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US Holocaust Denial
By Dr. Gideon Polya, MWC chief political editor  Holocaust Denial is repugnant because it denies the suffering of the victims and the suffering of the survivors and descendants of the victims. Holocaust Denial is also dangerous because denial of horrendous avoidable mortality events simply increases the probability of their repetition – history ignored or history denied yields history repeated.
Holocaust Denial is again in the news with the recent Israeli-backed US Resolution passed by the UN General Assembly condemning denial of the Holocaust i.e. denial of the World War 2 Jewish Holocaust. Significantly the Resolution – while perfectly praiseworthy in itself - does not mention OTHER Holocausts, thereby raising the specter of American Holocaust Ignoring, and indeed suggesting that the Resolution was in itself a form of Holocaust Denial. The Resolution, introduced by the United States and approved by consensus, stated that the General Assembly of the United Nations "condemns without any reservation any denial of the Holocaust." What the Resolution SHOULD have said was that the UN "condemns without any reservation any denial of ANY Holocaust." U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon very properly said that the Resolution: "reflects the prevailing view of the international community … the denial of historical facts such as the Holocaust is unacceptable … [that principle must be] respected both in rhetoric and in practice." The Resolution, while not mentioning Iran, was clearly linked in the eyes of the world’s media to the December 2006 Teheran Holocaust Conference. Indeed this was explicitly stated by the US representative. Speaking during the General Assembly session, Washington's acting ambassador, Alejandro Wolff, said: "conferences like those sponsored by Iran are designed solely to polarize and incite hatred. If successful they can then use that hatred as a catalyst to justify genocide. Some will cloak their hatred and hidden agenda by invoking the right to free speech and academic freedom. There is a categorical difference between free speech and speech which willfully and maliciously ignores recognized historical facts in order to advance an ulterior agenda." This American position, echoed by Israel, is intemperate, hypocritical, dangerous and dishonest – the Iranians are not threatening anyone with genocide but indeed it is nuclear-armed Israel and nuclear–armed America that have been threatening non-nuclear Iran with nuclear war and destruction. Thus a Google Search for the utterly obscene phrase “nuke Iran” yields about the same number of URLs today as for the phrase “Jewish Holocaust” – about 0.3 million. For a sample of current discussions about the unthinkable “nuke Iran” possibility that is being actively advocated by Bush-ites and Racist Zionists see the appalled commentary by decent, concerned American commentator Fred Kaplan. “The only time the United States ever used nuclear weapons, in 1945, was at the end of a world war that had been raging for years. And at the time, the bombing was seen as an alternative to an invasion of the Japanese mainland that might have killed hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. In the 60 years since, the world has declared and observed a clear threshold between the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons. To violate that threshold—for a purpose that falls far short of pre-empting an imminent threat or protecting our national survival—would not only be immoral; it would incite outrage across the Middle East and the Muslim world; it would inspire vast recruitment drives by anti-American terrorists (and any resulting sequels to 9/11 would be seen, even by our friends, as just deserts); and it would legitimize nuclear weapons as everyday tools of warfare and spur many nations into building their own arsenals, if just to anticipate and match their neighbors' impending arsenals. In short, it would be a disaster of head-spinning proportions.” “[Iran is dissociating itself] from this entire hypocritical political exercise … Genocide and immense sufferings associated with that horrific crime should not be manipulated for political purposes. Regrettably, the Israeli regime has routinely attempted to exploit the sufferings of the Jewish people in the past as a cover for the crimes it has perpetuated over the past six decades against Palestinians in the occupied territories including massacres, targeted assassination, ethnic cleansing, and state terrorism … [resolution did not refer to] other cases of genocide perpetuated in various parts of the world in the past and present especially the crimes perpetuated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Palestine, Rwanda, and the Balkans…”
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