Iranian Halocaust Denial Convention?

Question

What do you think of the Halocaust Denial Conference in Iran?
Why'd they hold it?
And why'd a cupcake company sponsor it?

Answer 1

I was just reading about this.

Iran's official position is that all of Palestine should be under Palestinian Arab rule (no Israeli government).

As another user pointed out, denying the Final Solution strengthens their position, as it is used by Israel to justify its existence.

To quote Juan Cole (Mid East expert):

Iran's farce of a "conference" on the Holocaust is a way of underlining its government's complete rejection of a two state solution and of a Zionist state in the Middle East. Iran's leaders support a maximalist Hamas vision of a fundamentalist Muslim Palestinian state in all of historical Palestine, which requires the dissolution of the Israeli state. Since Israelis tend to justify their state project with reference to the Holocaust, the Ahmadinejad faction in Iran is replying with Holocaust denial as a counter to this argument. Note that other prominent Iranians, such as former President Mohammad Khatami, accept the Holocaust and have lambasted Ahmadinejad for questioning it.

Answer 2

Regardless of the whether they are wildly misguided - I personally believe everyone has a right to freedom of speech (even if some of those making a comment or expressing a point of view -be they Iranian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian etc don't).

No subject should be above discussion - indeed it's frightening that in some countries in Europe you can be imprisoned just for questioning the Halocaust!!! (I know many of the people doing the questioning may be a little 'out there' but that's no excuse for imprisoning people for a point of view.

We don't persecute people who believe in UFO's, nor those who believe in violent regimes etc (unless we know they're actually going to act out or incite violence)

- so when did just the suffering of Jewish people under the Nazi regime become so sacred that no one may speak a word against it ? (No other historical mass murder has this status - and there have been so very many - from Stalin's inhuman cruelty (we are talking 10's of millions killed here) to the near forgotten Armenian genocide, and so on.

Last time I looked nobody had a monopoly on suffering - The death of huge numbers of innocent Jewish people is a truly horrible unthinkable thing, but so is the death of innocent people from any other faith, place or time.

In conclusion; I do not believe that the aforementioned unthinkable crimes against humanity should ever become unspeakable -if you see what I mean.

- Irans motives for the convention are at best highly questionable (if not down right dodgy), but as for silencing freedom of speech - too many great souls have given their lives for us to want to do that, me thinks....

Answer 3

It is for Iran to draw the attention of the world away from what is happening in Lebanon, in Iraq and in Iran itself (their nukes). At the same time to appear to the Islamic World that she is the only country which defends the Palestinian rights and standing against Israel. Thus Iran creates a solid ground for her and for Hezbollah in Lebanon to take over and for the world to forget about her nuclear program.

Answer 4

It is a smoke screen to draw attention and support to the Arab/Middle Eastern cause. I agree with the support side of it, but I just believe that there are other, more diplomatic ways to do this. A conference with this sort of agenda only creates distance and gaps.