SPME Secretary and Board Member, Dr. Ruth Contreras of the University of Vienna and Vienna Natural History Museum wrote the following letter to the editor, published on December 19^th, 2005 in the Austrian Newspaper “Der Standard”, in response to a piece by John Bunzl entitle "Tactical Rhetoric." This was published in the Austrian Newspaper "Der Standard" which reaches more than 400 000 readers - the English translation is to be found below.

Translation:

Questionable Assumptions

Much to my surprise I found John Bunzl’s letter to the Editor concerning the most recent statement of the President of the Iran Ahmadi-Nejad. They lead to dismiss the threats to wipe out Israel and what we call the “New Anti-Semitism”

How seriously these threats should be considered shows a recent report by MEMRI  (Middle East Media Research Institute; www.memri.org) of December 1, 2005 on a symposium at the largest and only public University in the Lebanon: „Lebanon’s Largest Government University Hosts Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV Symposium Calling to Wipe Israel Off The Map: ‘Just Like Hitler Fought The Jews…We Too Should Fight The Jews and Burn Them’ , where there was a call as well to destroy Israel.

Bunzl calls the expressions of Muslim holocaust –deniers a more recent phenomenon that only arises from the incapacity of dealing with the conflict of Palestine and the imperial dominance of the West. This is extremely dangerous.

It seems that the politologist Bunzl overlooked the tradition of Islamic anti-Semitism, which did not start with the present Middle East Conflict or with the foundation of the State of Israel but much earlier.

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Summary of Bunzls letter to the editor published in the Standard on December 12, 2005

Tactical Rhetorics – by John Bunzl

Here is a summary of Bunzl’s letter to the editor where he refers to an article concerning the holocaust-denial by Ahmadinejad

According to Bunzl Ahmadinejad can’t decide himself if he wants to destroy Israel or “merely” move her to an other place on the map. His sayings should not be misinterpreted as sayings of realpoliticism.

Holocaust denial does not have its roots in the anti-Semitism of the Islamic culture but it is a more recent phenomenon, which only arises from the incapacity of dealing with the conflict of Palestine and the imperial dominance of the West.

Western columnists are seeing in this phenomenon the return of their own guilt.

At the end of his letter he refers to an article by Dr Nur Masalha with which he fully agrees. The article is published in the Guardian. According to this theory Israel’s formation is based on colonization and mischief in the Middle East http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1602682,00.html

For learning more about John Bunzl there is an article by him on the Disengagement at http://www.jfjfp.org/BackgroundY/gaza_bunzl.htm