Iran’s Holocaust Cartoons: The Latest in Holocaust Denial

It’s a good thing Iran is low on credibility these days, otherwise, the Holocaust “cartoon” website launched from the nuclear wannabe rogue state would be causing more than the current elicited outrage.

Otherwise, the Holocaust cartoon website launched from the nuclear wannabe rogue state would be causing more than the current elicited outrage.

HoloCartoons, launched last week in Farsi, Arabic, and English, is financed by an Iranian non-governmental “cultural foundation.” The cartoons are based largely on a Holocaust-themed comic or cartoon book published in 2008. The book contains satirical images and texts questioning the Holocaust.

The landing page opens to Henry Mancini’s Pink Panther theme and initial texts dedicate the site to all those “killed under the pretext of the Holocaust.” The site also refers to “the killing of 6 million Jews in the Second World War known as the Holocaust” as a “sheer lie.”

Internally, texts call the massacre of six million Jews during World War II a fabrication designed to allow Jews to grab hold of the Middle East and control its resources.

Site visitors click on swastika icons to advance along pages that depict Jews as beak-nosed murderers.

As would be expected, directors of Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust museum, were incensed over news of the launch:

Although the website is not affiliated with the Iranian government — the organization that set it up calls itself “Bulwark of Faith and Thought” — Holocaust denial within the Iranian regime is not novel.

In 2005, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad referred to the Holocaust as a “fairy tale.”

And in December 2006, Iran’s government hosted a Holocaust denial conference termed the “International Conference on Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision.” The conference was intended to bring international attention to the regime’s claims that the Holocaust did not occur and to minimize the magnitude of the genocide.

The larger objective was to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist, something Iranian leaders have perpetuated since the 1979 Islamic revolution, primarily by refusing to recognize the Jewish state by referring to it only as “the Zionist regime.”

The latest cartoon site launch is an offshoot of an Iranian Holocaust denial cartoon contest that was held in 2006 as a cynical offset response to controversy stirred up by the 2005 Danish daily Jyllands-Posten “Mohammed” cartoon series.

The Iranian contest winners hailed from Morocco, Brazil, and France and they were awarded $12,000.00 and $8,000.00 for their depictions.

Beyond cartoon sites and allegations, does Holocaust denial coming from a Wild West — or East, in this case — state present a threat to Jews or minority populations at large?

Historian and author Deborah Lipstadt would probably nod vigorously. When she first decided to write about the phenomenon of Holocaust denial in the late 80s her colleagues advised against it, saying deniers were a fringe group of loonies.

Harmless cartoons? Dangerous descent? Preferably the former. But protest and outcry must continue to prevail loudly in order to prevent the latter.

Kahlili’s perspective is unique: Recruited into the Revolutionary Guard by a childhood friend soon after the revolution, he saw everything, and he saw it with the heightened sensitivity of someone constantly on guard against his betrayal being discovered.

Very soon after his guard career began, a close friend and his younger siblings were arrested and sent to Evin prison. Kahlili described the scene:
“A group of armed guards emerged from a doorway. With them, a dozen teenage girls struggled barefoot down the hall. I went numb as they passed in front of me. These children seemed broken both mentally and physically. I could see that some were in shock. Some had tears rolling down their swollen faces ... I didn’t think it was possible for me to feel more miserable ... until I realized that one of the faces was Parveneh’s (his childhood friend’s sister).”

The girls were led to a courtyard and executed to chants of “Allaho Akbar, Allaho Akbar.” When he is able to speak to his friend Naser, he finds an emaciated shadow who puts his mouth to Kahlili’s ear and whispers, “Reza, please get Parveneh and Soheil out of here. I can’t watch them being tortured anymore. This is unimaginable hell in here. These bloodthirsty animals raped Parveneh in front of me. They made me watch as they twisted Soheil’s ankle around in a circle. How can God allow this? I pray for my death every second.”

There are other vicious regimes in the world. There are torture chambers elsewhere, too. But as Michael Ledeen has tirelessly emphasized in a series of books (e.g., “The Iranian Time Bomb”), Iran conceives of itself as a revolutionary world movement, not as the mere government of a single country. Its tendrils extend throughout the world, from Iraq to Lebanon to Latin America to Europe. The mullahs are truly the “terror masters” (another Ledeen title) and in addition to their criminality at home, they are uniquely hostile to the United States.

Kahlili’s account includes the celebrations among the Revolutionary Guard when a suicide bomber killed 241 American Marines in Beirut in 1983, and when the Pan Am airliner was brought down over Lockerbie, Scotland. He saw the contempt with which the regime greeted each pathetic new attempt at engagement by American officials.

Obviously, this isn’t meant to appeal to anyone one who has even the minimal amount of intellect. Totally juvenile, and as far as I am concerned, the really educated people of Iran know this is just plain BS.

The Mullahs are in it for the power and wealth it has given them. The good Iranians see this, but are helpless as most of the good Germans were in the 1940’s. They need a leader, a standard bearer, to unite them, and toss the present leadership out on their butts and back to Saudi Arabia. The Mullahs that flooded Iran after the revolution didn’t speak Farsi. They need the Jews, as did Hitler, as scape goats to keep their power base riled up. These cartoons only appeal to the ignorant and uninformed.

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