took a position that was deemed hostile to the state of Israel, including opposition to Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and its use of cluster bombs, I was a marked man.
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Russia Scraps Communist Holiday
 The Russian parliament has abolished what used to be the main Soviet holiday - the October Revolution Day marking the Bolshevik uprising in 1917.
MPs adopted amendments to the Labour code - which also replaced a holiday marking the new Russian constitution and introduced new bank holidays.
It gives Russians nearly 10 days off around the New Year and the Orthodox Christmas and replaces Revolution Day.
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Poland Hunts Jew, 86, Over 'Revenge' Killing of Nazis
 Poland is demanding the extradition from Israel of an elderly Jewish man accused of the deaths of hundreds of Germans in a post-war detention camp.
Solomon Morel, 86, faces charges of "crimes against humanity" in relation to more than 1,500 inmates at a camp in southern Poland, many of whom perished in "barbaric" circumstances.
The investigation is the first in Poland into a Jew accused of retaliating against the Germans, and poses potentially awkward questions for Israel about its attitude towards those allegedly involved in revenge killings. Israeli officials turned down a previous extradition request six years ago when there were suspicions that the case was politically motivated.
Behind An Eye for An Eye
 Revenge, Hate and History
John Sack
Three years ago I was scheduled to speak at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The speech was announced in this brochure and also on the Internet. But then the Museum canceled it.
For the next forty-five minutes, I'll say here what I'd planned to say at the Holocaust Museum, and then, just as I'd have done at the Museum, I'll stay here as long as you'd like, answering questions. The audience at the Museum would have been historians, mostly, and I'd have said something like ...
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, thank you for listening to me. What I'm going to talk about happened fifty years ago. And for fifty years, no one, no historian, no one at all has spoken about it in public anywhere in the world. Not until now.
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British Jews Unfazed by Poll Portraying Israel as Unsafe, Ugly
British Jewish leaders on Tuesday said they were not surprised by a poll published in the Daily Telegraph on Monday showing that Britons consider Israel one of the most undemocratic, unsafe, unfriendly and unattractive countries in the world. |
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This is the Chinese Century
 America may believe it is still at the heart of events, but the future is being shaped on the margins
THE 18TH and 19th centuries were the British centuries, in which industrial, political and imperial development in Britain shaped the world. The 20th century was the American century; the United States changed the world, providing a margin of victory in two world wars, and developing all the major new technologies: telephones, automobiles, television, jet aircraft, the internet and so on. We all assume, as Washington undoubtedly assumes, that we are still living in the era of American hegemony, though it is already clear that China may be an emerging superpower.
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Historians in Trouble: Why Some Get Nailed
Historians have been in the news a lot recently, and the news has not been good—accusations of plagiarism, investigations of research fraud, and punishments for classroom misconduct have made headlines and in some cases even ended up in court.
But not all cases of wrongdoing by historians follow this scenario. While some charges of misconduct end up on page one and bring careers to an end, other equally serious charges stay out of the media spotlight and bring little or no public sanction or punishment. Why do some cases become media events while others remain within the confines of scholarly settings?
The answer briefly is power—especially power wielded by groups outside the history profession. Historians targeted by powerful outside groups can face intense media scrutiny and severe sanctions for transgressions, while historians connected to powerful outside groups can be shielded from the media spotlight as well as from the consequences of malfeasance; in some cases, they have even been rewarded.
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Holocaust Fund Investigated for 'Unusual' Money Transfers
 The World Jewish Congress, which has wrung billions of dollars in Holocaust restitution from European governments and companies, is being investigated by the authorities in New York following a series of unusual money transfers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The influential international group, which was founded in the Thirties to counter growing anti-Semitism, has attracted the attention of Elliot Spitzer, the New York state attorney general, who is making informal inquiries into the transfers ordered by Rabbi Israel Singer, the president of the WJC since 1985. It is possible his office could order a full-scale inquiry.
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Goodbye to All That?
 Tony Judt, The Nation
"The Shoah [the 'Holocaust'] is frequently exploited in America and Israel to deflect and forbid any criticism of Israel. Indeed, the Holocaust of Europe's Jews is nowadays exploited thrice over: It gives American Jews in particular a unique, retrospective 'victim identity'; it allows Israel to trump any other nation's sufferings (and justify its own excesses) with the claim that the Jewish catastrophe was unique and incomparable; and (in contradiction to the first two) it is adduced as an all-purpose metaphor for evil — anywhere, everywhere and always — and taught to schoolchildren all over America and Europe without any reference to context or cause. This modern instrumentalization of the Holocaust for political advantage is ethically disreputable and politically imprudent."
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Leaders Fear Probe Will Force Pro-Israel Lobby To File as ‘Foreign Agent' Could Fuel Dual Loyalty Talk
 Ori Nir, Forward
As the Department of Justice intensifies its investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Jewish communal leaders fear that the goal of the probe is to compel the powerful lobbying organization to register as a “foreign agent” representing the government of another country.
Widely regarded as one of the most influential organizations on Capitol Hill, AIPAC is registered with Congress as a lobbying group. Under American law, registering as a foreign agent would require AIPAC to provide significantly more detailed information about its aims and activities to the government — thereby robbing the group of a key weapon: the ability to operate behind the scenes.
Such a change would severely weaken the organization’s influence and fuel charges of dual loyalties against Jewish groups, communal observers said.
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Orlando: 63% of Goyim Oblivious to 'Auschwitz' Tale
 Coming on the heels of the December 2 BBC televised poll which revealed that nearly half of Britons had never heard of the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, a Jewish organization in Florida has released a study claiming 63% of a "typical United States city" could not identify the camp.
A radical Zionist group called "International Society for Sephardic Progress" says it conducted a survey in the form of a random sampling of the population of Orlando, Florida, between December 5 - 26, 2004. "We were stunned to learn the BBC study revealed 45% of people questioned had never heard of Auschwitz. The Orlando findings, 63%, are even more discouraging," stated dual citizen Shelomo Alfassa (pictured), ISSP Executive Director.
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Why 'The Passion' Still Troubles Me
 Abraham H. Foxman
...In its depiction of Jews and how it attempts to turn back the clock on the many positive changes the Catholic Church has made in the last half-century, the film could not have been worse.
Gibson not only blames the Jews for the persecution and death of Jesus, but along the way he plays into and reinforces the stereotypes of Jews that have haunted our people for two millennia.
At the core of anti-Semitism, and what makes it different from other forms of ethnic or religious hatred, is the image of the Jew as alien, conspiratorial and mystically all-powerful.
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Several papers appear dissatisfied with this week's remembrance ceremonies, with one commenting that speeches are easier than action.
