Denial!

At first I was really steamed at the Holocaust Denial Conference that our good friend President Ahmadinijadeieio of Iran just hosted in Tehran. It's one thing for scattered crackpots around the globe to make excuses for their anti-semitism by denying the untold slaughter of the greatest crime in history. Further, it allows them to de-legitimize Israel by claiming that without Holocaust guilt, there would not be an Israel, or at least an Israel that has international support and whups ass on all the scumbags that try to, you know, KILL ALL ITS CITIZENS.

I believe it's wrong to want to kill all Israelis. It's wrong to want to kill all the Jews (and that's admittedly self-serving). But I'll go further than that: it's wrong to want to kill all the Iranians. It's wrong to want to kill all the Luxumbougians (those bastards). It's wrong to want to kill all the Palestinians, Russians, Iraqis, Americans...

You get me, right? And if wanting to do it is so wrong (which it is), than how much worse is trying to do it? How much worse is actually making a stab at it? If you'll pardon the pun.

Bad, right? That's why Clinton's war in Bosnia was a good one - for all the ham-handedness - because it stopped a genocide. That's why the US, instead of creating death and mayhem in Iraq, should be using its force to stop genocide in Darfur. See how that works?

Anyway, back to Tehran (if we must). I was trying to build up some big outrage mojo, but I just couldn't do it. After reading about these poor dumb bastards, I had an embarrassing out-loud chuckle on the subway:

They sent congratulatory telegrams to Hamas, their rabbis advised Yasser
Arafat (and took a fee for their trouble), and they stood outside the White
House wagging signs -- "Judaism Has No Right to Rule over ANY PART of the Holy
Land" -- to protest a November visit by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert.

But even by the standards of Neturei Karta, these most ultra of
ultra-orthodox Jewish Hasids took a step into the world of the very strange, if
not the meshuga, or crazy, when they showed up as honored guests at a conference
of Holocaust skeptics and deniers in Tehran. With a hug and a smile for Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rabbi Aharon Cohen walked into a conference room
with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, discredited academics, and more than
a few white supremacists and served up a rousing welcome speech.

"Let me express my gratitude to the illustrious organizers of this valuable event,"
Cohen told the 67 delegates from 30 countries this week according to a text
printed on the organization's Web site. "To sum up, the Orthodox Jewish view is
that, yes, there was a Holocaust to a terribly significant degree whatever that
was. But in no way can it be used to justify the illegitimate and criminal cause
and actions of Zionism."

This drew, by all accounts, loud applause from the Holocaust-denying set,
who insist against all reason that the Nazis never committed genocide by
systematically killing millions of Jews.

I'm sorry - that's funny.

Tell me - is that not a Mel Brooks scene? In fact, I'm sure I saw that in one of his movies. Was it "Blazing Saddles?" "High Anxiety?" I know - "The History of the World - Part I" (I've been waiting in vain for the rest of the history - "It's good to be the King!").

Can you picture the KKK assholes in robes hanging out with the Illinois Nazis (still looking for those Blues Brothers)? The effete French "intellectuals" smoking in berets and speaking English with a rididulous accent? "Zees Ooloocoost - she never 'appen, oui?" The self-loathing Jews buttering them all up, and the various Arabs and Persians digging the whole scene?

I guess the central point for this collection is that if there were to be a real Holocaust, if it were to actually happen (presupposing that it did not in the 30's and 40's), THEY would be the bastards to do it, right? I mean, Ahmadinijadedodioud himself has put forward the viewpoint more than once that Israel should not exist and should be made to not exist, by force of arms if necessary. In each of the Arab-Israeli wars of the past, the explicit multi-national Arab aim war to kill, you know, all of them.

So no bunch of historical Nazis is going to steal that thunder from this group. I guess the next conference will be more of a planning session. How will we kill all the Jews and who will draw the short straw and go and try to actually, you know, do it.

There was one truly sorry-ass Canadian there, just to ensure that the Maple Leaf was not spared the drag through the mud along with so many other nation's flags. St. Francis Xavier Prof, Shiraz Dossa (no doubt as dry and fruity as his namesake wine), actually spoke at the Con. Sweet.

Speaking for all Canadians was the university's president:

"My main feeling is it's just an embarrassment for the university. I think it's
an embarrassment for Canada to have lent any credibility, no matter how thin, to
that particular conference with that very hurtful agenda," university president
Sean Riley said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Do you think Dossa dressed up like a Mountie? Come on - just picture it.

It's how Mel Brooks would have framed it.