Iran: The dangers of Iran's Holocaust denial

The dangers of Iran's Holocaust denial
February 14, 2006, The Toronto Star

Pursued to its limits, anti-Semitism could turn ongoing regional conflicts into religious wars involving Muslims, Jews and Christians, warn Amir Hassanpour and Shahrzad Mojab

The president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently declared the Holocaust a "myth ... that they call the massacre of Jews." If it is not a myth, he said, and Europeans had indeed massacred the Jews, then Europe or North America, and not the Middle East, should host the Jewish state.

Later, foreign affairs ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi announced a plan to hold a conference on "the scientific aspect" of the Holocaust in order to "discuss and review its repercussions," as reported by the BBC.

Although the Holocaust has continued to be contested in the Middle East, it has not been prominent in the political discourses of Iranians.

However, this current round of denial involves more than another expression of anti-Semitism. It comes in the midst of a scuffle over Iran's decision to resume its uranium enrichment program and in the context of ongoing crises throughout the Middle East.

What Ahmadinejad calls a "myth" is the most extensively documented genocide of all time. The Holocaust was openly planned and publicly proclaimed by its perpetrators.

Germany's Nazi regime propagated, in state organs, media, films, and even academia, the intent to eliminate the Jewish people, as well as the Roma people, gays, disabled Germans, and communists.

This was a project to "purify" German blood and to create an Aryan master race with the mission to enslave other races.

Like all genocides, the Holocaust was not only a crime against its victims, it was a crime against humanity. Under current international law, perpetrators of genocide can be prosecuted in any country of the world.

The denial of genocide amounts to the perpetuation of its intent and effects, even after it has come to an end. But Iran's Islamic regime has engaged in more than genocide denial; it has perpetrated its own genocide.

The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide defines this crime as the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." It comprises acts such as "killing members of the group," "causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group," and "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

The Islamic regime has time and again expressed its intent to eliminate Baha'ism, one of Iran's indigenous minority religions. It has executed hundreds of Baha'is, and has denied them full citizenship rights.

Even after execution, Baha'is and other "non-clean" victims such as socialists and communists are buried in unidentified cemeteries or unmarked graves.

The Islamic regime has not spared its majority population, either. Women have been subjected to a regime of gender apartheid, and "married adulterers" are brutally punished by stoning them to death. In 1988, Tehran launched a "politicide" project, massacring thousands of political prisoners who had already been sentenced to prison terms.

Iran's non-Persian peoples, the Arabs, Baluches, Kurds and Turkmens, also suffer from repression. They are denied many rights including native tongue education. Even followers of Sunni Islam, which comprise about 20 per cent of the population, suffer from discrimination. They have not been allowed to build a Sunni mosque in Tehran.

Iran's Jews and Christians survived, and sometimes thrived, throughout Iranian history despite recurrent repression.

In the wake of the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-11, they were granted citizenship rights in the form of equality before the law. However, the Islamic Republic has created conditions that have drastically reduced the size of the country's Jewish and Christian communities. They are treated not as citizens but as dhimmis - members of non-Muslim religious minorities "protected" under Islamic rule. Holocaust denial is not convincing to the majority of Iranians who have resisted this theocracy and demanded the separation of state and mosque.

However, if pursued to its limits, it could turn the ongoing conflicts of the region into religious wars between Muslims and Jews, and Muslims and Christians. This has already happened to some extent; the continuing U.S war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict further fan the flames of such conflicts.

In their opposition to the Israeli state, which is built on the ruins of Palestine and its people, the leaders of Iran's theocracy appeal to racism and ethnocentrism.

It is not difficult to imagine another denial conference, with its claims to "scientific accuracy," turning into a reunion of traditional anti-Semitism and fascism.

There are, however, alternatives to this racist politics.

Many Palestinians and Jews oppose both anti-Semitism and anti-Palestinian policy. In 2001, for instance, 14 Arab intellectuals, including Lebanese poet Adonis and Palestinians Mahmoud Darwish and Edward Said, protested the convening of a similar conference in Beirut.

Some of the Arab media, too, condemned the event, which was, as a result, cancelled.

For their part, many Israeli Jews support the Palestinian people's right to self-determination.

Intellectuals such as Uri Davis and the late Israel Shahak, a Holocaust survivor, treat Israel as an apartheid regime, while many such as Amira Hass, Jeff Halper, and Ilan Pappé struggle to reverse the destruction of the Palestinian people.

The "international community" has generally kept silent about Iran's gender apartheid and its politicidal and genocidal practices.

The outcry against the anti-Semitism of the theocrats is motivated more by imperial interests than a principled anti-racism. At the same time, Israel uses the Holocaust to justify its policy of uprooting the Palestinian people.

As for Iranians, this is an opportunity to broaden their resistance to the theocracy by opposing all expressions of anti-Semitism, and preventing the holding of another Holocaust denial circus.