HMD censors events

The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign have announced that the trustees of Holocaust Memorial Day have pulled off mention of their events from the HMD website.

The SPSC are showing the play Perdition this week in events they have organised to mark the occasion. The work highlights the role that Zionists in Hungary had in collaborating with the Nazis. HMD claims this is "anti-Semitic".

The SPSC had advocated that everyone should engage positively with HMD. Here's their announcement:

Now the official Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website has pulled from its website announcements of seven Scottish events in three Scottish cities:

1. an inclusive Round-Table discussions of the Holocaust, with Jewish, Gypsy, disabled and gay contributors.
2. talks by Holocaust historian Lenni Brenner, to include the role of Zionist political groups in the Holocaust tragedy.
3. rehearsed readings of Jim Allen’s play Perdition, a powerful dramatisation of a trial that rocked Israel, on the collaboration of some Zionist leaders with the Nazis in wartime Hungary.  The play was first directed by Ken Loach, now one of Britain's greatest film directors.

Please call and email the Holocaust Memorial Trust to demand that the ban be rescinded and that space be allowed to discuss Palestine today, as well as the Zionist role in the Holocaust: Call Nick Joseph at 0845 838 1883 (cost of a local call from anywhere in the UK) and email at nick.joseph@hmd.org.uk

The SPSC organised the events to

1. remind people of the scale, scope and insane dynamic of the Nazis mass killings of WWII
2. discuss the flight of many Jewish Holocaust survivors from Europe after WWII to British-occupied Palestine
3. show the links between the bitter tragedy of European Jews and the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine from 1948 to today

In a telephone conversation with Mick Napier, Scottish PSC Chair, on Friday afternoon, HMD Trust Chief Executive Officer Nick Joseph said he had received 'three or four complaints' across the UK and had then asked two distinguished academics to assess Perdition for the HMD.  The two un-named 'distinguished academics' had decided, he said, that Perdition is 'anti-Semitic', as a result of which all seven events had been withdrawn from the website.  Mr. Joseph told a subsequent caller, SPSC member Marion Woolfson, that the two authorities he solicited were none other than Martin Gilbert and David Cesarani, the two militant Zionists who led the slanderous attacks on Perdition when it first appeared in 1987.  No reasons were given for the pulling of the lectures by Lenni Brenner or the inclusive round-table discussions on the Holocaust.

It is ludicrous to label Perdition, a play which dramatises a real 1954 Israeli libel trial, as racist.  Perdition lionises some of its Jewish characters, and indicts others.   Jim Allen's reference to the collaboration with the Nazis of the Zionist leaders of Hungary's Jews is, in fact, precisely the charge made against these same leaders by Jewish Auschwitz escapee, Rudolph Vrba:

"The Jewish leaders in Hungary, though knowing the truth, the detailed facts about Auschwitz, did nothing...Had they spoken, they might have changed the history books which record mournfully that 400,000 Jews were transported to Auschwitz and died without resistance. As an ex-prisoner of Auschwitz-Birkenau...I cannot emphasise sufficiently strongly that secrecy was the main key to its successful operation." 

The 1954 trial's Israeli presiding judge, Ha'levi, found the Hungarian Zionist leader, Kastner, guilty of a betrayal of the Jewish masses through his collaboration with the Nazis.  Judge Ha'levi went on to say that when Kastner accepted the Nazi offer of safe passage to Palestine for 600 Jews, whom he could nominate, 'Kastner had sold his soul to the devil.' 

The charge of 'anti-Semitism' is mere dust in our eyes, a threadbare tactic to silence criticism of political Zionism, past or present.  George W. Bush desperately tries to label all hostility to US crimes abroad as 'anti-American': we shouldn't fall for the same trick from political Zionists.

Full details at www.scottishpsc.org.uk 

Comments

[aineliva]

A heavy emphasis on "Militant Zionism" here. Perhaps they are a little intimidated by "Militant Islam", after the Channel4 documentary.

As there are not to my knowledge Rabbi's in UK Synagogues calling for the annihilation of the "Gentile", perhaps we can be less scared of Zionists.

But I'm still scared of Anti-Semites, and Christophopes.

[joe90]

Well,
let me enlighten you then!

From the
Scotish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign
http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1688&Itemid=31>Israeli Ambassador Visit to Scotland Cancelled in Face of Planned Protests

The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign deplores the decision of the Newton Mearns Synagogue authorities to invite the Israeli Ambassador to deliver a political speech there on Thursday November 23. In the immediate aftermath of the murderous invasion of Lebanon, and the ongoing massacres in Palestine, this is a desecration of a house of worship: a religious venue is being used by the representative of the state of Israel to propagate his murderous views.

For years we have stood by whilst the most revolting lies have been disseminated from the 'Israeli Information Office' in Giffnock, skulking inside a Jewish community centre there. Now the dispossessed and tortured Palestinian victims of Israel's crimes cry out to heaven for justice, and cry out to decent people around the world for action to bring Israel’s never-ending ethnic cleansing to an end.

Press Release by SPSC
15 11 2006

I hope that clears the matter up.

You can also try
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/>Jews sans Frontiere blog -
- where you will discover articles such as this one -
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2005/12/chief-rabbis-aid-to-christian-aid.html>Chief Rabbi's aid to Christian Aid
- throughtout its archives,
on the important role some so-called 'Jewish' organisations and personages in Britian play in supporting Israel's decades old racist war crimes campaign.

As you know,
war crimes by western powers and their puppets aren't considered even newsworthy - not as newsworthy as the much lesser crime of terrorism, and the crimes of our victims for having the gall to resist our efforts to occupy and rule over their lives and country using military violence.

[John Palubiski]

Yes, great fanfare for Palestine and trite twadle about WWII Hungary.

All this while Osama ignores the Channel 4 Islamist elephant in his own back yead.

He reserves the right to pontificate on things that don't concern him and which have no connection whatsoever with someone of South Asian origin.

A Muslim pundit who avoids Muslim issues except for those which present an opportunity to murmer "islamophobia", to slander the surrounding society and to abuse the freedoms that society has provided doesn't leave much to work with.

For how much longer can such a person be of any use to the UK?

Osama, the Palestinian cause, something I once supported, has lost my sympathy and the awkward and maladroit efforts to elevate the term "Islamophobia" to the ranks of "anti-Semitic" is a howler.

The former, you see, has no basis in reality, no emotional impact. It is the hobby-horse, the cobble-potted construct of a few envious Bronze Age fanatics resentful that Jews enjoy a great deal of public sympathy in the west.

It is the term Tariq Ramadan invokes to censure various works by Voltaire and Rousseau.

And if you think this initiative is imbued with islamic solidaity, think again.

South Asians are despised in the Arab world. Most Palestinians wouldn't give you the time of day.

Among the millions of guest workers in the Middle East it is only the Black Africans that rank lower than South Asians.

Such slave/master solidarity is unbecomming

[joe90]

All this while Osama ignores the Channel 4 Islamist elephant in his own back yead.

Yes
the famous Channel 4,
the makers of 'Big Brother' which uses racism to boost its pathetic viewing ratings, and are now being threatened with losing their public broadcasting licence because of it -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6283833.stm>Schools 'must act on Brother row'
BBC
21 Jan 2007
and
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6285935.stm>TV bosses hold Big Brother summit
BBC
22 Jan 2007

ps
pinheadski,
anything more to add on the crusades, and your complete lack of knowledge of them?

- now this cultural non-entity is mentioning the bronze-age!

[Sohaib]

John, your racist bile is despicable. How dare you suggest that someone who is "South Asian" should keep silent about a matter of universal concern. Or even if it were not so, it is a concern of his. It's his blog. Why do you even come here to be such a prat? In fact you seem to live on Muslims' blogs to be a prat. Does someone pay you for this? Are you a professional prat?

[Osama]

Aineliva, you're making the common mistake of using the terms "Judaism" and "Zionism" interchangeably.

[John Palubiski]

The point of this blog is not to chronicle everything going on in the world anyway

That was Osama's response when I encouraged him to post on the channel 4 documentary.

He cannot comment on something originating in the UK, but yet pontificates on situations to be found thousands of miles from Enlgand and having nothing to do with daily life here.

And as for universal concerns, Sohaib; what happens when those universal concerns contradict or fly in the face of an islamist agenda?

Just checked the headlines. Some 80 people, all muslims, have been killed in Iraq today by suicide bombers, all of whom were Muslims.

However, the day is still young, so perhaps, Sohaib, you angst for "universal concerns" may still resurface!

And the racism practised in the Middle East by Arabs against non-Arab Muslims is very, very real, Sohaib.

I thought I'd mention that because racism IS a universal concern, and anyone, no matter their skin-colour, can engage in it.

[joe90]

but yet pontificates on situations to be found thousands of miles from Enlgand and having nothing to do with daily life here

- this is about the only thing you've ever said that's true.

Osama is of course Scottish, and so is his blog, the last time I looked.

You're absolutely right it has little to do with England as such,
much in the same way you have little to do with reality, peanutbrainski.

You aren't a million miles away from Scotland yet you have no idea about this blog or where it's coming from - typical English bias.

You've a cheek to criticise others for having a view about stuff going on far away, and yet you've no idea what's even under your own nose!.

[Sohaib]

It's also lost on John that the topic is a play held in Scotland. And that it relates to the British 'battlefield' of ideas and agendas.

SPSC elaborated in a press release that Nick Joseph, Acting Chief Executive Holocaust Memorial Trust gave the following explanation:

"In our opinion, the play is anti-Semitic because it purports to reveal a vast conspiracy in which Zionists in Nazi Europe, London and Washington conspired with the Nazis to bring about the deaths of millions of Jews in order to achieve the creation of the State of Israel. A common theme of anti-Semitism is the existence of a world conspiracy in which Jews control London and Washington, in effect, blaming them for millions of deaths. The play, therefore, labels Jews and the whole Zionist movement as complicit in the Holocaust."

You might as well say: "Pure water doesn't boil at 100 degrees Celcius: the Nazis used to believe so, so repeating this claim is anti-Semitic."

[Mikey]

This particular play is ahistorical. In fact it is a travesty of the truth. For example in the main post above - It discusses the judgment by Judge Ha'levi yet ignores that of the Supreme Court which overturned the decision.

The comments by Rudolf Vrba - are not all the charges of Perdition. Perdition uses a combination of fact and fiction to try and paint a picture of the Holocaust in Hungary and the actions of Jewish leaders in Palestine, UK and America.

This particular part of the Holocaust has been well documented by Professor Randolph Braham in America, Professor Yehuda Bauer and Professor Yechiam Weitz in Israel and Professor Szabolcs Szita in Hungary - (amongst others)

The claims made in Perdition do not tally up to scholarly sources. In reality the "facts" contained in the play had more to do with the work of an American Trotskyist by the name of Lenni Brenner than any recognised or respected historian on the subject.

The play simply paints a false picture. The Holocaust is a very sensitive matter for the Jewish population as in total about 1/3 of their global number were wiped out by the event - There is no reason that plays about the matter should not be staged - but the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust should not be promoting a play that contains false information.