But surely this can't be the same Atzmon who accepts there was a holocaust, and the Jews could have prevented it by being more popular.

I mean to say, only a completely reactionary bigot would constantly shift positions so as to maximize offense. A serious intellectual like the Atzmon we know would only have one position at a time. Despite being unable to field questions about his own writing.

Nice that you include the 'love interest' angle for those of us who tire quickly of political narratives.

I thought this whole anti-Atzmon thing was just supposed to be nothing more than Tony Greenstein's one-man personal campaign, and that the proper way to respond was to attack Tony Greenstein. At least, that's what Atzmon keeps telling anyone who'll listen, and there are people who bought it.

I didn't realize that Tony Greenstein worked for the Iranian press. I guess it shouldn't surprise me; everybody knows what a hotbed of hard right-wing Zionism that Iranian press is, so naturally they'd hire Tony.

Either that, or the whole "it's really just Tony's campaign against me" thing just doesn't wash, and Gilad Atzmon really is an antisemite.

No, that couldn't possibly be it, now could it.

While I was out supporting a demo for freedom of protest in the crypto-zionist's hometown, the scumbag was at his computer, posting what he knew from the ALEF list was strenuously denied by Atzmon and just for good measure, quoting from and liniking to a Holocaust revisionist site.

It is no surprise to see him and gehrig, Indymedia's resident zionist occupier singing from the same hymn sheet on this one, and thereby revealing how similar are the tactics of a zionist scum and a crypto-zionist scum.

What astounds me more than anything, is that when Greenstein the crypto-zionist wrote this in his turgid, unreadable article*

"The cynical way that Zionist propagandists and fundraisers use the holocaust is best described by Israeli writer Boaz Evron: holocaust awareness is “an official, propagandistic indoctrination, a churning out of slogans and a false view of the world, the real aim of which is not at all an understanding of the past, but a manipulation of the present”

he didn't realise that it was himself who was the 'zionist propagandist' cynically using the holocaust.

* http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/633/zionism.htm

All the zionist and crypto-zionist scum can do is lie, smear and abuse.

... come to understand that (1) its' being in a mainstream media source doesn't automatically make it false and (2) your boy Gilad's maybe not half so clever at intentionally playing at the margins of antisemitic discourse as he thinks he is, and this time he got himself caught squarely over the line when the whistle blew.

Of course, people might be more willing to give Atzmon the benefit of the ever-diminishing doubt if he hadn't gone out of his way to spread Paul Eisen's blatant valentine-to-Zündel Holocaust denial essay to his mailing list and then fail to repudiate it when repeatedly challenged.

Tony has posted on Indymedia an article from the Revisionist Site (that assuredly, he doesn't read, or does he, but YOU can't!!!....) Now, like Gilad Atzmon pointed out, the people trying to smear him take stuff from sites on a pick and choose basis. If a site carries something you generally see as false, why do they all of a sudden become a reliable source???? So, Tony digs through and asks us to read the Adelaide Institute and what do we find? Some very shaky stuff that contradicts the actual dispatch of Press TV! Especially regarding the criteria of sources that Tony considers to be proof of his thesis.

First of all, Tony. If you actually READ the article you post, it comes to the light that the Stolz character didn't use this information about Gilad in her harangue in the Zundel Trial, but rather, A YEAR AGO in a trial of this Henning character that was not even a trial about Holocaust Revision but actually:
Denying the Bundesrepublik’s legitimacy.

Not a good start, Tony. Let's see if you can do any better with where you got the original material. (Or so you want us to believe, which we don't... we all know you never saw the Gilad Shalit campaign and it's only on hundreds of thousands of sites, and you never saw the Hunters of Goliath paper until it was here, and it was on about 50 sites prior to that....). Press TV:

It's not enough that Tony takes the Adelaide Institute stuff as swear on the bible truth, but he also takes Press TV in the same way! I never heard of it before today, but apparently, it is becoming a reputable source for Tony.

What might someone who actually reads all of the press from the area have to say about it? This is what my friend, the webmaster of the major internet site on the Iraq war and all the conflicts in the Middle East says:

"I’ve just posted the latest article by Gilad and I made a Google search to see if I was able to understand what really had happened. Seeing as the sole source was PressTV, the official disinformation site of the Islamic Republic of Iran, as a first impression, I thought it could even be a fake story. Three quarters of the news published by PressTV are false. They even wrote a few months ago that the tomb of Saddam had been attacked by his Iraqi “victims” and then they fed the body to the dogs and that the Iraqi resistance has been paid and armed by the CIA and by Mossad in order to bring the Maliki government down and bring the Baathists back to power).

And what Stolz said seems a quite a bit more articulated than what has been attributed to her by the Iranian site. Despite the margin for ambiguity, Stolz does not appear to attribute to Atzmon a negationist thesis on the Holocaust (differently than Zundel, Henning was not accused of “negationism”, but rather of “Denying the Bundesrepublik’s legitimacy”). On the other hand, the woman said that “In Mecca, the most important pilgrimage site in the Muslim world, the Iranian head of state Ahmadineschad publically acknowledged that he is a holocaust denier” (but THIS bit, the Iranian Press TV propaganda site doesn’t bother to mention!).

The episode took place more than a year ago." (.... and the writer continues)

"At the time, no one was interested in the harangue by Stolz, not for the part concerning Gilad’s citation at least, even because, as a matter of fact, Stolz does not say that Gilad denies the Holocaust. Now, the “news” by PressTV is all over the place. I really can’t figure out why the site of the Islamic Republic of Iran wanted to give this emphasis to the “citation” by Gilad, and all the more so by presenting it in this way, seeing as how it certainly could not have had any relevance for the condemnation of the woman. The thing that is even stranger, seeing as how Gilad has always defended and praised the Islamic Republic of Iran and Ahmadinejad (I remember having had an email exchange with him on the argument, because on this point, I am not at all in agreement: Iran has helped in the USA wars of aggression against Iraq and Afghanistan, they support in every possible way the Iraqi and Afghani puppet governments, the philo-Iranian death squads have fought in every way the Iraqi resistance and they have carried out ethnic cleansing in Iraq, etc. etc. Seeing as how for me facts count much more than words, the ramshackle anti-USA and anti-Israeli declarations by Ahmadinejad are far less important than the active help he gives to American war criminals)."

Well: there are conclusions we can draw to all of this (besides the fact that Tony pitches false things as true, and he delegates others to do street activism when he is regurgitating yet the same smears of Gilad, knowing them to be false!) is that Tony is not to be trusted either for content or source, and that is a hanging charge in internet activism. And, that he still can't seem to get one of his attacks right. He should see a witch doctor.

I'd say Tony needs to fact check the articles he himself puts up and cross references. Upon reading the article that he posted again, it is clear that the trial of Henning was not from a year ago, but more than two.

Doesn't he start to connect the dots between things and begin to notice the inconsistencies and falsities? Does he not start to question what he has in front of him? No, that was a stupid question. I'm far too familiar with Greenstein to expect anything close to accuracy and correctness, much less consistency.

Gehrig also takes this shit seriously, but Tony posted up all the research that only hurts his own case.

Interesting that Zionists quote a holocaust denial in the desperate hope that they can paint one of their critics with the same brush. Classic "guilt by association" Disinformation.

Why hasn't this garbage been hidden? If the role was reversed, the Troll that posted it would be screaming bloody murder!

"Gilad Atzmon routinely dismisses his critics, including those who call him a Holocaust denier, as "Zionists."

That's because his ONLY critics are Zionists. And nobody has accused him of such a thing, except Extremists who hope nobody will notice the complete disconnect between the issue of someone quoting him, and himself and his work and beliefs.

Tch, tch. Not only am I a ‘crypto-Zionist’ but also a ‘scumbag’. Clearly ftp is losing it.

If ftp knew his facts he would know that I was integrally involved in setting up the ‘right to protest’ campaign to begin with, after the police harassment of the August 19th demonstration against the bombing of Lebanon. And if FTP wasn’t so self-righteous he would know that at the time he was demonstrating, I was helping to run the Palestine Solidarity Campaign stall outside Marks & Spencers, as other PSC members would testify to, as I most Saturdays. Or maybe starvation in Gaza takes second place to puerile abuse. I posted the response after the stall and after the demonstration.

Yes I agree with Boaz Evron that the Zionist use of the Nazi holocaust is ‘“an official, propagandistic indoctrination, a churning out of slogans and a false view of the world, the real aim of which is not at all an understanding of the past, but a manipulation of the present” So much do I agree that I wrote the article that FTP quoted and 3 others in previous weeks, i.e.
 http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/633/zionism.htm
Mary accuses me of not being able to read. The real problem is that I read this only too well. I post another link, which has been posted without objection from Ms Rizzo, on the Alef list of which we are both members. As Mary rightly says, re the trial of one Hennig. This what the open holocaust deniers say of Atzmon:
But I haven’t, despite the warm reception for Atzmon among the holocaust denial sites, said that what is posted is necessarily true but that it raises many doubts. What I also quoted were Atzmon’s own words in his Esther to Aipac article. I notice that Mary hasn’t seen fit to comment on this. Perhaps ‘daring’ serious holocaust historians from the anti-Zionist left to start debating with holocaust revisionists is something she agrees with?

And ftp accuses me of siding with a known Zionist, Gehrig. if Gehrig is a Zionist then we will disagree about everything else. But most Zionists, including Boaz Evron (whom ftp quotes without blushing - at least on line!) don't deny the holocaust. Even worse they deliberately inflate the importance of holocaust deniers in order to play up the idea that the holocaust is going to recur and that there is an imminent danger to Jews. There isn't but those who do deny the holocaust or like Atzmon play with holocaust deniers and seek to legitimise them (at best) are in fact handing the Zionists and the starvers of Gaza a free gift.

It is also irrelevant when this was printed, be it today, yesterday or 3 years ago. What matters is whether or not it is true and some of us have long abandoned giving Gilad Atzmon the benefit of the doubt when it comes to holocaust denial.

Tony G

 http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/Dissenters1/Mahler/Hennig_engl.htm
This is to be found in Exhibit No. 1 . Because he is himself a Jew and highly esteemed worldwide, his words carry especial weight. In his appeal to the Germans he is quoted as follows: “In Israel, one is imprisoned if one disagrees with official opinion.”
This is particularly true with regard to the past. In his books, Gilad Atzmon attempts to “rearrange this past.” He describes the historiography of the Second World War and Holocaust, so familiar to us, as a complete falsification invented by Zionists and Americans. He shows that the real enemy was not Hitler but Stalin.
The Germans must finally realize this and stop feeling guilty -- and above all, to stop feeling responsible. “It is You who are the victims” Atzmon says.
He reminds the Germans that the bombing attacks on German cities took place because the Americans had plenty of bombs and wanted to use them; the same happened in Vietnam and now in Afghanistan and Iraq. He reiterates that the true evildoers of our time are George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Ariel Sharon.
(Source: Ruhrnachrichten (News of the Ruhr,) Bochum, Tuesday, November 29, 2005

The breach opened by Gilad Atzmon makes it possible to get a new understanding of what Konrad Adenauer, the first Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, related in his Memoirs - Exhibit No. 6 - about the physical genocide against the German people in 1945.

"A total of 13.8 million Germans were driven out of the eastern parts of Germany, Poland, Checkoslovakia, Hungary etc. according to facts established by the Americans. Of these 7.8 million came to the East Zone but mostly to the three West Zones. Six million disappeared from the face of the earth. They died or were wiped out....A large part of the men and women who were able to work were dragged off to slave labor in the Soviet Union. Endless suffering has been caused by this expulsion of 13 to 14 million people from their homes, where their forefathers had lived for hundreds of years....The expulsion was based upon the Potsdam Agreement of August 2, 1945. I am convinced that sometime in the future world history will harshly judge that document."
(Konrad Adenauer, Memoirs)

It certainly required extraordinary efforts to conceal the extent of this shameful deed from the history books and to wipe it away from the memory of the grievously mistreated German people. Is not there precisely here a motive for what Atzmon calls the "complete falsification."

Maybe this site should rename itself "Holocaust Deniers for Palestine." It used to be an antiracist site.

Hey, Mary, freethepeeps, Jordan. That pro-Holocaust-denial essay that Gilad Atzmon admitted to Tony Greenstein he distributed to his mailing list -- that essay which Ernst Zündel loved so much he put it on his own site, which isn't too surprising seeing how it's a love letter to him -- see anything antisemitic in it at all?

 http://www.zundelsite.org/zundel_persecuted/may20-05_eisen.html

It's an essay that builds the case that the gas chambers of Auschwitz were a Zionist fraud. It's perfectly in sync with the beliefs of David Irving on the matter. Yet Atzmon told Greenstein that his own differences with the essay were "slight."

Watch, folks, as they find excuse after excuse to evade this question. Watch them close their eyes to the evidence of Atzmon's antisemitism. Then ask yourself why.

Why are they protecting and defending the spreading of such blatantly antisemitic stuff?

No Hasbarah by the Book, Atzmon’s only critics are not Zionists. On the contrary, some of his best friends, like one Mikey Mikey, are Zionists! No seriously, Atzmon has no real differences with the core fundamentals of Zionism and that is where he gets his hatred of Jews outside Israel from. This is a constant theme in Zionism.
But if ‘Zionist’ is just a codeword for ‘Jew’ then yes I guess I’m a Zionist, or a ‘crypto-Zionist’. The National Front and BNP (before the latter became pro-Zionist) used to ritually call all Jews ‘Zionists’. Atzmon’s good friend, Israel Shamir (‘a unique and advanced thinker’ e-mail tome 12.6.05.) actually criticised the BNP for being pro-Jewish on account of its support for the bombing of Lebanon. That people like FTP associate themselves politically with those who think the BNP isn’t anti-Jewish enough, to say nothing of its virulent hatred of Black and Muslim people, shows where he has ended up. A moderator of Indymedia who is busy driving other moderators out. But noone can point to a single thing I’ve every said or done which is supportive of Zionism, unlike Atzmon with his article on how the anti-Zionist Jewish Bund were wrong and the Zionists were right.

G: Mr Greenstine, True I circulated Paul Eisen's paper. I do believe that argumentative texts must be circulated as widely as possible. I am sure that in case you have a counter argument to suggest Paul will be delighted to address it. By the way, my take on the subject is slightly different than Paul's one and yet, i found Paul very attentive to my criticism. Furthermore, Let me assure you that if I ever see a great text written by yourself I ll be the first to circulate it. This is my way, that is what i believe in.

But it’s not the case, as Gehrig says, that Atzmon merely said that his differences with Eisen were ‘slight’. The relevant paragraph from his e-mail to me of 6th June 2005 was as follows:
‘G: Mr Greenstine, True I circulated Paul Eisen's paper. I do believe that argumentative texts must be circulated as widely as possible. I am sure that in case you have a counter argument to suggest Paul will be delighted to address it. By the way, my take on the subject is slightly different than Paul's one and yet, i found Paul very attentive to my criticism. Furthermore, Let me assure you that if I ever see a great text written by yourself I ll be the first to circulate it. This is my way, that is what i believe in.’

Eisens essay, ‘Holocaust Wars’ was a full blooded tribute to Ernst Zundel.

He has a passage The Hitler we loved and why…. I’m never sure whether he is quoting with approval the words of Zundel’s Nazi wife or if they are his own words. It makes no difference since he cites them with evident approval and not a hint of criticism:
‘Ernst Zundel was once involved in the publication of a book called The Hitler We Loved and Why, but Ernst Zundel was not the only German who loved Hitler and is probably not the only German who still loves Hitler. Millions of Germans loved Hitler who for twelve years impacted on them as no German has or probably ever will, and, though they never say so, must, deep down still cherish his memory.’

This is a full-blooded tribute to a regime that not only exterminated millions of people, Jews, gypsies, gays, Slavs etc., but imposed slave labour and a police state regime inside factories. Which abolished trade unions and instituted the system of concentration camps. A regime that began its murderous plans with the mass murder, in gas vans, of some 80,000 mentally and physically handicapped. And Eissen goes on to say of the Holocaust deniers (or Revisionists as he calls them) that of course they don’t deny some, even many, thousands of Jews died ‘But they do deny the Holocaust narrative as we know it in three specific areas.
· They deny that there ever was an official plan on the part of Hitler or any other part of the Nazi regime systematically and physically to eliminate every Jew in Europe.
· They deny that there ever existed homicidal gas-chambers;
· They deny the figure of six million Jewish victims of the Nazi assault and claim that the actual figure was significantly less.’

Even David Irving admits that Jews and others were exterminated by gas. It’s just it didn’t happen in Auschwitz. But as part of the Action Reinhardt, he accepts the incontrovertible evidence that it did. After all the same trucks used in the ‘Euthenasia Programme’ were sent into Poland to begin the Nazi holocaust.

This is the text that Atzmon not only has ‘slight differences’ with but is a ‘great text’ which he is proud to distribute. And people like FTP are happy to sing from Atzmon’s songsheet.


That Indymedia should now harbour apologists for neo-Nazis and holocaust deniers is something that should put it to shame.


That the Zionists use the Nazi holocaust for their own purposes is irrelevant. They do and I like Lenni Brenner and others I have always criticised them for this, not least because the Zionists during the Holocaust prioritised building a ‘Jewish’ State not rescuing the Jews of Europe. That is undeniable, not least by the more intelligent and honest Zionists. But that is no reason for denying what is obvious except to Eisen, Atzmon and his small band of followers.

Tony Greenstein

TG: " No seriously, Atzmon has no real differences with the core fundamentals of Zionism and that is where he gets his hatred of Jews outside Israel from"

The kind of bollocks you would expect from a man who quotes a Holocaust Revisionist site as a reputable text....... knowing full well that the organiser of the Bochum meeting had strongly disputed the original report on the meeting.

Didn't take long to google this up:

"I will never forget my visit to Anzar, an Israeli concentration camp on the Lebanon soil," he says. "Thousands of Palestinians were surrounded by barbed wire fences and Israeli army sentry tower guards, getting burned in the heat of the August sun. I knew then that I wouldn't last more than five minutes. What I saw there was the clearest manifestation of oppression and abuse I have ever come across. After facing those devastating sights, I painfully grasped that my identity was grounded on a basic denial of the legitimate rights of innocent people to return to their homelands. What I saw in the Lebanon war convinced me that my one and only enemy is Zionism."
 http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=809

"Once we manage to internalize that the discourse of solidarity with Palestinians is dominated by the malicious and brutal Israeli practices, we are more or less ready to admit: it is the Jewish State: a racist nationalist ideology that we must oppose primarily. It is the Jewish State and its supporters around the world that we must tackle. It is Zionism and global Zionism that we must confront immediately.

Yet, this is exactly where the solidarity campaigner loses his grip. To identify the Palestinian disaster with the concept of a “Jews Only State” is a leap not many activists are capable to do for the time being. To admit that the Jewish State is the core of the problem implies that there may be something slightly more fundamental in the conflict than merely colonial interests or an ethnic dispute over land. To identify the “Jews Only State” as the core of the problem is to admit that peace is not necessarily an option. The reason is rather simple: the “Jews Only State” follows an expansionist and racially orientated philosophy. It leaves no room for other people as a matter of fact and principle."
 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov06/Atzmon22.htm

So, just dealing with the first part of the third sentence of the latest diatribe, it is clear that Greenstein can only smear and misrepresent.

I have in the few months since I have come into contact with the man, been advised by him that I am a racist, loyalist, Aaronovitch loving, anti-semitic zionist. This just serves to re-inforce the credibility gap somewhat, as my take on me is 'slightly different'. However, I have to confess that I have not found him attentive to my criticisms .........

Meanwhile, the zionist author of the Geniza blog would have us believe that a report carried only by Presstv, is probably credible.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that it is as credible as gehrig himself.

And he joined Indymedia for what?

I have more important things to do than engage in pointless circular arguments with these 2 ideologues.

I will, in reply to Greenstein's claim that:

" But noone can point to a single thing I’ve every said or done which is supportive of Zionism, "

point out that it has been said to him many times that his tactics are exactly the same as that of the zionists.

And I will remind him that very recently he said:

"if it walks like a duck, talks and quacks
like a duck, it probably is one."
 http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/bh/messages/post/22KVsl1z5ldZ8R2djykdB9

Furthermore, in pointing out the double standards of him linking to the Adelaide Institute, a nasty little revisionist site, I will point out that his double standards are again exposed by his recent statement:

"Of course that gives me no control, just as I can do nothing when far-right sites purloin what I right for their own nefarious purposes."
 https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=17894519&postID=4448201500679348059

Ho hum........ write on!

Those who uses the term anti-semitic as applying only to people who hate Jews are supporting and joining with that Germanic Racist who first used it over a century ago as an insult that called Jews Arabs. To use it as an insult, that Academic must have had a very low opinion of Arabs. Jews who take it as an insult are the cause of the trouble in Palestine. It shows their racist attitude to Arabs. They are usually the Zionists.

Can anyone name the Jewish girl in a Baltic State who agreed to speak in support of the Balfour Declaration and asked for a copy to read, read it, and saw that it was impossible to fulfill, attended the meeting she was advertised to speak at, but did not speak. She had seen immediately that there just was not enough room in Palestine for all the Jews. Later went to South Africa and did useful anti-apartheid work there.

Was Hitler a Zionist? Without the holocaust there would not have been the desperation necessary to create the State of Israel. Even with it there were still too many Jews to fit in. That is a nice can of worms those who monopolize anti-semitic as anti Jewish can chew on, as you are too damn stupid to be asking what can Israel do to be friends with Hamas.

Have we reached the stage where only determined real anti-semites can bring that about?

Meanwhile, God is cowering in a corner with Religious people kicking the shit out of Him/Her/It, and Satan has a free hand to destroy this Earth's ability to support this Creation of Life. That is a very real reason for Irgun and Hamas to join forces.

Pardon me if I do not rush to accept the veracity/motive of the organiser's statement. There are a few problems in immediately accepting it.

The first and most obvious one is that we have no clear indication of that person's relationship to Atzmon. What is clear however is that their livelihood/reputaton is to a degree tied up in the matter. There would be further room for doubt if that person is a promoter in Germany. Since being associated with holocaust denial there would instantly relegate you to putting on secret Skrewdriver gigs in pub basements in Schwerin with more spooks in the audience than skinheads.

It would be interesting to see a transcript of the gig that degenerated into a political debate. I would be very surprised to hear that "West" Germans under the age of 80 had great difficulties with English. Especially in the Ruhr conurbation which was heavily militarised during our period of occupation. Interestingly there is no complaint of being 'misquoted' so much as misunderstood.

Germans are generally a lot better at spotting racism than people in the UK in my experience. Their Anti-Fa activists far outnumber ours and your average German lefty upstart wouldn't hesitate verbally ripping anyone who skirted near holocaust denial a new arsehole.

From my experience too Germans are quicker to spot 'coding', they have had good training after the 3rd Reich they were occupied by masters of spin and deception (both East and West) and even today they still have to contend with far right (and left) party leaflets through their door which are coded so as stay within legally accepted parameters.

Your average German activist wouldn't be duped by the egocentric lexical sophistry of coding 'Jews' with 'Jewishness' or 'history' to 'historiography'. They have seen such misdirections all before.

That's pretty much by the by when it comes to the bare facts.

Atzmon distributed holocaust material. His motive is indicated that it wasn't an exercise in free speech, which I would have respected though not endorsed, by because it was a 'great text'.

This casts massive doubt on any lipservice to not being sympathetic to holocaust denial.

tsk tsk Tony. Why not try getting an editor. You are becoming repetitious.

It is pretty hard to add to what ftp has already suggested; that Tony passes around as fact and true what is actually distortion and falsification from two sites that have severe problems of accuracy and reliability. Says a LOT about Tony. And he blames me for not having "protested in another place when I saw these links". Oh, so that's the issue?

Tony knows that what he's passing around comes from Revisionist and Disinformation sites, and he STILL peddles it as if it is Kosher stuff! I mean, the man has very little capacity to see the lovely little corner he painted himself in. When I saw Shraga Elam publish it in Alef, sure, I didn't comment straight away, because Tony knows that only he is allowed to rant on and on about Atzmon. I published that it was falsification, and Shraga admitted he was "happy it was not true". Uh huh. I thought Elam was a nutbar THEN (when he put up stuff from Revisionist sites, but I never heard of Press TV until an expert source informed me without me even asking, that they were a bullshit factory) and I am more convinced that Elam has some issues that make him a weirder than weird one than ever following a day of email exchanges with the man. Get this: He believes he has invented the term "Holocaust Industry" and Finkelstein nicked it from him. He insists he understood the concept of Holocaust Religion before Liebovitz and Ofir did... He is insisting it's his idea to have Palestinians sell their oil as Palestinian Olive Oil... Oh, it doesn't stop there.... not only does he "question the numbers", and does not want anyone else to discuss history of the Holocaust, but he bandies around to all and sundry STUFF FROM ADELAIDE INSTITUTE! It's barking mad, but it seems he can't see how normal people would react to comments and actions of the sort. Know what, the first time I ever clicked in Adelaide Institute was from the link you put up Tony!!! Holocaust Revision isn't something I even give a damn about, and I am sure the site probably has its fair share of crap. I avoid places that print falsity and distortion. There may even be legit stuff in there, but I sure ain't interested in investigating. That Tony gives it the bonafides makes me CERTAIN it is a bunch of garbage!!! And, how is it that you both peddled the bullox that Stolz, an out and out Nazi, for sure, with some serious mental problems to boot, but still, in a position that she should not be punished for defending her client (what a wierd world), used her harangue in a different trial. It's about being able to read and passing off information as legit. All it took was a cross reading between the two! Not hours of research!!!! Tony insists to still reprint it, the man is barking mad as well.

How is it that details, facts, information just seem to escape these smearmongers? Because facts obviously don't count when you can get a smear campaign launched to the unattentive.

Why does Tony want to bring Gilad and those who respect Gilad down? Good question. Ftp answered it quite well. Tony obviously works in harmony with settler sites, H Rev sites, anything that will destroy a man he detests because that man is denouncing the madness of ethnic campaigning (and all ethnic thinking). There is an article on it on my blog, Tony. You aren't that far off from a proper settler or Gilad Shalit supporter. You know no limits and your conscience stops as far as your nasal hairs.

The definition of words is determined by their common usage and in most cases their dictionary definitions are derived purely through the study of their common usage (corpus texts are amassed into databases and searched for words, the words meanings are derived from the contexts).

The use of the word 'anti-Semitic' to refer to Arabs has to my knowledge never ever had any currency. There is certainly no evidence of contemporary currency of that meaning.

Essentially, your argument makes all the linguist sense of trying say that 'gurgle' is the new word for 'wood'. I seriously doubt that the rest of the word will embrace your inclination, but rather like 'gurgle' would view you as crackers.

The idea that the word should be purged of its currency is in itslef dubious. In fact such 'language planning' was popular under Hitler and Stalin.

You can however argue it is etymologically anomalous or in a very extended and pointlessly pedantic fashion scientifically inaccurate but you can never argue that a word in currency is wrong. To do that would be to subscribe to the of authoritarian grammar patricians/fascists like Keith Waterhouse and his punctuation snobs.

Language is as language does.

It is beyond the pale that such misinformation, misquotes, libel in fact, can actually be printed in the first place by any media outlet, and the way Greenstein (biography from Pal data base at  http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=367)
knowingly latches onto and republishes stuff which he knows to be a complete fabrication about Atzmon, who is someone against whom he has a vicious personal vendetta, tells us even more about him and his level of integrity than all the documentation of his anti-social misdeeds altogether:

 http://www.geocities.com/tonygreencard/greenbully.pdf
 http://www.geocities.com/tonygreencard/greensteal.pdf
 http://www.geocities.com/tonygreencard/greencrime.pdf
 http://www.geocities.com/tonygreencard/greenfine.pdf

Like his friend Sue Blackwell, TG has been known to make some rather rash and serious accusations against Atzmon, based on no evidence at all. One almost has to wonder if the mossad are paying Tony Greenstein to keep up this baseless ongoing smear campaign, which is in any case rather ineffective, as Atzmon continues to reach thousands of people each month with his message of peace, universal humanism, and suppport for the people of Palestine.

In case Greenstein is planning to retire back in the promised land, he may be interested to discover that in Israel a certain bill (see below) was passed in Nov 2007 as preparation for the latest round of atrocities against the people of Gaza since Bush's visit to the region, where all checkpoints were sealed off this week preventing UN food aid from entering and where there is a daily bombardment of aerial bombing in the days. The bill passed by the Knesset in Nov 2007 made it illegal (up to 7 years in prison) to compare israeli atrocities with nazi crimes, or the actions of individuals with those of the 'nazis', or using images such as the swastika or striped garments of the type worn in concentration camps. The original bill can be read here in Hebrew:

 http://www.knesset.gov.il/privatelaw/data/17/2656.rtf

And translated into english here
 http://pursuingjustice.blogspot.com/2008/01/criminalizing-speech-and-political.html

as a partial answer to the person above with his linguistic - organiser queries. This was what I published in Alef after Tony and Elam were farting around for days: (PS, Even Shraga tells me his English is not very good, so your comments about the marvels of using English are all extremely relative. Language is very complex and it takes years of constant use in the target environment to capture all the nuances. Not to mention that Gilad is not a native English speaker, and perhaps the "interpreter" had enormous difficulty in understanding him.)


Well, I didn't want to get involved in this, as I would much rather that people check out yesterday's blog post about the uses of the Gilad SHALIT campaign (which Tony said would make a good topic for a paper, and I took him up on it).  http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/2008/01/some-human-beings-are-more-human-than.html

But, I see that Sol, Shraga and others insist upon believing that everything they see is real and true.


I am aware of the events that were written about in the newspaper concerning the alleged quotes by Gilad. The facts are quite different from what the apparent misuses are:
1) Gilad appeared at the event without there being a professional interpreter. I am an interpreter, and I know that it is of utmost importance to have one if one speaks in public or if there is press. Persons in the audience who understood both English and German informed him that the translation was extremely faulty, to the point of being a total mistranslation. One example (of many) Gilad used the terminology "The Holocaust Narrative", and Narrative was translated as Romanza. (Novel, Story, Fable)... It was clear to the listener that the meaning was completely different from what was said! Therefore, bearing this in mind, one can surmise that those in the audience did not even receive a correct translation of the content. As far as I know, there is no recording of the event, but Gilad has been speaking publicly on the same issue for over 6 years now, (at least) and there has never been this kind of interpretation of his content, so one is lead to believe that the matter of false translation is at the core of it. One is able to read any of his 200 articles and listen to the dozens of speeches and interviews in internet and one will not find the quotes that the Lawyer in question claims he made. What she did was engage in hearsay. Anyone can say anyone said anything, but actually demonstrating it is another kettle of fish. Gilad has hundreds of his interventions documented, and none of what the Lawyer said can be found. It is legitimate to surmise that she was not there, and what she has heard has been reports that reported something false. It is like the whispering game. Someone says "My mummy is lovely" and it comes out "Buy crumbly in sunny". Makes no sense, but "that's what I heard", they may claim.


2) If someone uses whatever was stated in an event that was so grossly translated (and this was admitted by the organiser of the event, that they had neglected to have an interpreter on hand that was up to the task and prepared with any sort of discussion that has specific terminology, which was the discourse that was historical, political, literary and philosophical. They thought he was going to say Hi and just name the names of the tunes!) We can assume that the person using it is doing it in bad faith or simply out of ignorance.


3) People of all shapes, colours and beliefs always try to pull people that have some kind of public role to their side of the fence. This apparently has happened in this situation, and Gilad is aware of it. It had happened in the past in Italy with someone talking about the same event, and when it was pointed out that there was a huge aspect of FALSITY involved, the paper that published the original declaration made an errata corrige stating that they had gotten their information without checking any of it, and they were sorry that it was misleading and false. They then published the rectification and apologised that it had mislead the readers and misrepresented Gilad Atzmon.

Mary, if you knew a little more about the history of Holocaust denial, you'd know how much of what Atzmon has to say had its origins there, *including* his pejorative use of the phrase "the Holocaust Narrative" -- his attempt to label the extensively studied, extensively documented, extensively proven history of the Holocaust as a mere "narrative," i.e. a story, rather than a pile of plain fact.

Anybody who knows the slightest thing about Holocaust denial can see that Paul Eisen's essay promotes it. It uncritically rehashes pretty much all the central arguments of Holocaust denial. And Eisen's also said where his allegiances lie, when he said “Regarding gas, again I am not sure but the evidence for the use of homicidal gas-chambers is not good at all. The evidence against it is much, much stronger.”

But what did Eisen cite as "evidence" in the Holocaust denial that Atzmon thought was so terrific and differed with only "slightly"? A bunch of crap that turns out to have come from Steady Freddy Leuchter, the idiot Ernst Zündel paid $35,000 to write a pseudo-scientific report "proving" there were no gas chambers.

This stuff comes from the far right, guys. It comes from people trying to polish up ol' Hitler's image. But because one or two people -- people like Eisen and Atzmon -- are trying to prettify it for the left, and leave out the "Hitler We Loved and Why" aspect. No, wait, Paul Eisen's essay doesn't leave out the fact that Zündel wrote a book called "The Hitler We Loved and Why" -- he actually to excuse such a book!

How much shit from the blackshirts should progressives accept? None! Yet here's Mary and Gilad and Peeps doling their best to make the left safe for blackshirt lies.

I agree that the language issue is a matter of speculation on both sides of the argument, but there is a little problem with your take on the ability question. Germany and German is saturated with English culture/language. Vernacular German is full of English. German children start speaking English in primary school. All they listen to is English music... The average German's English is likely to be higher than a Year 1 to 2 British university student's German.

So, I doubt an interpreter would be needed for them to follow Gilad in a Q&A unless he had a speech impediment.

Well if you really want to play with conjecture (RE: Whispers/Telephone), it is rather interesting that arguments get closer to their naked essence when you reduce them to short statements. More so when they are heavily cloaked in doggerel. I just wonder if that was why they got upset: they understood very well indeed.

Who knows. Neither of us were there and we have no account from anyone who left in disgust. So the 'Dear Sirs' lettter isn't worth much.

As for the far right misappropriating 'Atzmon', I think you are stretching a bit to imply that these things are random and beyond control. I haven't seen Jesse Jackson being lauded by many racists. Did Bobby Seale become a poster boy for the Tories? The far right figure that they and Atzmon have an affinity, otherwise he'd be rejected not endorsed. You do occasionally get obtuse alliances, but normally only when there is a convergence of ideas.

But, I'll return again to what seems to be the major fly in your ointment. Did Atzmon distribute holocaust denial material? Did he not broadly endorse the material?

Here's something from the Paul Eisen essay that Atzmon distributed:

"Nothing seems to fit about the gassing story. The numbers of victims crammed into the space, the design and construction of the gassing facilities, the lack of protection for the attendants, the implausibility surrounding the rate of cremation, the huge errors, omissions and disparities in eye-witness accounts -- all these and more, when added to the near total absence of hard affirmative evidence, makes one wonder why anyone believed such a story in the first place."

If you followed the David Irving trial in as much detail as I did, then you recognized not only seven different standard straight-from-the-goosesteppers lies, but you might even be able to tell which goosestepper started spreading which lie. (In this case, most of this stuff comes from Leuchter. I'd spell it out in detail, line by line, but does anybody really think peeps is in a position to listen?)

And this is what Atzmon defends-- still -- and this is what peeps and Mary defend Atzmon for defending.

Oh, in case you didn't know, that's a Mark Twain piece.

It is interesting that since Germans are saturated with American music, etc, that they understand all the sublte nuances of English. This is quite funny. They have their TV and film dubbed into German, and I doubt that they are able to capture all the nuances in current language just because they are German and the languages are similar and they have some English words in use.

I haven't lived in an English speaking country for 20 years, and it is actually mentally tiring to listen to English because I am out of practice in oral English. Don't know if the good folks of Bochum have Americans walking around the place keeping them finely tuned, but I can assure you, your confidence that they are completely certain that what they hear is correct and even the organiser said it was poorly translated, (it was a book fair, so I suppose he is familiar with language issues, and recognises a correct translation from an incorrect one).

You don't know what a historical narrative is?

Well, let's just call it a day, you are intellectually unprepared to debate if you are unaware of such a core concept in the recounting of history. Or, do you think history is just dates and names lined up one after the other without criterion?

And, the fact still remains. Gherig and Tony and Shraga peddle stuff on Holocaust Revisionist sites and disinformation sites from Iran as if they were gospel, factual and legitimate. Got it folks? Try to stay focused here!

The bit from Paul Eisen I just referred to -- the eighteen-thousand word valentine to the Holocaust denial movement -- was the very same bit your guy Gilad thought was so "great" that he personally took the time to distribute it. I linked to the Zündel copy to show how warmly the Holocaust denier community has taken Paul Eisen's Holocaust denial essay to its heart. I don't think even ftp is stupid enough to believe I'm endorsing Zündel's site by linking to it (though he and you apparently hope the typical Indymedia UK reader is).

So here's the state of play.

Paul Eisen writes an essay that's plainly and blatantly pro-Holocaust-denial.

Atzmon loves the essay so much he distributes it to his list, and defends that decision even now. What's more, Atzmon can't quite bring himself to address the fact -- and it is a fact, not a "narrative" -- that the essay consists of a compilation of the very same antisemitic lies of the far right that were debunked so completely in the Irving trial.

And you too will do everything in your power to keep from seeing what any schoolboy could see: that Eisen is a Holocaust denier, and that Gilad thought it would be fun to inject a little Holocaust denial into the "anti-Zionist" discourse to see what happens, knowing that his faithful denizens could be counted on to find every imaginable excuse rather than to address the obvious lies of Paul Eisen's piece.

And the allegedly anti-racist activist Mary Rizzo cannot, cannot, cannot bring herself to address the demonstrable lies in Paul Eisen's piece, or their demonstrable Nazi-apologist origins, because to do so would be to finally admit that Gilad Atzmon intentionally distributed an obviously, blatantly antisemitic piece and then left you twisting in the wind defending him.

And none of that has anything to do with Tony Greenstein, so your constant attempts to change the subject onto him and how evil he is and how much you hate him and so on keeps get swept aside as irrelevant, because it *is* irrelevant. This isn't about Greenstein, this is about how Zündel's antisemitic lies are being repackaged for the left by Atzmon's "good friend" Paul Eisen and how you and Atzmon and ftp don't seem to mind helping spread them.

Now, Mary -- Paul Eisen says that the gas chambers of Auschwitz wouldn't work. He backs this up with lies from Ernst Zündel, author of "The Hitler We Loved and Why." Is he right? Is Atzmon -- who by now is well aware of this -- right too? What excuse will you use to run away from this question this time?

Well actually up until 1989 they did have loads of Americans literally marching around. At least in my town they did. Up in Bochum it'd've been Brits, some Belgians and some French.

I think my German is good enough to spot the difference between an etymological relative, a false cognate and a loan word. Watch German TV, you'll be bombarded with German sentences with English phrases and words cramming in (usually with dreadful pronunciation).

Most German schools will also have a native speaker as a language assistant. And many Germans seem to just love practicing their English too. I have been in situations where I have been chatting with people in German for half an hour and when they find out I'm British, there is no stopping them!

I know what a historical narrative. But I'm surprised that you seem to unaware of the concept of hidden agenda and that perhaps 'deniers' aren't particularly interested in the empirical truth.


The day I'm intellectually unprepared for a debate with you lot is the day I make an appointment at the Alzheimer's Screening Clinic.

But again; did Atzmon distribute holocaust denial material and broadly endorse it?

"I see FTP hasn't apologised for his abuse yesterday, but maybe he thinks he deserves congratulations for going on a demonstration rather than supporting the Palestinians."

I won't be apologising for anything - I do despise you, you are despicable......

"Local people in Brighton have been campaigning for the last three and a half years against a bomb factory in thier back yard. EDO MBM make componants that are used in weapons deployed against the people of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. For more deatails of the campaign and the factories efforts to suppress protest see: www.smashedo.org.uk"

Thats what it says on the prop for the demo ( http://www.brightonactivist.net/node/612)

And then of course, theres this:
 http://www.smashedo.org.uk/pressreleases/How%20EDO%20Supplies%20the%20Israeli%20Military.htm

So, how was going on that demo not 'supporting the Palestinians'?

You still haven't told us how many people you've publicly labelled as anti-semites since you contacted this list? Heres another chance!

People who deliberately lie rarely do apologise FTP. You said I was posting at home on the internet, not a crime incidentally, whilst you were out demonstrating for the right to protest. Having been on somewhat more EDO demonstrations at the factory I don't think you are in any position to lecture anyone. And as people at EDO will be the first to acknowledge, Brighton Unemployed Centre where I'm based has given more support - financial and material - to EDO than a windbag like you.

The only people I label as anti-Semites or racists are those who are. You are a defender of holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, as my last post demonstrates, so why do you object to the label? After all, your hero Gilad Atzmon says there is no such thing as anti-Semitism anyway. And if he said it, you obviously agree.

Tony G

I was first told of the proper inclusion of Arabs in 'anti-semitic' by a clever well educated Jew at the end of WW2 who was very anxious that those then about to found Israel should find common cause with the Arabs to ensure the long term survival of the Israel.

I have since been told he who first used the phrase was an educated Jew hater, obviously the originator intended it as that insult of calling Jews Arabs. It is fairly certain that many East European Jews are not of Semitic origin in any case. So that anti-semitic Academic was as wrong as all the other Academics and his misrepresentation really should not be allowed in common speech.

Those who put the purely Jewish use to it empower an anti-Jewish racist.

People can be anti-Zionist, or anti-Jewish, or anti Arab. When they are anti all those it is proper to call them anti-semitic. It is then a useful term. Duplicity should be avoided as there is even need for anotther term that includes all three of those, and to go further, the non Jewish Zionists. Words are too precious to squander in misuse.

"You are a defender of holocaust deniers and anti-Semites, as my last post demonstrates"

Your last post demonstrates that you have pulled together a lot of garbage and think it proves something. It is riddled with inaccuracies and downright lies. It is shit of the worst kind.

Now, I know of at least 5 people you have publicly labelled as anti-semites since you contacted this list in October. How many more are there?

The fact that you scatter these accusations around like confetti at a wedding, has the same effect as the widespread use of the term by zionists to villify those who oppose occupation and zionism. It makes the term worthless.

What is clear is that there is no difference between the behaviour of Geniza gehrig and that of the crypto-zionist Greenstein.

Greenie accuses anyone who doesn't make "anti-semitism" their # 1 preoccupation of being a "holocaust denier". And while it's normal to acknowledge and feel pain related to holocausts of the past - the 2nd world war, Cambodia, Vietnam, Chile, Rwanda... the list seems to be endless.... but only a mindless zombi would preoccupy themselves with events which happened 100, 60, or even 30 years ago, when there is a massive genocide unfolding in our own time, right now, THIS WEEK...to a million and a half people in Gaza. That's the holocaust we need to focus on, and it is up to each of us to do whatever we can do to stop it.

Another ONGOING massive holocaust is that suffered by 24 million people of Iraq, which has been utterly destroyed, starting with the gulf war 18 years ago, the use of banned (chemical/nuclear) weapons (highway of death etc), the murderous sanctions, and the "final solution-type" invasion and occupation of the country.

But the Hasbara parrots want the world to stay focused on *** The Holocaust (TM)*** ..... and maybe we won't SEE the extent of the HORROR unfolding before our very eyes, right now, for millions of people.

Well, robo-zios, the hasbara is just not working so well any more.... the world is gradually waking up to the reality.

Well your friend certainly had honourable intentions, but if he knew anything about language he would surely known he was out on a limb with little chance of success.

He tried to saddle language language, and it's not a horse, more akin to a cow.

A brief explanation of how words work. Words are a distinctive collection of "oral" sounds (language is primarily spoken) that represent ideas. Neither the ideas nor the sounds have any meaningful existence with the world outside our heads. There is no logical reason why one set of sounds is better than another. A cow has no use for 'anti-semitism' (AS).

So basically the value of the word is bound up with the idea behind it. Therefore to accuse anyone who uses the word AS as discriminating against Arabs is illogical unlike the intent to do so can be proven. And given that virtually no one associated the words with Arabs it is unlikely.

But if for a moment we indulge your idea and test it quickly falls foul.

The Semite Demographic

1. I have seen little evidence that anyone uses the word Semite to refer to Arabs. In fact to my knowledge, the only people who use the word at all are linguists and archaeologists/historical ethnographers/historians. And even when they use it, they consciously use it as a reference to antiquity.

Repeatable results?

2. Do other references to ancient tribes repeat the same result? If you were to call me a Germanphobe for saying "I hate those Krauts", then by your rules I would have a get out of jail free card by pointing out that the Germanen were a Scandanavian tribe, so all Scandinavians need to be included to make the terminology valid. I can hate the Germans but love the Swedes, and escape being a Germanophobe, despite what the majority of people understand by the term. Or even argue 'I might hate Germans but I'm British and the Anglo-Saxons were Germanic'.

In other words. The meaning of Semite has been long redundant to most and has no associative bearing on the word ant-Semite. It probably has never been in common daily usage at all, let alone associated with Arabs.

The only true meaning of a collection of oral sounds is that given to it by current users, never by its history. If I were to admonish someone with "Don't call me mister! I have no journeymen under my tutelage!" they'd probably rightly reckon I was a tad strange.


Anyway, have you read any Atzmon?

So, what would you call someone who distributes holocaust denial literature and broadly endorses it?

I thought that was exactly what were doing.

Do you not think that Gaza deserves better than having their plight soiled and cheapened by the association with holocaust deniers and racists?

Palestine has a hard enough time getting a fair hearing in the public domain as it is without being further marginalised by false associations with bigots.

Or do you think that bigots that hide ride on the backs of social injustice are to be applauded and encouraged?

It's funny... I see his drivel so often that it almost becomes funny. He thinks he can call a person a groupie because she is a woman. Really progressive thinking.

But, actually, I didn't read all his crap. What's the use when he quotes extensively from an article neither Atzmon, Ftp or I had anything to do with! It's just staggering the idiocy of this approach. But, no, I'm not going to waste my time to trawl through the recycled stuff. I just noticed this little gem and have to get something straight:

Tony: "The idea that Atzmon, Rizzo or any of the others object to going to holocaust denier sites would be amusing if it weren’t so sad. They do it all the time."

Mary: oh yeah???? Like "when"? Prove it. You are the one who quotes one as an authoritative source, not me! You are the one who links and sends them around and quotes extensive passages of them to defend your position.

I'd say that puts you on their fringe.

But, of course, you're not a Holocaust Denier. You just accuse others of being ones. This is your problem. Look, you can read any site you want. I have no problem with it. But YOU are the one putting up the link and taking the stuff as gospel, and then you throw aspersions on US about the site? Get your shit straight. Or please, get out more often. I can't imagine how much time you spend at a computer. And, HOW you spend it! Smearing Gilad, ftp and me because you think you should or can.

I wish you had the idea of what the people I know think of you. They are getting intolerant of your tricks and they may decide to say something. You never learn when to give up. You simply cannot lose gracefully. What a shame that all of us have to suffer your insufferance.

Gilad Atzmon has distributed -- and defended in general terms -- an essay by Paul Eisen designed to promote Holocaust denial. The Eisen essay, titled "Holocaust Wars," claims among other things that the gas chambers of Auschwitz are fraudulent and couldn't work. It "backs up" this claim using the same lies used by the leading lights (such as they are) of the Holocaust denial movement -- people like David Irving, the self-described "Hitler-lover" Ernst Zündel, and the faux engineer Fred Leuchter.

When you defend Paul Eisen's essay, you're defending the very same lies promulgated by the "Hitler-lover" Zündel, his flunky Leuchter, and his admirer David Irving. Yet this is what Gilad Atzmon does.

Now, if you think I'm exaggerating by calling Paul Eisen's essay "Holocaust denial propaganda," you might want to skip to the last section of the post, in which I document exactly that. For now, it suffices to say that Eisen has said "... the evidence for the use of homicidal gas-chambers [at Auschwitz] is not good at all. The evidence against it is much, much stronger."  http://www.haloscan.com/comments/thecutter/117192641046077827/

And the following paragraph from the essay Atzmon circulated gives little room for doubt on where Eisen stands:

"Many will take the view that Holocaust revisionism [the boilerplate euphemism for the Holocaust denial movement] is but pernicious nonsense motivated only by a hatred of Jews and a desire to rehabilitate Hitler and National Socialism specifically, and fascism in general, and therefore not even worthy of scrutiny. I don't agree, and those with sufficient curiosity to wish to research the subject can visit the website of the premier Revisionist think tank, the [fascist-founded, though Eisen doesn't mention that] Institute for Historical Review, locate the Journal of Historical Review and its archive of articles and papers and start reading."

I'll describe the "Institute for Historical Review" in a little more detail below. You can find the Eisen essay itself, the one Gilad Atzmon thought was so brilliant, by googling "Eisen 'Holocaust wars'"; you'll pull it up on a number of "Poor Hitler was misunderstood" sites like Ernst Zündel's.

What was Gilad Atzmon's reaction recently when he was challenged over having distributed a stack of standard-issue Holocaust denier lies? "I am happy i circulated Eisen and he is indeed a friend of mine."  http://www.haloscan.com/comments/thecutter/8761647492477468265/

Is Atzmon an open Holocaust denier, as Tony Greenstein claims? Not quite; he's got too much to lose to go around saying openly what Eisen does. But Atzmon clearly has no serious problem with circulating pro-denial essays or praising Holocaust deniers, as shown by his decision to distribute Eisen's essay, a decision he's "happy" about. And when challenged about the propriety of spreading the lies of Nazi apologists, Atzmon resorts to the same line of patter I describe in the next section.

-- Some notes on the Holocaust denial movement.

One of the favorite lines of patter of the Holocaust denial movement is that nothing should be taboo when it comes to studying history. They're right -- or at least they're right if by "studying" you mean studying, not "making up lies about." Unfortunately, they mean the latter.

It helps to remember some facts about the Holocaust denial movement.

And the first thing to notice is that the Holocaust denial movement is and has been for thirty years a product of the racist right, the brownshirt right. Ernst Zündel -- the guy who paid for the Leuchter report I'll discuss below -- let us know exactly where he stands politically when he wrote the book, "The Hitler We Loved and Why."

The Holocaust denial movement in America was also a product of the racist right; the "Institute for Historical Review" -- for decades the leading Holocaust denial organization in the US -- was funded by Willis Carto, a former Bircher who led it for more than a decade.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Carto

And, of course, David Irving -- well, nobody's about to argue that *he's* in any way a political progressive, right? His racism was completely exposed in the Lipstadt trial, but so was his tendency to speak to neo-Nazi organizations.

Like any crackpot organization, Holocaust deniers have two core ideas. One is that the Holocaust was vastly exaggerated by the greedy Jews. The second -- common ground for all crackpot organizations -- is that they are being censored and persecuted for their ground-breaking views. (Name a crackpot who doesn't claim he's being persecuted for his ideas. It's part of the syndrome.)

When legitimate historians refuse to debate Holocaust deniers -- for exactly the same reason that legitimate astronomers don't debate flat-earthers -- Holocaust deniers do the "nothing should be taboo in historical study" dance. Which sounds pretty good, if you've removed it from context.

The context, though, is this: the Holocaust *has* been very widely studied and will continue to be very widely studied. And from the very beginning these studies have shown that Holocaust deniers are full of shit. (I'll give a specific example below.)

They're like -- although considerably nastier than -- the "intelligent design" folks, who start from an absolutist religious position but try to dress it up as if it were a scientific position. Scientists see right through "intelligent design," just like historians see right through Holocaust denial, which is antisemitism trying to pass for historical inquiry. The Holocaust denial movement starts from the stance, "the brownshirts weren't as bad as they say, and The Jews are lying," and then tries, through pseudo-scholarship, to make that seem like it might be a legitimate historical stance, rather than an expression of basic antisemitism.

-- a note on law

A key difference, of course, is that spreading Intelligent Design isn't illegal, while several countries have included Holocaust denial as part of their laws against hate speech. These countries -- all but two, last time I checked, either having been part of the Reich or having been occupied by the Reich -- aren't wrong to consider Holocaust denial a form of hate speech. I think these are bad laws, not because they somehow mischaracterize Holocaust denial (they don't), but because I don't think there should be laws against hate speech as such, except when that speech is used to incite to violence.

Of course, Holocaust deniers -- and their defenders -- natter on about "thought police throwing people into prison" and such, never mentioning that Holocaust denial is only one of many forms of hate speech such laws prohibit.

Having said that, let me repeat that I don't agree with such laws. I think the best way to confront Holocaust denial is simply to show how ridiculous its claims are, when unwrapped from their lies and rhetorical flourishes.

But let's be clear: if you start saying things like "why is investigating the Holocaust taboo" you have bought into the Holocaust denier frame, which is wrong for two reasons. One is that investigating the Holocaust is not taboo; the second is what Holocaust deniers are doing isn't "investigating" but lying.

-- the repackaging of Holocaust denial for leftist consumption

And let's be clear about something else: there are some folks on the left starting to repackage classic, by-the-book Holocaust denial in "anti-Zionist" garb, hoping to spread it over here. Paul Eisen is one, and Gilad Atzmon is self-admittedly "happy" to help him do it. In the new version, tailored for the left, the culprit is not the Jews -- heaven forfend, no! -- but "the Zionists." Same lies, same reliance on Zündel and Leuchter and Faurisson and Irving and the rest of that jackboot lot, new false "anti-Zionist" moustache.

There was an interesting example of this in the US just a few years ago. The nation's oldest regular publication, a progressive magazine called The Nation, ran an ad for a book by Roger Garaudy called "The Founding Myths of Modern Israel." The ad ran for one issue only before it was discovered to be a work of Holocaust denial and pulled. The placing of the ad was a clear and conscious decision by Holocaust deniers to repackage their lies for the left by making the villains not the Jews but "the Zionists" -- even though the ad was placed by the same "Institute for Historical Review" I mentioned above, a group just as happy to blame the Jews.

This -- the antisemitic pile of lies called Holocaust denial -- is what Eisen wants to bring to leftist discourse, and his friend Atzmon is happy to help. Anything that makes you hate "Zionists" is fair game, apparently, even when it's repackaged Nazoid horseshit like Holocaust denial. They're hoping you'll be useful idiots.

But you can't be a useful idiot if you're not an idiot, and the best way not to be an idiot is to educate yourself. So let's take a look at the real sources of Paul Eisen's Holocaust denial.

-- Paul Eisen's essay

Let me start out by saying that I've been following the Holocaust denial movement for over a decade, and that related to the David Irving trial I've probably read, all told, somewhere around three thousand pages of reports, submissions, transcripts, etc. I'm not going to footnote every last thing I write in this section, but be assured that I can, and feel free to ask me for details about the source(s) of any particular fact. I am *so* not making this up.

Here is an example of what Eisen wrote and Gilad Atzmon was so "happy" to have distributed:

"Nothing seems to fit about the gassing story. The numbers of victims crammed into the space, the design and construction of the gassing facilities, the lack of protection for the attendants, the implausibility surrounding the rate of cremation, the huge errors, omissions and disparities in eye-witness accounts -- all these and more, when added to the near total absence of hard affirmative evidence, makes one wonder why anyone believed such a story in the first place..."

Let's just take the very first issue, "the numbers of victims crammed into the space." If you followed the Irving trial in any detail, you already know that this is one of the standard gambits of the Holocaust deniers, and has been for decades. Goes like this: "There simply wasn't enough capacity in the supposed gas chambers of Auschwitz to hold all the Jews who were allegedly murdered there, not even enough room to cram them all in."

Where does this claim come from? It comes from a guy named Fred Leuchter, the twit Ernst "The Hitler We Loved" Zündel paid $35,000 dollars to in the 1980s to produce a bogus "scientific" refutation of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Zündel wanted to prove in Canadian court that the Holocaust didn't happen, and he thought that throwing down a bullshit "engineering report" about the gas chambers would help his case. It didn't. But that document, the "Leuchter Report," has the grim historical hallmark of having been the work that made David Irving decide to become a Holocaust denier himself; Irving published it in the UK under his own imprint and repeatedly referred to it in his talks as an irrefutable blow to the Auschwitz "myth."

I'm not going to link to the Leuchter report; you can find it at your nearest swastika-kissing site. A detailed demolition of the Leuchter report can be found here:  http://hdot.org/trial/defense/van/ix. This is a chapter of the expert report submitted by Auschwitz historian Robert Jan van Pelt as part of the Irving v. Lipstadt trial, and it chops the Leuchter Report into bits.

Well, say what you want about whether or not Leuchter is an antisemite, but he's certainly an idiot, and his "Report" is full of appalling idiocies, many of which have been taken up by Paul Eisen and spread, in turn, by Gilad Atzmon. Leuchter made his calculation of the gas chamber capacity at Auschwitz and concluded that there just wasn't enough. His calculation is, as van Pelt shows, full of all sorts of stupid assumptions and errors -- Leuchter vastly overestimated fatal HCN concentration levels, he ignored the presense of a ventilation system Leuchter didn't notice, vastly overestimated the minimum possible time between gassings, etc., etc.

But maybe the single dumbest factor of Leuchter's calculation is this: he assumes that -- despite eyewitness accounts of how packed the "showers" were -- that each person, required *nine* square feet of standing room within the gas chamber, man, woman, or child.

Why such a ridiculously large figure? Because he wasn't trying to get at the facts; he wasn't "studying" the chambers; he was instead trying to force his numbers to fit his pre-ordained conclusion, as bought and paid for by Ernst "The Hitler We Loved and Why" Zündel.

So he lied. And Ernst Zündel picked up that lie ("not enough floor space") and ran with it. Why not? He paid for it. And then David Irving picked it up as well, when he started selling copies of the Leuchter report in the UK. And the lie wound its way through the Holocaust denial movement as a standard part of the "gas chambers wouldn't work" saga. And it is as part of that saga that the Holocaust denier Paul Eisen picked it up -- without mentioning its source -- and put it into his love letter to Ernst Zündel, the very same "Holocaust Wars" essay Gilad Atzmon was so "happy" he circulated for his "good friend."

@%<

We support Tony Greenstein all the way!

Just to say that we stand alongside ENGAGE and WORKER'S LIBERTY in our support of Tony Greenstein, who, at the end of the day, remains one of us - a Jew! True, he has been criticising a few of our more forceful policies over the years from inside the so-called Left, but as an insider, he was able to learn the way it works in England. Nothing wrong with that. Thankfully at last he has become a mensch and I personally no longer consider him an enemy of Israel. Musseltov Tony, and we stand in solidarity with you.

not to be missed...

 http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/2007/04/tony-greenstein-in-three-easy-steps.html