Scholars protest Chavez's comparison of Israel and Hitler
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.)