Weber, Fromm Tackle Current Issues at IHR Meeting in Arlington
News from the Institute for Historical Review
Mark Weber and Paul Fromm tackled headline-making current issues in spirited talks at an IHR meeting on Saturday evening, July 8, 2006. Among the 30 or so persons who filled the restaurant meeting room in Arlington, Virginia, were men and women who had driven from as far away as Canada and New York City. Among the attendees were several younger people, as well as several professional writers. More than 200 persons listened to the talks as they were broadcast through a live internet feed.
Paul Fromm, director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression (CAFE), spoke first. With humor, verve and first-hand knowledge, he spoke about the battle for free speech in Canada and western Europe, with emphasis on the legal persecution of British historian David Irving, and German-Canadian publisher Ernst Zundel, whom he referred to as “political prisoners.”
Irving is currently serving a three-year prison sentence in Austria for “Holocaust denial” remarks he had made in 1989. Zundel has been held behind bars in Germany for more than a year for “Holocaust denial” statements made in Canada and the United States. He was seized at his home in Tennessee in February 2003, and then held for two years in Canada in solitary confinement before being deported to Europe. His trial has been dragging on for more than seven months now, with no end in sight.
“They’re putting these people in jail because they’re blind scared,” said Fromm, who stressed the importance of the internet reaching the public with factual information about the struggle for free expression.
Mark Weber, director of the IHR, spoke about the looming danger of a new war in the Middle East, the Jewish-Zionist role in determining American foreign policy, and the pressing task of reaching more people. (The full text of Weber’s address is posted here.)
He detailed the campaign for war against Iran, citing recent remarks by high-level US officials. The so-called Iran crisis is bogus, he said, and “every bit as phony as the one manufactured to provide a pretext for war against Iraq.”
“Once again,” said Weber, “we are told that another country that Israel regards as an adversary is a grave threat to the peace of the world. Once again we are told lies so similar to those we heard in 2002 and 2003, and from the same people, that it’s amazing that anyone can take them seriously.” A war against Iran, he stressed, “would serve only Israeli and Zionist interests. For everyone else, war against Iran would be a catastrophe.”
US policy in the Middle East, Weber said, is based on a “blatant double standard.” “While Washington threatens war against Iran for developing a nuclear program, it sanctions Israel’s vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, and seemingly has no problem with a nuclear-armed China, Pakistan, Russia and India.”
Weber spoke positively about the recently-issued “Israel Lobby” paper of professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. This important publication, said Weber, “is much more than an effective analysis or persuasive critique of a particular lobby. It is implicitly a damning indictment of the American social-political system.”
As he has in other talks and interviews in recent years, Weber emphasized the dangerous impact of Jewish-Zionist power. “The Jewish-Zionist grip on our nation,” he said, “is an expression of a profound and deeply rooted problem… Such a lobby or power — particularly one that represents the interests of a self-absorbed community that makes up no more than three or four percent of the population — could only gain such a hold on the governmental machinery of a society that is fundamentally sick and corrupt.”
Now, said Weber, “we are engaged in a great, global struggle — in which two distinct and irreconcilable sides confront each other. It is a struggle for the welfare and future not merely of the Middle East, or of America, but a great historical battle for the soul and future of humanity itself. A struggle that calls all of us — across the country and around the world — who share a sense of responsibility for the future of our nation, of the world, and of humankind.”
At the conclusion of his address, the audience gave Weber a standing ovation. During the question and answer session that followed, he touched on a range of issues, including the “exceptional” character of American history.