a civil thread on Israel and the Middle East

[Suleiman]

And this thread is rapidly approaching a condition that can't be described as 'civil' either

Ashame about that, for a while we had people with different views at least talking. We need more of that.
Here is to a less violent nex year.

[Izzy HaveMercy]

I agree that Psichonaut used some crass language.

But I find it very rude to call someone a 'f**king NAZI', three times in a row, then alter your avatar in accordance.

That is called taunting and you won't get MY vote in that case.

I steered clear of this thread for a long time but don't you people go and drag other issues in your already highly flammable thread.

Or would you like ME to start about Jews in Western economy, their censorship on Wikipedia, their hand in modern-day economy worldwide?

I work in the diamond industry in Antwerp for a couple of years now, I can tell you stories.

Please do keep in mind that I am talking about Jews here in the Western world.

Then again, a quote from writer Amir Tajik:

Nearly 52 million people were killed during WWII, the overwhelming majority of them non-Jewish.

Among that 52 million were people also deliberately targeted by the Nazis, in particular ethnic Slavs, including Russians and Serbs. It is curious that their suffering has not received quite the same coverage as the suffering of the Jews.

On and on it goes. Death is death. All holocausts are equal and according to professor Finkelstein's book "The Holocaust Industry," this is something that the holocaust industry relies on heavily, the belief that no one will check or can check the facts.

While continuing my research, I [author Amir Tajik] heard the news of Israeli attacks on Gaza. "137 Palestinian civilians were massacred in one day!" How could it be? I checked the news again. The figures were correct.

A new version of the Holocaust; new and improved is underway in Palestinian's lands. Something must be done about it. Palestinian people should not be paying for the actions of others. They have lived in horror for decades. They have sacrificed their lives to defend their existence and their right to live.

know that eventually the truth will prevail and people around the world will do their best to stop the new and improved version of the Holocaust currently underway in Palestine. We have to break through the barriers and tell everybody the truth. We cannot allow history to repeat itself. Ironically, it is those who keep the story of the Holocaust alive [but under locked key from investigation], are now the ones creating another.

Food for thought.

First one calling me a NAZI gets a free FGG cd

IZ.

[Silver_Owl]

First one calling me a NAZI gets a free FGG cd

IZ.

NAZI!

[Izzy HaveMercy]

First one calling me a NAZI gets a free FGG cd

IZ.

NAZI!

You already have one, you capitalist pig you

IZ.

[Silver_Owl]

I thought it was the new album, you fascist.

[eotunun]

I agree that Psichonaut used some crass language.

But I find it very rude to call someone a 'f**king NAZI', three times in a row, then alter your avatar in accordance.

That is called taunting and you won't get MY vote in that case.

I steered clear of this thread for a long time but don't you people go and drag other issues in your already highly flammable thread.

Or would you like ME to start about Jews in Western economy, their censorship on Wikipedia, their hand in modern-day economy worldwide?

I work in the diamond industry in Antwerp for a couple of years now, I can tell you stories.

Please do keep in mind that I am talking about Jews here in the Western world.

Then again, a quote from writer Amir Tajik:

Nearly 52 million people were killed during WWII, the overwhelming majority of them non-Jewish.

Among that 52 million were people also deliberately targeted by the Nazis, in particular ethnic Slavs, including Russians and Serbs. It is curious that their suffering has not received quite the same coverage as the suffering of the Jews.

On and on it goes. Death is death. All holocausts are equal and according to professor Finkelstein's book "The Holocaust Industry," this is something that the holocaust industry relies on heavily, the belief that no one will check or can check the facts.

While continuing my research, I [author Amir Tajik] heard the news of Israeli attacks on Gaza. "137 Palestinian civilians were massacred in one day!" How could it be? I checked the news again. The figures were correct.

A new version of the Holocaust; new and improved is underway in Palestinian's lands. Something must be done about it. Palestinian people should not be paying for the actions of others. They have lived in horror for decades. They have sacrificed their lives to defend their existence and their right to live.

know that eventually the truth will prevail and people around the world will do their best to stop the new and improved version of the Holocaust currently underway in Palestine. We have to break through the barriers and tell everybody the truth. We cannot allow history to repeat itself. Ironically, it is those who keep the story of the Holocaust alive [but under locked key from investigation], are now the ones creating another.

Food for thought.

First one calling me a NAZI gets a free FGG cd

IZ.

Psichnaut is a crass person as a whole, and surely this statement was a rather despicable one, but still calling him a Nazi is a bit out off proportion. Nevertheless I cherrish every person with an open eye against the nazi f*cks highly, and please, Jeff, keep your eyes open, even if in this case you shot a bit early. I just had my go at one of the real pigs on Youtube.
Then, IZ, I beg to differ with some of what you quoted:
Surely, the Nazi regime wasn't the only one based on terror against its own in the nineteen thirtees, but what the Nazis did to jewish Germans and Polish (mainly) is without equal in known human history: Never before have humans been used as raw material for industrial products. Felt slippers and soap made out of KZ victims are a fact. Not only jews met that fate, but the vast majority of victims were jews.
So there's an author that calls the Palestine conflict a holocaust?
-Mein Kampf had an author as well.. A person being an author doesn't make it plausible to call the suffering of the Palestinians a holocaust. I am not downgrading the Palestinian's suffering here, this merely is putting terms into places where they belong.
I do understand that many of the Jewish were traumatized so badly by experiences and reports of what happened to theirs for no other reason than what their faith was that they refused to go back where they were born. I, too, understand that there were more refugees than the war shaken countries could handle as new citizens. I understand why Israel was needed.
I, too, understand that there's an autonomous state for the Curdish people due. Which arabic or turkmen country will spare a few square miles for their muslim brothers?
Just to adapt the vocabulary: The turkish holocaust against the curds. Does that term fit here? No? So why apply it to the Palestinians? The Curds, too, developed a nationalist party that drifted off into becoming a terror organization. The Curds, too, suffer. Especially in Turkey where they are treated as second class people by the state. Who's speaking up for them?
The Armenians? Who remembers what cruelty that muslim people suffered from muslim leaders? No Hamas or Fatah or any of those super righteous holders of holy indignation say anything about that.
Killing your own is better than other's killing your own, according to any scripture?

The actions of the fundamentalist Jews that defy Israel's laws and all international agreements by settling on palestinian land are despicable, the lack of intervention by Israeli officials against such offenses is beyond comprehension, but still I think that the reaction of Hamas and Hisbollah and their likes makes a decent solution impossible. The current climax of tensions merely is a result of their own attacks, and they are to blame for the attack on Palestine under way now.
I think the greatest part of guilt in that conflict is on the holy men who preach holy war for the holy land. And if these f*cks won't shut up, there's going to be a hole in the map where the holy land once was some day. With all the good people living there now not living anymore. I think we'll need a new term when that day comes, for a collaborative genocide commited by several people is not covered by the term "holocaust". That will, like holocaust, be a new quality of human cruelness, unequaled in human history, making the Nazi's crime just another crime.

[Izzy HaveMercy]

As said, I was only reacting on this nazi-accusations against one of our HLers.

I was also placing in perspective the role of (prosperous) Jews in Western economy nowadays and the fact that no other group of people screams so loud about the horrors of the past as they do. I never heard a Jewish committee scream: "oh, look what they are doing in Serbia! These people were wright next to us in the camps! That is rightout anti-Serbitism! To the National Human Rights Court with them!"

Because it does not gain them anything, thus it is not worth it. And I find that a very hypocrite attitude, to say the least.

Don't take this from me, take it from the people I work with sometimes. They know their past bloody well, especially the tainted bits.

In that same vein, remember Jürgen that there was jewish soap, gypsy soap, and Russian soap all on the same shelf, to state it that rude. Yet we only get sentenced and imprisoned when we say the Holocaust was not worse than this or that war because the Jews will sue your ass. Never heard a Russian group of people sue someone because of minimalizing the Holocaust.

As for the Gaza-Palestinian question, I steer clear of that, as I did for almost 5 pages, because I don't know enough about it to enter a civilized discussion.

IZ.

[Silver_Owl]

The title of this thread (which has already been split once) contains the word civil. Going around calling people nazi is most certainly not civil. Like Iz I don't know enough about the original subject matter to discuss it but have been enlightened and informed by all your posts.
However, I do know Marco and I know he is not a Nazi. His comments were taken out of context I believe.

I don't want to lock this thread but please steer clear of accusations such as this please.

Happy New Year.

[EvilBastard]

Seconded - not sure how we went from "Israel and the Middle East" to "Those jews - aren't they a bunch of self-righteous bastards, eh?"...but maybe we can split a new thread off from this one?

[Silver_Owl]

Seconded - not sure how we went from "Israel and the Middle East" to "Those jews - aren't they a bunch of self-righteous bastards, eh?"...but maybe we can split a new thread off from this one?

I was tempted to delete the whole lot about Nazis and jews to be honest but hopefully that's the end of it.

Group hug?

[Erudite]

The whole situation is just too depressing for words.
As ever, Britain, the UN and the Americans are sitting around calling the Israelis a bunch of very naughty boys while innocent people on both sides continue to die.
Maybe my grasp of politics is overly simplistic, but much, I think, could be accomplished by the American government threatening to revoke the $3 bn of annual aid to Israel.

[Dark]

First one calling me a NAZI gets a free FGG cd

IZ.

Seriously? Okay...














Commie.

[EvilBastard]

Maybe my grasp of politics is overly simplistic, but much, I think, could be accomplished by the American government threatening to revoke the $3 bn of annual aid to Israel.

True, the situation is depressing - unfortunately that $3bn of aid is part of the Camp David Agreement that Carter brokered to get Israel and Egypt to start playing nice. If you cut off Israel's bit you'd have to cut off Egypt's bit too, and that wouldn't play too well in certain quarters.
What they could do is stop the other money that goes in arms deals and "most favoured nation" trading status. Britain has already implemented levies on goods produced by Israeli companies in the occupied territories. Trade embargoes and economic sanctions have worked in the past, and would hit the Israeli government in the pocket, which is what is required. Unfortunately such behaviour would bring out the Pro-Israel lobby in force - you know, the people who have been so successful in equating criticism of Israel with "anti-semitism" (and they've managed to steal that expression too), and some politicians are too damn' scared to risk the wrath of this group.
Sadly in the US it's unlikely to get any better under a new president - the Democratic party is in deep with the Pro-Israel lobby (compare and contrast with Bush Snr's Secretary of State, James Baker, who famously opined, "Fuck the jews - they don't vote for us anyway."), and we're unlikely to see Mr. Obama make any kinds of strides in the direction of Israeli censure anywhere that it counts. Expect to see continuing unwavering support for Israeli policy at the UN from the US.

[psichonaut]

Seconded - not sure how we went from "Israel and the Middle East" to "Those jews - aren't they a bunch of self-righteous bastards, eh?"...but maybe we can split a new thread off from this one?

I was tempted to delete the whole lot about Nazis and jews to be honest but hopefully that's the end of it.

Group hug?

i want only make a point: i'm not nazi and more often, thinking to what's happening in Israel i think to all the conflicts and civil wars around the world in the past decades too....i don't agree to wars, but i blame our "great" countries that choose in wich war they can jump for keep save their interests...that's my point
most of the blame for what happens since the birth of Israel as State is "ours" because we closed our eyes too many times thinking: "we are far"

have an astonishing 2009 HLers

[Erudite]

Maybe my grasp of politics is overly simplistic, but much, I think, could be accomplished by the American government threatening to revoke the $3 bn of annual aid to Israel.

True, the situation is depressing - unfortunately that $3bn of aid is part of the Camp David Agreement that Carter brokered to get Israel and Egypt to start playing nice. If you cut off Israel's bit you'd have to cut off Egypt's bit too, and that wouldn't play too well in certain quarters.
What they could do is stop the other money that goes in arms deals and "most favoured nation" trading status. Britain has already implemented levies on goods produced by Israeli companies in the occupied territories. Trade embargoes and economic sanctions have worked in the past, and would hit the Israeli government in the pocket, which is what is required. Unfortunately such behaviour would bring out the Pro-Israel lobby in force - you know, the people who have been so successful in equating criticism of Israel with "anti-semitism" (and they've managed to steal that expression too), and some politicians are too damn' scared to risk the wrath of this group.
Sadly in the US it's unlikely to get any better under a new president - the Democratic party is in deep with the Pro-Israel lobby (compare and contrast with Bush Snr's Secretary of State, James Baker, who famously opined, "Fuck the jews - they don't vote for us anyway."), and we're unlikely to see Mr. Obama make any kinds of strides in the direction of Israeli censure anywhere that it counts. Expect to see continuing unwavering support for Israeli policy at the UN from the US.

Sadly (but in a good way) I'm forced to concur with your logic.
Is there no way out of this mess?

[eotunun]

In that same vein, remember Jürgen that there was jewish soap, gypsy soap, and Russian soap all on the same shelf, to state it that rude. Yet we only get sentenced and imprisoned when we say the Holocaust was not worse than this or that war because the Jews will sue your ass. Never heard a Russian group of people sue someone because of minimalizing the Holocaust.

I know about the soap being not exclusively from one choice of victims.
Isn't it funny how they washed themselves with the very item of their worst guilt? FGG probably will make a song about it one day..
I think I said that I see it was not only Jews who suffered that, but they took the big bulk of the cruelty. While I agree that probably there even are some today who make a buisness of sueing percepted offenders, I find it very sensible to remember what those people experienced.
Read my previous post again, i didn't attack a word you said, I just felt the bloke you quoted looked at the entire matter in a rather one-eyed manner I find inappropriate,

[7anthea7]

In that same vein, remember Jürgen that there was jewish soap, gypsy soap, and Russian soap all on the same shelf, to state it that rude. Yet we only get sentenced and imprisoned when we say the Holocaust was not worse than this or that war because the Jews will sue your ass. Never heard a Russian group of people sue someone because of minimalizing the Holocaust.

I know about the soap being not exclusively from one choice of victims.
Isn't it funny how they washed themselves with the very item of their worst guilt? FGG probably will make a song about it one day..
I think I said that I see it was not only Jews who suffered that, but they took the big bulk of the cruelty. While I agree that probably there even are some today who make a buisness of sueing percepted offenders, I find it very sensible to remember what those people experienced.
Read my previous post again, i didn't attack a word you said, I just felt the bloke you quoted looked at the entire matter in a rather one-eyed manner I find inappropriate,

The fact is that the Jews, having been forced to remain a cohesive cultural group by the manner in which they have been treated by non-Jews, have found themselves in a better position to represent themselves a group. If all the lily-white Christians of the second millennium hadn't come up with the idea that they could circumvent the sin of usury by letting the Jews do it, the Jews might well never have developed the drive and ambition they so frequently have, nor amassed the fortunes some have attained. Add to that a centuries-long tradition of ingrained insecurity about the future as a result of mass expulsions, pogroms, etc, and you only reinforce the 'us against the world' mindset. 'Russians' are too diverse to have this sort of group identity; the Rom/Gypsies have always been so far down on the social scale, not to mention clannish and nomadic, that they haven't been able to be a political force (although, thank gods, that's changing). Had either of these groups been in the same position as the Jews - having a strong personal cultural identity and wealth - you can bet they'd be suing for compensation, recovering confiscated property, and tracking down war criminals in exactly the same manner. And it would be totally righteous.

I lived in Los Angeles for many years, where it is almost impossible not to be in daily contact with people of Jewish descent. What I learned from this is that they differ as much as any 'ethnic' group. I have known both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews; Hasidic and Rabbinic Jews; Orthodox and completely secular Jews. I held a canopy pole at a wedding where the rabbi never mentioned the name of god - turned out he was agnostic!

All this is to say: It really bothers me when this sort of discussion is couched in terms of 'Jews' and Palestinians. It would be the same as characterising all Muslims on the basis of the Taliban, or all Americans on the basis of Bush's born-again Christianity. Radicals such as Zionists and Islamists abuse their religious convictions as justification for whatever narrow-minded, exclusionary cause they choose to pursue, but that doesn't make everyone who shares their essential spiritual beliefs the same. The ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel attack their own neighbours for not observing the Sabbath in the 'proper' manner - but those secular Israelis vastly outnumber them, just as (now that the rest of the US has finally got off its lazy arse) reasonable human beings outnumber American warmongers and xenophobes.

So fault, if you will, political forces in Israel that claim to represent 'the will of the people' in their dealings with Palestine - because it is extremely doubtful that they actually do so, any more than the situation in Iraq represents the will of the common American. Don't blame 'Jews' - that's the kind of attitude that perpetuates these conflicts

[EvilBastard]

All this is to say: It really bothers me when this sort of discussion is couched in terms of 'Jews' and Palestinians. It would be the same as characterising all Muslims on the basis of the Taliban, or all Americans on the basis of Bush's born-again Christianity. Radicals such as Zionists and Islamists abuse their religious convictions as justification for whatever narrow-minded, exclusionary cause they choose to pursue, but that doesn't make everyone who shares their essential spiritual beliefs the same...
So fault, if you will, political forces in Israel that claim to represent 'the will of the people' in their dealings with Palestine - because it is extremely doubtful that they actually do so, any more than the situation in Iraq represents the will of the common American. Don't blame 'Jews' - that's the kind of attitude that perpetuates these conflicts

I agree with you - the problem here is not "the jews" or "the muslims", rather the actions of governments that claim to be representative of these group (although I stand by my assertion that Friends Don't Let Friends Date Tribe, but that's a purely personal opinion founded on one too many bad dates). In the same way that I don't despise Americans (I've met Erica, and she's vewwy vewwy wuvwee), rather it's the American government I can't stand. Likewise, the Israeli government and the political parties that claim to represent Israelis. In discussions like this it is paramount that one restricts one's criticism to governments and organs of state, rather than a nationality or a religion.
The problem is that the pro-Israel lobby has been very successful in equating criticism of the Israeli government with criticism of "the jews" (which, as you say, is a pretty diverse group of people - there is nothing quite as double-take making as watching super-orthodox jews take the side of the Palestinians, on the grounds that they believe that Israel can only be created by god, not man), and managing to turn any form of debate or questioning into "anti-semitism". While I'm no great fan of David Irving as a person, as a historian by training I find his questioning of the minutiae of the holocaust fascinating - he has never claimed it didn't happen, rather he questions the numbers using scientific techniques - "Here we have an oven of dimensions X. We know that it takes Y pounds of coal to dispose of a human body, and it takes Z hours. Based on this, it is pretty incredible to claim that Q people were disposed of in here. The records (and the German government of the time were sticklers for record-keeping) don't bear it out. So maybe it wasn't 6 million jews. Maybe it was 5,295,312. Still a bugger of a lot of people, no doubt, but where are the figures? Where did we come up with this idea of 6 million?" Somehow it has become a crime to ask for the details, to dare to cast a spotlight on a horrific chapter of human history, to question the Holocaust. No one in their right mind doubts that it happened, as Irving himself states. But what about the details? We know exactly how many people the British killed in the Boston Massacre (5, as it happens - in my mind not so much a massacre as a misunderstanding), or at Peterloo, so why shouldn't we ask for an exact number for the Holocaust, or at least for access to the records so we can check the working of the people who came up with 6 million.
Bizarrely, it is the Pro-Israel lobby in Washington DC that has steadfastly campaigned to prevent the US government from terming what the Turks did to the Armenians as "genocide". I've been to Deir ez-Zor in Syria and looked at the contemporary evidence - if that wasn't a genocide then my old mum is the Queen of Sheba. But apparently, and according to the mindset of the lobby, the only people who are allowed to be seen to have suffered in the 20th century are jewish. Somehow we have allowed our shared histories to be hijacked by narrow special interest groups whose only aim to to allow the state of Israel to behave as it likes, safe from censure or criticism. Enough already.

[Izzy HaveMercy]

Exactly what I mean.

It is very, VERY difficult to find exact numbers or even statements about the Jewish victims of WW2, that are objective and based upon facts.

Especially on the Net, I might add.

A friend of mine has a vast interest in, and a lot of books on WW2, which I still believe are more trustworthy that any Wikipedia entry today, and even there the 'Jewish casualties' range from 1,1 million (but only quasi-negationists believe that number) over 4,1 million up to 6 million.

Why can't we delve deeper into this matter, which is important enough, methinks, to know every little detail about?

Because some groups won't let us do that. And that's called fishy at the least and censorship and fraud at the most, IMO.

Asking questions about the Holocaust has become a crime these days and has become synonym with 'questioning the Holocaust'.

IZ.

[the_inescapable_truth]

I agree that legitimate criticism of Israel is often unfairly called anti-Semitism but the line is extremely thin and it can be truly difficult to ascertain what is good, reasoned criticism of Israel and what is just outright anti-Semitism.

Simply criticising Israel's policies is patently not anti-Semitism at work. The problem is when this criticism is fuelled by age-old stereotypes. It's the old 'the Jews control the media and the banks' stuff, you know the suspicious hook nosed person looking to exploit the gentiles at every opportunity. I see this a lot and am often surprised how naive some people can be about it. It's still largely acceptable in polite conversation to rant out against the Jews and how 'we control the media and the banks' just as it was okay for Shakespeare to write about things in the same vein. It's an old problem, not a recent one. It's true, to an extent of course, but what I find most annoying is the underlying implication that this situation was acquired through underhand dealing, deceit and not a combination of hard work, upbringing and intelligence. But then holding every Jew 'responsible'? As a skint Jew living in a country where the prevailing attitudes in the media are not representative of my views at all I am sure you can appreciate why this is annoying.

I don't know how many times I've defended Israel only to find the person I am debating with turns out to be largely fuelled by a deep suspicious of 'the Jews'. It's disappointing. And indeed this can often turn into that there's no such thing as anti-Semitism in the first place.

Thankfully some of the fiercest critics of Israel, Chomsky for example, avoid a lot of this by being Jewish themselves.

So to an extent I can understand why it happens, and I'm not excusing when it does happen, but I can appreciate why people might be a little bit jumpy about it too.

I think the thing about it not being okay to question the Holocaust is mostly a lie. People have been doing so for years and continue to do so, but you better bet that if you think it didn't happen or want to question the numbers you better well have good, solid evidence and not have any sort of political agenda. And it's important to note being able to point out some inaccuracies in the figures is rarely good enough by itself without further examination and criticism of how others came up with their figures. Oh and no falsification of evidence as Irving did either.

Still it's a shame that you can be persecuted for even flatly denying the Holocaust happened at all but I think this law largely exists as a gesture and to try and catch the politically motivated criticism.

I could have predicted this thread would turn out this way. Some good, insightful posts from EvilBastard, sultan2075, and 7anthea7 in any case. And I've not said I want to say but I think this thread has probably run its course for me.

[EvilBastard]

I think your points are well-put - hatred of jewish people often masquerades as criticism of Israel, and one needs to be careful to confine one's criticisms to the actions of the state, not of the people. One cannot, of course, escape the accusation of "anti-semitism" (I'm cautious about using this expression, and it appears here under its narrower definition of "anti-jewish") - if you're raised in a western, "christian", society, with its long history of hostility towards jews, there is always going to be the suspicion that what you say is grounded in anti-semitic sentiment.
I don't know enough about Shakespeare the man to be able to say whether he was an anti-semite - as a playwright he had to be able to speak to people of his time and place, who were by-and-large an anti-semitic lot, a sentiment reinforced by the Church of the day. When the film of the Merchant of Venice came out a couple of years ago there were large groups of jewish people protesting about it outside the cinemas, claiming that it was anti-semitic. One must wonder why there aren't crowds of pagans protesting whenever Macbeth is staged, or christian fundamentalists berating Romeo & Juliet for an attack on "family values". Alas, there are people in every group who allow themselves to be whipped into a fervour by rabble-rousers who see can see only the negative side of things, rather than thinking for themselves.

Chomsky has come in for some fairly damning accusations of being a "self-loathing jew", so it would appear that not even adherents of the religion are allowed to criticise Israel. The fact that he limits himself to attacks on the Israeli government appears to cut no ice among those who believe that the actions of the state are sacrosanct and beyond reproach.

Questioning events is the responsibility of every historian worth his salt. Only by probing, researching, and analysing every piece of evidence, can one arrive at a "true" picture of an event. What we know today of events in the past we owe to people who were prepared to question things - Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939, for example. If you take the government line, you believe that Germany was defending herself against an incursion by Polish forces. If you are prepared to dig into the facts, you discover that this is not the case.
The same holds true for the Holocaust - no historian anywhere would say that it didn't happen (not if he wanted to be taken seriously by his peers, at least). Historical research must perforce be open to peer review - I could write a thesis claiming that the Vikings were a peace-loving group of people who never left Scandinavia and spent their time flower-arranging and breeding adorable fuzzy kittens, using narrowly-interpreted evidence and claiming that their reputation as marauders and berserkers was based on anti-pagan sentiment fuelled by the Christian church in England. Were I to do so I would expect any number of people to challenge this, and engaging in discussion. However, it appears that the Holocaust is a sacred cow, one whose innards may not be investigated, challenged, or debated. As I say, you'd be hard-pressed to find an academic who questioned the fact of it. But the moment anyone wants to ask questions, like "How many people died? How did they die? How were they transported? Who was responsible? What were the logisitics of the thing?" the shutters come down and accusations of holocaust-denial fly thick and fast. One need only look at what happened to Alan Bullock after he published "Hitler, a Study in Tyranny," which is the book for anyone seriously interested in the 3rd Reich. Because he did not spend a thousand pages damning the man up and down he was accused of being an apologist, a neo-nazi, and worse. That his work was endorsed by Trevor-Roper (himself a man who had been accused of similar) only added fuel to the fire.
Historians and archaeologists have a duty to subsequent generations to report what they find, and to lay out exactly how they arrived at their conclusions. Those who don't do a disservice to posterity. Take the very small example of Rushen Abbey on the Isle of Man. Back in the 1930s the site was excavated by Cubbon who, not finding what he expected, set about creating what he thought should be there. When the site was re-excavated in the 1980s the first couple of seasons of digging was spent working out what Cubbon had done, and trying to undo the damage. He'd built walls where he thought they should have been, using material from all over the site. Thus we found 12th century baptismal basins alongside 17th century ceramicware, for example.
If the Holocaust cannot be laid open for educated analysis, reasoned debate, and peer review, then we will never be able to establish a complete catalogue of facts. Did 6 million people die? Was it more, was it less? How many were jews, roma, homosexuals, political undesirables, mentally or physically handicapped, etc.? Where did they die, how were they killed, what became of the physical evidence? If you kill 6 million people their remains must be somewhere - where are they? Some were turned into soap, others were buried in lime-pits, others still were dumped in mass graves. Someone was taking notes, keeping count - we owe it to ourselves to have the facts. For those with an analytical mind, not having them is maddening - worse, it leads to accusations that there are groups who want to keep the facts covered up, because they believe that if the facts were known then sympathy for the plight of jews would be lessened(and by extension, criticism of Israel would increase). I don't doubt that it happened, any more than I doubt that what the Turkish government did to the Armenians counts as genocide. But I'd like to see some evidence to back up some of the claims that are made.

[thesenator]

Hamas now plans major suicide attacks inside Israel. The group actually warned Muslims who are foreign citizens to leave Israel immediately: http://samsonblinded.org/news/hamas-war ... srael-5473

[EvilBastard]

And there's a deliciously "fair and balanced" blog!

It took about 3 minutes to find this gem: A self-hating Jew appointed the British Foreign Secretary

[psichonaut]

how do a mother let do her son the human-bomb and be proud of it?

[nowayjose]

how do a mother let do her son the human-bomb and be proud of it?

Evolutionary dead end.