Strong Objections to Beirut Holocaust Denial Conference 2001

Information from:

Institute for Historical Review

Revisionist Conferences

Beirut Conference 2001

Revisionist conferences always attract a lot of attention, but the upcoming conference on "Revisionism and Zionism" in Beirut, Lebanon, is fast becoming a focal point for interested parties around the world.

Strong Objections to Beirut Holocaust Denial Conference

By David Saks

A major international conference aimed at promoting the theories of the Holocaust denial lobby will be taking place in Beirut from March 31 to April 3.

The SA Jewish Board of Deputies recently wrote to the Lebanese ambassador requesting a meeting. It is intended at the meeting to convey the strong objections the Jewish community has to the planned conference and to ask that the Government of Lebanon be lobbied to ban it.

Other Jewish communities around the world are expected to make similar overture to their respective Lebanese ambassadors.

The Board also wrote to Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad asking the South African Government to consider and react to the event.

Commenting on the scheduled conference, Russell Gaddin, national chairman of the SAJBD, pointed out that the known participants in the seminar were not credible academics but in fact rabid anti-Semites who had conclusively been identified as such by Jewish organisations world-wide.

Participants include well-known deniers like Robert Faurisson, who has thrice been convicted of violating French hate-crime laws, Jürgen Graf, who fled his native Switzerland after being sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment on similar grounds and Mark Weber, director of the anti-Semitic Institute for Historical Review (IHR) and an American neo-Nazi activist.

Notwithstanding his humiliating courtroom defeat last year following his attempt to sue Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt for libel, the English-based denier David Irving is also expected to take part. The IHR, which has been described as "the world's single most important outlet for Holocaust denial propaganda" by the Anti-Defamation League, is one of the co-sponsors of the conference, the other being the Swiss revisionist organisation Verite et Justice.

The type of rhetoric encouraged at conferences of this nature have underlined the extent to which Holocaust denial is not a legitimate field of study but a means of both promoting neo-Nazi ideals and attacking Jews.

A typical example was the statement by Keith Thompson, one of the early stalwarts of the IHR, at its 1983 conference in which he urged supporters to "stand by the Third Reich" because, "if, in the end, the Holocaust did take place, then so much the better!"

Thompson's remark, which was greeted by tremendous applause by those present, was subsequently deleted from recordings of his speech sold through the IHR catalogue.

The choice of venue, added to the fact that many of the addresses will be delivered in Arabic, has been seen as providing disturbing evidence of the extent to which denial of the Holocaust had taken root in the Arab-Muslim world.

In its announcement of the conference posted on its website on December 26 last year, the IHR commented that the meeting "reflects and will further strengthen growing co-operation between revisionists in the West and in Muslim countries".

"We view with concern this latest attempt to gain credibility for the Holocaust denial cult, something which is deeply offensive not only to the many survivors, both Jewish and non-Jewish, of Nazi tyranny, but indeed to all reasonable and fair-minded people," Gaddin said.

He added that while it might not be an issue that the South African Government could influence, he believed it would nevertheless regard the holding of a conference of this nature with repugnance.

For this reason, the Board had requested that it communicate its strong disapproval of the matter to the Lebanese Government.

The South African Jewish Report, Volume 3, Number 39: Friday, March 9, 2001, p. 3

Conference information

Conference news from the Journal of Historical Review
Registration information (January 2001)
First announcement (December 2000)
Conference background

Media attention

IHR letter to USA Today in response to their op-ed piece by Rabbi Cooper (March 9, 2001)
A South African Jewish Report article tells of strong objections from the SA Jewish Board of Deputies -- March 9, 2001
Rabbi Abraham Cooper gets hysterical in USA Today -- March 8, 2001
IHR Press Release on Zionist efforts to ban the Conference (March 7, 2001)
The Tehran Times reports that the U.S. State Department is trying to stop the conference -- March 4, 2001
As-Safir reports that the U.S. State Department is trying to stop the conference -- March 3, 2001
The Simon Wiesenthal Center calls on the Prime Minister of Lebanon to end free speech -- March 1, 2001
News item from Reuters -- February 22, 2001
Article in the Canadian Jewish News -- February 22, 2001
Press release from the Simon Wiesenthal Center -- February 12, 2001
Press release from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) -- February 11, 2001

REVISIONISM

Zionism & Israeli Apartheid
Israeli/Zionism's racism & discrimination --- Sabra & Shatila massacre
WWII Zionists' indifference to Jewish suffering --- Politicizing the Holocaust
Israeli Terrorism & aggression --- Home demolitions & torture
Israeli Ethnic cleansing, expansionism & settlements
Zionist-Nazi & Zionist-Fascist alliance --- Israeli human right violations & massacres

Israel Allowed Argentinian Jews to Die (Return 12/1990)
Zionism's Attitude to Anti-Semitism by Tony Greenstein, (Return 03/1989)
The Jewish Question and the Zionist Movement by Udi Adiv, (Return 12/1990)
Zionism's Failure to Support Resistance. (Excerpted from Nazi-Zionist Collaboration, pamphlet published in 1981 by BAZO-PS - British Anti-Zionist Organization/Palestine Solidarity, London.)
The Kastner Case. Kastner, a Jew, helped Nazis (Eichmann) locate and send a Million Hungarian Jews to concentration camps. (Excerpted from Nazi-Zionist Collaboration, pamphlet published in 1981 by BAZO-PS - British Anti-Zionist Organization/Palestine Solidarity, London.)
Zionism and the Holocaust by Haim Bresheeth (Return 03/1989).
Closed Door Policy Excerpts from the Nazi-Zionist Collaboration, pamphlet issued by BAZO-PS - British Anti-Zionist Organization/Palestine Solidarity, London, 1981)
Hannah Arendt Author of the famous book Eichmann in Jerusalem
Zionism and Anti-Semitism: A Strange Alliance Through History by Allan C. Brownfeld (Washington Report 07/1998)
The Role of Zionism in the Holocaust (from Jews Not Zionists)
Pleas to Rescue Jews in the Holocaust Ignored by Zionist Leaders (from Jews Not Zionists). The Zionists here ignored the pleas of Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel.
The Millions That Could Have Been Saved by I. Domb (from Jews Not Zionists)
Sharon Faults 'Left' for Jews' Holocaust Pligh t by Yossi Verter (Ha'aretz 03/16/2000)