by Gilad Atzmon
We’ve been sent a transcription of PSC Chair Hugh Lanning’s speech at the PSC AGM where he tries to justify, on the grounds of racism, anti-Semitism and prejudice, the expulsion of ex-PSC Chair, Dr. Francis Clark-Lowes
To support the PSC EC decision Lanning quotes Clark-Lowes saying.
Clearly here Clark-Lowes adopts a genuine, universalist attitude. By denying the Holocaust its capital ‘H’ the Brighton academic rejects the primacy of Jewish suffering. Of course one would expect the UK PSC to be primarily concerned with Palestinian suffering but, alas, this is not the case. Clark-Lowes’ stand has provoked all the usual PSC/hasbara agitators.“I said I was proud to call myself a Holocaust denier – it is the capital ‘H’ I believe we must question.”
Similarly and tragically, Lanning, who, in recently stating his and PSC’s adherence to the principle of Two States, betrayed, not just the Palestinian cause, but also the most basic humanist and universal ethical code, framed in international law, which guarantees to Palestinians (and anyone else in similar circumstances), the right of return.
Lanning also quotes Dr. Clark Lowes as saying…
“to be precise, I’ve ceased to believe in the six million figure, the planned extermination programme and the mass killings in gas-chambers.”A bit more problematic perhaps. Or is it?
Dr Clark Lowes is an academic, a student of, and authority on, German-Jewish relations. Of course , like anyone else, he can be right or he can be wrong. That’s not the point. The real issue is this: Is this essentially academic matter to be judged by the PSC EC or even the PSC AGM? Can the PSC decide how many Jews perished in the holocaust and in what manner? Are these not subjects for historical research? Should they really be considered political questions? And consider this: If the AGM of the PSC can determine the past by ‘popular vote’, how can it protest the Israeli Knesset determining the nature of the Nakba by the same means?
It’s pretty simple. The past does not belong to politicians, activists or anyone else. It is there for us to visit, revisit and revise – and those who oppose such an approach – whether Zionists, anti Zionists, Likudniks or even the PSC Executive Committee – are the enemies of truth, justice and peace and therefore of all humanity.
Lanning concludes, “…it was on these grounds that the Executive Committee determined that Dr Clark-Lowes’ membership was not compatible with the objectives of the PSC…..PSC stands in opposition to racism, including anti-Jewish prejudice. “
I couldn’t find in Francis Clark Lowes’ words a single trace of “racism or anti-Jewish prejudice.” But Lanning knows better.
“It was clear to the EC in this case that there was racism based on a clearly-stated expression of anti-Jewish prejudice. I’d go further: Holocaust denial with a big or a little ‘H’ is racist and anti-Semitic.”Here I find myself in some agreement with Lanning. I don’t doubt that Holocaust denial may, in some cases, be driven by anti-Jewish feelings. But in Francis Clark-Lowes’ case this is clearly not so. The Brighton academic, exPSC Chairman and scholar of Jewish studies, clearly opposes the Holocaust religion, the oppressive primacy of Jewish suffering, and Talmudic-style censorship practised by Lanning, PSC EC and their Zionist overlords – Harry’s Place and the Jewish Chronicle . Dr. Clark-Loews is no racist nor is he an anti-Semite and the PSC has singularly failed to prove that he is.
Over the years I’ve heard some Palestinian friends suggest that Palestinine solidarity activists should, mainly for tactical reasons, avoid any questioning of the Holocaust, and I understand their concerns. They say:
‘We’ve enough to deal with without taking on the Shoa as well’.PSC’s Hugh Lanning, however, thinks otherwise: “It’s not a tactical issue, as alleged in the correspondence; it is a principle issue. Holocaust denial has no place in the fight for a free Palestine. Our campaign is based on justice, human rights and international law.”
Someone should remind the PSC EC, and Hugh Lanning in particular, that the suppression of free thought and speech is incompatible with justice, human rights and international law . And they should ask themselves why an academic and leading solidarity activist should not be entitled to express his thoughts and explore Jewish identity, Jewish ideology and even challenge the ‘primacy’ of Jewish suffering. And one other question: Why has the PSC located itself in the front line of the Israeli Hasbara campaign in Britain?
In the last two years, the PSC EC has systematically expelled and marginalised leading Palestinian thinkers and solidarity activists in the UK and it was this, ahead of the AGM, that catalysed our founding of deLiberation as an alternative intellectual and activist platform.Unlike a PSC that supports the Two-State solution, we at deLiberation simply support the right of Palestinians to determine their own future and, most important of all, we welcome open debate on the matter. Unlike the ‘secular’ PSC we are not afraid of Islam, Judaism or any other religion for that matter. And also unlike a PSC that bows shamelessly to Zionist pressure, we promise to fight Israel and its lobbies unceasingly.
On the most crucial and controversial matters, DeLiberation will always provide open discussion and fresh analysis.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian 
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!
3 comments:
It’s now official – there’s been no actual shortage of Holocaust Survivors :
Quote from The Holocaust Industry by Norman G. Finkelstein of the City University of New York, published by Verso in the year 2000:
'The Israeli Prime Minister's office recently put the number of "living Holocaust survivors" at nearly a million.' (page 83)
I've checked out the six volumes of Churchill's Second World War and the statement is quite correct - not a single mention of Nazi 'gas chambers,' a 'genocide' of the Jews, or of 'six million' Jewish victims of the war.
Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe is a book of 559 pages; Churchill's Second World War totals 4,448 pages; and De Gaulle's three-volume Mémoires de guerre is 2,054 pages.
In this mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find no mention either of Nazi 'gas chambers,' a 'genocide' of the Jews, or of 'six million' Jewish victims of the war.
CODOH - Committee for Open Debate of the Holocaust - breaking the power of taboo
http://www.codoh.com/
Zionist trial runs of "6 Million" Holocaust propaganda in 1911 - and 1919
Max Nordau (1849-1923) was the co-founder of the World Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl.
Have a look at this Max Nordau quote from Ben Hecht's book 'Perfidy' - which is available for free in PDF format at
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/perfidy.pdf (on page 232 of 261):
Quote:
In the Zionist Congress of 1911, 22 years before Hitler came to power, and three years before World War I, Nordau said, “How dare the smooth talkers, the clever official blabbers, open their mouths and boast of progress. . . . Here they hold jubilant peace conferences in which they talk against war. . . . But the same righteous Governments, who are so nobly, industriously active to establish the eternal peace, are preparing, by their own confession, complete annihilation for six million people, and there is nobody, except the doomed themselves, to raise his voice in protest although this is a worse crime than any war . . .” unquote.
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And take a look at the article from The American Hebrew, October 31 1919
(see attached reproduction below), prophesying a 'holocaust' of 'six million':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_H._Glynn
http://www.jrbooksonline.com/images/091031crucifixion.gif
The Crucifixion of Jews Must Stop!
By Martin H. Glynn
(Former Governor of the State of N.Y.)
From across the sea six million men and women call to us for help, and eight hundred thousand little children cry for bread.
These children, these men and women are our fellow-members of the human family, with the same claim on life as we, the same susceptibility to the winter's cold, the same propensity to death before the fangs of hunger. Within them reside the illimitable possibilities for the advancement of the human race as naturally would reside in six million human beings. We may not be their keepers but we ought to be their helpers.
In the face of death, in the throes of starvation there is no place for mental distinctions of creed, no place for physical differentiations of race. In this catastrophe, when six million human beings are being whirled toward the grave by a cruel and relentless fate, only the most idealistic promptings of human nature should sway the heart and move the hand.
Six million men and women are dying from lack of the necessaries of life; eight hundred thousand children cry for bread. And this fate is upon them through no fault of their own, through no transgression of the laws of God or man; but through the awful tyranny of war and a bigoted lust for Jewish blood.
In this threatened holocaust of human life, forgotten are the niceties... etc etc etc
Dirty Little Secrets - the hidden, awkward origins of World War 2 - the unexpected views of four key diplomats who were close to events
Just consider the following:
· Joseph P. Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to Britain during the years immediately preceding WW2 was the father of the famous American Kennedy dynasty. James Forrestal the first US Secretary of Defense (1947-1949) quotes him as saying "Chamberlain (the British Prime Minister) stated that America and the world Jews had forced England into the war". (The Forrestal Diaries ed. Millis, Cassell 1952 p129).
· Count Jerzy Potocki, the Polish Ambassador in Washington, in a report to the Polish Foreign Office in January 1939, is quoted approvingly by the highly respected British military historian Major-General JFC Fuller. Concerning public opinion in America he says "Above all, propaganda here is entirely in Jewish hands…when bearing public ignorance in mind, their propaganda is so effective that people have no real knowledge of the true state of affairs in Europe… It is interesting to observe that in this carefully thought-out campaign… no reference at all is made to Soviet Russia. If that country is mentioned, it is referred to in a friendly manner and people are given the impression that Soviet Russia is part of the democratic group of countries… Jewry was able not only to establish a dangerous centre in the New World for the dissemination of hatred and enmity, but it also succeeded in dividing the world into two warlike camps…President Roosevelt has been given the power.. to create huge reserves in armaments for a future war which the Jews are deliberately heading for." (Fuller, JFC: The Decisive Battles of the Western World vol 3 pp 372-374.)
· Hugh Wilson, the American Ambassador in Berlin until 1938, the year before the war broke out, found anti-Semitism in Germany ‘understandable’. This was because before the advent of the Nazis, "the stage, the press, medicine and law [were] crowded with Jews…among the few with money to splurge, a high proportion [were] Jews…the leaders of the Bolshevist movement in Russia, a movement desperately feared in Germany, were Jews. One could feel the spreading resentment and hatred." (Hugh Wilson: Diplomat between the Wars, Longmans 1941, quoted in Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh, Hodder 1976).
· Sir Nevile Henderson, British Ambassador in Berlin ‘said further that the hostile attitude in Great Britain was the work of Jews and enemies of the Nazis, which was what Hitler thought himself’ (Taylor, AJP: The Origins of the Second World War Penguin 1965, 1987 etc p 324).
Etc etc etc etc - more detail at http://www.rense.com/general92/dirty.htm
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