Miko Peled, who appeared in Ithaca in 2016, now speaking to neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers in Britain

I wonder if it's occurred to the people who organized Miko Peled's talk in Ithaca in 2016 to feel a bit of shame in retrospect, considering that he's now appearing at venues in Britain organized by open neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers? 

Peled is the son of an Israeli general who has decided that Israel is entirely responsible for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He spoke here on November 2, 2016, after giving a talk in Syracuse on September 16 to the Syracuse Peace Council. The Ithaca sponsors were a parade of the local leftist great and good:  Ithaca Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Citizens for Justice in Palestine, Episcopal Peace Fellowship's Palestine/Israel Network, Veterans for Peace, Ithaca Catholic Workers, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Multicultural Resource Center. He spoke at GIAC - the Greater Ithaca Activities Center.

See William Jacobson's report on his visit to Ithaca - https://legalinsurrection.com/2016/10/anti-israel-activist-miko-peled-to-appear-at-city-of-ithaca-youth-center/.

What's he been up to since then?

He just spoke at a church in Soho, as reported by David Collier - http://david-collier.com/church-antisemitism and http://david-collier.com/miko-peled-ian-fantom/. It turns out his talk was sponsored by a group called "Keep Talking," which was founded by a 9-11 Truther named Ian Fantom and a Holocaust denier named Nick Kellerstrom. Other antisemites also attended the meeting, among them Alison Chabloz, who has been convicted and jailed for Holocaust denial (illegal in Britain), and Stephen Sizer, the Anglican vicar who also blames Israel for everything and has cosied up with the Iranian regime.

I'm not holding my breath waiting for his local fans to apologize for bringing him here. Much of his antisemitic reputation was already known at the time he came to Ithaca, and it didn't stop any of them from bringing him. A pity.

More Antisemitism in the Republican party

People obsess about whether Trump or his family members are anti-Jewish. I think it's more important to pay attention to the many other people in the Republican Party who are displaying their open antisemitism, about whom there's no question.

Jim Hagedorn, a Republican running for Congress in Minnesota, "once wrote that former Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman supported the Iraq War because Lieberman is Jewish." (He's also a bigot against many other groups of people, including Native Americans, LGBT people, African Americans, and Irish Americans).

Two Republican members of Congress, Dana Rohrabacher of California (R-Kremlin) and Matt Gaetz of Florida, have once again shown up at a public event with a Holocaust denier, Charles C. Johnson,
"who wrote on Reddit last year that he did not believe that the Auschwitz gas chambers were real or that six million Jews died." Gaetz gave Johnson a ticket to the State of the Union address this year.

This is what Johnson said on Reddit:

During an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit’s alt-right section, Johnson had been queried, “what are your thoughts on the Holocaust, WW2, and the JQ in general?” (“JQ” is neo-Nazi shorthand for the Jewish Question.) Johnson replied, “I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic. I think the Allied bombing of Germany was a ware [sic] crime. I agree…about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real.”

So why is it that antisemites and people who hang around with Holocaust deniers are so easy to find among Republican candidates or office-holders? While I think it's a good idea to keep an eye on the far left for antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism (as I often do on this blog), we have to be equally attentive to how certain people are trying to mainstream antisemitism in the Republican party (which is not to say that the party itself is antisemitic or that more Republicans than Democrats hold antisemitic views).

Holocaust deniers try to disrupt conference on Mennonites and the Holocaust

In March 17 and 18, I went to a conference on Mennonites and the Holocaust that was held at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas. It was very interesting, and I've been meaning to write up my impressions, but haven't gotten to it it.

The conference was disrupted a couple of times by a Mennonite denier of the Holocaust named Bruce Leichty, who was finally kicked off campus by the local police. He attempted to speak a couple of times during the question and answer period after the academic presentations, but was told to leave by the conference organizers.

Update: Lisa Schirch, in a contribution to the blog Anabaptist Historians, describes one of the incidents when Leichty attempted to disrupt the conference:

A Mennonite holocaust denier, Bruce Leichty, attended parts of the conference. Leichty is a California-based lawyer known for representing the Holocaust deniers Ernst Zundel and his Mennonite wife Ingrid Rimland Zundel. Leichty has passed out anti-semitic literature at the past several MCUSA gatherings. At the introduction of the conference, the organizers told the audience there was someone attending the conference who they were watching. But many were not in the room or did not understand what was being said. When Leichty began to ask an offensive question during the conference, the organizers removed him by calling campus security, but did not inform the audience of who the man was or why he was being removed. The lack of communication confused many in the audience.

Two of his compatriots in Holocaust denial, who are affiliated with the antisemitic group Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR), also went to North Newton - Daniel A. McGowan, emeritus professor of economics at Hobart and William Smith College in Geneva, New York, and Henry Herskovitz, who leads a weekly vigil outside a synagogue in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I saw and heard Leichty, but didn't see McGowan or Herskovitz, but apparently Herskowitz was hanging around the auditorium where the conference was held and he was also told to leave campus by the police. Herskovitz wrote up his reaction on his blog, hosted on the DYR website, where he wrote that Leichty was arrested and held by the local police for a number of hours. His arrest is recounted in an article posted on a Holocaust denial website, which I will not link to.

Herskovitz says that he and McGowan intended to give a kind of counter-talk outside the conference at a at a local meeting hall, called "Two Revisionist Jews Consider the Holocaust," and Leichty tried to hand out flyers about this meeting to the people at the conference. In all the reading I've done by and about McGowan, I've never seen the claim that he himself is Jewish, so I'm not sure where the title comes from. [I just looked again at Herskovitz's post, and he provides a link to a farcical document where he and Paul Eisen declare McGowan to be a Jew; Eisen is a co-founder of DYR].

The conference itself was very moving to me as an outsider, because so many of the Mennonite speakers and attendees were obviously troubled by the fraught history of Mennonites during the Holocaust. Mennonites were not persecuted by the Nazi regime, and in some places (Germany, Poland, and Ukraine) some collaborated with the Nazis, even to the extent of being part of one of the Einsatzgruppen (in Ukraine) - the Nazi killing squads that targeted Jews. Some Mennonites did try to protect and hide Jews, but most did not (as most European Christians did not). One of the talks was about Mennonites in the Netherlands who did work to rescue Jews.

Given the pained sincerity of most of the participants in the conference, it was really a violation to have Leichty appear and attempt to disrupt these difficult conversations with his crude and obtuse attacks upon historical truth. It is a pity that he and the other two deniers decided to push their agenda at such an important conference.

Update: Leichty apparently has a long history of pushing his antisemitic and Holocaust denial views among Mennonites. Vic Rosenthal, writing in Fresno Zionist in 2007, describes a talk organized by Leichty in a local Mennonite church. The speaker was Ingrid Rimland Zündel, wife of Ernst Zündel, who was imprisoned in Germany for Holocaust denial. The pastor of the church himself did not want Rimland Zündel to speak, and passed out flyers to try to dissuade people from going in and listening to her.

More on Leichty from the ADL: Anti-Semite Christopher Bollyn Scheduled to Attend 9-11 Events in California. 

Leichty is a problematic figure who has defended a number of Holocaust deniers, including Ernst Zundel, who is imprisoned in Germany for denying the Holocaust. Leichty also represented 9-11 widow Ellen Mariani in lawsuits against various entities she held accountable for her husband’s death. In motion papers, Leichty apparently used research from Bollyn to make spurious accusations against a Jewish judge on the case. In May 2012, the United States Court of Appeals sanctioned Leichty and Mariani for making frivolous arguments before the court and also highlighted the anti-Semitism reflected in the papers filed by Leichty.

Leichty is also a believer in other conspiracy theories, including those about the 9/11 attacks. He belongs to a group called "Lawyers for 9/11 Truth."

Leichty's antisemitism also showed up in a lawsuit he brought on behalf of a widow of a man who died in the 9/11 attacks: 9-11 Widow and Lawyer Sanctioned for Raw and Ugly Antisemitism. For a more objective report, see the New York Times article: Court Penalizes a Lawyer Over Slurs in a 9/11 Filing

More on Deir Yassin Remembered in Ann Arbor

The Michigan Daily, a student newspaper, also reported on the SPLC designation for DYR.

Deir Yassin Remembered, a local group famous for its weekly protests outside Beth Israel Congregation in Ann Arbor, has been placed on a list of hate groups compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center under the subcategory of Holocaust denial. According to the Washtenaw Jewish News, Deir Yassin Remembered is "the only sustained action targeting a Jewish house of worship anywhere in the United States.” 

Mark Potok, editor-in-chief of the SPLC's quarterly journal, explained the addition in a recent interview on Michigan Radio, stating the group defended Nazism. "We list them because over the years they have come to more and more explicitly embrace real-life Holocaust denial," he said. "The kind of Holocaust denial that these people practice is essentially a defense of Germany and National Socialism.”....

Henry Herskovitz, a member of the board of directors for Deir Yassin Remembered and later, a self-described “former Jew,” stirred controversy in 2014 when he campaigned for the release of Ernst Zundel from prison, who was sentenced by a German court to five years in prison for inciting racial hatred through literature he published....

A member of the Beth Israel congregation, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of harassment by Deir Yassin Remembered, said the group's apparent concern with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israeli apartheid were superficial. 

“That is the nominal organization to which they are affiliated, but that is ancillary to their primary motivation,” the member said. “Their primary motivation is a deep anti-Semitism, in the same way as the Ku Klux Klan claims to be defending white rights.”

This is part of the article from the Washtenaw Jewish News (also published in the Michigan Review):

So far as is known, the picket of Beth Israel by Deir Yassin Remembered is the only sustained action targeting a Jewish house of worship anywhere in the United States. The picket has been condemned by members of the Palestinian-American community, by a great number of local clergymen of all faiths, by the mayor of Ann Arbor, the city council, the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, and The Ann Arbor News. On learning of Deir Yassin’s anti-Semitic views, The Ann Arbor Observer and several billboard companies have refused to accept ads from the group. 

Deir Yassin Remembered in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Victor Lieberman, the Raul Wallenberg Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Michigan, has just published an article about the activities of DYR in Ann Arbor, Michigan. One of the leaders of DYR, Henry Herskovitz, lives in Ann Arbor, and has picketed a synagogue there for the last thirteen years, together with a small group of other like-minded haters of Israel and of Jews.

Professor Lieberman reports:

In person outside the synagogue and on their website, DYR activists promote an array of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: Jews built gas ovens in the death camps after World War Two to frame the Germans. Jews created and now control ISIS. Jews destroyed the Twin Trade Towers in New York City on 9/11. 

Jews have organized all the chief terrorist attacks in Europe and America. According to a report in the Washtenaw Jewish News, while standing outside Beth Israel in 2012 a leader of the weekly picket summarized his views in these exact words: "I hate Jews. Whatever happened to them in World War II, they brought on themselves. They deserved everything they got."

He reports about another DYR leader, Paul Eisen, whom I have written about before, "DYR Director Paul Eisen appeared on the radio show of David Duke, the Louisiana anti-Semite, white supremacist, and former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan."

And he also documents DYR's support of Ernst Zundel, a well-known Holocaust denier, who has been jailed in Germany (his native land) for "inciting racial hatred."

DYR leaders campaigned for the release from prison and the rehabilitation of Ernst Zundel, an ani-Semite jailed in his native Germany for "inciting racial hatred." 

During his trial, Zundel's lawyer signed court motions with the words "Heil Hitler." Zundel co-authored a book "The Hitler We Loved and Why," published by White Power Publications, which explained "It was never Hitler's Germany. It shall always be Germany's Hitler....Today, [Hitler's] spirit soars beyond the shores of the White Man's home in Europe. Wherever we are, he is with us. WE LOVE YOU, ADOLF HITLER." 

To express their admiration for Zundel, Henry Herskovitz, who is a member of the Board of Advisors and Directors of DYR, together with Daniel McGowan, Executive Director of DYR, visited Zundel in Mannheim Prison in Germany. In 2014, Herskovitz also posted a picture of himself greeting Holocaust survivors at a memorial ceremony organized for their murdered families with a sign reading "Free Ernst Zundel."

Daniel McGowan writes forward to book by Holocaust denier and antisemite, Germar Rudolf

From the JHate website of Aryeh Tuchman, I learned that Daniel McGowan has written the forward to Germar Rudolf's recent book, Resistance is Obligatory. Rudolf is a German Holocaust denier who has been imprisoned in Germany for his Holocaust denial, which is illegal in Germany. He is currently living in Pennsylvania, unfortunately for those of us who oppose anti-semitism and Holocaust denial. McGowan has been hanging around with Holocaust deniers for quite a long time - for example, he visited Ernst Zundel in prison in Germany when he was also imprisoned for Holocaust denial.

A small excerpt from McGowan's forward, which clearly also displays his antisemitism and Holocaust denial:

An increasing number of scholars and lay people clearly see that something is not right with Elie Wiesel and the current Holocaust narrative. The writings of Germar Rudolf and others simply confirm what they already suspect. They may care little for chemical traces in the brickwork at Auschwitz or topological evidence of mass graves, but they have seen other historical events substantially revised and they are suspicious of the outrage and scorn heaped upon those who question the uniqueness and scope of this particular event, especially when it is used to persecute Palestinians and promote endless war in the Middle East. 

That Jews suffered greatly during the Third Reich is not in question, but the notion of a premeditated, planned and industrial extermination of Europe’s Jews with its iconic gas chambers and immutable six million are all used to make the Holocaust not only special but also sacred. We are faced with a new, secular religion with astonishing power to command worship. And, like Christianity with its Immaculate Conception, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, the Holocaust has key and sacred elements – the exterminationist imperative, the gas chambers, and the sacred six million. It is these that comprise the holy Holocaust which Jews, Zionists, and others worship and which Germar Rudolf and other revisionists question.

Daniel McGowan & Gilad Atzmon in upstate New York

I had been wondering what Daniel McGowan, the Holocaust denier from Geneva, New York, had been up to lately. (For my other posts on McGowan, click here).

David Adler of Lerterland, in a posting entitled "Don't Let Atzmon Hoodwink America's Jazz Scene," reports that Gilad Atzmon, the noted jazz musician and anti-semite, will be playing two concerts in upstate New York (Rochester and Geneva), that were organized by McGowan.

Atzmon is playing with someone named Rich Siegel, who seems to be as anti-Israel (and as forgiving of Holocaust deniers) as Atzmon is. Apparently the first gig in Rochester was kicked out of the original venue (a Unitarian Church) when a local rabbi got wind of the event. It's been rescheduled for another venue, but is still sponsored by the church and the Social Justice Council (according to Siegel).

(Both of the posts are from Mondoweiss - for a flavor of the site's wacko anti-Zionist politics, read Philip Weiss's anti-Elena Kagan rant; he's against her because former Israeli Supreme Court president Aharon Barak is one of her legal heroes. For a more rational article on Kagan's view of Barak, see today's Haaretz article).

September 1, 1939

I should be grading map exercises, but instead I've been reading blogs, and like other people, have found George Orwell's entries in his diaries (now being posted daily on the Orwell Diaries website) very poignant. For September 1, 1939, the day that Germany invaded Poland, he wrote:

Invasion of Poland began this morning. Warsaw bombed. General mobilization proclaimed in England, ditto in France plus martial law. [Radio]
Foreign & General
1. Hitler’s terms to Poland boil down to return of Danzig & plebiscite in the corridor, to be held 1 year hence & based on 1918 census. There is some hanky panky about time the terms were presented, & as they were to be answered by night of 30.8.39,[1] H.[2] claims that they are already refused. Daily Telegraph [a]
2. Naval reservists and rest of army and R.A.F. reservists called up. Evacuation of children etc. begins today, involving 3m. people & expected to take 3 days. [Radio; undated]
3. Russo-German pact ratified. Russian armed forces to be further increased. Voroshilov’s speech taken as meaning that Russo-German alliance is not contemplated. Daily Express [b]
4. Berlin report states Russian military mission is expected to arrive there shortly. Daily Telegraph [a]

The site includes PDFs of the newspaper articles he refers to in the diary.

This is a good counter to Pat Buchanan's retrograde America-First anti-semitism, most recently expressed in a column published on his website and others, which contends that "Hitler did not want a war with Poland." The only possible response to this comment, it seems to me, is "why the hell did he invade Poland then?!" Why does MSNBC retain him as a commentator? How much more blatant does his anti-semitism and pro-Nazism have to get before they decide that he's more of a liability than a draw?

Update: see this good TPM article on Buchanan. Commenter jeffgee reminded us of Molly Ivins' stellar line describing Buchanan's speech at the '92 GOP convention: it "sounded better in the original German."

And here's a good takedown of Buchanan by Orac.

This is the stanza of W.H. Auden's poem about the beginning of the war that I find the most moving:

Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

And again, today was a beautiful early September day - not a cloud in the sky, warm but not too warm, the sky a beautiful blue as it was on that Tuesday eight years ago in New York City and Washington.

Hamas shows its true colors again - Holocaust denial and hatred of Jews

Hamas, the Holocaust-denying Islamist terrorist organization that runs Gaza, slams UN over "Holocaust classes" in Gaza.

Branding the Nazi genocide of the Jews "a lie invented by the Zionists", the Islamist movement which runs the Gaza Strip wrote in an open letter to a senior U.N. official that he should withdraw plans for a new history book in U.N. schools....Hamas said it believed UNRWA was about to start using a text for 13-year-olds that included a chapter on the Holocaust. In an open letter to local UNRWA chief John Ging, the movement's Popular Committees for Refugees said: "We refuse to let our children study a lie invented by the Zionists."

Of course, the UNRWA schools currently do not teach anything about the Holocaust, and when asked if there were any plans to change that, the UNRWA spokesmen refused to answer.

UPDATE: Apparently, contrary to the article quoted above, UNRWA does have a new human rights curriculum for eighth graders that teaches the basic facts of the Holocaust.

Three teachers at U.N. schools said that according to the new program, basic information about the Holocaust was expected to be taught to eighth grade students as part of human rights classes.

Two of the teachers said they were told about the lesson plan by colleagues involved in the new syllabus. Another teacher said he attended a recent meeting with education officials where he was told to try to teach the new syllabus without offending parents' sensibilities.

All three said they had not received the syllabus for the human rights classes yet, even though the school year began in late August. They requested anonymity because they are not allowed to speak to reporters.

Shooting at Holocaust Museum

Brian Beutler, on Talking Points Memo, asks whether the "Holocaust Museum Shooting Vindicates the DHS Report." This is the report that was issued in April warning about the rise of right-wing extremist groups. He writes,

Let's take stock of what's happened in the months since President Obama was elected just over six months ago, and in the weeks since the DHS story broke. In November, the New York Times reported that "gun owning" Americans - responding to rumors that the incoming administration would confiscate their weapons - had embarked on a shopping binge and were hoarding guns and ammunition. By the time Obama was inaugurated, the climate of fear on the far right had grown hotter. In February, MSN's moneyblog noted that the surge in sales had led, unsurprisingly, to a surge in gun stock prices.

Then on Sunday May 31 of this year, George Tiller - a Witchita doctor who provided late term abortions - was murdered while attending church services, allegedly by a right wing anti-abortion zealot named Scott Roeder.

And today, a white supremacist, Obama birth certificate conspiracy theorist - and World War II veteran -named James W. von Brunn entered the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with a shotgun and opened fire, killing one guard.

Of course, the plural of anecdote isn't data--but this is just the sort of violent extremism the DHS report warned about.

And these two murders are not the only ones motivated by violent right-wing extremism. David Neiwert and Sara Robinson of Orcinus have followed many stories very closely since before Obama's election about right-wing violence and attempted violence against African-Americans and other racial minorities, Jews, liberals (remember the shooting at a Unitarian-Universalist church last summer?), and police ("Two months ago, Richard Poplawski, a right-wing extremist, allegedly gunned down three police officers in Pittsburgh, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban"). See Neiwert's post today on Crooks and Liars about the killing at the Holocaust Museum.

Jeffrey Goldberg has a whole series of posts from today about the shooting. (And for an extra-added dollop of anti-semitism, see the comment by Jeremiah Wright on whether he'll be speaking to President Obama anytime soon - "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office." Or never, one hopes).

David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, comments today in the Washington Post:

This represents something else that is perhaps distinct to Jews in America compared to other groups. Other religious targets may be subject to vandalism or even discriminatory acts, but there are few other religious institutions that day in and day out must be concerned about acts of terrorism in the form of bombs, gun attacks, etc. On many levels Jews have been and remain the quintessential victims of religious intolerance and hatred in western civilization.

I say that knowing that today Muslim mosques have been targeted for vandalism. We just had a murder take place against a doctor in a church this past week and others are subject to acts of prejudice, but the notion of an entire community being concerned that their house of worship, their institutions might be targets of violent acts anywhere in the country still haunts American Jewry today with all of the successes that America's freedoms have brought to us.

He's correct. It's worthwhile to look at the FBI's hate crime report every year, as I have commented before. Jews are the most targeted of all religious groups in the United States - and Jews are about 2% of the U.S. population. (The group that is most targeted of all in the U.S. is African Americans). In 2007 (the most recent year for which there is a report), 69.2% of the victims of an anti-religious hate crime were Jews.

Of the 1,628 victims of an anti-religious hate crime:

• 69.2 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias.
• 8.7 percent were victims of an anti-Islamic bias.
• 4.3 percent were victims of an anti-Catholic bias.
• 4.1 percent were victims of an anti-Protestant bias.
• 0.5 percent were victims of an anti-Atheist/Agnostic bias.
• 9.1 percent were victims of a bias against other religions (anti-other religion).
• 4.1 percent were victims of a bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).

Lipstadt's talk

Professor Lipstadt's talk on Thursday night was excellent and very well-attended. Many students and community members came to hear her clear and cogent account of her libel trial in England, when David Irving, a notorious Holocaust denier, sued her for libel for calling him a Holocaust denier. One of the most interesting parts of her presentation was the description of the strategy that she and her legal team devised to counter Irving. They decided that since the Holocaust is a well-known and documented historical event, they did not need to prove that it occurred in order to defeat Irving. Instead, they decided to demonstrate how Irving misused evidence, misquoted sources, invented incidents, and engaged in other techniques to distort history. Scholars went through Irving's books exhaustively and checked all of his footnotes, which revealed that he systematically distorted his sources in order to support his own conclusions. His aim was to prove that Hitler knew nothing of the Holocaust and in fact tried to prevent it - something which all reputable historians know is utter nonsense. The judge in the case decided for Lipstadt based on this argument.

She also spoke of the emotional burden the case imposed on her. Many survivors of the Holocaust and their children saw her as their standard-bearer for the truth, and she felt even more responsible because of this to win the case on their behalf. Her talk was moving and I am glad that we were able to bring her to Ithaca College.

Neturei Karta and the Holocaust

The NPR report last night on the Iranian Holocaust conference included an interview with members of the Neturei Karta sect who attended the conference.

SHUSTER: Iran's government kept the list of participants secret until the last minute, so it was something of a surprise to see several ultra orthodox Hasidic Jews taking part. This small Hasidic group from New York follows the teachings of the Satmar Rabbi, who preached it was against God's will to establish a nation on earth for the Jews.

These anti-Zionist Jews condemn what they call the Holocaust religion, and they talked of the so-called Holocaust, although one from Britain acknowledged that there is sufficient evidence to prove that the Nazis killed millions. But these orthodox Jews argue that Palestine does not belong to the Jews and should be returned to the Palestinians.

Rabbi Dovid Weiss tried to explain why some Jews of his community might want to deny the Holocaust.

Rabbi DOVID WEISS: People who question, many that come from embitteredness because of the Zionists using the Holocaust to brazenly and offensively oppress a people. So people start questioning. Just like they said Palestine was a land without a people and they were liars, maybe they're liars about here.

I must say that of all the vile people who are attending this conference, I think that the Neturei Karta are the most vile. How dare they associate with people who would be happy to wipe out all of the remaining Jews on earth? And what do other people in the Satmar community think about them - survivors of the Holocaust or people whose families were wiped by the Nazis? Whatever they think about the State of Israel, wouldn't they recoil in disgust from associating with Holocaust deniers and blatant antisemites? For those who can stomach reading it, take a look at the speech given by one of the Neturei Karta representatives, Aharon Cohen (I am deliberately not giving him his rabbinic title as he has disgraced it by his collaboration with the enemies of the Jewish people).

Should we negotiate with Iran?

So this is the Iran that the Iraq Study Group wants us to negotiate with about Iraq?

Tony Blair said:

During his monthly news conference today, the British prime minister, Tony Blair, held out little hope of engaging Iran in constructive action in the Middle East, and expressed revulsion at the Holocaust conference, calling it “shocking beyond belief. It’s not that I’m against the concept of reaching out to people,” Mr. Blair was quoted by Reuters as saying, in a reference to efforts to include Iran in peace efforts. “The trouble is, I look around the region at the moment, and everything that Iran is doing is negative. You only have to see what is happening in Iran in the past couple of days to realize how important it is that all people of moderation in the Middle East try to come together and sort out the problems,” he continued. “I mean, they hold this conference yesterday which — you know, maybe I feel too strongly about these things — but I think it is such a symbol of sectarianism and hatred toward people of another religion. I find it just unbelievable, really.”

Attendees at the Iranian Holocaust conference included "Holocaust deniers, discredited scholars and white supremacists from around the world, who made presentations questioning whether Nazi Germany used gas chambers to exterminate some six million Jews and millions of other 'undesirables,' as well as other aspects of the historical record of the Holocaust." David Duke, former KKK leader, "asserted that the gas chambers in which millions of Jews perished did not actually exist."

Other well known Holocaust deniers also attended:

Among those attending the conference was Robert Faurisson, an academic from France, who said in his speech that the Holocaust was a myth. Mr. Duke invited conference participants to stand in honor of Mr. Faurisson and applaud him for standing up for his beliefs. Bendikt Frings, a psychologist from Germany, said Monday that he had come to the conference to thank Mr. Ahmadinejad for initiating discussion on the subject. And Frederick Toben, from Australia, said Mr. Ahmadinejad had opened an issue “which is morally and intellectually crippling the Western society.”

I don't see how we can have anything to do with this regime. If we negotiate with them over Iraq, we'll simply being playing into their hands and negotiating from a point of weakness.