Haaretz
Tevet 12, 2006
Yad Vashem said yesterday it viewed with
"growing concern" what it termed Iran's continued Holocaust denial, and
called on the international community to act "to prevent genocidal
intentions from becoming genocidal capabilities".
"Reports that the
Association of Islamic-Journalists of Iran is convening an international
conference of Holocaust deniers to `examine in depth this myth' illustrate
how deeply entrenched Holocaust denial is in radical Islamic circles," Yad
Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev said in a statement.
Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a series of remarks starting in October, has
denied the occurence and extent of the Holocaust several times, at one
point calling the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews a "fairy tale." He said
that if Europeans were responsible for the Jews' massacre, then they
should relocate the Jewish state to their continent.
"Iran has
embraced such charlatans as David Irving, who was found by a British court
to be an `anti-Semite' and `racist' whose `falsification of the record was
deliberate,' as well as Robert Faurisson and Roger Garaudy," Shalev
said.
"These sham historians - totally discredited in the West -
find a responsive audience in Iran, where senior officials have called the
factual events of the Holocaust a `matter of opinion'," he
continued.
Shalev said the United Nations and most of the world
have recognized the importance of Holocaust remembrance as "a safeguard
against the breakdown of the basic human values that underpin our
civilization".
"The dismissal of the veracity of the Holocaust and
its legacy represents a clear rejection of those values," he said.