Denying the Holocaust in Iran

"The aim of this conference is not to deny or confirm the Holocaust," Iran's foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in a welcome address to a conference that the government of Iran sponsored this week. I must find my self in agreement with Mottaki's apparent confusion over the whole issue of hosting a global gathering of international rightwing, far rightwing and ultra orthodox Nazi's, most of whom are so xenophobic as to be convinced that a Muslim is at the very least a threat to 'white' standards and at worst think all Muslims should be exterminated in prison camps that are suspiciously similar to the ones that they have come to deny. The very act of inviting such a horrible crew into the heart of such a strong Muslim country must have given Mottaki a headache at the very least. Still his president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was quite adamant why he wanted them to arrive in his country. Declaring that he was certain that Israel would soon implode in much the same way as the old communists of the CCCP did, he threw his arms wide to, as the press puts it, to 'some of Europe's and Americas best know holocaust deniers.'

For those who are a little confused about this term, to be a holocaust denier is to be irrationally convinced that the National Socialist Party of Germany was a bunch of rather gentle and forward thinking types who did not exterminate any Jews, gypsies, trade unionists, communists or socialists. To prove that they can multi-task with the best of them, a holocaust denier also needs to be convinced that the Jewish race needs to be exterminated and that if the Nazi's were too nice to do the job, then they were quite up to the task. David Irving, a rather strange historian, for instance holds with the reinventing of Hitler as progressive and with the removal of Jews from his home country, England. David Duke, leader of that progressive force in America, The Klu Klux Klan, is convinced that Jews form an unholy alliance with black people to take over the world. Both David's agree that the slaughter of six million men, woman and children did not take place.

How then does it come to be that Iran, a powerful voice for a minority branch of the Muslim faith, invite a group of people whose opinions would be the laughing stock of the west, were it not for the tragic horror implicit in them, and whose public remarks have been declared a pernicious branch of racial hate, to come and give them the low down on an event that occurred in Europe 60 years ago.

Sadly the joke is on the Zionists in Israel. The disgusting tactics of this country over the last ten years. Its abject denial of human rights, its apartheid system against Palestinians and its monstrous war crimes in Lebanon have shocked a world. The question of how a nation that was almost destroyed by the holocaust, can turn around and in its place use exactly the same tactics as the Nazi's is almost unanswerable. Israel's abuse of human rights has laid the Jewish faith open to become fair game to those misguided and fringe lunatics of the far right as they form an unlikely alliance with hard line, and sometimes fanatical, right wing thinkers of the Muslim faith. United only by hatred, hatred of the Jewish faith and hatred of each other, they can monopolise headline space in serious papers.

Perhaps it would be best if the media of the world simply laughed at the stupidity. And it would be nice if this was all it was. Unfortunately a lot of money and power was behind this conference and from conferences such as this come resolutions and actions. These resolutions can only strengthen those who hate differences so much. Perhaps we should all condemn both the conference and the strategies employed by Israel. Both take us a few more steps towards the horror and bloodshed that we all hoped had died out in Europe some sixty years ago. If I were to adopt a slogan it would be, Never again. Not in Europe, not in Israel and certainly not in Iran.

I will leave you with the impassioned plea of Iran's president as he addressed the holocaust deniers: "The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom." Not, I think, Mr Ahmadinejad, by the likes of David Duke.