Letters

The Larger Picture

The recent Iraq crisis, with the Clinton administration's zealous campaign to persuade everyone of the need for military action against that Arab country, is helping many Americans better to see the larger picture. I find that people are asking questions and saying things that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Everywhere, it seems, people are challenging, with increasing fervor, the whole rotten edifice of Zionism and our relationship with Israel, along with the many lies on which they are built.

Although I pray that the Clinton administration does not unleash the full fury of modern high-tech weaponry against the helpless people of Iraq, perhaps such a slaughter might at least help everyone see much more clearly just how beholden our political leaders have become to alien interests.

J.M.
New York City

A Relief

I am an independent scholar, and my main field is 20th-century Germany. Seeking information about the Nazi period, I joined several H-lists [Internet e-mail discussion forums], including H-Holocaust (which is where I found your URL [Internet address]).

I finally quit it, sending a rather acerbic message to the list administrator about calling this a “scholarly” list. Actually, it was nothing but diatribes, ad hominem attacks against anyone who dares say anything good about anything German, and so forth. It was really horrible. I began to wonder about the motivation of those who so harshly demand that everyone agree with them or be branded Evil (anti-Semitic), who forever hound and want to punish the Germans, and, in short, who endlessly promote hatred in a world already full of it – and to what end?

Anyway, I had my fill of that nonsense, and resigned from that revolting list. I also decided to look into what they are so afraid of – that is, your information. Coming across your Web page was a relief! Lo and behold, I find that your information more closely fits with the conclusions I had been reaching through my own research.

For years I had bought into the “official” propaganda line, which requires that one never argue with Jews about Holocaust matters, but instead bow dutifully to all the hatred they promulgate in the name of “How We Suffered.” Because of their sufferings half a century ago, they insist on all sorts of exemptions and special privileges. I found it amazing that Germany itself makes revisionism a crime, and even awards prizes and honors to authors (such as Daniel Goldhagen) who spew hatred against Germans.

M. S. [by Internet]
University of Texas
Austin, Texas

A New Taboo for a New Era

Goldwin Smith's essay, “The Vexing 'Jewish Question',” [Jan. Feb. 1998 Journal] may strike some readers as astonishing in its frankness. But such forthright writing on this now taboo-laden subject was not at all unusual 80-90 years ago. Until the 1930s, prominent scholars were still relatively free to write candidly of the Jewish role in society.

For example, one contemporary of Smith who expressed similar views on this subject was John Clark Ridpath, LL.D. Among other works, this respected historian was the author of the Cyclopedia of Universal History as well as an impressive nine-volume scholarly work, Ridpath's History of the World, published in Cincinnati in 1910.

In his History of the World (vol. 9, pp. 208-09) Ridpath wrote:

Since the Second World War, and at least in large part as a consequence of the outcome of that terrible conflict, it has become nearly impossible for “respectable” scholars to write frankly, much less critically, about the enduring problem of relations in society between Jews and non Jews. Instead, everyone is now more or less obliged to start from the premise that anti-Jewish sentiment is irrational and unrelated to Jewish behavior.

E. Svedlund
Seattle

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