http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200508\NAT2005080 9b.html Entertainers Urged to Apologize for Nazi Comparisons By Susan Jones CNSNews.com Senior Editor August 09, 2005
(CNSNews.com) - A leading Holocaust Studies institute wants entertainers Harry Belafonte, Dick Gregory, and Woody Allen to retract their recent statements comparing the Bush administration, Israelis, and black conservatives to Nazis. As Cybercast News Service reported, Belafonte over the weekend used a Hitler analogy when asked what impact prominent blacks such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell and current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had on the Bush administration's relations with minorities. "Hitler had a lot of Jews high up in the hierarchy of the Third Reich. Color does not necessarily denote quality, content or value," Belafonte said in an exclusive interview with Cybercast News Service. That's incorrect, said Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which describes itself as a research and education institute focusing on America's response to the Holocaust. "Some entertainers simply don't know much about history," said Medoff. "The fact is that there were no Jews in Hitler's hierarchy; the policies of America and Israel are not similar to those of Hitler; and African-American conservatives are not comparable to Nazis." The Wyman Institute (located at Gratz College in suburban Philadelphia) is urging the three entertainers to publicly retract their "inaccurate and hurtful" remarks about Hitler and the Holocaust. "Such analogies pollute public discourse by trivializing the brutal horrors committed by the Nazis," Medoff said. "Hitler was a maniacal dictator whose regime systematically annihilated six million Jews, and launched a world war that caused the deaths of more than forty million people. How can any reasonable person put Hitler and the Nazis in the same sentence as American or Israeli leaders, or black conservatives?" Comedian Dick Gregory, also interviewed by Cybercast News Service, said that African-American conservatives "have a right to exist, but why would I want to walk around with a swastika on my shirt after the way Hitler done messed it up?" Earlier this summer, comedian and filmmaker Woody Allen told the German magazine Der Spiegel: "The history of the world is like, he kills me, I kill him -- only with different cosmetics and different castings: so in 2001 some fanatics killed some Americans, and now some Americans are killing some Iraqis. And in my childhood, some Nazis killed Jews. And now, some Jewish people and some Palestinians are killing each other." (Der Spiegel, June 20, 2005) See Related Stories: Bush, GOP Called 'Thieves' Who 'Need to be Locked Up' (8 Aug. 2005) Labor Leader Concedes Unions Have Become 'Stale' (8 Aug. 2005) Belafonte's Racial Remarks Prompt Criticism, Anxiety ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <font face=arial size=-1><a href="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12hcgs42p/M=362329.6886306.7839369.3040540/D=groups/S=1705323667:TM/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1123609396/A=2894321/R=0/SIG=11dvsfulr/*http://youthnoise.com/page.php?page_id=1992 ">Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back!</a>.</font> --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
