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Scholars protest Chavez's comparison of Israel and Hitler

Fifty-three leading Holocaust scholars from around the world have sent a letter to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, denouncing his statements comparing Israel to the Nazis.

The signatories include two former senior officials of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Dr. Michael Berenbaum and Dr. Walter Reich; Journal of Genocide Research editor Henry Huttenbach; Genocide Watch president Gregory Stanton; Prof. David S. Wyman, author of the The Abandonment of the Jews; and numerous other prominent scholars, including Daniel Goldhagen, Richard Rubenstein, and Jacob Neusner.

The protest was organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.

The text of the letter, and the full list of signatories, follows:


August 11, 2006

Hon. Hugo Chavez
c/o Embassy of The Republic of Venezuela
1099 30th Street NW
Washington DC 20007
via email: prensa@embavenez-us.org

To His Excellency, President Hugo Chavez:

As Holocaust scholars, we are deeply troubled by your reported statement to the Al Jazeera news agency that "[The Israelis] are doing what Hitler did against the Jews" (Aug. 4, 2006) and your statement on your radio program, 'Hello, President', that Israel is carrying out "a new Holocaust" (Miami Herald, Aug. 9, 2006).

The Holocaust was the deliberate, systematic mass murder of six million innocent Jews by Germany and its collaborators. By contrast, Israel is acting in legitimate self-defense against Hezbollah terrorism, has no interest in harming innocent Lebanese civilians, and indeed has done its utmost to avoid civilian casualties, whereas Hezbollah deliberately targets Israeli civilians. Any comparison between Israel and the Nazis outrageously distorts Israel's actions and trivializes the enormity and nature of the Holocaust.

We note that the U.S. State Department, in its report on global antisemitism last year, stated that "The demonization or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders ... indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy concerning a controversial issue."

We therefore urge you to retract your comparisons of Israel to the Nazis and refrain from making any such comparisons in the future.

Sincerely,

Prof. David S. Wyman
University of Massachsetts-Amherst (emer.)

Prof. Henry R. Huttenbach
Editor, Journal Of Genocide Research
City College of New York

Dr. Gregory H. Stanton
President, Genocide Watch
Founder and Chairman of the Board, The International Campaign to End Genocide

Dr. Michael Berenbaum
Professor & Director,
Sigi Ziering Institute on the Holocaust, University of Judaism

Dr. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University

Prof. Richard L. Rubenstein
President Emeritus, University of Bridgeport
Lawton Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus, Florida State University

Prof. Debórah Dwork
Professor & Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Clark University

Dr. Walter Reich
Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor of International Affairs, Ethics and Human Behavior
George Washington University

Prof. Thane Rosenbaum
Novelist and law professor, Fordham University Law School

Prof. Jacob Neusner
Bard College

Prof. Peter J. Haas
Chair, Department of Religious Studies
Director, The Samuel Rosenthal Center for Judaic Studies
Case Western Reserve University

Prof. Andrei S. Markovits
University of Michigan

Prof. Christopher J. Fettweis
US Naval War College

Prof. Michael Brown
York University, Toronto (emer.)

Prof. Linda M. Woolf
Director, Holocaust & Genocide Studies,
Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights
Webster University

Prof. Neil J. Kressel
William Paterson University

Prof. Aaron Berman
Dean, Hampshire College

Dr. Kenneth Waltzer
Professor of History, James Madison College
Director, Jewish Studies, Michigan State University

Prof. Marcia Sachs Littell
Founding Director, MA Program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

Prof. Meir Amor
Concordia University

Prof. Paul L. Rose
Pennsylvania State University

Prof. Zsuzsanna Ozsvath
Director, Holocaust Studies
University of Texas at Dallas

Prof. Gil Troy
McGill University

Prof. Steven Leonard Jacobs
University of Alabama

Prof. Rochelle L. Millen
Wittenberg University

Prof. Peter I. Rose
Smith College (emer.)

Prof. Zev Garber
Editor, Studies in the Shoah
Los Angeles Valley College

Prof. Carol Rittner, RSM
Interim Director, MA Program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

Judy (Weissenberg) Cohen
Editor, www.womenandtheholocaust.com

Prof. Monty N. Penkower
Machon Lander Graduate School for Jewish Studies, Jerusalem

Dr. Bat-Ami Zucker
Bar Ilan University

Prof. Paul Oppenheimer
City University of New York

Dr. Harold Brackman
Simon Wiesenthal Center

Prof. Harry Reicher
University of Pennsylvania Law School

Prof. Haim Genizi
Bar Ilan University

Dr. Sharon R. Lowenstein
Author, Token Refuge

Samuel Laster
Editor, internet portal "die juedische"
(www.juedische.at) Berlin, Vienna

William Bemister, Producer-Correspondent “The Hunter and the Hunted”
and “The Search for Mengele,” Oxford, England

Prof. Oren Stier
Florida International University

Dr. Peter Suedfeld
University of British Columbia

Dr. Efraim Zuroff
Simon Wiesenthal Center

Prof. Stephen H. Norwood
University of Oklahoma

Dr. Rochelle L. Millen
Wittenberg University

Prof. John C. Zimmerman
University of Nevada Las Vegas

Prof. Eunice G. Pollack
University of North Texas

Prof. Erich H. Loewy
University of California, Davis

Prof. Ron Hollander
Montclair State University

Prof. Gershon Greenberg
American University

Prof. Alan Berger
Florida Atlantic University

Myrna Goldenberg
Independent Scholar, Bethesda, MD

Dr. Baila Round Shargel
Manhattanville College

Dr. Alex Grobman
Brenn Institute

Dr. Rafael Medoff
The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies

(Institutions listed for identification purposes only.)

Read entire article at News Release -- David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies