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hiver - Historical Revisionism by Vrij Historisch Onderzoek

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——————————————————————> Conseils de révisions / <strong>hiver</strong> winter 2007<br />

identity. If the Shiite Iranians are looking for friends, particularly among Sunni Arabs, Holocaust<br />

denial isn't a bad way to find them.<br />

This international conference has a purpose that goes well beyond a mere denunciation of<br />

Israel. Because some countries once under Nazi rule have postwar laws prohibiting Holocaust denial,<br />

Iran has declared this "an opportunity for thinkers who cannot express their views freely in Europe<br />

about the Holocaust." If the West is going to shelter Iranian dissidents, then Iran will shelter David<br />

Duke.<br />

Heckled for the first time in many months <strong>by</strong> demonstrators at a rally last Monday,<br />

Ahmadinejad responded <strong>by</strong> calling the hecklers paid American agents: "Today the worst type of<br />

dictatorship in the world is the American dictatorship, which has been clothed in human rights." The<br />

American dictatorship, clothed in human rights and spouting falsified history: It's the kind of<br />

argument you can hear quite often nowadays, in Iran as well as in Russia and Venezuela, not to<br />

mention the United States.<br />

This particular brand of historical revisionism is no joke, and we shouldn't be tempted to treat it<br />

that way.<br />

Washington Post 18 12 2006<br />

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-apple1806dec18,0,5591266.storycoll=orl-opinion-headlines<br />

GOOD FOR THEM<br />

Rabbi claims Holocaust dead ‘deserved it’<br />

Maurice Chittenden<br />

A BRITISH rabbi who angered fellow Jews <strong>by</strong> speaking at a “Holocaust denial” conference in Iran now<br />

says millions did die in gas chambers but may have deserved it.<br />

Ahron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew from Greater Manchester and a leading member of the anti-Zionist<br />

Neturei Karta movement, sparked new controversy on his return from Tehran <strong>by</strong> suggesting that God would<br />

have saved the victims of the Nazis if they had deserved to live.<br />

Cohen, whose house in Salford was pelted with 1,000 eggs last year because of his extremist views,<br />

told The Sunday Times: “There is no question that there was a Holocaust and gas chambers. There are too<br />

many eyewitnesses.<br />

“However, our approach is that when one suffers, the one who perpetrates the suffering is obviously<br />

guilty but he will never succeed if the victim did not deserve it in one way or another.<br />

“We have to look within to improve and try to better ourselves and remove those characteristics or<br />

actions that may have been the cause of the success of the Holocaust.”<br />

Cohen’s trip to Tehran — along with four American rabbis from the same sect — was paid for <strong>by</strong> the<br />

Iranian foreign ministry, which organised the conference entitled The Holocaust: A Global Vision. They were<br />

warmly greeted <strong>by</strong> Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and had two meetings with him.<br />

Cohen ended his speech to the conference with a prayer “that the underlying cause of strife and<br />

bloodshed in the Middle East, namely the state known as Israel, be totally and peacefully dissolved”.<br />

The rabbi claimed “learned gentlemen from both sides of the fence” were at the latest conference.<br />

They included David Duke, former “imperial wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan.<br />

Cohen said on his return: “President Ahmadinejad is not a man of war. He is a man of peace. I have<br />

received criticism for meeting him and attending the conference, but Jewish people are adopting an attitude<br />

of criticism from an emotional point of view, not a logical or sensible one.<br />

“We know there was a Holocaust. We lived through it. I had relatives who died in it . . . But in no way<br />

must the Holocaust be used to further the aims of the Zionist concept.”<br />

Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, registrar of the Jewish Ecclesiastical Court for Greater Manchester, said:<br />

“Rabbi Cohen has for a long time been ostracised <strong>by</strong> the vast majority of Jews for associating with and<br />

thus giving support and legitimacy to the enemies of Israel and the Jewish nation.<br />

“He represents an insignificant minority. His involvement is a stab in the heart of the Jewish<br />

community and of all decent law-abiding people.”<br />

Times online, 17 Dec. 2006<br />

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2508305,00.html<br />

LEARNING FROM HISTORY<br />

Western leaders have not yet decided to<br />

— 77 —

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