MADRID (AP) -- A Spanish newspaper is defending its plans to publish an interview this weekend with a British writer who denies the Holocaust, despite a furious complaint from Israel.
The center-right daily El Mundo plans to run the interview Saturday with David Irving, who served 13 months in prison in Austria after being convicted there in 2006 over charges he denied the Nazis exterminated 6 million Jews...
[Israeli Ambassador] Schutz told The Associated Press that Irving lacks any credibility and does not deserve to be in the same interview lineup. It includes Ian Kershaw, a Briton who is a leading biographer of Hitler, and Avner Shalev, director of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel.
"To put Irving on the same platform with these people may create an impression, and as a matter of fact it does, that he has the same stand while everyone who knows something about the issue knows that David Irving is nothing but ... a con man," the ambassador said.
In the upcoming interview, Irving does not deny the Holocaust, Laviana said. Rather, he stresses that the Allies are to blame for "looking the other way" and ignoring the Nazi genocide, he told the AP...
The calm in the western Negev continues. Hamas refrains from firing rockets into Israel and its senior figures emphasize for Western ears its policy of restraint. Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha told a New York Times correspondent that “the fighters needed a break and the people needed a break.” According to the New York Times report, the decision to suspend rocket fire was “partly the result of popular pressure,” and occurred because people were questioning the value of the rockets, which they regarded as relatively ineffective. 
