Deconstructing Simon Wiesenthal by Lawrence Swaim
Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 8:52AM Gilad Atzmon 
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, California, is named after the famed Austrian Nazi-hunter, Simon Wiesenthal, a connection that turns out to be appropriate in disturbing but unexpected ways. That is, both Simon Wiesenthal and the Center named after him have been accused of flagrant lying, exaggerations and half-truths. Wiesenthal's confabulations were never a matter of published discourse among scholars, so far as this writer can determine, nor were they popular knowledge until quite recently. In any case, it is now known that Wiesenthal, a born story-teller, rarely let the facts get in the way of a good story—in fact many of the things he claimed to have done were fabrications. This recently came to light with the publication, in June of 2009, of Hunting Evil, by British Author Guy Walters, in which he characterizes Simon Wiesenthal as "a liar—and a bad one at that." Wiesenthal, he maintains, would "concoct outrageous stories about his war years and make false claims about his academic career." Walters found that there were "so many inconsistencies between his three main memoirs and between those memoirs and contemporaneous documents, that it is impossible to establish a reliable narrative from them. Wiesenthal's scant regard for the truth makes it possible to doubt everything he ever wrote or said."1
With Cohen, Pearlman and the ADL who needs the real thing?
"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US . . ." -- Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook?
The public outrage at the savage Israeli invasion of Gaza which ended in January 2009, has had a considerable effect on the question of Palestinian solidarity over the last 12 months. Two distinct trends have emerged during the year, both of which are likely to bear on the question of solidarity, but from different and perhaps even occasionally opposed directions. First, more people than ever before have become clear on the fact that Israel is indeed a rogue state. Palestine solidarity activity on the street creates more concerned interest and support. This means there is a growing reservoir of antipathy to Israel and Zionism, upon which Palestinian solidarity can be built; a fact which is to be welcomed. Second; the brutality of Zionism, as an expression of extreme Jewish nationalism, has also weakened the support movement for Israel. More Jewish voices are being heard in opposition to Israeli and its brutal occupation of Palestine, another positive development. However, both these constituencies I suggest have the potential to increase the quantity, but dilute the quality of struggle for Palestinian rights in the following way.
Israel's Hidden Friends, the Names, the Tactics by REDRESS INFORMATION & ANALYSIS
"Palestine is and shall remain at the centre of the struggle for justice for the Palestinian people. We Palestinians and Arabs played no part in your Holocaust and we have nothing to do with anti-Semitism, past or present, real or imagined. It is us, not you, who are continuing to suffer from the legacy of the Nazis. Go forth and take your Jewish issues elsewhere. We shall have nothing to do with you."?
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