An
Update from Political Prisoner, Ernst Zündel
Friday,
6 June 2008
To
my Zündelsite Readers -
Here
is a slightly edited update about Ernst's legal situation in Mannheim, written
to a German couple in Canada, who kindly sent me a typed copy for our
archives.
I
should also add that as of June 2, 2008, we have filed extensive papers in the
federal court in Knoxville asserting our right to continue litigating Ernst's
case in the United States that will focus heavily on his political kidnapping
aspects - a focus that has been denied us so far.
I
am excited about this new front because we are in possession ofsome pretty
devastating documents obtained through various Freedom of Information Acts in
three countries that show a web of political coordination - and shenanigans in
this international manhunt for one pacifist activist that staggers the
imagination!
My
readers and, hopefully, the media will hear about that in a few weeks!
Ingrid
Zündel - zgrams@zgrams.Zündelsite.org
----------------------------
Ernst
Zündel,
JVA
Mannheim,
Herzogenriedstr.111
68169
Mannheim
Dear
******
I
want to thank you for the birthday card, the E 5.00 and the stamps you
enclosed for me. A word of
caution! The [greeting card] you
sent had elaborate foam pads behind the actual image to give it a 3-D feeling.
Although it is nice, it was suspicious even to the Canadian Postal
authorities - it was bulgey and it was held back, opened and examined in
Toronto already - and thus received "Special Handling Attention",
which delayed it for that reason.
Once
it arrived here in prison, it again caused suspicion for the same reason,
because it could contain dope or worse. Remember
they had the same fears in Canada at Toronto West and did not let me have some
cards. So keep that in mind,
please, and let our friends know that these nice, expensive cards cause
problems for people in prisons.
Plain
cards, and even some photocopies are now allowed, even the odd booklet.
They do not allow me full size books - they go to the "Asservaten
Kammer" and are kept there till I am released on 1. March 2010,
unless of course higher courts overturn the verdicts etc. of lower
courts. In my opinion - after the kind of "quality" of Justice I
have seen and hear of every day from other prisoners - the Germans have a long
way to go before they even come near Anglo-Saxon legal traditions and
treatments of people in courts. Only
Ignoramuses about the situation here and Germanophiles cannot see what ails
this system.
They
have no verbatim/word for word transcripts in criminal trials, which invites -
no, it guarantees! - abuses and injustices.
The German system of Criminal Justice can not recover its reputation of
fairness or procedural correctness until they restore what was ROUTINE in
Germany and is still routine in Canadian, American and British justice
[systems] for centuries!!! The
Inquisition had verbatim transcripts, even Nuremberg Tribunals had transcripts
- although there, testimony could be expunged from the record, which was done
for instance in Streichers case where, incredibly, the Streicher
Defense-Attorney agreed to have important testimony about Streichers torture
stricken from the record at the request of the prosecutors - with the consent
of the presiding judges!
Every
regime since before Bismarck, including the Weimar Republic and even the Third
Reich [and what followed] had verbatim transcripts till 1972 - then it was
done away with in criminal proceedings, but not in civil proceedings -
apparently. The reason? "To
make the court more efficient" -
a lie of course. I suppose civil
suits can remain inefficient?
Even
Judge Blais in Toronto was astonished when I mentioned the "no
transcript" situation. But
who is aware of these "details of history"
as Jean Marie Le Pen would call them? No one!
But
now for the actual legal situation on the ground here.
-
I
still am battling for my mail from 2005, 2006. 2007. There are approximately
1500 pieces of mail in boxes that
have not been released to me. I
negotiated a release-deal-method with officials - instead, after releasing
some postcards and short letters - suddenly 185 letters were seized that were
2 to 3 years old. The reason for
the seizure? People wrote me
letters and cards that contained compliments, calling for me to hang in there
etc.! - That, it was felt, was
opposed to the aim of my conviction!
Remember,
I am still subject to spot censorship!
I
was also ruled ineligible for transfer to the pensioners' prison in Singen and
was ordered to serve my whole time - that means till March 1, 2010 - here in
Mannheim. The reasons?
They were amazingly frank about it.
The Singen Facility would allow me to live in a much more relaxed and
open atmosphere, with frequent trips into town to shop, etc.
Media people would seek me out, and that would result in articles - and
that, in turn, would bring unrest into the institution, made up of mostly
elderly people, all of whom would have suffered under the old regime.
Thus, for the good of the other inmates, I would have to be kept here,
even though by age 62 I was to be entitled to serve my time in an "Altenknast".
It
was decided by the prison administration's resident jurist - that I would get
no relaxation of conditions - but would have to serve my time in full, ohne
"Freigang", which is when one gets to go into town in the presence
of uniformed (?) prison officials. Instead
I would serve my time, locked up in prison.
I
have hired a new woman lawyer. She
is a specialist in Prison Rights - and has now submitted these decisions to
the local "Strafvollstreckungskammer" - which has a reputation to
see things the prisons and the convicting judges do - as a rule.
That means we will have to appeal that "3 rulings package"
to the Oberlandsgericht Karlsruhe.
All that of course takes time. That
is the aim of all this chicanery, for every day
I am forced to spend in the "non-relaxed" atmosphere - [the
opposite of what] I am entitled to by age and tradition - means what in
America is known as cruel and unusual punishment.
Should the OLG Karlsruhe decide against me, then I could appeal it to
the Bundesgerichthof and the Bundesverfassungsgericht.
[Comment:
The first instance has already turned down Ernst's appeal...]
All
these legal moves take their time because the Courts are busy, dockets are
full. Add this to the legal fees
and especially the court costs, which are steep here and have been regularly
assessed against me - for instance a 1 1-2 pge. decision, naturally against
me, at E 1200.00 just for this one sheet of paper that had to be paid "sofort"
[immediately]. My court costs for
the Mannheimer Verfahren were assessed at E 59,829.00.
To this must be added the payments for legal fees for my own
"Wahl-Anwalte" (chosen Solicitors) like Rieger, Dr. Schaller, Sylvia
Stolz, R.A. Bock and Gisa Pahl in Hamburg, and now this new Mannheim
specialist lawyer. These costs,
too, had to be paid at once. [Ingrid
and I are] paying off these horrendous costs in installments.
Dr.
Schaller challenged the "non-counting" of my two years and one month
in Canadas Guantanamo North- (Toronto West and Thorold), with
the local "Staatsanwaltschaft-Strafvollstreckungskammer".
They ruled
that the two years would not be counted, as the lower court had decided last
year already. We challenged that
with the appeal court (Oberlandesgericht-Karlsruhe).
They, too, ruled against me - the
two years would not be counted.
Now
I have to decide if [we] can raise the money to go on to the Bundesgerichtshof
and then the Bundesverfassungsgericht - and of course
for the legal fees for my lawyers.
And,
finally, one of the most important legal moves was to submit "eine
Beschwerde" (a complaint) an
appeal for review and redress with the European Court of Human Rights in
Strassbourg. That was one hell of
a document to prepare, and I had to wrestle and argue with my own lawyers, to
expand the document to the events of my kidnapping and expulsion first from
the US, then explain the reasons for the arrest and proceedings in Canada
before Blais - and how all this came about.
Luckily we gained access to very important documents during the
Mannheim and the American proceedings that showed E-Mails and lots of faxes on
official letterheads by the highest authorities in America, Germany and
Canada, documenting and detailing at least some aspects of this
"Operation Atlantik" as the Germans called the hunt for my capture
in documents going way back to the 1990s.
Dr. Schaller's document finally condensed all this down to 63 pages -
and for the first time explained it more or less coherently, given the
constraints and format of these Strasburg proceedings.
The
title of the documents is:
"Ernst
Zündel gegen BRD". The date
it was submitted was May 8, 2008. All that work, legal research, preparation
etc. have to be paid.
Ernst
---------------------------
Comment:
Our readers need to understand that all the bills are handled and paid
by me, his wife, since of course Ernst is prevented from keeping such regular,
emotionally and time-consuming fundraising efforts going from inside his cell.
If
you would like to be put on our mailing list for updates or by contributing to
our efforts to keep this case before the courts and media, please write to:
Ingrid
Zündel
3152
Parkway, 13-109
Pigeon
Forge, TN 37863
USA
Can
you send money to Ernst directly to help him pay for stamps, phone calls, and
the occasional "shopping trip" to the prison store?
Yes,
in small amounts. Ernst is allowed
to receive small bills in cash in Euro or US$ from his friends and supporters.
Please don't send any checks or money orders to him, especially from
countries other than Germany. Ernst
cannot deposit or cash them.
His
address is:
Ernst
Zündel
JVA Mannheim
Herzogenriedstrasse 111
D - 68169 Mannheim
Germany
Is
the Zionist State of Israel imploding?
"The
end of Zionism is nigh. A Jewish state may endure, but it will be a state of a
different sort, dreadful and alien to our values."
Avraham Burg: The
Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise from Its Ashes
Fredrick Töben
comments: “Statistics on my YouTube page http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=bNCiaHk4LBM
indicates viewers come mainly from
Australia, Germany, California, Alaska, India and Patagonia, that region of southern
Chile and Argentine where Jewish activity is thriving. Is this where many Jews
are re-locating as they flee the Promised Land of Israhell?
--------------------------------------
The ‘ethnic cleansing’ of
Palestine. Judaism is universal
By Eric Rouleau
Avraham
Burg is the scourge of the Israeli establishment. Though he has been in turn a
prominent leader of the Labour Party, chairman of the World Zionist
Organisation and speaker of the Knesset, he regularly expresses opinions at
odds with those of most of his fellow Israelis. Burg lost hope of influencing
those in power and quit politics in 2004.
The
views he expresses in his latest book The Holocaust Is Over: We Must
Rise from Its Ashes (to be published by Macmillan in autumn 2008) are
brutally frank. On the occupation of the Palestinian territories he writes:
“For years I tempered my position to avoid a breach within Israeli society.
I have now changed. Today I ask: are [all Jews] my brothers? My answer is
no… Since the Shoah, I believe there is no such thing as genetic Judaism,
only Jewish values… Even if they are circumcised and respect the Sabbath and
the Ten Commandments, the wicked occupiers are not my brothers.”
Throughout
the book Burg contrasts the “Judaism of the ghetto”, whose racism he
deplores, with “universal Judaism”, whose humanism he supports. He rejects
the Old Testament notion that the Jews are God’s chosen people, as that
amounts to a claim of racial superiority. “The cancer of racism is eating
away at us,” he told the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonoth in 2003. He
has also written that the terrible tragedy of the Shoah demonstrated that
Jehovah was not the protector of the chosen people any more than He was
responsible for their misfortunes. He believes in a God who has given man the
power of decision-making and thus responsibility for his actions.
Burg
is the son of a universally respected rabbi who was leader of the National
Religious Party and its representative in the Knesset in nearly every
government since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Burg himself was
educated in a yeshiva (religious school) and his work quotes liberally from
the Torah and the Talmud to show that holy texts can often be misinterpreted
and distorted, or simply have lost their relevance.
Burg
accuses Zionist leaders of having appropriated the Shoah – a tragedy not
only for the Jews but all humanity – for often shameful ends. He takes issue
with the fact they have turned it into an essential part of Jewish identity,
which they’ve thereby reduced to a litany of past persecutions. In Burg’s
view, this distorts Jewish history and conceals centuries of peace and good
relations with other peoples.
Burg
reminds readers, for example, of the concern shown towards his Jewish subjects
by the ancient Persian ruler, Cyrus the Great; of the fruitful relations that
Jews enjoyed with their Muslim compatriots in the Middle Ages in places such
as Aragon, Castille and Andalucia; and the privileged position of Jews in the
Americas and other countries across the world. He also points out that for
centuries Jews lived alongside Germans before the Nazis came to power. He
believes that Jews who are well integrated in their societies should not be
stigmatised for not wanting to emigrate to Israel, especially as the diaspora
plays a positive role in world civilisation.
Burg
is against the use of the word Shoah (catastrophe) for the Holocaust, since it
gives it a unique character, beyond comparison with other genocides. This
exclusivity, he believes, undermines compassion and solidarity with non-Jewish
victims. It also feeds the paranoia that anti-semitism is a universal,
timeless phenomenon: “The whole world is in league against the Jews.”
Zionist
leaders have made use of the Holocaust in a variety of ways. It can be used as
emotional blackmail to bring both political and financial advantage. Or serve
as a reminder to the Germans of their criminal guilt and to the Americans and
Europeans that they looked the other way while the Jews suffered at the hands
of the Nazis. The Israeli authorities thereby guarantee themselves impunity,
whatever their violations of international law and human rights, and whatever
war crimes they carry out, such as targeted executions of Palestinians.
Burg
takes issue with Israeli scholars who ignore all genocides but those suffered
by the Jews, and with laws which punish only crimes against Jews. He opposes
Jewish immigrants being automatically granted Israeli citizenship on religious
and genetic grounds. A committed secularist, he has also criticised the
“religious fundamentalists” who show contempt for national sovereignty.
Noting that his country often picks its leaders from members of the military
or the secret services, he has warned that “the nightmare of a state run by
rabbis and generals is not impossible”.
He
thinks that it is time that Jews and Israelis freed themselves from the
nightmare of the Holocaust, “which must of course be remembered forever, but
no longer by prostrating ourselves in the dust” because “we must get rid
of the Auschwitz mentality as well as the culture of trauma and terror”.
Burg
does not consider himself anti-Zionist, except when the principles of Herzl
and the values of the declaration of independence are betrayed. That is what
happens when Israel is transformed into a “colonial state run by an immoral
clique of corrupt outlaws”, as he put it in his Yedioth Aharonoth
interview. In the same article he went on: “The end of Zionism is nigh… A
Jewish state may endure, but it will be a state of a different sort, dreadful
and alien to our values.”
Such
views unsurprisingly provoked an outcry in Israel. But they also drew
enthusiastic support from those Israelis who are eager to see root and branch
reform of their country. Avraham Burg, who is in his early 50s, can hope that
his dream may one day become reality. And, like the wave of iconoclasts in the
Israeli intelligentsia who have absorbed the work of the new historians, he is
living proof that his society is undergoing profound change.
http://mondediplo.com/2008/05/17judaism
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Uninvited
guests
Despite
Israel's ban, Norman Finkelstein should return to Israel in the name of
freedom and democracy
Richard
Silverstein,
guardian.co.uk,
Friday June 6 2008
I
have a dream for Israeli democracy. This dream of mine may not be as elegantly
articulated or stirring as Martin Luther King's, but it nevertheless
represents some creative brainstorming. It all began with this short passage in
the Jerusalem Post last week:
The
Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) detained and deported Finkelstein, who is a
prominent critic of the Israeli occupation, when he landed at Ben-Gurion
International Airport on Friday. He was interrogated for several hours and
held in an airport holding cell before being returned to Amsterdam, where he
had been lecturing. Finkelstein said he was told he could not return to Israel
for at least 10 years.
On
Tuesday, the Shin Bet said that if [Norman] Finkelstein tried returning to
Israel it would need to re-evaluate its position."
This
got me to thinking: by God, the Shin Bet is tacitly inviting Finkelstein to
try again. I started wondering: why not test the Shin Bet's statement? Why not
return to Israel?
Then
my brainstorming became grander and bolder: don't just return to Israel, but
make a bold political statement out of Finkelstein's return. After the
ugliness at DePaul University, where Finkelstein was denied tenure, local
Chicago activists organised a teach-in
on academic freedom that included Ben Gurion University professor Neve
Gordon, John Mearsheimer and Finkelstein himself.
So
I started thinking why not do something similar in Israel with Finkelstein
again being either the guest of honour or featured speaker. You could turn
this into an academic conference on issues like Israeli democracy, ethnic
identity and conflict in Israel, Israel-Syria peace negotiations and the
critical importance of freedom of travel and speech in democratic society. The
conference could happen both in Israel and in the West Bank – say, at Bir
Zeit University (since one couldn't expect Israelis to be able to travel
freely to the West Bank nor Palestinians to travel to Israel to attend either
session).
Think of the interesting figures you could invite who have had experiences
similar to Finkelstein's who could address this gathering:
1.
Tariq Ramadan, whose US visa to teach at Notre Dame was revoked in part
because Daniel Pipes and other neocons lied, claiming
Ramadan was a supporter of Islamic terror.
2.
Yigal Arens, computer security expert at the University of Southern California
and son of former Israeli defence minister Moshe Arens. The younger Arens was invited
to lead a section of a Ben Gurion University conference in his field. But
the Shin Bet conference participants objected to his presence because he is a
strident critic of Israeli policy. Conference organisers disinvited him.
3.
Avrum Burg, whose new book The
Holocaust is Over, scandalised the Israeli political elite when it was
published in Hebrew last year because Burg, scion of a distinguished Orthodox
Zionist family, has moved to France and turned his back on Israeli Zionism.
4.
Menachem Klein, professor at Bar Ilan University, whose academic department
refuses to grant him tenure because his analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict violates the department's narrow political-academic consensus.
5.
Neve Gordon, professor at Ben Gurion University, who has endured a savage
letter-writing campaign to his university president and trustees smearing his
name and seeking to get him fired for his critical writing about Israeli
policy. Another Israeli academic, Steven Plaut, called him a "kapo"
and "Juden-Rat," and ended up losing
a libel case brought by Gordon and a subsequent appeal.
6.
Nadera
Shalhoub-Kevorkian, an Israeli-Arab law professor at the Hebrew University
who was denied
permission to exit Israel (again while at Ben Gurion airport) to attend an
academic conference; all this at the hands of the same Shin Bet which deported
Finkelstein.
7.
Hadeel Abukwaik, one of seven Palestinian
Fulbright winners who recently gained permission to take up their US
studies after it was initially denied by the IDF, which refused to allow them
to exit Gaza.
8.
Juan Cole, professor at University of Michigan, denied
an endowed chair at Yale University after a campaign by right-wing alumni
attacking him for being anti-Israel.
9.
Rashid Khalidi, professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University,
similarly smeared while he was under consideration for an endowed chair at
Princeton and also fired from teaching a course to New York public school
teachers about the Middle East, because of false charges made by Daniel Pipes
of supporting Arab radicalism.
10.
Nadia Abu El-Haj, professor of anthropology at Barnard College, targeted by
pro-Israel militants who attempted unsuccessfully to deny her tenure for her
critical writings about Israeli archaeology.
11.
Sami Bahour, Palestinian-American entrepreneur and peace activist denied
entry to Israel for no discernible reason.
12.
Zvi Schreiber, Israeli technology entrepreneur and developer
of G.ho.st, a program allowing computer users to access their computers
anywhere in the world. The project is a collaboration between Israelis and
Palestinian programmers.
13.
Rabbi Menachem Froman, founder of Gush Emunim and a West Bank settler, who is
close to Hamas. The Shin Bet prevented Froman from holding a joint press
conference to promote his ideas about Israeli-Palestinian peace.
As
part of this conference, I'd love to hear a concert by Mira
Awad, a wonderful Israeli Arab singer and popular theatre and TV actress
who hasn't been able to get a contract to produce her first recording. Her
music is not considered commercial enough (as defined by Israeli-Jewish record
executives). And why not add to the concert David Broza, who recorded the
first Israeli-Palestinian musical duet for his song B'Libi. And Noa and Khaled,
whose performance in Hebrew and Arabic of John Lennon's Imagine is stirring
beyond belief. And Idan Raichel, whose music is at the cutting edge of the
intersection of Israeli and world music. A performance by the West-Eastern
Divan Orchestra under Daniel Barenboim would also be stirring.
I
also devised a few ideas about how to shame/compel the Shin Bet into granting
Finkelstein entry. He could fly to Israel with several of the conference
speakers, forcing the Shin Bet to grant entry or eject all of them. (The could
call the flight the Voyage of the Banned.) Other conference speakers could
meet him at Ben Gurion along with his lawyer, Michael Sfard (just in case).
Joining them could be a few journalists, TV cameras and perhaps an MK or two.
I'd say this might give the Shin Bet pause. And if it didn't, the conference
organisers could hold the event anyway and leave an empty "Elijah's
chair" on stage for anyone detained by the Shin Bet.
Of
course, it's easy to dream. Israelis would have to be the ones to do the hard
work to make this dream a reality. But it was great fun dreaming a dream of
Israeli democracy and of forcing the Shin Bet to live up to the ideals of its
own country's Declaration of Independence.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/06/israelandthepalestinians
