Iran 'Holocaust Conference'

December 16, 2006

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Other Victims of Denial (MRZine) An open letter to the Iranian President from a Palestinian who spent eighteen years in an Israeli prison

New York City Satmars: Jewish delegates at Iran Holocaust conference 'reckless outcasts (AP) Neturei Karta criticized by other anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews

More Important Articles Links to other important news articles for today

[JPN Commentary: The contemptible display this past week in Iran of a gathering of Holocaust deniers was falsely billed by its organizers, the most prominent of whom was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elicited outrage form many quarters. This was, naturally, an issue that united Jews who often disagree with each other, as well as many others who decried this hateful gathering. The Shoah is one of the best documented historical events of all time. The Nazis were meticulous record-keepers, and filmed many aspects of their actions on top of the extensive documentation, eyewitness accounts and testimonies of survivors. That it occurred, and occurred at the magnitude it did, is simply not in question. Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as many other progressive Jews, organized or individually, have objected to the sometimes cynical use of the Shoah to shield Israel from the due consequences of some of its actions or to deflect any criticism from it, but to question such a clearly proven event is the most despicable form of bigotry. Jewish objections to Iran's shameful conference have rightly been given prominence in the media. Unfortunately, Muslim voices of outrage have not. This serves to reinforce negative stereotypes of Muslims as Jew-haters and fanatics. Yet the Islamic Movement in Israel has denounced this conference in no uncertain terms. Iran apparently refused a visa to Khaled Mahameed, an Arab citizen of Israel and an attorney who set up a Holocaust museum in his Nazareth office due to his Israeli citizenship. But he had been planning to go with the message to "Stop denying the Holocaust and start studying it, because it's this refusal to understand the Holocaust that caused such a catastrophe for the Palestinians." Here is a Muslim American leader, and Director of the Human and Civil Rights Division of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. He finds no trouble putting together absolute opposition to Israel's occupation and to other Israeli policies, and equally strong opposition, from a purely Muslim point of view, to Holocaust denial. Finally, I would like to share with our readers an e-mail we received this week: "As a Muslim I am shocked and disgusted by Iran's conference on [the] Holocaust in which they want to deny the mass murders of 6 millions Jews. I want to assure you that as a Muslim I am tearful and sad that a so called Muslim government is denying the killing of innocent people. I want to assure that Islam does not preach killing of people. I am in your sorrow. Nadeem." It is unfortunate that our media chooses to pay so little attention to these Muslim voices. -- MP]

http://www.masnet.org/articlesandpapers.asp?id=3939 Friday, December 15, 2006 In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful History will recall the tragedy of the genocide that slaughtered some six million European Jews between the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1933 and the culmination of the Second World War in Europe in May, 1945. The evidence of this crime, and the horrible magnitude of this killing, is irrefutable. From sources as varied as Nazi war records, film documentation, and most importantly, the testimony of survivors and witnesses, we know that the mass murder of European Jews was, indeed, the single greatest crime of genocide in the twentieth century. Yet the world now witnesses yet another wave of historical revisionism and Holocaust denial, this time emerging not from European Anti-Semites, but from none other than the President of Iran. Indeed, this head of state has taken the unprecedented act of hosting an international conference of anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and even white racists like former Klan leader David Duke, to gather in Tehran to deny the magnitude, if not the very existence, of this barbaric act. As a Muslim of African decent in the United States, whose ancestors were victimized by the enormous crime of slavery, I object. And I believe that all Muslims, like other human beings who value compassion and truth, must vigorously object to this gathering as well. Like many in the global Muslim community, I regard the occupation of Palestinian land and the policies of the State of Israel as issues of extreme importance. I am certainly among those who believe that the occupation of Palestinian territory and the denial of full human rights to Palestinians, and even to Arab people regarded as Israeli citizens, is deplorable. But I find it to be morally unconscionable to attempt to build political arguments and political movements on a platform of racial hatred and the denial of the suffering of the human beings who were victimized by the viciousness of Hitler's genocidal rampage through Europe. President Ahmedinejad should recognize that the issue of the Palestinian people must not, and cannot, be transmogrified into the ugly and spiritually bankrupt context of racial hatred. The cause of freedom must never drink from the well of hatred and racism. And indeed, as the Holy Qur'an compels Muslims to demand justice for the oppressed, we are also called to witness against ourselves when we are in error. And in this case, the President of Iran most certainly is. The writer is the Director of the Human and Civil Rights Division of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation

[JPN Commentary: In a further example of how indefensible Holocaust denial in particular, Judeophobia in general, is no matter how terrible the crimes of the Israeli occupation may be. The writer, recently released form 18 years in prison by Israel for his role in the first Intifada and a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, remains as committed as ever to the Palestinians cause. He himself says he once believed the Holocaust to have been exaggerated, but learned better from his time studying history and, in particular, many Palestinian and Arab intellectuals like Azmi Bishara and Edward Said who stressed the importance of acknowledging and understanding the Holocaust in order to understand the struggle the Palestinians themselves are engaged in. This letter is an important illustration of the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. One may agree or disagree with anti-Zionism, but it is not necessarily born of hatred of Jews. Al-Safadi, the author, concludes by saying, "We fight for our existence and our rights and against the historical injustice which was inflicted on us in 1948. We will not win our victory and our independence by denying the genocide perpetrated against the Jewish people, even though the forces who occupy our country today and dispossess us are part of the Jewish people." In the search for a solution to this conflict, we are all best served by recognizing the humanity of the other, and recognizing that this is a clash over land between two national movements that cannot be defeated but must be reconciled. -- MP]

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/alsafadi141206.html Mr. President, I write to you following the announcement of your intention to organize a conference on the Holocaust in Teheran on 11-12 December, and I sincerely hope that this letter will be brought to your attention. First of all, allow me to introduce myself: Mahmoud Al-Safadi, a former prisoner from occupied Jerusalem. I was released less than three months ago from the Israeli prison where I had been locked up for eighteen years for having been a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and having taken an active part in resistance to the occupation during the first Intifada. Since you were elected president, I have followed your declarations with great interest -- in particular those relating to the Holocaust. I respect your opposition to the American and Western injunctions concerning the Iranian nuclear program and believe it legitimate that you complain of the double standard that the world has with regard to the nuclear development of certain regimes. But I am furious about your insistence on claiming that the Holocaust never took place and about your doubts about the number of Jews who were murdered in the extermination and concentration camps, organized massacres, and gas chambers, consequently denying the universal historical significance of the Nazi period. Allow me to say, Mr. President, with all due respect to you, that you made these statements without really knowing the Nazi industry of death. To have read the works of some deniers seems to be enough for you -- a little like a man who shouts above a well and hears only the echo of his own voice. I believe that a man in your position should not make such an enormous error, because it could be turned against him and, worse still, his people. Like you and millions of people in the world -- among whom, alas, are innumerable Palestinians and Arabs -- I was also convinced that the Jews exaggerated and lied about the Holocaust, etc., even apart from the fact that the Zionist movement and Israel use the Holocaust to justify their policy, first of all against my own people. My long imprisonment provided me with the occasion to read books and articles that our ideology and social norms made inaccessible to us outside the prison. These documents gave me a thorough knowledge of the history of the Nazi regime and genocide that it perpetrated. At the beginning of the 1990s, by reading articles written by the Palestinian intellectuals Edward Said and Azmi Bishara, I discovered facts and positions which contradicted mine and those of many Palestinians. Their writings having piqued my curiosity and given birth inside me to the need to know more, I set about reading accounts of survivors of the Holocaust and the Nazi occupation. These testimonies were written by people of various nationalities, Jews or non-Jews. The more I learned, the more I realized that the Holocaust was indeed a historical fact and the more I became aware of the monumental dimension of the crime committed by Nazi Germany against the Jews, other social and national groups, and humanity in general. I discovered that Nazi Germany aspired to found a "new world order" dominated by the "pure Aryan race" thanks to the physical annihilation of "impure races" and the enslavement of other nations. I discovered that various "normal" official institutions -- bureaucracies, judicial systems, medical and educational authorities, municipalities, railroad companies, and others -- had taken part and collaborated in the implementation of this new world order. From a theoretical point of view, this objective, just like the victories won at the time by the Nazi armies of occupation, threatened the existence of the Arabs and Muslims as well. Whatever the number of victims -- Jewish and non-Jewish -- the crime is monumental. Any attempt to deny it deprives the denier of his own humanity and sends him immediately to the side of torturers. Whoever denies the fact that this human disaster really took place should not be astonished that others deny the sufferings and persecutions inflicted on his own people by tyrannical leaders or foreign occupiers. Ask yourself, I beg you, the following question: were hundreds of thousands of testimonies written about death camps, gas chambers, ghettos, and mass murders committed by the German army, tens of thousands of works of research based on German documents, numerous filmed sequences, some of which were shot by German soldiers -- were all these masses of evidence completely fabricated? Can all that be summed up simply as an imperialist-Zionist plot? Are the confessions of high-ranking Nazi officials about their personal role in the project of extermination of whole nations only the fruit of the imagination of some disturbed spirit? And all these heroic deeds of the people subjected to the German occupation -- the first among whom were Russians, Polish, and Yugoslavs -- only lies and gross exaggerations? Could the struggle of the Soviets against Nazi Germany be only a phantasm? The Russians continue to celebrate their victory over Nazi Germany and remember millions of their civilian and military compatriots who lost their lives in this struggle. Are they lying, too? I invite you to read historical studies and serious testimonies before making your public statements. You divide the world in two camps: the imperialists-Zionists, who manufactured the myth of the Holocaust, and the adversaries of imperialism, who know the truth and uncover the plot. Perhaps you think that the act of denying the Holocaust places you at the vanguard of the Muslim world and that this refusal constitutes a useful tool in the combat against American imperialism and Western hegemony. By doing so, you actually do great disservice to popular struggles the world over. At best, you cover your people and yourself with ridicule in the eyes of political forces who reject imperialism but cannot take your ideas and arguments seriously, due to the fact that you obsessively deny the existence of an abundantly documented and studied historical period whose consequences are still felt and discussed today. At worst, you discourage and weaken the political, social, and intellectual forces who, in Europe and in the United States, reject the policy of confrontation and war carried out by George Bush, but are forced to conclude that you, too, jeopardize the world by your declarations denying the genocide and by your nuclear program. Concerning the struggle of my people for their independence and their freedom: perhaps do you regard the negation of the Holocaust as an expression of support for the Palestinians? There, again, you are mistaken. We fight for our existence and our rights and against the historical injustice which was inflicted on us in 1948. We will not win our victory and our independence by denying the genocide perpetrated against the Jewish people, even though the forces who occupy our country today and dispossess us are part of the Jewish people.

[JPN Commentary: This article represents a crucial final note on the differences between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Leaders of the Satmar Hasidim, an ultra-Orthodox sect that is one of the largest in the world and is opposed to Zionism on religious grounds, harshly condemned the appearance of the Neturei Karta at the Iranian Holocaust conference. The Neturei Karta (Aramaic for "Guardians of the City"), a religious fundamentalist group, has often embraced some of the most extreme views of anti-Zionism, including support for conspiracy theories and, at times, saying that Zionism brought retribution upon the Jews because it is an affront to God. A recent book about religious opposition to Zionism, both in the past and present, "A Threat From Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism" by Professor Yakov Rabkin is recommended reading for the depth and breadth of religious Jewish opposition to Zionism. And, while the Neturei Karta delegation went to the conference to affirm the reality of the Holocaust but to denounce its use to justify Zionism, this was not the appropriate forum for that statement. To deliver that message to supporters of the Palestinians is fine; to deliver it and thereby, intentionally or not, bolster the case for the Holocaust deniers and for those whose support for the Palestinians is merely a cloak for their hostility and antagonism toward Jews is not. The Satmar have a long history of opposition to Zionism and they have not backed away from that position at all. That they felt the need to condemn the Neturei Karta for this action speaks volumes. There are many Jews who support the Palestinian cause and oppose Zionism, many others who support a just peace for all concerned based on recognizing the national rights of both people. Support from the Neturei Karta is help the Palestinians and all those working for a just peace simply don't need. -- MP]

The Associated Press Friday, December 15, 2006 http://www.iht.com/articles/ A half-dozen Jews who attended a Holocaust denial conference in Iran have come under intense criticism over the visit, with one of the world's largest Hasidic groups denouncing them as "reckless outcasts." The Jews who went to Iran "trampled on the memory of their ancestors and people. They embraced the disciplines and followers of their murderers," said a statement from the Satmar leaders of Congregation Yetev Lev in Brooklyn. The Jews who attended the conference are often confused with the Satmars, who also are anti-Zionist but acknowledge that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. Besides their shared anti-Zionism, Neturei Karta followers and the Satmars both wear long, dark coats and wide-brimmed hats, and have beards and sidelocks. The Satmars say there is no connection between them and Neturei Karta, a group that sent a half-dozen delegates to this week's conference in Tehran under the banner Jews United Against Zionism. They were led by a rabbi from the New York area, Yisroel Dovid Weiss. He said that, while his group does not entirely deny the killing of Jews in World War II, figures for how many people who died in the Holocaust are exaggerated. He said that "Zionists are using the Holocaust to brazenly and offensively oppress a people (the Palestinians)." The Satmars from Congregation Yetev Lev responded, in their statement, that "the unavenged blood of the millions of Jewish victims cries out in pain and abhorrence, to these reckless outcasts, 'How can you sink so low?'" The position of the Jewish delegates, the Satmars said, "is contrary to the teachings of our venerated Grand Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the founder and leader of the Satmar movement." The Satmars, who claim about 100,000 followers worldwide, were founded by the Hungarian-born Teitelbaum, who died in New York in 1979. He was succeeded by his nephew, Moses Teitelbaum, who died last April. Teitelbaum laid out the anti-Zionist belief that forbids a Jew from creating a Jewish state until the Messiah comes and leads them to the promised land. Hamodia, an English-language Orthodox Jewish daily in New York that is not affiliated with either the Satmars or Neturei Karta, published an editorial this week that said: "While we are speaking of insanity, it is impossible to report about this so-called conference without making mention of the handful of deranged men in Jewish garb" who attended. "These few individuals — who represent no one except themselves — are playing into the hands of our (Jewish) nation's archenemies." Estimates of Neturei Karta followers range from several hundred to thousands, with dozens living in Monsey, New York, a community about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of New York where some attend a house of worship called Yeshiva Beis Yahud. There was no telephone listing for it. Calls to Moshe Beck, another Neturei Karta leader, rang busy for hours on Friday afternoon. Another community of Satmars, based in the village of Kiryas Joel, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of New York, also has condemned Neturei Karta members for attending the conference.

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