Tehran – Iran’s hard-line president said Tuesday that Israel will one day be “wiped out” as the Soviet Union was, drawing applause from participants in a conference casting doubt on the Holocaust.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s comments were likely to further fuel the outcry prompted by the two-day gathering, which has gathered some of Europe’s and the United States’ best-known Holocaust deniers.
Anger over the conference could further isolate Iran as the West considers sanctions in the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad called for elections among “Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner.”
Ahmadinejad has used anti- Israeli rhetoric and cast doubt on the Holocaust to rally anti- Western supporters at home and abroad, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. Several times he has referred to the Holocaust as a “myth” used to impose the state of Israel on the Arab world.
“The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder,” David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and former state representative in Louisiana, told The Associated Press.
Ahmadinejad announced that the conference would set up a “fact-finding commission” to determine whether the Holocaust happened or not. The commission will “help end a 60-year-old dispute,” he said.
The Tehran conference was touted by participants and organizers as an exercise in academic freedom and a chance to openly consider whether 6 million Jews really died in the Holocaust.
Rabbi Moshe David Weiss, one of six members attending from the group Jews United Against Zionism, told delegates, “We don’t want to deny the killing of Jews in World War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for how many people were killed. They have used the Holocaust as a device to justify their oppression.”
