Thursday, December 15, 2005

Another Holocaust denial...

So apparently in Iran they teach revisionist history, where the Holocaust never happened. And it's not just the kooky ones--it's the President of the country (although I assume some will call him 'kooky'). From Yahoo! (via Reuters...our favorite!)....

A senior Vatican cardinal on Thursday sharply criticised Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for claiming the Holocaust was a myth, condemning the assertion as a shocking injustice to the victims of the Nazi genocide.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, who, like Pope Benedict, is German, launched a specific attack on Ahmadinejad in a speech accepting an award from an international Jewish organisation.

"It is shocking to hear from the mouth of the president of a nation with an ancient and venerable culture, as the Iranian nation is, expressions of anti-Semitism which for every human being are unacceptable," he said.

"To call the Holocaust a myth is a new injustice to the victims of this unprecedented genocide," he said.

The Vatican criticised previous anti-Israel comments by Ahmadinejad, but the language used by Kasper, who is close to the Pope, was especially strong.

Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guardsman who was elected president in June, in October called Israel a "tumour" which must be "wiped off the map", provoking a diplomatic storm and stoking up fears about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Last week Ahmadinejad first aired his doubts about the veracity of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed by the Nazis. His comments drew rebuke the world over.

Kasper, the head of the Vatican's department for religious relations with Jews, made his remarks at a ceremony where he was given an award by the Anti-Defamation League.

He said he wanted his condemnation of the remarks by Iran's president to be seen as a "concrete" sign of the Vatican's solidarity with the Jewish people.


The thing that always kills me about Holocaust deniers is their two faced stance: one, it didn't happen, but two, we must finish what Hitler started and annihilate the Jews! hooah! Does this seem odd to anyone else?

Reason number 5,065,704 why 1) Iran should not be a member of the U.N. (hah!) and 2) Why the U.S. should not be in the U.N. Discuss among yourselves. But seriously, shouldn't the U.N. take some sort of action against Iran, given that they've called for the complete destruction of another member state? I think so. But the U.N.'s credibility problem goes a lot farther than Iran/Israel.

Also, why does the Iranian President call for Israel to be moved to Europe? OK, I know why, in my head, but it just doesn't make sense. Israel is the "promised land" of the Old Testament, the covenant home of the Jews. God gave it to them. I don't think they're just going to pick up and pack out after 2,000 + years of fighting for it. They're a tough bunch. More power to them! I wouldn't want to pick up and move to Europe, either. Besides, it's not like that continent is a hotbed of Jewish tolerance, anyway (remember the synagogue burnings in France in Spring 2004?). So, uh, where does the Iran President think they should go? Of course he'd prefer if they were just gone, but that's not really an option.

Do we need more reasons why Iran shouldn't have the bomb? I don't think so.

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