News
There was no Holocaust?
At a time when the whole world is condemning the Iranian president’s anti-Semitic remarks, the head of the largest opposition group in Egypt has said that the Holocaust is a myth invented by Jews. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the second largest party in the Egyptian parliament, repeated the words of the Iranian president, who called the Holocaust into doubt. “Western democracies attack anyone who does not share their Zionist version of the Holocaust, which is only a myth, after all,” said Muhammed Akef.
As proof of western intolerance, Akef cited the cases of the French writer Roger Garoudy, convicted of Holocaust denial in France in 1998, and of the British historian David Irving, charged with a similar offense in Austria last month.
Earlier in December, Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a “myth” used as a pretext for “intruding into the heart of the Arab and Muslim world.” Ahmadinejad also called for transferring Israel to Europe, Canada, or the USA.
Such an approach to the Holocaust is nothing new in the Arab and Muslim worlds. According to the most recent report by the American Holocaust Research Institute, denying the extermination of the Jews during the Second World War is common practice in the Middle East.
In Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, governments turn a blind eye to, and frequently even endorse such assertions. Not long ago, a writer for a pro-government Egyptian newspaper stated that the world had been needlessly outraged over the statements by Ahmadinejad, who was only “telling the truth.” The newspaper wrote that “the massacres that Israel accuses the Nazis of committing in fact never occurred, and the gas chambers were used for disinfecting clothing.”
