Iranian president calls holocaust a 'myth'

Iranian president calls holocaust a 'myth' in live TV broadcast Robert Tait in Tehran and Luke Harding in BerlinThursday December 15, 2005The Guardian

Iran's ultra-Islamist president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, triggered a fresh wave of international outrage yesterday by dismissing the Holocaust as a myth and calling for Jews to be moved to Canada and Alaska.

In a speech broadcast live on Iranian television and calculated to generate maximum publicity, Mr Ahmadinejad described the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews in the second world war as a fabrication concocted to justify Israel's existence.

"They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets," he told an audience in the south-eastern city of Zahidan.

"If someone were to deny the existence of God ... or prophets and religion, they would not bother him. However, if someone were to deny the myth of the Jews' massacre, all the Zionist mouthpieces and the governments subservient to the Zionists scream against the person as much as they can."



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The outburst was the latest in a string of anti-Israeli statements from Mr Ahmadinejad. Analysts in Tehran yesterday said the wave of rhetoric was calculated to increase Iran's international isolation, strengthening the president's radical camp against more pragmatic regime figures who have been critical of his performance since he took office four months ago.

The remarks drew angry condemnation from Israel, the EU and Germany, which warned that they jeopardised the resumption of talks between the EU and Iran about its nuclear programme. Germany's foreign minister, Franz-Walter Steinmeier, said: "I cannot hide the fact that this weighs on bilateral relations and on the chances for the negotiation process, the so-called nuclear dossier."

One MEP yesterday suggested that the best way to express Europe's frustration with Mr Ahmadinejad would be to throw Iran out of the World Cup. Iran, a football-mad country, is due to take part in next summer's tournament in Germany. Millions of Iranians watched last week's draw in Leipzig.

The best way to isolate Iran internationally would be to exclude it from the tournament, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the joint leader of the Green group in the European parliament, said yesterday.
Last October, Mr Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", earning a rebuke from the UN. Revisiting that theme yesterday, he said: "If you say it is true that you massacred and burned 6 million Jews during the second world war, if you committed this massacre, why should the Palestinians pay the price? ... Give a part of your own land in Europe, the US, Canada or Alaska to them so that the Jews can establish their country."

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Why did Britan have to carve out a homeland for the Jews in Arabia
why not UK?
why not USA?
why not Germany, since Hitler massacred the Jews?

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