(Jewish Group) Iran's dangerous denial of the Holocaust
The recent 60 Minutes interview with Iranian President Raisi raised once again, in a very public way for the first time since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was president, the reality of Holocaust denial by an Iranian leader.
It has long been widely understood that the Iranian regime is the leading country threatening the state of Israel on many levels. So where does questioning the Holocaust fit in to this obsession with Israel?
It reflects a mindset of conspiratorial thinking about the Jewish people that is the most dangerous since the horrors of the Nazis in the 1930’s and 1940’s. It moves from the rejection of the Jewish state to denying or diminishing the reality of the murder of six million Jews. It is both an instrumental perspective to strengthen their argument against the legitimacy of Israel and a manifestation of conspiracy thinking that has taken over the regime.
Instrumentally, denying the Holocaust is an attempt to eliminate what the regime believes is the root of the founding of Israel and its continuing legitimacy. It is only because of the sympathy for the Jewish people after the alleged murder of two-thirds of European Jewry that serious international support for a Jewish state emerged. And, in this way of thinking, its legitimacy continues to rest on that unspeakable suffering.
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