Dec. 16




IRAN:

Rogues and Fools

This week's conference in Iran of Holocaust deniers and racists was,
predictably, a circus of Holocaust denial and racism argued by discredited
scholars and even the former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke. But one
should never underestimate the political power of these vicious ideas,
even among supposedly respectable people across the Middle East and
beyond.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran apparently believes his claims that
the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis is a myth ginned up to justify
the creation of the state of Israel. That is frightening enough. Couple
that with his calls to wipe Israel off the map and his governments so far
unrestrained drive to develop the technology needed to build a nuclear
weapon, and you have even more reasons to keep yourself up at night.

What is also frightening is that Mr. Ahmadinejad believes there is
political benefit in these hate-filled lies and may well be right.

He is clearly hoping they will divert Iranians attention away from his
failure to rein in corruption and improve the economy. (The conference
opened just days before nationwide elections for City Councils.) These
lies have already pumped up his standing even in the streets of Sunni-led
Arab countries like Egypt, trumping suspicions of Shiite-led Irans growing
regional power.

This week's conference is another reminder as to why the power of rogues
and fools should never be underestimated. And why history's truths must
never be taken for granted or forgotten.

(source: Editorial, New York Times)




GLOBAL:

Why they deny the Holocaust----On top of nearly constant anti-Semitic
propaganda, much of the Muslim world hasn't even heard of it.

(By Ayaan Hirsi Ali, AYAAN HIRSI ALI, a Somali immigrant who served in the
parliament of the Netherlands until earlier this year, is the author of
"Infidel," an autobiography to be published in February)


ONE DAY IN 1994, when I was living in Ede, a small town in Holland, I got
a visit from my half-sister. She and I were both immigrants from Somalia
and had both applied for asylum in Holland. I was granted it; she was
denied. The fact that I got asylum gave me the opportunity to study. My
half-sister couldn't.

In order for me to be admitted to the university I wanted to attend, I
needed to pass three courses: a language course, a civics course and a
history course. It was in the preparatory history course that I, for the
first time, heard of the Holocaust. I was 24 years old at that time, and
my half-sister was 21.

In those days, the daily news was filled with the Rwandan genocide and
ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. On the day that my half-sister
visited me, my head was reeling from what happened to 6 million Jews in
Germany, Holland, France and Eastern Europe.

I learned that innocent men, women and children were separated from each
other. Stars pinned to their shoulders, transported by train to camps,
they were gassed for no other reason than for being Jewish.

I saw pictures of masses of skeletons, even of kids. I heard horrifying
accounts of some of the people who had survived the terror of Auschwitz
and Sobibor. I told my half-sister all this and showed her the pictures in
my history book. What she said was as awful as the information in my book.

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a way
of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray
to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed."

She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I
remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a
daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that
their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the
Holocaust.

Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf
philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and
donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of
Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and for
epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of wars.
They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. If
we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we didn't want to be
wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For those of us who were not
in a position to take up arms against them, it was enough for us to cup
our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.

Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference this week denying the Holocaust need to
wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world, the
Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We simply do not
know it ever happened because we were never informed of it.

The total number of Jews in the world today is estimated to be about 15
million, certainly no more than 20 million. On the other hand, the world's
Muslim population is estimated to be between 1.2 billion and 1.5 billion.
And not only is this population rapidly growing, it is also very young.

What's striking about Ahmadinejad's conference is the (silent)
acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is there
no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta
condemning Ahmadinejad? Why are the 57 members of the Organization of the
Islamic Conference silent on this?

Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations, the
leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their
populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that
generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed - that Jews are
vermin and should be dealt with as such? In Europe, the logical conclusion
was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he shall not want for
compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish.

The world needs to be informed again and again about the Holocaust - not
only in the interest of the Jews who survived and their offspring but in
the interest of humanity.

(source: Los Angeles Times)





SWEDEN:

Holocaust, challenge for Western freedoms - Swedish teacher


A Swedish teacher who has lost his job for taking part at "Tehran
Conference On Holocaust: A Global Vision", said in Stockholm on Friday
that restrictions on speaking about Holocaust challenge West's claims on
observing freedom of expression.

Swedish high school teacher Ian Bernhoff, 35, has been laid off after his
return from Tehran to Stockholm.

He said in Tehran that claims on massacre of six million Jews in Nazi
death camps are definitely unauthentic and that according to his studies,
the real number of Jews that lost their lives in that catastrophe was
around 300,000.

Employment status of the Swedish citizen is scheduled to be surveyed next
Thursday in the presence of head of the administrative organization of the
community where his school is located at, his school headmaster, a
representative of the Swedish High School Teachers Syndicate, and of
course, Bernhoff himself.

The School Headmaster of the high school where Bernhoff teaches, Britt
Mary Johansson, has told the local media that despite being laid off,
Bernhoff is benefitted from his monthly salary and his other social rights
so long as his social status is not decided upon at concerned organs.

(source: IRNA)




Dec. 11



GERMANY:

BERLIN COUNTERS HOLOCAUST CONFERENCE----"This Is What Happened"


As the world looks on with concern, Tehran kicked off its Holocaust
conference on Monday. Berlin, too, is hosting a conference. The German
one, though, is aimed at keeping the Holocaust from becoming a matter for
political debate.

The Iranian government insists that the conference it is currently holding
in Tehran has nothing to do with denying the Holocaust. Instead, the
two-day gathering, called "Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision," is
intended to "create an opportunity for thinkers who cannot express their
views freely in Europe about the Holocaust," said Iranian Foreign Minister
Manouchehr Mottaki.

Rasoul Mousavi, head of the Foreign Ministry's Institute for Political and
International Studies, which is hosting the conference, went even further
in his opening remarks on Monday. The conference, he said "seeks neither
to deny or prove the Holocaust. It is just to provide an appropriate
scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom
about an historical issue."

In other words, Iran is a bastion of free speech and all those who would
question the "official" version of the Holocaust -- whereby Nazi Germany
slaughtered some 6 million Jews during World War II -- represent an
oppressed minority in Europe.

Forum


The rest of the world isn't so sure.

It wasn't so long ago that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for
Israel to be "wiped off the map," called the country a "tumor" and
referred to the Holocaust as a "myth." The guest list also leaves room for
doubt. A number of right-extremist politicians from Germany's neo-Nazi NPD
party were invited -- though Berlin has barred them from attending. David
Duke, a former Republican state representative from Louisiana and a Ku
Klux Klan leader, will be there. Sessions include one titled "Holocaust:
Aftermath and Exploitation." Another is called "Demography: Denial or
Confirmation?"

International condemnation of the even has been loud and clear. Israel's
Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem issued a statement saying the Tehran
conference is an attempt to "paint (an) extremist agenda with a scholarly
brush." Moris Motamed, the one Jewish representative in the Iranian
parliament, called the gathering "a huge insult to the Jewish community"
in Iran, which numbers some 25,000. The United States has also condemned
the conference, with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles planning
to hold a teleconference during the conference focusing on individual
stories from Holocaust survivors.

A German counter conference

Germany, too, is holding a counter conference on Monday. While Thomas
Krger, head of Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education -- which is
sponsoring the event -- is wary of giving the Tehran gathering too much
credence, he says: "The denial or questioning of the Holocaust cannot
remain uncommented. We have to do what we can to counter this current
before it begins to make inroads into our society."

Especially concerning for Krger and the Germans is the fact that neo-Nazis
in Germany have shown solidarity with Ahmadinejad and even waved Iranian
flags during the World Cup tournament in Germany last summer. Indeed,
Islamism and neo-Nazism are two sides of the same Holocaust denial coin,
Krger says.

Wolfgang Benz, head of Germany's Center for Anti-Semitism Research, says:
"We have to say very clearly: This is what happened. Reality cannot be a
matter for debate and does not belong in the political realm to be viewed
according to one's political ideology."

The Tehran conference comes at a time when concern is growing in the
international community that Iran is making strides toward developing a
nuclear weapon. Over the weekend, Ahmadinejad announced that his country
had begun installing some 3,000 centrifuges at a plant in central Iran,
equipment necessary for the enrichment of uranium which can be used either
in nuclear weapons or for the civilian production of electricity. "This is
the first step toward industrial production," he said according to the
Fars news agency.

Britain and France on Monday were planning to present a draft resolution
to the United Nations Security Council calling for sanctions against Iran.
The measures would be in response to Iran's flouting of an Aug. 31 deadline,
imposed by the Council, to cease uranium enrichment.

(source: Reuters)