Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University was a fascinating insight into free speech in action (though one Haaretz commentator feared that Israel was the loser of his presentation, as if openly discussing Middle East issues threatens the poor, helpless Jewish state.) More on his talk here and here.
The Zionist lobby worked itself into a lather before Ahmadinejad even arrived and denounced him again after he spoke. A wonderful look, boys.
The Iranian leader isn’t especially clever, or worldly or witty, and his refusal to accept the Jewish Holocaust is morally repugnant, but what about this constant refrain?
“Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event [the Holocaust] they had nothing to do with?”
Tragically, he has a valid point (unless, of course, you follow the US media’s hysterical attempt to turn Ahmadinejad into Public Enemy Number 1.)
What makes you think that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad does not accept that The Holocaust happened?
The first sentence quite clearly indicates that he accepts that it did happen, he just doesn’t appear to be willing to accept much of the “mythology”.
There has always been a mythology associated with The Holocaust. For example:
that all concentration camps had gas chambers (only Dachau and the extermination camps);
that the fat of Jewish victims was rendered down to make soap (one experimental attempt);
that the bones of Jewish victims were crushed to provide material for building the autobahns (bones were crushed but only to cover up the evidence when the Germans knew they were going to lose the war)
that the Jews were numerically the largest group of victims of German genocide (Slavs with over 12 million civilian dead);
that the Wehrmacht was not heavily involved in The Final Solution (wre they fuck!)
that the Palestinians supported The Holocaust by not allowing Jews to settle in Palestine and because the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem supported Hitler (the British controlled Palestine and had deported the Grand Mufti who represented nobody).
There are also areas which are much more controversial such as alleged Zionist support for Hitler’s ethnic cleansing of Jews so long as they went to Palestine, the involvement of American companies such as IBM in The Holocaust, the extortion of money from certain European financial institutions in recent years and the direct involvement of nationalists from many European countries in The Holocaust.
You only have to look at the response of certain people to the work of Norman Finkelstein to see that the Iranian president might have a point. And as to all “real” Holocaust research being truthful, read up about Daniel Goldhagen’s book titled Hitler’s Willing Executioners which has sold over 500,000 copies and was a best-seller in 13 countries.
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