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Florida, Tuesday, June 24, 2003

[Anti-Defamation League chops off another head]

Democratic Party official resigns over e-mail

By George Bennett
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

A local Democratic Party functionary has quit after it was revealed he once offered friendly legal advice to a historian who was later branded an "active Holocaust denier" by a British court.

Rob Ross, a Boca Raton attorney who in March was named finance committee chairman for the Palm Beach County Democratic Party, resigned during the weekend.

Ross said he did not know about British historian David Irving's controversial views on the Holocaust when he sent Irving a 1998 e-mail.

In the e-mail, which landed in several Democratic in-boxes in recent weeks, Ross called Irving critic Deborah Lipstadt a "pawn" of Jewish advocacy group the Anti-Defamation League and suggested that Irving file a racketeering complaint "alleging that there has been a long-standing international conspiracy by the ADL to ruin your reputation and spread false allegations regarding the quality of your research and writings."

At the time, Irving was pursuing a libel suit in British court against Lipstadt, an Emory University professor whose 1994 book called Irving a Holocaust denier. When the suit went to trial in 2000, Irving called the gassing of millions of Jews in death camps a "big lie" during cross-examination.

A judge ruled against Irving, calling him "anti-Semitic and racist" and "an active Holocaust denier."

But Ross said that in 1998, two years before the trial, the Holocaust was never mentioned when he heard Irving give a lecture in Fort Lauderdale. After the lecture, Ross said he spoke briefly to Irving and Irving said that he was involved in a legal dispute, but did not say what it was about. Ross said he followed up with an e-mail a few weeks later.

Although Ross' e-mail mentions Lipstadt by name, he said he did not know that the Holocaust was the central issue in the dispute between Irving and Lipstadt.

"If I knew in '98 what I know now, I certainly wouldn't have offered him any advice," Ross said.

"Let me state, without reservation, that I disavow publicly any statement made at any time by Mr. Irving, or any other person, which casts doubt upon the Holocaust or upon the culpability of the Nazi leaders who perpetrated heinous crimes against humanity in the 1930s and 1940s, including the horrific slaughter of six million Jews," Ross added in an e-mail statement.

Ross, 47, already was the source of some controversy within the Democratic Party, which he rejoined a few months ago after being an active Republican. Ross said he was a Democrat before joining the GOP in 1993. In Palm Beach County, Ross was a Republican Executive Committee member who allied himself with the party's conservative wing and ran unsuccessfully for county GOP chairman in 1996 and 2000.