International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust

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The "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust" was a two-day meeting in Tehran, Iran, that began on 11 December 2006. It was hosted by the Iranian government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki stated that it had been organized "neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust... [but] to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue." [1] The meeting took place shortly after Iran's International Holocaust Cartoon Competition, which was sponsored by Tehran's government-owned newspaper Hamshahri . Most of the invitees were far-right activists, several of whom had faced legal charges or imprisonment in Western countries for their advocacy of neo-Nazism, Holocaust denial, or Islamic extremism.

Contents

Noteworthy non-Iranian participants in the meeting included American politician David Duke, who was the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan from 1974 to 1980; Australian author Fredrick Töben, who founded the Holocaust denial group Adelaide Institute in 1995 and was later imprisoned in Germany in 1999, the United Kingdom in 2008, and Australia in 2009; and Moroccan ex-military officer Ahmed Rami, who participated in the 1972 Moroccan coup attempt before claiming asylum in Sweden, where he founded Radio Islam in 1987 and was later imprisoned in 1990. The meeting was also attended by Yisroel Dovid Weiss and five other Haredi Jews belonging to Neturei Karta, which is a Jewish anti-Zionist organization that is primarily active in Europe and North America, as well as by Moshe Aryeh Friedman.

Among the meeting's top subjects of discussion was the State of Israel, particularly on the part of Ahmadinejad, who remarked that the country would be "wiped out the same way the Soviet Union was" in his opening speech to the attendees. [2] It was widely criticized by Holocaust scholars as "an attempt to cloak antisemitism in scholarly language" and drew condemnation from many countries and organizations, including the United Nations, the Holy See, and the European Union. [3] [4] [5] [6] Numerous Jewish organizations also specifically condemned Neturei Karta's participation in the meeting, with the Chief Rabbinate of Israel calling for the Jewish attendees to be censured by Jews worldwide. Within Iran, the meeting was criticized by the country's sole Jewish member of parliament Maurice Motamed, as well as by many student protesters against Ahmadinejad's visiting speech at Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran. Several of the world's leading academic and non-profit organizations cut all ties with their Iranian counterparts following the meeting, citing its pseudo-scholarly presentation of false information that denied the Nazi atrocities that caused the Holocaust death toll. [7]

Counter-conferences were held to focus on a historical analysis of the Holocaust and stories from Holocaust survivors, including the Bali Holocaust Conference, which was organized by Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid to combat what he called Ahmadinejad's "falsified history" in 2007. Academic and media coverage of the Iranian conference largely highlighted its lack of qualified historians and researchers, as well as its vindication of Nazism and of individuals who were overtly affiliated with similarly racist and antisemitic ideologies and organizations, such as the American Ku Klux Klan, the Swedish National Socialist Front, the French National Front, and the German National Democratic Party, among others.

Background

According to Iran, the aim of the forum was to "find answers to questions about the Holocaust" posed by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. [8] [9] Since coming to power in 2005, Ahmadinejad had previously engaged in Holocaust denial. [10]

Manouchehr Mottaki, then foreign minister of the Ahmadinejad government, said the purpose of the conference was not to reject or accept the historical reality of the Holocaust. [11] [10] Instead, along with other Iranian officials, he stated that the conference was intended to "create an opportunity for thinkers who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust". [12] Its objective was to create "suitable scientific research so that the hidden and unhidden angles of this most important political issue of the 20th century becomes more transparent." [10] [13]

According to Mottaki: "If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt. And if, during this review, it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?" [14]

According to scholar Jacob Eder, the conference was an example of an effort to reject Holocaust universality as a form of European American imperialism. The conference served not only to question and deny Israel's right to exist [15] and to provide a forum for Holocaust denial but was also an attack on the West and its values more generally. [16]

Attendees

There were 67 attendees from 30 countries, according to the Iranian foreign ministry. [17] The AFP described attendees as a host of Western revisionists who doubted that the killing of six million Jews took place. [9]

Attendees included:

Israeli Arab lawyer permission rescinded

Israeli-Arab lawyer Khaled Kasab Mahameed was invited to attend the conference by the Iranian government, who rescinded his permission after it was discovered that he holds Israeli citizenship. [27] Iran does not grant visas to Israelis. According to Ha'aretz , Mahameed intended "to tell the conference that the Holocaust did happen and that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's position of Holocaust denial is wrong". He stated:

Everything that happened must be internalized and the facts must not be denied... It is the obligation of all Arabs and all Muslims to understand the significance of the Holocaust. If their goal is to understand their adversary, they must understand the Holocaust... The naqba [disaster] the Palestinians experienced in 1948 is small compared to the Holocaust, but the political implications of the Holocaust have made its terrors a burden on the Palestinian people alone... The Holocaust has all the reasons for the creation of the Arab–Israeli conflict, but also has potential to bring peace." [28]

Conference

The event opened on December 11, 2006, and was organized and hosted by the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs's Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS). [10]

The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying: "The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom [and] elections should be held among Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner." [29]

Papers delivered included "A Challenge to the Official Holocaust Story," and "Holocaust, the Achilles Heel of a Primordial Jewish Trojan." [9]

At the conference, Renouf claimed that the "terrible things" that happened to the Jews in World War II were brought upon by Jewish leaders. [23]

David Duke gave a speech in which he said: "In Europe you can freely question, ridicule and deny Jesus Christ. The same is true for the prophet Muhammad, and nothing will happen to you. But offer a single question of the smallest part of the Holocaust and you face prison." [14]

During a presentation, Jan Bernhoff, a computer teacher from Sweden, claimed that only 300,000 Jews had been killed as opposed to six million. [30]

Fredrick Töben told the conference: "Minds are being switched off to the Holocaust dogma as it is being sold as a historical fact and yet we are not able to question it. This is mental rape." [31]

Aharon Cohen told the conference: "There is no doubt whatsoever, that during World War II there developed a terrible and catastrophic policy and action of genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against the Jewish people, confirmed by innumerable eyewitness survivors and fully documented again and again...The figure of six million is regularly quoted. One may wish to dispute this actual figure, but the crime was just as dreadful whether the millions of victims numbered six million, five million or four million. The method of murder is also irrelevant, whether it was by gas chamber, firing squads or whatever. The evil was the same. It would be a terrible affront to the memory of those who perished to belittle the guilt of the crime in any way. [25]

Richard Krege maintained diesel exhaust gas chambers to be an "outright lie," and showed a model of the Treblinka extermination camp to illustrate this. He claimed that up to 10,000 people died in the camp, but of disease, instead of planned extermination. He said, "There is no scientific proof to show that this place was an extermination camp. All that exists are the words of some people." Historians believe that at least 800,000 prisoners were murdered in the camp. [9]

On the second and final day of the conference, Ahmadinejad announced that the conference decided to set up a "fact-finding commission" led by Mohammad-Ali Ramin to determine whether the Holocaust had happened. The commission would also prepare the next Holocaust conference. According to Ramin, the commission would be located in Tehran, but would eventually move to Berlin. [8] [32]

Reactions

The conference was widely condemned as antisemitic and Holocaust denial. [33]

Iran

Iran's sole Jewish member of parliament Maurice Motamed said: "Holding this conference after having a competition of cartoons about the Holocaust has put a lot of pressure on Jews all over the world;" [11] and that "The conference has upset Iran's 25,000-strong Jewish community." [18]

Though reformist demonstrations had been rare since Ahmadinejad took office, a few dozen students burnt pictures of him and chanted "death to the dictator" as Ahmadinejad gave a speech at Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran on 12 December 2006. [31] One student activist said the protest was against the "shameful" Holocaust conference, and added that Ahmadinejad had "brought to our country Nazis and racists from around the world." [31] Ahmadinejad responded by saying: "Everyone should know that Ahmadinejad is prepared to be burnt in the path of true freedom, independence and justice." [31]

However, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, Secretary-General of the International Congress to Support the Palestinian Intifada, expressed support for the conference, saying that the "Western and Zionist media have always been aggrandizing the dimensions of the reality of Holocaust, mixing a bit of truth with a lot of lies". [34]

International

Supranational bodies
States
Religious leaders

Non-governmental

Thirty four of the world's leading policy institutes released a statement on 15 December that they would break off all relations with Iran's Institute for Political and International Studies. Signatories included the directors of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; the Aspen Institute in Berlin; the German Marshall Fund in Washington; the Geneva Centre for Security Policy; the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris; the United States Studies Centre in Sydney, Australia; and the Center for International Relations in Warsaw. [7] The conference was condemned by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). [50]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali called on Western leaders to wake up to the reality of the situation. She stated: "For the majority of Muslims in the world the Holocaust is not a major historical event they deny; they simply do not know because they were never informed. Worse, most of us are groomed to wish for a Holocaust of Jews." [51] She said that she never learned anything about the Holocaust while she was studying in Saudi Arabia and Kenya. She called for action from charities: "Western and Christian charities in the third world should take it upon themselves to inform Muslims and non-Muslims alike, in the areas where they are active, about the Holocaust." [51]

A number of Arab journalists in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom criticized the conference, arguing that it included unqualified non-historian speakers, spread the hate and propaganda of an extremist Iranian government, defended the heinous crimes of the Nazis, damaged Iran diplomatically at a time when its foreign relations were difficult, and reflected a lack of human and cultural sensitivity. [52]

Counter conferences

See also

References

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