In denial on the internet
Being in the public eye, with a web page on the Middle East and a e-address that's easy to obtain through the university which employs me, it's not surprising that I receive a regular avalanche of e-mails.
I won't bore you here with the hate-mail and death threats from Israel and the USA; nor the impassioned attempts to win me over to one of the 57 varieties of Christianity or Islam (I'm still waiting for offers to convert me to Judaism). Nor even the long diatribes from sundry nutters expounding their theories on life, the universe and everything, and
asking me to look over their book proposal which has already
been rejected by every self-respecting publisher on the planet.
No, the ones which bother me the most these days are a small proportion of the many messages of support I receive. The senders come from all religious and ethnic backgrounds, but for some reason they are invariably women.
One of them wrote:"i totally SUPPORT YOU IN UR SITE AND WHAT
U SAY ABOUT THE JEWS." Other well-wishers wanted to defend
me against "the Jewish lobby".
Then there were the helpful suggestions of new links for my site.Like the story that the International Solidarity Movement had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. I was about to paste in the URL when I
noticed the navigation bar at the top of the page: "Mr. Irving, take me to ...." What, surely not David Irving the
Holocaust revisionist? The very same, it turned out.
For some time I had a link to Wendy Campbell's site, which describes her as a
"a film-maker & distributor, human rights and conservation activist, writer, illustrator, political pundit, world traveler and entrepreneur". So I was perturbed when an article in the Jerusalem Post attacked me for "neo-nazi" links, naming Campbell. She protested vehemently:
"I certainly am NOT a Nazi nor a White supremacist". At the same time,
though, she rebuked me in an e-mail for allowing Jews to tell me how
to think, and recommended I visit a website called "One democratic state"
whose board includes one Israel Shamir.
Shamir claims to be an Israeli Jew but is probably Swedish. He associates openly with holocaust deniers and neo-nazis.
Shamir has his own site which includes
essays by Paul Eisen, such as the one entitled "The Holocaust wars" in
which he praises revisionist Ernest Zundel and denies the Nazis used
gas to exterminate Jews. Campbell has another article by Eisen ("a TRUE anti-Zionist Jew") on her site, entitled "Jewish Power", in which
Eisen defends Israel Shamir and has a good deal to say about the "Jewish
lobby" in American politics. Campbell is also linked with Kevin MacDonald,
who testified in court on behalf of David Irving (a "a credible and intelligent scholar" according to Campbell).
When I informed Ms. Campbell that I was dropping her site because of
all this, she came out in her true colours, accusing me of "holding
the movement down, by not tackling the 'sacred cow' of the 'holocaust'
head-on".
Another site I used to link to is "True Democracy", run by Arlene
Johnson. I severed my links to that
one when I found she had numerous references to the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion in her blog. When I asked her to explain, she protested that one
of her best grandsons was Jewish. In which case, why is she promoting
the tired old conspiracy theories that Jewish workers in the WTC got
tipped off just before 9/11 happened, and that "communism was created
by the Illuminati". (I don't know why she thought a socialist would
be impressed by this).
And we mustn't forget the website of Israeli jazz musician and
novelist Gilad Atzmon, or the Fat Old JewishGuy Who Lives in the Projects (aka Eugene Weixel) They both
happily provide links to articles by the likes of Eisen. and get outraged when anyone dares to criticise them.
Out there in cyberspace lurks a network of anti-semites who have jumped on the Palestinian bandwagon. The same names keep coming up:
Campbell, MacDonald, Shamir, Zundel, Eisen, Irving, Atzmon. The Palestinians don't need their help, and genuine supporters of thePalestinian cause should tell them where to go.
And as Holocaust Memorial Day approaches, I reflect on this brave
new world in which Jewish bloggers happily defend and promote holocaust
denial while my detractors continue to accuse me of anti-semitism.
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For more on this subject, see: www.sue.be/pal/nazis.html
Sue Blackwell is a trade union activist and campaigner for Palestinian rights who lectures at the University of Birmingham. She is writing in a personal capacity.
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