In 1996, well-known Holocaust denier David Irving lost a lawsuit against Prof. Deborah Lipstadt, during which he was found guilty of mishandling documents and distorting facts. However, this dispute, fought on the rational-argumentative level, would have taken place far more effectively outside of a formal legal dispute. All what had to be done was to ask Irving to meet with subject matter experts and go through document by document in a relaxed atmosphere. In doing so, he would inevitably have encountered the mistakes he had made. Since a court case always takes place under the stress of opposition and confrontation (i.e. under biological parameters that are programmed for a physical fight), the higher brain performances, such as hypocrisy-free assessment and rational insight, can by no means fully develop.
In the meantime, it is foreseeable that the legally won victory of the Holocaust experts cannot last, because the side of the Holocaust deniers is gaining support on a completely different level, namely on the demographic. According to a statistic published in 2014, the majority of Muslims worldwide either have not heard of the Holocaust or doubt it. The percentages in the younger age groups are still significantly higher than in older ones, an observation that also applies to members of other religious groups and indicates an alarming trend in development. / Cf. Emma Green, The World is full of Holocaust Deniers, 2014, in The Atlantic, reference https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/05/the-world-is-full-of-holocaust -deniers/370870/
These observations are alienating in a world obviously governed by a financial aristocracy considered being friends and protectors of Judaism. But the activities clearly against Jewish interests by their known tools such as the media, many NGOs (Chapter B 10) and at least partially the UN in New York, indicate that the elite does not recognize friends, only subjects and agents of its big money empire. Thus, the damage to the Jewish community fits perfectly into a general struggle against all successful nations of civilization that they see as rivals for the resources of the planet – see Chapter B 7. The battle at the military level constitutes only one component of a complex struggle and is managed by the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC-Military-Industrial Complex). This is made up of leaders from the military, the arms industry and politics. The media has its role as an apparatus to influence opinion in favor of military interference and arms deliveries, despite obviously counteractive results.
As can be seen from the activities of the UN, the media and many NGOs (Chapter B 10.), these developments are being promoted by the power of big money - and they fit seamlessly into a major trend that is leading civilization from the self-determined and peaceful level of an evolution of ideas down to the primitive level of an armed "clash of worldviews" - towards a new Middle Ages. In this context, recent revelations (late 2021) show the polarizing role played by oligopolistic social(?) media.
With this destructive trend in mind, two things about Israeli security become clear. First, political groups and parties are increasingly neglecting historical legal positions and the rational-argumentative level in general when protecting the interests of Israel and Jewish people in general. Instead, they turn to self-destructive anti-strategies such as appeasement or, at the other extreme, to provocative and even militaristic actions. One of the provocative ones is the non-recognition of the democratically elected Hamas government in the Gaza Strip because the organization is classified as a terrorist group. The organization's history of terrorism is undeniable, but failure to recognize it has squandered the opportunity for it to embark on its development into a serious democratic party.
Conversely, since with terrorists there is “no negotiation”, this means that crackdowns and counter-violence are considered the only remaining means to deal with them. However, there is no effective strategy for cracking down on Islamist terror, because that would require authority above all, which the "West" fruitlessly already had tried to establish in Vietnam (Chapter A 20th, second half), in Afghanistan and in Iraq (Appendage C 6, last third and C 7.). The results of more than 20 years of "war on terror" are the absolute opposite of the proclaimed goals, namely a dismantled reputation of the leading power USA. In this political environment, labeling Hamas a terrorist group can by no means serve its positive evolution into a fair democratic party, but only to reinforce its willingness to use violence - psychologically an effect of the "self-fulfilling prophecy".
The announcement of an attack on Iranian targets by the Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin Gantz in December 2021 also stands for a self-destructive course and for the opposite of what Moshe Dayan did with a sensitive hand in his 1967 managing of the 6-Day War. A supposedly preventive military strike against Iran, on the contrary, would have the potential to set in motion or continue the chain of violence outlined towards the end of Chapter A 31 - and would thereby massively endanger Israel's vital interests - see Chapter B 12.
Secondly, and closely intertwined with the threatening chain of violence, the perception of Israeli-Jewish interests has increasingly reached a dangerous dead end, including when dealing with the Holocaust. As seen above, occasional lawsuits in this area bring to light various errors of the deniers and trivializers of the genocide. More precisely, these could be brought to light if the mainstream media took up this extremely valuable argumentative tool in their reporting, processed it at all intellectual levels and published it widely. But instead the legal proceedings were presented in the manner of a flat sensation, thereby addressing the irrational, tribalistic elements surrounding each legal dispute.
The adrenaline-charged atmosphere that is created - not only in the courtroom, but in society - prevents the necessary relaxation in which rational conviction and a change in people for the better can succeed. Because at the level of the evolution of ideas, it is not about fighting people, not even Nazis and Holocaust deniers, but about factual correction of content in their world of ideas. - If the mental opening for a sincere and patient dialogue is successful, then, in all seriousness, convinced Nazis can become sincere friends of the Jewish people.
In post-war years, numerous books on the subject of Nazi rule and World War II were published in Germany. Some dealt with the Holocaust, others with military actions. In that context, aspects of Allied warfare that violated international war rules were also discussed, for example the treatment of prisoners of war and the systematic use of phosphorus and other incendiary bombs against civilians.
Most of these books had the character of reports recorded fresh from memory and they largely corresponded to what people had experienced in their personal environment as eyewitnesses. But from about 1960 until the late 1980s, there appeared a category of books in which the Holocaust was played down, questioned or outright denied - 1959 L. K. Smith's Cross and the Flag, 1964 Paul Rassinier, The Drama of European Jewry , 1966–67 Harry Elmer Barnes, Article in Rampart Journal, 1969 Noontide Press, The Myth of the Six Million. / Encyclopedia, Holocaust Denial: Key Dates, reference https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/holocaust-denial-key-dates
At the same time, an attentive observer must have noticed that Allied violations of the rules of war, e. g. targeted attacks on refugee treks (e. g. in Dresden), were systematically downplayed in the publishing media, which were now American dominated. For example, the information on the number of victims in the Allied air raids on Dresden, which was overrun with refugees from Silesia, from February 13 to 15, 1945, was subject to a constant downward "correction" over the post-war decades, so that it has now arrived at "up to 25,000", a number to be questioned given the more than 1300 aircraft involved (and in contradiction to independent Anglo-Saxon sources / cf. e.g. John Black, The Truth about the 1945 Bombing of Dresden, in Workers World, 23 February 1995 , reference http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/61/001.html
Understandably, many Germans suspected a unilateral distortion of facts with the help of media power - whose highly effective functioning once had already been demonstrated by the Creel Committee founded during World War I. When books appeared in the 1960s claiming that the Holocaust was a propaganda fabrication, these supposed revelations seemed consistent with the apparent tendency to downplay Allied violations of the rules of war. Today, with the results of decades of polarization in mind, the publication of the pseudo-revelations denying the Holocaust has proven to be a simple fraud, which, however, grew into a polarizing monster through a broad media ambience that systematically downplayed Allied war misconduct. .
The (objectively refutable) falsification in the Holocaust-denying writings was not the perfidious thing, but its appearance in a time window when obvious media trivialization tendencies in the field of Allied violations had already made many Germans suspicious. This distrust was the most dangerous breeding ground on which the falsification, denial and trivialization of the Holocaust could spread. In the perfidiously arranged ambience of a double falsification and a double truth (hidden behind it all) either side - Jews and Germans - hardly had a chance to see the whole truth as long as each side assumed that falsifications were spread with the purpose to artificially exaggerate their (supposed) opponent´s role as victims.
Not only could the Holocaust trivializations easily be taken for true by Germans, because they seemed to fit plausibly to the actual media falsifications of German victim numbers, but in this media environment also these high numbers could easily be mistaken by Jews to be exaggerated. So group egoism was commonly assumed as motive behind the dissemination of each group`s high victim figures. Also, holocaust deniers who merely passed on their false narrative in good faith could be accused as if they were active fakers.
As a result, both sides often succumbed to the temptation to cast doubt on the (supposed) opposite side's correct data as an attempt to fraud. For decades, this mutual undermining of reputations prevented the establishment of the truth, which had already been documented and attested to around the time of the war, as recognized historical facts. Just like in the diverse rumor mill around 9/11, an environment of general uncertainty and all-round polarization was created – which since then allows influential forces to select the "truth" they like from this mush at a convenient time and to proclaim it as official historical fact. Just as in the case of the Palestine conflict, on the history of the holocaust a lasting non-peace was created that made both sides losers, but especially the Jewish side, since Holocaust denial is now spreading worldwide.
By the end of the 1950s the bombed cities had been rebuilt and the relationship between Germans and Jews was also on a positive course, with both sides trying to deal appropriately with the guilt that arose from the Holocaust. The appearance of writings that denied the genocide and accused the Jewish side of cheating emotionalized everyone involved and led to a permanent impairment of the already advanced reconciliation process.
So the relaxed atmosphere was missing in which the people who had been taken in by the fakes could have been convinced of the correctness of the actual Holocaust documentation. In addition, the immoral practice of balancing the number of victims against one another could spread - while respect for each individual behind the number of victims requires extreme sensitivity to be used when correcting possible downwards. This should have made it clear that there is a goal that even surpasses finding the truth, namely the common and sincere search for the truth.
In addition to the Holocaust-denying writings, policies ostensibly defending the honour and security of Jews also developed strategies that pushed the dispute between Holocaust historians and Holocaust deniers even further away from a rational, evidence- and argument-based settlement. Thus, penal laws were enacted without reflection on the psychological consequences, which, while responding to the legitimate concern of the Jewish community to be protected from disrespect towards the victims, have done much more harm than good since their ineption
Even at the definitional level, the media pay little attention to the distinction between document forgers (the actual deniers) and those who have fallen for such forgeries and pass on the distorted view in good faith. The counter productivity of criminal prosecution was well illustrated in Austria in 2006, when well-known denier and author David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison. Not only was Irving able to use the actually completed 13 months to write another book on full board, he also gained publicity through his court appearances and was viewed as a martyr by naïve trusting people around the world.
The strategy of enacting specific criminal laws to supposedly protect a historical truth turns out to be doubly wrong. On the one hand, as the example has shown, the rehabilitation of the perpetrators is thwarted. But it is far more serious that the interests of the victims and their relatives are harmed to an incredible extent. Just as in the purpose of defending Israel's legitimate vital interests politics turned to adopt two counter-strategies doomed to fail forever (appeasement and a reputation-damaging hard to clumsy militarist line), the same applies to the criminal law measures to "protect" people against Holocaust denial.
Instead, Jews have already sufficiently proved in several Middle East wars that they can help themselves very well without (much better than with) big "protectors". Even more in the field of rational arguing, there is excellent defence capability, because not only do they have the best lawyers and scientists in the world in their ranks, but also the truth on their side. - Only the way of communicating the truth to the citizens shows very strange deficits.
Because using criminal law to push through an absolutely clear thing like the very detailed documentation of the Nazi mass murder proves to be like carrying a gun openly when you're legally withdrawing money from your account at a bank teller. The inevitable consequence is - at the very least - a psychologically devastating suspicion.
The really goal-oriented handling of the topic, on the other hand, consists in a self-confident opening. This means, among other things, processing the long list of Holocaust trial files, the historical reports and the primary sources in order to then compare them point by point and in a scientifically correct form with the false claims of the deniers and to refute them factually. With this mental tool in hand (especially in compact forms of various degrees of compression) in hand one can approach sceptics and Holocaust deniers (including definite Nazis), invite them to information events with free discussion opportunities and slowly build trust. This is exactly what the specific penal laws have prevented for far too long.
A constructive discussion atmosphere requires that each side can present its point of view with the full conviction of its correctness, without any intention of defaming the other side with deliberately untrue accusations. A criminal law that on the one hand does not provide effective protection against deliberate counterfeiters (i.e. actual deniers) and on the other hand threatens by law the much larger number of people who are simply misinformed as downplayers, doubters or Holocaust deniers, thwarts its declared goal on a gigantic scale. The distrust of the correct, but legally “defenced” Holocaust documentation can only increase as a result, according to the simplest psychological rules.
In the Middle East conflict as well as in the Holocaust issue, the Jews are clearly right, but they are not allowed to present these impeccable positions clearly and convincingly to their - often only supposed - opponents as well as to ordinary citizens and increasingly even to the people in their own community - with the inevitable consequence of an inflationary growing anti-Semitism. Had the big bucks ever been their genuine friends and protectors, the Jews and the State of Israel could never have found themselves in such an artificially weakened and threatened position. This position can be further eroded as long as the people of Israel allow to be diverted from their straight, independent path. Only on this path the titanic power of truth, fair defence and rational argument is at its disposal, while the path of clumsy violence as well as that of the power of money diverts the own forces against itself. This is shown by the self-destructive effects of physical violence (e.g. building settlements in the West Bank), structural violence (denial of the right to self-determination in the West Bank and thus of an autonomous Palestinian state) and ideological violence (by prosecuting Holocaust deniers like conscious deniers, instead to convince them of the truth). Reasonable, psychologically qualified approaches to spreading the truth (despite a rousing optimism at times) hardly get a chance because they are systematically ignored by the media and financially strong NGOs. / See Robert Satloff, The Crumbling Walls of Arab Holocaust Denial, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, April 2021, reference https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/crumbling-walls-arab-holocaust-denial
Towards the end of his devastating dictatorship, Hitler had said that "history" would "acquit" him. It is high time to recognize that the world is rapidly moving towards conditions in which this history-falsifying acquittal would be normal. Apart from Stalin (whose crimes are also conspicuously kept out of the historical focus), no one else was involved to such an extent in bleeding the European civilized nations and among them especially Jews, Germans and Russians against each other with war and murder. As a result, these three nations and communities are the only ones in the world whose numbers have not increased in the past hundred years, while virtually all others have seen a doubling to tenfold increase.
It´s high time to stop the growing polarization. To step into a new era of sincere dialogue and fairness requires a firm stance based on proven facts and consistent principles, while cowardish appeasement is as counterproductive as any form of violence, including inadequate laws.