Thursday - September 03, 2009

Dutch to prosecute Arabs over Holocaust cartoon.  That govt. doesn’t seem to be getting any wiser.

What a truly dumb idea. And what are they gonna get worked up over next?

Is it in bad taste?  You bet it is.  Is it funny?  Not to me it isn’t.  Is it offensive?  Could be to many. So what?
The Dutch, who gave the world PC as I understand it from what I’ve read, just do not understand that the freedom they bang on about even extends to ,,,, those people.  By trying to stifle a dumb cartoon they are only playing into the hands of jerks.  Let it run, ignore it, and chances are it’ll be forgotten as new things take its place in the news.  And yes. More then likely there could be more of the same.

Most people know and understand the holocaust happened.  It was not a figment of anyone’s imagination.  It’s recorded history by the very people who carried it out.  Hard to doubt them in the circumstances.  But wanting to make a legal big deal out of this is just plain wrong. And it’s stupid.

H/T EUROPE NEWS

Dutch to prosecute Arabs over Holocaust cartoon

The Associated Press 02 September 2009
By Toby Sterling

Dutch prosecutors said Wednesday they will charge an Arab cultural group under hate speech laws for publishing a cartoon that suggests the death of 6 million Jews during World War II is a fabrication.

The public prosecutor’s office in the city of Utrecht said the cartoon insults Jews as a group and is therefore an illegal form of discrimination.

Prosecutors plan to press charges for “insulting a group and distributing an insulting image.”

Spokeswoman Mary Hallebeek said the maximum punishment is a year in jail, but a fine of up to euro4,700 ($6,700) is more likely, given that the charges are against the group.

The Dutch arm of the Arab European League said it doesn’t deny the reality of the Holocaust, but published the cartoon on its Web site as an “act of civil disobedience” to highlight a double standard.

AEL chairman Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda argued that prosecutors had not pressed charges against Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders for his film that included cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The cartoon shows two apparently Jewish men standing near a pile of skeletons with a sign that says “Auswitch,” presumably representing the largest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz.

One pokes a bone with a stick and says “I don’t think they’re Jews” and the other answers, “We have to get to the six million somehow.”

Ronny Naftaniel of the Center for Documentation on Israel, which filed a complaint against the cartoon, said Jews had nothing to do with the Muhammad cartoons, so it didn’t make sense for the league to retaliate in this way.

“Imagine if Dutch Jews insulted Muslims every time they heard an anti-Semitic remark. What kind of perverse world would we be living in?” he said.

After a strong immigration wave in the 1990s, Muslims make up around 6 percent of the 16.5 million Dutch population.

A popular backlash against immigration has dominated politics here since 2001, and it intensified in 2004, when filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered by a Muslim radical over perceived religious insults.

That further fueled debate over immigrant crime and the need to preserve traditional Dutch values.

AN AP STORY

Posted by peiper     on 09/03/2009 at 12:38 PM   
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