The aiding and abetting of anti-Semitism

Political scientist Dr. Daniel J. Goldhagen, an academic who has written extensively about German "eliminationist antisemitism" and who spoke then with The Jerusalem Post regarding the Center's approach to the study of anti-Semitism was highly critical. While the Post quoted Dr. Goldhagen in its initial story on the Center, a number of  his statements did not appear in the report due to space limitations.

Readers can further engage in the ongoing dispute over the direction of the Center by reading the previously non-published statements of Dr. Goldhagen below. The Center's director Wolfgang Benz and Dr. Wetzel stated that they would not talk to the Post.

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Germany's boycott of Durban II

The Durban II anti-racism conference showed in crystal clear terms that playing down the Iranian nuclear threat and the genocidal anti-Semitic rhetoric of Ahmadinejad carries currency among many German political parties and human rights organizations.

Pro-Israel bloggers in Germany cited a telling example: Marianne Heuwagen, the German representative of Human Rights Watch, who wrote a guest commentary for the news organization Tagesschau, in which she defined Ahmadinejad as simply "critical of Israel." Heuwagen slammed Germany for boycotting Durban II.

Letter from Germany

BERLIN - The topsy-turvy events of 2008, including an unprecedented German-Israeli diplomatic crisis provoked by Chancellor Angela Merkel administration's decision to approve a more than 100 million euro trade deal to build three gas plants in Iran, consumed my reporting at the time; this deal reflected the common phenomenon in Germany, where I live and work, of playing down anti-Semitism worldwide, including Iran's genocidal threat to Israel and dictatorial Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's persecution of his country's small Jewish community.

A deeply moving, but highly disturbing, Jerusalem Post column by this paper's editor-in-chief David Horovitz in late February 2008 (When Jewish communities lose their voices), which dealt with rising anti-Semitism in Venezuela, stoked by Hugo Chavez, reminded me of my attempt to draw attention to the precarious situation of Venezuela's Jews and Chavez's state-sponsored anti-Semitic campaign. A little over a year before David published his column, I found myself in the position of the messenger who is attacked for blowing the whistle on a reporter's anti-Semitic article. I had uncovered a journalist writing freelance articles for the main German Jewish paper while simultaneously filing an anti-Jewish article for a hardcore anti-Israeli leftist German daily.

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