"How a British jihadi saw the light"

Ed Hussain has written a powerful account of his stay in Saudi Arabia. Once a prominent proponent of radical Islam in London was changed by his time teaching in Saudi Arabia.

Father of Slain Wall Stree Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl on Contemporary Terorism

Stop Making Excuses for Terror

By JUDEA PEARL

Wall Street Journal 2/3/09

This week marks the seventh anniversary of the murder of our son, former Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. My wife Ruth and I wonder: Would Danny have believed that today's world emerged after his tragedy?

Reuters/Corbis

Jimmy Carter.

The answer does not come easily. Danny was an optimist, a true believer in the goodness of mankind. Yet he was also a realist, and would not let idealism bend the harshness of facts.

Neither he, nor the millions who were shocked by his murder, could have possibly predicted that seven years later his abductor, Omar Saeed Sheikh, according to several South Asian reports, would be planning terror acts from the safety of a Pakistani jail. Or that his murderer, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now in Guantanamo, would proudly boast of his murder in a military tribunal in March 2007 to the cheers of sympathetic jihadi supporters. Or that this ideology of barbarism would be celebrated in European and American universities, fueling rally after rally for Hamas, Hezbollah and other heroes of "the resistance." Or that another kidnapped young man, Israeli Gilad Shalit, would spend his 950th day of captivity with no Red Cross visitation while world leaders seriously debate whether his kidnappers deserve international recognition.

No. Those around the world who mourned for Danny in 2002 genuinely hoped that Danny's murder would be a turning point in the history of man's inhumanity to man, and that the targeting of innocents to transmit political messages would quickly become, like slavery and human sacrifice, an embarrassing relic of a bygone era.

But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism -- the ideological license to elevate one's grievances above the norms of civilized society -- was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable "tactical" considerations.

This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man's second nature. "In an unfair balance, that's what people use," explained Mr. Livingstone.

But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.

Mr. Carter's logic has become the dominant paradigm in rationalizing terror. When asked what Israel should do to stop Hamas's rockets aimed at innocent civilians, the Syrian first lady, Asma Al-Assad, did not hesitate for a moment in her response: "They should end the occupation." In other words, terror must earn a dividend before it is stopped.

The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.

Then came the August 2008 birthday of Samir Kuntar, the unrepentant killer who, in 1979, smashed the head of a four-year-old Israeli girl with his rifle after killing her father before her eyes. Al Jazeera elevated Kuntar to heroic heights with orchestras, fireworks and sword dances, presenting him to 50 million viewers as Arab society's role model. No mainstream Western media outlet dared to expose Al Jazeera efforts to warp its young viewers into the likes of Kuntar. Al Jazeera's management continues to receive royal treatment in all major press clubs.

Some American pundits and TV anchors didn't seem much different from Al Jazeera in their analysis of the recent war in Gaza. Bill Moyers was quick to lend Hamas legitimacy as a "resistance" movement, together with honorary membership in PBS's imaginary "cycle of violence." In his Jan. 9 TV show, Mr. Moyers explained to his viewers that "each [side] greases the cycle of violence, as one man's terrorism becomes another's resistance to oppression." He then stated -- without blushing -- that for readers of the Hebrew Bible "God-soaked violence became genetically coded." The "cycle of violence" platitude allows analysts to empower terror with the guise of reciprocity, and, amazingly, indict terror's victims for violence as immutable as DNA.

When we ask ourselves what it is about the American psyche that enables genocidal organizations like Hamas -- the charter of which would offend every neuron in our brains -- to become tolerated in public discourse, we should take a hard look at our universities and the way they are currently being manipulated by terrorist sympathizers.

At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

The primary purpose of the event was evident the morning after, when unsuspecting, uninvolved students read an article in the campus newspaper titled, "Scholars say: Israel is in violation of human rights in Gaza," to which the good name of the University of California was attached. This is where Hamas scored its main triumph -- another inch of academic respectability, another inroad into Western minds.

Danny's picture is hanging just in front of me, his warm smile as reassuring as ever. But I find it hard to look him straight in the eyes and say: You did not die in vain.

Mr. Pearl, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, founded in memory of his son to promote cross-cultural understanding.

Meeting with Emory's "Infamous" Cartoonist: A Learning Experience

Yesterday afternoon I met with Dylan Woodliff, the young man who drew the cartoon in the Emory Wheel comparing the wall/fence between the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel to the ghettos under the Nazis. For background on this see here.

After hearing from some of his teachers and his fellow students that he was a "good guy" who got into something way over his head. I had emailed him offering to meet him. He readily agreed.

My motivation for doing so was twofold. I felt, based on what I had been told and on his "explanation" which accompanied the cartoon, that he had gotten in way over his head. Maybe there was room to do what it is our job to do, educate. I wanted him to understand why what he did was so wrong.

Secondly, he had been subjected to a barrage of criticism, well deserved criticism but criticism nonetheless. Rarely does a single student do something that gets 46 professors to unequivocally condemn his actions. I was concerned about him. It's pretty heavy stuff for one person -- particularly a student -- to face. I wanted him to know that though I felt strongly about what he did but felt empathy for him as a person.

I found a contrite student who was worried that people thought he was an antisemite and that he had ruined his future. [In the age of Google these things don't go away.] I found a student who tried to make a point about the politics of the Middle East and did so in a thoughtless and ill informed fashion.

We did not talk that much about the cartoon itself because by this time he knew full well that he had really messed up and that he should never have made the analogy. In fact I told him about how, in the past, I had tried, on occasion, to make a point about something and, in the course of so doing, said something stupid, angry, or extreme. My point was lost because all anyone could focus on was the extreme way in which I had expressed myself.

I assured him that I had no doubt that he was not an antisemite. In fact, if I had thought otherwise I probably would not have bothered to meet him.

The previous evening I had also met with Sal Rizzo,the editor of the Wheel. I think he too realizes that he and his editorial board failed in their job of ensuring responsible journalism. I am not talking about censorship. Obviously they have the freedom to screw up... as they did royally. I talked about judgment.

Both students realized that by using this false and hurtful analogy they had ultimately shot themselves in the foot. No one had discussed Middle East policy. All people had discussed was the thoughtless analogy.

These two meetings reminded me that we do a lot of our educating in the classroom but sometimes we do our most important educating outside of it. I think they learned something... and so did I.

Flash from Ahmadinejad: Israel is Doomed and Zionists Behind Food Shortages..

[edited 7:20 a.m.]

Prior to leaving for the UN Food Conference in Rome Iranian President Ahmadinejad said that Israel was doomed with or without Iranian action. He predicted that Israel be wiped away. See the video here.

Last year when Ahmadinejad said Israel should be wiped off the face of the map, a number of people insisted that that was not what he said, despite the fact that the home page of the Iranian president had that quote up on it.

Now at the UN conference in Rome he has said that in would be in the interests of Western Europe if Israel did not exist and he has blamed the food crisis on Zionists.

Quite a guy.

HDOT, Emory website on Holocaust Denial, Receives 120K Grant

HDOT Website Receives 120K Grant from Claims Conference

Release date: April 30, 2008
Contact: Elaine Justice at 404-727-0643 or elaine.justice@emory.edu

Funding will support HDOT.org translation into Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Russian

Emory University Professor Deborah Lipstadt has received a grant of $120,000 from the New York-based Claims Conference (The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany) on behalf of her Web site, Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDOT.org).

The grant will be used to translate elements of the site into Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Russian and to develop educational lesson plans.

Holocaust Denial on Trial chronicles Lipstadt's 1996-2000 British trial versus Holocaust denier David Irving. In 1996 he sued Lipstadt in British court alleging libelous content in her book "Denying the Holocaust."

Following her resounding victory in 2000, Lipstadt founded the site in conjunction with Emory to provide complete archives of the trial's documents. The site strives to empower readers to identify and reject the lies, distortions and misleading innuendo used by Holocaust deniers.

But there are still those who spread disinformation on the Holocaust. That's why Lipstadt began HDOT.org. She is out to make such distortions a thing of the past."When people don't have historically accurate information they are susceptible to all sorts of distortions and fabrications," says Lipstadt. "This is true for the Arab speaking world and the English speaking world as well."

Grant Will Fund Translation, Education Tools

The grant will allow HDOT.org to complete 50 myth/fact sheets about the Holocaust in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Russian, and to introduce two educational modules on the topic of Auschwitz denial for use in advanced secondary school and undergraduate college courses.

Adding additional languages and lesson plans is just the beginning, says Dan Leshem, web development specialist at Emory, which hosts the site. "We strive to be responsive to our readers' needs. For that reason, we also want to build a connection to the site's readership," he says.

Visitors can sign up for periodic newsletters and subscribe to an RSS news feed of Lipstadt's frequently updated blog entries. "The weight of this site is its integrity," says David Lower, a business analyst at Emory who oversees the site's development.

"We have to hold these translations to the highest possible standards. We know that deniers will look for any errors on the site to exploit for their own purposes."One example of precision in translation was the word "Holocaust" itself, says Leshem. "We transliterated the word and got 10,000 hits."

Then, based on a recommendation by a scholar of Arabic, they used another term for holocaust in Arabic that is much more common—it translates loosely as 'the catastrophe of the Jews'—and got 150,000 hits, simply because it is the more common term. "That goes back to the translators knowing the content," Leshem says.

So far, that diligence seems to be working. After posting the first translations of the myth/fact sheets in Arabic, Leshem copied the name "Anne Frank" in Arabic and did a Google search. HDOT.org was listed at number three.

Benjamin Franklin on the Jews: Classic [and highly mythical] antisemitism from a Syrian cleric:

[Links corrected 12/18/07]
According to MEMRI, Syrian Cleric Muhammad Sa'id Ramadhan Al-Bouti said on Al Jazeera that Benjamin Franklin had called upon Americans to Deport Jews from the U.S.

Simply put: this is completely false. No proof of this statement has been found in anything Franklin said. In addition, it contains language that was not used in Franklin's times, e.g. homeland. Moreover, the statement never surfaced before the 1930s. And it comes from a book which no one has ever seen.

If you need more evidence that this a hoax and an antisemitic canard, the ADL has done a good analysis of the history of this fraudulent claim. Significantly, this ADL piece quotes a number of leading Franklin scholars who debunk this nasty effort

Now we have to ask how this cleric got this information? It only surfaces on antisemitic and White Supremacist websites. I guess we know where he and his cohort are rummaging.

His use of this really gives one hope.....

Egyptian cleric preaches antisemitism to children

If this is what Egyptian children are watching on television than those who look forward to a day of peace are really "dreamers."

Watch the whole 2+ minutes of it. The last lines are the real shockers.

I get lots of "Islam is despicable" emails which I discard in disgust. I have always hated and continue to hate condemnation of an entire people or faith. However, watching enough of this kind of stuff truly tries one's spirit.

Ahmadinejad was at Columbia [12]: As predicted Bollinger's hard hitting remarks are excoriated [and praised]

As I predicted, while listening to Bollinger's hard hitting comments [which can be read here] about Ahmadinejad, many people have criticized him for being ungracious to the Iranian.

This man has persecuted academics, women, homosexuals [oops there are none in Iran] and when he is called on it these critics don't like it.

Ahmadinejad IS AT Colubmia [10]: Finally he gets to the point ... It's all about the Palestinians

He closed with a ringing attack on Israel and the treatment of the Palestinians. This is what it's all about.

Then he slips into the Holocaust and claims that those who want to research the Holocaust from "a different perspective" are put in jail. Why is that so?

It's one of his slippery moments. His call for more research regarding the Holocaust is what Shiraz Dossa, a professor in Canada who went to the meeting in Iran, calls "Holocaust neutrality." [Dossa is trying to legitimize questioning the Holocaust.] But Holocaust neutrality is naught but denial.

Now Coatsworth is pushing him to answer a question: Do you seek the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state?

Long discourse. But no answer.

Coatsworth tries to get him to answer.

To no avail.

Ahmadinejad IS AT Colubmia [9]: Bollinger hits a homerun [in a game which should never have been played]

I am listening to the Columbia forum. Bollinger began with a truly hard hitting statement expressing his revulsion at all that Ahmadinejad represents. He challenged Ahmadinejad to invite him and a group of students and faculty to come to Iran to speak to university students about free speech, in the same way that Ahmadinejad is benefiting today.

Bollinger was first rate.

He told him his Holocaust denial makes him ridiculous.

He attacked him for his persecution of scholars, women, and dissenters.

He called him to account for his threats to destroy Israel.

It was powerful and it was moving. If this event had to happen, this was the best beginning possible.

I am sure there will be those who will critique Bollinger for being so hard hitting.

I say bravo but also dissent from his attempt to say this appearance is a fundamental reflection of free speech.

As soon as Ahmadinejad began to speak it was clear that he was not prepared for such a statement. He made it sound like he did not even know who Bollinger was. Said it was insulting to have to listen to such things.

Ahmadinejad probably never had to sit through such a hard hitting critique of his record. It reminded me of a miscalculation made by David Irving when he chose the courtroom as his venue to make his argument. There was a judge there with the authority to make him stop his polemics and who could point out when he was making things up out of whole cloth [i.e. lying].

So too Ahmadinejad had to sit there and listen to his record in a way that he probably never has had to do. It also points out why the Scott Pelley's of the world are such poor excuses for interviewers. He could have asked some of these questions instead of his idiot queries.

Now Ahmadinejad is engaging in a religious discourse. My guess is that most students present have no idea where he is going with this. I think it is his attempt to sound like an intellect and some who believes in the pursuit of truth. It is a real miscalculation of his audience, I think...

Too bad his record contradicts everything he is saying....

More later.....

Ahmadinejad going to Columbia University [7]: An insightful comment from a reader of this blog

Steve has posted the following response. His comments are so on the mark that I thought I would post them directly [not just as a response] to give them maximum exposure.

Here is what kills me about his talk at Columbia today. I was a senior administrator who would have been in the eye of the storm (and have been) during an incident like this. I have been there.

And I start with the obligatory and fully sincere fact that few things about my country makes me prouder than the first amendment. You might laugh: But one of my proudest moments was explaining to a foreign visitor that this was a country so sure of itself, so confident that freedom made it stronger, that we were confident enough to even allow people to burn flags and know that the Republic would stay strong.

Having said that, free speech means that a speaker gets to say what he or she wants, within the well known constitutional "fire in the theater" limits. It does not mean that any given institution has to provide a forum for any speaker.

I might feel that universitities should have a "presumption that someone can speak" principle, but they should also remember that their platform is a valuable commodity and that, while letting someone speak does not mean the University supports the views, they have given the speaker a special gift that other less prestigious institutions cannot provide.

Now I think this gift should be given very freely, but not promiscuously. In fact, the standards for getting the gift and legitimacy of a Columbia platform should be minimal, perhaps only requiring that the person have given some small civil consideration in return.

What I am leading to is that Ahmadinejad, by refusing basic scrutiny of his nuclear program and by continuing to imply his willingness to engage in acts of annihilation, acts that could lead to an incident that would make Dresden and London look like target practice, has not given the world that consideration.

Not doing this means he has essentially said: "I will not give you even the most simple assurance that I will won't accidentally destroy you, much less purposefully do so.

So I would not have given him the platform.

And I haven't even touched on his Holocaust denial idiocy, which means that -- in return for the gift of the visibility and legitimacy of a Columbia logo on the platform, he wouldn't even provide the simple consideration of acknowledging the death of 100, much less than 6 million, Jews.

So, my threshhold was minimal when I had the call about some speakers , and some pretty creepy creeps spoke under my watch. 90% of the time the platform revealed then to be idiots. A few times they made sense.

President A. has not met that minimal standard.

The UN cannot have that standard, so that is his proper forum.

We are a free marketplace of ideas. Ideas joust for respect and attention and win or lose. But a Columbia forum essentially rigs the free market. It gives him valuable symbolic capital in which to frame his views, which doesn't just put him in the marketplace, it advantages him!

And without providing even the most crude and minimal consideration in return.

Ahmadinejad going to Columbia University [6]: A Columbia student doesn't know what she thinks

On Morning Edition [NPR] a Columbia student was just quoted as saying, "I don't know what to think of him if I don't really know what he stands for. Let him come and speak and then I can be really angry." [I am paraphrasing slightly]

Could someone explain to me what this student is doing at Columbia if she doesn't know what Ahmadinejad stands for? Doesn't she read a newspaper? Is she living under a rock?

Here is a check list for her:
1. Religious freedom in Iran [except for fervently religious Muslims]
2. Academic freedom in Iran [except for those who follow the government line]
3. The existence of Israel ["wipe it off the map"]
4. The historical fact of the Holocaust
5. Iraq's right to decide its own future

This only a partial list.

I wonder if she knows that Haleh Esfandiari, the much respected director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, was jailed in Iran for a number of months and that other scholars still sit in jail.

I guess this airhead Columbia student never heard about any of these things. I doubt that she will hear them from Ahmadinejad at today's talk. I do suspect that Bollinger will raise the issue in his introduction.

Ahmadinejad going to Columbia [5]: Comments on his talk

Check out the Columbia Spectator's most recent article on the visit and a host of comments and responses. According to the Spectator the visit will be available on the web. I hope to be watching and commenting.

The Spectator has prepared a special section on the visit available in a pdf format.

Ahmadinejad on 60 Minutes [4]: Scott Pelley gets walked over and doesn't notice....A prelude of things to come tomorrow at Columbia??

I am sitting here watching "60 Minutes" as Scott Pelley tries to skewer Ahmadinejad.

I am having a hard time believing the dumb questions he is pitching to him. He points out that Iranian weapons are being used in Iraq against American forces. Then Pelley says: "You have American blood on your hands. WHY?"

What kind of question is that??? "WHY?" The answer is obvious because to Ahmadinejad the United States is an enemy.

He fails to challenge Ahmadinejad's claim that nuclear weapons are not important because the age of nuclear weapons has passed.

Now Pelley has asked a completely stupid question: "What trait do you admire in President Bush?" What's that have to do with anything? International relations are not about "admiring" one another. This is not about being a mutual admiration society.

Complete soft ball and idiotic.

Now he's reading him a statement that Bush made about what he thinks of Ahmadinejad. Has Pelley lost his mind?

And then Pelley has a nice laugh with him as he protests that he's only a simple American reporter. Well he got that one right. Simple and simple minded.

This reminds me of Mike Wallace's equally idiotic encounter with Ahmadinejad in which the Iranian ran complete circles around Wallace.

What an idiotic performance and my guess is what we will see at Columbia will be no better. After all anyone, such as Lee Bollinger, who thinks you can dialogue with this guy is already starting with one hand tied behind his back.

Ahmadinejad going to Columbia [3]: Politically Correct Idiocy: Dean would have invited Hitler to a dialogue

Columbia's Dean John H. Coatsworth, in the name of defending the university's invitation to Ahmadinejad, told Fox News that the institute would have invited Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler to appear before students had he been willing to participate in an open debate.

This is one of those posts that needs no comment.

Ahmadinejad going to Columbia University [2]

As I observed in the previous post, Ahmadinejad is going to speak tomorrow at Columbia University. This morning on NPR Columbia President Lee Bollinger was quoted as saying that, while he was going to introduce Ahmadinejad by listing his human rights abuses, addressing his Holocaust denial, and castigating his calls for the destruction of Israel, he believed that Ahmadinejad had a place at Columbia because university's are places for "dialogue."

Bollinger has issued a statement in which he describes Columbia "as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas.... Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious."

What Bollinger and a lot of other very smart people don't understand is that you cannot dialogue with a liar. They make up facts, create their own reality, and leave you twisting in the wind.

Columbia has given Holocaust deniers everywhere a tremendous victory. He has made their claims and "other side" of a debate.

Secondly, while I hate the glib comparisons to Hitler [from the right and from the left], a not so off the mark comparison has been made between inviting Hitler in the 1930s [early 1930s] and inviting Ahmadinejad today.

For elaboration of this see Raphael Medoff's column at the website of the David Wyman Instittue Columbia University has a record of being open to Nazi representatives throughout the 1930s. It, of course, is not alone in this regard. Harvard did as well. And my guess that lots of other universities did the same.

All in the name of dialogue.

Ahmadinejad going to Columbia University [1]

Seems that Ahmadinejad is going to speak at Columbia University. I find it galling. I just listened to some Columbia faculty and students talking about how universities are places for "dialogue" and for people to talk "with one another."

True. But this is a man who has called for the destruction of Israel [wipe off the face of the map] and who has denied the Holocaust.

If he had denied American slavery or the Armenian Genocide would these same students be saying we should "dialogue" with him?

I think not.

The people at Columbia who invited him have minds that are so open their brains fell out.

Iranian TV shows acccurate series on the Holocaust: Go figure....

AP reports that Iranian TV has been broadcasting a mini-series on the Holocaust. It does NOT deny it. The show tells the story of an Iranian diplomat who, while based in Paris, helps Jews escape the Holocaust.

This would be noteworthy in and of itself given President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's energetic Holocaust denial.

What makes it even more mind boggling is that the government produced the series and it is airing it on state-run television.

According to the AP reporter the

series titled "Zero Degree Turn" is clearly sympathetic to the Jews' plight during World War II. It shows men, women and children with yellow stars on their clothes being taken forcibly out of their homes and loaded into trucks by Nazi soldiers.

The series is based on a real Iranian diplomat who distributed 500 Iranian passports to Jews seeking refuge during the 1940s.

There is speculation that the show represents an attempt, according to the AP report,

by Iran's leadership to moderate its image as anti-Semitic and to underline a distinction that Iranian officials often make — that their conflict is with Israel, not with the Jewish people.

In order for the series to be broadcast it had to have the imprimatur of Iran's clerics since state broadcaster is under the control of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei, who has final say in all matters inside Iran.

Finally, the AP notes that the series breaks "another taboo in Iran: For the first time, many actresses appear without the state-mandated Islamic dress code." Apparently, the producers wanted a realistic portrayal of 1940s Paris and headscarves and chadors would not have cut it

Go figure....

Of course, the next thing that might happen would be an announcement by Ahmadinejad himself denying that such a mini-series is being aired.

Deborah Lipstadt: "spineless" and "wimpy"

A few months ago I posted and then deleted a review by Debbie Schlussel of A Mighty Heart. I decided it was too vituperative in tone. I explained my mistake.

Well it seems Ms. Schlussel did not like my action [that's understandable] and sent me an email [which due to a bureaucratic snafu I did not receive until this a.m.] expressing her opinion about my action.

I thought it was worth sharing with readers of this blog:

From: Debbie Schlussel [mailto:debbieschlussel@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2007 5:29 PM
To: hdot@emory.edu
Subject: To DEBORAH LIPSTADT . . .

Dear Dr. Lipstadt:

I don’t read your site, but got a google alert on my name and saw what you posted about my movie review. Prior to this, as a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I had been a fan of your work, but you’ve change my mind completely all on your own. I can now see why those who share the views of the David Irvings of the world are so successful, whereas our side is losing. They have backbone, and you are spineless. Thanks for enlightening me. I’d ask why those to whose whims you bow so easily were so upset with the “tone” of my review, which was perfectly fine. But frankly, I don’t care. I care much more to know why you are so wimpy. Then again, we cannot always find reason in illogic. Now I know why C-SPAN was so successful in mistreating you. You probably willingly took it. Or apparently, they very easily changed your mind, based on “tone.”

Regards,

Debbie Schlussel

I have been called many things but never have I been called "spineless" and "wimpy" or been accused of having "willingly took it." Next time Ms. Schlussel is sued in the UK for libel by a Holocaust denier and engages in a 6+ year legal battle, I hope she lets me know so I can support her.

Life is an unending string of surprises.

And a Shana Tova to you too Ms. Schlussel.

Fantasy Land: Former American Senator says 9/11 Arab terrorists were in cahoots with the Zionists

Former Sentator James Abourezk said on Hizbullah TV that the Arabs who blew up the WTC and the Pentagon were cooperating with the Zionists. No comment is really necessary except that never have I been so happy someone was a former senator.

For the full transcript of his lunacies see Memri Special dispatch no. 1708

Interviewer: "Here I need to ask you something, which is growing and escalating in the Western world, and particularly in the U.S., which is this immense wave of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment, lumping all Arabs together as 'terrorists.' This was clearly manifested in movies and TV series, like 24. Why? Why now? Is it just after 9/11?"

"The Arabs Who Were Involved in 9/11 Cooperated With the Zionists"

James Abourezk: "No, it's after the Soviet Union collapsed. The Zionists were looking around for another enemy to have, because to them the Soviet Union was an enemy because they wouldn't allow Jewish emigration. So they used that as an organizing tool, basically, and when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no more organizing about the Soviet Union. So they looked around, and they said: Well, the Muslims. Let's find the Arabs and the Muslims, and make them the boogeyman. And that's what they did."

Interviewer: "But why did this sentiment of hatred increase after 9/11?"

James Abourezk: "Well, because the Arabs who were involved in 9/11 cooperated with the Zionists, actually. It was a cooperation. They gave them the perfect excuse to denounce all Arabs. It's a racist sort of thing, really racist - you know, picking out these 19 or 20 terrorists - they were terrorists - and saying all the Arabs are like them. So, you know, people in America don't really look at it that deeply, and they accept what the government and the press are saying."[...]