UNHOLY HATREDS: HOLOCAUST DENIAL AND ANTISEMITISM IN IRAN

Posen Papers. 2017

Matthias Küntzel

Never before has a head of state called into question the reality of the Holocaust so vociferously as the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A provisional high point in his campaign was reached with the conference “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision,” hosted by the Iranian regime on 11-12 December 2006 in Teheran. The more than 60 participants from thirty different countries included the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, the nutty followers of the Jewish sect Neturei Karta, officials of Germany’s neo-Nazi German National Party (NPD), as well as the usual crowd of Holocaust deniers. Fredrick Toeben delivered a lecture entitled “The Holocaust — A Murder Weapon,” Robert Faurisson referred to the Shoah as a “fairy tale,” while his colleague Veronika Clarke from the United States explained that “the Jews made money in Auschwitz.” A certain Professor McNalley declared that regarding the Holocaust as a fact is as ludicrous as believing in “magicians and witches,” whilst the Belgian Leonardo Clerici offered the following explanation in his capacity as a Muslim: “I believe that the value of metaphysics is greater than the value of history.”

Had such a gathering taken place in a pub somewhere in Melbourne, hardly anyone would have paid any attention. The gathering took on historical significance only because it happened by invitation and on the premises of the Iranian foreign ministry: hosted by the government of a country that disposes of the world’s largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and the largest natural gas reserves after Russia. In this setting, even the most delusional phantasms did not provoke laughter, but attentive nodding and applause. On the walls, there hung photos of corpses with the caption “myth,” as well as photos of laughing concentration camp survivors with the caption “truth.”

The Teheran deniers conference marks a turning point because for the first time the leadership of a large and important state has put Holocaust denial at the center of its foreign policy agenda. The founding conception of the United Nations, created in the 1940s as a response to the massacres of the Second World War, has never been challenged in a more provocative fashion. It is clear that this is precisely the point of the exercise for the Iranian elites. Mohammed Ali Ramin, one of Ahmadinejad’s closest advisors who was charged with the preparation of the Holocaust conference, compared this “second historical conference, that took place in Teheran” with the famous Teheran Conference of the WWII Allied Powers in 1943. Just like the first Teheran Conference, so too the second would “change the face of the world,” he enthused.

But the Teheran deniers conference marks a turning point not only because of its state sponsorship, but also because of its purpose. Up until now, Holocaust deniers wanted to revise the past. Today, Iran wants to shape the future: to prepare the next Holocaust. In his opening speech to the conference, Iranian Foreign Minister Manucher Mottaki left no doubt that the aim is the destruction of Israel: if “the official version of the Holocaust is called into question,” Mottaki said, then “the nature and identity of Israel” must also be called into question. By denying the particularity of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, a central motive for the establishment of the State of Israel is debased. Consideration of Auschwitz is de- legitimized in order to prepare a second anti-Jewish genocide. If, however, the Holocaust did occur after all, then — per Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric — Israel has even less of a reason to be in Palestine, but should be transplanted instead to Europe. One way or another, the result is the same: Israel must vanish.

This was the sole reason for Iran attaching so much importance to the participation of the delegation from the Jewish sect, Neturei Karta. Although Neturei Karta does not deny the Holocaust, it welcomes the abolition of Israel. This objective was the common denominator uniting all the participants in the conference. In his closing speech, Ahmadinejad formulated his aim with unmistakable clarity: “The life- curve of the Zionist regime has begun its descent, and it is now on a downward slope towards its fall. … The Zionist regime will be wiped out, and humanity will be liberated.”

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