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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Despite Pressman's claim Ahmadinejad never denied the Holocaust, but the Iranian president definitely does want to open up a dialogue with the USA with regard to US Mideast policy.
Because a false conception of the Holocaust seems to be a controlling factor in US behavior toward Iran, Arabs, and Muslims, Ahmadinejad's desire to discuss the associated Jewish Zionist mythology is hardly illogical.
In any case, even if everything that Americans believed about the Holocaust were true, there is no reasonable ethical system in which Jews would be justified in stealing Palestine from the native population on the basis of Jewish suffering in Europe.
In addition, the absolute and relative numbers of Jews perpetrating mass murder, ethnic cleansing, and genocide by the end of the 30s were far larger than those of similarly culpable Germans by the end of WW2. (See Jewish Peril 1933 versus 2009.)
If the government of Germany paid reparations to Jews and to the State of Israel for the actions of relatively few German Nazis, not only should Jews and the State of Israel have paid even larger reparations to the victims of a very large number of Jewish communists, but the world Zionist population should also be totally stripped of everything it owns to compensate the native Palestinian population and neighboring ME countries for the crimes of Zionism! In addition, the US should clawback at least $6 trillion from American Zionists for fraudulently manipulating the USA into supporting the State of Israel.
Not only is it total hubris and arrogance for Jewish Zionists to believe that the world owes them recognition of a bogus Jewish claim to Palestine because of the Holocaust, but Americans should certainly be discussing the removal of Zionist interlopers from Palestine as a means to restore American moral stature.
Anyway, after Pressman's essay I have included a comment previously posted in World War: 1939, 2009 because it remains especially relevant as Obama's ME policy becomes more and more Zionist.
A Visit to Auschwitz That Ahmadinejad Will Never Make
By GABE PRESSMAN
Updated 10:28 AM EDT, Fri, Sep 25, 2009
It was a bitterly cold day in January 1948. I can never forget it.
A former inmate of Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi extermination camps, was leading the way. We walked over the frozen ground through the gate bearing the words in large letters: "Arbeit Macht Frei." (Work Makes You Free).
The words themselves were a mockery of the poor souls who lived there for a brief time before being gassed to death in the execution chambers.
When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rants about the Holocaust never having happened I think of this cold day in Poland. And I remember how angry I was as I saw evidence of Nazi efficiency and cruelty in this supreme death factory.
My guide, who was wearing a tattered American military coat and limping, was very matter of fact as he showed me the evidence. We visited the barracks buildings where hundreds of thousands were held. When the Russians were advancing late in the war, the Nazis had to flee in a hurry. They left behind many remnants of the lives that were taken there.
One building held thousands of clumps of women's hair, shaved off the heads of victims after they were gassed. It was part of the Auschwitz routine to ship this hair back to Germany to be used in the manufacture of mattresses. In one large barracks building were mounds of shoes, taken from the victims' feet before death, the guide told me.
There were men's shoes and women's shoes and children's shoes -- a sad testimony to what happened here.
Few Americans, at that time, fully realized the extent of the tragedy, the systematic killing that happened. I was so stunned -- and furious -- that I decided to take home some souvenirs. I had a paper bag and, in it, I placed some woman's hair that still smelled faintly from Zyklon, the gas that killed her, and a baby's shoe.
Later, outside, the guide explained that when the ovens got too full toward the end of the war, bodies were burned out here in ditches. He got on his knees and started digging with his hands, pulling out a silver-capped tooth. And, I, obsessed with the idea of recording this moment, started digging too. I came up with a few chips of bone.
The guide said, "Because of all the bodies buried underneath, this is probably some of the richest soil in Europe."
In another building, we found hundreds of suitcases with addresses stenciled on them. Sadly, the people to be executed had brought some of their belongings to Auschwitz because they had been told they should be prepared to stay a while.
I remember all the features of this horrible place, including the railroad tracks that led right to the center of the camp. Some of the victims were housed in barracks buildings and put to work for a while. Others went directly from the trains to the gas chambers. They were told to undress so they could take a shower. Then the rooms were sealed and the gas poured out and killed them.
When I got back to the press hotel in Germany a few days later, I had to confront somebody so I picked on the room clerk. He was a handsome, ex-Luftwaffe officer about my age.
I poured the contents of the bag on the reception desk. And he blurted out in a heavy German accent, ''We didn't know about these things!"
I got similar reactions from other Germans until I dumped the contents of the bag on the bedspread and my cleaning lady saw what was there and started to cry. She obviously understood about these things.
After I told her about the experience, my mother wrote me from New York: "I don't give a damn what your hatred of the Germans will do to them. I do care very much what it will do to you."
Sixty years have passed. I have marveled at the transformation in Germany, where the younger generations have, for the most part, expressed regret for what happened and the major political leaders have spoken out against the Holocaust and what happened in their country.
The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has denounced the Iranian president for his "anti-Semitic rants."
He commended those who walked out on Ahmadinejad. And then added dramatically, "To those who gave this Holocaust denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?"
The Polish government has made a museum, a shrine out of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. It would be wonderful if the UN could ship Ahmadinejad there -- just for a day, just long enough to see evidence of the crimes he denies. It's just a fantasy, of course, but wouldn't it be great to put this bum on a plane to Cracow and have him go there, to proclaim, again, on the soil of Poland, that it never happened?
The h-event is being used to strenghten the relationship
Quote:I thought about posting something about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's most recent fit of Holocaust denial, but Juan Cole said everything
You Americans really ought to forget everything that has got to do with socalled holocaust.* Typically of you Americans you got to know the term from a television series. Churchill, Eisenhower and De Gaulle have between them written tens of thousands of pages about WW2 without ever mentioning the word. You Americans are smart, and Walt is one of your finest. Surely you have grasped why some people want you to pay disproportionate homage to this event, which affected only a small part of all those killed in WW2. [The reality is, of course, that it is always a perilous situation to be a minority in a dictatorship, and being disliked by that dictatorship. And there is very little outside forces can do about it] It is used to generate sympathy towards Israel, and to lend moral justifications to Israels actions, and to lessen the crimes that Israel has committed towards the indigenous population of Palestine. You Americans learned the term in the 70'ties, at the same time as your help [in the form of gifts, not loans (See Mearsheimer & Walt: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy)] increased 6 times following the October War, and Israel from 1976 onwards became the biggest recipient of US foreign aid (ie. gifts). Actually Mearsheimer and Walt quotes a scholar, who says the relationsship from then on got the character of an alliance. And in this alliance this h-event has got a role of....a thing that can keep the two together and alligned. When the Cold war ended, Israel felt it needed a new glue for the relationsship, and it chose radical Islam - and by implication Iran - as the new enemy. But it has made sure that the h-event still features prominently by directing education programmes [Mind you, to a people that have zero guilt in the persecution of Jews in Europe], and building museums in the very Capital of the free world.
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Ad.* )
When the Iranian President speaks on the subject it should be seen as a Middle Eastern protest, that racism in Europe has led to a country that spurs racism on natives of the region. The Arbas and the Iranians have zero to do with the h-event, and it is written nowhere that they should show any particular respect to it. Why should they? To them other more recent events in their area looms far larger.
