TEHRAN: Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told delegates at a controversial international conference in Tehran to deliberate on the veracity of the Holocaust that Israel’s days are numbered.
The conference, hosted by Iran and described as a debate on the killing of six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps and elsewhere, has brought condemnation from the west, including the Vatican.
Ahmadinejad had been maintaining that the killing was a “myth”. He has also called for the Jewish state of Israel to be wiped off the map.
He told the conference a committee should be set up to investigate whether the Holocaust had indeed occurred. Justifying the need for such an investigation, he said the creation of a Zionist regime and the use of the Holocaust for propaganda purposes have become instruments in the hands of the western powers, especially the United States and Britain, to dominate the Middle East. “I believe that the roots of insecurity and injustice should be confronted,”? he said.
He also told the participants, “Thanks to people’s wishes and God’s will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want.
“Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out.”
Ahmadinejad was cheered by the delegates as he made the scathing remarks. The 60 plus attendees included several writers, hardcore opponents of Israel and the so-called believers in the “white supremacy”. Many of them made presentations doubting the existence of gas chambers and concentration camps that were used by the Nazi Germany to exterminate the Jews and other “undesirable” people and arguing that the claims of the Holocaust were fabricated or exaggerated. Among the attendees was David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader, who spoke at the conference saying Israel feared an inquiry into the Holocaust more than a nuclear bomb from Iran.
Iran says it organized the conference to bring out the exact reasons behind the creation of Israel after World War II and to allow researchers from countries where it is a crime to deny the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad told the delegates that Iran is home for all freedom seekers of the world.
The delegates had earlier decided to form a “fact-finding” committee under an Iranian academic, Mohammad Ali Ramin, to study the Holocaust. Other members of the committee included scholars from the United States, France, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Iran, Bahrain and Syria.
The Vatican issued a statement describing the Holocaust an “immense tragedy” which had to remain forever a warning for all people to respect the rights of others. The statement used the Hebrew word Shoah to describe the Holocaust.
Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel said the meeting sponsored by Iran shows the seriousness of the situation Israel is placed in.
The White House in Washington issued a statement Tuesday saying the gathering in Tehran is an “affront to the entire civilized world, as well as to the traditional Iranian values of tolerance and mutual respect.”?
Originally Posted HERE