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Now
No Matter What Ahmadinejad Does He'll
be Portrayed as the New Hitler
Tehran's
Holocaust Conference
By STEPHEN GOWANS
Was the two-day conference on the Holocaust
held earlier this month by the Iranian government intended to
cast "doubt on the Nazi Holocaust during the Second World
War," (1) or was it Iran's rejoinder to the Jyllands-Posten
affair, an attempt "to embarrass the West and say, 'Look,
we are practicing what you preach. We are allowing freedom of
discussion of just about any issue, including the Holocaust'"?
(2)
It's pretty clear how Western journalists summed up the event.
The point of the conference was to assemble the world's most
notorious Holocaust-deniers and Jew haters, among them KKK kook
David Duke, to lend support to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's claims that
the Holocaust is a myth and to cheer on the Iranian president
as he prepares to perpetrate a genocide against the Jews and
'wipe out' Israel.
The problem is, matters aren't quite as black and white as all
that. Not even close.
Let's start with the claim that Ahmadinejad "has referred
to the Holocaust as a 'myth'" (3), a claim made by almost
every major media outlet in North America.
Ahmadinejad may have said the Holocaust is a myth, but if he
has, it has escaped my attention. Of course, I don't follow him
around with a tape-recorder and babel fish in my ear, so maybe
I missed it. Still, the file of Ahmadinejad quotes I have before
me, which goes back two years, hasn't a single quote that backs
up the near media consensus that Ahmadinejad has "repeatedly
called the Holocaust a myth," (4) let alone called it one
even once. Which is odd. Considering that demonizing the leader
of the next oil-rich country on the White House list of targets
slated for take-over has become something of a sport in the Western
media, you'd think the "no, there never was a Holocaust"
quote would be a simple matter to unearth and thrust before the
world, like Iraq's WMD. Oh, right.
In the stories that followed the conference, there were dozens
of Ahmadinejad quotes, which, if you read them carefully, played
opposite type (they didn't say what the headlines said they said)
but not one of them had Ahmadinejad saying "Holocaust? Pshaw
-- as phony as an all-beef hotdog."
True, Ahmadinejad has played around the edges of the issue, saying
things that amount to "maybe it did or maybe it didn't happen,
but either way, it doesn't justify what was done to the Palestinians."
Always, the emphasis is on the Holocaust as a political construct,
not an historical reality. That's not quite in the same league
as David Irving, the writer who was jailed in Austria for denying
the Holocaust.
Regarding headlines that misrepresent the story they lead, take
the "Israel will be 'wiped out'" headline that appeared
in the Toronto Star on December 12, a photo of Ahmadinejad nearby
just to make clear who was uttering the alleged threat. Outgoing
US Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, is using quotes like this
to bring a suit against Ahmadinejad before the International
Court of Justice on charges of genocide. Bolton, who the north
Koreans once called "human scum," accuses the Iranian
president of "calling for the destruction of Israel."
The Guardian ran the Bolton-accused-Ahmadinejad-of-genocide story
on December 13, under the headline "Move to bring genocide
case against Ahmadinejad as Iran president repeats call to wipe
out Israel." Bolton's suit also refers to "numerous
threats against the United States" Ahmadinejad is alleged
to have made, which says that what Bolton has oodles of in the
human scum department, is matched by equal oodles of in the chutzpah
department.
Did Ahmadinejad really threaten to wipe out Israel? No more than
scientists predicting the melting of the polar ice caps are threatening
to melt them themselves. What Ahmadinejad did say was that, "The
Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet
Union was" (5) a prediction, not a threat. And since
the Soviet Union wasn't wiped out in a hail of nuclear missiles,
a storm of terrorist attacks, or an epidemic sparked by biological
weapons, it might be safe to conclude that Ahmadinejad expects
Israel to collapse through self-inflicted wounds the way
the Soviet Union did and not under a barrage of nuclear
missiles launched from Tehran.
In the Iranian president's view, the days of Israel, as Zionist
state, are numbered because it was founded on injustice, and
therefore stands on rotten foundations. When the UN carved a
Jewish homeland out of someone else's homeland, and without consulting
a single Palestinian, it created a Chimera whose existence would
always depend on sponsorship by imperialist powers, and unremitting,
massive infusions of aid. In other words, Israel has been artificially
kept alive from the start.
Elections, explained Ahmadinejad, should be held among "Jews,
Christians and Muslims" in Palestine (by which he means
Israel, Gaza and the West Bank together) "so that the population.can
select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic
manner." (6) That's a far cry from raining down nuclear
missiles on Tel Aviv to wipe out Jews, but is much more compelling
a story if your aim is to shape public opinion in ways that favor
a possible future intervention in Iran.
The whole sordid business of the Holocaust conference, and earlier,
the Holocaust International Cartoon Contest, would never have
happened had the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, not run flagrantly
racist cartoons mocking the prophet Mohamed, and had Western
governments not dismissed the resultant flap as an over-reaction
by a bunch of hot-headed Mohammedans. It's a free speech issue,
the West's politicos said. You Muslims -- simmer down.
What a crock, retorted Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"In this freedom, casting doubt or negating the genocide
of the Jews is banned, but insulting the beliefs of 1.5 billion
Muslims is allowed." (7) Bull's eye.
With the Jyllands-Posten scandal
still resonating, Iran's largest newspaper, Hamshari, counterpunched.
It would sponsor a carton contest to mock the Holocaust. If you
can mock the prophet Mohamed, and say it's a free speech issue,
then surely we can mock the Holocaust, and say the same.
As it turned out, the cartoons didn't do much mocking. They didn't
present the genocide of Europe's Jews as a myth, or mock its
victims. Instead, they explored the themes of Israeli brutality
against the Palestinians, use of the Holocaust to justify anti-Palestinian
crimes, and parallels between Israel and Nazi Germany.
Judge for yourself. The drawings showed: A vampire wearing a
Star of David drinking the blood of Palestinians; Ariel Sharon
in a Nazi uniform; three army helmets together, two with swastikas
and one with the Star of David; a rabid dog with a Star of David
on its side and the word Holocaust around its collar; a dove
prevented from flying because it is chained to a Star of David;
US president George Bush seated at a desk swatting doves; an
Israeli asleep with three Arab heads mounted to the wall above
his bed; an Israeli soldier pouring fuel into a tank from a gasoline
can that reads Holocaust on the side; a razor blade in the ground,
representing the illegal Israeli-built separation wall, bearing
the word Holocaust; two firefighters, each with Stars of David
on their chests, using Palestinian blood to extinguish flames
issuing from the word Holocaust. (8)
While the director of the exhibit correctly pointed out to a
New York Times reporter that the drawings were anti-Israeli and
anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish, the newspaper nevertheless ran
the story under the headline "Iran exhibits anti-Jewish
art." (9) Conflation of Israel and Zionism with Jew, and
therefore anti-Israel and anti-Zionist with anti-Jewish, is a
handy howitzer to have around whenever you need to blow away
opposition to Israel.
This month's conference was
similarly described as anti-Jewish and while the conference certainly
featured a cast of unsavory Jew-haters, not all the participants
were of the same stripe.
Shiraz Dossa, an admirer of Noam Chomsky and Hannah Arendt, who
teaches Third World politics at St. Francis Xavier University
in Nova Scotia, delivered a paper on the abuse of the Holocaust
to justify the war on terror. Dossa calls the Holocaust a reality
and says that "anyone who denies it is a lunatic."
(10) He accepted the invitation to speak at the conference to
help Tehran make its point: That the West's commitment to freedom
of speech extends only to insulting someone else's sacred cows.
Last point: If the real aim of the conference was to call the
Holocaust into question, it would hardly make sense to assemble
a gang of hacks, flakes and whack-jobs whose credibility is nil.
On the other hand, if the aim was to show that free speech doesn't
justify a repellent, silly, and disgusting display, inviting
David Duke and his gaggle of misfits, was the right stroke.
Still, no matter how vigorously Ahmadinejad plays to Western
public opinion, he can't win. Some will say his moves are bone-headed,
and, in the end, they are, not because they alienate Western
public opinion, but because he thinks he can win it over. He
can't, unless he can cut through the West's mass media
and that won't happen. The point about tolerance of freedom of
speech will hardly be grasped by Americans or Britons or Canadians.
No matter what he does, he will be portrayed as the new Hitler.
That's how many leaders of countries on the US hit list are eventually
portrayed. That's how they must be portrayed.
Stephen Gowans is a writer and political activist who
lives in Ottawa, Canada. He can be reached at: sr.gowans@sympatico.ca
(1) "Israel will be 'wiped out'", AP, December 12,
2006.
(2) "Canadian prof attends Tehran's gathering of Holocaust
deniers," Globe and Mail, December 13, 2006.
(3) AP, December 12, 2006.
(4) "Even a scholar's academic freedom has its limits,"
The Globe and Mail, December 14, 2006.
(5) AP, December 12, 2006.
(6) Ibid
(7) New York Times, February 8, 2006.
(8) New York Times, August 25, 2006.
(9) Ibid
(10) Globe and Mail, December 13, 2006.
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