Israeli prime
minister Binyamin Netanyahu lashed out at Iran on sunday for staging a
Holocaust-themed cartoon contest that mocked the Nazi genocide of six million
Jews during the second world war. The Islamic Republic was busy planning for
another one.
He quotes ‘I think that every country in the world must stand up and
fully condemn this,’ Netanyahu said in his weekly address.
A State Department spokesman, traveling with Secretary of
State John Kerry in Saudi Arabia, expressed US concern about the contest,
saying it should be “condemned by the authorities andcivil society leaders
rather than encouraged”.
Iran has long backed armed groups committed to Israel’s destruction
and its leaders have called for it to be wiped off the map. Israel fears that
Iran’s nuclear program is designed to threaten its very existence. But Netanyahu
said Israel opposed not only Iran’s belligerent policies, but its values. “It
denies the Holocaust, it mocks the Holocaust and it is also preparing another
Holocaust,” Netanyahu said at his weekly cabinet meeting. “I think that every
country in the world must stand up and fully condemn this.”
State Department spokesman Mark Tone said the US was concerned
the cartoon contest could “be used as a platform for Holocaust denial and
revisionism and egregiously anti-Semitic speech, as it has in the past”.
“Such offensive speech should be condemned by the authorities
and civil society leaders rather than encouraged,” Toner said. “We denounce any
Holocaust denial and trivialization as inflammatory and abhorrent. It is
insulting to the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust.”
The denial or questioning of the genocide is widespread in
the Middle East, where many regard it as a pretext Israel used for its creation
and to excuse its actions toward the Palestinians. “Holocaust means mass
killing,” said contest organizer Masuod Shojai Tabatabaei. “We are witnessing
the biggest killings by the Zionist regime in Gaza and Palestine.” He said the
purpose of the Tehran event was not to deny the Holocaust but rather to
criticize alleged western double standards regarding free expression – and
particularly as a response to depictions of the Prophet Muhammad by the French
satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and others.
The exhibit featured some 150 works from 50 countries, with many
portraying Israel as using the Holocaust to distract from the suffering of the
Palestinians, and others comparing Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. Others
depicted Palestinian prisoners standing behind concentration camp-style barbed
wire fences and a Jerusalem mosque behind a gate bearing the motto, “Arbeit
Macht Frei”, that appeared at the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp. The
contest was organized by non-governmental bodies with strong support from
Iran’s hardliners. A previous contest in 2006 got a boost from then-president
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner who referred to the Holocaust as a “myth” and repeatedly
predicted Israel’s demise.
0 comments:
Post a Comment