The Hopkins event about Iran the other day in Washington was a Realist event. It was led by Francis Fukuyama, who has left neoconservatism for his own brand of realism. And the discussion revolved around realist scholar Trita Parsi’s book on Iran and Israel, Treacherous Alliance, which describes the rivalry between the countries as a strategic power struggle, in which ideology tends to be so much rhetoric. Parsi pointed out that in 1980, even as Iran was publicly calling Israel "a tumor" that needed to be removed from the Middle East, Israel’s foreign minister was urging the U.S. to get over its differences with Iran and embrace Iran in its war against Iraq. Our differences: at the time, Iran was still holding our hostages!
Parsi’s thrust was that some degree of nuclear capability on Iran’s part is inevitable. Iran doesn’t even know whether it wants a bomb, but it wants the fuel. Michael Hirsh of Newsweek echoed this; he said that the best outcome was a deal in which Iran got "some kind of capability… under an international consortium." A pragmatic president like Hillary Clinton would make such a deal, he predicted, if we haven’t bombed Iran by then…
M.J. Rosenberg expressed a Jewish point of view. His comments warmed my heart because they were openly Jewish, he spoke of "my people, the Jews." There was no attempt to dissimulate, which is what the neocons do. Because they have power, they hide their Jewish agenda. It’s generated suspicion, rage, The Israel Lobby (and thrown me back into my Jewishness).
Challenging the Realists on Ahmadinejad, Rosenberg said, "I lose my calm rationality… [this] is really scary stuff." He elaborated: "I know the Israelis pretty well. They will put up with lots of criticism. There is probably nothing you can say about Israel as a state that they haven’t heard before.. and are prepared to swallow." But the Holocaust denial crossed a line. Even the Palestinians honor the Jewish experience in Europe. " When Ahmadinejad sought nuclear capability and meanwhile was denying the Holocaust, it appeared that he was going to "destroy the survivors of the self-same Holocaust that you say didn’t take place!"
Hirsh and Parsi were calmer. Hirsh said that on his visit to Tehran earlier this year, he found intellectuals and politicians more willing to trash Ahmadinejad in private meetings with him than the similar class in Washington is wont to go after Bush. He felt that Ahmadinejad had turned down his anti-Holocaust rhetoric in his speeches this week.
Parsi echoed this. He said that the Holocaust denial had caused a "tremendous amount of anger" in Iran’s Jewish community. That community has always been "agnostic" about Zionism and accepted its government’s criticism of Israel. But "what Ahmadinejad did was to cross a red line" in the Iranian discourse. There has been pushback–uncovered in the U.S. Parsi described Op-Eds in Iranian newspapers criticizing Ahmadinejad and television shows describing the suffering of Jews in Europe during World War 2. One show told about an Iranian diplomat who had helped French Jews escape the Holocaust. "That is something happening right now in Iran," he said.
Meantime, Iran’s Jewish population has gone from 100,000 in ’79 to 25,000 now, he said. I gotta finish the book to find out why…
Normal people died in Europe during WWII. They died because of bullets, bombs, food poisoning, sadness, suicide, cold, abortion, famine, disease, car accidents, drowning, heart attack, the flu, etc. but not the jews. The jews died only from holocaust. A strange disease without qualification except for the implied terror inside gas chambers. Inevitably, the death of every single jew in Europe was delivered by the hands of a gentile sinner, as was long expected: The holocaust, a sin without a people for a people without a sin.
I appreciate the summary of this discussion, but I think Philip's comments are dishonest for conveying less than the entire truth.
Ahmadinejad hasn't denied the Holocaust happened. Show me the quote. There is none. He has raised questions, and some are good ones. The most essential, which the commentor Anonymous pegged above, is this: If something like 47 million civilians died during WWII, why do we only talk about "the Holocaust" and the tragedy of "the Jews"? Isn't it a bit limited to mandate Holocaust curricula when most high schoolers don't even learn about WWII itself, its causes, and much less the 20 million plus Russians who died in it (by far the largest ethnic group, for those to whom that really matters).
I do not understand why you don't know by now that Ahmadinejad remarks were grossly mistranslated by MEMRI and others:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14733.htm
I guess these Rabbi's are self-hating Jews who also deny the holocaust:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×1910146
I also appreciate MJ Rosenburg's honesty which is indeed quite refreshing compared to the bait-and-switch of the neo-cons.
The reason that so many Jews left Iran after the Revolution was the same reason so many bourgeois professionals left for the U.S. I learned that in the comments of this very blog. I was unable to find any source documenting anti-Jewish persecution in the wake of the Iranian revolution.
It's also pretty forgiving to refer to Iran's Jews as "agnostic" about Zionism. There have been documented attempts by Zionist organizations to lure Iranian Jews to Israel and the comments in response from said Jews were not too "agnostic" if you know what I mean.
I wish the Holocaust denying crowd (looking at anonymous at the top) would find some other blog comment section to type their crap.
It was always clear to me that what Ahmedinejad was talking about was the hijacking of historical suffering for political purposes.
It is, after all, the only real justification for the Israeli colony left, and obviously anything so politically charged is going to be difficult to study objectively. The fact that it is the only historical topic in the world that you can be sent to prison for for having the wrong opinions about proves this. Ahmedinajad was calling for a discussion not of the historical event, but of the Holocaust™, for which I say bravo.
Quite a rationalization David.
Donald, I do not deny jewish suffering or persecution. What I'm saying is this:
If Victimhood were a country by right it would be filled by souls of all races and from all places and times. If Victimhood were a contry almost all it's inhabitants would long ago have been forgotten by the world at large, but inside Victimhood's borders all of them would be entitled to share their tales and be treated as equals in suffering. But, alas, if Victimhood were a country, at this time and place it would be under occupation. A group of people would be claiming ownership of the land and dispossessing the other victims of their place and dignity. They would claim to be the original inhabitants of Victimhood and proceed an ethnic cleansing coupled with a censoring of history and research, to fit their purposes. Backed by wealthy donors, corrupted politicians heirs of war criminals and the ignorance of the masses brainwashed by the movie industry and the media the new colonizers of Victimhood would be turning the land of the saints and martyrs into a nightmare of high walls where every single gate would have an enormous "H" made of gold.
See, Donald, when you say "deny the holocaust" I hear "deny my right to exist". It's one and the same intent. We humans are slowly, but inexorably, perceiving we are all palestinians in this Earth. You say in the same breath that palestinians are all terrorists and we gentiles are all guilty, but your heart is shaking with doubt…
So much of what is said in defense of Israel centers around the Holocaust. Lets talk about it a little.
First let me say that I have no doubts at all that it happened just the way it is portrayed (Raul Hilberg's version at least).
Furthermore when I was only seven, the aged lady doctor with a heavy accent who walked several miles through a Midwestern blizzard to give me a lifesaving penicillin shot when I had gone into coma from double pneumonia, after my own pediatrician had refused to make the house call, had one of the tattoos on her arm. The next day, when I had awakened, I asked her about the numbers on her arm and my mother told me to shut up. So I am not a negationist. I loved that old lady and I owe my life to her.
So it strikes me as incongruous that with so much concern about the Holocaust that: "an umbrella group of Holocaust survivor organizations in Israel estimated that about one-quarter of Israel’s 250,000 survivors are living in poverty." that according to the JTA,
Anonymous, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah, many Zionists use the Holocaust as a shield against any criticism of Israel. If you meant that, fine. You'd be right. Then say it, rather than talking obscurely in a way that suggests you think that most of the Holocaust victims weren't victims of genocide. The last thing the Palestinians need are Holocaust deniers flocking to their banner.
People forget that around this time the Muslims were being criticized for protesting the cartoons of Muhammad published in the Netherlands. People were saying Muslims don't believe in "open dialog."
Meanwhile, people were being throw in jail for questioning the Holocaust (or parts thereof) in Europe and still are today.
His conference was an attempt to show the hypocrisy of the west, and I think a valid one.
The "scream-and-bang-the-table" crowd has drowned this point out, but his fundamental line of thinking was sound.
[In similar fashion I have no doubt someone will try and say I denied the holocaust in this post, which I did not.]
Nobody seems very interested in the poverty stricken Holocaust survivors in Israel, do they?
This is what I mean, the official Shoa is just to beat people over the head with. A political attack weapon. In Washington, in Europe, in Jerusalem and on this blog too, by the look of it.
Dershowitz, Pipes, etcetera can't cough up enough money to keep a few thousand poor old people, who have had hellish lives, from having to eat dog food till time and misery finish the job for Hitler. The whole thing is pure bullshit, nothing but bullshit.
I did use Palestine as a metaphor for human conscience. A place under occupation by an undeserving people.
In my point of view there is little difference between a rabid zionist and a jew willing to accuse people of holocaust denial whenever someone points to the fact that the jewish tragedy was a small part of the human catastrophe known as WWII and should be treated as such.
Is an old lady doctor with a tatoo more deserving of pity than the ashes of the inhabitants of a burnt city? And yet they would also travel in a Midwestern blizzard to reach you, David Seaton, if they could.
"n my point of view there is little difference between a rabid zionist and a jew willing to accuse people of holocaust denial whenever someone points to the fact that the jewish tragedy was a small part of the human catastrophe known as WWII and should be treated as such."
Oh brother. For one thing, what does a person's "Jewishness" have to do with my complaint against you? I don't happen to be Jewish, but why is that at all relevant?
I read Norman Finkelstein's website daily and Tony Karon's too–I agree with their viewpoints. I also agree that the Holocaust wasn't "unique", except in the sense that every deliberate attempt at exterminating an entire group of people is unique. The Holocaust is not the beginning and end of all the suffering in WWII, but it is a major part of it, not a small part. They didn't die like tens of millions of others in WWII–they died because they were Jewish.
I jumped into this sewer–I think I'll leave now. I'd love to spend my time here arguing against kneejerk Zionists, but the odor in this particular thread is getting pretty foul. It's the unfortunate byproduct of serious criticism of Zionism–it also brings out the Springtime for Hitler crowd.
On second thought, on the better light a candle than curse the darkness principle, here's a great link –
http://themagneszionist.blogspot.com/2007/07/are-you-moral-zionist-take-test.html
Donald: ". . . the odor in this particular thread is getting pretty foul. It's the unfortunate byproduct of serious criticism of Zionism–it also brings out the Springtime for Hitler crowd."
Even worse, it brings out people who think that their "people had a holocaust and yours didn't. Therefore you can't criticize me."
When is Steven Spielberg going to remake the Iranian Schindler's List "Zero Degree Turn"? Or has he bought into MEMRI's translation of everything coming out of the Middle East?
I assume that Donald is in good faith and not out to smear this blog.
My next assumption then is that he is a relatively young man who has, at any case, no personal recollections of the first few decades after the war. If he had he would know that, as Peter Novick has stated in his 'The holocaust in American Life', that among American Jews then there was no desire to stress the uniqueness of their fate. The emphasis then was on Nazi barbarism in general and the fact that the war had claimed almost fifty million victims. Many concentration camp survivors preferred not to dwell on the past and wanted to rebuild their lives.
The American cult of the holocaust is a post 1967 phenomenon and has a lot to do, as Novick has stressed, with the search of scattered and divided Jewish communities for a shared identity and also with the foreign policy interests of both the US and Israel. In his review of Novick and Finkelstein Professor Micha Brumlik, one time director of the Fritz Bauer institute for the documentation of the holocaust in Frankfurt, accepted both these claims.
The emphasis on the uniqueness of the holocaust is, as far as I know, especially found in Jewish theological thought. A prime exponent of this line of thought was the religious philosopher Emil Fackenheim.
Eugene Borowitz summarised his views on the holocaust as follows:
"This event cannot be assimilated to anything. One who evades, or buries, or mitigates, or 'explains'or couples the holocaust with any other occurrence commits the unpardonable sin. The contemporary Jewish thinker must, therefore, make the absolute oneness of this malevolence the core and criterion of all authentic future Jewish thought."
Fackenheim might have been a very competent philosopher and theologian but I cannot be persuaded that he knew much of history. A historian as David Stannard, for instance, who wrote about the holocaust that took place in the conquest of the 'new world', has argued that neither in the number of its victims, nor in the speed with which they were destroyed, nor in the murderous intent behind it all, was the holocaust unique. Those who complain that comparing the holocaust to other forms of genocide means to trivialize it, are themselves in danger of trivializing all those other events.
Lifting the holocaust into the realm of the sacred, into that of the 'mysterium tremendum' (in fact Arthur A.Cohen's book on the holocaust has the word 'tremendum' in its very title) should shield it from all 'secular' study. Such study is regarded as a 'profanation'. Apart from theology one might note that this 'profanation' might lead to a diminution of its value as the legitimating event for Israel.
Secular thinkers have not been intimidated by this. One of Europe's most prestigious sociologists, Zygmunt Bauman, who after an anti-semitic purge in Poland, settled permanently in Britain, has approached the holocaust from a secular angle in his study 'Modernity and the Holocaust'. Since he and his wife settled for a while in Israel he also speaks from personal experience, I assume, when he declares that Israel uses the holocaust 'as the certificate of its political legitimacy, a safe conduct pass for its past and future policies, and, above all, as the advance payment for the injustices it might itself commit.'
One should, like Bauman, not be intimidated by religious anathemas in the style of Fackenheim to disregard these aspects of the matter. They are perhaps not meant as, but have the effect of, immunisation strategies against critique of Israel.
Fackenheim regarded care for the continuation of Jewry, and with that for the State of Israel, as the 614th Mitzvah (in addition to the 613 commandments given in the Torah). In his old age he moved to Israel and could, according to a former student of his, never find it in himself to criticize its policies.
I've read Novick. I have his book. I think he's probably right. I'm so glad you acknowledge the possibility of my good faith. This has brightened my day.
I'm not arguing with most of the people here. I'm arguing with "Anonymous", who so far sounds very much like a Holocaust denier. Not someone who merely thinks the Holocaust has been used as a shield for indefensible Zionist actions. Oddly enough, I mentioned my disapproval of such actions, and my approval of Norm Finkelstein's views, but this doesn't seem to have sunk in. By the way, Novick has said some pretty nasty things about Finkelstein and I'm on Finkelstein's side on that. I also have great admiration for Phil.
I'm fine with people criticizing the uses to which the Holocaust has been put–I've said that before. I'm not fine with people who are Holocaust deniers, and who probably care mainly about the Palestinians because of their usefulness as a stick with which to beat Jews.
As for this blog–again, I respect Phil a great deal. The comment section, though, is a mixed bag. Some of it is good and some is trash.
I disagree that the majority of references of the holocaust is for manipulation of sympathy for political ends.
I also disagree with the silly description that American Jews were somehow not profoundly occupied with the holocaust post WW2.
Its a revisionist approach for political ends ("ironically").
There are other events in history that are genuinely genocidal. That is true.
There are few cultures though that remain the object of persecution over millenia (sometimes loud and obvious, sometimes quiet, subtle and deniable).
Being part of a national state is not the only way to have dignity.
Being part of national state in an environment of persecution though is practical.
Witty:
"I disagree that the majority of references of the holocaust is for manipulation of sympathy for political ends."
O.K. you disagree. Does that count as evidence of some kind? And who spoke of a 'majority of references'?
Witty:
"I also disagree with the silly description that American Jews were somehow not profoundly occupied with the holocaust post WW2."
Novick's main argument is that it was not then the subject of Jewish identity politics and, most of all, that the subject did not loom so large in the consciousness of other Americans.
Witty:
"Its a revisionist approach for political ends ("ironically")."
The term 'revisionism' betrays what you are about here. To lump all commentators on the holocaust who do not stick to the 'approved' script together with the likes of Irving.
Witty:
"There are other events in history that are genuinely genocidal. That is true."
Here you are in danger of not following the script yourself. Good on you.
"There are few cultures though that remain the object of persecution over millenia (sometimes loud and obvious, sometimes quiet, subtle and deniable).
Being part of a national state is not the only way to have dignity.
Being part of national state in an environment of persecution though is practical."
Well, it has often been pointed out that there is no environment on earth where Jews are more endangered than in Israel. Also, it seems obvious to me that the whole Zionist enterprise has led to an increase in negative sentiments towards Jews in general and, more importantly, to a vast increase in injustice and human suffering.
The way to make the Jewish state irrelevant is to convey utter confidence that there is no need for the protection of a state.
You don't convey that confidence. Iran doesn't convey that confidence. Hamas does not convey that confidence.
Only rhetoric from you.
"They didn't die like tens of millions of others in WWII–they died because they were Jewish."
Do you mean the other tens of millions didn't die in fear, pain and agony, or do you mean they died because they were something other than themselves? What is your point? All the dead jews were innocent? Still they would be a very little fraction of the innocent dead.
I wittness your neglect. You have closed your eyes to the millions of children and old and innocent who have died in distant places in and after WWII because theirs was a death without a brand name. Yes, Donald, the only way in which jews died a different death than us is because theirs is a death called holocaust, whilst ours is a death called "shit happens."
"The way to make the Jewish state irrelevant is to convey utter confidence that there is no need for the protection of a state.
You don't convey that confidence. Iran doesn't convey that confidence. Hamas does not convey that confidence."
Iran and Hamas. If there was no state called Israel there would be no possible threat from them. Some protection.
——————————————————————————
"The way to make the Jewish state irrelevant is to convey utter confidence that there is no need for the protection of a state."
This from the man who says gratefully that "Hitler made me a Jew."
The world shouldn't be held responsible for your neuroticism, Richard. It's your own responsibility to seek out help.
My wife's uncle said "Hitler made me a Jew".
He had been an atheist, a promising scientist. Instead, when nazi Germany occupied not-sufficiently suppressive enough fascist Hungary, my wife's uncle was enslaved. He was only enslaved (rather than killed), because he was 15 and strong.
Hitler made him a Jew in two respects. First, Hitler "succeeded" in defining what a Jew was in ethnic terms, by blood, not by association, identity, religion.
Second, my wife's uncle shifted what he considered his primary identity from the collegiality of science to his family/and family of families.
He was still a collegial scientist, but a Jewish one.
Ironically, one of Hitler's ethnically based orientation as to "truth", particularly in science, was in describing the number of prominent German Jewish scientists not as scientists, not even as part of the thriving German academicy, but as "Jewish science", which he ridiculed. The German scientists/engineers that joined in the ridicule nevertheless relied on the "Jewish science" to make most of their and their prospectively worst weapons.
Jews detect a similar mode of thinking in Ahmadinejad, in that he considers religious revelation and Islamic ideology to be authoritative, and science and more common ethics based on doubting to be false, or unimportant.
That method of formulation of ethics (religious conformity), CONFLICTS with the humanist basis of ethics which emerges from a combination of love and reason adding up to compassion.
Denial of the holocaust is not only that the holocaust didn't happen. It includes the idea that the holocaust wasn't a significant world event, or that it somehow shouldn't involve others.
There is a reason that WW2 was called a world war. For one, the war was fought in Europe, North Africa, Middle East, every ocean, China, Southeast Asia, and fought over the same resources that are fought over now.
Oil, water, rubber, tin, nickel, uranium, etc.
It won't stop there, especially if those that claim to not want to intervene in others' lives, continue to organize their societies around oil, metals, uranium, etc. and fail to preserve fresh water (upstream and downstream).
"My wife's uncle said "Hitler made me a Jew".
He had been an atheist, a promising scientist … he was 15 …"
What's your point Arie?
Mine was clear.
Somebody just sent me this article about the new (east) Indian Lobby:
link to washingtonpost.com
/>
What is ever going to happen to the world with all these narrow interest groups manipulating a superpower?
Quelle bordelle! (excuse my French)
Anonymous, in your opinion, did the Nazis deliberately try to exterminate the Jews and succeed in killing at least 5 million (Raul Hilberg's number, lower than the usual 6)? Yes or no? If you answer yes, then I misjudged you, though I still think your opening comment was exactly the sort of thing a Holocaust denier would write. A well-intentioned person would have said that the Jews were the victims of a deliberate policy of extermination, but the deaths of tens of millions of other people is morally just as important and is often neglected. That's not what you did. You implied that Jews died for the same reasons that everyone else did. That's a lie. And you mocked them with your last stupid sentence.
As for the other crimes of WWII, I would say that Hitler's assault on the Soviet Union and the killing of 20 million or more Soviet citizens was a crime comparable to the Holocaust. It's a different sort of crime, but not that different–the Nazis obviously had almost as low an opinion of Slavic people as they did of Jews, though not quite as low. Their attitude towards the Roma was similar and the genocide against them was quite similar to the Holocaust(though numerically lower, while the killing of the Soviet citizens was higher). They didn't slaughter (non-Jewish) civilians on such a scale in Western Europe because they regarded them as a more deserving sort of human.
There were other crimes against humanity in WWII–the bombing of civilian populations by the US and Great Britain, for instance. These were horrific, though not as bad as the attempted extermination of an entire ethnic group.
And other countries have also committed or attempted to commit genocide. There was a bounty placed on Indian scalps in California, I believe, which would put the people who instituted that policy on the same moral level as the Nazis. The numbers involved were far, far lower, but the principle is the same.
I've treated you as a moral leper because no one with good intentions and common sense would think that the proper way to remember the other innocent victims of WWII would be to imply that the Jews were not the victims of a deliberate policy of extermination. If you are not a Holocaust denier, you are one of those people who thinks that by saying something crude, insensitive, outrageous and insulting about the memory of millions of murdered Jews you are somehow striking a blow for the rest of humanity. That sounds, well, antisemitic, doesn't it?
Coming from a small country with no weapons industry to speak of, and no entrenched tradition of lobbying through what we provincials call corruption, I look with bewilderment at the American body politic.
Just now I am reading Gore Vidal's 1876, set in the last days of the Grant administration. It was then already taken for granted that every Senator was on the take – and this was accepted, though the 'really nice people'preferred not to speak about politics.
Somewhere the point is made that it was the Civil War that had brought this all about. There was then so much money floating around and, I suppose, so many industries got entrenched then that kept seeking an outlet for their products.
What amazes me is that it is still taken for granted that most Senators are 'subsidized' and this seems to be deemed all right as long as the 'contributions' are made public.
If this is the entrenched political culture in a big power we are all in trouble.
Zygmunt Bauman made the point that technology has its own momentum. If the military-industrial complex has filled the weapons arsenals to overflowing, armament has got to get rid of in one way or another (preferably by some war at other people's expense).
I understand that weapons contracts are at the heart of this Indian lobby's activities as well.
Richard, I was just teasing you – but there WAS something wrong with your chronology. Look again.
Make your point, Arie.
Rather than tackling that seemingly insurmountable task I will accept that your uncle was a child prodigy.
He was.
He is now a retired math professor after teaching at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and later as chair of the math department at the University of Edmonton.
Still liberal in orientation, but not living in apology for his existence.
His whole family is a great irony if you see them, my mother-in-law as well. My wonderful but overbearing mother-in-law led an escape from a German slave labor camp, arranging false papers for 12, false identity for six months.
She was 17.
This is now history.
The fantasy that Israel will somehow not be important, that it will willingly dissolve into a single Palestinian state is preposterous.
Moral leper??
Holocaust denier, as expected. I'd have been surprised to find out otherwise. The only interesting question is whether you are innocently ignorant or culpably ignorant, but given what you've said thus far, it's probably a deliberate choice. You've got something invested in thinking that there's something debatable about the Holocaust.
Donald, you really owe a response to the points that Anonymous raised. That there was suffering has never been in question, but the details and context that give it meaning have been placed off limits for investigation. Can we really trust a history written by the victors?
"You've got something invested in thinking that there's something debatable about the Holocaust."
I would have said just the opposite. It's the Zionists who have the most invested in ensuring that there is no debate. Otherwise their whole racist project might go up in smoke.
I owe anonymous precisely nothing. Frankly, I don't know how any decent educated person could read his crap without wanting to throw up. He starts off writing as though Jews in WWII were not treated differently from anyone else, then says he needs to do more research (apparently centuries worth before this towering giant in the historical field can come to any safe conclusions). Fine. Let him go away for a few hundred years and get back to us when he's finished his investigation.
There are always going to be details to be hashed out about any historical event and things we don't know, but we know beyond any reasonable doubt that the Nazis planned to exterminate the Jews and killed around 5-6 million of them. Is that what you meant by "suffering" or did you mean something less than that? Which details do you want clarified and what context would you like to know about?
You want to argue the details with a great intellect like anonymous, you're welcome to do so. You can also go argue with a flat-earther if that sort of thing amuses you. The only excuse for someone like him would be ignorance–perhaps he's been around Holocaust deniers his whole life and doesn't know any better.
The sad thing about this is that there is a very serious point to be made about the Israel lobby and the way the ugly side of Israeli history is whitewashed in the US, though of course the ugly side of US foreign policy is also whitewashed in similar ways. But start talking about this and the Holocaust denying nitwits start bleating about their "doubts". And now you come along and tell me I owe this creep a better explanation. Perfect. No wonder people think critics of Zionism are a bunch of Jew-hating Holocaust deniers. I know that's not so in general, but apparently some are.
I gotta stay away from the comments section of this blog. Phil is great, and so are some of the commenters, but I can go to other blogs critical of Zionism without having to deal with this moral idiocy.