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Dec. 22, 2006
Undermining state of Israel
ED MORGAN
Last week's so-called Holocaust conference in Tehran had nothing
to do with seeking historical truth and everything to do with undermining
what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the radical mullahs,
whose views he represents, perceive to be the basis of Israel's
claim to statehood.
Their perverted lie that the Holocaust never happened negates the
reality of the proven facts that the Nazis and their collaborators
carried out the mass murder of millions of Jews. It is also a calculated
attempt to delegitimize the state of Israel, the fulfilment of the
Jewish people's centuries-old struggle to reestablish their sovereign
presence in their ancestral homeland.
Ahmadinejad and his cohorts fail to understand that Israel is not
the result of the Holocaust but, rather that, had there been an
Israel in the 1930s and 1940s, there would have been no Holocaust.
It is indeed in this capacity as a rescuer of threatened Jewish
communities that Israel has welcomed, for example, the majority
of the 900,000 Jews that Arab countries have been expelled or induced
to leave their ancient homelands.
The Iranian mullah-ocracy's denial of the Nazi genocide lays the
foundation, in its view, for the fulfilment of the repeated genocidal
call it has issued for the destruction of Israel, in direct violation
of the Genocide Convention and the Charter of the United Nations.
It is this context that best explains why Iran has become the leading
state sponsor of international terrorism.
Iran's travesty of a conference used the Holocaust as a weapon,
but people of good conscience saw it for what it truly was
anti-Semitism, plain and simple. That is why the nations of the
civilized world have condemned it. That is also why students at
Tehran University and many other Iranians protested against it,
in a remarkable demonstration of courage and commitment to truth
in a country where criticism of the government can be a death warrant.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper eloquently and forcefully expressed
outrage over the gathering on behalf of all Canadians. His government,
one week before the conference, also found an excellent antidote:
Canada's participation, for the first time, in a meeting of the
Task Force for International Co-operation on Holocaust Education,
Remembrance and Research, held in Budapest. The task force aims
to inspire political and social support for Holocaust education,
remembrance and research on a global level.
In examining these issues, it is well to recall that the Holocaust
began with words and actions that went unopposed. Adolf Hitler,
in Mein Kampf, outlined exactly what he planned to do once
he seized power. We should similarly harbor no illusions about Ahmadinejad
and his regime.
While the scope, magnitude and mechanized bureaucratic implementation
of the Holocaust make it unique, its lessons and messages are universal.
As we ponder the horrors of Bosnia and Rwanda and, today, the killing
fields of Darfur, we must recommit ourselves to making sure that
"Never again" is not an empty slogan. We must work together
to ensure that 60 years from now, no country like today's Iran will
hold a sham conference to debate whether these genocides actually
occurred.
Ed Morgan is the national president of the Canadian Jewish
Congress and a professor of international law at the University
of Toronto. A longer version of this article appeared in the Montreal
Gazette.
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