13:42 , 01.30.06
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Champions of a new Holocaust The UN-sanctioned establishment of Jan. 27 as
Holocaust Remembrance Day is a welcome development and long overdue. But as
the success of Hamas
in this week's Palestinian elections shows, memorials for Holocaust victims
must be coupled with a response to the existential threats to the survival of
the Jewish people posed by Middle Eastern Islamists. The fact that Palestinian voters would
give so much support to a murderous terrorist organization is telling.
Consider Hamas' 1988 founding covenant, in which it approvingly quotes Imam
Hassan al-Banna's invocation that " Israel will exist and will continue
to exist until Islam will obliterate it." In effect, many Palestinians were voting
for the extermination of the Jewish state. Of course, Hamas does not yet have the
means to make good on this goal. Nor will it anytime soon. But the same is
not true of the group's patrons in Tehran .
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is
seeking to develop nuclear weapons, and has said that he wants to put Israel
"into eternal coma -- like (Ariel) Sharon ." Ahmadinejad also denies the historical
reality of the Nazi Holocaust, which he claims is a hoax invented by
Zionists. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has
challenged Iran 's President to visit Auschwitz to "come and see the
evidence of the Holocaust himself." The response by Iran 's official news
agency, IRNA, reiterates Tehran 's promise to hold a government-sponsored
Holocaust Denial conference giving voice to a rogue's gallery of hatemongers
who will promote Ahmadinejad's claim that Hitler's murder of six million Jews
is a "fairy tale." Prime Minister Blair may consider the
idea of such a conference "shocking, ridiculous, stupid," and
President Bush may reiterate the U.S. commitment to an embattled Israel , but
Tehran 's mullahs are not at all ashamed. To the contrary, they have already
learned the only lesson they care to from Europe -- that, six decades after
Auschwitz , there is still no price to be paid for anti-Semitic statecraft. Indeed, Iran 's Ahmadinejad used as a
bully pulpit a visit to the Muslim holy of holies, Mecca . He proudly takes
credit for rekindling "the Islamic world (which) was getting passive and
extinguished on opposing Israel and needed a shock on the basis of
truth." Compounding the menace of Hamas on
Israel 's doorstep and Iran 's genocidal threats is the fact that not a
single Arab government is willing to forthrightly condemn either movement. Mixed signals
Perhaps these leaders remember the fate
of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, murdered in 2005 by Syrian agents.
He'd got on the wrong side of Damascus ' Bashar Assad in 2001 by courageously
canceling an international Holocaust Deniers' Conference in Beirut .
Organized by Jurgen Graf, a professional bigot who fled Switzerland to Tehran
after being sentenced to jail for defaming the memory of Hitler's victims,
the plan was a sit-down among a cross-section of extremists from Hezbollah to
William L. Pierce, whose infamous racist tract, The Turner Diaries, was the
blueprint for Timothy McVeigh's terrorist attack in Oklahoma City. Collectively, Hamas, Hizbullah and their
patrons in Tehran represent the synthesis of two poisonous ideological
movements in the Muslim world: The denial of the Nazi Holocaust, and the
desire to create a second Holocaust. And they're getting plenty of support
from "mainstream" Arab sources. In Egypt , where a columnist in the
newspaper Al-Massa recently described Nazi gas chambers as "no more than
rooms to disinfect clothing," the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's
leading opposition movement, has abandoned its "moderate" pose
during recent parliamentary election in order to add its voice to
Ahmadinejad's. According to Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the
Brotherhood's supreme spiritual leader, "the sons of Zion" are
responsible for manufacturing "the myth of the Holocaust" as well
as "manipulating" the "new world order" that America is
imposing on the Mideast. Despite recent condemnations from leaders
such as Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush, the world continues to give
Mideast hatemongers mixed signals. No cozying up to Hamas-led government In June, 2005, UN Secretary Kofi Annan
eloquently described the world body as "emerging from the ashes of the
Holocaust" to rectify great evils like Jew hatred. But the UN General
Assembly has failed to even censure Tehran for threatening genocide against a
member state; and at the recent UN Palestine Day proceedings, Annan appeared
on stage in front of a map of the Mideast with Israel expunged. Only now is it beginning to dawn on some
world leaders that we are approaching a 21st century " Munich
moment." Will Washington recognize a Hamas administration as legitimate?
Will it succumb to threats to unleash a terrorist network to "burn"
American cities if the world takes action against Iran 's nuclear program?
Will the European Union seek to appease Tehran 's genocidal Jew-hatred in
hopes that any toxic fallout will be limited to the Middle East ? The West must make clear that it will
not give in to terrorists and their supporters. In addition to tough UN
sanctions to stop Iran 's nuclear weaponization, Western governments must
counter Iran 's anti-Semitic statecraft by making opposition to the new
global Jew hatred integral to their own statecraft. No more friendly meetings or sweetheart
economic deals with Tehran until the mullahs stop their genocidal rhetoric
and nuclear preparations; ad no cozying up to a Palestinian government
dominated by Hamas. There is still time to act before the world may have to
face a new Holocaust. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center in Los Angeles . Leo Adler is Director, National Affairs, Friends of
Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto. |
