Guardian Grovel

nemies of Free Speech origins of anti-semitism It should never have been published London, December 3, 2009 UNDER PRESSURE FROM THE USUAL SOURCES, THE GUARDIAN REMOVES AN OFFENSIVE LETTER CONCERNING JOHN DEMJANJUK: Justice and Demjanjuk Sir: What kind of justice is it that proscribes the normally accepted right of an accused to challenge the assumption that a crime had, in fact, occurred?

Normally the prosecution is obliged to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the crime of murder had taken place. This is not the case in the German trial of John Demjanjuk . The prosecution will not have to present such evidence. The court will, without proof, arbitrarily accept that the alleged crime took place. His legal counsel will be prohibited on pain of prosecution from presenting evidence contradicting this assumption.

Being stripped of his most powerful defense, the accused is reduced to pleading mistaken identity or that he had nothing to do with an unproved murder. John Mortl Then along comes the Jewish paramilitary army, the inoccuously named “Commuity Security Trust,” and post this item : (the CST is a thuggish front of the Board of Deputies of British Jews ): December 3th, 2009 by CST Holocaust Denial: unrecognised on Guardian letters page?

This is a guest post by Paul Evans of the Holocaust Educational Trust . A letter about the John Demjanjuk trial appears in today’s Guardian , which asks “What kind of justice is it that proscribes the normally accepted right of the accused to challenge the assumption that a crime had, in fact, occurred?”

It contests that in the alleged war criminal’s trial, the focus should shift from whether Demjanjuk was a guard at a death camp, to whether the court should first prove any crimes were committed there. “The court will, without proof, arbitrarily accept that the crime took place,” he complains. What the letter-writer appears to imply is that the murder of thousands by gas, at the hands of guards at Sobibor death camp, is a question of legitimate debate.

It is an extraordinary and offensive suggestion. The letter is from a man named John Mortl . While “John Mortl” is an unusual name, letters to the international press from people of that name are not &endash; and the eagle-eyed might spot a few running themes in the correspondence. In 1996 a John Mortl of Bala, Canada, was writing to the New York Times to tell us that following the Holocaust, Germans believed that the gas chambers were no more than “atrocity propaganda”.

The same year, someone of the same name and from the same Canadian town was writing to the anti-Israeli Washington Report on Middle East Affairs questioning “what does ” Holocaust denial ” really mean?” and coming to his own unorthodox conclusions. By curious coincidence, just years previously, a man named John Mortl was writing letters to the notorious Holocaust denial newsletter, the Journal of Historical Review (published by the Institute of Historical Review).

After a period of silence, a John Mortl from London begins reappearing in the press. In June 2003, this John Mortl is complaining to The Observer about “the anti-Semitic card” being played to divert attention from the Israeli government’s conduct in Gaza and the West Bank. Now let’s skip forward five years and to an article in The Times , entitled ‘German war dead no one wants to remember’.

The online version of the piece now appears to have no comments under it, but internet history shows us that there was one (since deleted) from a reader named John Mortl. The comment read: “In WWI it was Britain and France who declared war on Germany, also in WWII. Too, in 1933 organized world Jewry declared war against Germany, and again in 1939 international Jewish bankers in New York and London bankrolled these two world wars.”

This is the stuff of classical antisemitic conspiracy theorists, directly asserting that the Jews as a race bear responsibility for all wars. A few months later on a legal affairs blog run by the Inner Temple Library, we again find a “John Mortl” comment, this time in defence of Australian Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben . Finally, in March this year we find opinion from a John Mortl on a Holocaust Denial Forum, discussing the need for “a change of emphasis at the IHR”.

Are all these John Mortls are related? I don’t know. But I do know that publishing Holocaust denial is bad news for the reputation of Britain’s most widely-read progressive newspaper.

UPDATE: The Guardian has now removed the letter, and published an apology in its place ( see below ). [ Into the Memory Hole: ] The Guardian issued this statement December 5, 2009 : “We published a letter by John Mortl in the Guardian of 3 December [page 37, and guardian.co.uk] relating to the case of John Demjanjuk, who is accused of assisting in the murder of 27,900 people in Poland. Unfortunately, we misread the letter. The underlying meaning, we now realise, implied Holocaust denial .

As soon as we realised our mistake, we removed the letter from the website. It should never have been published and we apologise unreservedly that it was.” Because along came the same Jewish paramilitary army, the inoccuously named “Commuity Security Trust,” and fesses up : (the CST is a thuggish front of the Board of Deputies of British Jews ).

The CST now brags : Holocaust denial: Recognised and removed from Guardian December 4th, 2009 by CST On 3rd December, the Guardian letters page printed a letter by John Mortl that appeared to allude to Holocaust denial . CST discussed the letter with the Holocaust Educational Trust , following which HET’s Paul Evans wrote an excellent analysis of it for CST’s blog. This showed that our initial suspicions were entirely correct.

CST forwarded Evans article to the Guardian , where senior staff then took immediate action to remove Mortl’s letter from the Guardian website. It is of course regrettable that the letter was ever published, and whilst CST blog was not the only website to mount criticism of the Guardian , we are very happy to have worked with both HET and the newspaper to help achieve a quick and constructive outcome.

The Guardian’s website now carries this statement, in place of the offensive letter: Editor’s statement : We published a letter by John Mortl in the Guardian of Thursday 3 December and on this site relating to the case of John Demjanjuk, who is accused of assisting in the murder of 27,900 people in Poland. Unfortunately, we misread the letter. The underlying meaning, we now realise, implied Holocaust denial . As soon as we realised our mistake, we removed the letter from the site.

It should never have been published and we apologise unreservedly that it was. Our Our Demjanjuk index Secret Meeting minutes reveal how in 1991 the (non political “charity”) Holocaust Education Trust — a front of the Board of Deputies of British Jews — secretly plotted to blackmail Macmillan UK Ltd into abandoning plans to publish “Hitler’s War” and further books by David Irving