-Caveat Lector- From http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewForeignBureaus.asp?Page=%5CForeignBureaus%5Carchive%5C2001 03%5CFor20010323f.html }}>Begin Holocaust Revisionist Conference Not Welcome in Lebanon By Julie Stahl CNS Jerusalem Bureau Chief March 23, 2001 Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - Holocaust revisionists will have to look for a new place to hold their international conference after the Lebanese government announced they would not be allowed to hold their gathering in Beirut as planned. Jewish leaders welcomed the Lebanese decision to cancel the gathering of individuals who argue that the Nazis' systematic murder of six million Jews either did not take place, or that the number of victims was grossly exaggerated. The conference, called "Revisionism and Zionism," was to have been the first of its kind held in an Arab capital. It was scheduled to take place at an undisclosed location - reportedly for security reasons - in Beirut fro m March 31 to April 3. Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was quoted as saying the government had decided "not to allow anybody to hold any conference like this in Lebanon." "We are looking for the future," Hariri said. "We are looking to establish a better climate." The director of the Simon Weisenthal Center in Jerusalem, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, said he was both pleased and surprised that the conference was cancelled. Both the SWC and the Anti-Defamation League had campaigned for Lebanon to ban the event. Among other functions, the two organizations monitor anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitic articles and cartoons appear regularly in state-run media in the Middle East. Holocaust denial or the presentation of the Israelis as Nazis and the Palestinians as victims of a new Holocaust are popular theme s in the press. "The fear was that holding such a conference [in the Middle East] would increase hostilities and make it more difficult to return to peace negotiations and go forward," Zuroff said. He could not say what lay behind the Lebanese decision, but thought it may have been the result of an appeal by 14 Arab intellectuals who came out against it. Some Arabs had urged Lebanon to cancel the conference warning that hosting the first-ever such assembly in an Arab capital would harm Lebanon's image internationally. The academics and others from Lebanon, Syria, Morocco, Algeria - joined by the prominent Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish - signed a letter calling for "this anti-Semitic undertaking" to be banned. It's possible that Washington had recommended that Beirut not host the conference, Zuroff said, but added that even the Arabs themselves realized that it would damage the "honor and prestige" of their cause. "Sanity preva iled," he commented. Last week, the respected Arab newspaper Al Hayat said in an editorial that "damage to Lebanon is guaranteed" should the meeting go ahead. The war-torn country is in the process of trying to rebuild itself and attract inve stors. Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi characterized the reports about the gathering as "a political, diplomatic and media campaign against Lebanon." He told reporters no organization had asked for a permit to hold t his kind of a meeting. Nevertheless, the conference, sponsored jointly by the U.S.-based Institute for Historical Review and the Swiss-based Verite et Justice (Truth and Justice), is advertised in great detail on the IHR's Internet website. IHR director Mark Weber was quoted as saying that he regarded the cancellation as "outrageous." According to the website, prominent revisionist scholars and activists from a number of countries were to have addressed the conference, which it said would strengthen cooperation between revisionists in Europe and the Mi ddle East. The IHR, America's leading Holocaust revisionist organization, was founded in 1978 by Willis Carto, who is associated with anti-black and anti-Semitic causes. The organization enjoys official standing as a non-profit corp oration, operating as an entity of the Legion for the Survival of Freedom. Verite director, Jurgen Graf, fled Switzerland last year after exhausting his appeals against a 1998 conviction for denying the Holocaust ever happened. Graf had been sentenced to 15 months in prison but escaped to Iran i nstead. He is the author of several books denying the Holocaust. Holocaust revisionists or deniers maintain that the Holocaust has been used as a Jewish or Zionist propaganda tool in order to gain sympathy in the world. Their cause received a blow last year when revisionist historian David Irving lost a libel suit against writer Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books for calling him one of the world's most dangerous "Holocaust deniers" in he r 1994 book Denying the Holocaust. Irving maintained that while a large number of Jews died during World War II, there was no systematic campaign of extermination. Most scholars and historians accept that six million Jews were killed by various methods, including shooting and gassing in gas chambers. End<{{ T' A<>E<>R Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the "democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded subjects. [[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard, Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]] <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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