Expert: Iran’s Holocaust Denial, Echoing Nazi Rhetoric, Exposes Its True Threat To Israel

Iranian Holocaust denial, which echoes Nazi rhetoric, exposes an intent “to [repeat] that same crime,” Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), argued in an article published Monday in Tablet Magazine. Ottolenghi rejected claims that it is misguided to associate Iran with Nazi Germany.

Ottolenghi pointed out that even though Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prohibited “outright” Holocaust denial, it wasn’t because he disagreed with it, but because he wanted “to safeguard Iran’s international image.” Instead, Iran has pushed a theme that “regardless of the magnitude of Nazi atrocities, the Zionists had callously exploited them in order to blackmail world opinion in support of their Palestine grab.” This “softer” variation of Holocaust denial, Ottolenghi wrote, has been adopted by President Hassan Rouhani, widely regarded as a moderate.

Ottolenghi’s argument is similar to one made by Raobert Wistrich, the scholar of anti-Semitism who died yesterday at age 70, in a 2012 interview with Ben Weinthal of FDD. Wistrich explained “that the constant efforts to deny, relativize or invert the Holocaust—especially against Israel—are a conscious (or unconscious) invitation to repeat it.”

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Read the full article here.