From Ian:
Anne Bayefsky: UN fails to learn lessons of Holocaust. It focuses on showmanship
Anne Bayefsky: UN fails to learn lessons of Holocaust. It focuses on showmanship
Analogizing Palestinians to the Jewish victims of the Nazis: that’s how the UN is marking this week’s “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.” The epicenter of modern antisemitism on a global scale is not somewhere over there, but in the middle of Turtle Bay.Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt: We have gone back to the Middle Ages and face religious war with the fascists of radical Islam
For public tour groups, and their busloads of impressionable American students from around the country, the UN ‘s permanent “Palestine” exhibit has now been arranged to be within a few feet of the UN’s permanent Holocaust exhibit.
This week’s activities follow suit.
On January 25, 2016, a temporary exhibit called “Holocaust by Bullets” was opened in the UN visitors’ lobby. The painstaking research of the French organization Yahad-In Unum substantiates how two million Jews were shot to death in the presence of normal folks all over Europe.
But “Holocaust by Bullets” follows the UN’s December exhibition, which is titled “Palestinian Children: Overcoming Tragedies with Hope, Dreams, Resilience and Dignity.” That month-long display in the visitors’ lobby consisted of scenes of Palestinian children suffering from “devastating” wanton, unprovoked Israeli “operations.”
Father Patrick Desbois opened Yahad-In Unum’s exhibit by explaining that his team locates the bodies of Nazi victims and then honors the dead. He is driven to ensure that Europe does not bury “all its values” by building its future on unacknowledged and unvalued human beings in mass graves.
Palestinian UN representative Riyad Mansour opened December’s exhibit with a different set of values – incitement for Palestinian children to kill more Jews. As Mansour explained: “we are so proud that in this popular uprising, the backbone of this uprising are the youth of Palestine.”
If the 20th century could be characterised as a battle between territories, then I believe the 21st century has seen a return to the religious wars of the Middle Ages. The rise of Isil has followed fifteen years since 9/11 where Islamic religious terrorism has become the premier menace to democracy. In fact, the attacks on 9/11 ended the 20th century, in which secular totalitarian ideologies, such as Nazism and Communism challenged the existing world order and world peace.MEMRI: For International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei Publishes Holocaust Denial Video
One of the many challenges this new war poses is that it goes against the tolerant, inclusive society that has developed in the Western World over the last fifty years. For that reason, the first reaction of many is to divorce terrorism from religion. Many feel that the only way to protect religious freedoms is to deny radical elements. We need to understand the fact that there are radicalised aspects within many faiths, in particular Islam. Its fascist offshoot, Isil, is a strain of Islam and must be treated as such. These interpretations of Islam must be denounced but we must realise that we have now entered a religious war.
Islam, as it is practised today in some parts of the Middle East, is similar to Christianity in the premodern times, it has not yet developed or learnt to integrate into society. Therefore, by definition, it is entirely medieval and contrary to the basic tenets of a liberal state or democracy. But it would be ridiculous to assume that more than one billion Muslims are radical and dangerous. Instead we need to learn to differentiate between those strains that have developed and those strains that are a genuine danger to the developed world.
Today, January 27, 2016, International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei published on his official website a three-minute video clip titled "Are The Dark Ages Over?" In it, he expresses doubt about whether the Holocaust actually happened, rages about Europe's ban on public questioning of the validity of the Holocaust, and hints at a conspiracy on the part of Western Europe and the U.S. – which champion freedom of speech yet at the same time prevent open discussion of whether the Holocaust happened, and rages about Europe's ban on denying the Holocaust.Supreme leader of Iran marks Holocaust Memorial Day by publishing Holocaust denying video
Khamenei attacks what he calls the hypocrisy of the West that champion the value of freedom of speech yet prevent any discussion of whether the Holocaust actually happened. This silence about the Holocaust that is imposed by the West on their citizens, he hints, is a conspiracy by the Western countries and the Zionist regime, aimed at establishing falsely, justification for Israel's existence, as it expels the Palestinians.
He then calls on the Muslim ummah, in a religious message, to come together to fight Israel and her Western patrons, because it is they who are perpetrating the real "Ignorance" – Jahiliyya – a reference to the era of ignorance that preceded the advent of Islam.
The clip also features images of leading European Holocaust deniers such as Roger Garaudy, Robert Faurisson, and David Irving, and highlighted the alleged persecution of them by Western authorities.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, has marked Holocaust Memorial Day by publishing a Holocaust denying video on his official website.
While nations around the world remembered the millions of people who were killed in Auschwitz and other concentration camps, Iran’s hardline leader questioned whether the Holocaust “is a reality or not”.
Khamenei's website promotes the video with a banner across its homepage, featuring a montage of images, including one of Adolf Hitler.
Wednesday was also the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland where more than one million people were killed during World War Two. The majority were Jews and the former extermination camp is the world's biggest Jewish cemetery.
Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis attempted to annihilate all of Europe’s Jews. In one of the largest genocides in history, approximately six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators.
Khamenei's message comes as President Hassan Rouhani tours Italy and France, attempting to drum up trade and diplomatic links after his country signed a historic deal to limit its nuclear ambitions.









