Bryan popped in to fight against the fight against ignorance, and said:
Indeed, I do hope people look through all of the available information and decide. However, looking at those denial sites will not do it, as they don’t provide all of the information.
So, by all means, look at those sites (if you have the time and the stomach for it) and then go buy the book by Shermer and Grobman and Deborah Lipstadt’s earlier work to see how much those sites are lying.
Incidentally, calling them “revisionists” gives them too much credibility. Revisionism is a legitimate branch of history. They are deniers, pure and simple.
This is a bit off-topic, but a question to those knowledgable about the subject: the 'death camps" described are mainly in Poland, with a few in other countries-are they being preserved? I read recently that most of them are in a state of disintegration (it has been over 55 years since they were built). Is there any organization charged with restoring these sites, or are they doomed to decay? I would expect that as time goes on, fred Leuchter and his ilk would have a field day-look at Sobibor-just a pile of collapsed buildings-“obviously nobody was incarcerated here”
My understanding is that a few are being maintained as museums/memorials/reminders … and that others are being left to the ravages of time.
Why should we believe any “holocaust revision” site that mentions zionism? That seems to pretty much indicate an anti-semetic mind set.
No, I doubt that it will be removed. People here will want to see it, to help cut some of the ‘ideas’ in those sites to shreds. Also, if you asked that the post not be removed, you must have know that you were posting things that many would find offensive.
Adam, that’s not necessarily correct. Bryan F. is new here. How is he supposed to know our customs? Some places do delete comments merely because the owner disagrees with them.
Don’t worry Bryan, an informative post that is not hateful or crude won’t be deleted, even if the admins disagree with the content.
Altho those folk have very low credibility, I will point out that some Jews, even, are indeed- “anti-zionists”. You CAN be anti-zion, without being anti-semetic, you know.
<<I will point out that some Jews, even, are indeed- “anti-zionists”. You CAN be anti-zion, without being anti-semetic, you know. >>
This is technically true, but is basically a ridiculous statement. You can find some loony religious sects that believe about anything, and there are a handful of Jews (certainly way fewer than 1,000) who live in Israel but who don’t reconzie the existence of the state of Israel. They are anti-Zionist Jews. OK, it’s possible.
But about anything is possible, given the four billion people in the world. Just as, in talking about a coin toss, it’s possible that the coin will stand on its end. Out of four billion tosses, I suppose you’d get that result every once in a while. But it would be absurd to say “some” tosses wind up standing on end, when you are are wondering how much to bet.
Your statement is technically accurate, but grotesquely misleading. 99.99% of anti-zionists are anti-semites, although they often pretend not to be for political reasons.
hmm, im not sure if you should be so bold as to say that antizionists are antisemites. a large hunk of the lefter side of the political spectrum honestly are antizionist and have no problems with jews. many of them are jews. you’re 99.99% thing is very inaccurate too, but at the same time i have no means of measuring what percentage of antizionists are prosemitic.
but that’s not what i was really going to comment on. when i was in high school, a holocaust survivor spoke to us, and we had brought up the topic of schindlers list. this holocaust survivor said that the movie didn’t accurately portray schindler, and that schindler didn’t care about the jew, but ended up saving them for his own finacial reasons. i asked some other elderly jewish people about this and they said that the movie schindlers list had a lot of hollywood inaccuracies, but that no one really knows what schindlers intentions were. it seems that the latter would be the most likely, however i’m far from an expert in this area.
A) Heck, there are ultra-orthodox Jews who are anti-Zionists.
B) Holocaust deniers needn’t necessarily be anti-Semites. Some could just be loonies, like moon-landing deniers and Shakespeare deniers.
C) My father was in WWII, but he didn’t know George Patton. Similarly, someone could be a Holocaust survivor and not know Oskar Schindler. No doubt there are historical inaccuracies in the film (what film is without them?), but I’d want to see something in the way of evidence first.
Yes, but they only oppose the secular nature of the government of the State of Israel. That’s quite a different reason for being anti-Zionist than some of the other loonies out there.
Zev Steinhardt
There are also those who argue that there can be no restored Israel before the Messiah.
<< , im not sure if you should be so bold as to say that antizionists are antisemites. a large hunk of the lefter side of the political spectrum honestly are antizionist and have no problems with jews. >>
“Large hunk”? Sorry, that’s pure bullshit. Yes, there are a handful of Jews who are anti-zionist, and yes, there are a few left-wingers who re anti-zionist but not anti-Jewish, but (as I said before) this is a teensy tiny little variation. Look, you can find a bunch of people who hate blacks but who aren’t racist, too, if you look hard enough. But by and large, anti-zionist is the same as anti-Jewish.
And let’s be clear on definition: zionism was the movement that favored the establishment of the state of Israel. Anti-Zionism denies that the state of Israel should EXIST. There is a big difference between opposing Israeli policies (for instance) and being anti-Zionist. The anti-Zionist doesn’t just oppose Israeli policies, but believes the state of Israel should not exist at all. That’s how you can get some Jewish religious fanatics who think the state of Israel should not be established until the Messianic era, thus Jewish anti-zionists.
The Palestinians who claim to be “anti-Zionist” but not “anti-Jewish” are using Orwellian double-speak, and amazingly enough it fools lots of innocent Americans. The anti-Zionists by and large see the extermination of all Jews in Israel as a goal.
One contradiction among those who deny the holocaust is that many of them would like to kill or ethnically cleanse Jewish people who are currently alive.
Reading this thread has taught me one thing: David B is no more logical or objective than the people he criticizes. Even CK Dext Haven admits this.
Just so that I can say that I’ve contributed to the discussion: One legitimate problem that I’ve noticed is that accusing people of being a “Holocaust Denier” has become a reflexive response to almost any criticism of the way that WW2 history has been taught. I saw something on TV where a historian claimed that the commonly-accepted figure of 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust is too high, and the true figure is probably 4 or 5 million. It seemed like a reasonable debate to me, but other historians immediately jumped on this guy and accused of being a Holocaust denier. He wasn’t doing anything of the kind, but God damn were they vicious to him! I thought to myself “These guys are no more rational or objective than the Skinheads; they’re just on the other side of the coin.”
Yes Diceman, you can find people who see any challenge to the accepted version as an attack on the whole. Mostly this comes from having a sensitivity to the issue built up by dealing with the extreme deniers. Similar sensitivities develope in any heated controversy, such as the abortion debate, or arguments over evolution vs. creationism. One would hope that those claiming to be the rational side would be able to remain so, but everyone is vulnerable.
CK, I think what gets confusing is terminology. I’m uncomfortable with the term “zionist” because until very recently I hadn’t even encountered that word. I think the issue becomes muddied by whether we are talking about a Jewish State or a Jewish State. What I’m talking about is the distinction between Judaism as a religion vs. an ethnicity. A large part of the Zionists are talking about a state for people of Jewish heritage, whether or not they are currently religious (in fact many are atheist). Whereas others are looking at Zionism as a push for a Jewish theocracy. Thus the two factions are not happy with each other - just how secular is the government to be? Thus you can have someone who supports an ethnically Jewish secular state and opposes a Jewish theocracy. Is that person a Zionist or an anti-Zionist?
That’s a bit strong. There is certainly something to be said for the notion that the state of Israel is a territory grab by Europeans and Americans that rode roughshod over the existing people’s rights. The issue can be argued both ways, and I don’t intend to get into it, but simply to dismiss the Palestinian’s complaints as “anti-Semitism” (apart from the intrinsic absurdity, for Arabs are Semites, too), is to conveniently paint them as sub-rational creatures with whom debate is incapable of producing useful results.
And it is a matter of record that, before Zionism became an issue, Christians, Jews, and Moslems, alike, all regarded Jews and Moslems as natural allies against Christian hegemony. (Just look at the architecture of any old big-city synagogue.)
Some of these deniers turn right around and say how they would like to ethnically cleanse or kill any remaining Jewish people.
John W. Kennedy, perhaps there is plenty of ignorance rampant. After all, the only way I’ve ever heard the term “anti-semetism” was regarding Jews, and until recently was not aware that Arabs were also semites. That’s an easy one to chalk up to lack of information. Intrinsic absurdity? Perhaps, but easily not noticed.