Israel vajoaa muslimien tasolle, osa 2

David Irving markkinoimassa kirjaansa Hitler's War, poliisien ympäröimänä häneen kohdistuvan väkivaltauhan vuoksi

(Kaikki allaolevien sanomalehtisitaattien lihavoinnit minun.)

David Irving interview in El Mundo provokes Israeli anger

A Spanish newspaper's move to mark the second world war anniversary with an interview with the Holocaust-denying historian David Irving has touched off a furious row with Israel, which has condemned the decision to elevate freedom of expression above ethics.

El Mundo yesterday defended its decision to publish the Irving interview, saying he was one of a series of interviewees picked because of their opinions on polemical questions left behind by the war. It said it also chose Irving, who served 13 months in an Austrian jail for denying that the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews, because he was at the centre of a wider debate about the criminalisation of opinion.

Israel's ambassador to Spain, Raphael Schutz, complained bitterly about El Mundo's decision to include Irving in a run of interviews that include the Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw and the director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel, Avner Shalev.

"The problem is not just the offence or the polemic, but the lack of any moral, historical or ethical judgment on the part of whoever decided to interview Irving alongside recognised experts in the matter," Schutz wrote in a letter published by the newspaper.

"The unfortunate decision to interview Irving cannot be justified in the name of freedom of expression," he said. "It is just a reflection of the lack of ethics of those responsible, of their disdain towards the newspaper's readers, towards the other interviewees and, obviously, towards the newspaper itself."

El Mundo's deputy editor, Juan Carlos Laviana, said the paper's interviewer had been tough with Irving. El Mundo would also run a piece debunking some of the falsehoods the historian had previously peddled about the second world war and the Holocaust, Laviana said.

"He does not deny the Holocaust in the interview," said Laviana. "There is nothing in it that would be a crime in Spain."

"Irving has already paid for his crime," he added, referring to his prison spell in Austria. "That was, of course, a crime of opinion rather than of action."

Laviana said a debate was now open about whether laws in some countries against expressing certain opinions about the second world war were too harsh and should be changed.

The interview is due to be published on Saturday. In it, Irving accuses the allies of paying relatively little attention to the Holocaust until it became a major international issue, years after the war had ended, according to Laviana.

"I think they are giving Irving more importance than he really has," Laviana said of the Israelis. "They are turning him into a piece of news."

Other controversial opinions about the war expressed by El Mundo interviewees had raised no complaints, Laviana said. These included a claim by the German historian Jörg Friedrich that allied air raids on civilians in German cities amounted to murder.

Laviana said El Mundo's staff editorial committee had backed the decision to publish the Irving interview despite Israeli criticism. A letter of complaint about Irving had also been received from Shalev, Laviana said.

This is the second time that Israel has publicly taken issue with a foreign news organisation in recent weeks.

Late last month, an article in the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet suggested that Israeli troops had harvested the organs of dead Palestinians. Israel urged the Swedish government to issue an official condemnation of the story, but the Swedes refused, citing freedom of expression.

David Irving sparks row over Holocaust 'propaganda'

Eminent historians have condemned a Spanish newspaper's decision to interview the controversial historian David Irving as part of its coverage to mark the 70th anniversary of the Second World War.

The Hitler specialist Sir Ian Kershaw, whose interview last Monday launched El Mundo's commemorative series, said he – and most historians – would have pulled out had they known of Mr Irving's participation.

In the interview published yesterday, Mr Irving once again played down the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Second World War, despite having served time in an Austrian jail for his extremist views.

"The Holocaust is just a slogan, a product like Kleenex or Xerox printers. They've turned it into a commercial phenomenon, and succeeded in making money out of it – producing films about it which have made millions," said the 71-year-old Mr Irving, prompting fury and dismay in Israel.

Israel's ambassador in Madrid, Raphael Schutz, condemned the interview as an insult to readers, to legitimate historians and to the concept of free speech. Mr Schutz said: "Everyone who knows anything about the issue knows that David Irving is nothing but... a con man."

El Mundo justified publication on the grounds of freedom of expression and because Mr Irving was at the centre of a wider debate about the criminalisation of opinion.

But Avner Shalev, the director of Israel's Holocaust Museum, responded in a letter published by El Mundo: "There are subjects about that don't permit a 'for' and 'against'. The paper gives legitimacy to a man who doesn't deserve it... It is inconceivable that a serious newspaper should provide a platform for anti-Semitism."

The notion of the Holocaust was built up decades after the event, Mr Irving argues. "Until the 1970s it was just a speck of dust on the horizon," he tells El Mundo. "The proof is that it doesn't appear in any of the biographies of the great leaders of the Second World War. But from then on it became fashionable. The Jews turned it into a brand, using the same technique as Goebbels. They invented a slogan... and repeated it ad nauseam."

Asked if he continued to believe that the figure of six million Jews exterminated was an exaggeration, Mr Irving replied: "I'm not interested in figures. I don't count bodies. I'm not all that interested in the Holocaust."

How come, the interviewer persisted, you are the only historian to deny that the concentration camp at Auschwitz contributed to the Holocaust? "Because they all copy each other. To jump off the rails would condemn them to jail and poverty, which is what happened to me."

Mr Irving served 11 months in an Austrian jail in 2006 for denying that the Nazis killed six million Jews.

He insisted yesterday that Hitler was not responsible, being merely the dupe of smarter collaborators. "Hitler was a simple man constantly deceived by his subordinates." The allegation that the Nazi leader sought to exterminate the Jews was, he said, "a propaganda lie. In Hitler's speeches there is only one anti-Semitic sentence. Something about 'when the war begins, I want the Jews to suffer'. But that's just a stereotypical expression."

Goebbels and Himmler were more to blame, he said, but Churchill – "a corrupt politician" – was responsible for the war: "He pushed the UK into the war and destroyed the British empire. Churchill was in the hands of the Jews, and if he'd surrendered he'd have gone down in history as a failure. People would have laughed at him."

So should he have made a pact with Hitler? "Of course. We were very close to ending the war in 1940."

II Guerra Mundial: la verdad frente al negacionismo

Nuestro periódico ha publicado estos días una serie de entrevistas con historiadores de la época. Hoy lo hace con David Irving. El embajador de Israel, el director del Museo del Holocausto de Jerusalén y algunos de los expertos entrevistados han manifestado su rechazo a que este periódico haya recogido el testimonio de Irving, conocido apologeta del nazismo pero también autor de libros publicados en España que contienen algunas aportaciones tan interesantes como polémicas sobre el conflicto.

No tendría que hacer falta decir que entrevistar a una persona no supone estar de acuerdo con sus opiniones. Irving relativiza el Holocausto y sostiene un perverso discurso antisemita que nuestro periódico repudia por completo. No compartimos la mayor parte de lo que dice, pero defendemos su derecho a decirlo. Irving ha sido entrevistado este año por el diario británico The Independent y anteriormente por The Observer y The Guardian. Nadie acusó a estos medios de hacer de altavoz de sus tesis, como nadie pensó que EL MUNDO fuera franquista por entrevistar a Utrera Molina.

«El debate sobre los asuntos públicos debe ser desinhibido, robusto y completamente abierto y, por ello, puede muy bien incluir ataques vehementes, cáusticos e hirientes», afirmaba el juez Brennan en su famosa sentencia Sullivan versus The New York Times. La defensa de la libertad de expresión incluye también que Irving pueda opinar sin ser sometido a censura, lo cual no debería escandalizar a nadie.

Moratinos critica a EL MUNDO por dar espacio a un historiador negacionista

El ministro de Exteriores, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, ha criticado la publicación en EL MUNDO de una entrevista al historiador David Irving, un revisionista que ha sugerido que Adolf Hitler desconocía el exterminio judío.

Pese a que el texto, dentro de una serie de entrevistas sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial, deja claro que el historiador ha sido repudiado por sus colegas y a que este diario publica un editorial crítico con el negacionismo –y no sólo de Irving-, Moratinos quiso expresar su malestar.

"Desde el más absoluto respeto a la libertad de expresión, el ministro de Exteriores lamenta que se dedique un espacio a un historiador que niega una de las mayores tragedias de la Historia contemporánea para la humanidad y quiere hacer llegar su empatía y su comprensión porque este tipo de afirmaciones hieren profundamente la sensibilidad del pueblo hebreo", dijo su portavoz, tras una reunión de ministros de los Veintisiete en Estocolmo.

El editorial de EL MUNDO defiende la libertad de expresión, incluida la de Irving. "No compartimos la mayor parte de lo que dice, pero defendemos su derecho a decirlo", asegura.

Malestar en Israel

También la prensa israelí se ha hecho eco de la publicación de la entrevista. El periódico Yediot Ajaronot dedica al tema una página bajo el título 'A favor y en contra de la Shoah', informa Sal Emergui desde Jerusalén. "El diario español EL MUNDO concede una plataforma al negacionista del Holocausto en una serie por el 70º aniversario del inicio de la II Guerra Mundial", informa en una pieza que recoge el malestar israelí.

Este diario también critica la elección como "gran experto" de Irving, quien "afirmó que el Holocausto es un tema inflado, las cámaras de gas son una invención y los judíos son responsables de la crisis económica".

Asimismo, Haaretz titula sobre el tema: "Israel protestó enérgicamente por la publicación de los argumentos de un negacionista de la Shoah en un diario español". Indica también que Irving estuvo en la cárcel por negar el Holocausto, y recuerda una de sus famosas frases: "Auschwitz fue una atracción turística".

El periódico Maariv, por su parte, cita la protesta del embajador israelí en España, Raphael Schutz: "Este hombre no tiene ni una gota de credibilidad y no puede ser incluido en la misma serie de entrevistas con reconocidos historiadores".

Todos los medios israelíes recogen la indignación del director del Museo del Holocausto en Jerusalén, Avner Shalev, incluido en la serie sin ser informado de la participación de Irving.

"Hay temas en los que no hay a favor y en contra. El diario da legitimidad a un hombre que no se la merece", denuncia Shalev, cuya entrevista realizada por Sal Emergui fue publicada el pasado jueves en EL MUNDO. "Si llego a saberlo, al igual que otros historiadores entrevistados, no hubiera aceptado participar en esta serie de entrevistas", añadió Shalev.

Moratinos no puede dar lecciones de nada

06.09.2009

El ministro de Asuntos Exteriores se sumó ayer a las voces procedentes de Israel que han criticado la publicación en EL MUNDO de una entrevista con el polémico historiador David Irving, con motivo del 70 aniversario del comienzo de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Moratinos lamentó «que se dedique espacio» a una persona que niega el Holocausto.

¿Desde cuándo un ministro establece lo que puede o no publicar un periódico? Parece claro que Moratinos ha querido agradar a las autoridades israelíes en vísperas de la gira de Zapatero por Oriente Próximo.

Este diario dejó ayer muy claro que no comparte en absoluto las tesis de Irving, aunque ello no obsta para que defienda su derecho a expresarlas. Cosa que, por cierto, ha hecho el historiador no sólo en EL MUNDO, sino en otros grandes diarios europeos, sin que los gobiernos hayan intervenido.