PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Does Ahmadinejad Really Deny Nazi Holocaust? Or Does He Question Zionism?
by JewsnotZionists Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006 at 10:39 PM

Recently the controversial President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, hosted a conference titled "World Without Zionism" where the official version of the Nazi's Holocaust of WW2 was challenged. Looking beyond media's accusations of "anti-Semitism" to understand what Ahmadinejad is saying..

Recently the controversial President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, hosted a conference titled "World Without Zionism" where the official version of the Nazi's Holocaust of WW2 was challenged. Looking beyond media's accusations of "anti-Semitism" to understand what Ahmadinejad is saying..

Does Ahmadinejad really want to wipe Israel "off the map"? Does he really deny that 6 million Jews died in Nazi concentration camps in Germany and throughout Europe?

Here's what Ahmadinejad actually said;

The Iranian press agency IRNA renders Ahmadinejad on 2005-12-14 as follows: "'If the Europeans are telling the truth in their claim that they have killed six million Jews in the Holocaust during the World War II - which seems they are right in their claim because they insist on it and arrest and imprison those who oppose it, why the Palestinian nation should pay for the crime. Why have they come to the very heart of the Islamic world and are committing crimes against the dear Palestine using their bombs, rockets, missiles and sanctions.' [...] 'If you have committed the crimes so give a piece of your land somewhere in Europe or America and Canada or Alaska to them to set up their own state there.' [...] Ahmadinejad said some have created a myth on holocaust and hold it even higher than the very belief in religion and prophets [...] The president further said, 'If your civilization consists of aggression, displacing the oppressed nations, suppressing justice-seeking voices and spreading injustice and poverty for the majority of people on the earth, then we say it out loud that we despise your hollow civilization.'"

There again we find the quotation already rendered by n24: "In the name of the Holocaust they created a myth." We can see that this is completely different from what is published by e.g. the DPA - the massacre against the Jews is a fairy-tale. What Ahmadinejad does is not denying the Holocaust. No! It is dealing out criticism against the mendacity of the imperialistic powers who use the Holocaust to muzzle critical voices and to achieve advantages concerning the legitimization of a planned war. This is criticism against the exploitation of the Holocaust."

read on @;

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12790.htm

Nor does Ahmadinejad actually believe that Israel will be "wiped off the map". This is not only physically impossible, it isn't what he wants. Here's another way of looking;

"A dispatch by Reuters confirms 2006-02-21: "The Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki has [...] repudiated that his state would want the Jewish state Israel 'wiped off the map'. [...] Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been misunderstood. 'Nobody can erase a country from the map.' Ahmadinejad was not thinking of the state of Israel but of their regime [...]. 'We do not accredit this regime to be legitimate.' [...] Mottaki also accepted that the Holocaust really took place in a way that six million Jews were murdered during the era of National Socialism."
"

What remains is that millions of people were discovered dead in Nazi prison camps when the US/British troops finally arrived in Germany. We already know that pleas to help Jews in Nazi prison camps were ignored by Zionist leaders in the US;

"The Zionist leaders in Switzerland and Turkey received this offer with the clear understanding that the exclusion of Palestine as a destination for the deportees was based on an agreement between the Gestapo and the Mufti.

The answer of the Zionist leaders was negative, with the following comments:

a) ONLY Palestine would be considered as a destination for the deportees.

b) The European Jews must accede to suffering and death greater in measure than the other nations, in order that the victorious allies agree to a "Jewish State" at the end of the war.

c) No ransom will be paid

This response to the Gestapo's offer was made with the full knowledge that the alternative to this offer was the gas chamber.

These treacherous Zionist leaders betrayed their own flesh and blood. Zionism was never an option for Jewish salvation. Quite the opposite, it was a formula for human beings to be used as pawns for the power trip of several desperadoes. A perfidy! A betrayal beyond description!"

read on @;
http://www.jewsnotzionists.org/holocaust-zionism.htm

Since Israel already has them
by I'd want nukes, too Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006 at 10:45 PM

A prime minister who is unable to control his statements on sensitive matters of security, must quit," said MK Yuval Steinitz of the Likud opposition.

"The terrible statement made in Germany undermines 50 years of Israel's policy of ambiguity, and joins the irresponsible slips of the tongue such as the announcement regarding the fate of the abducted soldiers in Lebanon."

In an interview with German television station N 24Sat 1broadcast on Monday, December11 , Olmert implicitly acknowledged that Israel has atomic weapons.

"The most that we tried to get for ourselves is to be able to live without terror. But we never threatened any nation with annihilation," he said.

"Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"

MK Yossi Beilin, Meretz party leader and former justice minister, said that "the fantastic statement of the Prime Minister on the nuclear issue reflects the carelessness ... and raises serious doubts whether this is a person worthy of serving as prime minister."

Israel has long decline to confirm or deny having nuclear bomb as part of a strategic ambiguity policy.

US intelligence agencies routinely omit Israel from semiannual reports to Congress identifying countries developing weapons of mass destruction to protect it from any economic or military sanctions.

But Israel is believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with experts saying it has no less than 200 nuclear warheads.

Recently declassified British documents showed London helped Israel obtain its nuclear bomb 40 years ago.

More
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1165506819375&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout

Why they deny the Holocaust
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali Monday, Dec. 18, 2006 at 3:23 PM

By 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.

On top of nearly constant anti-Semitic propaganda, much of the Muslim world hasn't even heard of it. By 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. December 16, 2006
>
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.

Arab Holocaust scholar denied visa
by orly h Monday, Dec. 18, 2006 at 4:22 PM

Khaled Kasab Mahameed waited until the very last moment, hoping that his visa would come through. A Muslim lawyer from the Israeli Arab city of Nazareth, he had reserved a seat on an afternoon flight December 10 from Amman to Tehran, expecting to address Iran’s international conference on the Holocaust. His bag was packed. His wife and two children were ready to take him at 9:00 a.m. to the Jordanian border crossing.

But at 9:00 a.m., his hopes were dashed. In a phone call to the Iranian Embassy in Amman, a clerk informed him that there was no visa waiting for him. “I was so disappointed,” he said. “I sat depressed, and I waited an hour and called again. Then another hour and called again. In the end, they said Israelis don’t get visas.”

Mahameed, 44, had been waiting for this day from the moment he received his invitation to the conference from Iran’s Foreign Ministry. In 2005, Mahameed opened the world’s first Holocaust museum for Arabs, called the Arab Institute for Holocaust Research and Education. It shares a floor with his law office.

In a way, the conference was his moment of truth. Not only would Mahameed have an international platform to teach Muslims and Arabs about the Holocaust — and possibly to get more financial support for his work. More important, in his opinion, he finally would be listened to. For the first time, he had been invited by Muslims to speak about his views. And maybe, just maybe, he could convince some to open their minds and hearts — to Jewish pain.

But it was not to be. “I thought about it,” he said, “maybe they invited me because they thought I live in the Palestinian Authority.”

Then the phone rang, and the interviews began. BBC, CBC, French TV. For the two days of the conference, December 11 and 12, Mahameed got more exposure than he would have if he actually had attended the conference. But not in the Arab media.

He called an Arab journalist who once had visited his office. “I suggested writing a story about the conference and interviewing me,” Mahameed said. “He said, ‘Why should I give you a platform?’ That’s exactly the problem that we’re dealing with. The people who need to know are in denial.”

The story began last year, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began making statements denying the Holocaust. Mahameed sent him a copy of his book, “The Palestinians and the State of the Holocaust.” The Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies invited him to speak at its planned Holocaust conference, which was titled “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision.”

“I think they invited me because I always send them things,” he said.

It was clear from the outset that the conference would bring together Holocaust deniers from around the world to advance Ahmadinejad’s outrageous notions. Mahameed was hoping to raise his voice, “to convince them that the Holocaust did happen and that they shouldn’t talk about numbers or make light of it.”

Unlike Western leaders who spoke out against dignifying the conference by attending, Mahameed saw an opportunity. He believes that if Arabs and Muslims don’t study the Holocaust, if they continue to deny it, then they will not be able to deal with the conflicts they face.

“It’s very important that they begin to study the significance of the Holocaust,” Mahameed said. “It affects relations between East and West, and it dictates policy regarding the Palestinians in particular.”

The secret to peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, according to Mahameed, depends on the Arabs and Muslims learning about the Holocaust — the subject of his lecture — and the Jews, in turn, getting over their fear.

“When you don’t understand the Holocaust, it hinders the peace process,” he said. “I wanted to go tell the Iranians that when you play down the Holocaust or deny it, you are directly hurting the Palestinian refugees who are in camps. By denying it, they are making the Jewish people feel persecuted — which doesn’t allow options for peace to develop.”

“Ninety percent of the Israeli identity is based on the experience of the Holocaust — the horrors of the Nazis,” Mahameed said. “So when [the Iranians] deny the Holocaust, they are actually saying [Palestinians] are facing something that doesn’t exist. But it does exist.”

Mahameed’s knowledge is expansive, quoting from Heine and Clausewitz. But his focus is very much at home — directed at the conflict that affects his own life.

“I remember since I was 6, my father always said we are paying for the horrors of the Holocaust.”

His parents were internal refugees, Israeli Arabs who fled from the village of Ilajoun. He was born in Umm al-Fahm, not far away. “My father lived in Ilajoun until age 17, then the state was created and they were expelled to Umm al-Fahm,” he said, adding that his family lost 40,000 dunams of land, or about 10,000 acres. “The kibbutzim took it.”

Mahameed sees a symbolism in his life. He senses that teaching his people about the Holocaust is his calling.

“We are 13 children, and I am number six,” he said. “Like 6 million.” He paused, then added: “Not by chance I was born on the sixth of May, the day the Nazis were defeated. I come to defeat the remains of the teachings of the Nazis. I also want to neutralize the feeling of persecution among the Jews.”

Almost counter-intuitively , Mahameed argues that the Palestinians cannot win by talking of Israeli atrocities, but rather by acknowledging the atrocities perpetuated against the Jews.

“Palestinians talk about Israelis killing 1,000 or 2,000 in Sabra and Shatila,” he said, referring to a massacre that happened under Israeli watch after the 1982 Lebanon War. “But the Israelis have 6 million. I say, Palestinians need to adopt the Holocaust. The result of adopting the Holocaust is that then they don’t need to be violent against the Jews. That’s the power of the Holocaust. So let’s bring information to the Palestinians about the Holocaust.”

But he also believes that Jews need to make an effort: “I also request from the Jews to overcome the Holocaust. Yes, it was a horror, but why let Hitler continue to dictate our lives?”

He blames Israelis and Europeans for not teaching Arabs and Muslims about the Holocaust. “Israelis always speak of the need to preserve the security of the Jewish state. Why not explain why? Why not describe what happened to the Jews in the Holocaust so the Arabs will understand that the Holocaust is an important factor in shaping policies toward the Arab world?”

Like all messengers, Mahameed has not had an easy time. He stood at Kalandia checkpoint near Jerusalem on Auschwitz Remembrance Day last January, and at a conference held by controversial Arab Israeli lawmaker Azmi Bishara at which he distributed pamphlets about the Holocaust that he printed with his own money.

“People get angry and say, ‘No, I don’t want it,’” he said. He sometimes gets ugly comments on his Arabic-language Holocaust Web site. Once, he said, a Hamas activist threatened his life. Mahameed managed to convince him to give up firing Qassam rockets.

Mahameed remains optimistic. “Just give me two months, and I can make peace here,” he said. “You laugh. I’m serious.”

"Does Ahmadinejad Really Deny Nazi Holocaust? Or Does He Question Zionism?"
by anti-racist Sunday, Mar. 18, 2007 at 4:42 AM

Once again: why is this racist Holocaust denying crap on Indymedia? Why haven't the editors hidden this outrageous racist shit?

RE "Since Israel already has them I'd want nukes, too"
by what a crock Sunday, Mar. 18, 2007 at 4:49 AM

And who would you be? Why, a forging, spamming and sexist pro-Nazi antisemite from California. Your opinions on these matters have negative credibility.