Alfred Lilienthal eulogized

"j." formerly the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, currently has an article that goes about "Remembering the foremost Jewish anti-Zionist." He "loved San Francisco," hated Israel, and wrote that the Diary of Anne Frank "could not possibly have been the work of a teenager."

It was a simple death notice in the Washington Post: “Author, and Middle East expert, Alfred M. Lilienthal, age 94, died peacefully Monday, October 6, at his home in Washington, D.C.”

He may have died peacefully, but Alfred’s life was hardly peaceful. I know because I was his cousin, as well as his friend. [...]

Alfred once worked for the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. They let him go because his views were so passionately pro-Arab and anti-Israel that even fellow ACJ members were offended. In later years, he offered to endow a chair at one of his alma maters, Cornell University. But he attached so many strings that Cornell turned down the gift.

He spoke at anti-Zionist gatherings in Libya and Iraq in the 1970s, and championed the United Nations "Zionism is racism" resolution in 1975. Sadly, he also became involved with Holocaust deniers, going so far as to write, "'The Diary of Anne Frank' may be a fraud. ...Any informed literary inspection would have shown it could not possibly have been the work of a teenager."

Alfred loved San Francisco and traveled to the city with great frequency. As his own activism increased, San Francisco was a natural destination as it was a center of anti-Zionism. The ACJ claimed that one-third of its national membership was from San Francisco. [...]

The article doesn't quite note the glee with which Neo-Nazis hawked his writings. "I am glad his views did not prevail," the author concludes.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Tags: Lilienthal, anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, San Francisco