Jews Say No to Free Speech at Oxford
Holocaust denier is denied a chance to
debate at Oxford
By Richard Allen Greene
LONDON, May 10 (JTA) – A student group at Oxford has canceled a debate on freedom of speech that was to feature Holocaust denier David Irving.
The Oxford Union, a debating society, decided to call off the event at the last minute after intense pressure from a range of groups including the Union of Jewish Students, the Anti-Nazi League, the Association of University Teachers and Oxford’s own Student Union.
The Anti-Nazi League, which had planned protests at the debate, originally scheduled for Thursday, hailed the cancellation as “great news.”
“It would have been horrendous for David Irving to get to speak in Britain,” league spokeswoman Debbie Jack said.
The debate was to address the question of whether there should be restrictions on the freedom of speech of extremists.
Irving was scheduled to argue against restrictions, while Richard Rampton, one of the lawyers who successfully defended Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt from Irving’s libel lawsuit last year, was to argue in favor.
David Mitchell, a Jewish student at Oxford, coordinated campus opposition to the event.
After distributing leaflets and pressuring other members of the panel to pull out of the debate, he put motions to the Oxford Union condemning the Irving invitation and demanding that it be canceled.
At a four-hour meeting on Tuesday, students voted 95 to 15 in favor canceling the debate, union spokesman Daniel Johnson said.
Under union rules, the votes were not binding on President Amy Harland.
She said she would announce her decision on Wednesday morning, the day before the event was to take place. At 1 p.m., a notice went up saying that the event had been canceled.
“To see it happen at the 11th hour was spectacular,” Mitchell told JTA. “It’s not easy to cancel something like this at the last minute,” he added.
This is the third time in recent years that Oxford has canceled a planned Irving appearance.
But Johnson said that having him participate in a free speech debate was different.
“He was not coming to discuss his beliefs, but to participate in a debate with vigorous opposition,” he said.
The Board of Deputies, the umbrella organization that represents most British Jews, does not accept the distinction.
“By giving him a platform, whatever the topic, you are giving him a legitimacy that he did not have after the libel trial,” a Board spokesman said.
In a highly publicized London case last year, Irving lost his lawsuit against Lipstadt for calling him a Holocaust denier. In his ruling, the judge found that Irving “is a Holocaust denier, anti-Semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.”
Source: ZGram – Where Truth is Destiny | May 10, 2001 | Copyright (c) 2001 – Ingrid A. Rimland
Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
On David Irving’s website we find this statement:
“There was a large potential for interesting and important debate. The right of free speech has been compromised.” Words spoken to the wind. The long anticipated debate between Rampton and Irving was to have taken place today. Immense pressure was applied to have that debate canceled, with Oxford Union resisting as long as they could but finally caving in. Here is what came in just now from the Peterborough column:
[START]
Free speech under threat at Oxford Union
The Oxford Union has withdrawn its invitation to Holocaust revisionist David Irving to speak at a debate only a day before he was to take the podium.
Irving had agreed to face Richard Rampton QC — who successfully defended Deborah Lipstadt against Irving’s libel action last year — to oppose the motion: “This house would restrict the free speech of extremists .”
Irving was disinvited yesterday after an open meeting of union members. The union’s press officer says:
“We are very disappointed. The meeting of members yesterday morning was staffed by a very vocal minority who were worried about student safety. There was no real threat to safety. Instead, there was a large potential for interesting and important debate. The right of free speech has been compromised by objections led, to a large extent, by the student union.”
This is the third time Irving has had an invitation to speak in the city withdrawn. Last year, a smaller Speaker’s meeting was vetoed on the grounds that it would give Irving “the platform to give a talk and answer inappropriate questions”. And just before Christmas, the Oxford Reform Club also withdrew an invitation amid concerns over safety.
Edited by Sam Leith
[END]
Now compare that shameful caving in to the Jewish censors, compared to this sweet little item, also found on Irving’s site:
[START]
Irving addressed senior pupils at Latymer High School, West London, for two hours on Friday despite attempts by three pupils, one of them the son of a barrister, to close down the long-planned meeting (their parents forced school governors to withdraw the original invitation); angry pupils rented their own hall outside the school precincts to hear the historian speak
[END]
What does all that teach you? That the enemy gets ever more frantic – and that there’s trickle-down Revisionism even to the high school level where kids, not yet corrupted, assert themselves in ways that ought the corrupt school and university officials hang their heads in shame!
An additional small little item of interest to my readers, which I am using as a preface to my Thought for the Day:
Keep this in mind as you read the item about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad below:
Maybe Bashar al-Assad does not even know that fully 82 percent of the Israeli and Diaspora Jews are the descendants of “converted” Khazars! Ethnically they have absolutely no thread of connection to the semitic inhabitants of the Holy Land! They are nothing but brazen imposters!
Does anybody feel another Revisionist battle coming on?
(See the Christian Jew Benjamin Freedman’s excellent study “Facts are Facts” about this little-known fact of Jewish history.
Thought for the Day:
DAMASCUS, May 8 (AFP) -
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad hit out Tuesday at accusations of anti-semitism levelled against him by Israel and Jewish organisations, saying that Arabs themselves were Semites.
“It is regrettable that there are still parties who fear historical truths being mentioned and who accuse us Semites of being anti-semitic,” he said while seeing off Pope John Paul II from Damascus international airport.
(Posted on Asia – News World)
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