Posted on 12/23/2006 1:58:30 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
Holocaust denier David Irving on Friday said Jews should ask themselves why they have been hated throughout history.
"They [Jews] should ask themselves the question, 'Why have they been so hated for 3000 years that there has been pogrom after pogrom in country after country?', said Irving, speaking at a press conference he convened in England on Friday, a day after he was released from an Austrian prison.
Irving, who was sentenced to three years in prison for denying the Holocaust, was released last week after his appeal was granted.
Asked if he sees himself as anti-Semitic, Irving said, "No, I like to think I am not."
But immediately following his answer, Irving expressed his support for Mel Gibson's comments that "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."
Irving also took pride in the success of his books and claimed that he the fortune he made from sales of his biography on World War II German General Erwin Rommel enabled him to walk into a car showroom with a paper bag stuffed with cash to buy a "Nigger brown Rolls-Royce."
Irving's comments aroused great anger within Britain's Jewish community.
Lord Janner, president of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said Irving's release was "unwarranted" and that Irving's "latest comments were totally to be expected and should be totally ignored."
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
The Jewish population was not limited to "Palestine." The Disapora extended to most of the known world. Jews are known to have been in China, and India as well as Ethioipia. My quess is that neighbors were drawn to the Jewish faith. Christian missionaries seems to have followed Jewish routes. So "Jews" were also persons of other races, plus they had fellow-travelers who patronized the Jews but stopped short of actual membership. (Easier for women than men to get in, of course).
So do most Western democracies, at least to a far greater extent than the US. Don't get me wrong; I'm a big fan of the US approach, and I'm as close to absolutist on the 1st Amendment as I am on anything. And I agree that attempting to shut down speech just drives it underground, and the more effective strategy is to drag it into the open and counter it.
But America isn't the world; even in free, pluralistic democracies, most people in the world have more faith in government than Americans do. We're fronteir folk. The foundation of our national philosophy came from folks who crossed the ocean at great risk with no guarantees, just to be left the hell alone.
Even Canadians, who are as culturally similar to Americans as anyone elese on Earth, have far more tolerance for restrictions than we do. On the spectrum between freedom and order, there's a pretty broad range that can still be considered free and democratic, and Americans are pretty much outliers at the freedom end of the line.
The facts that most Western (and Westerm-influenced, like Japan, S. Korea and Turkey) democracies accept more restrictions on speech and also tolerate higher taxes in exchange for a more comprehensive welfare state are not coincidental. They're both symptoms of the same underlying cause, that most folks trust their governments more than we do and trust individual initiative and corporate power less.
It's easy to defend the American version of things philosophically, and there are plenty of people who can do it better than I. It's also pretty easy to point at America's unprecedented material prosperity and military power as a sign of its pragmatic value. But the fact that like-minded societies differ from ours by degrees doesn't make them antithetical.
Irving set out to make himself a martyr. He made it his mission to test the law, and he lost. He wanted to be Europe's version of Larry Flynt, to stretch the envelope, but the difference is he chose the wrong cause and the wrong venue.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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David Irving has more important things to worry about than Jews.
Hmmm, this scenario sounds familiar.
By the way, how many pages are there in the EU's Constitution?
This is memorably captured in "Little Big Man," one of my favorite movies, where the tribe calls itself simply "the human beings."
And their names for the next tribe over usually go back to "the other people," or "the evil people," or "those cannibals over the hill."
One of the enduring controversies in American anthropology is what to call the pre-Columbian cliff-dwellers in the Four Corners region, whom Westerners have traditionally called the "Anasazi." Anasazi is a Navajo word that means, more or less, "our ancient enemies." The Hopi, who consider themselves the descendents of ... um, those folks, still bristle at the name.
The only really obnoxious, but very smart, one I ever knew was indeed from New York City. He was a walking talking stereotype. His name was even Stanley, like the doorman in Crocidile Dundee.
Some of the co-crazies of Mr. Irving beat the snot out of him one day, came really close to killing him in fact. He wasn't *that* obnoxious, especially for a PhD physicist. Fortunately his company took good care of him, even flying his mother in to Dallas from New York City.
It wasn't until the mid-to-late 17th Century in most European countries that jews were allowed to own property, serve in the rulers' military, practice the learned professions of law, medicine or clergy and most businessmen tradesmmen engaged in patent discrimination by sub rosa not hiring jews or blantly posting notices that ''Jews need not apply.'' Thus, virtually the only areas of commerce and employment available were banking and becoming one's own small business owner. In those fields most showed such adeptness and acumen that many were able to accumulate significant wealth. Without the ability to reinvest such proceeds in real property and since lending and the collection of interest were without any adverse moral taint, they often became the object of even greater and widespred scorn by the rest of society.
Not any of them that I knew. Two were my next door neighbors in Plano Texas for Pete's sake. One was from Memphis or somewhere in Tennessee, the others were from Missouri, she from Kansas City, he from St. Louis. Her parents could, if they were still living (which they might be, but doubtful, they were OLD when they had her), having come through the death camps that Irving says didn't exist. His family, great grandparents I think, came in through the port of Galveston, rather than Ellis Island, around 1900 sometime. She used to like to dress up as a witch, big nose, green face, and all, for Halloween. Can't get much more part of Americana than that. She made a great witch too, having her own long dark hair, and other witch-like features, only the nose and skin color were artificial, scared the pee right out of a few little kids.
They did celebrate Hanneka rather than Christmas, and Passover rather than Easter. They especially liked the Fourth of July. and he is gun owner. My younger daughter and their older one were great friends. They also owned a timber shepherd, who thought she was a cat.
Not everywhere. Pre 1900, Jews in Poland and Russia were farmers, small shopkeepers and pretty much the lower level of society. Not all of them of course.
OTOH, not a few Jews in Italy, Spain, Turkey, especially Turkey, were the "rich bankers and merchants" of the stereotype.
6. They are big supporters of socialism which tends to turn conservatives against them.
That's a recent thing, late 19th and 20th century mostly. Jews were persecuted and hated long before then.
Dumbest thing I've heard in many moons, except when reading Supreme Court decisions of late. Why would the Soviets pressure people to underestimate how many Germans the English had killed? If anything they'd want the Brits to look bad. OTOH, maybe they didn't want the Brits to get the credit for killing so many Germans. Germans not being held in high regard at the time.
That's part of the Nicene Creed, which Lutherans, and many others, use as well as Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. In that Context "Catholic" means something like "Universal" not necessarily "Roman Catholic".
The version from the Lutheran Service Book (2006) reads:
And I believe in one holy Christian and apostolic Church, I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.
There's even a Arabic version of the creed. (Because there are several types of Arab Christians, plus Persian ones)
قانون الايمان با لحقيقة أؤمـن بإله واحد، آب ضابط الكل خـالق السماء والأرض, ما يرى وما لا ي وبرب واحد يسوع المسيح, ابن الله الوحيد, المولود من الآب قـبل كل الدهور, نور من نور, إله حق من إله حق, مولود غـير مخلوق, واحـد مع الآب فى الجوهـر, الذى به كان كل شئ, الذى من أجلنا نحن البشر ومن أجل خلاصنا نزل من السماء, وتجسّد من الروح القـدس ومن مريم العـذراء, وتأنّس, وصُلِب عـنّا عـلى عهد بيلاطس البنطى, وتألّم, وقُـبر, وقام من بين الأموات فى اليوم الثالث كما فى الكتب, وصعد إلى السماوات وجلس عن يمين الآب, وأيضًا يأتى فى مجده ليدين الأحياء والأموات, الذى ليس لملكه إنقضاء, نعم أؤمن بالروح القدس, الرب المحيى, المنبثق من الآب قبل كل الدهور, نسجد له ونمجده مع الآب والابن, الناطق فى الأنبياء, وبكنيسة واحدة, مقدسة, جامعة, رسولية, واعترف بمعمودية واحدة لمغفرة الخطايا وأنتظر قيامة الأموات وحياة الدهر الآتى [edit]
And they've been bastards ever since.
He was able to sell the Dresden story for years. When he started on the Jews. Everything he ever wrote got a second look.
LOL!! The asute ponderings of a wise man, indeed.
He's far too stupid to make a good martyr. Send him to Iraq and see how long he keeps his head. The Muzzies aren't above "doing" those that support them, as long as they are Western Infidels.
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