Holocaust Conference Iran[Orthodox Jews line up with an ex Ku Klux Klan leader and Holocaust Deniers]© Hugh Taylor Dec 12, 2006 http://middleeasttravel.suite101.com/article.cfm/holocaust_conference_iran |
The Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki in his opening address said that “the aim of this conference is not to deny or confirm the Holocaust.” but to create “an opportunity for thinkers who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust.”
One of the participants was David Duke a former Louisiana Republican representative and former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. He said that preventing the Holocaust being freely discussed let people “turn a blind eye to Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people.”
British Rabbi Aharon Cohen of the group Neturei Karta said that he was attending to put the Orthodix Jewish viewpoint. He maintained that there had been a Holocaust but objected to it being used as a justification “for perpetrating unjust acts against the Palestinians.”
Neturei Karta, the Guardians of the City, a group which views Zionism as a poison threatening all Jews. Rabbi Cohen told the conference that that the movement to establish a Jewish national state in what was Palestine was the underlying cause of strife and bloodshed in the Middle Eastand that he prayed that Israel “be totally and peacefully dissolved”.
In it’s place, Rabbi Cohen would like to see a country where Palestinians, both Arab and Jew could live together peacefully as they had for centuries.
According to Neturei Karta the creation of the state of Israel goes against the book of Jewish law which teaches that human force must not be used to create a Jewish state before the coming of the Messiah.
Rabbi Moishe Friedman an Austrian based Jew said he had come to Tehran to look at the lessons that could be learned from the Holocaust and to break the taboo on discussing it. He was not there to debate the existence of the Holocaust.
He believed that it was wrong to use the past suffering of the Jewish people as a " tool of commercial, military and media power" and to use it to legitimize the suffering of other people.
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