On December 8, 2005, Iranian president Ahmadinejad, in an interview in Al-'Alam TV, made blatantly anti-Semitic remarks, slandering Israel and the Jewish people. He denied the Holocaust and said there was no legitimacy for the State of Israel's being the national home of the Jewish people. ¹

In addition to the severe criticism of Ahnadinejad's statements in the Egyptian media, praise was also showered on the Iranian president (particularly in the government newspaper, Al-Gumhouriya) for his “daring” to raise the issue of Holocaust denial . The praise was accompanied by anti-Semitic articles written by Egyptian columnists which dealt with Holocaust denial and blamed the European countries for exploiting the Holocaust to solve the Jewish problem at the expense of the Arabs.

Following are the most prominent of those remarks as they appeared in the Egyptian media.

The Iranian president became Israel 's number one enemy by stating that he doubted the truth of the Jewish claims in reference to the Holocaust. Since the Second World War, they have invested millions of dollars in publishing books and articles and in producing propaganda movies claiming that Jews were sent to gas chambers in concentration camps under the Nazi régime and that the Jewish people were victims of Nazi anti-Semitism.

Spreading the Holocaust myth [by the Jews] has two objectives:

•  To make world public opinion sympathetic to the founding of a Jewish state in the Middle East ;

•  To exploit the German guilt complex to make the country pay huge reparations.

At the same time, the Jews cry “anti-Semitism” every time a Western thinker or politician with a conscience condemns the Jewish slaughter of the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, throughout the world there are many intellectuals who have explicitly stated that they have doubts about the events of the Holocaust. Their fate has been to have law suits brought against them. The Jews even managed to have a resolution passed in the UN General Assembly designating a memorial day for the victims of Nazism, to silence everyone who might doubt that the Holocaust ever occurred.

In the face of all of the above, the remarks of the Iranian president reminded the world of the doubts there are about what happened during the Holocaust. He may have opened the gates for new thinkers who will raise the issue again and deal with it rationally, undermine the effectiveness of Jewish propaganda and destroy the guilt complexes that have taken root in the West over the past fifty years.

The Iranian president, in his call to the Europeans to “bear the results of having oppressed the Jews and to establish their state in Austria and Germany ,” lit a great fire that will not be extinguished. The reason the world is panicking at what Ahmadinejad said is not only because the Jews rule everything that happens in Europe , but because the Western world is afraid the Jews will return to live among them . The idea to get rid of them was a stroke of genius because it got them off the map of the West, rid Europe of them and at the same time turned them into the thorn in the side of the Arabs.

The most important aspect of Ahmadinejad's remarks was that he raised the issue of the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel in the region [i.e., the Middle East ]. They have also reopened the argument over historical facts which the Jewish propaganda and political machines invested a great deal of effort to gloss over. “Whatever may be said about the recklessness of the man [i.e., the Iranian president] who uttered those remarks or about his lack of understanding of the international equation, he has at least motivated us to rethink the issue of why the Jews of the world came to our countries.”

In his recent remarks, which certain critics called rash and unwise, the Iranian president denied the events of the Holocaust, which Israel and the West view as the source of [ Israel '] right to exist.

It is possible that Ahmadinejad was rash and that his remarks motivate the West to support Israel , although they have no reason to do so. However, the Iranian president did recall facts which many have tried to ignore: Europe rid itself of the Jewish presence, and solved its own problem by tossing the problem to the Middle East . The issue of the Holocaust was inflated out of all proportion to increase the damage for which the Jews would [demand] to be compensated. That compensation was embodied in the establishment of an independent homeland [for the Jews] which has received the full support and patronage of the West. That was why German and Austria trembled when Ahmadinejad reminded them that someone had to compensate the Holocaust victims, if the Holocaust did [indeed] take place, and if [in fact] it was as serious and terrible [as claimed].

In a article entitled “ Israel 's lies,” Hisham ‘Abd al-Rauf claimed that during the Second World War “ these massacres, which Israel alleges the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews, never happened. The famous execution chambers [i.e., the gas chambers] were not more than rooms for disinfecting clothing. ” The Holocaust, he claimed, was nothing more than a lie the Jews exploit to “extort world solidarity.” The Iranian president, he wrote, posed a “logical and proper question” to the Western countries “which planted Israel in the heart of the Islamic world, and which protected and continue to protect it.” ²