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Iran's 60-day grace period for it to stop enriching uranium expired on Wednesday, February 22, 2007. The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in addressing the people of Gilan (Northern Province of Iran) insisted on enrichment and ridiculously said, "If we are supposed to suspend (our nuclear activities) for the sake of negotiations, then you should suspend your nuclear activities as well."
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When the United Nations
considered a landmark resolution condemning Holocaust denial last
month, the media missed a major story: One of the first delegates out
of his chair to express support for "keeping memory alive" was the
ambassador from Egypt.
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Ahmadinejad's great inspiration, the Ayatollah Khomeini, not only recognized the mobilizing power of anti-Semitism in the struggle against the shah, he made use of it himself, as far back as the 1960s. "I know that you do not want Iran to lie under the boots of the Jews," he cried out to his supporters on April 13, 1963. That same year, he called the shah a Jew in disguise and accused him of taking orders from Israel. This drew a huge response from the public. Khomeini had found his theme.
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 On December 11 and 12, 2006, the Iranian regime hosted a conference dedicated to Holocaust denial, called the “International Conference on Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision.” Its intention was to give an international dimension to the false claim that the Holocaust of the Jewish people during the Second World War did not occur, or, at least, to minimize its magnitude. The overall objective was to deny international legitimacy for the existence of the State of Israel.
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Since his election in June 2005, the Iranian president has taken an extreme position on a number of critically important issues, heightening regional and international tensions. In violation of the basic principles of the UN Charter, he has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel, a UN member state, saying it should be "wiped of the map." He also declared the Holocaust a "myth," and recently sponsored a Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran. Furthermore, he made threats against the United States and American interests, postulating a "world without the U.S."
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The uniqueness of the Holocaust was not the Nazi's determination to kill the Jews of Germany and even of neighboring Poland. Other genocides, such as those by the Cambodians and the Turks, sought to rid particular areas of so called undesirables by killing them. The utter uniqueness of the Holocaust was the Nazi plan to "ingather" all the Jews of the world to the death camp and end the Jewish "race" forever.
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The persistent Holocaust denial of Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad raises a vital question that needs to be addressed: What
function does this denial serve in the ideology of the Iranian regime
and in its strategy? The answer to this question bears cardinal
importance to the future of the State of Israel.
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But why would the Iranians invite speakers with so little
credibility in the West, including a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard
and disgraced European scholars? That question misses the point. The Iranian president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, portrays conference participants like David Duke, the
former Louisiana Klan leader, and Robert Faurisson of France, who has
devoted his life to trying to prove that the Nazi gas chambers are a
myth, as honest men who have been silenced by their governments.
Ahmadinejad seems to enjoy pointing out that countries like Germany,
France and Austria claim to champion free debate yet have made it
illegal to deny the Holocaust.
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The news that Iran is to go ahead with a conference that will supposedly investigate whether the Holocaust actually happened is deeply shocking. Thirty years ago when I was working on the holocaust episode of the ITV series The World At War I and my colleagues deliberately decided not to stop when we had gathered the first hand witness evidence we needed for making the programme, but to gather more and put it together to be kept for posterity for use against the day when people or states claiming intellectual respectability might try to claim that the Holocaust did not happen.
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Iran, which has often proclaimed its intent to carry out a second Holocaust, this time against the Jews concentrated in Israel, will be holding a Holocaust-denial conference on December 11-12. A certain illogic is evident: if you yourself find Jews so loathsome that you seek to exterminate them, why is it implausible that someone else should have had the same idea and acted on it, especially when so many people including all reputable historians say that is exactly what happened just six decades ago?
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bloggers than any other country and blocks public access to 40% of political opposition’s websites. Liberate the imprisoned voice of moderate Iran by promoting firewall-bypassing technology.
