ACSC´s report on nazi infiltrations in the field of solidarity with Palestine

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Solidarity with Palestine in Spain (09-6-2001)

Informe del CSCA sobre infiltraciones nazi-fascistas en la solidaridad con Palestina

Documento-1.pdf
Documento en formato PDF de 140 páginas (tamaño: 612K) con la totalidad de los correos enviados hasta el día 20 de septiembre por "Quirón Alvar" a la lista de correo electrónico al-Awda-español

Informe del CSCA

In a communiqué issued on September 6th, the Arab Cause Solidarity Committee expressed its concerns about the participation in the Al Awda Español list of individuals and/or organizations with nazi-fascist ideologies. In two different notes issued by the moderator of this list, Mr. Ahmed Yacoub denied these accusations and threatened the Arab Cause Solidarity Committee. The ACSC has since decided to publish this report in which we further explain the accusations that were first formulated in the September 6th communiqué.

ACSC's report on nazi infiltrations in the field of solidarity with Palestine

Arab Cause Solidarity Committee
Madrid, September 24th 2001

I. Report about the messages circulating in the 'Al Awda-español' list

1. The Awda-español list was launched on October 23rd, 2000, not even a month after the beginning of the second Intifada. The moderator of this list is Mr. Ahmed Yacoub. As we understand it, Al Awda´s moderators in every country are required to monitor the messages sent to the different groups. Al Awda International bylaws clearly state that the list should guarantee that the messages contained in the list contribute to the ends of the organization as such, namely the recognition of the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes. Despite all this, Mr. Yacoub has allowed during the past year the distribution of messages containing clearly and unquestionably nazi-fascists, racist, and anti-Jewish comments.

2. Out of the many participants in the list, special attention should be paid to Mr. "Quirón Alvar" due to the inclusion at the end of every message links to other interrelated web pages. These pages have an unquestionably nazi-fascist content (particularly obvious to those who are familiar with the history and development of fascist movements in Spain and Europe). They also contain links to other pages belonging to extremist right-wing Spanish and international organizations.

3. The first message sent by Mr. Quirón Alvar to the list is message no. 78, dated February 5th 2001. The messages signed as "Quirón" constitute about 65% of the totality of messages sent to the list. The other great portion of messages are those of the moderator of this list, who periodically sends out news and other related pieces of information translated from news wires and newspapers. The limited number of contributors is presumably so low due in part to the withdrawal of some members of this list who withdrew from this list after maintaining several discussions with Mr. Quirón about the filo-nazi contents of most of his messages.

4. The ACSC has elaborated for its Spanish readers a complete report containing some of the messages sent by Mr. Quirón in which the nazi, fascist and anti-Jewish content of the messages is clearly exposed. Some extracts of the messages go as follows:

"It is important for Palestinians and pro-Palestinian people to distinguish [between Jews], but not against good Jews and bad Jews, as such a thing would be like making a distinction between good venom and bad venom: venom is bad as it is, without any distinctions" (message dated February 13th)

"This is truly amazing: what is happening now is what we have known for a long time: wherever the Jews step with their hooves, they destroy everything (February 22nd)

"Now we know that the false State of Israel will be destroyed by itself. But it is only thanks to such glorious and important things as the Intifada that we will see the end of the Tribe [Jews] in Palestine. After that, finishing with it in the rest of the world will be a matter of getting people to act. In the end, world public opinion will know what does it mean to be a Jew and will realize that they are not a tribe, nor a race, nor anything of what they have said they are; they are simply bad people that have sown evil since the first day of their existence until the last" (April 3rd)

"The are not Israelis, Israelites, Hebrew, not even human or animal. They are only Jews, the Tribe of Satan that just as they did 2600 years are doing the same thing, only now they are doing it armed to their teeth" (April 6th)

"Let the whole world know: this [in reference to the news of a new massacre in Palestine], did not even happen during the Second World War, and of course not even at the hands of the Nazis. Only a human subspecies would be capable of doing all this: Jews. Long live the truth! Death to the Jewish assassins!" (April 21st)

"I am fed up with repeating one time and another that I am NOT a Nazi not anything that resembles it at least from the point of view from which this is always referred to, an untruthful reference invented precisely by those who are killing and destroying, that is, the Jews. Nazism, I repeat, was a political system based on National Socialism that is: it had a national side, whichever nation we may be talking about although it took place among the German nation, and a socialist side, a social and economic organization system based on the collective or state run property and administration of collective means of production as well as the regulation by the State of economic and social activities as well as the distribution of resources etc etc. It was this that the mythology and the simple lies called all this "anti-Semitism" that is, "enemies of the sons of Sem" talked about in the Bible and all that crap" (June 2nd)

"Well, if all this makes me a neo-nazi oh well, what a terrible thing! () With regards to the Nazi solution to the problem of Palestine: it is quite confusing; the Germans were waiting for the result of the conversations of the enemies about what to do with the Jews. Hitler´s "final solution" was VERY simple: to send Jews to the Island of Madagascar, because they were NOT supposed to be in Europe because of their many attacks, such as getting together with Bolchevism and communism bad thing. There has NOT been a most serious crime against humanity than communism. This is not often said, because they have imposed on us the idea that it was Nazism. Fashion changes" (August 10th)

"It is only until you [Jews] realize that you will have to suffer, and this time you will suffer a Holocaust which you yourselves have invoked upon yourselves: if you sow evil, you will reap Evil" (August 29th)

"[We should] ask for an official document that explain how the [Nazi] "holocaust" was a Jewish lie () But NO, this has only been requested by Arabs, well, Palestinians, because they are the one suffering (and this time truly) a Holocaust and not only that, but the evil and simple destruction of their people in all sorts of ways" (September 7th)

The previous message dated September 7th was sent and signed by Mr. Quirón Alvar in reference to the World Conference Against Racism in Durban after the first communiqué of complaint was sent by ACSC against this.

Mr. Quirón Alvar´s opinions would be anecdotic were it not for the fact that they were expressed in a list serve that is technically devoted to the solidarity with Palestine, a field proudly known by its progressive, democratic, and anti-fascist character nationwide. During the year 2001 such opinions were neither contested nor condemned by the moderator Mr. Ahmed Yacoub, who allowed the distribution of such messages under the pretext of defending "freedom of expression". Mr Yacoub equally did not defend nor did he support those members of the list that were subjected to the aggressive responses and threats coming from Mr. Quirón Alvar, many of which finally opted for abandoning the list.

II. About links to other pages

The messages sent by "Mr. Quirón Alvar" include at the end links to one or more interrelated web pages with explicit fascist contents, as well as links to right-wing organizations both Spanish and foreign. These web pages are the following:

(a) http://quiron_alvar.tripod.com This page leads to a "Foro de discusión" (Discussion list) and a page called "Palestinian cause". The index page shows at its end a Palestinian flag together with a pre-constitutional Spanish flag (which was used during the dictatorial regime of general Franco).

(b) The representation of a Palestinian flag together with the pre-constitutional Spanish flag is in fact a link to Mr. Alvar´s own discussion list, whose objectives are made explicit with these words:

"This discussion list is devoted to all the Spanish warriors and patriots and to promote the traditional values and glorious History of our beloved Spanish Nation. This list is also a meeting point for those wishing to inform about acts, mobilizations, ideas, opinions, and websites our moto, Spain: Great, Free, United"

These mottos and ideas are, when read in the context of Spanish and European history, immediately identified with the most extreme organizations of the Spanish fascist right-wing.

Similarly, the fact that the Palestinian flag is used to link to this fascist iniciative is in itself quite disturbing.

From the Index of the page called "Primera Puerta" it is possible to have access to the "Kronos Club", which equally has a link to the Palestinian Cause page. Its opening motto is: "NO to lies: if the Holocaust were true, why were there so many survivors? NO TO ZIONISM".

Quirón´s site "Causa Palestina" (Palestinian Cause) contains links to other organizations. Three of the links belong to organizations of solidarity with Palestine, while as the next link brings the visitor to the page of Resistencia (Resistance), presented by Quirón as "A page against all the established with an article in favor of the Intifada". This page, however, is a neo-Nazi page.

From the page of Resistencia, the visitor can also link with the pages of Islamic Palestinian and Lebanese groups such as Hezbollah, Islamic Resistance, and Hamas (although some of the links are not even the links to the official sites of these organizations, but "parasite" pages that use the names of Hamas and Hezbollah without having any connection to these organizations). From Resistencia, it is also possible to arrive to pages belonging to organizations of the extremist Spanish right-wing sectors. Right-wing and neo-Nazi organizations have long shown their "solidarity" with the Palestinian people from what are anti-Jewish (not anti-Zionist) positions, using a discourse that does not go so well with the secular, democratic, and non-confessional discourse of Arab and more specifically Palestinian nationalism.

"Red Vértice" is also the most complete web-ring in which several Nazi groups (Spanish, European, and Latin-American) are acting. From Campo Hobbit the visitor can have access to links that lead to the pages of the right-wing extremist Maronite Lebanese militias that carried out the massacres against of Sabra and Chatila in 1982 against Palestinian civilians.

III. Conclusion

After visiting numerous web pages and sites and analysing the messages contained in the list serve, the ACSC would like to point out the following:

a) It is difficult to argue that the so-called Quirón Alvar is one individual only. Nevertheless, due to the similarity in style of all the messages sent to Al Awda and to the list of the Palestinian Community in Valencia, this could be possible. In any case it is quite clear that ideologically and in terms of organizative capacities he belongs to the most extreme and radical extreme right-wing sectors both inside Spain and internationally. The ACSC does not hesitate in affirming that the Awda Español list has suffered from an infiltration coming from the nazi-fascist sector.

b) Whether this may be an individual or the action of a Nazi-fascist organization, its actions respond to the well-known Nazi formula of acting in the fields in which they believe they can attract new followers:

- in the field of solidarity with the Arab world and Palestine, substituting the anti-Zionist discourse denouncing the State of Israel with an anti-Jewish discourse that justifies the Nazi holocaust;

- in the field of a most basic and primitive anti-Americanism that has nothing to do with anti-imperialism and is only a defence of the old-time Arian racist European discourse, equally imperialist:

- there is also the confusion and ideological non-definition as well as the formal rejection of bourgeois traditionalism in what seems to be an attempt to attract new followers from the working classes and youth disenchanted with the Left.

The Arab Cause Solidarity Committee firmly believes that in the movement of internationalist solidarity with the Palestinian people, it is necessary to distinguish between "Jew" and "Israeli", between "Judaism" and "Zionism", and most of all, between "anti-semitism" (or "anti-Judaism") and "anti-Zionism". In its 15 years of continuous work of solidarity with the Palestinian people the ACSC has always been extremely careful (and so it demands) with the use of this terminology. Similarly, the ACSC maintains a solid relationship with non-Zionist leftist groups inside Israel. In supporting the Palestinian people and their rights, not everything is permissible.

With this report, the ACSC considers that it has been sufficiently proven that the al-Awda Español list has been used to distribute explicitly Nazi, fascist, racist, and genocidal contents by individuals or groups connected to Nazi-fascists organizations. The ACSC considers that it has been established with enough clarity that the moderator of this list has tolerated and still tolerates this action. Unfortunately, this has allowed for the first time inside the country for Nazi and fascist groups to appear in the field of solidarity with Palestine. Mr. Ahmed Yacoub has hence incurred in a serious political responsibility as well as a legal one, because the list he moderates serves as a platform for the distribution of racist comments that deny the Nazi holocaust and other genocidal messages, which are all punishable by the Spanish legislation.

Hence, the ACSC would like to express the following:

1. We ask the moderator of Awda Español list to prohibit the publication of new messages signed by "Quirón Alvar" or any other messages that have a racist or Nazi-like content.

2. We ask Mr. Yacoub to rectify his position, publicly apologizing to the ACSC for the content of his two notes which were made public recently in which he negated the accusations relating to the infiltration of the list by Nazi and fascist elements.

3. We ask the Palestinian Community in Valencia to withdraw from its page the links to pages of "Quirón Alvar".

4. In order to build a united and progressive field in the field of solidarity for Palestine, leaving aside past discrepancies and basing our call in our mutual belonging to progressive left of this country, we ask all organizations who have aligned themselves with Al Awda in the past months to reconsider their position and to ask Mr. Yacoub to put an end to the distribution of Nazi, fascist, and racist contents.

5. We ask the Palestinian communities in Spain to get involved and claim the democratic principles that have always inspired the Palestinian national struggle.

Madrid, September 24th 2001

Arab Cause Solidarity Committee