By Chris Voidis

Why would a man of obvious intelligence, as President Ahmedinejad of Iran surely is, want to provoke the West by inspiring a conference
meant to look at the Holocaust? What is really behind the ?Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision? conference?

Throughout Western media, from the day this conference was announced until today, and for many more days to come I am sure, nowhere is this question asked: Why is this conference being held? Rather, we see a lot of fingers pointing at Mr. Ahmedinejad?s ?obvious? anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. Furthermore, it is
taken for granted that this is the case. President Ahmedinejadcannot be anything else other than an anti-Semite who is bent on exterminating the Jews living in Israel.

Yet, no one has bothered to ask why he doesn?t start with the 30 000 or so Jews living in Iran. Why doesn?t he start, for example, with Moris Motamed, an Iranian Jew who just happens to sit in Iran?s Parliament. How did he get to be a member of the Iranian Parliament, anyway? Was he elected? I thought there was no democracy in Iran. Hmmmm.

Could it be that Mr. Ahmedinejad is not interested in picking up where Hitler left off? After all, it wouldn?t be all that difficult to kill 30 000 people. Look at Iraq. Unless of course he is afraid that the whole world would spring into action. After all, we all know that
the life of one Jew is worth the life of a thousand Muslims. Right? To kill 30 thousand Iranian Jews would mean killing the equivalent of 30 million people. The world would most certainly not allow that. Right?

What if Mr. Ahmedinejad is doing one of the most sane things in the world? What if he is merely calling the West?s bluff? Remember a while back, how the Islamic world was up in arms over the publication of a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammed? People in the Westpointed to Islamic reaction and said ?See, these people
are backward. Look at how they react to something as self evident as freedom of speech.?

Well, it seems to me that Mr. Ahmedinejad has made a fool of the West by tricking us into behaving in the same way. Mr. Ahmedinejad pinpointed the one thing that would stir up controversy in the West. Just as it is a sacrilege to depict the prophet for Islam, so it is a sacrilege to question the Holocaust in the west. Being an intelligent man, and knowing full well that the Holocaust happened, Mr. Ahmedinejad has not questioned the Holocaust itself. Rather, he questioned the myth that has grown around it and how it has been used by Israel and the West in order to deny the rights of the
Palestinians. A smart move by the President of Iran.

I don?t think that Mr. Ahmedinejad believes that some new evidence will be brought forth that will help the world see that the Holocaust did not happen. He himself knows that it did. What he wanted to achieve with this conference he did: he got the Western media and
governments to overreact and by this to show the Islamic world that the West is untrustworthy and carries a double standard when it comes to Muslims. It can offend them at will, but they will not stand for their ?holy taboos? to be questioned.

Surely the West is now behaving as if a taboo has been broken. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for people in the West to reflect on the necessity of respecting the taboos of other people, and to see that they serve a purpose and are not just there because people are ?backward?. Also, it may help us to question our own taboos. What if the Holocaust has been used as a weapon against the Palestinians? Is that an impossibility? What if a mythology has been built around the death of 6 million Jews? There?s no denying, to my mind, that millions of Jews were killed, but how has this fact been used ever since? Has it been used to beat people into submission? Has it been used to intimidate North Americans especially, into an uncritical attitude towards Israel for fear of being called anti-Semites and racists? Perhaps. It may not be such a bad thing for us to think about these things?