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Jewish Press, Omaha, NE
March 3, 2006
The Olympic Spirit Lives (in Some Places) Though we don’t admit it, many Jews were proud to see the Jewish names of athletes who competed in the recent Olympic Games in Torino, Italy. Whether they won medals--like figure skaters Sasha Cohen’s silver, Irina Slutskaya’s bronze, and ice dancers Ben Agosto’s silver (with his partner Tanith Beldin)--or not (like the Israeli pair Galit Chait and Sergei Saknovsky), we were proud of their Jewish heritage and our connection to them. Of course, it took decades before an Israeli athlete won a medal as Gal Fridman did in windsurfing at the 2004 Athens Games. How proud were we when the world heard “Hatikvah” played for the first time at the Olympics! Of course there are Jewish athletes, but seeing a Cohen on the medals stand is somewhat unusual. Yes, we have Ben Jacobson of Omaha playing basketball on the college level today, as Irv Yaffe once did for UNL, but we still smile when we think of Jews in sports. It’s good, too, that Cohen was especially gracious at the Olympics, giving credit to her fellow skaters and admitting that her falls were her fault. Unlike some of the other Americans on the U.S. Olympic team who were overhyped and who under-performed, Cohen understood that she was representing more than just herself. Another athlete, Apollo Anton Ono, American--but not Jewish--praised the U.S. Olympic Sports group in Colorado, where he lives and trains. He thanked not only his trainers and the sports medicine doctors, but even the cafeteria staff! With his million-dollar
package of endorsements, Ono can afford to live in a pricey home; instead he lives among other Olympic athletes in the dorms in Colorado Springs. He showed true humility when he was interviewed by NBC reporters, following his gold-medal win in the 500-meter short track race. And, as Americans (Jewish or not), we shared a little of that pride as he spoke in true Olympic spirit. Too bad not all Olympic athletes demonstrated that same spirit. Performing tricks so close to a sure fire gold medal win, telling reporters you “didn’t care about the medals,” getting into bar fights, are just some of the expressions of the uglyAmericanism expressed last week. These were not reflections on us as Jews, but they were slurs on our American reputation--something we hardly need at the moment. Between the mismanagement of the war in Iraq, the latest news about selling our ports to a subsidiary of a company based in Dubai, and the anti-Western and antiJewish cries from Islamofascists, American athletes should be on their best behavior--not their worst. The latest arrow shot against Jews and the West is so bizarre, it almost makes one laugh. Some Iranian clerics now claim that the Hanna Barbera cartoon “Tom and Jerry” was created to clean up the image of the Jews as “dirty mice”--and if that wasn’t enough, the clerics have it confused
with Walt Disney cartoons (Disney, as you might recall, was thought to have been antiSemitic). By the way, where were the Iranian Olympic athletes (or the Syrians, the Yemenis, the Saudi Arabians)? Guess they’re too busy drumming up hatred against cartoonists, Jews, Americans, and our way of life than practicing the Olympic spirit of sportsmanship, gracious behavior and freedom. On to Beijing?
Editorials express the view of the writer and are not necessarily representative of the views of the Jewish Press Committee, the Jewish Federation of Omaha or the Omaha Jewish community as a whole. The Jewish Press reserves the right to edit signed letters and articles for space and content. The Jewish Press is not responsible for the Kashrut of any product or establishment.
Day in Court with Irving Shows History a More Potent Weapon than Censorship
BEHIND THE H EADLINES by DEBORAH LIPSTADT ROME (JTA) -- David Irving’s arrest and three-year jail sentence for having denied the Holocaust has been met with a chorus of cheers in the Jewish community. A notorious liar, he was once considered a prominent historian. Many people were delighted that prison would now house a man who has called Jews cockroaches, believes black newscasters should be relegated to reading news of criminals and drug busts, and asked a survivor how much money she had made from having a number tattooed on her arm. At long last, justice seemed to prevail. In the immediate aftermath of the verdict, my blog (Lipstadt.blogspot. com) was flooded with expressions of delight. Most people assumed I was dancing the hora. But I was not. I fought this man’s libel charge against me for six years. For over three months I had to silently sit in court in London listening to him say the most horrible things about Jews, people of color and survivors. He made fun of those who talked about gas chambers and sneered at survivors’ accounts of what they endured. He was full of bluster about how he was going to demolish the myth of the Holocaust. Quietly and meticulously, relying on the stellar work of a dream team of historians, we showed that every one -- not many, not most, but all -- of David Irving’s claims were complete rot. They were based on lies, distortions and fabrications. They were, as the prominent historian Richard Evans and the leader of our research team, said, “A tissue of lies.” In no way, Evans continued, could this man even be thought of as a historian. Some people have argued that since he has written over
30 books on historical topics, he is a historian. If I wrote books on building bridges that would not make me a structural engineer. Irving has been dubbed by some people on the Internet as a “distorian.” During my trial, Irving kept trying to introduce evidence of a world Jewish cabal or global conspiracy against him. He described me as “the gold-tipped spearhead of the enemies of truth,” his euphemism for the Jews. He laughed at survivors, declaring them liars or psychopaths. And he called the judge--in a very telling slip, “Mein Fuhrer.” He suffered an overwhelming loss. When the judge, in a 350-page judgment, said he “perverts,” “distorts,” “lies,” and that his conclusions are a “travesty,” Irving’s reputation was left in tatters. When two different courts of appeal concurred, he faced financial ruin. Why then was I not delighted with the court sentence handed down in Vienna on Feb. 20? I am writing this sitting in the shadow of the Vatican, preparing to teach a course on the Holocaust at the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Jesuit university affiliated with the Vatican. For centuries the church censored Jewish books, forcing Jews to remove anything the church authorities deemed objectionable to Christianity. Even prayers were censored. We Jews, who have suffered from censorship, should not be supporting it. Moreover, I don’t believe censorship is efficacious. It renders the censored item into forbidden fruit, making it more appealing, not less so. Here in Europe, as in many quarters in the United States, this discussion has been joined with the debate over the Danish cartoons. Various Jewish organizations have pointed out --and rightfully so--that the Islamic world, which is so vigorously protesting the insult
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they perceive in these cartoons, is ignoring its own double standard. It has lived quite comfortably for many years with a spate of antiSemitic cartoons. Some are well nigh pornographic and worthy of what one might find in Der Sturmer, the Nazi anti-Semitic newspaper. While it is legitimate to argue that there is a difference between cartoons and the murder of millions of people, it is hard to argue for laws against Holocaust denial but demand that the Danish cartoonists’ freedom of speech be protected. It suggests a double standard. More importantly, there is a far better way to fight Holocaust denial than to rely on the transitory force of law. When David Irving forced me to go to court to defend my freedom of expression, my most important weapon was the historical truth. We have truth and history on our side. From both an ideological and strategic perspective, those are far more powerful weapons than laws, especially laws that seem to counter the ideal of freedom of expression. The best way to counter Holocaust deniers is to teach as many people as possible this history. That is why courses on history of the Holocaust have proven so popular and important. Students who take those courses will never fall prey to the David Irving-like distortions. Jewish tradition teaches that the word emet, truth, composed as it is from the first, middle and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, encompasses everything. The truth of the Holocaust is terrible and painful, but it is the truth and that is the most potent weapon anyone could want. Deborah Lipstadt teaches at Emory University and is the author of History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving [Ecco, 2005] which is a winner of the National Jewish Book Award.
We have truth and history on our side. From both an ideological and strategic perspective, those are far more powerful weapons than laws...
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