Thursday, February 02, 2006

Jewish Goose, but no Arab Gander



Remember this bloke? Recall how the West castigated him for wearing a Nazi swastika armband to a fancy dress ball?

Condemned for something associated with a fancy dress ball? For crying out loud!

I have seen 'Dracula', 'Liberace', 'Stalin', 'Peter Pan', 'Hitler', 'Moses', 'Tojo' and even a 'George Bush' at fancy dress balls, all winning at least a laugh or two.

But the ruckus evoked from an innocuous incident by an unsuspecting youth was so great that it not only forced the young royalty into
apologising but panicked his father, the future King of England into issuing abject apologies and explanations of how silly his son had been, with British ministers wading in, all stumbling forward to prostrate themselves before the Gods of their guilt.

His father even ordered little Harry to visit
Auschwitz extermination camp to learn and atone. Lord Janner, a senior figure in Britain's Jewish community, said "What Harry did was both stupid and evil. The time has come for him to make a public apology."

Evil?

Hey! Freedom of expression? What happened to that cherished Western institution then?

Know this guy? He is David Irving, a British Holocaust denier.

Personally I think he's a joke. Some say he's a racist with extreme rightwing leanings, but I think he is an opportunistic bloke who made his living by writing for the taste of a fringe rightwing neo-Nazi-ish sector. I have never read his books (though I have heard of them) and I don't intend to.

Well, bloke's banned from entering Germany, Austria, Australia and Canada. Holocaust denying is a crime in Germany and Austria.

Déjà vu - didn't I say this before? Hey! Freedom of expression? What happened to that cherished Western institution then?

OTOH, caricatures of a Muslim religious personality whose image is forbidden even to Muslims, let alone depicted in such derogatory fashion? And by a newspaper of a Western-Christian nation?

Of course in this case the Western democratic values of 'freedom of expression' must be upheld and protected. And no bloody Muslim was going to tell a Danish newspaper what to print or not print!

Now, what happened to those Western and Jewish groups that were most virulent when Prince Harry wore that armband to a fancy dress ball?

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