Evans joins NZ withchunt against Dr Hayward

September 26, 2000 (Tuesday)
Cleveland (Ohio) -- Detroit (Michigan)

MY London office receives an email from Melanie Jones of Television New Zealand:

Can you send me an email address or other contact details where I may request an interview with David Irving for the New Zealand edition of the 60 Minutes television programme? The subject would be Joel Hayward. Please treat this request as confidential. Melanie Jones [mkjones@tvnz.co.nz]

So it seems that the witchhunt is now beginning in earnest against Dr Hayward, who distinguished himself a few years ago by writing an objective doctoral dissertation, which was accepted, on the revisionist viewpoint on the Holocaust. I have posted several stories [1] [2] [3] about this scandalous agitation on my website already, and included it as an example of the causes of anti-Semitism. In my absence, London emails a reply to the New Zealanders, giving my US address.

September 28, 2000 (Thursday)
Detroit (Michigan) -- Cleveland (Ohio) -- Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania)

NEW Zealand television is beholden to the usual pressure groups, it seems; as the Board of Deputies of British Jews has already demonstrated in London on April 13, every effort is undertaken to prevent my appearing on television screens, whether live or otherwise (Norman Finkelstein is having the same experience). A message now comes from the New Zealanders:

Thanks for your email. After further discussion, it no longer seems appropriate to include an interview with you in our proposed story. However, I do appreciate your prompt response.

In fact I had given them no further thought, apart from mailing a warning to Dr Joel Hayward about what is afoot against him. My own inquiries reveal that the well-funded New Zealand Jewish Council has commissioned none other than Prof. Richard Evans (right) to write a lengthy report for the Working Party investigating Hayward's thesis. Evans' job is to attack the academic work and its supervision, and this he has evidently done in the most vitriolic and biassed manner; other experts have responded by easily proving this ill-tempered little Welshman wrong on key points. A New Zealand academic describes Evans as "certainly a nasty piece of work," which echoes the words of Dr John Charmley, professor of modern history at the University of East Anglia -- Charmley told me that the university rang with cheers when Evans departed to take up the chair of history at Cambridge.

I reply to the New Zealanders at 7:25 PM:

I did not consent to an interview and I would not have consented, either, except to draw attention to the venal behaviour of the witness professor Richard Evans, who accepted a "fee" of over $200,000 (!) to testify in the manner that he did for the defence of Prof Lipstadt, and who is now similarly hired by the New Zealand Jewish authorities to destroy the career of a New Zealand academic.

We have heard of guns for hire; this is an "academic for hire." The British judge Sir Charles Gray QC who heard of the "fee" described it as grotesque and wholly out of proportion to the task.

You would not have heard a word from me about Dr Hayward, so it is wise that you did not ask.

Evans has already been the subject of caustic interviews with university editors about the payments he has received (I don't know if these brave souls published them, however).