@@ Wiesenthal center: a bastion of JEW propaganda @@
Arash
September 2005
The Simon Wiesenthal Center: A Bastion of Jewish-Zionist Power
By Mark Weber
Since its founding in 1977, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has grown to become one of
the most important and influential Jewish organizations in the world. Headquartered
in Los Angeles, with offices in New York, Jerusalem, Paris, Miami, Toronto and Buenos
Aires, it reports a membership of more than 300,000 and an annual income of some $30
million.
The Center’s imposing “Museum of Tolerance” in West Los Angeles, which presents a
relentlessly Jewish-Zionist version of history, draws some 350,000 visitors each
year, including tens of thousands of school children who are brought in busloads.
Although it calls itself “an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated
to preserving the memory of the Holocaust fostering tolerance and understanding,” the
Center in reality is a propaganda agency whose agenda is to further Jewish-Zionist
interests. / 1
Political Clout
The Center and its head, Rabbi Marvin Hier, wield considerable political power. "Hier
has accrued unprecedented clout in the Legislature, on Capitol Hill, in the city's
boardrooms and even in Hollywood," says the Los Angeles Times. / 2
Among the Center’s prominent and wealthy supporters are President George W. Bush,
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York),
Senator Charles E. Schumer (New York), Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and
Mortimer Zuckerman, publisher of US News and World Report and the Atlantic Monthly. /
3
One of Hier’s most important backers has been Roland E. Arnall, a California
businessman who played a key role in getting the Center off the ground. With a
fortune estimated at $2 billion, he has for years been a major player in state and
national politics. / 4 Other major financial contributors, likewise Jewish, have
included Ivan Boesky, who is perhaps best known for his prominent role in a mid-1980s
Wall Street insider trading scandal, and Gary Winnick, founder and chairman of Global
Crossing, Ltd., who donated $40 million for the Center’s “Museum of Tolerance” in
Jerusalem. / 5
Public Funding
The Center’s annual income in the 2002-2003 fiscal year (the most recent for which
detailed data is available) was $30 million, of which some $17 million was from
public donations, and $10 million – one-third of the total -- was from taxpayer
funds. / 6 Of that $10 million in taxpayer money, $6 million was from the state of
California, $2.6 million was from the US federal government, $1 million dollars came
from New York City, and $328,147 was from New York State. / 7
That such a large portion of its budget is from public funds is an expression of the
Center’s political muscle. Even during times of fiscal belt-tightening, Hier’s
already wealthy Center can count on indulgent treatment by pliant politicians. In
1985, for example, California lawmakers voted to give the Center a $5 million grant
of state taxpayer funds. / 8 In 1995 the state legislature gave a second $5 million
grant. That allocation -- to the Center's " Museum of Tolerance ” (and equal to the
entire California Arts Council budget for the year 2004) -- came from funds that had
been reserved for the state’s public schools. Backing this extraordinary gift were
prominent politicians of both parties, including Governor Pete Wilson. / 9
In addition, the Center has received at least $5 million in federal funds, through
legislation sponsored by US Congressman Henry Waxman. / 10
“…In what’s become a growing scandal,” the LA Weekly noted, “funds allocated for the
Museum’s `Tools for Tolerance’ program [of the Wiesenthal Center] (which trains
educators and police on `diversity issues’) are a budget `line item,’ meaning that it’s
pre-allocated every year by the governor (with legislative approval) – bypassing the
peer-review process of other grants.” / 11 The paper went on to remark on the
political clout that makes such largess possible: “The Museum’s good fortune is as
much a testament to the lobbying power of the Wiesenthal Center’s dean, Rabbi Marvin
Hier, as to the much larger social agenda of privatizing public services. For more
than a decade and a half, Hier has had powerful backers among both Democratic and
Republican lawmakers, from former Governor Pete Wilson and former Democratic leader
Willie Brown, to President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who invited
Hier to briefings on the war in Iraq.”
Among those who receive generous salaries from the Center are four members of the
Hier family. In fiscal year 2002-2003, Martin Hier – its founder and “Dean” --
received $482,528 in salary and benefits, while his wife, Marlene, the Center’s
“Membership Director,” received $312,574. Alan Hier, a son, received $151,761 in
compensation and benefits for fundraising activities, and another son, Aron Hier,
received $95,656 as “Associate Director.” Abraham Cooper, the Center’s “Associate
Dean,” received $397,622 in salary and benefits. Compensation for other senior staff
members was similarly generous. / 12
In cultural life as well, Hier’s Center has had considerable success in pressing its
agenda. Through its “Moriah Films” division, it has produced several movies. “The
Long Way Home,” a film released in 1997, for example, is a fervently pro-Zionist look
at the 1945-1949 period that sympathetically portrays Jews who survived German camps
and World II, and the triumphal establishment of a Zionist state in Palestine. Even
Jewish terrorist groups, the Irgun and the Stern Gang, are presented with
understanding, if not sympathy. / 13
The Wiesenthal Center serves as an informal film censor. Motion picture makers
routinely ask it to screen films as they are being considered for production. The
Center effectively has the power to kill a movie. As one journalist who tracks the
Hollywood scene has noted, Hier’s Center “has been active in the entertainment
industry for a number of years, often reviewing scripts and consulting with
filmmakers and studios on Jewish-related productions. The Center has worked on
everything from New Line’s 1998 film `American History X’ to the 1989 ABC television
mini-series `War and Remembrance’.” / 14
In 2004 the Center called on French authorities to ban the French edition of The
Holocaust Industry, a provocative study by American Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein
that has been a best-seller in Europe. An official of the Center said that the book
“presents a great danger” and should be prohibited in France because it is allegedly
“replete with Holocaust revisionism and incitement to antisemitism.” / 15
A Record of Recklessness
The indulgent treatment of the Center by politicians is matched by similarly
respectful treatment from the press. With an attitude that borders on the
reverential, the American media overlooks the Center’s easily verifiable record of
recklessness and deceit.
In its glossy magazine, Response, and in its other propaganda materials, the Center
relentlessly conjures up a frightening image of militant, hate-crazed anti-Jewish
legions on the march everywhere, determined to eradicate all Jews in a genocidal new
"Final Solution.” Its record of exaggerating anti-Jewish sentiment to raise money is
no secret. Even the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), another major Jewish-Zionist group,
has acknowledged that the Center makes “inaccurate” and “exaggerated claims” about
anti-Semitism to raise money. It found, for example, that a Center fund-raising
letter is “replete with factual misstatements and exaggerations” about anti-Jewish
sentiment in the United States and Europe. / 16
In 1998 the Center issued a report that harshly condemned Switzerland ’s treatment of
Jews during World War II. The report, which received wide media attention, claimed
that Swiss authorities held Jews in “slave labor camps.” During the war years, its
author charged, “the Swiss were really sadistic. They wanted to hurt the Jews, to
deliberately hurt the Jews.” / 17 In fact, the report was so inaccurate that Simon
Wiesenthal himself took the unusual step of disavowing it. / 18 Although the report’s
distortions were eventually identified and made public, the damage had been done. The
truth about the Center’s fraudulent claims received much less media attention,
especially in the American press, than did the Center’s original, exaggerated
accusations.
In 1999 the Center posted on its website a doctored wartime photograph of the
Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Appearing under the heading “Photo Gallery: Hungarian
arrivals after the 'Selektion' at Auschwitz,” it was captioned: “As these prisoners
were being processed for slave labor, many of their friends were being gassed and
burned in the ovens in the crematoria. The smoke can be seen in the background.” In
fact, the photo had been altered by adding phony “smoke,” apparently to support
survivor testimony about smoke billowing from camp crematory chimneys. It was only
after skeptics identified and publicized the fraud, that the Center removed the faked
photo. / 19
Many Christians have been offended by some of the Center’s overblown pronouncements,
such as Rabbi Hier’s charge that Mel Gibson and his film, The Passion of the Christ,
“stereotype and denigrate the masses of Jews” and “could potentially imperil Jewish
lives.” / 20 Hier has also chastised Christian leaders during the Second World War,
“from Pope Pius XII down, who at best looked the other way, protected their own, were
bystanders rather than activists and sometimes even assisted the Nazis in carrying
out their Final Solution.” / 21 Hier has made the amazing claim, unsupported by any
reputable historian, that Pope Pius XII prayed for Hitler’s victory in World War II,
and gave Church money to the German leader to fight Soviet Communism. The campaign to
elevate the wartime pontiff to sainthood, Hier charged, “desecrates the memory of the
Holocaust.” / 22
Israel and Zionism
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is a staunch supporter of Israel and its Jewish
supremacist regime. “What happens to Israel is every Jew’s business,” says Hier. /
24 “Let us never forget,” Hier has also said, “that after the Holocaust when hope
was bleak and Jewish life was decimated, that it was Israel that made us whole again,
restored our pride, our faith, and our determination to go on.” / 25 In that
spirit, the Center staunchly defends Israel ’s policies of oppression, occupation,
dispossession, and institutionalized discrimination against non-Jews. / 23
The Center supports Jewish religious bigotry, insisting that the Zionist seizure of
the land of Palestine (“Zion”) is ordained by God, as revealed in the Hebrew
scriptures. “In fact,” says Hier, “the cornerstone of our [sic] return to Zion was
always based on the fact that it was a return to our historic biblical roots.” / 26
The Center supports policies of the Zionist state that have been condemned by the
world community and which violate United Nations Security Council resolutions. For
example, it has repeatedly voiced support for Israel ’s formidable “security fence,”
a hideous barrier that is part of Israel ’s long-range policy of seizing land of
non-Jews, and which the International Court of Justice says is illegal. / 27 While
the Center denounces violence and terrorism against Jews, it sanctions Zionist
terrorism against non-Jews. It has publicly honored two Israeli leaders – Menachem
Begin and Yitzhak Shamir – each of whom has a well-documented record as a terrorist.
/ 28
In 2002 the Center announced plans to build a grand “Museum of Tolerance”Jerusalem.
This was too much even for some Israeli Jews. The former deputy mayor of Jerusalem,
Meron Benvenisti, vented his exasperation in a piece published in an influential
Israeli daily paper: “It is difficult to imagine a project so hallucinatory, so
irrelevant, so foreign, so megalomaniac, as the Museum of Tolerance. The mere attempt
to stick the term tolerance to a building so intolerant to its surroundings is
ridiculous… There’s no need to waste words on the absurdity of a Museum of Tolerance
planted on part of an ancient Muslim cemetery, some of which has long since been
turned into a parking lot, and will now be topped by spaces in which people are meant
to learn about tolerance, mutual respect and coexistence.” Benvenisti concluded: “The
Museum of Tolerance project must be eradicated without any tolerance.” / 29
Propaganda for War
The Wiesenthal Center has a long record of reckless propaganda for war. Long before
the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it had been pressing for an American attack
against the Middle East nation, backing its effort with alarmist “Big Lie” claims
about the supposed danger posed by the Baghdad regime.
In 1990 Hier wrote in Newsweek magazine: “I think the United States should go in.
Maybe not tomorrow, but very soon… Three years from now, Iraq will have nuclear
weapons.” / 30 In early 1991 the Center announced the “shocking revelation” that
Iranian prisoners of war were being killed with Zyklon B “in gas chambers specially
designed for the Iraqis by the German company Rhema Labortechnik.” The Center’s
magazine, Response, went on to assert that the Iraqi “gas chambers were tiled to look
like operating rooms, with a separated observation room for each gas chamber with
reinforced glass visibility.” / 31
In the months before the US invasion of Iraq, the Center was offering new propaganda
reasons for America to go to war. An all out attack was necessary, it claimed in
October 2002, because the Saddam Hussein regime had been “continuing to stockpile
weapons of mass destruction,” and because it “has defied the world and thumbed his
nose at United Nations Security Council resolutions.” Moreover, the Center went on to
charge: “For while there are other tyrants, Saddam alone stands as a menace to world
order and stability. While there are others who possess chemical and biological
weapons of mass destruction, only Saddam has shown an eagerness to use them.” / 32
The Center’s indignation over the Baghdad regime’s alleged defiance of United Nations
Security Council resolutions is remarkable for its gall, given Israel ’s own long
record of defying such resolutions.
As the world now knows, the Center's claims about Iraq– which matched those of the
Bush administration – were empty propaganda pretexts designed to persuade a skeptical
public to support unprovoked war against a country that posed no threat to the United
States. / 33
Fanning the Flames
In its slick membership magazine, its films, and its public pronouncements, Rabbi
Hier and his Center skillfully play to Jewish fears, concerns and sensitivities,
above all through relentlessly emotion-laden exploitation of the Holocaust story. In
fanning the flames of what Jewish American historian Alfred Lilienthal calls
“Holocaustomania,” it has no equal.
“Rabbi Hier and the Wiesenthal Center are, in my opinion, the most extreme of those
who utilize the Holocaust,” the director of Israel 's Yad Vashem Holocaust center has
said. “The Jewish people does many vulgar things,” he went on, “but the Wiesenthal
Center [has] raised it to a complete level: The optimum use of sensitive issues in
order to raise money ...” / 34 “The enormous success of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center," says New York Times journalist and author Judith Miller, “has given new
meaning to what was once a macabre in-house joke ... 'There is no business like Shoah
business’,” (“Shoah" is the Hebrew term for Holocaust). / 35
The Center has been a major player in what Norman Finkelstein calls the “extortion
racket” by Israel and organized Jewry to blackmail billions of dollars from European
countries and corporations. / 36 Finkelstein, himself a son of Holocaust survivors,
calls the Center “a gang of heartless and immoral crooks, whose hallmark is that they
will do anything for a dollar.” / 37
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is not only an expression of immense Jewish-Zionist power
in America, it plays an important role in maintaining that power. In promoting its
agenda, it carries out a well-funded and effective propaganda campaign of deceit,
disinformation and lies in support of Israeli oppression and war. In partnership with
politicians who put their own interests ahead of the public good, it both reflects
and contributes to the corruption of American political and cultural life.
Notes
1. See also M. Weber, “The Simon Wiesenthal Center : An Overview”
(http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v15/v15n4p-2_Weber.html), The Journal of Historical Review,
July-August 1995, pp. 2-7. Additional useful information about the Center is posted
on David Irving’s website: http://www.fpp.co.uk/docs/Wiesenthal
2. S. Teitelbaum and T. Waldman, “The Unorthodox Rabbi,” Los Angeles Times Magazine,
July 15, 1990, p. 9.
3. Other prominent supporters of the Center have included:
President Ronald Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, Governors Jeb Bush (Florida),
Gray Davis (California), and George E. Pataki (New York), New York Mayor Rudolph W.
Giuliani, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, Senator Charles E. Schumer (New York),
Senator Dianne Feinstein (California), and her investment banker husband Richard
Blum), entertainers Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor, columnist George Will,
television journalist Barbara Walters, several members of the moneyed Belzberg
family, Alan Greenberg (chairman of the investment firm of Bear Stearns), and New
York financiers Nelson Peltz, Ronald Perelman and Ivan Boesky.
4. During the 2001-2005 period, for example, Arnall, his companies and his wife,
have made more than $8 million in political donations. He has been a major financial
backer of President George W. Bush and California Governor Schwarzenegger. Arnall
and his wife gave $5 million to a group that supported Bush’s presidential reelection
campaign, and he and his companies provided $1 million to finance Bush’s 2003
inaugural. Source: E. Scott Reckard, “Ambassador Nominee’s Company is Scrutinized,”
Los Angeles Times, Sunday, August 7, 2005, pages A1, A28.
5. S. Freudenheim, “$40-Million Gift to Fund Israeli Tolerance Center,” Los Angeles
Times, May 10, 2000; D. Colker, “Global Chairman Defends…,” Los Angeles Times, Oct.
2, 2002, pp. C1, C4.
6. According to the Center’s public IRS Form 990 for the year 2002, filed on May 19,
2004, the Center’s income during the year ending June 30, 2003, was $30,540,845, of
which $16,867,991 was from “direct public support” (donations from the public), and
$10,117,676 was from “government contributions (grants).”
7. Information provided by the Wiesenthal Center.
8. M. Chazanov, M. Gladstone, “Museum of Tolerance’: Proposed State Grant for
Wiesenthal Facility Raises Eyebrows,” Los Angeles Times, May 19, 1985.
9. D. Morain, “Lean Times Don’t Imperil Wiesenthal Grant,”Los Angeles Times, July
18, 1995.
10. S. Teitelbaum and T. Waldman, “The Unorthodox Rabbi,” Los Angeles Times
Magazine, July 15, 1990, p. 9.
11. S. L Morris, “Swimming with sharks in a sea of arts funding”, LA Weekly, June
27-July 3, 2003. http://www.laweekly.com/ink/03/32/news-morris.php
12. Information from the Center’s public IRS Form 990 for the year 2002, filed on
May 19, 2004.
13. H. Sheehan, “The Long Way Home’: A Personal History,” The Orange County Register,
Sept. 19, 1997.
14. Josh Spector, ”Forget Ebert: Studios Now Look for Thumbs Up from Special
Interest Groups,” Inside Magazine, March 26, 2001. See also: Tom Tugend, “Hollywood
Director Says Wiesenthal Center Nixed Film,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), April
20, 2001; Tom Tugend, “Pressure Power?,” The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles,
April 6, 2001.
15. “Simon Wiesenthal Centre Testifies in Paris Libel Suit Against Norman
Finkelstein,” Die Jüdische, March 26, 2004.
http://www.juedische.at/TCgi/TCgi.cgi?target=home&Param_Kat=15&Param_RB=&Param_Red=1956
16. Miles Corwin, “Claims About Anti-Semitic Wave Hit by B’nai B’rith”, Los Angeles
Times, Dec. 12, 1984.
17. “Jews Mistreated in Swiss WWII Camps, Study Says,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 13,
1998; “Swiss Slowed Jews’ Escape, Report Says,” Los Angeles Times, June 10, 1998;
Essays by Rabbis Hier and Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center, and by Swiss Ambassador
Thomas Borer, “Perspectives on the Swiss in World War II,” Los Angeles Times, June
17, 1998.
18. “Wiesenthal Dismisses Report on Switzerland,” The Orange County Register, June
18, 1998.
19. “How the Simon Wiesenthal Center Falsifies History”, The Journal of Historical
Review, Sept.-Dec. 1999 (Vol. 18, No. 4-5), pages 4-5.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v18/v18n5p-4_SWC.html
See also: David Irving, “Bowing to the 'deniers' Wiesenthal Center has finally
removed faked photo from its website”.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/fake/SWCsmokeFake.html
20. SWC news release, “SWC and Mel Gibson’s Film The Passion of the Christ”,
February 2004.
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/s/content.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=253162&ct=285287
21. M. Hier, “Heroes Aren’t the Story, Villainy Is,” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 19,
1995.
For a succinct response to criticisms of Pope Pius XII for his actions during World
War II, see “The Myth of Hitler’s Pope”, a review by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., July 25,
2005. Posted at: http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods48.html
22. C. Reed, “Wartime Pope `Prayed for Nazi Victory’,” The Guardian (Britain), May
15, 1999, p. 18.
23. On the systemtic and institutionalized nature of Israeli discrimination against
non-Jews, see: “Saving Israel From Itself: A Secular Future for the Jewish State”,
by Bernard Avishai, Harper's Magazine, January 2005; Norman Dacey, “Democracy’ in
Israel: Government, Social Order and Institutions (IHR: 1992?); Alfred Lilienthal,
The Zionist Connection (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978), esp. chap.VI; Issa Nakhleh,
Encyclopedia of the Palestine Problem (New York: 1991).
http://www.harpers.org/SavingIsraelFromItself.html
24. SWC news release, Feb. 12, 2001.
25. SWC news release, July 22, 2001. On Hier’s ardent support for Israel and its
policies, see also SWC news release, April 11, 2002 “We Stand With Israel.”
26. SWC news release of Jan. 10, 2001, “Israel’s Honor and Soul Should Not Be Up for
Grabs,” Jan. 10, 2001.
27. SWC “Press Information” statements of August 20, 2003, and July 9, 2004. For
more about the “security fence,” see: “Israeli Official: Wall to Ensure Jewish
Majority” (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,162096,00.html), AP, July 11, 2005;
“Stop the Wall” website http://stopthewall.org ; “Israel’s Confiscation Barrier
Through Palestine”, If Americans Knew .
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/sep_barrier.html
28. M. Weber, “The Simon Wiesenthal Center : An Overview,” The Journal of
Historical Review, July-August 1995, pp. 2-7.
“Both the Stern Gang and the Irgun, which included [later Israeli] prime ministers
Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, were involved in the bombings of Arab markets, the
bombing of the British military headquarters in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel -- an
attack that left over 80 Englishmen, Arabs and Jews dead – and the assassination of
UN mediator Count Bernadotte, author of a June 1948 peace plan calling for, among
other things, an Arab-controlled Jerusalem.” See: James Ciment, Palestine/ Israel:
The Long Conflict (New York: Facts on File, 1997), pages 186-187; George W. Ball,
Douglas B. Ball, The Passionate Attachment: America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947
to the Present (New York: 1992), p. 141; Baylis Thomas, How Israel Was Won: A
Concise History of the Arab-Israel Conflict ( 1999).
29. Meron Benvenisti, “A Museum of Tolerance in a City of Fanatics,” Haaretz
(Israel), Dec. 5, 2002.
30. Marvin Hier, “Crisis in the Gulf,” Newsweek, Nov. 26. 1990. Facsimile in
Christian News, Nov. 26, 1990, p. 4.
31. “German Firms Produce Zyklon B in Iraq," Response: The Wiesenthal Center World
Report, Spring 1991, pp. 2, 4; D. Willis “German Exports: `Was the Lesson of
Auschwitz in Vain?,” Orange County Register, Feb. 8, 1991.
32. SWC news release of October 7, 2002. “Wiesenthal Center Supports Congressional
Resolution on Iraq”.
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/s/content.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=253162&ct=286230
33. A major and probably crucial factor in the US decision to bomb, invade and
occupy Iraq was to eliminate a regime that was hostile to Israel and dangerous to
Zionist interests. See: M. Weber, “Iraq : A War for Israel”
(http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/iraqwar.shtml), May 2005; James Bamford, A Pretext for
War (Anchor, 2005); Stephen J. Sniegoski, “War on Iraq - Conceived In Israel”
(http://www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/20030102.php), Current Concerns (Switzerland),
Issue No. 1, 2003.
34. Ha'aretz, (Israel), Dec. 16, 1988. Reported in: David Sinai, "News We Doubt
You've Seen," [“Sad”], The Jewish Press (Brooklyn, New York), Dec. 23, 1988.
35. Judith Miller, One by One, by One: Facing the Holocaust (New York: Simon and
Schuster/ Touchstone, 1990), p. 237.
36. Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry (London, New York : Verso, 2003
[second ed.]), pp. 89, 94, 130, 138, 139
37. “A Conversation with Professor Norman Finkelstein”, Conducted by Don Atapattu,
Dec. 13, 2001. http://www.counterpunch.org/finkelstein1.html
* Mark Weber (http://www.revisionists.com/revisionists/weber.html) is director of the
Institute for Historical Review. He studied history at the University of Illinois
(Chicago), the University of Munich, Portland State University and Indiana University
(M.A., 1977). For nine years he served as editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical
Review.
* The Institute for Historical Review, founded in 1978, is dedicated to promoting
greater public awareness of history, and especially socially-politically relevant
aspects of twentieth century history. It is recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3)
not-for-profit educational enterprise.
http://www.ihr.org/other/swcpower.html