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Jared Israel: Francisco Gil-White Falsified Data to Slander Rabbi Stephen Wise as 'Wanting the Holocaust'

[Posted 3 July 2006]

1. Jared Israel's Accusation: Gil-White excerpted nine words to reverse the meaning of Wise's thousand word article.

2. Francisco Gil-White's defense: "What I did was fine" because the charge is true.

My charge that Francisco Gil-White, formerly associated with Emperor's Clothes, deliberately falsified data to slander Rabbi Stephen S. Wise as wanting the Holocaust was raised in a wide-ranging Internet debate. The exchange, in which I present evidence for this charge, and Gil-White replies, is posted below.  A collection of all the most important posts from this thread is at
http://emperors-clothes.com/israpundit.htm 

-- Jared Israel
Editor, Emperor's Clothes

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1. Jared Israel's Accusation

To Bill Narvey,

Bill, responding to my accusations against Francisco Gil-White, you wrote:

[Comment from Bill Narvey starts here]

In spite of not agreeing with how Prof. Gil-White interprets the facts he states, I am always nonetheless better informed for having read his work than not. […]

Jared Israel seems to have lost some perspective and proportionality for he puts his academic sniping against Prof. Gil-White ahead of the fact that both he and Prof. Gil-White are pro-Israel advocates. (Comment 25)

[Comment from Bill Narvey ends here]

I understand that when bitter conflicts occur, it is natural to suspect personal motives. However, I am not engaged in academic sniping, nor is this a personal conflict. In your comment, you suggest that you a) trust Gil-White’s facts and b) you consider him to be motivated by a desire to defend Israel.

Reading Gil-White’s recent work, I have found that a) he deceives his readers, going so far as to falsify documentation in order b) to slander prominent Jews. This is not something he has done just once, with Nathan Weinstock. It is something he has done as a pattern.

I will for the moment reserve my opinion as to what is behind Francisco Gil-White’s pattern of deception. For now, let me present more evidence that he does do it. (I have already presented evidence that he did this with Nathan Weinstock. See my comments #16, #22 and #30.)

I will prove that Gil-White lied in at least three ways when he attacked Rabbi Stephen Wise.

In the article in question, entitled “How the mainstream Jewish leadership failed the Jewish people in World War II,” and archived here solely for educational purposes (i.e., so that you may study this text exactly as it is now, whatever changes may be made on Gil-White’s website) – in it, Gil-White argues that Rabbi Stephen Wise wanted the Holocaust. This charge is important not only because it smears a deceased leader of world Zionism, but because it thereby lends the support of a supposedly pro-Israel writer (Gil-White) to the accusation, made by antisemites, e.g., PLO leaders, that Zionists wanted the Holocaust. (The accusation, which we have all heard, is that Zionists wanted a Holocaust so there would be world sympathy for the creation of a Jewish State.)

Gil-White starts his article in the most sensational way, with the following block of text, indented, in italics, right at the beginning:

[Excerpt from Gil-White's article starts here]

“I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany…” [1]

Said on the eve of the Nazi genocide by “Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise, the undisputed leader of organized American Jewry” [19], and “probably the most influential and well-respected American Jew of his generation” [24a], in reply to British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s suggestion that Jewish refugees from Hitler might settle in Tanganyika.

Stephen Wise got his wish.

[Excerpt from Gil-White's article ends here]

Am I being fair? Did Gil-White really mean to say Wise wanted the Holocaust? On the Israpundit discussion Website, Gil-White wrote:

[Comment from Gil-White starts here]

“According to Jared Israel, I said that ‘Jewish leaders were welcoming the Holocaust.’ I did not. What I did was quote what Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise replied to Neville Chamberlain when Chamberlain (who was certainly an antisemite, there is no implied apology for Chamberlain here) suggested to Wise that Jewish refugees from Hitler might settle in Tanganyika. Stephen Wise’s reply was the following: ‘I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany…’ Notice that Stephen Wise did not say, ‘I would rather have my fellow Jews settle in Palestine.’ And I point out also that the quote is documented in a book written by an admirer of Stephen Wise: Urofsky, M. I. 1982. A voice that spoke for justice: The life and times of Stephen S. Wise. Albany: State University of New York Press. (p.304).

In my piece, I commented that ‘Stephen Wise got his wish.’ My remark was therefore specific to Stephen Wise, not to Jewish leaders in general. Jared Israel has taken offense at this comment, but I didn’t invent what Stephen Wise said. If Jared Israel wants to give Stephen Wise’s words a different interpretation, he is welcome to defend it.” (Comment #19)

[Excerpt from Gil-White's article ends here]

Three quick points. First, when Francisco Gil-White slanders Rabbi Wise, head of the American Jewish Congress and the leading Zionist in the USA for many years, he is not slandering only Rabbi Wise. Indeed, Gil-White’s article is entitled “How the mainstream Jewish leadership failed the Jewish people in World War II,” and by stating in his opening words that when the Holocaust occurred, the leading American Zionist “got his wish,” Gil-White is clearly suggesting that Wise was not alone.

Second, please note that in his statement, quoted above, Francisco Gil-White refers to Rabbi Wise’s “remark.” Keep that term “remark” in mind, because we shall refer back to it when we get to Lie #3.

And third, in his article, as it was originally posted, and as it is still posted today (21 June), Francisco Gil-White said nothing about Chamberlain being an antisemite. That description appears only in Gil-White’s comment on Israpundit, as quoted above. And notice that, even in the Israpundit comment, where Gil-White states that Chamberlain was an antisemite, Gil-White still insists that Rabbi Wise wanted the Holocaust.

Francisco Gil-White’s slander of Rabbi Stephen Wise includes at least three forms of deception:

1) A lie by false implication of expert knowledge;

2) A lie by diverting readers through sensationalism; and

3) Lies by falsification of documentation.

The lies in group #3 may be the most blatant, but these are all lies, and their existence necessitates an answer to the question: why did Gil-White lie with such energy in order to slander Rabbi Wise?

==============================================

Lie #1: Lie by false implication of expert knowledge, namely, that of course Gil-White wouldn’t make such an accusation unless he knew what he was talking about.

================================================

To claim that Rabbi Wise, a world Zionist leader, wanted the Holocaust is to make the most extreme accusation. Neo-Nazis and anti-Israel Arab leaders accuse pre-war Zionist leaders of wanting the Holocaust in order to justify the creation of Israel. These people are motivated not by knowledge but by a desire to undermine support for Israel. But other than them, nobody I know of except Gil-White has charged that a Zionist leader such as Rabbi Wise wanted the Shoah.

And unlike the Arab leaders, Francisco Gil-White presents himself as a supporter of Israel and an historian. Indeed, on his website he flaunts his supposed status, emphasizing how far removed he and his colleagues are from ordinary people:

“Laypeople, it now dawns on me, find it quite difficult to grasp what historians do, and have a quite mistaken picture of it. I will do my best here briefly to explain how proper historiography — the very thing this website aims to produce — ought to work.” (Source: Francisco Gil-White, “About the HIR method,” 17 Dec 2005)

And Francisco Gil-White does not present himself as just any historian. On his website he has posted a book, or the first chapters of a book, which will, we are told, encompass several thousand years of history and span the globe. It has the modest title, “The Crux of World history.”

Gil-White’s ultra-elevated status has been asserted on Israpundit, for example by his close associate, Alex Eisenberg, and by others, apparently swept up in Gil-White fever.

Alex Eisenberg writes:

“…the strength of his [Gil-White's] work, as opposed to those [sic] of Pipes or Dershovitz, is precisely in its scientific approach.” (Comment #9)

And:

“In fact, his work is not ‘only’ a defense of the Jewish people as such. It is part of a broad research which encompasses the entire history of the [sic] Western civilization based on the most recent advancements in the field of evolutionary anthropology.” (Comment #9) [My emphasis – J.I.]

This hyperbole is apparently infectious. Texts are generally presented in a matter-of-fact fashion on Israpundit. But in his introduction to part 4 of Gil-White’s four-part series on the Palestinians, throughout which series Gil-White misportrays Holocaust scholar Nathan Weinstock as rejoicing in the deaths of Jews, Israpundit editor Ted Belman describes Gil-White’s writing as “revolutionary,” calling him “a fierce defender of the Jewish people” and telling readers, “Take the time to read all parts and for that matter also read his other articles…”

With all this hype, one would naturally assume that Gil-White’s comments about Rabbi Wise were based on considerable knowledge of British policy, which of course is what Rabbi Wise was responding to.

One would be wrong.

On 16 June 2006, Gil-White stated that when he wrote this article, in January 2006, and indeed, as late as April 2006, when I attacked him on the Arutz Sheva website:

“…at the time, I had not studied British Mandate ‘Palestine,’ and hence was ill-informed about [British Colonial Secretary] Malcolm Macdonald in general.” (Gil-White in comment #19)

He didn’t know about Palestine Mandate history and Malcolm MacDonald when he wrote an article half of which was about British government conflicts with Jewish leaders over offers to resettle Jews in Africa, conflicts directly related to Palestine Mandate history and Malcolm MacDonald.

By failing to tell his readers that when he accused Rabbi Wise of being an advocate of the Nazi’s Final Solution, he did not know about the issues, Gil-White was of course deceiving his readers. This is worsened by the fact that, at the same time, his website (i.e., he himself) and his followers and others were praising him as the most knowledgeable, indeed, scientific and revolutionary of historians, one who was writing a book called “The Crux of History.”

================================================

Lie #2: Lie by using sensationalism to divert from having presented zero evidence.

================================================

As noted, Gil-White presents his claim that Rabbi Wise wanted the Holocaust in the most dramatic way: as a block of text, indented, in italics, at the start of the article. He has a set-up, then some white space, and then the portentous statement: “Rabbi Wise got his wish.” And on the side of the page, there is a picture of a grim-faced man, identified as Rabbi Wise.

The effect of this presentation is so chilling that one may be excused for not noticing the paucity of evidence. For example, nowhere in the article does Gil-White tell us when Rabbi Wise allegedly made this statement. Was it immediately after the Evian Conference? During that 1938 affair, convened to discuss the problem of where to send Jewish refugees from Hitler, the British had made clear that they did not want any Jews sent to Britain. If, after the British performance at Evian, British Prime Minister Chamberlain, notorious as the appeaser of Hitler, had made some flippant and perhaps, in context, insulting suggestion to Rabbi Wise about settling Jews in Tanganyika, one might even forgive Rabbi Wise for punching Chamberlain in the face, let alone giving him an “over-my-dead-body” response. Similarly, if the alleged confrontation between the two men had occurred shortly after the announcement of the White Paper, eliminating Palestine as an escape destination, one could imagine a similar response to such a Chamberlain remark.

Moreover, there is something else Gil-White’s sensationalism causes one not to notice: Gil-White never quotes Chamberlain. Exactly what did Chamberlain allegedly say? What were his exact words? Does Gil-White know? If he does, why doesn’t he quote him? And if he does not, how can he gauge Rabbi Wise’s alleged response?

As demonstrated below by my detective hunt starting from Gil-White’s cited source, apparently there was no direct confrontation between Wise and Chamberlain about this issue. But I am getting ahead of myself. The point here is that, by presenting the alleged confrontation, and Rabbi Wise’s alleged statement, in such a sensationalist manner, Gil-White diverts attention from the fact that he hasn’t fulfilled the most minimal requirement of “proper historiography” - mentioning the date when something has allegedly occurred, and telling us what both sides allegedly said!

So here we have a second kind of lie – the disguising of a lack of basic information, by means of sensationalism worthy of the lowest, gutter-rag journalism.

================================================

Lie #3: Lies by direct falsification of documentation.

================================================

One is so conditioned to accept uncritically the printed word, that it was only after looking at the alleged quote from Rabbi Wise a dozen times that I noticed that it ends in three dots – an ellipse! Some of the text has been removed.

Using a truncated quotation may be perfectly honorable, or it may constitute the worst kind of deceit.

It constitutes falsification if, by quoting partially, one hides any information that might to any extent possibly be construed as contradicting anything one is trying to prove. This is true in direct proportion to the extremity of one’s argument. And in this case, of course, Francisco Gil-White’s argument is of the most extreme.

In order to determine whether Gil-White has falsified by deletion of text, we have to look at his source. I went to Gi-White's footnote 1 and found that he does not simply list his source, he emphasizes its credibility, writing:

[Gil-White's footnote 1 starts here]

This quote is reported, I should note, by an admirer of Stephen Wise. It will be found here:

Urofsky, M. I. 1982. A voice that spoke for justice: The life and times of Stephen S. Wise. Albany: State University of New York Press. (p.304)

[Gil-White's footnote 1 ends here]

I searched for the Urofsky book in the online library database, the ‘Minuteman Catalogue,’ which covers most school and public libraries in Eastern Massachusetts. It gave 20 listings for Urofsky, a nonfiction writer specializing in Jewish and legal issues, but there was nothing about Rabbi Wise. One fellow who works on Emperor’s Clothes suggested that from what he’d observed about Francisco Gil-White, he had probably found the quote in an online fishing expedition. I searched online but couldn’t find the Urofsky book – and then I remembered. I had introduced Gil-White to Questia, an online archive that allows one to search through hundreds of thousands of books and documents looking for a phrase or phrases. For example, if one wanted to find something that could be used to make Rabbi Wise appear to be calling for the Holocaust, one could enter “Rabbi Wise” and “death” or “dead,” etc. You get the idea.

I went to Questia and sure enough, they had the Urofsky book. On p. 304, I found the quote, including the part that Gil-White had deleted. Here it is with the deleted part in bold:

“When Chamberlain suggested that Jews go to the former German colony of Tanganyika, Wise bitterly rejected the plan. ‘I would rather have my fellow-Jews die in Germany than live in lands which bear the imprint of yesterday’s occupation by Germany and which may tomorrow be yielded back.’”

Restoring the part that Gil-White had deleted, the quote makes sense. Wise was apparently outraged because Chamberlain was suggesting that Jews should go to a colony that Chamberlain, the notorious appeaser, might very well turn over to Germany as soon as the Jews arrived. In any case, Rabbi Wise obviously was not calling for the deaths of Jews. Rather, he was making an “over-my-dead-body” statement. If, as Gil-White suggested in his 16 June comment (#19), Rabbi Wise had instead responded, “‘I would rather have my fellow Jews settle in Palestine,’” even though Chamberlain’s government had cut immigration to Palestine to a trickle and refused to let refugee Jews into Britain, Wise would have been kissing Chamberlain’s fanny. You know, being an Uncle Tom, a step-and-fetch-it kind of Jew.

Gil-White had indeed falsified the quotation, the better to falsely portray Rabbi Wise’s tough defense of Jews as being a violent attack on Jews. He had doctored the evidence in order to slander a key Jewish leader.

But it gets worse.

In general, and especially when considering the validity of an extreme accusation, the rule of thumb is to dig down as close to a primary source as possible. In footnote 38, Urofsky, a popular biographer, gives his source for the Wise quotation, so of course, Gil-White had this information:

"[Footnote] 38. Feingold, Politics of Rescue, pp. 124-25"

I searched Questia for Feingold’s book, and in a short time was looking at page 124.

Examining the Rabbi Wise quote in Feingold’s book, I found that Urofsky had slightly miscopied Feingold’s text; a few words were different. None of it altered the meaning, but one change did indeed matter. As is not shown in Urofsky’s book, there is an ellipse. In other words, Feingold had deleted something else when he copied the quotation from wherever.

Here is Feingold’s quote, with the second half, the part cut by Gil-White, highlighted in bold:

“I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany than live somehow, anyhow, in the lands which bear the imprint of yesterday’s occupation by Germany, in lands which may tomorrow be yielded back . . . to Germany.118″

So far Gil-White’s “proper historiography” has him making the most extreme accusation even though, he now states, he knew nothing about the subject matter; doctoring Rabbi Wise’s alleged statement to hide the reasons for Wise's anger; and using Urofsky when in fact Urofsky was just passing along a quote miscopied from somebody else who, it turns out, had also deleted material from the original.

And it gets worse.

Feingold’s source for the quotation is indicated in footnote 118:

"[Footnote] 118. Wise, Stephen S. As I See It. New York: Jewish Opinion Publishing Corp., 1944."

So, without much trouble, we get to the original source - Rabbi Wise.

This book is a 1944 compilation of over a decade of Rabbi Wise’s articles from the Jewish magazine, Opinion. This indicates another Gil-White falsehood: the Wise quote, thrice altered and thrice removed from the original source, was not, as Gil-White wrote in his comment #19, a “remark.” It was not, as he wrote in his article, something Rabbi Wise “said on the eve of the Nazi genocide.” (My emphasis) Based on a trail of evidence easily followed from the Urofsky book, it was not said at all. It was part of a magazine article, included in a book.

Stephen Wise’s 1938 article, entitled “America Has Spoken,” is worth reading (though I do not claim it is the “Crux of History”), so I have posted it on Emperor’s Clothes. I hope that reading his words will wipe out the effect on Jews of the hideous accusation, now circulating the Internet, that, according to Gil-White, supposedly “a fierce defender of the Jewish people,” Zionist leader Wise wanted the Holocaust. You can read Rabbi Wise’s article in full on Emperor’s Clothes. Or you can go to Questia and get a free week’s subscription, and access the whole book.

Below I have posted two paragraphs from Rabbi Wise’s article. But first, let me once again post Gil-White’s doctored version of the Rabbi Wise quotation, falsely presented as something he said and then give you the real quotation.

First the doctored version, courtesy of Gil-White:

“I would rather have my fellow-Jews die in Germany…” [9 words]

Now Rabbi Wise, undoctored:

“I would rather have my fellow-Jews die in Germany than live somehow, anyhow, in lands which bear the imprint of yesterday’s occupation by Germany, in lands which may tomorrow be yielded back by England and France to Germany, as all other conceivable concessions are being made to the Nazi Reich.” [50 words]

I think you will agree that these read like the words of a man committed to the defense and dignity of his people, expressing the spirit of the Jews who died rather than submit to Roman slavery at Masada. And this is especially true when you read the words in context. To provide that context let us first look at another paragraph from the same article. This is quoted from p. 109 of Rabbi Wise’s book:

“Not being a race of beggars, though we are wanderers, we must make clear to the world that we are resolved that we are not to become, nor to be dealt with as a refugee people, even though the German-speaking peoples are forcing our brother-Jews into exile. The refuges for Jews are the lands in which they have lived for centuries and millennia. We raise our voice today against every proposal and program which deals with Jewish migrants or exiles as if they were to be further penalized by being settled in uninhabited lands, lands of doubtful title, lands of uncertain capacity for colonization and resettlement.” [Emphasis as in original. – J.I.]

And then this section, from page 110, including the text Francisco Gil-White falsified in order to slander Rabbi Wise. I have indicated the part omitted by Gil-White by putting it in bold. The words that Gil-White did not delete are highlighted in yellow:

“We lift up our voice in most solemn protest against any and every thought of settling Jews in the German colonies of yesterday. Having lived under the blight and burden of the Swastika, no Jew must ever again be compelled to touch the soil over which the German flag has been lifted up. Moreover, we Jews do not believe in reprisal or in vindictiveness. We do not wish even the German people to believe that we desire to possess ourselves of lands of which they have by war been dispossessed. Moreover, the destruction of any Jewish-occupied, one-time German colony would become the supreme objective of Germany. We would have Jews live anywhere outside of the Nazi Reich, live under almost any conditions, but we will never give approval or sanction to any plan which dooms Jews to live again in a land defiled up to the days of peace by that government which has sought to destroy them. I would rather have my fellow-Jews die in Germany than live somehow, anyhow, in lands which bear the imprint of yesterday’s occupation by Germany, in lands which may tomorrow be yielded back by England and France to Germany, as all other conceivable concessions are being made to the Nazi Reich.”

I will continue my discussion of Francisco Gil-White’s falsifications, aimed at slandering prominent Jews, in my next comment. Yes, there are more. As I said, it is a pattern.

Jared Israel.
Emperor’s Clothes

***

2.  Francisco Gil-White's defense: "What I did was fine."

REPLY TO JARED ISRAEL (CONCERNING STEPHEN WISE), by Francisco Gil-White

I notice that Jared Israel has not replied to my demonstration that he is wrong about Nathan Weinstock.

I shall now reply to his comments regarding Stephen Wise. In Comment #31, above, Jared Israel accuses me of having presented “falsified documentation” in order “to slander Rabbi Stephen Wise as wanting the Holocaust.”

What is the criticism, specifically? At the top of an article that I wrote on Stephen Wise and other American and British Jewish leaders during the Holocaust, entitled “How the Mainstream Jewish Leadership Failed the Jewish People in WWII,” I quoted Rabbi Stephen Wise saying, “I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany…” Jared Israel claims that I quoted Stephen Wise out of context.

In other words, Jared Israel believes it is possible to apologize for what Stephen Wise said.

I hold that the following statement is true by inspection (that is, true without requiring an explanation):

OBVIOUSLY TRUE STATEMENT: On the eve of the German Nazi extermination of the European Jewish population, which this was, it is unacceptable for the foremost leader of the Jewish community in the United States, which Stephen Wise was, to begin a sentence with, “I would rather have my fellow Jews die in Germany…”

In other words, there simply is no context that one can provide, before or after the sentence fragment that I quoted, that will render Stephen Wise’s sentence acceptable to anybody who does not already feel contempt for Jews. For demonstration, I submit Jared Israel’s heroic display of his talents in the service of rendering what Stephen Wise said
acceptable, and which fails.

In conclusion, since no context can make what Stephen Wise said acceptable, I quoted just the beginning of his sentence, which economically and dramatically communicates the contempt that Stephen Wise felt for the Jewish people. What I did was fine.

But what really matters, in the end, is not whether I misused that particular quote. If had done so I would simply remove it and issue a retraction. Nothing much hangs on it, and my article would remain.

What does my article show? That Stephen Wise, this man whom Jared Israel has attempted to defend, moved heaven and earth to sabotage the effort to rescue the desperate European Jews, even as the ovens were burning. This means that, according to Jared Israel’s own published standards, Stephen Wise is worse than Adolf Hitler. I shall now demonstrate this.

(I emphasize, however, that I will demonstrate that Wise is worse than Hitler according to Jared Israel’s published standards, not my own; if I myself was forced at gunpoint to choose between Wise and Hitler to be locked in a room with, I would choose Wise).

Jared Israel wrote an article for Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) entitled; “Benny Morris: The Kiss that Kills”; where he attacked Benny Morris.

This Jared Israel did with justice, because Benny Morris wrote a fraudulent history of the War of 1948, where Morris literally made up stuff in order to attack the Israeli Jews with the accusation that they had supposedly had a policy of ethnic cleansing against the Arabs. In Jared Israel’s judgment, this makes Benny Morris “worse than Arafat.” Here is his reasoning:

“It was [Benny Morris’s] lies, his manufactured ‘scholarship,’ which was picked up and spread worldwide by an eager media, and which poisoned the thinking of millions of people against Israel. Here was a Jewish scholar, supposedly driven by a passion for truth wherever it might lead, who accused Israel of terrible crimes. I was one of the people affected by Morris.

In large measure it was because of him that — and I am ashamed to have to say this — I once supported the PLO.

When I read [historian Efraim] Karsh [who unmasked Benny Morris] and realized Morris had lied — not made mistakes, but fabricated evidence — I was sickened. Morris’ lies were criminal, just as much as if he had attacked Israel with bombs. He helped undercut worldwide disgust for Palestinian terror; he helped create the political basis for a Palestinian terror state next door to Israel. Morris is responsible, like Yasser Arafat, for the murder of thousands of Israelis. But Arafat is not an Israeli Jew. Morally, Morris is worse than Arafat.”

In the middle of a terrorist war against the Israeli Jews, Benny Morris wrote lies that help the terrorists who murder innocent Jews, and which make the defense of Israel difficult. In Jared Israel’s opinion, this makes him “worse than Arafat” because “Arafat is not an Israeli Jew.”

Well, as bad as Benny Morris is, what Stephen Wise did is worse. Stephen Wise energetically sabotaged the defense of desperate European Jews who were being slaughtered by Hitler during the Holocaust, even as they were being slaughtered; in other words, Stephen Wise materially assisted one of the greatest catastrophes ever to befall humankind. In Jared Israel’s view, the fact that Stephen Wise was Jewish should increase, not decrease, his guilt. At least this would be consistent with the way he has judged Benny Morris. This would then make Stephen Wise, according to Jared Israel’s standards, worse than Adolf Hitler.

So Jared Israel has attempted to defend a man who, according to his own published standards, is worse than Adolf Hitler. Anybody who thinks that I am exaggerating is invited to read my article on Stephen Wise.

The reason that I wrote my piece on Stephen Wise is that there is widespread ignorance about him among Jews, in part because the organizations that he founded, such as the World Jewish Congress, are powerful in the world of today’s Jews, and these organizations have therefore kept most Jews from understanding what he did. Another reason is that current Jewish leaders, who inherited Wise’s position of leadership and even his specific institutional offices, are behaving much in the manner of Stephen Wise, as I have explained in a companion piece: http://www.hirhome.com/israel/leaders2.htm

Unless the Jewish people wake up to this, such Jewish ‘leaders’ will once again succeed in sabotaging the defense of the Jewish people, and we will once again face Catastrophe — all of us, not just the Jews, because when antisemites acquire enough power to kill millions of Jews, as they did in WWII, everybody else pays a cost, too.

Finally, concerning the email that Jared Israel has characterized as a threat (see Comment #42), I certainly did send it, but it is not a threat. I was within my rights to post the paragraph in question at the bottom of my demonstration that he is wrong about Nathan Weinstock. But I didn’t, not right away. Why? Because without that final paragraph, my demonstration that Jared Israel is wrong about Nathan Weinstock is a celebration of Jared Israel’s work, and not yet an open attack on him. The reason I wrote my piece like that is that I wanted to give Jared Israel an opportunity to make a public retraction. He has refused this opportunity, and so I have now posted the paragraph.

Francisco Gil-White

===========================================