"Iran hosts Holocaust conference"

[MarcO]

CNN

Iran hosts Holocaust conference

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran on Monday opened a two-day conference exploring the validity of the Nazi Holocaust, a move that has sparked outrage among Jewish groups.

One such group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, planned to counter the event with a teleconference showcasing stories from Holocaust survivors.

Manouchehr Mohammadi, Iran's deputy foreign minister for research, told Iran's state-run news agency, IRNA, that Tehran's leaders would accept that the Holocaust occurred if scholars attending the conference could prove that the Nazi regime exterminated 6 million Jews during World War II.

But Mohammadi said Iran does not deny the murders and damages caused by Hitler's genocide, nor that 50 million people were the victims of his racism, according to IRNA.

He said the conference is to be held in response to international outrage at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated assertion that the Holocaust is a myth. (Full story)

"If the Holocaust is a historical event, then is it not warranted to be looked into and researched?" Mohammadi asked rhetorically.

Because of the negative reactions to the nature of the conference, Iran has not announced the names of the participants, but said it would include Jewish scholars and rabbis, IRNA reported.

No one from Israel will attend the conference, which began at 9:30 a.m. (1 a.m. ET), Mohammadi said.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center announced on its Web site that it would convene a videoconference of 70 Holocaust survivors whose personal accounts are intended to counter the Tehran conference.

The center said the conference will be attended by "close to 70 Holocaust revisionists and deniers."

The videoconference will be held at the center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles beginning at 9 a.m. (noon ET), and will be linked to the center's New York and Toronto offices.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center, rejected the Tehran conference as one of several attempts by Iran to deny the validity of the Holocaust.

"This is an outrage, an insult to humanity, that a country could stoop so low as to deny the greatest crime in the history of civilization," Hier said.

"That is why we gathered together Holocaust survivors who will counter these bigots and revisionist claims by giving first-hand accounts of what they actually experienced and witnessed and how their lives were shattered."

Mohammadi said if Iran accepts the validity of the Holocaust, the next question examined will be, "Why should the Palestinians pay for the Holocaust?"

Mohammadi said Tehran also plans to host conferences to look into what he described as genocide by Europeans against Native Americans, Africans and the Palestinians.

[Hux]

Is this really "politics"?

[MarcO]

sorry, should this go in the Slip section?

Maybe the food forum?

ugh. Down with these damn "forums"!

[SmoothedShredder]

I vote it belongs... it's especially relevant becasue of how the US is planning to negotiate with Iran and Syria on how the US is going to leave Iraq. I think as Canadians we should atleast be aware of these negotiations, even if we are not sitting at the table. It's essentially a Foreign Policy issue... we have to deal with them, so can we deal with them when they do stuff like this? Perhaps they'll stop doing this when we actaully deal with them, instead of ignoring them, and telling them what to do or not do with their Uranium.

I'm looking forward to what the other 7 people in the Politics forum have to say!

[Birdy]

hey now! i'd say we're at least up to 10 these days.

"If the Holocaust is a historical event, then is it not warranted to be looked into and researched?" Mohammadi asked rhetorically.

what a sticky situation. i hope that one day this could be true, without this sort of response:

"That is why we gathered together Holocaust survivors who will counter these bigots and revisionist claims by giving first-hand accounts of what they actually experienced and witnessed and how their lives were shattered."

[MarcO]

Perhaps Mike could start a Holocaust forum?

[bradm]

Iran hosts Holocaust conference

"If the Holocaust is a historical event, then is it not warranted to be looked into and researched?" Mohammadi asked rhetorically.

I'd like to see their response to, say, Israel hosting a conference to debate the historical evidence for Muhammad and the events detailed in the Qur'an.

Aloha,

Brad

[Birdy]

should they not be entitled to host the conference though?

[AdamH]

Iran hosts Holocaust conference

"If the Holocaust is a historical event, then is it not warranted to be looked into and researched?" Mohammadi asked rhetorically.

I'd like to see their response to, say, Israel hosting a conference to debate the historical evidence for Muhammad and the events detailed in the Qur'an.

Aloha,

Brad

How about this: "Palestinians: an ethnic minority or a bunch of displaced arabs clinging to an identity that presents them as hard done by?"

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Or, "Palestinians: hard done-by Arabs that much of the Arabic world doesn't actually give enough of a shit about to get down and take real care of except for cheap rhetorical effect"?

[AdamH]

It can get a little hazy whether we're talking about Jews, Israel or the holocaust.

Fortunately Iran's Head of State has made his stance on all three quite clear:

Iran's President says Israel's days are numbered

and from the same article:

Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War Two as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map," launched another verbal attack on the Jewish state

[d_rawk]

Blitzer interviews David Duke about his participation at the conference in Tehran

[SmoothedShredder]

Wow. Heavy Shit. So where does everyones 'truthiness' level lie?

[Biggest Fan]

I tried to let the thread die but I could'nt -n- for that I'm sorry. Anyways I was hoping to get some opinions on the subject.

A little while back I was watching an interview with Netenyaho ( I'm sure that's not how you spell it) and he was pretty worked up with their open hostility/developing nuclear program. I do not know what I would do if I was Israel with respect to this issue. Please insert opinion HERE...

As far as Israel and the Palestinians, I was reading a book by Elias Chacour {(Blood Brothers) very much worth looking into} which only made me more upset with what is going on. The formation of Israel reminds me a lot of the growth of the USA with relation the Native Americans. We cannot turn back the clock but we have to 'live up to what we did'. I'd like to hear more from Israel about the issue of the Palestinian refugees and the growth of illegal settlements. Again insert opinion HERE...

P.S. Thanks for the link the the You. It was a pretty tight race for who sounded like the bigger idiot (never having been a fan of either).

P.P.S. Anybody have any suggestions to where I could find some good chat/message boards about historical issues related to the Bible. No kidding.

*Sorry about the BLOG (-n- bad spelling).

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Will have to mull over those points....

I just ran across this piece from the LA Times, which I think puts things well.

Opinion: Op-Ed

Why they deny the Holocaust

On top of nearly constant anti-Semitic propaganda, much of the Muslim world hasn't even heard of it.

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali, AYAAN HIRSI ALI, a Somali immigrant who served in the parliament of the Netherlands until earlier this year, is the author of "Infidel," an autobiography to be published in February.

December 16, 2006

ONE DAY IN 1994, when I was living in Ede, a small town in Holland, I got a visit from my half-sister. She and I were both immigrants from Somalia and had both applied for asylum in Holland. I was granted it; she was denied. The fact that I got asylum gave me the opportunity to study. My half-sister couldn't.

In order for me to be admitted to the university I wanted to attend, I needed to pass three courses: a language course, a civics course and a history course. It was in the preparatory history course that I, for the first time, heard of the Holocaust. I was 24 years old at that time, and my half-sister was 21.

In those days, the daily news was filled with the Rwandan genocide and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. On the day that my half-sister visited me, my head was reeling from what happened to 6 million Jews in Germany, Holland, France and Eastern Europe.

I learned that innocent men, women and children were separated from each other. Stars pinned to their shoulders, transported by train to camps, they were gassed for no other reason than for being Jewish.

I saw pictures of masses of skeletons, even of kids. I heard horrifying accounts of some of the people who had survived the terror of Auschwitz and Sobibor. I told my half-sister all this and showed her the pictures in my history book. What she said was as awful as the information in my book.

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed."

She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.

Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and for epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn't want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.

Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference this week denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of it.

The total number of Jews in the world today is estimated to be about 15 million, certainly no more than 20 million. On the other hand, the world's Muslim population is estimated to be between 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion. And not only is this population rapidly growing, it is also very young.

What's striking about Ahmadinejad's conference is the (silent) acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad? Why are the 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this?

Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations, the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed — that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such? In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he shall not want for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish.

The world needs to be informed again and again about the Holocaust — not only in the interest of the Jews who survived and their offspring but in the interest of humanity.