The mainstream media generally refrains from giving a platform to far-right extremists with fascist or neo-Nazi backgrounds. Yet, no such stigma appears to be attached to the promotion of extreme far-left ideologues, despite the fact that Marxism and communism have also historically been responsible for mass murder and the stifling of individual freedoms.
While left-wing anti-Zionism has seeped into the mainstream, there are still radical and appalling charges that belong on the fringes of accepted debate. One of these is the false accusation that Zionists actively collaborated with the Nazis.
So why does Australia’s ABC Radio ask on the transcript page of its “Religion Report”:
“Which Israeli Prime Minister in his youth was a member of an organisation that offered to collaborate with the Nazis at the height of World War II, because of their shared racial ideology of blood and soil? This question is answered by American civil rights activist and Anti-Zionist Lenni Brenner, the author of “Zionism in the age of the dictators.”
The charge of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis is a form of Holocaust revisionism that is barely deserving of a response. (The history of the Holocaust has been exhaustively researched and is covered by a large number of reputable online sources.) A regular accusation employed by Soviet propagandists in the 1970s, this falsehood was trumpeted by Marxist Lenni Brenner’s book in 1983 as a means to delegitimize Israel as a fascist and Nazi state. Classical Holocaust deniers claim that the mass extermination of the Jews never took place or seek to minimize the numbers of the dead. Left-wing revisionists such as Brenner do not deny that mass murder took place but seek to blame Zionist Jews for the actions of the Nazis.
Michael Ezra points outs that:
“The neo-Nazi right was delighted with Brenner’s book. An article that Brenner originally wrote for the London magazine Middle East International was subsequently reprinted by the American neo-Nazi publication Spotlight. The Australian far right also approved. Eric Butler, Director of League of Rights, wrote a long letter quoting Brenner’s work.
It would appear that in 1986 the neo-Nazi publishing house Noontide Press reprinted Brenner’s book. Noontide Press specializes in hate literature. Amongst other books Noontide published include The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry by Arthur Butz and Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood. Noontide also publishes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford’s The International Jew, both of which claim that Jews are plotting to take over the world.”
Abusing the memory of 6 million murdered Jews is a malicious method to attack Israel and has most recently been employed by Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Why has ABC indulged an extremist like Lenni Brenner?
Click here – http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/religionandethicsreport/contact/– to send your considered comments to ABC and please send us copies of your e-mails and any responses to [email protected].
FURTHER READING
The ideological background behind left-wing anti-Zionism and Holocaust revisionism is a complicated one but here are a few sources for further reading:
Paul Bogdanor – Information on the role of radical leftists in promoting hatred of Jews and denial of the Holocaust.
Michael Ezra, The Abuse of Holocaust Memory: The Far Right, the Far Left and the Middle East
LA TIMES PUBLISHES RESPONSE TO MAKDISI OP-ED
Our recent critique of Saree Makdisi’s op-ed in the LA Times, which questioned the recognition of Israel, prompted many of you to write letters to the paper. The LA Times has now given op-ed space to Judea Pearl of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, who addresses Makdisi’s arguments:
“Never in the history of nations has a society defined itself on the ruins of a neighboring democracy and never has such society sought sovereignty and international legitimacy while admitting its intent. Makdisi, for example, is not a bit embarrassed to argue for a Palestinian state on Israel’s tomb while quoting from Orwell on language and morality.
The unique demand to recognize Israel’s “right”, not merely its “existence,” reflects the general understanding among students of history that the core of the conflict and its resulting sufferings lies not in resource or border disputes, but in a deep ideological resistance by Palestinian Arabs to accommodate any form of a Jewish homeland in any part of Palestine since the end of World War I, accompanied by a persistent denial of any historical connection between the Jewish people and their national birthplace.”
