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The Iranian Holocaust Conference: an exercise in theatre
By yaman | December 16, 2006
If there is such thing as a Holocaust industry allowing Israel to act with impunity in Palestine, then now it is also true that President Ahmadenijad has succeeded in creating an industry out of Holocaust denial. Dressing first a Holocaust cartoon contest and later an equally revolting Holocaust ‘conference’ in the language of academic freedom and free speech, Ahmadenijad is building an equally egregious myth out of latent anti-Semitism and frustration with the state of Israel.
The premise of this conference is not that the massacre of six million innocent Jews and others by the Nazis during World War II has been abused by politicians, as more respectable scholars like Norman Finkelstein maintain. Rather, it is that this slaughter was invented, exaggerated, or otherwise forged in order to support the ascendance of Zionism in historical Palestine. These analyses are not equivalent, and the latter, rooted in politics and racism, is completely illegitimate and unconvincing.
The rationalizations put forth by Ahmadenijad and his sympathizers regarding their “freedom” to have this conference have been equally unconvincing. More than a few have bought the line that the President of Iran is merely pointing out a double standard in the West by crossing perceived barriers on public discourse. The Iranian government, first and foremost, is in no position to proclaim itself the vanguard of free speech, and its justification of its ‘conference’ is reminiscent of similar ones organized by right-wing reactionaries in the United States who took it upon themselves to reproduce and publicly display the infamous Danish cartoons earlier this year. Principles of “free speech” have been abused in recent years as a cover for the dissemination of hateful material. When advocating beliefs or materials that are inherently racist or discriminatory, hiding behind “free speech” is simply a weak defense mechanism, not the recourse of somebody on an imagined moral high horse.
It may have been more palatable if the so-called ‘conference’ was actually serious in nature. Fortunately, the well-established facts surrounding the truth of the Holocaust precluded this from happening before it ever occurred to Ahmadenijad to arrange for it, rendering the entire event a sinister charade and those academics who did attend it tools of a political agenda–hopefully–not their own. Despite this, the various responses to the skit have failed to address important ramifications.
First, the Western press has reacted to the event by giving a platform for bigots like David Duke and then attempting to discredit the entire Palestinian advocacy movement based on his pseudo-advocacy. This is not the first time it has happened–the Mearsheimer and Walt paper was described by the New York Sun and Washington Post as one that was praised by Duke. A New York Times article about Carter’s recent book randomly mentioned the Holocaust conference at the end of the article. A debate on CNN between Wolf Blitzer and Duke ended up with an inquiry into Duke’s views regarding the Palestinians: interestingly enough, and probably to Blitzer’s chagrin, he claims to support a two-state solution. Regardless, this kind of mischaracterization needs to stop. David Duke is not a representative of the Palestinians, and holocaust denial is not an ideology originating from or incriminating of the Palestinian people.
In the past I’ve written against exploiting the Holocaust and using fringe groups like the Neturei Karta as tokens for questioning Israel’s doctrinal legitimacy. If it is true that the Holocaust is manipulated to apologize for Israel’s policies, then it is equally true that Holocaust denial is being exploited to simultaneously undermine Israel’s existence and support figures like Ahmadenijad. For people who are familiar with Israeli history and modern policy, this seems like a roundabout way of seeking change. What people taking this route must believe is that, if Israel exists because of the Holocaust, then the way to change this is to remove the Holocaust from history. Of course, in doing so they acknowledge one of the most inaccurate and troubling justifications given by some Israelis about Israel: that it needs to exist because of the Holocaust. In other words, they do not oppose the Israeli state because of the policies it currently adopts, but because they believe the Holocaust did not happen. Besides being inaccurate (political Zionism appeared on the world stage roughly half a century before the Holocaust, and Jewish immigration to Palestine pre-dated that), it implicitly validates the opposite narrative.
Furthermore, it does not, as some claim, place Israel’s contemporary racist policies under scrutiny. It has succeeded only in showcasing the Iranian president’s idiocy and embarrassing the Iranian people and, ironically enough, has been just as detrimental to the recognition of Palestinian suffering as the employment of Holocaust memories as a silencing mechanism can be. Palestinians and their advocates should be especially weary of the co-optation of their struggle by external forces who have ulterior agendas. David Duke does not support the Palestinians because he genuinely recognizes the human rights of all people. Ahmadenijad is taking advantage of the Palestinian question to promote his own stature in the Arab world and to provide a pretext by which to rationalize Iran’s rising regional power.
In short, Ahmadenijad has done nothing admirable. He has not opened up channels of intellectual inquiry, he has not pointed out any double standards in the West, and he has not advanced any noble cause. It is not courageous to assemble a crowd of shoddy academics and racists and to make shoddy and racist statements before them. The conference’s “conclusions” were pre-determined, its intent non-academic and anti-intellectual, and its role damaging to the truly noble advocates of Palestinian rights. It was nothing more than an exercise in theatrics, and it was not that amusing. Arabs, Muslims, and other advocates of equality for the Palestinians are all right to join the chorus resounding around the world in rejecting the conference, condemning its anti-Semitic undertones, and marginalizing those who participated in it.
A movement that is on the side of justice, after all, cannot accept partnership with racists and other opportunists who would deny historical realities of human suffering, like that of the Holocaust, of the Armenian and Native American genocides, of the Nakba, to further their own political ends.
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