Iran President just can't resist Holocaust denial

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been back at his old holocaust denial habit. He has been quoted previously directly questioning the existence of the Holocaust but then there have been attempts to play this down. Here is the latest and recent example of these holocaust denial instincts as revealed in his open letter to the President of the United States of 5th August 2006. This letter received quite a bit of media publicity at the time. However there did not seem to be much attention paid to the following quote from the long rambling letter. (Relevant text in bold. Its a fairly long quote - to give readers some context.

"Young people, university students, and ordinary people have many questions about the phenomenon of Israel. I am sure you are familiar with some of them. Throughout history many countries have been occupied, but I think the establishment of a new country with a new people, is a new phenomenon that is exclusive to our times. Students are saying that sixty years ago such a country did not exist. They show old documents and globes and say try as we have, we have not been able to find a country named Israel. I tell them to study the history of WWI and II. One of my students told me that during WWII, which more than tens of millions of people perished in, news about the war, was quickly disseminated by the warring parties. Each touted their victories and the most recent battlefront defeat of the other party. After the war they claimed that six million Jews had been killed. Six million people that were surely related to at least two million families. Again let us assume that these events are true. Does that logically translate into the establishment of the state of Israel in the Middle East or support for such a state? How can this phenomenon be rationalized or explained?"

It is not a difficult task to decipher what he really is saying here. What he means is - if six million Jews were killed during WW2 then there would have been two million bereaved families. He implies that by some logic this calls into question the fact of the holocaust. He clearly realises the danger of outright denial though because then he goes on , clearly with reluctance, to acknowledge a working assumption that the Holocaust was true - in order to question the founding of the state of Israel. Implying of course that there is some doubt that must be overcome by making the assumption. The full letter - if you are masochistic enough to want to read it - can be found on the http://www.president.ir/eng/ahmadinejad/cronicnews/1385/02/19/index-e.htm#b3


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