Deir Yassin: Inconvenient History

First published in

Inconvenient History

Deir Yassin: Inconvenient History

Daniel McGowan1

The Massacre

There are many different accounts and interpretations of what happened on 9 April 1948 at Deir Yassin, a small village on the west side of Jerusalem. For ardent Zionists it was a battle at the beginning of Israel's War for Independence. For most historians (privately, in opinions they can no longer express without unacceptable professional consequences) it was a massacre of Arabs committed by dissident Jewish factions of the Irgun and the Stern Gang. For Palestinians it was the beginning of the Nakba or The Catastrophe, when they were stripped of 78 percent of historical Palestine.2

Despite these different interpretations, almost all will agree on the following:

• Deir Yassin was a village populated by about 750 Arabs located 3 km west of Jerusalem near the top of a hill accessible only by one road coming from the east.

• With about 120 men, the Jewish terrorist gangs known as The Irgun and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin at 4 a.m. on 9 April 1948 in their first joint ‘military operation’.

• Alerted by guards, the villagers from within their stone homes and with few weapons (including two machine guns) were able to kill four of the terrorists and wound thirty-six, bringing the attack to a standstill by late morning.

• The gangs then sought the help of soldiers from the Palmach, the elite fighters of the Haganah, or the main Jewish military force. These seventeen professional soldiers, using a 52-mm mortar, conquered the village within an hour.

• After the Palmach soldiers had left, the gangs went from house to house killing women, children, and old men.

• They paraded some of the Palestinian men through the streets of Jerusalem and then brought them back to the stone quarry on the south side of Deir Yassin. There they shot them all to death.

• The Irgun and the Stern Gang then herded the villagers who were unable to flee (down the mountain to the southwest toward Ein Karem) into the school and threatened to blow up the building with all the people inside.

• The bloodbath was finally ended when Jews from the neighboring settlement of Givat Shaul intervened, forcing the gangs to let the Palestinians out to flee to East Jerusalem.

• In the following two days the bodies of over a hundred Palestinian villagers were either thrown into cisterns or burned in the quarry.

• During the evening of 9 April at a tea and cookies party for the press, the leader of the Irgun bragged of having killed 254 Arabs. This number was reported in the New York Times on 10 and 13 April.

• Within a year, the homes of Palestinians at Deir Yassin were resettled by Jews, most of them from Romania. In 1951 the Israeli government moved them and created a mental hospital among the buildings in the center of Deir Yassin. It was called Gival Shaul Bet and later the Kfar Shaul Hospital.

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No Peace for Rudolf Hess

First Published in

Inconvenient History

Editorial

No Peace for Rudolf Hess

Richard A. Widmann

In July news circled the globe that the body of Rudolf Hess, the one-time deputy to Adolf Hitler, was exhumed from a family funeral plot. His bones were cremated and scattered at an undisclosed location at sea. Karl-Willi Beck, the mayor of the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel where Hess was buried, justified the action by asserting that the grave had become a site of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.1

Apparently Hess had requested in his will that he be buried in Wunsiedel with his parents in their family plot. At the time of his burial, the local Lutheran church, which supervises the graveyard, did not object and said the wishes of the deceased could not be ignored.2 The removal of Hess’s body and the subsequent disposal of his corpse in a method reminiscent of the recent burial of Osama bin Laden invites a reconsideration of both his life and the death.

Rudolf Hess was born in Alexandria, Egypt on 26 April 1894. The young Hess volunteered to fight for Germany during the First World War and as early as November 1914 had taken part in trench warfare on the Somme. Hess was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class for his bravery and suffered two severe wounds during the conflict.3

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A gross distortion of Real Historical events

"At eighteen he [Germar Rudolf] learned of the post-war expulsion of twelve million Germans..." (Paul Eisen, My Life as a Holocaust Denier, Smith’s Report 184, p11)

This statement is not accurate. If you ever have contact with Germar Rudolf then he should be promptly corrected on such a fallacy.

It is a fact agreed upon by all historians of whatever disposition that more than half of these 12 million Germans fled to the west before the Soviet army had even reached their territory. What makes this especially pertinent for any would-be Holocaust revisionist is that authors such as Walter Sanning (with some general approval expressed by Rudolf) have taken the view that any Jews who may have fled from the Nazi armies (in a war which Hitler waged as part of an attempt to conquer living space in the east the same way that Europeans had conquered North America) are not to be counted as "victims of Hitler" if they happen to perish behind Soviet lines as a consequence of the war.

If one is going to take such a view that itself is OK, but is really incumbent upon you to practice honesty and apply the same standards to Germans who fled long before their territory was occupied. To make it sound as if all or even most of these Germans who fled were expelled after the war is a gross distortion of real historical events.

Patrick McNally

A Personal Appeal from CODOH founder Bradley Smith

August/September 2011

For twenty years Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) has focused on taking the revisionist critique of the orthodox Holocaust story to the university campus across America. We have argued these twenty years that academics and students alike allow—encourage—a routine examination of the orthodox Holocaust narrative, just as every other historical narrative is open to such an examination

For twenty years we have struggled to crack open the taboo that prohibits such an examination of historical facts, a taboo that is supported collectively by academics in every discipline, by the chancellors and administrations of world-renowned universities and community colleges alike. It is a taboo that is promoted with a special fervor by such special-interest organizations as Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Together they have multi-million-dollar budgets, while Hillel alone is represented on more than 500 American campuses.

In the American classroom the conventional Holocaust narrative is the one historical narrative that cannot be addressed openly, which means it cannot be addressed honestly. To make certain that this intellectually corrupt environment for students and academics alike continues and prospers, Hillel and ADL together have published and distributed to student newspaper staffs nationwide a 10,000-word paper titled Fighting Holocaust Denial in Campus Newspaper Advertisements--A Manual for Action. CODOH is the one entity publishing revisionist copy in the student press. The one purpose of this Hillel/ADL multi-million-dollar partnership publication is to stop CODOH from working on the American campus

This is a tough act to go up against. I admit it. At the same time, I’m going to continue to go up against it. The program this academic year is simple enough. While I cannot lay it all out here for the benefit of the folk at Hillel and ADL, I can say that we are going to be "in touch" with more students, more faculty, and larger segments of the administrative system, with more target material, than ever before. And this year—and this will depend significantly on contributions—we are looking at public speaking options on campus.

An open debate on the conventional, taboo-protected Holocaust narrative will help change American civilization from the bottom up. On campus students and faculty alike will be able to question the "unique" monstrosity of the Germans, and to ask (finally) what role Jews have played in the worlds "oldest hatred." Ordinary journalists will feel free to ask Holocaust "survivors" probing questions they would never think of asking now, and have not asked over the last sixty years. Hollywood and the publishing industry would turn away from using German stereotypes to represent evil, and Jewish stereotypes to represent anything and everything—but evil. That in itself would be a cultural revolution. And then there is television. How much do I need to say?

And of course there is the U.S. Congress, such as it is. An open debate on the Holocaust narrative? The new, modified, adapted to the truth narrative would expose the U.S. Congress to the necessity to rethink its relationship with the Israeli State. The Congressional world would fall apart. Without being able to morally exploit a now-ruined Holocaust story, how many more billions would it think morally justifiable to allocate to the Israeli military, including its nuclear weapons? Not so many perhaps? How would that affect the Arab Spring? Iran? I don’t know, but an honest view of an historical narrative focused on Jews, and through Jews to European, Christian, and Muslim cultures the world over would seem to me a worthwhile task.

We’re going to make some of this happen. How much of it we can make happen is significantly dependent on the support from those of you who seriously want to see it happen. I’m not going to spend a lot of money at any one place. But I will have to spend money—week after week after week. If you can help, please do. If you can send a couple, three or four thousand up front, please do. If you can send fifteen, twenty dollars a month please do. If you are unable to contribute anything yourself right now, perhaps you have a friend, an acquaintance, an uncle who would like to see this happen. Talk to him or her. Have them read this appeal.

I’ve been told that if you do not ask, it won’t happen.

Thank you,

Bradley Smith

CODOH Founder

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Professor McGowan Exposes Contemptible Six at Hobart and William Smith Colleges

May 22, 2011

From: Daniel McGowan,

mcgowan@hws.edu

To: Faculty at Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Subject: McKinster smear letter sent to you on October 3, 2009

This is an attempt, admittedly futile, to remove some of the slime thrown at me in a letter addressed to President Gearan and circulated to over 250 people on October 3, 2009. It was written by Jim McKinster and five other faculty members and allegedly signed by 32 people in all. I heard about it by happenstance soon after it was circulated, but neither the President nor any of the six who circulated it was willing to provide me with a copy. That is a typical cowardly response employed by those who use this smear method to accuse, try, and censure someone who dares to speak truth to power. (I finally got a copy last week, hence the 20-month delay in my response.)

Their letter and a copy of the op-ed I wrote in the Finger Lakes Times are attached.

Allow me to refute the lies and innuendos that these “colleagues” have levied against me, behind my back. Since each of you received the detractors’ letter, I am sending you this rebuttal.

1. The purpose of my op-ed was to define Holocaust denial. That should be clear from the byline “What do deniers really mean?” It was submitted in response to the media frenzy and demonization of President Ahmadinejad who addressed the UN General Assembly and whose picture was shown above my guest appearance piece. Instead of acknowledging this, my faculty detractors feigned outrage that it appeared on the eve of Yom Kippur. I had nothing to do with the timing of the article and make no apology for when it appeared vis-à-vis a Jewish holiday.

2. More egregiously these faculty detractors claimed to know my “personal beliefs” and claimed that I misused my title of professor emeritus at Hobart and William Smith Colleges to lend them credence. That is simply a lie. Nowhere are my personal beliefs stated. Moreover my op-ed included an exceptionally long disclaimer showing The Colleges neither condone nor condemn what I had written.

3. The faculty detractors claim that “Holocaust denial carries absolutely no weight among academic scholars in any field whatsoever.” That is simply not true. There are a number of scholars who write about the typical Holocaust narrative and are willing to fight the slime hurled at them by ardent Zionists and by others who feel it their duty to protect the narrative which serves as the sword and shield of apartheid Israel. (BTW, our former provost and former William Smith Dean both demanded that I not use the word “apartheid” in connection with Israel; granted the term was used in the Israeli press and later by President Carter, but it was not “suitable discourse” on our campus where we routinely claim to support free speech and diversity of opinion.

4. The faculty detractors write that “denying undisputed facts of the holocaust (sic) is not a way to show support for the Palestinians.” First, the three tenets of Holocaust revisionism are clearly not “undisputed.” To the contrary, they are hotly and passionately disputed; people’s lives are ruined when they even question these “facts.” In fourteen countries you can get jail time for disputing “facts” surrounding the Holocaust.

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How Elie Wiesel Got the Nobel Peace Prize

First Published in

EWCTW

How Elie Wiesel Got the Nobel Peace Prize

By Carolyn Yeager

Was Wiesel a strange choice?

What has Mr. Wiesel ever done for “peace” or, even more to the point, “world peace?” He was a devoted Zionist even in his youth, working as a journalist for Zion in Kampf, a Yiddish newspaper in Paris (see here). He had many contacts with the Irgun terrorist organization and cheered on their every action; he may well have been even more deeply involved with Irgun. He stated in his memoir that “I belonged to the Irgun.” He has supported every illegal military action in which Israel took over more land, homes and livelihoods of Palestinians, right up to his being an apologist for the latest unprovoked attack on Gaza in 2008-09 when the Jews used white phosphorous bombs on civilians.

Wiesel has never sought to act as a peace-maker in these ongoing unbalanced attacks, nor has he criticized or sought to stop the many wars of the United States since he became a citizen in 1963. He has also promoted a virulent anti-Germanism, e.g. “Every Jew should set aside a zone of hate – healthy, virile hate – for what the German personifies and for what persists in the German.”

So why was Elie Wiesel chosen for the most prestigious award in the Western world, the Nobel Prize for Peace, in 1986 when it still carried a dignified aura? (It has since lost some of that glow because so many of its recipients, including Wiesel, have lost theirs!) You’ll find the answers in the article below from The New Republic that appeared in November 1986 befpre the Nobel award ceremony took place on Dec. 10.

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What Does Holocaust Denial Really Mean?

By Daniel McGowan

Daniel McGowan, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (HWS) in Geneva, New York. Below you will find a story that began almost two years ago with an opinion piece by Professor McGowan that appeared in The Finger Lakes Times on 27 September 2009.

Chapter two of the story consists of a Statement signed by six Hobart and William Smith faculty urging the president of the college to deny Professor McGowan the right to call himself “Professor Emeritus.”

Chapter three took place on 22 May 2011 when Professor McGowan, having gained access to the Statement by the Contemptible Six, replied to it directly and publicly.

What Does Holocaust Denial Really Mean?

By Daniel McGowan

The Finger Lakes Times,

September 27, 2009

In April 2007 the European Union agreed to set jail sentences up to three years for those who deny or trivialize the Holocaust. More recently, in response to the remarks of Bishop Richard Williamson, the Pope has proclaimed that Holocaust denial is “intolerable and altogether unacceptable.”

But what does Holocaust denial really mean? Begin with the word Holocaust. The Holocaust (spelled with a capital H) refers to the killing of six million Jews by the Nazis during World War II. It is supposed to be the Germans’ "Final Solution" to the Jewish problem. Much of the systematic extermination was to have taken place in concentration camps by shooting, gassing, and burning alive innocent Jewish victims of the Third Reich.

People like Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zundel, and Bishop Williamson who do not believe this account and who dare to say so in public are reviled as bigots, anti-Semites, racists, and worse. Their alternate historical scenarios are not termed simply revisionist, but are demeaned as Holocaust denial. Rudolf and Zundel were shipped to Germanywhere they were tried, convicted, and sentenced to three and five years, respectively.

Politicians deride Holocaust revisionist papers and conferences as "beyond the pale of international discourse and acceptable behavior." Non-Zionist Jews who participate in such revisionism, like Rabbi David Weiss of the Neturei Karta, are denounced as "self-haters" and are shunned and spat upon. Even Professor Norman Finkelstein, whose parents were both Holocaust survivors and who wrote the book, The Holocaust Industry, has been branded a ....

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Cover letter For Smith's Report # 184

Bradley Smith, Founder

16 August 2011

Dear Friend and Supporter

I believe you will be aware that this issue 184 of Smith’s Report is behind schedule. Let me count the reasons. To be real, there are only two reasons.

One was a computer problem where something was so wrong with the machine that I was told by my computer fix-it guy that it would be best to install a new platform for the whole enchilada. Sure thing.

The result was that Mr. Fix-It could not get it right. Without burdening you with the entire very boring story I’ll only note that I used up the month of July with a sick machine and lost, in addition to mucho time, all contribution records from the first week in February through the last week in July, 2011. Not to worry, though. I did not lose the contributions themselves.

To complicate my time, I allowed myself to develop a sleeping disorder—the kind where you cannot sleep. Just my luck to not get the sleeping disorder where you sleep all the time, the one that when you’re 81 years old I suppose can be something of a gift. This being life, however, you can’t choose your disorder but have to take the one you get.

And then I had a real disappointment only yesterday afternoon when I was reporting into the VA hospital in La Jolla to have the left knee replaced with one that works. I’d waited five months and I was really ready because I’d like to be able to walk eight or ten miles a week, drop some weight, and regain some of my natural beauty.

It wasn’t to be. A Mexican bug bit the calf of my left leg, I scratched it, it got infected, and Dr. Yu would not take a chance with the possibility for infection and cancelled the surgery. It’ll happen in another three, four months. Meanwhile. . . .

Anthony Reed Smith

The young man above is our third and youngest grandchild. Reed was a family name on my paternal grandmother’s side. Irish. She had 13 children, among them my father, who grew up in and around the coal mines in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

Back to business:

Now there is the matter of soliciting your help, again, for the work. We have a very interesting university campaign kicking off even as I write this. You’ll get the first report of it in the next issue of SR. I’ll give you a hint. It exploits the ADL/Hillel Manual for Action.

At the same time one of my periodic money issues is approaching. I owe $2,100 that I can’t pay, and I need funds for the upcoming work—about $3,000. So I’m looking at having to raise in total some $5,000 to get myself into a good, workable condition.

If you can help, please do.

Thank you.

Bradley

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What to Do about Campus Bogeyman Bradley Smith: A Manual for Action

By Jett Rucker

At age 56 (younger by far than our Bradley Smith), I returned to a college campus as a hyperannuated student, far more eager to learn than I was in those days when enrollment in college was one means to defer the draft for us males. I noticed many changes on campus after some forty years, but one thing, particularly noticeable at night, had nothing to do with advances in learning. That was “panic stations,” those pole-mounted telephones or buttons surmounted by a blue light by means of which anyone in fear for their physical safety could signal the campus police to the rescue. A small step forward for technology, I thought, at the same time a great leap backwards for society, or the standards by which its members deport themselves.

Today there lurks on campuses in America a bogeyman thought by many parents, administrators, and appropriations-voting politicians to have been banished long ago: the specter of Open Debate. Free Thinking—call it what you will—it is today but the faintest vestige of what it .....

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Instant (Self-) Revisionism: The Goldstone Affair

First Published in

Inconvenient History

Instant (Self-) Revisionism: The Goldstone Affair

BY Jett Rucker

According to what we hear about how apostasy is dealt with in Islam, a Muslim who renounces his religion is made the object of a fatwa—that is, he is marked for death, fair game for any Muslim who might have the means and opportunity to kill for Allah.

Vigilantes of Zionism have a less-direct, hence less-just, but more-effective approach: they target . . . your grandson, and/or other innocent members of your family who had no involvement in the original offense. And they don’t kill him—they just bar his grandfather from attending his bar mitzvah, and threaten pickets and demonstrations in the event his grandfather tries to be present upon the occasion of his entering into that elite-of-the-chosen, Jewish manhood.

This is but the most-visible of the many and devious retributions visited upon South African jurist Richard Goldstone for the crime he committed against Israel, the redoubt of pugnacious Judaism, in producing for the United Nations a report on war crimes committed in the attack on Gaza of 2008—a report for the making of which Israel denied its cooperation. Like violating the code of omerta among Mafiosi, the crime has a name in Hebrew: mesirah—“ratting” to “the authorities” (world opinion in this case) as to something fellow Jews may have done that might arouse negative feelings toward the perpetrators.

Richard Goldstone was chosen by the United Nations to head its fact-finding commission into the Gaza attack by Israel of 2008 because he was ....

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