Witness for Peace addresses Ann Arbor City Council

On Monday, May 1, I addressed Council on the topic “Holocaust Education”. Text of speech available below signature. Halfway through my presentation the 24-year-old Jewish council member, Zachary Ackerman, fled the room and returned only after I had finished the presentation and taken my seat. This action begat the following letter to Mayor Chris Taylor:

Dear Chris,

I’m pretty sure I don’t have a legal leg to stand on in this matter, but wanted to let you know how much it irks me when a salaried civil servant leaves the room as I speak during Public Commentary time at City Council meetings.

Especially when the salary Mr. Ackerman accepts is drawn off the taxes I pay.

Perhaps Council needs to consider a minimum age/maturity requirement for running for public office.

Best wishes,
Henry Herskovitz

Reminder: Gilad Atzmon to Speak in Ann Arbor

Circle the date: Thursday, May 4, 6pm at the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library (4th floor conference room “A”). Author Gilad Atzmon will promote his newest book, Being in Time.

Being in Time suggests that ‘after-politics’ is a tale of the decisive victory of one elite. Gilad Atzmon, author of The Wandering Who, has managed to dissect the ethos, strategy and culture that are driving this invincible elite.

The Ann Arbor District Library forbids sales of books at their facilities. The sponsor, Deir Yassin Remembered, is considering giving them away.

Click here for event flyer.

Comments?

Henry Herskovitz
Witness for Peace
America First Not Israel
Four vigilers
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Text of presentation to City Council

May 1, 2017

Good evening,

A couple of events have occurred since the last time I addressed Council that bear notice. First, in addition to the weekly vigils our group – Witness for Peace – hold every Saturday, I also serve on the board of advisors of an organization – Deir Yassin Remembered – which commemorates the massacre at that village prior to the formation of the Jewish state.

In February, I signed a three-month contract with Adams Outdoor advertising to run a billboard sponsored by Deir Yassin Remembered, and it ran for a week before the company received so many irate calls from powerful sources that the billboard was removed. The message of the billboard was a mere extension of President Trump’s familiar words: Our sign reads “America First Not Israel”.

The second event has now been documented by our friends at the Washtenaw Jewish News, WUOM, the Michigan Daily and others. Deir Yassin Remembered has been mis-identified as a “Hate” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, under the sub-category “Holocaust Denial”. In fact, I have been castigated by former Council member Joan Lowenstein as “a full-fledged holocaust denier”. And it’s been reported that some current Council members have heard Holocaust denial in my words.

So, what does Holocaust Denial really mean? Fortunately, Dan McGowan, executor director of Deir Yassin Remembered, has penned a definition which was printed in a Geneva NY newspaper and almost cost Dan his Professor Emeritus status at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He writes:

1. For most Holocaust revisionists … their arguments boil down to three simple contentions:
2. 1. Hitler’s “Final Solution” was intended to be ethnic cleansing, not extermination.
   2. There were no homicidal gas chambers used by the Third Reich.
   3. There were fewer than 6 million Jews killed of the 55 million who died in WWII.

And he adds:

If other myths, like making soap from human fat, have been dismissed as Allied war propaganda, why is it “unacceptable behavior” to ask if the gas chamber at Dachau was not reconstructed by the Americans because no other homicidal gas chamber could be found and used as evidence at the Nuremburg trials?

I would like to close with a quote from Thomas Jefferson:

“There is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world”

Thank you