Iran to Publish Holocaust Cartoons

Iran's largest selling newspaper is holding a contest for 12 Holocaust cartoons to be published.

Iran's Hamshahri newspaper announced today it was holding a contest to publish cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publication in European papers of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

(I don't know about you, but I can't imagine anything funnier than cartoons about the Holocaust.  Lots of humorous material there.  You know -- systematic dehumanization, mass murder, kids, parents, the whole deal.  Hilarious.  I'm chuckling just thinking about it.)

"It will be an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust," said Farid Mortazavi, the graphics editor for Hamshahri newspaper, which is published by Teheran's municipality.  Mortazavi said tomorrow's edition of the paper will invite cartoonists to enter the competition, with "private individuals" offering gold coins to the best 12 artists -- the same number of cartoons that appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.  He said the plan was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression.

"The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let's see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons," he said.

I've explained earlier why I think that it isn't necessarily a good idea for Westerners to mock religious customs of Islam or, worse yet, get busy creating more offensive Mohammed images of their own.  (Links here and here.)  Going out of our way to mock the religion shared by our allies and enemies alike (about one billion of the earth's population in total) serves only to undermine our allies and motivate our enemies. 

And just because you have the right to exercise freedom of speech doesn't mean it's wise to exercise it in every way possible at all times.  I have the right to go down the street and insult the religion of every one of my neighbors, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.  We are engaged in a war on terror, not a war against anyone's religion.  As long as they exercise their religion peaceably, we don't have a problem with it.  It's when they chop innocent heads, hijack planes and detonate bombs that we draw the line.

But let's talk about Iran for a moment.

As you may recall, Iran's crazy president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted international anger when he dismissed the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel. 

Here's a picture of Mahmoud engaging in one of his favorite hobbies when he's not busy advancing Iran's nuclear weapons program -- fantasizing about the day when both Israel and the United States will drop, broken, to the bottom of the hourglass of world history. 

I've never understood Iran's -- or anyone's -- fixation on denying the Holocaust.  Nobody but a fool can deny that many were killed and starved and worked to death in Nazi concentration camps.  We've got extensive first person testimony from numerous direct observers and unlucky participants, photographs and film of starving survivors, and photographs and film of heaps of dead bodies, not to mention forensic evidence.  Obviously, those ovens were used for something grim. 

So Holocaust denial at best comes down to a debate about how many people were torn from their families and killed -- not whether.  But who cares how many? If six were killed instead of six million, would that make it OK, Mahmoud? 

Or maybe Holocaust denial is an attempt to show how they all deserved it.  Yeah.  That'll work.  Noncombatant civilian men, women, children and babies.  They deserved it.  Words fail me.  (Actually, they don't fail me -- I'm just choosing not to say them, Mahmoud.) 

It's a bizarre and pointless obsession for Iran and its ilk.  But then, when you're sitting on top of 130 billion barrels of oil reserves, the price of oil has been sky-high for a good long while, you've thoroughly suppressed your own population by hanging and otherwise disposing of enough of them to scare the living daylights out of the rest, you've bought every toy a mullah could want; and you still have a whole lot of money left over and more flowing in every day, what else is there to do but to attempt to rewrite history so that your religion and your culture come out on top for a change?

And if the West falls into your trap and makes it a war about religion, all the better.

Comments

[Jack Yan]

I like what you’re saying, Gina. And I think we can accuse this newspaper editor of everything we accused western ones of. You know, I’m glad we kept level heads about the matter, and about picking the right battles.

[Krishna109]

There has been a big fuss made about how offensive to Muslims it was to publish the (original 12) cartoons. What terrible people we westerners are for publishing them-- how extremely sensitive Muslims' feelings are.

However, if this is the case, how can we explain this article from an Egyptian weblog?
Egyptian Sandmonkey weblog.