"A Sick Phenomenon"

[achebeautiful]

Holocaust Conference Begins In Iran
By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer


TEHRAN, Iran - Iran hosted Holocaust deniers from around the world Monday at a conference examining whether the Nazi genocide took place, a meeting Israel's prime minister condemned as a "sick phenomenon."

The 67 participants from 30 countries included former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and Holocaust skeptics who have been prosecuted in Europe for questioning whether 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis or whether gas chambers were ever used.

"The number of victims at the Auschwitz concentration camp could be about 2,007," Australian Frederick Toben told the conference, according to a Farsi translation of his remarks. "The railroad to the camp did not have enough capacity to transfer large numbers of Jews," said Toben, who was jailed in 1999 in Germany for casting doubt on the Holocaust.

The two-day conference was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an apparent attempt to burnish his status as a tough opponent of Israel. The hard-line president has described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Earlier this year, his government backed an exhibition of anti-Israel cartoons in a show of defiance after Danish cartoons caricaturing Islam's Prophet Muhammad were published in Europe, raising an outcry among Muslims.

Organizers and participants touted the conference as a scholarly gathering aimed at discussing the Holocaust away from Western taboos and the restrictions imposed on scholars in Europe. In Germany, Austria and France, it is illegal to deny aspects of the Holocaust.

Duke, a former Louisiana state representative, praised Ahmadinejad for his "courage" in holding a conference "to offer free speech for the world's most repressed idea: Holocaust revisionism."

"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," Duke said. "But offer a single question of the smallest part of the Holocaust and you face prison."

Also among participants were two rabbis and four other members of the group Jews United Against Zionism, who were dressed in the traditional long black coats and black hats of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The group rejects the creation of Israel on the grounds that it violates Jewish law.

Rabbi Ahron Kohen urged participants not to deny the Holocaust. "If we say that this crime did not happen, it is a humiliation and insult to the victims," he said, according to a translation of his remarks.

But he added that Zionists have used the Holocaust to "give legitimacy to their illegitimate project," the creation of Israel.

Another participant, Robert Faurisson, has been convicted five times in France for denying crimes against humanity — most recently last month, when he was fined for denying in an interview with Iranian TV that the Nazis meant to exterminate Jews.

Faurisson, a retired university professor, has regularly caused outrage in France, claiming that no gas chambers were used in Nazi concentration camps.

The gathering brought quick condemnation from Israel and Germany. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called on the world to protest, terming the conference "a sick phenomenon."

German Parliament President Norbert Lammert protested the conference in a letter to Ahmadinejad, calling it anti-Semitic propaganda "under the pretext of scientific freedom."

Israel's official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, said the Tehran conference was "an effort to mainstream Holocaust denial" and "paint (an) extremist agenda with a scholarly brush."

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki dismissed the criticism as "predictable," telling delegates there was "no logical reason for opposing this conference."

"If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt," said Mottaki, whose ministry put together the conference. "And if, during this review, it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?"

A statement from Ahmadinejad was expected to be read to delegates Tuesday.

The conference fit in with Ahmadinejad's policy of seeking to cast Iran as an alternative power to the West — in politics, science and academics. His anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. stances have brought out crowds of supporters during visits to Asia and Africa in recent years, and he has used those themes to rally support at home.

Ahmadinejad has said the Nazi genocide during World War II was a "myth" and "exaggerated." He has also repeatedly said Palestinians had to pay the price for European guilt over the Holocaust.

The Tehran gathering coincided with an independently convened academic conference on the Holocaust in Berlin, where historians affirmed the accuracy of the Nazi genocide data and questioned the motives of those behind the Tehran forum.

Wolfgang Benz, head of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at Berlin's Technical University, said people who deny the Holocaust "know perfectly well what happened."

"They want to use what happened — through denying it — to effect something else, to articulate the crude old anti-Semitism against Israel," he said. "It's about politics ... not about scholarship."

[achebeautiful]

This is sick, disgusting and straight from the pit of hell in my opinion.

[achebeautiful]

Iran President: Israel Will Be Wiped Out
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer


TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's hard-line president said Tuesday that Israel will one day be "wiped out" as the Soviet Union was, drawing applause from participants in a conference casting doubt on the Holocaust.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments were likely to further fuel the outcry prompted by the two-day gathering, which has gathered some of Europe's and the United States' best-known Holocaust deniers.

Anger over the conference could further isolate Iran as the West considers sanctions in the standoff over Tehran's nuclear program.

But Ahmadinejad appeared to revel in his meeting Tuesday with conference delegates, shaking hands with American participants and sitting near six anti-Israel Jewish participants, dressed in black ultra-Orthodox coats and hats.

"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom," Ahmadinejad said during Tuesday's meeting in his offices, according to the official IRNA news agency.

He called for elections among "Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner."

Ahmadinejad has used anti-Israeli rhetoric and cast doubt on the Holocaust to rally anti-Western supporters at home and abroad, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. Several times he has referred to the Holocaust as a "myth" used to impose the state of Israel on the Arab world.

"The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder," David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and former state representative in Louisiana, told The Associated Press.

Ahmadinejad announced the conference would set up a "fact-finding commission" to determine whether the Holocaust happened or not. The commission will "help end a 60-year-old dispute," he said.

The Tehran conference was touted by participants and organizers as an exercise in academic freedom and a chance to openly consider whether 6 million Jews really died in the Holocaust, away from Western taboos and the restrictions imposed on scholars in Europe, where some countries have made it a crime to deny the Nazi genocide during World War II.

It gathered 67 writers and researchers from 30 countries, most of whom argue that either the Holocaust did not happen or that it was vastly exaggerated. Many have been jailed or fined in France, Germany or Austria, where it is illegal to deny the Holocaust.

Participants milled around a model of the Auschwitz concentration camp brought by one speaker, Australian Frederick Toben, who uses the mock-up in lectures contending that the camp was too small to kill mass numbers of Jews. More than 1 million people are estimated to have been killed there.

Rabbi Moshe David Weiss, one of six members attending from the group Jews United Against Zionism, told delegates, "We don't want to deny the killing of Jews in World War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for how many people were killed."

"They have used the Holocaust as a device to justify their oppression," he said. His group rejects the creation of Israel on the grounds that it violates Jewish religious law.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that the conference was "shocking beyond belief" and "a symbol of sectarianism and hatred."

In Washington, the White House condemned Iran for convening a conference it called "an affront to the entire civilized world."