OXFORD STUDENT UNION SINKS EVEN LOWER

DOES OXFORD THINK IT OK TO HONOR A MAN WHO CALLS ANNE FRANK A PORN STAR? (Tom Gross)

In October, I wrote about criticism of the Oxford Union in a dispatch titled “Outrage after Holocaust denier David Irving invited to Oxford Union.”

Oxford University’s world famous Oxford Union debating society went ahead with the invitation to Irving, and British fascist leader Nick Griffin, in November. Shortly before, in the latest of several outrageous pronouncements, Irving had told the British daily The Guardian that the Jews were responsible for “most of the wars of the last 100 years.”

Tomorrow (Tuesday) at the Oxford Union, four academics who all support a boycott of Israel, will debate the motion “This House Believes That The State of Israel has a Right to Exist.”

American revisionist “historian” Norman Finkelstein along with Prof. Ted Honderich will be speaking for the motion while opposing them will be Exeter University academics Ghada Karmi and Ilan Pappe, a former Israeli Jew who has made a career out of slandering the country where he was born and grew up. It is harder to know which of these four is the most vile.

Just last week, Finkelstein reprinted on his website an article from the Israeli paper Ha’aretz about worrying signs of failures in Holocaust education among German youth, and added the mock headline: “To reverse declining German interest in Holocaust, Britney Spears to play Anne Frank in new Holo-porn video.”

Making fun of Holocaust survivors has been a frequent feature of Finkelstein’s work (even though he is himself the son of survivors) and it is not surprising that so many regard him (as was the case with former chess champion Bobby Fischer who died last week) as a highly disturbed Jewish self-hater.

What is surprising – and dangerous – however, is Oxford’s behavior.

Do the university authorities think it is ok to honor (and indeed pay a fee to) a man who thinks it is fun to call child Holocaust victim Anne Frank a porn star?

Do people in turn think it is ok to continue making donations to Oxford University’s fundraising appeals?

The issue is not just why Israel is the only country whose right to exist is being questioned at Oxford. Perhaps of even greater concern is why Oxford has chosen such anti-Israeli figures as Finkelstein and Honderich to argue Israel has a right to exist. All four speakers have in the past supported organizations that have called for the delegitimization of the State of Israel.

DOES BRITAIN HAVE A RIGHT TO EXIST?

Fresh from his tour of Lebanon earlier this month (where he was warmly welcomed by Hizbullah supporters), Finkelstein is this week on a British tour organized and paid for by FOSIS (the Federation of Student Islamic Societies in the UK and Ireland) and supported by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. In addition to Oxford, he will be speaking to students at Manchester, Keele, Sussex and Edinburgh Universities, and at the London School of Economics (LSE).

The posters advertising the speaking tour show a map depicting a one state solution for Palestine, with Israel eliminated, and Palestine represented in red with dripping blood. So why has Oxford chosen Finkelstein, of all people, as the speaker students will hear putting the case for a Jewish state not to be wiped out?

What would people in Britain think if foreign universities debated whether Britain had a right to exist?

I also attach below, in the “Full Articles” section, a piece on how the idiocy of the Oxford Union has spread to American universities. It is by Cliff May, a subscriber to this list.

I should add that when I was a student at Oxford University, and a member of the Oxford Union, it never invited quite such evil people to appear before it as it does now.

MERCHANT PUTS ANNE FRANK IN KAFFIYEH

Netherlands Merchant Puts Anne Frank in a Kaffiyeh (LGF)

Sick, sick, sick.

Boomerang, a popular Dutch merchant of T-shirts, greeting cards, and other items, is now selling an image of Anne Frank wearing the symbol of Palestinian terrorism: Boomerang.nl - Werk - 'Banned Frank' by T.

NORTH CAROLINA SCHOOL ENDS NAZI ROLE PLAYING

N.C. school halts Nazi role-play (JTA)
A North Carolina middle school will halt a classroom exercise in which students role-play as Nazis and Jews.

The Hoke County Board of Education voted Tuesday to end the eighth-grade English class exercise in conjunction with reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" after a parent complained, the Fayetteville Observer reported.

Students were divided into Jews and Nazis; the students playing Jews were not allowed to participate in class activities without permission from the students playing Nazis. The roles reversed the following week.

The classroom teacher, Hoke Middle School principal and the schools superintendent all stood behind the project. But the school board decided to end it during a closed session of its regular meeting.

ANNE FRANK'S TREE FACES AX AGAIN

Protesters Try to Save Anne Frank's Tree (SF Chron)
Hiding from the Nazis in a cramped Amsterdam apartment, Anne Frank often gazed at a majestic chestnut tree visible through an attic skylight — her only window to the outside world — and dreamed of freedom.

Now a group of conservationists and local activists are fighting to prevent the badly diseased tree from being cut down, saying it is a living link to the memory of the teenage diarist, who died in a Nazi concentration camp at 15.

"It's a monument to the spirit of what Anne Frank wrote — hope and light, which she did not have," said Sylvio Mutal, a neighbor whose study overlooks the courtyard where the tree is located.

Mutal, a former consultant to the United Nations on preservation of monuments, called a decision Tuesday by the city of Amsterdam to fell the tree next week a "betrayal," after earlier promises to wait until Jan. 1 to consider a salvage plan.

"I'm not doubting the tree is sick and may have to be cut," he said. "What I'm saying is, I want a second opinion."

The tree suffers from a fungus that has caused more than half its trunk to rot. The city ordered it cut down next Wednesday, citing an appraisal that said it was in imminent danger of falling.

But opponents, including the Netherlands' Trees Institute, challenged the decision as hasty and argued the tree is a living historical monument worthy of extraordinary measures to save.

The Utrecht-based institute carried out an independent inspection of the tree Wednesday and said it will seek an injunction to block the order.

SEE ALSO: ANNE FRANK'S CHESTNUT TREE GETS REPRIEVE; ANNE FRANK'S CHESTNUT TREE FACES AX

ANNE FRANK'S CHESTNUT TREE GETS REPRIEVE

Anne Frank's Ailing Tree Gets a Reprieve (SFGate)
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- The diseased chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she hid from the Nazis during World War II has been granted a reprieve. The 150-year-old tree was due to be chopped down after experts determined it could not be rescued from the fungus and moths that caused more than half its trunk to rot.

The tree is familiar to millions of readers of "The Diary of Anne Frank." It stands behind the "secret annex" atop the canal-side warehouse where her family hid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and its crown was just visible through the attic skylight — the only window that was not blacked out.

An appeals panel made two separate decisions last week: one upholding the right of the tree's owner to have it cut down any time in the next two years, and another granting a request by the country's Trees Institute to investigate the possibility of saving it, said Ton Boon, a spokesman for Amsterdam's Central borough.

The tree is on the property of Keizersgracht 188, adjacent to the building that is now the Anne Frank Museum. Property owner Henric Pomes has agreed for the time being to wait for the institute's proposal, due before Jan. 1, Boon said.

The Utrecht-based Trees Institute said its salvage plan would likely involve a combination of treatments and supports for its trunk and limbs.

SEE EARLIER: ANNE FRANK'S CHESTNUT TREE FACES AX

ANNE FRANK MEMORIAL VANDALIZED IN IDAHO

THERE'S AN ANNE FRANK MEMORIAL IN IDAHO?

Anne Frank memorial in Idaho hit by vandals (YNET)
Vandals toppled and damaged a bronze statue of Holocaust victim Anne Frank in Idaho's capital, two months after the memorial was plastered with neo-Nazi stickers.

Damage to the 500-pound (226-kilogram) statue of the girl, whose diary of hiding from the Nazis during World War II made her a human rights heroine, included a broken finger and scrapes on the head. In March, the five-year-old Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial was covered with swastika-emblazoned stickers promoting the neo-Nazi group Combat 18, and identical stickers were attached to the Islamic Center of Boise. Combat 18 is a loosely organized group that is believed to have originated in Britain. No one was arrested.

LE PEN RAPS CHIRAC FOR CALLING OUT VICHY

Le Pen raps Chirac for calling out Vichy (JTA)
Jean-Marie Le Pen "regrets" that President Jacques Chirac acknowledged the French government's responsibility for deporting French Jews during the Holocaust. In an interview published Sunday in Le Parisian, the extreme right-wing candidate in France’s presidential elections said, "Chirac was the only president to do it. Not even [Francois] Mitterrand did it."

Early in his presidency, Chirac won the Jewish community’s admiration for recognizing the Vichy government's responsibility for deporting Jews during the Holocaust.

Asked about how the Holocaust is being taught to French high school students, Le Pen answered: “I’d rather not talk about this. Last time I did, expressing myself moderately, it cost me" some $250,000. "These debates are not part of the democratic freedom of expression principle."

In 1987, Le Pen was sentenced to a $250,000 fine for claiming that the gas chambers “were only a small detail in history."

SEE ALSO: Le Pen's fighting chance
As in France's last elections, right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen is a force in the race for president. Some say he could surprise again. (Los Angeles Times)

ANNE FRANK'S CHESTNUT TREE FACES AX

Anne Frank's chestnut tree faces ax (CNN)
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Amsterdam's city council gave the owner of the chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding a license to cut it down. Opponents have six weeks to file an objection but that is seen as unlikely. The large, 150-year-old tree has been attacked by a fungus and is in danger of falling down.

The tree is familiar to some 25 million readers of "The Diary of Anne Frank." It stands in the courtyard of the "secret annex," the canal-side warehouse where her family hid during the Nazi occupation.

The Jewish teenager made several references to it in the diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained indoors until the family was arrested in August 1944.

"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs," she wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. "From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. ...

"As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy."

The city council ruled in November that it was a hazard. On Thursday, the council granted the owner of the tree, the house next door to the former warehouse, a license to cut it down. No date has been set.

The Anne Frank Museum, where the tiny apartment has been preserved, said grafts already have been taken and a sapling from the original chestnut will eventually replace it.

Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.

ANNE FRANK'S FATHER'S LETTERS FOUND

Anne Frank's father's letters found
Newly disclosed letters written by Anne Frank's father illustrate his desperate attempts to get his family out of the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. (Time)