Dissident Veteran For Peace

I recently received a copy of a hoax chain e-mail with the subject line: "General Eisenhower Warned Us." Below, with some minor edits, is the response I sent to the more than two dozen e-mails addresses listed as having received or sent it before I received it.

The "General Eisenhower Warned Us" message below is a sad example of anti-Muslim fear-mongering. This hoax chain e-mail is based upon an earlier 2007 hoax chain e-mail that said, "Recently, this week, UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum ... " (see Snopes.com). The current version (below) says, "This week, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred."

This sweeping generalization or stereotype, even, is absurd on its face. It claims: "[The Holocaust] 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred." As a press release for a 2006 scientific poll of UK Muslims noted: "There is no universal, monolithic Muslim opinion - there is as much variety as among non-Muslims." Regarding the holocaust and Muslims, it reported, "2% denied it happened entirely." The same poll found that a plurality of Muslim respondents believe the Holocaust happened "as History teaches".

Moreover, there is no evidence that the UK ever "debated" removing "The Holocaust" from its curriculum. The 2007 report that apparently elicited the Islamophobic frenzy, "Teaching Emotive and Controversial History 3-19," is available online and you can read it yourself. Nowhere in it is there any debate about not teaching about the Nazi holocaust.

The report notes the holocaust is one of several controversial subjects for some students and references on page 15 "a history department in a northern city recently avoided selecting the Holocaust as a topic for GCSE [General Certificate of Secondary Education] coursework for fear of confronting anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial among some Muslim pupils." The GCSEs apply only to students aged 14 to 16. So, what you have here is one department in one city not selecting one topic for students aged 14-16 because of an unfounded or founded (we do not know which) fear of confronting "anti-Semitic sentiment and Holocaust denial" (whatever these mean) among SOME "Muslim pupils." That's all.

When the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth (Ynet is their online edition) covered the story in 2007, they reported:

" 'There is no evidence that schools are not teaching the Holocaust.' Orla Delegray of the Dept for Children, Schools and Families said.

" 'We have made clear there are certain, non-negotiable subjects which will be protected in schools and that includes the Holocaust,' she wrote. According to her, the British Education Ministry has even invested millions of pounds this year in subsidizing programs through which British students visit Auschwitz.

" 'The suggestion that the Holocaust is being dropped from the UK national curriculum is entirely false,' said Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust."

As for the bit about "Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' ..." that's a hoax, too. Calling the holocaust a myth is not Iranian state policy. The president of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--who is second-in-command after the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei--has been accused in the West of holocaust denial but so has Norman Finkelstein, son of two holocaust survivors and the author of The Holocaust Industry. I've read several of Finkelstein's books, including The Holocaust Industry and he is no holocaust denier.

But to return to Ahmadinejad consider the testimony of Shiraz Dossa: "... Ahmadinejad has not denied the Holocaust or proposed Israel’s liquidation; he has never done so in any of his speeches on the subject (all delivered in Farsi/Persian). As an Iran specialist, I can attest that both accusations are false. U.S. Iran experts such as Juan Cole and UK journalists such as Jonathan Steele have come to the same conclusion."

So, now ask yourself with US troops occupying two predominantly Muslim countries, with Iran in the cross-hairs of Israel and US Neo-cons, and with predominantly Muslim Palestine under the thumb of US-backed Israel, who benefits from spreading lies and distortions that cast Muslims is such a very bad light. Who gets hurt?

If you are a Christian and you passed this "General Eisenhower Warned Us" garbage on to other people or failed to challenge it then shouldn't you ask yourself if you have sinned? Leviticus 19:16 says "You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbour: I am the Lord." Christians are not under the Law but that is no license to harm our neighbors or spread falsehoods.

According to Jesus: "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles. ... what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person ..." They didn't have keyboards and computer mice in Jesus' day but it seems to me the principle is timeless and not restricted to one form of communication.

Perhaps the most offensive and most revealing part of this hoax is the closing. It says: "God Bless America!"

See also: Turning Muslim Children into Zionists
-----Original Message-----

Sent: Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:44 am
Subject: Fwd: [Fwd: Fwd: Fw: General Eisenhower Warned Us]

Labels: Christianity, critical thinking, Empire, holocaust, Iran, Islamophobia, Jesus