Thursday 3 September 2009

Spanish paper calls Holocaust denier Irving 'expert' on WWII

"Even freedom of the press, Schutz wrote, had limits. One sentence that was edited out of his letter was his charge that the paper was printing the interview to cause a sensation."

El Mundo article will appear a day after interview with Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev.

Source: article by Herb Keinon in TJP

First the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet cited freedom of the press as its justification for accusing IDF soldiers of harvesting Palestinian organs. Now the Spanish daily El Mundo is using the same argument to defend including Holocaust denier David Irving among its list of experts to be interviewed this week to mark 70 years since the start of World War II.

An interview with Irving, who served time in an Austrian prison for his Holocaust denial, is scheduled to appear in the paper on Saturday, a day after an interview with Yad Vashem's chairman Avner Shalev.

When Israeli Ambassador to Spain Raphael Schutz learned of the plans, he wrote a letter to the newspaper, saying it was obscene to include Irving in the list of experts and give him an esteemed platform. Such exposure, Schutz argued, lent Irving credibility. Schutz's letter appeared in the paper on Wednesday.

Schutz wrote that one of the problems facing the post-modern age was an inability to recognize anything as true, saying instead that there were only "different narratives." As such, Schutz wrote, there was no capacity to differentiate between truth and lies, between the important and the superfluous. And in this world void of truth, everything is at the same level - the murderer and the victim, the wise and the ignorant, Mozart's opera and the latest pop song.

Even freedom of the press, Schutz wrote, had limits. One sentence that was edited out of his letter was his charge that the paper was printing the interview to cause a sensation.

The paper's response, which was run under the letter, was not to endorse Irving's ideas, but rather to cite press freedom and the right for everyone to decide on their own.

Yad Vashem spokesman Estee Yaari, speaking for Shalev, said that it was "shocking" that a paper like El Mundo would include an interview with Irving as an "expert." Shalev, she said, "would never have agreed to be interviewed had he known." [...]

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1 comment:

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Whatever sells more copies. Need to remember the newspapers are going down and down...