500 scholars blast C-Span over Irving
JTA reports that more than 500 scholars have now signed a petition blasting C-Span's decision to air a talk by Holocaust-denier David Irving. JTA reports, "The petition was organized by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in response to the U.S. cable network's decision to broadcast a talk by David Irving alongside a lecture by Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt. Lipstadt later rescinded permission for C-Span to tape her talk. Irving lost a lawsuit against Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, in 2000, after Lipstadt accused Irving of being a Holocaust denier.
"'The Holocaust is not a topic with 'opposing views.' It is a historical fact. Giving a platform to a Holocaust-denier to 'balance' a Holocaust historian is as outrageous as giving a platform to the Flat Earth Society to balance a speech by an astronomer,' Wyman Institute Director Rafael Medoff said." (JTA, March 25)
Well said, Rafael. But...
...Ms. Lipstadt has some problems of her own, as pointed out in a commentary for Alternet by yours truly...
***Holocaust C-Span Controversy
***Holocaust C-Span Controversy: More than 500 prominent historians
and other scholars have now signed the petition protesting C-SPAN's plan to
broadcast a lecture by Holocaust-denier David Irving on its program "Book
TV." The latest signatories include such prominent scholars as New Republic
editor-in-chief Dr. Martin Peretz, Harvard Law School Prof. Alan Dershowitz,
and Dr. Michael Walzer; Eric Foner, Simon Schama, and Istvan Deak, of
Columbia; David Brion Davis, Harold Bloom, and Paul Kennedy of Yale; and
Charles Maier and Richard Pipes of Harvard. (HNN, March 26)
Is that sampling representative?
Glad to see Eric Foner on the list, but he appears to be the token lefty. Dershowitz and Pipes are montsers in their own right. (Not sure about that Harold Bloom character.) Where are Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Howard Zinn, who usually never pass up an opportunity to sign a petition? Why must the left cede the issue of anti-Semitism to the right?
The issue of anti-Semitism has been so successfully and for so long used as propaganda by the Zionists, that the left is now deadly afraid to even touch it. Which is, I suppose, understandable in a purely intellectual sense, but in no sense forgiveable. What political myopia and moral cowardice. It merely entrenches the perception, so long cultivated by our enemies, that anti-Semitism is now the domain of the left, not the right, and that anti-Zionism is always just a mask for Jew-hatred. Hannah Arendt would shit.
That Bloom character
Bloom called Bush a fascist in the NYT. Lately he has been referring to him as "Benito Bush."