(Updated: Originally posted December 12, 2006)
I suppose I need to comment on this event in Iran; however, I am not a denier.
Sad to say, but it happened.
When the Germans and the Jews let out all the records, they will show that mass killings of Jews did occur.
Who knows about the 6 million number?
It's like saying 3,000 dead on 9/11.
Like the Z-man, Philip Zelikow, would understand, cultural acceptance of such things can be ingrained over time, and lead to certain historical connectors in the minds of individuals.
The 6 million figure has become that; however, I find the actual number irrelevant.
Butchery has occurred throughout history, and it is time it stopped!
I am concerned about today.
As I have documented, the Arabs and the Muslims are the NEW JEWS and Israel and the United States (with Britain in tow) need to stop what they are doing to them!
Truthfully, it is our only hope!
Having said that, let's take a look at the conference through the Zionist-controlled prism of the New York Times.
After one year, I am really looking forward to this slam job, knowing what I know now -- how Zio-centric the NYT is!
TEHRAN, Dec. 11 — Iran held a gathering that included Holocaust deniers, discredited scholars and white supremacists from around the world on Monday under the guise of a conference to “debate” the Nazi annihilation of six million Jews. Iran's Foreign Ministry boasted would provide a spirit of scientific inquiry and an airing of diverse views.
Among those representing the United States was the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, whose prepared remarks, issued by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said the gas chambers in which millions perished actually did not exist.
Robert Faurisson, an academic from France, said in his speech that the Holocaust was a myth created to justify the occupation of Palestine, meaning the creation of Israel. That is what Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has frequently claimed.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki of Iran, in an opening speech:
"We hope this will be a beginning for deeper research into different aspects of contemporary history. We are preparing the ground for deeper fact-finding."
Given the biased coverage Ahmadinejad receives, I question the reporting.
I've read his letters and had quite a different reaction than the MSM.
Rasoul Mousavi, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies, in a welcoming speech, said the session would provide an opportunity to discuss the Holocaust “away from Western taboos and the restriction imposed on them in Europe.”
In several European countries, denial of the Holocaust is a crime. An accompanying exhibition also denied the Holocaust. One poster with three photographs showed dead bodies and described accounts of their gassing as a myth. Signs pointed to smiling prisoners freed at the end of the war with the label “truth.”
New captions in Persian on other pictures of corpses described them as victims of a typhus epidemic in Europe, not of the Nazi death machine. Speakers at the conference praised Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments about the Holocaust.
I am struck by the restriction on the cherished western right of free speech, and the virulent reaction to words!
It does make you wonder about the scale of the killings.
Doth protest too much?
Bendikt Frings, 48, a psychologist from Germany, said he believed that Mr. Ahmadinejad was “an honest, direct man,” and had come to the conference to thank the president for what he had initiated:
“We are forbidden to have such a conference in Germany. All my childhood, we waited for something like this.”
Frederick Toben, from Australia, who was jailed for six months in 1999 for his ideas and that there was a court order in Germany to arrest him if he again spoke against the Holocaust:
"[Mr. Ahmadinejad has opened an issue] which is morally and intellectually crippling the Western society. People are imprisoned in Germany for denying the Holocaust.”
Mr. Duke’s speech argued that inventions about what happened to Europe’s Jews were part of a plot:
“Depicting Jews as the overwhelming victims of the Holocaust gave the moral high ground to the Allies as victors of the war and allowed Jews to establish a state on the occupied land of Palestine.”
I never supported Duke's racism (obvious from reading my blog); however, read what he said carefully.
Not denying the killing of Jews, just the way it was used to push the creation of Israel!
I knew a Lebanese man once, and did that ever stick under his craw, I remember that!
Why did they plop the decimated Jews down in an area that had not inflicted crimes against them?
There were also members of anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects in attendance. One Jewish participant in a long black coat and hat wore a badge saying: “A Jew, not a Zionist.”
This totally perplexes me! It's not possible, right?
Some sort of Iranian trick, a prop, right? It's gotta be!
If not, my heart just warmed!
The organizers said they planned for “both sides” to be heard, but none of the speeches collected in the ministry’s book or any of the exhibitions spoke of the reality of the Nazi killing. A CD with the stories of 12 Holocaust survivors was said to be available.
Despite the Iranian pledge of an open inquiry, one Arab author who had hoped to convince Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust occurred said he was denied an Iranian visa at the last minute, barring him from the conference. Khaled Mahameed, an Arab citizen of Israel, said he had looked forward to an intellectual duel with the Iranian leader after sending Ahmadinejad his 300-page book documenting the Holocaust.
Mahameed, a lawyer and amateur historian who argues that Palestinians and the Arab world must accept the historical reality of the Holocaust if they want the international community to listen to their grievances against Israel... Iranian officials, who initially invited him, denied his visa.
Mahameed told the Globe, as he prepared for the conference last week, that his message to Ahmadinejad would be:
"Do not deny or even argue about the authenticity of the Holocaust. By doing this, you are not helping the Palestinian people. You are hurting their cause.''
Mahameed said Palestinians need the world to recognize the 'Naqba,' the Arabic word for "disaster'' that Palestinians commonly use to refer to the founding of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent war in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes, creating a refugee crisis that persists today:
"The world will not see our Naqba before we feel for their Holocaust."
That's too bad; however, did not the American president also turn down a debate offer?
The event has sparked outrage in the West. Germany summoned the Iranian chargé d’affaires to express its anger, and the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, has condemned the conference.
The conference was denounced in advance by the State Department as "disgraceful." The Iranian Jewish community reacted angrily to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments last year and said his words had spread fear among them.
Haround Yashayai, the head of the community:
“We consider the Holocaust as a fact and a disgrace for humanity.”
I agreed once!
I didn't dispute it, and visited the museum in Washington D.C.
I believed!
Some Iranian conservatives appeared embarrassed by the conference.
Asadullah Badamchian, a leader of the conservative Islamic Coalition party who is critical of Ahmadinejad's economic policies, when asked about the timing, gave a tense smile:
"Let me not say anything now."
Holocaust historians, at a separate conference in Berlin yesterday that was backed by the German government and organized to protest the Iranian event, portrayed the Tehran meeting as an attempt to cloak anti-Semitism in scholarly language.
Raul Hilberg, author of the three-volume "The Destruction of the European Jews," told the Berlin conference that historians base accounts of the Holocaust on Nazi records:
"This is not a figment of the imagination. This comes from the Germans themselves, and therefore any denial of these figures is absolutely senseless."
Saeed Laylaz, an economist close to the reformist wing of Islamist politicians, said the conference was aimed at rallying the extreme right-wing vote for national elections in four days for local councils and a powerful clerical assembly that will be the first test of Ahmadinejad's popularity after 16 months in office, and boosting the president's populist appeal in Arab countries, where many people believe that the founding of Israel on what they considered Arab lands in effect punished Arabs for Europe's persecution of Jews.
Oh, political shit behind it all. Like OUR guy!
And that last bit is an interesting point!
Why didn't they make the safe haven in the countries that punished and destroyed the Jews?
I understand the Biblical connections to the land of Zion; however, Jews had been living in peace with Muslims for hundreds of years before 1948.
Farzana Sayid Saidi, 29, an Iranian journalist covering the conference, said she had posted an entry on her blog the night before the conference, sardonically asking:
"What's important for Iran -- denying the Holocaust, or our economic problems? We have no problems in the country, so we're going to review all the historical mistakes of others one by one."
WTF?! Iranians have blogs?
That means they have computers!
I was under the impression that the Iranians were a bunch of primitive, uneducated, raving killers with no technology and their people starving.
Blogs? WTF?
As for reviewing the historical mistakes of others, that's U.S. foreign policy right there!
It was not clear how the speakers were assembled. The institute’s Web site invited scholars and researchers to submit their papers in advance. The Foreign Ministry provided little information about the participants, saying that it feared they would be prosecuted by their countries.
A 2004 book by an American author, Michael Collins Piper, “The New Jerusalem: Zionist Power in America,” was on sale for $20.
Bibliography: "Iran Opens Conference on Holocaust" by Nazila Fathi/New York Times December 12, 2006; "Conference in Iran on Holocaust begins; Attendees mostly deny Nazis killed 6 millions Jews" by Anne Barnard/Boston Globe December 12, 2006
