Thursday, September 3, 2009
Today Britain declared war on Germany. Here's an original BBC broadcast which includes Neville Chamberlin's utterly chagrined declaration.
Spanish paper El Mundo remembers the day by including an interview with David Irving: Spanish paper: Irving 'expert' on WWII
First the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet cited freedom of the press as its justification for accusing IDF soldiers of harvesting Palestinian organs. Now the Spanish daily El Mundo is using the same argument to defend including Holocaust denier David Irving among its list of experts to be interviewed this week to mark 70 years since the start of World War II.
An interview with Irving, who served time in an Austrian prison for his Holocaust denial, is scheduled to appear in the paper on Saturday, a day after an interview with Yad Vashem's chairman Avner Shalev.
When Israeli Ambassador to Spain Raphael Schutz learned of the plans, he wrote a letter to the newspaper, saying it was obscene to include Irving in the list of experts and give him an esteemed platform. Such exposure, Schutz argued, lent Irving credibility.
Schutz's letter appeared in the paper on Wednesday.
Schutz wrote that one of the problems facing the post-modern age was an inability to recognize anything as true, saying instead that there were only "different narratives."
As such, Schutz wrote, there was no capacity to differentiate between truth and lies, between the important and the superfluous. And in this world void of truth, everything is at the same level - the murderer and the victim, the wise and the ignorant, Mozart's opera and the latest pop song.
Even freedom of the press, Schutz wrote, had limits. One sentence that was edited out of his letter was his charge that the paper was printing the interview to cause a sensation.
The paper's response, which was run under the letter, was not to endorse Irving's ideas, but rather to cite press freedom and the right for everyone to decide on their own...
Irving isn't just an anti-Semite, he's a serial prevaricator. That's double the reason he shouldn't be put forward as an expert on anything. El Mundo's silly excuse of letting the people decide on their own is absurd. The average person would have no ability whatsoever to weigh the conclusions of people put forward as experts. Even relatively well-informed individuals would be hard put to sort through an Irving's clever lies. Is El Mundo really so divorced from the idea of their own responsibility not to understand this? They are not alone as this is a common characteristic of the modern press with its J-School grads who are themselves expert at nothing but the craft of journalism.
[via: CAMERA]
Norm Geras explains with his crisp language and logic why El Mundo's excuses do not stand the test of the argument's logic:
"The Spanish newspaper El Mundo has included David Irving in a list of experts to be interviewed in connection with the anniversary of the Second World War; Irving is to follow Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem. Challenged over this by the Israeli Ambassador to Spain, what does El Mundo say?
The paper's response... was not to endorse Irving's ideas, but rather to cite press freedom and the right for everyone to decide on their own.
The same plea as in the Aftonbladet case and just as pathetic. Freedom of the press obliges no newspaper to give space in its pages to a Holocaust-denier. Everybody knows this. Saying the contrary is a sign either of stupidity or of not caring about the propagation of untruths on this particular question."
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/09/abuse-of-the-free-press-argument.html
Norm is very tolerant towards el Mundo. In my opinion, they were just looking for an excuse to allow this Holocaust-denier a place to publish his views. They know he is propagating lies but they can't resist the temptation to inflict more pain upon Jews. There is a sadistic intention in all of this.
I think your sadism comment is spot-on. I think there's a measure of phony-bravery as well. How many times have you seen (or could swear see it while you read) that imperious pose as someone says something shitty about the Jews or Israel and then hides behind the free speech argument when they're criticized. How brave they are! And so often how smarmy and arrogant.
I think your sadism comment is spot-on.
I think if one takes into account the funding by Britain, Spain and Holland of illegal construction of houses and other buildings and anti-fence protests by Palestinians, the blood-libels of the "free press" media, Sarkozy giving an award to Charles Enderlin of al-Dura blood libel fame then sadistic is the wrong word to describe the current behaviour.
It is more like a concerted effort to de-legitimize the Jews once more in the eyes of the world by de-humanizing the Israelis.