Ian Macdonald of Ottawa tells us he has written this letter to the National Post, January 30, 2001 Subject: Robert Fulford on David Irving's "narcissism" WHEN Robert Fulford was Editor of Saturday Night, surely the pinnacle of his career, he wrote, and published, as was his prerogative, an eleven page eulogy to Stephen Lewis, then Canada's newly-appointed Ambassador to the United Nations. The otherwise exhaustive tribute oddly made no reference to the seeming paradox of the lucrative appointment of a Socialist politician by a Conservative Government nor to the egregious conflict of interest Lewis faced as an ardent Zionist representing Canada in a forum where the depredations of his beloved Israel were in almost daily contention. With this skeleton out of the closet, obviously the perceptive reader would not be surprised to find Mr Fulford gloating in the National Post over the supposed demise of David Irving at the hands of his detractors in a London court. Characteristically, your columnist, by choosing ad hominem arguments to denigrate Irving for his challenge to Holocaust-promoter Deborah Lipstadt, shed no light on the core issue of the Irving-Lipstadt trial, namely the authenticity or even plausibility of claims concerning the fate of the European Jews in World War II. Surely, it is incumbent upon a journalist of Fulford's status and presumed detachment, especially when writing for a prestigious newspaper, to provide balanced coverage on issues as inflammatory as Holocaust authenticity. He does not do so and makes no mention of Irving's exemplary professional reputation nor the widely-recognized integrity of his historical research techniques -- prior, that is, to his condemnatiion for agreeing to appear as a witness for Ernst Zundel, a known "Holocaust-denier" and scapegoat of the B'nai Brith and other anti-Anti-Semite lobbies. Key questions that Fulford negligently or intentionally leaves unposed and unanswered include: Why, if Irving's case was so transparently specious, did it take 20 top lawyers and tens of millions of dollars to challenge it? Why, if Irving's detractors had irrefutable proof to debunk Irving's claims, was it not produced (the Defense relied almost entirely on hearsay, innuendo and ad hominem arguments}? How, if Irving's skepticism about the alleged "extermination" was unjustified, could the German Government have received 4.7 million claims for compensation from individual Jewish "survivors", all validated by Jewish authorities? And why, if the Jewish (Lipstadt) version of the Holocaust is such a self-evident fact, is it necessaary to spend literally billions of dollars in its defense and to pay politicians to criminalize efforts by objective historians to examine the evidence (or lack of evidence, as the case may be)? Finally, if Irving is wrong, why is it that so many independent, including Jewish, scholars, basing their conclusions on solid forensic and irrefutable demographic evidence, risk their reputations, livelihoods and personal security to take his side? Fulford describes Irving as a "loser, on a calamitous
scale", "like a dim student" with "no case" and contrasts
him to the successful ,"wonderfully down-to-earth" Lipstadt
and her "expert practicioners". In fact, in an important
sense, David Irving was the winner. Through the massive
media coverage of the Trial he succeeded to alert the
academic world and the public to the sinister power of
Holocaust propagandists to subvert the British Judiciary and
media to their partisan cause, he exposed the duplicitous
tactics used to silence him and to ridicule his valid
opinions, and, most importantly, he caused to be revealed
the absurdities of the Hollywood/van Pelt version of the
Holocaust which can now be dissected by historians and other
interested parties the world over. If Irving's popular
Website (www.fpp.co.uk) is any guide, one could venture to
guess that he will emerge from his ordeal more hero than
martyr. He may be down but he is certainly not
out. |
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