Harry's Place

As I make my daughter’s lunch of a matzo cheese sandwich I feel dirty that as a Jew I am guilty somewhere of doing something that offends someone such that they can ban me. ignore me and accuse me of being a zio-Nazi” even if I haven’t even set foot in Israel. Maybe an uncle’s, cousin’s brother once short-changed a Palestinian due to a mistake at the till. Unless I write a letter of an apology to the World for being Jewish and getting a certificate to say I am an aceptable Jew, signed by the Shariah Court of Europe, then I will soon be a fugitive.

Maximum respect, Sir.

This episode has cheered me up no end. Red/brown is the colour of the future. Stop the War!

The precedent set by Pfeifer v. Austria is troubling. For in that case, the ECTHR held that ECHR Article 8 not only permits restriction on freedom of expression but even obligates a state party to censor private speech.
Fortunately, a subsequent chamber judgment has retreated somewhat from the sweeping holding of Pfeifer thereby aleviating the fear that the convention might in the future impose other speech restrictive obligations on the member states. Human rights should entail the right to liberty from state repression, but in no way should it imply a positive obligation on the part of government to censor what private parties publishes about others in newspapers.

this is very worrying – but in no way surprising.

LC are you of the opinion, that the accusation against me that I had with an article I’ve published in February 1995 caused the suicide of Dr. Werner Pfeifenberger in May 2000 can be judged as freedom of expression?

Kind of frightening isn’t it. I agree though not surprising.

Karl, I’m sorry you’ve had to go through these experiences. But maybe Germany and Austria are the places where a Holocaust survivor might encounter the reality of the bon mot about the Holocaust being the one thing they can’t forgive the Jews for.

@Karl Pfeifer
I don’t dispute that the allegation against you was false and defamatory, but that doesn’t concern my objection to the court extrapolating a right to reputation from the broad and nebulous notion of private life in Article 8.
Even if the allegation was knowingly false, which is very likely, providing a remedy for injury to reputation, at least when the perpetrator is not the government or its agents, should never be the proper concern of the convention. Unfortunately, it’s not the first or last time that the court has made novel “human rights” out of whole cloth.
In another case called Von Hannover v. Germany, the court ruled that private life entailed the right to government action against a newspaper’s publication of pictures taken in public places. Germany, the court held, had violated applicant’s human rights by not censoring the offending newspaper. I don’t need to extrapolate more on how dangerous such a principle is when extended to i.e freedom of religion, which could arguably be infringed by publication of anti-religious cartoons.

@LC There is except Turkey no other country as often condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for violating freedom of expression as Austria.
In my case the judgements of Vienna upper court to let pass the slander against me were argued with freedom of expression. But as the European Court for Human Rights has pointed out
no proof had been offered for the alleged causal link between my article and the professor’s death. By writing that, Andreas Mölzer’s letter overstepped acceptable limits, because it in fact accused me of acts tantamount to criminal behaviour.
So the ECHR was right to protect my good reputation.

Cookiecutter – I’m angry with you! How can you let the guilty make you feel a sort of paranoid guilt? Get up on your feet and be proud of who you are.

Germany has sofar kept a strict control on Antisemitism – you could take a taxi driver to court for making Antisemitic remarks – but now Antisemitism seems to be filtering back in thanks to the loony left

@Karl Pfeifer

no proof had been offered for the alleged causal link between my article and the professor’s death. By writing that, Andreas Mölzer’s letter overstepped acceptable limits, because it in fact accused me of acts tantamount to criminal behaviour.

The problem with that argument is that the convention does not by itself impose mandatory limitations on freedom of expressions but rather speaks of permissible limitations the state may place on its exercise. Whether or not the article overstepped acceptable limitations to freedom of expression should therefore not be the business of the European Court of Human Rights, since Austria pursuant to its own municipal law may choose not to censor expression.
Just because the convention permits government restrictions on freedom of expression does not imply that expression the court would hold unprotected must ipso facto be suppressed.

@Felix

Maybe media or politics seem to transport, that there’s no antisemitism in the german society but that’s definitely not the truth. There has never been that kind of a cut after the second world war and an antisemitic society…
The problem is that there is nobody talking about “the jew” but ’bout Israel meaning “the jew”!
And that is not only a problem of some leftists it’s a problem of most parts of the german society…And having some laws and courts against antisemitstic stuff doesn’t mean having a society beeing against antisemitism!!! Especially not in germany!

This was the case in Bielefeld AJZ where after hearing the comment that I am a „Zionist“ an assembly of young German antifascists agreed to exclude me

By their actions, they have demonstrated their unfitness to be called ‘antifascists’.
I would say that they are fascists par excellence.

apparently lc is of that opinion – i understand where he’s coming from (freedom of speech absolutism). but the point is – there *are* libel laws and long as they are in place and i cannot just say “x is a murderer” when she is not – this clearly should apply to equally to all.

there is this nice german expression “verfolgende unschuld” – persecuting innocence… guess this applies here: in order for antisemites being just and innocent it must be their victims who are the real murderers. especially people like karl pfeiffer who had the impertinence of surviving the holocaust and tell the story – from an antisemitic perspective – must be discredited as murderers.

it is quite natural to expect such attacks from the post-nazi right – unfortunately, at least since the early 1970s, it is also not uncommon from the “anti-imperialist” left – that remnant of the german left that has failed so miserably in its historic task of preventing nazism. they are really ripe for joining the “querfront” dreamt of by “revolutionary nationalists” – red and brown hand in hand

who was it again who said: “i can’t eat as much as i want to vomit”?

Thank you Liselotte (Bielefeld) and thank you very much 3–>
There can be no justification for diffamation.

Since the title of the post is Strange Days in Germany, let me add an account of another incident in Germany, this time in Hamburg. When a leftist group from Hamburg planned to show the Lanzmann film ‘Why Israel?’ at a local alternative movie theatre, another ‘leftist’, ‘anti-zionist’ group from the local ‘international centre’ B5 blocked the entrance. They were dressed up as mock-Israeli soldiers, hurled insults at those wishing to see a Claude Lanzmann film, beating some of them, all the while taking pictures and filming. The film was not shown, the theatre remained empty.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1258705154390&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The date for the film has been reset to december 13. This time it will be shown. There will be a demonstration from Hamburgs Rote Flora alternative community centre to the movie theatre, denouncing antisemitism and ‘anti-zionism’, and then we can finally watch the movie. I hope many people turn up.

3->,

I’m not sure you do understand where LC is coming from.

I don’t think that he is arguing about freedom of speech absolutism but more about the jurisdiction and use of the European Court of Human Rights.

If you were not guilty of criminal acts at Palmach or elsewhere, as claimed, then you deserve an apology. If you were a survivor of Aushwitz, that is to be respected.

However, if you are a supporter of Zionism or any other form of radical nationalism, then the one thing I don’t understand is why you were invited to speak at an autonomous youth centre in the first place.

Any kind of nationalism, including (but not especially) Zionism is anathema to proletarian politics. This has nothing to do with you being Jewish.

A Welsh nationalist should not be welcomed either!

What Anti-Zionism really is became once more clear at the blockade of the film mentionned by M: when the atmosphere became hot, some “anti-zionists” shouted: “Judenschweine!” (Jewish pigs); obviously that was not necessary for knowing their real feelings behind their “peace-activism”.
If the Jews had a little compassion with them they would really commit some real massacres to alleviate their sense of guilt.

Karl, from your article and your posts, in which you object to the Israeli military being compared with Nazis, it can be assumed that you had no problem with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 in which you participated as a member of the Palmach, irrespective of whether or not you were involved in one of the massacres of Palestinians that took place at that time.

That you, apparently,believe that neither you nor Israel have done anything for which to be ashamed, is not the unanimous opinion of other Holocaust survivors.

Quite a number have compared the treatment of the Palestinians and racist attitudes on the part of the majority of the Israeli public to those they experienced at the hands of the Nazis in the years leading up to the war and certainly Israel’s murderous bombing raids on Lebanon over the years and its most recent bombardment of Gaza, may rightly be compared with actions of the Third Reich.

I speak from a position of having seen for myself the wholesale destruction of Lebanese apartment blocks and houses caused by Israeli bombers and fighter jets in the aftermath of Israel’s 1982 and 2006 attacks and they resemble pictures that I saw of European cities destroyed by the Nazis and I also have encountered the Israeli military as a sadistic occupying force in Lebanon as well as the West Bank and Gaza. Having worn the uniform of the IDF is nothing to speak of with pride.

Being a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust or a survivor of any massive war crime of which the world has seen far too many merits a certain degree of respect but it does not give that person a permanent waiver for actions that he or she may engage in afterward.

It would be a far better response to those who denied you the right to speak if you wrote an article describing what you actually did in 1948 as a member of the Palmach and how you feel about that now. The question is, are you willing to do that?

@Karl Pfeifer: I’m really sorry and ashamed for what happened to you in Bielefeld. The AJZ is a normally a nice place and has seen various political cultures over time. Some years ago you would have been welcomed. I hope these people still can learn.

@Autonome: Could you please shut up! If you want to apologize, do it.
I’m not a fan of any kind of nationalism either, but please consider that zionism and “israelic nationalism” was simply a way to survive during national socialist germany. I think your doubts about nationalism are REALLY NOT APPROPRIATE in this context.

Zionism was a minority movement in pre-war Germany but when the Nazis came into power, it was the Zionist organizations that were allowed to function while the non-Zionists soon found their way to the camps. It was the Zionists who negotiated the Transfer agreement with Eichmann that allowed German Jews to buy German goods which were then sent on German freighters to Palestine where they were unloaded and the German Jew who was now in Palestine was then able to resell them. In the 30s the Nazis were primary concerned with making Germany Judenrein and the Zionists provided a convenient means to do that. The Nazis were not without their Zionist sympathizers. As Maxime Rodinson wrote, Jabotinsky’s supporters used to march in brown shirts crying “Hitler for German, Mussolini for Italy and Jabotinsky for Palestine!” Then the Stern Gang, in which Yitzhak Shamir was a prominent member sent a letter to Hitler (whether he saw it or not is not known) praising the national socialist philosophy and declaring that they were soul brothers with the Nazis and so should join forces against the British. This document has been published in Israel which on the occasion of Begin’s resignation and Shamir being given the post of prime minister in 1983, survivors of the Holocaust sent a letter to the government and the media,protesting that this would be collaborator with the Nazis was becoming Israel’s prime minister. It was mentioned in th 23rd paragraph of the Jerusalem Post.

Jeff,
Of all the things I might want to say towards your screed, the best I can do is this: Sir, you are wrong.

There is so much information contradicting your portrayals of IDF forces as brutes and random murderers, and even more, so many of your ilk inhabit the internet blog sites of anyone speaking on Israel’s right to exist or defend herself as to make what you accuse to be so much expected background noise. Because of this, your attempts to make scurrilous and unproved accusations will simply be dismissed outright as yet another uneducated outburst of baseless protestations. It is ridiculous trying to sound adroit while glibly accusing another of producing something so horrible as a massacre of innocents.

Jeff, to use a common vernacular, you are a “troll” attempting to pick a fight with an honorable man. Please go elsewhere.

Conrad, you may wish to keep your head in the sand or the toilet bowl but don’t expect others to do it. Even Benny Morris who now is sorry that the Israelis didn’t complete the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians admits that it happened and documented it. As for what happened in Lebanon and Gaza what I described is a matter of record and not subject to argument.

But what, for example, do you claim are unproven accusations?

@Autonome

And exactly that is the problem we are talking about…Saying stuff like this implicates not to catch the real existing differents between states. In a theoritical way of analyse all states are the same bad – but that’s not reality!!!
You can’t compare beeing a soldier or a, like u say ‘radical nationalist’ of/for the jewish safe area Israel and beeing a Welsh nationalist – especially not directly after the shoa.
Who are u to judge a jewish person that survived the shoa beeing a ‘radical nationalist’ because of fighting for a safe area???

And PLEASE don’t always try to tell us, there u would not work together with any other kind of nationalist and that u do not make differents between states!…that’s not the truth!
On the one hand nobody of the german leftist will ever take a look at the biography of, for example an activist of the Zapatista movement, before arranging a lecture. But if it is a jew, people always take a second look because of s_he might be a murderer or some.
On the other hand it’s the same with the states. You say all states are the same and it’s not espacially Israel but u always take a second look at what Israel is doing or not doing…Because of there might be something bad u don’t see at the first look – there must(!) be something to criticize….

And like I already said: Antisemitism is a problem of most parts of the German society – and ‘most parts’ includes leftists…And calling it antizionism doesn’t mean that it’s not antisemitism. And I don’t want to say that all kind of antizionism is antisemitistic but a lot of is. It’s always like ‘I don’t have anything against jews, but….ISRAEL!!!’

I should have added, Conrad, that I almost became a victim of a “random murder” at the hands of an Israeli soldier. While taking photos of the Israeli,Lebanese and Mobil Oil flags flying over the bridge at the Awali River south of Beirut in 1983, with an Israel tank less than 50 feet away, pointing at four lanes of cars that had been backed up for four days (an example of Israel’s proclivity to collective punishment) an Israeli soldier fired a shot from under the bridge that creased my hair. Seconds later I heard its report. I took one more picture of two Israeli soldiers heading my way with their US provided M-16s and then turned my back and walked back behind the roll of concertina wire that the IDF had strung across the bridge. But I had seen signs of their sadism before and after that.

I’m really getting angry now!!!
What kind of discussion is it, when people say shit like:
‘what Israel does/did in Gaza and the Lebanon is the same like the germans dids in the third reich with jewish people…’????

That is historical revisionism like nazi do…disgusting!!!

Karl – there isn’t really much I can say except that you have my deepest sympathies.

Jeff -’destruction of Lebanese apartment blocks and houses caused by Israeli bombers and fighter jets in the aftermath of Israel’s 1982 and 2006 attacks’
You obviously didn’t bother turning in the other direction to see the destruction of Israeli houses and the murder of Israeli citizens either in 1978 and 1982 by the PLO or in 2006 by Hizbollah which made it necessary for Israel to defend itself. I wonder why?

Excuse me, but there is no comparison between what Israel did in Lebanon and what the PLO did in 1978 or 1982 or Hezbollah in 2006. In 1982, the Israelis broke an 11-month ceasefire with the PLO that had been negotiated by US ambassador Philip Habib with the intention of wiping out the PLO which had been observing the ceasefire despite Israeli provocations.

The reports that the attack was launched in response to Palestinian shelling was a lie since friends of mine, yes, friends, IDF reservists, who were stationed on the border (and who later joined Yesh G’vul) said it wasn’t true and they were there. Another friend, a tank corps officer with whom I stayed outside of Jerusalem told me that when he and his corps advanced into Lebanon, they blew holes in the wall of every building on the road to Beirut. I thought he was exaggerating until I took a taxi from the Israel-Lebanon border to Beirut and saw the damage for myself.

The Israeli blitzkrieg ended up killing, according to the Red Cross,over 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinians,most of whom were civilians and they did it using white phosphorous and cluster bombs. I don’t recall any Israeli apartment block or homes being destroyed by Palestinians either at that time or in 1978.

As for Palestinian murdering Israeli citizens in 1982, the numbers of Palestinians being killed were far greater. In fact, the Israeli Committee in Solidarity with Beir Zeit, headed by a hero of the Mitla jump in the 1973 war (who later joined Yesh G’vul), Gideon Spiro, put out a poster which listed the names of Palestinians,from 5 to 62, who had been murdered over a three month period in the Spring of 82 by the IDF that read in Hebrew, “Just Don’t Say You Didn’t Know!” Predictably, that drove those Israelis who saw it crazy because like you and most of the posters here they have never looked in the mirror. I suggest you do that and meanwhile, I await Karl’s reply as to what he did while with the Palmach and if he can still justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Hezbollah, of course, did not exist until Israel invaded Lebanon and might never have come into existence if the Israeli soldiers were not so indoctrinated in anti-Arab racism that they fail to see that most of the Shia in the south were happy that the PLO was gone and they didn’t have to worry about them fighting Israel from their soil and then suffering from Israel’s retaliation. But when the Israeli soldiers shit in their mosques, poured oil in their flour, and humiliated them in their villages (which I saw with my own eyes), the Shia decided to respond and Hezbollah was born. Sure, it got assistance from Iran, but it was and remains an indigenous organization supported not only by the Shia but at least half of the Maronite Christians.

As for 2006, if Hezbollah’s capturing of two Israeli soldiers (kidnapping happens to kids,not soldiers on active duty) and the killing of two others was a war provocation, than both Hezbollah (as well as the Palestinians) had been the victims of many such provocations by Israel. And Hezbollah did not start firing its rockets into Israel until Israel started bombing Lebanon. The problem for the Israelis is that they thought that they could get away for ever with bombing Lebanon without worrying about retaliation and than suddenly rockets were coming in their direction. What did Israel learn from that? Apparently nothing since its military officials are talking about the next war. I suspect the soldiers who served there are not quite as anxious.

My now deceased relative by marriage was also a member of the Palmach. A U.S. born Jew, he went to Palestine in 1947 after spending time at a Habonim training camp in the U.S. Once in Palestine he joined the Palmach.

When I met him several years later after I married into his family. Not long after I met him he bragged of the actions of his Palmach group in driving out villages of Arabs into Lebanon. He was not unhappy with his memories of the hapless villagers fleeing from their villages leaving their shoes by the door and their pots on the stove. I didn’t ask him if he killed anyone. Like the good Germans of a few years earlier, I just didn’t want to know.

Part of the land that my relative ethnically cleansed became one of the kibbutzim from which Ariel Sharon staged his brutal attack on Lebanon. Shortly after the Israeli attack on the PLO, I spoke with my relative’s wife. She told me that not only had Israel broken the truce with the PLO but that the attack on Lebanon had been designed by Sharon in the same way as the attack on Iraq was designed by Bush. Weeks before the first IDF planes flew on their missions of death and destruction, the Israeli army had been bringing more and more weapons and troops to the border. Sharon wanted that war just as Ehud Barak wanted the death dealing attack on Gaza. Political reasons for both murderers.

@ “Jeff” & “Jan”

Both of you try to coax Karl into a personal statement about his time in the Palmach. Both of you make “personal” claims agains Israel but withouth any piece of satisfactory personal evidence. Both of you suck big time. Get a life…

@ Jeff. I thought in a civilised society those accused are heard. But this did not happen in Bielefeld.
Now you seem to be an idiot (in the sense of greek philosophy) as far as history is concerned.
I joined on March 15, 1946 Palmach. The British were ruling and they would not let in those survivors who could not go back or would not go back where to Poland, Slovakia and Hungary where after the liberation several pogroms with Hundred of Jewish victims took place.
When the British Army searched the Kibbuz I was in on 29.th of June 1946 they had their bayonets on their guns and called us all kind of not flattering names mentioning our being Jewish.
So as a consequent anti-Zionist you would have also pushed us around with bayonets and you would have done the utmost, so those survivors stay in the DP Camps in Germany. And you forget, that the U.K, USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand were not opening their gates to all those survivors.
So that is all for the moment. If those anonymous Antisemites of Bielefeld, who pretend to be antifascists, would have cared for what happens in Hungary, they would have listened to what I have to say, but no they did what antisemites like to to, they excluded me.
So why don’t you post on the website of your extremist antisemitic sect to which you seem to belong.

Answered like a true Zionist, Karl, your 81 years notwithstanding and just a a half dozen more than mine. Nowhere in my comments did I call you any name but, frankly, I believe those who participated in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians have something to explain. You obviously feel uncomfortable in doing that but I wished you had been allowed to speak at Bielefeld so one of those in the audience could have asked you the question directly.

I was not asking about the British who, unlike Israel vis a vis the Palestinians, permitted the yishuv to set up all the operations and businesses required by a functioning government before 1948 whereas Israel, according to a plan formulated by Moshe Dayan. decided that rather than let the Palestinians develop their economy, they would force them to work inside Israel and use that as a spigot to keep them under control. This,combined with over a thousand laws designed to drive the Palestinians nuts, such as needing Israeli permission to grow a tomato plant, worked until December 1987 when a new generation of Palestinians who had grown up under the Israeli jackboots decided they weren’t going to take it like their parents.

Their intifada was directed not only at Israel but at the PLO and the corrupt leadership of Yasser Arafat who then set about undermining it and when his standing among the people was at rock bottom, Israel came along and saved him with Oslo (which was an unprecedented surrender on Arafat’s part of occupied Palestinian land). The Jerusalem Post ran a cartoon that summed it up. Rabin and Peres carrying a stretcher with Arafat sitting up on it and flashing the V sign. You and the others might be interested in what Shlomo Gazit, a former head of Israeli intelligence and one of those who negotiated the Oslo agreement said about it. When challenged at a synagogue in San Francisco by a crazed member of the audience who was running down the aisle shouting “Munich,Munich!,” Gazit calmly replied, “I don’t like to make such comparisons, my friend, but if it’s Munich,we’re the Germans and the Palestinians are the Czechs.” Now, please don’t you or anyone tell me that Gazit is a self-hating Jew.

But I digress, I do not recall reading about the Palmach waging war on the British, that was left to the Irgun, but I do recall it being heavily involved with ridding Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants. That, of course, presents no problems for Jewish supremacists, but it does for decent people, Jews and non-Jews. Did you participate in that? You owe it to yourself at this point near the end of your life to tell the truth and get it off your chest.

Jeff you are an idiot who writes about history you do not have a clue about.

Your chatter about “ethnic cleansing” and you forget what happened before the UN General Assembly decided partition and that Palestinians under the darling of Hitler, Mufti Amin al Hussaini started right away killing Jewish civilians just a day after this decision on November 29, 1947.
And you write about Palmach that did not fight the British. Again you show everybody what an ignorant you are. Who brought their suffering brothers from the DP camps in Germany and Austria to the shores of Erez Israel? Palmachniks. Who let in only few survivors because the working class was afraid of competion? Do you forget those nice leftwing intellectuals in the U.K. who gave between 1939 and June 21, 1941 the mantra, that the war against Germany is an imperialist war? Do you forget those people from the British working class who joined your Sir Oswald Mosley? And how about those from Labour and ILP who joined this fascist traitor to his homeland?
Who let the British Radar explode?
and who let the bridges on the Jordan fly into the air? It was Palmach. But you chatter and tell us what you have from some old brochure.
Don’t you have any decency? You believe you can be uppish and show us what a moralist you are?
And you don’t know anything about millions of Poles, who after 1945 were just moved from their homeland, which was annected by the Soviet Union, they were transported to the former German territories annected by Poland.
So you worry about the “indigenous inhabitants” but did not the British move such inhabitants in Canada, New Zeland and Australia. So why for God’s sake don’t you worry about that. And how about the Poles?
And if we speak about that period, why the hell don’t you worry about Indians and the separatist Pakistanis, who created a state on basis of religion? After all there were at the same time in India and what was to become Pakistan 10 Million refugees and one million butchered?
And if you are British – and I assume you are – why don’t you worry in first line about your people torturing?
So why don’t you post your rubbish on the website of your extremist antisemitic sect?

Jeff – there are so many blatant innaccuracies in your revised versions of history posted above that it would take all day to point them all out and frankly, I have more important things to do today.
But just one small example of how twisted your vision is can be seen in your claim that in 2006 Hizbollah only started firing rockets after Israel shelled Lebanon. That is patently untrue and I’ll tell you how I know that. I was there, being shelled myself by your Hizbollah pals, and it is frankly an indication of your moral turpitude that you would attempt to deny the facts and twist them for your own particular political agenda.

When I grew up I could not fathom how the nazis came to power. Now in my late forties I understand it well. Not only is this type of behavior against Jews..er Zionists rampant in europe but is gaining hold in the USA. Orwell was off by 30 years.

Sorry to disappoint you Karl, but I am a Jewish American. I was well aware, however, of Oswald Mosley and Britain’s Cliveden set as I was growing up. I despised them as I do Nazis, fascists and racist bigots of ANY variety, nationality, religion, ethnicity, age or gender,and I have fought them here all my life, as well.

I am also aware of the wrongful transfers of populations that took place in Poland and elsewhere but what does that have to do with the dispossession of the Palestinians from their homeland by European and Western Jews that is still ongoing unless you think that there is no problem with ethnic cleansing if it is carried out by Jews which judging from your post, you apparently do.

When I hear people complaining about the Palestinians not accepting partition, I ask them how would THEY like to have some newly formed foreign organization that had not bothered to consult them, dividing their land and giving more than half of it away to people, the majority of whom were not even born there and whose only “legal” claim to the land was a letter written by a minister from imperial Britain which was given to the Zionists as their reward for helping to bring the US into the war on its side when it was close to being defeated by the Germans, 16 years before Hitler came to power.

This is the crux of the matter. Emotions apart, Israel was a European settler colonial state (terms used by the Zionists themselves when they didn’t have today’s negative connotations) that was established in the Arab and predominantly Muslim Middle East at a time when the rest of the world was in the process of decolonization, moving in the opposite direction. If the settlers had been Catholics or Protestants, there would have been the same resistance and probably they would have eventually packed their bags after a bloody fight, like the French in Algeria and returned from whence they came. In medical terms, Israel is a foreign transplant in the Middle East that the host rejects and that in turn rejects the host. Were it not for the support, economic, military and political, by the US, the Zionist project would not have succeeded. In order to insure that support its flag wavers here in the US have through their money and intimidation achieved a stranglehold over our Congress that has allowed successive Israeli prime minister to humiliate successive American presidents before the world and get away with it.

Now, you will ask, what should the Jews have done when Britain would not allow them into Palestine at the beginning, during and after the war, because, from its cold political standpoint, that posed a conflict with its war effort against the Nazis and its own colonial interests in the region. Now, it is a matter of historical record and not my imagination that the mainstream Zionist movement, led by Ben-Gurion was adamantly opposed to Jewish refugees being allowed to go anywhere but Palestine and he is on record as saying so. Also Yitzhak Greenbaum of the Jewish Agency came under attack for not participating in the conference at Evian that attempted, unsucessfully, to solve the problem. For the mainstream Zionists, it was Palestine or not at all, and other rescue efforts were sabotaged, as Ben Hecht, documented in his book,”Perfidy.”

Now, what about America’s Jews? The leadership, composed mainly of wealthy German Jews made no serious effort to get FDR to allow a new wave of Jewish refugees here because, having made it in the US and now well assimilated, they did not want Jews from the Polish shtetl
coming to America’s shores which might produce an anti-Semitic reaction. It wasn’t that they didn’t have the political power because it was those very same Jews, just a few years later, who were able to twist arms in Washington and in other countries around the globe, to vote for the partition against the publicly stated opinion of Secretary of State Marshall, who had led the allied troups in the victory of Germany.

We are told that those in the DP camps wanted to go to Palestine. They were given no choice and when they eventually got there, they were treated like shit and put in camps that seemed almost too familiar to them where the situation grew so bad, as Tom Segev described it in 1949: The First Israelis, that they almost had a revolt. Maybe Segev made it all up as did the Ha’aretz reporter who went into the camps and wrote about it at the time. But you know, quite well, Karl, that the Holocaust survivors were looked down upon by those who had come earlier to Palestine because they weren’t Zionists, and that in the Kastner trial, the attorney general of Israel described those who perished “as so much dust,” while prosecuting an 86-year old Hungarian survivor who had correctly accused Kastner of testifying in behalf of a Nazi SS general at Nuremberg.

What has always puzzled me, Karl, and perhaps you can fill me in, but I am not aware of any Holocaust survivor who has ever served or should I say, been allowed to serve in a high position in the Israeli government by either Labor or Likud?

Now, once again, I want to ask you, Karl, did you participate in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and, if so, do you have any regrets?

PS. I should tell you Karl, that, as a child, that I too,hated the British and saw them as the enemies in Palestine and used to sing this little ditty, “If you’re name is Arnie, join the Jewish army, fight, fight,fight for Palestine, Come you sons of Moses, with your broken noses, fight, fight, fight for Palestine!” I never knew the Palestinians existed until Israeli Jews came to visit our home and tell us that they had left Israel because of the racism against those Palestinian Arabs who remained, and they didn’t want to live in a racist state. This was the early 50s. Then, traveling years later in Europe, I ran into other former Israelis Jews who told me the same thing. It was, in fact, years before I met an Israeli who had anything positive to say about their country. And, BTW, I have friends in Israel who would agree with everything I have written. And neither they, not I, are self-haters.

Hey Jeff:
It looks like you are exercising something here that you should have (and probably unconsciously you feel sorry that you never had the guts to do so) exercised on your parents and grandparents. So I ask you here: what have they done through in the Nazi regime? In what way have they supported and participated in the Shoa? Have you ever asked your grandfather if and how many he has killed. Have you ever asked your grandmother in what way she participated in humiliation of the jewish neighbors and what she did when she saw and prfited from the deportations? I get the feeling that all this questions should have been asked but you didn’t have the guts and now you are so obviously projecting the guilt on the former victims. That is so pathetic. And yes you are young but already obediently performing your duty and carrying forward the war that your grandparents started with other means. Grow up! Deal with your biography take over responsibility for history and your personal biographical involvement in it! reflect the shit that you grew up in!!!

Lieber Karl,
I have met you in Berlin on an event not so long ago and I’m impressed by your courage and how you face and fight against the ongoing horror of antisemitism. I have deep respect for you and want you let you know that you are not alone and people have to and will go up against this new/old antisemitism. I still have hope and don’t even know where I take it from at this point.

@ Jeff, to start you off:
Don’t let it out on people who survived the deeds of your grandparents! Let it out on your grandparents! Take them finally and directly into responsibility for what they have done! Don’t ease that burden by pointing a finger at the victims point them at your grandparents!

@ “Jeff”

> the dispossession of the Palestinians

Facts? Numbers? Realistic, supporting evidence? (independent trials & their documentaries, independent & credible wittness about virtually all of the following: generally “illegal” crop sales & “forged” contracts, eventually “fabricated” scientific facts)

You still don’t prove any of your claims!

if my comments above don’t fit to jeff or anybody else who has picked up antisemitic discourses of some sorts, the profile fits the so called antifascists in bielefeld as well as in hamburg where so called antifascists have violently prevented an event from happening where the movie Pourquoi Israel by Claude Lanzmann was supposed to be shown.

Anne, obviously you haven’t read anything I have written and you have no idea who I am or where I am coming from. Before you criticize what someone has said, you might take the trouble to read it, no. Otherwise you make a fool out of yourself as you have done here, despite your afterword. And BTW,my parents were beautiful people who had been active in the Jewish community and although believers at the beginning, in the end they came to share my distaste for Israel.

Karl, you need to find yourself a more intelligent crop of defenders. With Anne and Joey,as they say,who needs enemies?

Joey, you are a friggin idiot. There is so much documentary evidence of what I have said and if you are not aware of it by now, I suggest you ask for a pass from the lunatic asylum where you apparently live, so you can go to the library and check it out. But you seem to be unable to read either. Who mentioned illegal crop sales and forged contracts?

@ “Jeff”

> Joey, you are a friggin idiot

Well.. one shouldn’t believe in all these rumours..

> Who mentioned illegal crop sales and forged contracts?

If you gotta ask, you ain’t got it.

quote:
“The idiot is defined in himself and by himself, therefore he doesn’t need any indirection by reason, for he cannot feel it’s absence [..]. In a way he exists before it and outside of it, which doesn’t exclude the fact that he’d never turn towards it in order to own it by it’s interiors. [..] The idiot is merged in his however constituted peculiarity, and this general motion of being merged in something modulates the common characteristics of limitlessly various quisquilia. The idiot rapturously listens to himself, he is caressed, he gets aroused by himself, he’s affectionate only towards himself. He, who only thinks about his own viability, ends up as the dreamlike loot of all promises of immortality, as well as the fool par excellence of all these Tartuffes of religion, medicine and a brilliant future. [..]“.
(André Glucksmann, “The Power Of Ignorance”, Ullstein 1988)

Please note: This is a simplified translated version of Glucksmann’s thesis, in order not to mentally distract any trolls from what they’re notoriously up to.

Joey, that Glucksman was clairevoyant. He described you to a tee. That’s a golf tee I’m referring to that’s been used by a duffer and has all the nicks to show for it. Well maybe in the next life….

Karl, what a thoroughly disgraceful conduct towards you; I’m so sorry to hear about that, though I’m very glad that an alternative venue was found, and your lecture took place after all – it is so very important that ultimately the attempt to silence you was unsuccessful.

Jeff writes:
“Karl, from your article and your posts, in which you object to the Israeli military being compared with Nazis, it can be assumed that you had no problem with the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1948 in which you participated as a member of the Palmach, irrespective of whether or not you were involved in one of the massacres of Palestinians that took place at that time.”

Jeff, it may be news to you, but Karl participated in defending the barely born Jewish state against the onslaught of the armies of five Arab states. Indeed, already in the negotiations about the UN partition plan in 1947, Arab League officials had made bloodcurdling threats against Palestine’s Jews, which sounded rather credible coming just some 2 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. It was also already in 1947, just after the UN partition resolution, that the Arab League proceeded to draft Nuremberg-style laws targeting Jews in Arab countries, and a number of the relevant provisions were later implemented, leading to the state-sponsored systematic ethnic cleansing of some 850 000 Jews from their ancient communities all over the Arab and Muslim world.

By contrast, the Arabs of Palestine became refugees in a war that was fought on their behalf, and with their participation; their leader at the time was the fugitive war criminal Haj Amin al-Husseini, also known as Hitler’s Mufti. The vast majority of Palestinian Arabs left their homes well before fighting became serious, expecting that the “final solution” of their “Jewish problem” wouldn’t take too long; most refugees moved to locations less than 50 kilometers from their homes to wait out the end of the fighting – in any other conflict, they wouldn’t even qualify as refugees, but only as displaced persons.

The war in which Karl fought was Israel’s most costly war in terms of losses: almost 1 percent of Israel’s Jewish population was killed, and an additional 2 percent were wounded; included in these casualties were of course people who had survived the Holocaust. It was a desperate fight for survival against an enemy that included many personalities and groups who sympathized with the Nazis and fully shared the Nazi hate of Jews. That was one reason why at the time the mainstream left was fully supportive of Palestine’s Jews.

So while in today’s Nation you wouldn’t find a good word about Israel, back then, the Nation was in the forefront of making the case for Israel. Some 6 decades of Arab rejectionism may make it seem attractive to rewrite history, but whatever “narrative” appeals today to those who like to pose as oh so morally superior (including apparently you), what happened back then doesn’t change: Palestine’s Jews were fighting for their survival against forces that would have rejoiced if WWII had ended with a Nazi victory.

You then proceed to write a lot of nonsense about colonialism etc. The Balfour Declaration was issued exactly in the Wilsonian spirit of granting self-determination, and by moving against their Jewish citizens, the Arab states proved, if any proof was still needed, how necessary and justified it was for Jews to demand the right to self-determination.
Your claim that Palestine was rightfully Arab is nonsense: it was Muslim due to the conquests of Islamic imperialism, and it was previously part of the Ottoman empire. The Arabs of Palestine were awarded the bulk of the land: first Jordan, which was part of the Mandate, and then, with the partition plan, another Arab state. Whatever rights the Arabs of Palestine had, they simply didn’t have the right to veto self-determination for the Jews; this is all the more pertinent given that the legislation drafted by the Arab League in 1947 illustrated all too well that Jews were a vulnerable minority in Arab and Muslim states.

Karl put his young life on the line to fight for the eminently just cause of a Jewish state that provided Holocaust survivors and hundreds of thousands of refugees from Arab countries with a chance to start over again without the fear that being Jewish might mean once again to be condemned to second class status, at the mercy of a majority that could at any moment decide to vent its frustrations in yet another set of discriminatory laws, or yet another burst of anti-Jewish violence. It says a whole lot about you and the utter shallowness of your “indignation” on behalf of the Palestinians that you would think that anything entitles you to feel superior to him.

@ “Jeff”

> Glucksman was clairevoyant.

Welcome to my mind.

@ PetraMB

Thanks for patiently and competently redirecting the discussion back to where it belongs, away from just losing valuable time in useless meta discussion (my apologies to Karl Pfeifer for my taking part in a rather useless ping-pong with a prototypic “truth salesman”).

As to the so called “Grand Mufti of Jerusalem” (who never carried this exaggerated title officially, the addendum “Grand” was kind of a formal invention): I think of his appearance on the historic plane as of a rather spooky thing working far beyond arab nationalism. Most people don’t seem to be aware of the fact that Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini was one of the heads of a die-hard, uprising spiritual movement inside Islam that had similar intentions as Himmler-Nazi and the inner magical order structure inside the “SS” had: destroy the Jewish “as a spiritual-cultural entity”, not just “being against the/some Jews” inside a given territory for sole reasons of totalitarist power or simple military-economic opportunism.

Of course this thought could pose many further questions about what might have really motivated most Germans and parts of the Arab world to kill and “harvest” Jewish populations and culture before, during and after WW2 in Europe and Middle East, than modern military, economic or political theories could ever sufficiently answer by their own means. I won’t suggest that I have even the slightest idea about finding “final truth”, but am also deeply convinced that any accusation against Israel as a state and modern society (typically: “stole land from the palestines”, “zionist nazis” etc.) is as absurd as can be.

At times, the whole thing seems to have had – and still seems to have – an additional archaic or “esoteric-magical” layer that today still tends to eat itself deeply into the subconscious minds of some, maybe of too many, like some kind of mental flu, though the surface of relevant discussions may often appear as a mere “psychological issue”, but there may be more to it, in terms of possible description of destructive irrationality itself.

Here “anti-” often does not just mean “being against sth/s..”, but rather “finaly closing the case by ritualized ignorance” – which is like trying to mentally execute someone, usually this makes any rational argument entirely obsolete. On the other hand, any mystification of highly speculative aspects “behind” any historical facts easily counteracts the main idea of the age of enlightenment: SAPERE AUDE.

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_grand_mufti.php

Here is a critique of the Hamburg “internationalist’s” blockade of the Claude Lanzmann film showing in the radical Left newspaper Jungle World, which “M” mentioned in his/her comment: “Eyes Closed and Covered”

In Germany and Austria the slogan was when I was a child “Der Jud’ ist schuld”
(The Jew is guilty)

Now I am 81 and know that the anonymous antisemites of Bielefeld and their ilk did not invent a new slogan, they just replaced the word Jud’ with Zionist and continue where their forefathers had to stop, because the Allied won the war.

To those British people who revile me, I suggest to sweep away the brown dirt before their own doorstep before attacking me.

Joey, I’m afraid any kind of debate with Jeff is a waste of time, since he seems mainly interested in his pose of pseudo-morality and a suitable fact-free narrative.

@ “jeff”:
true, haven’t read everything of what you have written, but i also have other stuff to do than reading the whole endless accusations that you’ve dropped, and what I have read was stupid enough to not let it pass without comment. aren’t you wondering yourself sometimes why big parts of your accusations sound so much like what new anti-semites say? And i wasn’t the only one who thought, according to your apology of nazi-germany with israel and other parts of your argumentation, that you must at least ideologically connected to them.

@ “jeff”:
true, haven’t read everything of what you have written, but i also have other stuff to do than reading the whole endless accusations that you’ve dropped, and what I have read was stupid enough to not let it pass without comment. aren’t you wondering yourself sometimes why big parts of your accusations sound so much like what new anti-semites say? And i wasn’t the only one who thought, according to your apology of nazi-germany with israel and other parts of your argumentation, that you must at least be ideologically connected to them.

sry karl for what happened in bielefeld!

Well, Petra MB, I know your arguments because I used to believe them myself until I made my first trip to the Middle East as a photojournalist and spent four months photographing in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan which spurred me into learning the history of the conflict from both sides. Experiences on that trip shed any illusions that I had about Jews being different from any other conquerors who had displaced indigenous people from their land. And whatever you may say to the contrary, the Palestinian Arabs had been living in that land for generations. I remember, standing on the Israeli-Lebanese border looking down into Israel with two young Palestinian men who had been born there but could not return, and here was I,an American Jew, with a US passport in my pocket, having more right to live in that country than those two men who were born there. It was morally wrong then and it is morally wrong today and those who do not agree with that are, in my mind, racists, Jewish supremacists. The fact that other peoples have been displaced make the crimes committed against the Palestinians and less deserving of condemnation. It is one of the sad ironies of history that people like Karl who had been so recently oppressed had no problem in becoming part of an oppressing regime itself. I do understand what drove him and others to do what he did but understanding it and accepting it are two different things.

There is one experience that I had at a refugee camp in Jordan that came to symbolize for me what Israel had become. I was invited to stay at theccamp by a young man who was a guard at the PLO office in Amman in a small metal hut that he shared with three other young Palestinians of his age. When he took off his shirt before going to sleep that night I noticed that his upper torso, front and back, was covered with small scars. When I inquired about them he told me that one night,Israeli soldiers had come to his home,believing he was a fedayeen (which Palestinian resistance fighters were called in those days),and they wanted infomation from him. Since he was not a fedayeen, or at least not yet, he couldn’t answer their questions despite their burning him with lighted cigaraettes which accounted for his scars, and breaking both of his arms at the elbows.

Now, I am sure this story fills all of you reading it with rage, not at the Israeli perpetrators of this crime, but at me, for having the temerity to even mention while you are paying homage a great hero of the Palmach who in 1948 was apparently involved in dispossessing other Palestinians from their land and no one’s suffering can be compared with what Jews have suffered. Is not that what all of you are saying in one form or another?

In 1983, in Israel I interviewed a number of members of Yesh G’vul, the organization of Israeli reservists who either refused to participate in the invasion of Lebanon the year before or who participate in the invasion and were so disgusted by the crimes they saw their fellow soldiers commit, that they chose short terms in prison rather than take part in what they correctly saw as an unjust war. Several of them had emigrated to Israel from Latin America but I later learned they had gone back home. From their experience in Argentina, they knew from experience the face of fascism and in Israel that face looked like Sharon and looked like Begin.

As for your version of history,PetraMB, it is nothing but regurgitated Zionist propaganda, and new Israeli historians have refuted it and provided the documents to prove the refutation. You might wish to check our Prof. Ilan Pappe’s “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” as well as my late friend, Prof. Israel Shahak’s “Jewish History, Jewish Religion, the Weight of 3000 Years.” He was a survivor of Bergen-Belsen.

As for the Balfour Declaration being “issued in the Wilsonian spirit of granting self-determination,” that is not only ridiculous on the face of it, considering Britain was engaged in a war that it was losing, but in 1917,when it was granted, that so-called “Wilsonian spirit,” had yet to be expressed. I have in my files not only the speech that David Lloyd George made thanking the Zionists for their assistance, but also the recollections made by one of the American Zionists who participated in the months of discussions that took place in the US in determining how the declaration would be worded.

It is difficult to argue with people who have been stuffed like Christmas geese with propaganda (if you don’t mind me borrowing that metaphor) and, without doing any actual research of their own, have come to believe it as if they did. It’s more a common failing than not.

As for your comment, Anne, asking me to wonder why, to you my “accusations sound so much like what new anti-semites say,” I can only reply that what I have been writing is the truth and when the truth becomes anti-Semitic and everyone telling it becomes an anti-Semite in your eyes, it is high time for Israelis and those Jews who support them to seriously reconsider what they have been doing and rejoin the human race and not stand apart and say its laws have nothing to do with them.

ilan pappe and shahak? i think we all understand *exactly* where you’re coming from, now. if you consider those people to be, er, “scholars” there isn’t much left to argue about.

Jeff, since I happen to have a Ph.D. in contemporary history, I feel I’m quite able and indeed qualified to tell the difference between propaganda and a complex reality. You may be disappointed to learn that Ilan Pappe himself actually doesn’t claim to even try to be objective; instead, he likes to tell the stories of people with whom he feels sympathy. As regards your dear friend Shahak, you certainly know that for good reason, also people like David Duke mourned his passing.
Last but not least, it’s very nice for you that you have such a good memory that you can still recall that you interviewed some Israelis in 1983 and what they told you — no doubt, there are all sorts of views expressed by all sorts of Israelis: take my word for it, since I’m one of them.

Of course, Petra, a decent human being, be he or she an Israeli or from any place or time is not going to be objective when he or she sees crimes being committed by one people against another as a matter of state policy. But what both Pappe, who I also know and admire, and Shahak as well other Israeli academics with whose names you are no doubt familiar have done is back up their research with documentation as is required of any legitimate historian. Perhaps, if your expertise in “contemporary history” covers a period longer than the past few weeks, you might undertake a critique of Pappe’s book and provide documentary evidence to counter his arguments. Perhaps, some other Israeli historian has done that, but I doubt it. It is a lot easier to dismiss Pappe and others as self-haters and even Jewish anti-semites.

But, may I remind you, that I have seen Israel for myself, even enjoyed coffee with friends in Tel Aviv cafes, Israelis who were born there (and share my opinions) which I have a hunch you were not. There is a settler mindset I have found among “Israelis” who have emigrated from the US and the UK, in particular that in certain critical ways distinguish them from a sabra even if they might share many of the same opinions,what one might call an unresolvable identity crisis. If I am wrong and you were born in what was Palestine you will let me know,

I have also been in the West Bank both before and after the first intifada and have experienced the racist, sadistic behavior of its soldiers. I also saw the same behavior from them in Lebanon, so I need no one to filter out the truths that I have seen for myself and which have been well documented over the years in the Israeli press by a variety of journalists who have not lost their sense of humanity and reject the notion of Israel Uber Alles. I won’t mention their names, since I don’t want them subjected to the swinish insult you directed toward one of the most honest men I have ever met–Dr.Shahak who quite appropriately excoriated the PLO and its corruption which most of his critics seem to ignore. One of Dr.Shahak’s “great crimes” was to translate the Hebrew press into English, and his translations included those who are still major figures in the Hebrew press, e.g, Yossi Melman, Ehud Yaari, Nahum Barnea, so non-Hebrew speakers would have a sense of what was being thought and said in Israel so much so that on my first visit, people I met were surprised at my familiarity with the Israeli political scene.

Now, getting back to Karl who, after all, initiated this thread. He was 18 and 19 at the time of the 48 war and he did what was expected of him. Given his wartime experiences, whatever he did in assisting the state in dispossessing the Palestinians of their land might be forgotten or forgivable under the circumstances, but if, after all these years, he is still proud of his accomplishments and stands staunchly as a defender of the racist state of Israel, I feel nothing for him but the contempt he deserves. There were others, of the same age, who did what Karl did,and later came to regret it and have done what they can to make amends to the Palestinians and, if nothing else, to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and more recently, the siege of Gaza. Karl made his choice. That it happened to be the immoral one is how, I assure you, he and others who made the same choice will be judged, if remembered at all, when the eulogies for the Zionist project are written.

To all of you who take offense at Jeff’s comments, I suggest that you read the logo at the top of this page.

“Liberty, if it means anything, is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.”

It is more than obvious that you who are blind to the racist nature of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians which still goes on today do not want to hear anything of this. So keep on your blinders and close your minds.

As a Jew I opened my eyes and my mind. It wasn’t easy but you too can do that if you want to know the truth.

Well, Jeff, given the views you have espoused here, methinks Karl is one lucky guy to be judged so harshly by you.
And Jan, you can’t even begin to imagine how impressive all those things are that you managed to do “as a Jew”…

You jest, now, Petra, but I will probably be considered much “softer” than those who will later pass judgment on Israel when its inevitable race to become a theofascist state can no longer be disguised or protected from the civilized world. Talk about a shanda, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

BTW, since you did not challenge my supposition that you were born elsewhere than Israel, I must assume that I was right. Teaneck? Brooklyn? Newton? Are you celebrating Thanksgiving?

Jeff your prophecy about what Israel is inevitable to become is your halluzination. What you do not see, there are several “theofascist” states in the World, like Iran.
So continue dreaming and not recognising reality.
Go away back to your nazi/and or antisemitic website and if you write try to write about subject matter.

By the way you can read a piece of news on
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1259010983725&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull

Karl, I already wrote that I disagree with the decision that was taken to keep you from speaking and I had already read that article. I also, as I wrote, have seen what your beloved Israel’’s wehrmacht had done with my own eyes twice in Lebanon and I watched the Israeli luftwaffe dropping white phosphorous on Gaza on Al-Jazeera so please don’t imply that I am a Nazi, since it is those whom you support are a better fit for that category, “Judeo-Nazi, “a term that the renowned scholar, Prof.Yeshayahu Leibowitz coined in the aftermath of the 67 war, If you don’t like to be called that name, than I advise you to not to do the same.

I have no truck with Ahmadinejad or the Iranian regime although his wild statements have been deliberately mistranslated. As the head of AIPAC said last year, he “is the gift that keeps on giving.” But may I remind you it is not Iran but Israel that has launched three wars in the last three decades, despite the bombast of Iran’s leaders that have been designed more to win support in the Arab world than to actually threaten Israel.

But not a week seems to go by without a report in the Israeli press of some prominent rabbi justifying the extermination of non-Jews, telling Israeli troops thatb they should kill without mercy, of Palestinians being compared to Amalek,and now we have seen a rise in the percentage of young religious Jews indoctrinated by these racist/fascist nutcases who are joining Israel’s combat units and as you are aware a number have already said they will refuse to participate in the evacuation of the settlements, should that, as unlikely as it seems, become a reality. It would not be the first civil war among Jews, as you well know, and it is more than likely to end in disaster as did the last one. On whose side would you stand? I confess, I don’t expect a straight answer. You seem to prefer ad hominum attack than replying to facts.

Karl, a postscript to the last comment. When I read that you were a “Holocaust survivor,” I assumed, incorrectly, as it turned out, that you had been interned in a concentration camp and had survived that experience. I just looked you up on the net and found out that you were nothing of the sort. Unfortunately, but not, I am certain, unintentionally, it seems that every European Jew who survived the war, irrespective of his or her location, is considered to be a “survivor.”

That one’s experience outside of the camps is qualitatively different than that of those inside the camps does not seem to be worthy of discussion, but from my experience, it certainly should be and I will tell you and the others on this thread why.

Up until now, I had never run across anyone who actually had been in the camps who was not sympathetic with the Palestinian experience and critical of Israel’s policies, including some who had lived there and left. Given that this was no scientific sample, however, it is useful to point out that not a single one, NOT ONE took anything resembling your point of view.

On the contrary, those who I consider to be something less, what I would call “Holocaust escapees,” such as you, the late US Congressman Tom Lantos, who passed for a German and was given a Swedish passport by Raoul Wallenberg, and Abe Foxman, the bloviated director of the US Anti-Defamation League who spent the war hidden in a house by a Christian family, turned out to be serious racists whose contempt for the Palestinian Arabs who Israel dispossessed was on the level of the Nazis attitude toward the Jews.

I suspect those were genuine survivors,not escapees, who several years ago sent a petition to the Israeli government complaining that the treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories resembled how they had been treated by the Nazis before the war, a petition that was quickly hushed up.

So while I might admire your daring escape to Palestine from the Nazis, and you were far luckier than the majority of the Jews in Hungary who were unable to do so, I will not afford you the same respect and degree of understanding that I would for someone who actually survived the Nazi death camps as did my late friend, Prof. Israel Shahak who has been defamed by people on this thread who are not fit to have shined his shoes (which frequently needed shining).

@ PetraMB

> Joey, I’m afraid any kind of debate with Jeff is a waste of time

thanks, I think the same. At least he did prove he’s able to consistently act like all these maniacs who are usually allowed to appear only once for a 150 bucks in a random local afternoon TV talk.

@ Karl

> Now I am 81 and know that the anonymous antisemites of Bielefeld and their ilk did not invent a new slogan, they just replaced the word Jud’ with Zionist and continue where their forefathers had to stop, because the Allied won the war.

maybe the allied forces should have stayed in Germany for another one or two decades. Thanks for reminding me how primitive that old principle of collective abolishment will always remain. Hopefully not only such pieces of utmost human stupidity will be passed on to our future generations. People of today no matter where they were born, if jewish or not, owe you (and much too few remaining others) very much for speaking out about your *personal* experience and feelings – very much unlike some of these mediocre conspiracy theorists who got kicked out of their jobs as professors after having heavily insulted and hurt their own country which freely paid their studies and also let them teach. The ones whose minds are still fixated to that utmost stupidity – antisemitism/racism of any kind – in some way they’re all the same and most of them will never learn.

Best Regards

@ The Holy Troll Combinate

> You might wish to check our Prof. Ilan Pappe’s

“‘t was fairly easy to crack thy shell.
But, alas, no gem inside…”

(quote: “The Unpublished Wives Of Windsor”, by W. Shakes-peare)

Pal Joey, Petra/Israelinurse, Anne, and you, too, Karl: I have two simple questions that requires just a yes or no answer.

1) Do you think there is any significant difference between the experience of someone who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during the war and someone who was not and managed to escape or hide?

2) When a person makes a point of identifying himself or herself as a Holocaust survivor, do you assume that that person was in a Nazi concentration camp?

And please, try and see if you can find the courage to answer these questions honestly rather than avoiding doing so by flinging more insults.

Karl, from your silence and the failure of your supporters to respond to what I believe are key questions,which come as no surprise, I have come to the conclusion that, irrespective of whatever else you have done in your life, you are NOT by an stretch of the truth a “Holocaust survivor,” and your pretending to be one is nothing less than an insult to those who actually were interned by the Nazis and persevered despite their suffering, as well as those who died.

The evidence for that seems clear. From what I read on the internet, your family left Germany in 1938 and you left Hungary for Palestine in 1943, a year before the Nazis invaded and occupied that country. While the situation for Jews in Germany had deteriorated in the period before you and your family left, the Nazi campaign of genocide had not yet begun.

What you should most properly be called is a “Holocaust avoider,” and there is no shame in being that. It is a description that could have been applied to the majority of German Jews who managed to escape from Nazi Germany while their counterparts in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe were not so fortunate.

I had assumed when I read the first lines of your article, as I mentioned in an earlier post, that you had actually been interned in a concentration camp, which is what most people believe when they are told that some is a “Holocaust survivor.”

What you have apparently been doing is using that title,without having earned it, to advance your political and journalistic career for which you should be ashamed. It is not too late to make a public apology.

Quote Jeff:
“1) Do you think there is any significant difference between the experience of someone who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during the war and someone who was not and managed to escape or hide?”

There is a difference, it´s the difference of life and death – of surviving and not surviving.
Jeff, you are disgusting.

@Karl: I really feel sorry for you having to take all this crap. If I were you I would just ignore this idiot – if he can´t be banned from the site, that is.

For me Jeff just proves: How elaborate “antizionism” might appear – in the end it´s just the same old antisemitic crap. I made up my mind now and will turn up for the re-screening of the Landsmann movie in Hamburg on the 13th.

No Michael, you and those of your mindset are the ones who are disgusting. You are the ones who insult the memory of both those who died in the camps and those who experienced and survived them as opposed to those like Karl who were fortunate enough to get out,first from Germany and then from Hungary without having had that experience. I am not judging him for that. I am judging him for pretending to have had those experiences by identifying himself as a “Holocaust survivor,” which I will repeat so that it might penetrate your thick skull, IS AN INSULTto those who actually had that experience who can genuinely be called “Holocaust survivors.”

I suppose if he had taken the political positions of Prof.Israel Shahak who WAS in Bergen-Belsen when the war ended, and retained a sense of humanity who supporters of Pfeifer on this thread have dumped on, you would certainly be quick to point out that Pfeifer is a fake and that he has used his fraudulent identity to not only enhance his career but give unwarranted legitimacy to his political opinions.

Since you didn’t answer my second question (and none of the others have answered either of them), perhaps you would tell me if when someone says that he or she is a “Holocaust survivor,” do you assume that the person telling you this was interned by the Nazis?”

Can you formulate an answer without lowering yourself even deeper in the gutter with your insults?

Since you mentioned the Claude Lanzmann film, I hope the one you’re are referring to is “Shoah.” It’s seven hours long and worth every minute. By the end, perhaps, you will understand what the difference was between being interned in the camps and NOT being in the camps as was the case with your friend, Karl.

@ Michael

> There is a difference, it´s the difference of life and death – of surviving and not surviving.

exactly. Most people instantly take it this healthy way, but not so that web taliban who calls himself “Jeff”, who claims “being born jewish”, claims being an about 75 year old U.S american, claims having worked about everywhere as a “photographer” – and what not – harrassed and heavily insulted about everyone in this otherwise peaceful blog discussion.

Why? Just to force his die-hard personal “views” upon everyone and just to create tons of false facts and inacceptable accusations against Karl. Then, yesterday, web taliban “Jeff” tried out a rather well known and easy to detect psycho game: “good Jew, bad Jew”, including the delivery of two classical catch-22 rhetoric patterns which in fact are no questions at all, but merely parts of his own beliefs as he’d already expressed them before most redundantly, he only clad these already fixated and half-understood belief snippets of his into hollow binary interrogation schematics that under certain unlucky circumstances “may” be mistaken as true questions.

Everyone immediately understood that, except for web taliban sissy “Jeff” himself. Also the third class demon inside his bowels probably hates being ignored. I’m pretty sure no shrink will accept this man for serious treatment, so only an exorcist might be able to have some rather obscure fun with him.

Joey, Schmoey, I knew you would not have either the guts, plain old fashioned guts, to provide a yes or no answer to those two very simple questions–that stand quite apart from whatever you may or may not think of me–but that is the way it seems to be with Holocaust abusers who are responsible for far more serious damage to their fellow humans than Holocaust deniers since when all else fails they justify Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians, against the Lebanese, and, still to come no doubt, against the Iranians, on the basis of what was done to other Jews, but not to them, three quarters of a century ago.

Let me make my point more clearly. When Karl Pfeifer pretends that he is a Holocaust survivor,the accepted definition of which is someone who survived Hitler’s concentration camps, or at the very least,spent the war hiding out in Nazi occupied Europe, Pfeifer is not only lying but he cheapens the experiences of those who actually were interned and survived and insults the memory of those who didn’t.

Now, forget about me for a moment and concentrate on that last sentence. If you think that it is okay for Karl Pfeifer, who left Germany before the Holocaust at the age of 9 and then left Hungary for Palestine at the age of 14, and spent the remainder of the war safely out of the reach of the Nazis to call himself a Holocaust survivor and indeed begin his article with that very claim, then you are as big a fraud as he is.

Finally, among your spurious accusations, you have accused me of presenting a “ton of false facts.” Perhaps you could begin by just mentioning one. I know insults come easier to you but try, if you can, to write something that appears to be the result of mature thinking.

one thing you should notice (to get the right picture) is that a lot of people, and especially a lot of political frustrated people who can be found in the AJZ have an severe alcoholic problem. this was true about a decade ago and i don’t think much has changed. don’t get me wrong, i don’t want to excuse anything…
hopefully there will be an ‘official’ statement from the AJZ Hausversammlung in the next days…

i am not able to translate it correctly. for those who don’t understand german at all, its an excuse and an explanation of what happened, it says (in brief) that there have been problems with internal and external communication and choosing another location was thought to be the best way to deal with these problems.

Stellungnahme der Hausversammlung des AJZ Bielefeld vom 01.12.2009 zu der räumlichen Verlegung der Infoveranstaltung mit Karl Pfeifer am 19.11.2009 Am 01.12.2009 fand ein Treffen im AJZ statt, an dem ca. 100 Personen aus dem AJZ, seinem Umfeld und der Antifa AG teilgenommen haben. Anschließend hat die Hausversammlung diese Stellungnahme formuliert, um den aktuellen Stand der Diskussion festzuhalten. Wir stehen weiter im Diskussionsprozess innerhalb unserer Zusammenhänge und mit der Antifa AG. Wir finden es wichtig, sich selbst und auch unsere Strukturen immer wieder zu hinterfragen und antisemitische, rassistische, sexistische und andere ausgrenzende und unterdrückende Tendenzen, Denk- und Sichtweisen innerhalb der Gesellschaft, aber auch in unseren eigenen Zusammenhängen sichtbar zu machen. Wir begrüßen daher auch ausdrücklich, dass sich auch bürgerliche Medien mit dem Thema Antisemitismus in Deutschland beschäftigen. Uns ist bewusst, dass sowohl durch missverständliche und aus dem Kontext gerissenen Bemerkungen, als auch durch die missverständliche Wiedergabe von Äußerungen, sowie durch Fehlkommunikation innerhalb des AJZ und mit der Antifa AG Dritte angegriffen und verletzt wurden, dafür können wir nur aufrichtig um Entschuldigung bitten – was wir hiermit tun. Uns ist auch bewusst (geworden), dass das Vorgehen der Hausversammlung des AJZ offensichtlich für Personen, die nicht mit selbst verwalteten, autonomen Strukturen vertraut sind, irritierend war und auch insbesondere, dass es in der Zwischenzeit – trotz der massiven Vorwürfe in der Presse – keine Äußerung aus dem AJZ gab. Das liegt an unseren Strukturen, die trotz der Schwächen die sie haben (z.B. Schwerfälligkeit) richtig und gut sind. Wie im AJZ üblich, gilt auch auf der Hausversammlung das Konsensprinzip. Keine Einzelperson kann sich für das AJZ äußern, also auch keine Stellungnahmen an die Presse oder andere Personen abgeben. Und das ist auch gut so. Die Veranstaltung mit Herrn Pfeifer wurde nicht aufgrund des Inhaltes der Veranstaltung (Ungarn 2009: Antisemitismus, Antiziganismus und Neofaschismus) oder der Person Karl Pfeifer verlegt. Diese Entscheidung war weder antisemitisch noch antizionistisch motiviert, sondern war fehlerhafter Kommunikation innerhalb des AJZ und mit der Antifa AG geschuldet. Entgegen der bisherigen Darstellungen wurde weder behauptet, dass Herr Pfeifer an dem Angriff auf Deir Yassin beteiligt war noch wurde gefordert, dass er sich davon distanzieren soll. Es wurde lediglich die Frage aufgeworfen, ob Herr Pfeifer in einer Einheit war, die etwas mit einem Massaker zu tun hatte. Dies, sowie die Tatsache, dass es zu wenige Informationen über den Hintergrund des Referenten gab und nicht abgeschätzt werden konnte, ob dieser dem Minimalkonsens des AJZ entgegen stehen würde, führte zu Bedenken das AJZ für eine Veranstaltung mit Herrn Pfeifer zur Verfügung zu stellen. Um die Bedenken aufklären zu können wären eine genauere Vorbereitung der Veranstaltung, eine bessere Kommunikation über die Informationslage sowie eine Kenntnis der historischen Fakten über das Massaker von Deir Yassin und den paramilitärischen Einheiten in der Zeit vor 1948 in Israel nötig gewesen. Der Vorschlag, mit Herrn Pfeifer Kontakt aufzunehmen, um so die Bedenken ausräumen zu können, wurde von den anwesenden Vertreter_innen der Antifa AG auf Grund des engen Zeitrahmens als nicht praktikabel abgewiesen. Als weiterer möglicher Umgang mit der Situation wurde vorgeschlagen, die Veranstaltung zu verschieben, so dass es Gelegenheit gäbe, sich mit dem Zusammenhang genauer zu beschäftigen, um dann eine Entscheidung treffen zu können. Auch dieser Vorschlag wurde von den Vertreter_innen der Antifa AG abgewiesen, da Herr Pfeifer aus Wien anreisen müsse, und das nur – wie geplant – in Kooperation mit einer weiteren Veranstaltung möglich sei. Es wurde der ausdrückliche Wunsch nach Klärung geäußert, da die Veranstaltung von allen als äußerst wichtig und interessant angesehen wurde. Anders als es nun dargestellt wird, wurde eine Veranstaltung mit Herrn Pfeifer nicht per se abgelehnt. Da die Teilnehmer_innen der Hausversammlung keine andere Möglichkeit sahen, bis zum Veranstaltungstermin die Bedenken auszuräumen, wurde als weitere Option vorgeschlagen, die Veranstaltung an einem anderen Ort durchzuführen. Die Vertreter_innen der Antifa AG zeigten sich mit dem Vorschlag einverstanden und es wurde anschließend gemeinsam über die organisatorische Umsetzung der Verlegung der Veranstaltung diskutiert. Auch wenn bei einigen Personen nach dieser Diskussion eine erhebliche Unzufriedenheit übrig geblieben ist, so wurde weder über die Entscheidung gestritten noch erklärten die Vertreter_innen der Antifa AG, dass sie die Entscheidung nicht mittragen würden. Das Vorgehen der Hausversammlung ist innerhalb der selbstverwalteten Struktur des AJZ der übliche Umgang mit einer Situation, in der es der Hausversammlung auf Grund der Informationslage und des Kenntnisstandes nicht möglich ist, eine abschließende Entscheidung zu treffen. Wir bedauern sehr, dass die Kommunikation zwischen den AJZ´ler_innen und der Antifa AG derart schlecht und ungenau war. Wären die Bedenken der AJZ´ler_innen frühzeitig der Antifa AG mitgeteilt worden, hätte noch recherchiert bzw. mit Herrn Pfeifer kommuniziert werden können. Für diesen Fehler entschuldigen wir uns. Wir bedauern auch, dass die anwesenden Personen der Antifa AG nicht geäußert haben, dass sie die Entscheidung, die Veranstaltung nicht im AJZ, sondern in der FH durchzuführen, anscheinend nicht mittragen wollten. Dies war auf der Hausversammlung nicht ersichtlich. Weiterhin müssen wir uns als Hausversammlung für die Zukunft einen Umgang mit derartig unklaren Informationslage überlegen. Wenn externe Gruppen Veranstaltungen im AJZ machen wollen, sind wir auf Informationen von diesen Gruppen angewiesen. Die Hausversammlung ist der Ort, an dem auch “Gerüchte” ernst genommen und geklärt werden müssen. In diesem Zusammenhang finden wir auch das Verhalten der Antifa AG problematisch, da diese sich als Veranstalterin, obwohl ihnen in der Absagemail der AJZ´ler_innen eine Woche vor der Veranstaltung mitgeteilt wurde, dass es Unklarheiten bzgl. des Vortragenden gäbe, nicht im Vorfeld um eine Klärung der Unklarheiten bemüht haben. Das veröffentlichte Gedächtnisprotokoll über die Hausversammlung stellt einen Zusammenhang her, den es auf der Hausversammlung nicht gab; es gibt außerdem nur in Fragmenten und mehr als ungenau die Situation wieder. Warum dies und das darauf folgende Presseecho in dieser indiskutablen Art und Weise erfolgt ist, muss in den internen politischen Strukturen geklärt werden, aber nicht in der Art und Weise, wie dies in den letzten Tagen auf etlichen Internetseiten erfolgte, sondern in einer solidarischen und (selbst)kritischen Art, die auch die eigenen Fehler, Vorurteile und Ressentiments mit einschließen muss. Denn es ist selbstverständlich, dass niemand vor Antisemitismus oder Rassismus gefeit ist. Sehr bedauerlich finden wir jedenfalls, dass aus einem hausinternen Kommunikationsproblem und dem Befolgen unserer selbst vorgegebenen Entscheidungsstrukturen eine derartig politisch aufgeladene Debatte wurde, die den tatsächlichen Beiträgen der internen Diskussion nicht gerecht wird. Wir fordern alle Beteiligten auf, von weiterer unsachlicher, konstruierter und falscher Berichterstattung über den “antisemitischen Gerüchtshof im AJZ Bielefeld” abzusehen. Dies wird der ernsthaften Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema Antisemitismus aus unserer Sicht nicht gerecht. Die Hausversammlung des AJZ Bielefeld

Jeff, to answer your questions:

1) Do you think there is any significant difference between the experience of someone who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during the war and someone who was not and managed to escape or hide?

Yes, there’s a difference. Just like there is a difference between living in the conflict and watching the conflict in the news.

2) When a person makes a point of identifying himself or herself as a Holocaust survivor, do you assume that that person was in a Nazi concentration camp?

No, I don’t make that assumption. I have met several Jews around Karl’s age who also fled the country and call themselves Holocaust survivors and are accepted as such by others, including concentration camp survivors.

The Holocaust was not just a group of concentration camps. It was the systematic denial and elimination of a people through various means, of which concentration camps were one.

Karl Pfeiffer:
I have learnt so much about real-time situations in Germany and Austria from these comments. The blocking, by anti-Zionists, of the theatre which was going to show a Lanzmann movie is the state of affairs in Canada.

A large majority of these can be designated as ‘losers’ i.e. anarchists, fascists, some professors who have in-bred anti-semitism, Muslim and foreign students including children of upstanding immigrant families (whose parents would be shocked if they knew what their son or daughter was upto), leaders of public-service unions, United Church lay leadership and, unfortunately, a significant section of the French TV and print media.

# 3 said it quite succintly for the reason for this behavior “in order for antisemites being just and innocent it must be their victims who are the real murderers. especially people like karl pfeiffer …….”.

I wish you well and grateful for your article!