The Scientologist and the German officer who tried to kill Hitler: Tom Cruise attempts to go where some Germans [and I] think he should not

A movie on the leader of the 1944 failed plot to assassinate Hitler is about to start filming in Germany. Tom Cruise is going to play the role of Col. Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg the leader of this plot. He was joined in this effort by other German military leaders, all of whom believed Hitler was leading Germany down the path of ultimate defeat. They wanted to negotiate a peace settlement.

They are great heroes in German WWII lore. In certain quarters their heroism is subtly juxtaposed with the Nazis' brutality. [What is often lost in the adulation about them is that they only rose up to oppose Hitler when they thought military defeat loomed on the horizon. His earlier misdeeds did not prompt them to do this. But that's for another time....]

In contemporary Germany there is a great hostility towards and distrust of [most legitimately so] of Scientology. Germans consider it a totalitarian system that captures its adherents as would a cult.

According to today's NYTimes, there are many people, including some members of the colonel's family who are appalled by the idea of Cruise, Scientology's emissary, playing von Stauffenberg.

The government official who heads the government's efforts to oppose Scientology's expansion got it just right when she said:

Tom Cruise is not just an actor who is a Scientologist. He is an ambassador for Scientology. All totalitarian systems have their celebrities to open doors for them.”

[Another thought about the military leaders who wanted to negotiate peace: Had they been successful we might never have known of the Holocaust. They would certainly have used the opportunity to erase all evidence of it since so many Germans -- and German military leaders -- were implicated in it. There was a novel that used this premise -- Hitler won and the evidence was hidden -- a number of years ago. It's a good read.]

Hamas TV: An Israeli kills off Mickey Mouse.... And this is what they tell children????

A few months ago I posted a comment about how Hamas children's television was using a Mickey Mouse look-alike names Farfour to preach Islamic domination.

Well he's been killed off in the final episode according to the NYTimes. And guess who did it? An Israeli of course. Why? Because he wanted his land.

Sara, the teen presenter of the show declared:

"Farfour was martyred while defending his land. He was killed by the killers of children.''

No comment necessary except for the fact that these are the people whom Jimmy Carter wants the Israelis and the world to trust.....

Canadian Professor Shiraz Dossa goes to a Holocaust denial conference and then denies: Professorial Obfuscations

Shiraz Dossa, a professor at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada, attended the Holocaust denial conference in Iran. He has now published a lengthy defense of his decision to attend in a small Canadian publication Literary Review of Canada.

His explanation is full of distortions, obfuscations, and simple inventions. Here is one graphic example. Dossa writes:

Iranian president Dr. Ahmadinejad; he did not attend or participate in the conference. It was not a Holocaust-denial conference by any stretch. That’s all false.

Problem for Dossa is that the official website of the President of Iran says otherwise.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that the Zionist regime is a constant threat to the Middle East states. "This threat has caused the regional countries to divert their resources from development to spending them on purchasing arms which will increase discord among them," he told participants of the international conference World Vision on Holocaust who met him in Tehran.

Then, of course, there are the pictures above.

My question is for the Literary Review of Canada. How could it claim that Shiraz's article was subjected to "rigorous fact-checking that went on for a number of weeks"? I found and uploaded this information in about 5 minutes.

Once Shiraz Dossa chose to attend the conference one could get a sense of what kind of man this is. But what can we say about this supposedly cautious and intellectual honest magazine? Clearly it is none of those things, at least in this regard.

Note:It is possible that the conference participants went to a different venue to meet the president. If this is Dossa's way out of his claim that Ahamdinejad did not attend or participate he is even more of an obfuscator [and far less smart] than I originally thought he was.

More on Dossa later.

The diaries of James G. McDonald: WSJ review

The Wall St. Journal has a very positive review of Advocate for the Doomed, the first volume of the diaries of James G. McDonald, an American who served as League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and who passionately sought to sound the alarm about the dangers of Nazism. In fact, he was one of those Americans who worked to change American immigration laws to aid Jews' entry into this country... to no avail.

I read the manuscript a few months ago and was mesmerized by the book. McDonald understood the Nazis as did few other commentators at the time, many of whom were inclined to dismiss Nazi antisemitism as rhetoric designed to appeal to the German populace. In contrast, Johnson writes,

McDonald was shocked by the Nazis' rise to power and felt an immediate horror at the prospect of the Nazis carrying out the policies implied by their annihilationist rhetoric.... He knew such rhetoric firsthand. At a meeting with Adolf Hitler on April 8, 1933, at the new chancellor's office, Hitler told him: "I will do the thing that the rest of the world would like to do. It doesn't know how to get rid of the Jews. I will show them."

This is only volume one of the diaries but the reviewer, Ian Johnson, has obviously seen subsequent volumes. The final lines of the the review intrigued me:

The next volume .... will show that International Business Machines -- the American-based company with extensive foreign dealings in the 1930s -- was not, contrary to previous claims, indifferent to the looming genocide.

The book will take aim at Edwin Black, who has long tended towards sensationalism in his books [and some would say I am being very kind]. As Johnson writes in his review:

Edwin Black, in his "IBM and the Holocaust" (2001), alleged that the company had unusually close business relations with Hitler's Germany and that its card-punch machines made it possible for Nazi bureaucrats to identify and track down Jews.

Some historians have already faulted the book -- arguing that IBM had close business ties with many countries at the time and that the perpetrators of the Holocaust did not depend on card-punch machines. But the charges have stuck. McDonald was apparently in contact with IBM Chief Executive Thomas J. Watson, who in turn lobbied on behalf of Jewish refugees, even urging Secretary of State Cordell Hull in 1938 to set up a Jewish homeland.

For this alone I look forward to the next volume of the McDonald Diaries.

No comment necessary

[compliments of ADL]

I made a mistake

Two nights ago, when I was tired and sweltering in New York, I mistakingly posted a link to a review of A Mighty Heart. I correctly described it as scathing.

A number of people contacted me to say that they did not think the tone of the review was of the calibre of this blog.

I have reread the review and decided that, while the tone was certainly not one that I would adopt, the contents were solid. So I posted that comment in response to the criticisms some readers had sent and left it at that.

Then this morning I gave it some more thought and decided that tone counts for a lot. In this day and age of vituperative politics and the like, I don't want to contribute to that atmosphere.

Therefore, even though it may be contrary to accepted blog practices, I am deleting that post. Those of you who want to read Debbie Schlussel's review will be able to find it, I am sure, on her website.

Iranian cleric calls for death for Salman Rushdie: Will England's UCU respond with a boycott?

According to a dispatch released by MEMRI, in Tehran in a sermon on this past Friday, Ahmad Khatami of the Iranian Assembly of Experts decreed that the Fatwa against Salman Rushdie must be carried out. His statement was greeted with chants of "Death to England."

He called Rushdie a "wretched man." I wonder if the UCU will propose a boycott of Iran for this attack on one of its own. I am not betting on it...

These are Khatami's words:

"The old, decrepit, and colonialist English regime presents itself as the defender of human rights, yet it awards a medal to such a wretched, bankrupt man [Salman Rushdie], who has offended the sacred values of more than 1.5 billion Muslims. Are these your human rights?"

Crowd chants: "Death to England. Death to England. Death to England."

Ahmad Khatami: "Is this your civilization? This old, decrepit government of England should know that the days of its imperialistic aspirations are gone, and today it is considered America's branded slave. They must also know that the wave of Islamic revival in the world has begun, whether they like it or not.

Under these circumstances, awarding England's highest honor to a wretched man, who lacks any talent whatsoever... He is not considered a prominent novelist or author. They awarded him this medal only because he cursed the Prophet.... Awarding a medal to such a man entails a conflict with one and a half billion Muslims throughout the world, and you will gain nothing from this. The one thing that will happen is that you will see the Islamic world roaring together.

In Islamic Iran, this revolutionary fatwa of Imam Khomeini still exists. It is unchangeable and with God's grace, it must be carried out."

If the UCU doesn't vote for a boycott, will it at least protest??? I doubt that too.

Express your view on the boycott of Israeli universities....

I don't believe in these online votes run by media outlets. They mean little except how active the two sides of the debate in question were in spreading the word and getting their supporters to log in and vote. And for the media outlet it is a way of getting more traffic to their site.

Having said all that, for those readers of this blog who do, you can express you views on the British boycott of Israeli universities at http://www.newstatesman.com/

Saul Friedlander's new book

Saul Friedlander's new book gets an extemely positive review in yesterday's New York Times from Richard Evans.

A Mighty Heart: Why was Danny Pearl killed?

I saw A Mighty Heart two nights ago. Angelina Jolie was outstanding. Having said that, there was a theme that disturbed me greatly. Marianne Pearl seems to steadfastly refuse to recognize the fact that Danny Pearl was made a target not just because he was an American or a reporter but because he was Jewish.

There is also a spot on observation in the review on Beliefnet. The paragraph that jumped out at me was

Unfortunately, the impact of Pearl's final words, caught on the horrific videotape of his death--"My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish"--is beyond the scope of this movie. With their echo of Jewish martyrdom throughout the ages, those words, whether forced or volunteered, instantly became both a point of pride for Jews worldwide and a sobering reminder that, in the eyes of anti-Semites, a Jew is just a Jew, no matter how secular and untraditional they are, no matter how liberal and open-minded and worldly they are, no matter how much they embrace multiculturalism and diversity.

It's not that this theme is beyond the scope of the movie. It's beyond the scope of people with the world view of Marianne Pearl. The way she is portrayed in the movie [I have not read the book], Marianne does not "get this." She reminds me of Rodney King's plaintive question in the wake of the LA riots: "Can't we all get along?" Jews recognize that it ain't so simple when it comes to antisemitism.

There will be those, I have no doubt, who will attack me for this view. But it seems so clear to me....

There is also an interesting critique on it in the Washington Post

About This Blog

Deborah Lipstadt’s Blog began when my book History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving was published. While I intended this blog to be a place to post reviews and comments on the book, I also used it to track the controversy that emerged right after publication when C-SPAN's Book TV refused to let me appear unless I agreed either to appear with David Irving or to have him appear immediately after I did, that is, back-to-back.

Since then, this blog has morphed into far more. I now address issues of antisemitism, Holocaust denial, politically correct idiocies, and free speech particularly as it pertains to Holocaust and genocide denial. While this blog gives me a chance to comment on these issues as they arise, it also saves me from having to answer the same questions numerous times. And though I aim to keep this blog focused on these issues, occasionally I write about something that cries out for comment. Other times, because something is so mind-boggling, it needs no comment.

I treat the items that I post as somewhere between email* and op-ed columns. This means that I try not to let typos or spelling errors creep in. However, the postings are not as polished as I try to make my op-ed columns. Sometimes, due to the pressure of time and/or my desire to get something posted rapidly, a mistake will pass me by. I apologize for that.

Regarding comments: I post most of the comments that come my way. I do not post items that come from deniers or antisemites. I feel no need to make this blog a soapbox for them. Nor do I post unabashed or even slightly abashed attempts to use this blog to advertise other blogs, particularly those with no connection to the topics under consideration.

I created this blog under the tutelage and at the urging of my blogmother, London's Sasha Frieze, whose observations on life can be found at Sashinka. During the early months, particularly during the whirlwind of the C-SPAN controversy, I simply could not have maintained it without the help of Hilary Ostrov who stepped forward to volunteer invaluable technical assistance. Tamar Orvell helped me take this blog into its latest incarnation. My photo is by Jillian Edelstein. And my friends at the Starbucks on LaVista and Briarcliff Roads, in Atlanta, continue to provide hospitality, friendship, and strong coffee. Their early morning camaraderie is essential to my work.

* I do not correct tpyos in email. That would destroy the prupose of email.

Tom Friedman nails it: The Proposed British boycott of Israeli universities

A Boycott Built on Bias

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The New York Times
June 17, 2007

Two weeks ago I took part in commencement for this year’s doctoral candidates at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The ceremony was held in the amphitheater on Mount Scopus, which faces out onto the Dead Sea and the Mountains of Moab. The setting sun framed the graduate students in a reddish-orange glow against a spectacular biblical backdrop.

Before I describe the ceremony, though, I have to note that it coincided with the news that Britain’s University and College Union had called on its members to consider a boycott of Israeli universities, accusing them of being complicit in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Anyway, as the Hebrew U. doctoral candidates each had their names called out and rose to receive their diplomas from the university’s leadership, I followed along in the program. The Israeli names rolled by: “Moshe Nahmany, Irit Nowik, Yuval Ofir. But then every so often I heard an Arab name, like Nuha Hijazi or Rifat Azam or Taleb Mokari.

Since the program listed everyone’s degrees and advisers, I looked them up. Rifat got his doctorate in law. His thesis was about “International Taxation of Electronic Commerce.” His adviser was “Prof. D. Gliksberg.” Nuha got her doctorate in biochemistry. Her adviser was “Prof. R. Gabizon.” Taleb had an asterisk by his name. So I looked at the bottom of the page. It said: “Summa Cum Laude.” His chemistry thesis was about “Semiconductor-Metal Interfaces,” and his adviser was “Prof. U. Banin.”

These were Israeli Arab doctoral students — many of them women and one of whom accepted her degree wearing a tight veil over her head. Funny — she could receive her degree wearing a veil from the Hebrew University, but could not do so in France, where the veil is banned in public schools. Arab families cheered unabashedly when their sons and daughters received their Hebrew U. Ph.D. diplomas, just like the Jewish parents.

How crazy is this, I thought. Israel’s premier university is giving Ph.D.’s to Arab students, two of whom were from East Jerusalem — i.e. the occupied territories — supervised by Jewish Israeli professors, all while some far-left British academics are calling for a boycott of Israeli universities.

I tell this story to underscore the obvious : that the reality here is so much more morally complex than the outside meddlers present it. Have no doubt, I have long opposed Israel’s post-1967 settlements. They have squandered billions and degraded the Israeli Army by making it an army of occupation to protect the settlers and their roads. And that web of settlements and roads has carved up the West Bank in an ugly and brutal manner — much uglier than Israel’s friends abroad ever admit. Indeed, their silence, particularly American Jewish leaders, enabled the settlement lunacy.

But you’d have to be a blind, deaf and dumb visitor to Israel today not to see that the vast majority of Israelis recognize this historic mistake, and they not only approved Ariel Sharon’s unilateral uprooting of Israeli settlements in Gaza to help remedy it, but elected Ehud Olmert precisely to do the same in the West Bank. The fact that it is not happening now is hardly Israel’s fault alone. The Palestinians are in turmoil.

So to single out Israeli universities alone for a punitive boycott is rank anti-Semitism. Let’s see, Syria is being investigated by the United Nations for murdering Lebanon’s former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. Syrian agents are suspected of killing the finest freedom-loving Lebanese journalists, Gibran Tueni and Samir Kassir. But none of that moves the far left to call for a boycott of Syrian universities. Why? Sudan is engaged in genocide in Darfur. Why no boycott of Sudan? Why?

If the far-left academics driving this boycott actually cared about Palestinians they would call on every British university to accept 20 Palestinian students on full scholarships to help them with what they need most — building the skills to run a modern state and economy. And they would call on every British university to dispatch visiting professors to every Palestinian university to help upgrade their academic offerings. And they would challenge every Israeli university that already offers Ph.D.’s to Israeli Arabs to do even more. And they would challenge every Arab university the same way.

That’s what people who actually care about Palestinians would do. But just singling out Israeli universities for a boycott, in the face of all the other madness in the Middle East — that’s what anti-Semites would do.

UNBELIEVABLE: Swiss government told Iranians it would host a Holocaust conference on "all views" on the Holocaust

According to a report in Die Weltwoche, a Swiss weekly, Switzerland's foreign minister proposed in December that her government host a conference on varying perspectives on the Holocaust. Those invited would include both Israel and Iran.

According to Die Weltwoche, the foriegn minister said she told the Iranians that she believed the "Holocaust was a historical fact."

This is so unbelievable that it's hard to know what to say except that the Swiss foreign minister has done PRECISELY what deniers want. She has made denial a legitimate "other side."

It would be the equivalent to inviting flat earth theorists to a conference on the nature of the universe. You might have sessions on why people believed the earth was flat. But you would be laughed out of town if you invited the flat earthers to speak.

I am sure that, as this news spread and protests mount, the foreign minister will quickly backtrack and apologize. That's essentially beside the point. The frightening point is that she thought this was a legitimate thing to do in the first place.

The British boycott of Israeli Universities

Ken Stern, of the American Jewish Committee, has written a thoughtful piece on the proposed boycott of Israeli universities by British academics.

Israel as the N-word

A few years ago an American Indian friend phoned me, absolutely perplexed. He could not reconcile two stories in his morning paper – one in the news section, the other in sports. Both were about major Florida universities.

The first story reported universal outrage at and severe sanctions on a fraternity which had hosted an event where participants dressed in blackface. The leadership of the university spoke in strong language about not tolerating racism, the hurt of stereotypes, the psychological impact of dehumanization, and the incompatibility of such offensive behavior with the standards of a university.

The second noted, without comment, that the leadership of another Florida university (which had an Indian mascot) was encouraging students to show up at a major sporting event in red face.

“How can people get it when it comes to racism against African Americans,” he lamented, “but don’t have a clue when Indian people are victimized by the same outrageous nonsense?”

I had some theories, none of them completely satisfactory. But I recall thinking such a blatant double standard rarely appears regarding bigotry against other groups, including Jews.

Recently I opened the New York Times and saw two articles. One reported that a union of academics in the United Kingdom (The University and College Union) voted to support the principle of a boycott against Israeli academics.

The other noted the plight of an Iranian-American academic from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars who was being imprisoned by the repressive regime in Iran. I was tempted to call my Indian friend and ask him, how could it be that academics want to demonize their Israeli colleagues simply because they are Israelis, but are absolutely silent when a repressive regime in the same region is actually imprisoning scholars?

[....]

It is bad enough that repressive regimes in the Arab and Muslim world (many of which are theocratic and autocratic) demonize Israel and promote dehumanizing views of Jews through their media and religious and education institutions.

[....] But now many in intellectual circles, especially in Europe, are also demonizing Israel with such regularity and glee as to resemble sport.

There is an historic parallel here which, while not applicable in every particular, is becoming increasing apt: the way leading Southern institutions treated blacks fifty years ago. Israel has in effect become the ni**er among the family of states or in the terms of anti-Semitic slur, “the ‘kike’ among the nations.”

[....]

Kenneth S. Stern

Columbia's Prez Bolinger condemns British boycott of Israeli univerisites

Columbia President Lee Bolinger has issued a scathing critique of the proposed British academic boycott of Israeli universities. I hope other University presidents join him.

The proposed British boycott of Israeli academics

I have, much to my chagrin, failed to say enough about this. It is unequivocally outrageous and antisemitic.* It is pernicious and it is stupid. [Most forms of prejudice -- and antisemitism prominently among them -- generally are quite stupid.]

Now that you know how I really feel, let me recommend an outstanding article by Anthony Julius and Alan Dershowitz from the London Times. It is a tour de force.

It is also available in a much longer form.

*Just because there are some Jews involved does not inoculate it against charges of antisemitism. Jews can be antisemitic. Blacks can be racists. Women can be sexist. And most readers of this blog know people who fit into each of these categories.

A weak reason to "believe" in the Holocaust: Thoughts on the statement by the Indonesian former President

In a previous post I quoted the statement made at the Bali conference on the Holocaust by Abdurrahman Wahid, the former president of Indonesia. In it he said he saw the shoes at Auschwitz and that convinced him.

Maybe he is using shoes as a metaphor for the factory of death which is Auschwitz-Birkenau. In any case, the shoes could be a ploy brought there after the war. As compelling as they are, they are certainly not the most convincing bit of evidence.

The Holocaust has the dubious distinction of being the best documented genocide in the world. There is a mound of evidence [mound may not be the right word to use in this context.... then again it might be the perfect word...] from perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. There is material evidence. There is documentary evidence. There is testimony. And there is the fact that approximately 6 million Jews went missing.

I welcome Abdurrahman Wahid's statement. I just thought it important to make this observation.

Postscript [not so happy] to the ecumenical statement by the Muslim and the Jew

The two previous posts made reference to the conference in Bali and the condemnation of Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial by the former president of Indonesia. There are two important post-scripts to this meeting:

Rabbi Lau, the co-author of the article, was denied a visa to the conference by the Indonesians.

Last week Indonesia, which does not have diplomatic ties with Israel, together with Qatar, delayed a proposed U.N. Security Council statement condemning Ahmadinejad's comments about the forthcoming destruction of Israel.

According to the Jakarta News this action at the UN was taken in response to domestic pressure. That's even more depressing because it means that the person in the street wants this standoff [that's a kind word for it] to continue.

The former President of Indonesia and the Former Chief Rabbi of Israel on Holocaust Denial

From the Wall Street Journal

As the authors say,"Those who tell big lies about the Holocaust are bound to tell smaller lies about nearly everything else."

The Evils of Holocaust Denial
By ABDURRAHMAN WAHID and ISRAEL LAU
Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2007; Page A17

BALI, Indonesia -- Today, religious leaders from many faiths and nations will gather here for a landmark conference in a unique place -- an island of tolerance, not terrorism. In a world in which religion is manipulated to justify the most horrific acts, it is our moral obligation not only to refute the claims of terrorists and their ideological enablers but also to defend the rights of others to worship differently: in freedom, security and dignity.

While there are many things that can be said and done to advance this cause, one issue in particular stands out as something we religious leaders must unite in denouncing: Holocaust denial. This denial is not a new phenomenon. Yet it is becoming an increasingly pervasive one. Long a hobbyhorse of the neo-Nazis and other figures from the fringe, it is gaining currency among millions of people who are either ignorant of history or are being misled by their media, their governments or -- sad to say -- their own religious authorities.

In recent years, we have seen that notorious 19th century Russian forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," being widely disseminated in bookshops from London to Cairo. We have seen Hitler's "Mein Kampf" become a bestseller in Turkey. We have seen schools in Britain stop teaching the Holocaust for fear of offending their students. We have seen notorious academic frauds invited by the president of Iran to raise "questions" about the Holocaust -- as if this is just another controversy in which all opinions are equally valid. We have seen the Holocaust deniers use the fashions of moral relativism and historical revisionism to deny not just truth but fact, all the while casting themselves as martyrs against censorship.

Worst of all, we have seen Holocaust denial being turned to an insidious political purpose: By lying about the events of the past, the deniers are paving the way toward the crimes of the future. They are rendering that well-worn yet necessary phrase "Never Again" meaningless by seeking to erase from the pages of history the very event that all people of good faith seek never to repeat.

Let us be clear: The real purpose of Holocaust denial is to degrade and dehumanize the Jewish people. By denying or trivializing the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis and their allies, the deniers are seeking to advance their notion that the victims of the 20th century's greatest crime are, in fact, that century's greatest victimizers. By denying or trivializing the Holocaust, the deniers are seeking to rob Jews of their history and their memory -- and what is a people without history and memory? [emphasis added]

Indeed, by denying or trivializing the Holocaust, the deniers are perpetrating what is, in effect, a second genocide. Extinguished as they were from the ranks of the living, Hitler's Jewish victims are now, in effect, to be extinguished from the ranks of the dead. That is the essence of Holocaust denial.

Yet even as we recognize the threat that Holocaust denial poses to Jews everywhere, we must also be cognizant of the peril it represents to people of all faith traditions. Nations or governments that historically have given free rein to Jew-hatred -- whether in Medieval Europe or Inquisition-era Spain or 1930s Germany -- have invariably done lasting damage to themselves as well.

Today, the countries in which Holocaust denial is most rampant also tend to be the ones that are most economically backward and politically repressive. This should not be surprising: Dishonest when it comes to the truth of the past, these countries are hardly in a position to reckon honestly with the problems of the present. Yes, the short-term purposes of unscrupulous rulers can always be served by whipping up mass hysteria and duping their people with lurid conspiracy theories. In the long term, however, truth is the essential ingredient in all competent policy making. Those who tell big lies about the Holocaust are bound to tell smaller lies about nearly everything else.

Holocaust denial is thus the most visible symptom of an underlying disease -- partly political, partly psychological, but mainly spiritual -- which is the inability (or unwillingness) to recognize the humanity of others. In fighting this disease, religious leaders have an essential role to play. Armed with the knowledge that God created religion to serve as rahmatan lil 'alamin, or a blessing for all creation, we must guard against efforts to demonize or belittle followers of other faiths.

Last year, Muslims from Nigeria to Lebanon to Pakistan rioted against what they saw as the demonizing of their prophet by Danish cartoonists. In a better world, those same Muslims would be the first to recognize how insulting it is to Jews to have the apocalypse that befell their fathers' generation belittled and denied.

Sadly, we do not live in such a world. Yet if radical clerics can move their assemblies to hatred and violence -- as was the case during the Danish cartoons episode -- then surely moderate and peace-loving clerics can also move theirs to rise above their prejudices and facilitate good relations between peoples of different faiths. In the words of the Holy Quran, which echo the story of creation from the book of Genesis: "Oh mankind! We created you from a single pair, male and female, and made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another, and not to despise each other."

Today in Bali, we look forward to hearing different ideas from diverse voices on how to advance this divine goal. Facing up frankly to the evil of Holocaust denial will be evidence that the conferees are "living in truth" and determined to act against hatred.

Mr. Wahid is the former president of Indonesia and co-founder of the LibForAll Foundation. Mr. Lau, a survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is the former Chief Rabbi of Israel. Today's conference in Bali, "Tolerance Between Religions: A Blessing for All Creation," is cosponsored by LibForAll Foundation, the Wahid Institute and the Museum of Tolerance.

Indonesian leader opposes Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial

According to the JTA a former leader of Indonesia has criticized Ahmadinejad's denial.

Abdurrahman Wahid told an interfaith conference in Bali on Tuesday that he opposes Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's dismissals of the Holocaust as a myth.

"I visited Auschwitz's Museum of Holocaust and I saw many shoes of the dead people in Auschwitz. Because of this, I believe Holocaust happened," said Wahid, a moderate who led the world's most populous Muslim nation from 1999 to 2001. "Although I am a good friend of Ahmadinejad, I have to say that he is wrong. This is important, courage to say the right thing. I don't have favoritism here. The Jews, Europeans, Arabs are all the same."