It’s hard to know whether to react with bemusement or revulsion to the recent Holocaust show conference in Iran.
Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played host earlier this week to a rag-tag group of 67 neo-nazis, discredited “scholars” and other Holocaust deniers from 67 nations, giving them a forum to indulge in their ahistorical fantasies.
Few events in history have been so well documented, and thousands of living witnesses remain among us to tell the terrible story. So, it is bemusing that some people remain blind to the facts.
The revolting aspect, of course, is the prejudice shown by Holocaust deniers.
There was also calculated danger behind Ahmadinejad’s conference in that he was playing to others in the Middle East who would like to see Israel destroyed.
The global reaction to the meeting was heartening. There was entirely appropriate criticism from government and religious leaders around the world. One Iranian academic stood up in the conference to present a counter view, and some Iranian students burned pictures of Ahmadinejad in protest of the conference. A Palestinian lawyer who is scholar of the Holocaust attempted to attend the meeting but was denied a visa.
We applaud such courage in standing up for the truth.
