Iran to Sponsor Conference on the Holocaust

There are a lot of varied reasons why most scholars might boycott the conference, but safety reasons is not one of them. Iran is as safe a country as you will find anywhere.

And I'm sure Iran's never thought of that.

I love the part where he asks the west to be 'open minded' about the issue. What... like he is I suppose.

Having said that I actually agree that there should be no issue that can't be discussed. There are dangers in discussing these things because it gives the impression that the matter is open to debate but the dangers in NOT discussing them is even greater in my view.

I think that attacks on people like Irving, some of which are not based on what he says but rather on the concept of his being a 'holocaust denier', are counterproductive. The guy's a liar and an arsehole.. that's obvious... but I still want to hear what he says despite that. If certain people, (who aren't too bright), can't follow the debate and jump to the wrong conclusion I would suggest that they're likely to do that anyway.

There was no palestinian state or any other type of country or formal entity. Therefore it would be impossible for immigration to be illegal. Moreover, there has been a Jewish presence in Israel for more than 2000 years. Again making it impossible to be illegal immigration.

In fact the territory was held by the ottoman empire.

I said that prior to the UN partition in '47, the Jews were only assigned areas where there was a Jewish majority. Your "support" via Wikiepedia for an arab majority refers to 40-60 years earlier. Nice try. Next time try being intellectually honest.

Moreover, if the British didn't keep Jews out of the area, even as they were being exterminated in Europe, there would have been even more Jews. The British only did so to appease the arabs and keep them from rioting because of their hatred of Jews.

I wasn't referring to the Jewish longing for Israel as a legal theory. I was responding to IM's garbage that Jews were serious about Uganda and Argentina. Jews have longed to return to Israel, and Israel only. That was my point. I wasn't making a legal argument.

Nice straw man you constructed.

You wrote this regarding arabs backing the Nazi's. Since you like Wikipedia:
Nazi ties and World War II

[edit]

Pre-war

In 1933, within weeks of Hitler's rise to power in Germany, al-Husayni sent a telegram to Berlin addressed to the German Consul-General in the British Mandate of Palestine saying he looked forward to spreading their ideology in the Middle East, especially in Palestine and offered his services. Al-Husayni's offer was rejected at first out of concern for disrupting Anglo-German relations by allying with an anti-British leader. But one month later, Al-Husayni secretly met the German Consul-General Karl Wolff near the Dead Sea and expressed his approval of the anti-Jewish boycott in Germany and asked him not to send any Jews to Palestine. Later that year, the Mufti's assistants approached Wolff, seeking his help in establishing a National Socialist Arab party in Palestine. Wolff and his superiors disapproved because they didn't want to become involved in a British sphere of influence, because the Nazis desired further Jewish immigration to Palestine, and because at the time the Nazi party was restricted to German speaking "Aryans" only.
On 21 July 1937, Al-Husayni paid a visit to the new German Consul-General, Hans Döhle, in Palestine. He repeated his former support for Germany and "wanted to know to what extent the Third Reich was prepared to support the Arab movement against the Jews." He later sent an agent and personal representative to Berlin for discussions with Nazi leaders. From August 1938, Husseini received financial and military assistance and supplies from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.
In 1938, though Anglo-German relations were a concern, Al-Husayni's offer was accepted. Al-Husayni's links to the Nazi regime grew very close. From Berlin, al-Husayni would play a significant role in inter-Arab politics.
In May 1940, the British Foreign Office declined a proposal from the chairman of the Vaad Leumi (Jewish National Council in Palestine) that they assassinate al-Husayni, but in November of that year Winston Churchill approved such a plan. In May 1941, several members of the Irgun including its former leader David Raziel were released from prison and flown to Iraq on a secret mission which, according to British sources, included to "capture or kill" the Mufti. The Irgun version is that they were approached by the British for a sabotage mission and added a plan to capture the Mufti as a condition of their cooperation. The mission was abandoned when Raziel was killed by a German plane[1].
In April 1941 the "Golden Square" pro-German Iraqi army officers, led by General Rashid Ali, forced the Iraqi Prime Minister, the pro-British Nuri Said Pasha, to resign. In May he declared jihad against Britain. In a few months British troops occupied the country and the Mufti went to Germany, via Iran, Turkey and Mussolini's office in Rome. See Farhud for more details of the events in Iraq.
[edit]

In Nazi-occupied Europe


al-Husayni and Adolf Hitler (1941)


Upon al-Husayni's arrival in Europe, he met the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop on November 20, 1941 and was officially received by Adolf Hitler on November 28, 1941 in Berlin. He asked Hitler for a public declaration that "recognized and sympathized with the Arab struggles for independence and liberation, and that it would support the elimination of a national Jewish homeland". Hitler refused to make such a public announcement, but "made the following declaration, requesting the Mufti to lock it deep in his heart:

1. He (the Führer) would carry on the fight until the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony had been obliterated.
2. In the course of this fight, the German army would - at a time that could not yet be specified, but in any case in the clearly foreseeable future - gain the southern exit of Caucasus.
3. As soon as this breakthrough was made, the Führer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany's only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the Vernichtung des...Judentums ['destruction of the Jewish element', sometimes taken to be a euphemism for 'annihilation of the Jews'] living under British protection in Arab lands.." [2]

The Mufti established close contacts with Bosnian and Albanian Muslim leaders and spent the remainder of the war conducting the following activities:

• Radio propaganda on behalf of Nazi Germany
• Espionage and the fifth column activities in Muslim regions of Europe and the Middle East
• Assisting with the formation of Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans
• The formation of schools and training centers for Muslim imams and mullahs who would accompany the Muslim SS and Wehrmacht units.

Exactly, commit a crime and your whole family is killed.

Umm, the point still holds. The arab population backed the wrong side and lost. That usually means you lose in the post war reorganization.

I guess the Nuremburg trials weren't enough proof for the Persians. They weren't put through that bastion of perfect justice known as Iranian Justice.

To do so would require some moral backbone. You are asking a lot.

Will Israeli or other Jewish scholars be allowed to attend the conference? Will visa restrictions for Americans wanting to attend the conference be waived?

If the answer to either of these questions is no it is hardly the open-minded conference you claim it to be IM.

Using the same logic as the theft of lands from the American Indians, no doubt.

Just as a matter of interest who defines what is a 'formal entity'. No. Don't bother answering that. I think we all know the answer anyway.

Again, presumably following the same logic, if the Palestinians deem what they see as the theft of their lands by Zionists they're justified in carrying out whatever acts they choose, are they?

The British were trying to restrict the numbers of Jews entering Palestine LONG before there were large scale exterminations of the Jews in Europe. They did this to try and prevent the conflict that immigration tends to create. Before that they had tried to persuade the Ottomans to accept large scale Jewish immigration.

The simple truth is that we promised the Arabs a united independent homeland after WW1 and they got screwed.

Yeah, what a screw job. They got 99%+ of the middle east land and had to give the Jews a sliver of it. Ben....where's that map you had.

The fact that the Arabs felt it was their land doesn't negate the fact that the Ottomon empire were the "owners of the land." The ottoman empire lost out to the Allies and the land was divvied up.

In 1917 the Jews were promised their land. Did you forget about that?

The Jews never said we want all the land. But I guess we can add you to the list that believe that Jews aren't entitled to any.

yes, the british were trying to restrict Jewish immigration long before WW II. Thanks for making my point. Had they not, there would have been an even larger majority in Israel in 1947. The fact is that they did it for no other reason to appease the Arabs who were killing or trying to kill the Jews that were there.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab-Israeli_conflict#Before_1947
Before 1947

Tensions erupted between the Jews and Arabs after 1880s, when Jews bought up land from Ottoman and individual Arab landholders and established agricultural settlements there.

Andy...does this sound like theft to you. Since when does buying land constitute stealing?

That's not true.

Britain, France and the US beat Italy and Germany in WWII. I can't go across to Berlin or Milan and build myself a house claiming 'we beat you in '45', can I.

In any event there were also considerable numbers of Arabs that volunteered for the British army. There was also sizeable support for Fascists, including Hitler, by elements of the Zionist movement most notably Avraham Stern who tried to get others to support Germany because they were at war with Britain.

The plain truth is that groups used whatever means they could to try and achieve their ends.

No, the plain truth is that most Jews sided with Britain.

Not the same analogy. The Jews already were living there before the war and in fact for more than 2000 years. But nice try. [/quote]
[/quote]

The fact is that the Jews backed the allies and the Arabs backed the Nazis. You can deny it all you want, but facts and history aren't on your side. Of course, I'm not saying every Jew backed the Allies and every Arab backed the nazi's. But that doesn't change the reality.

I was listing the reasons they'll give on why they won't participate not asserting there are real safety problems.
i am sure that if all the prominent scholars would participate they would be treated perfectly and certainly would suffer no harm.

fixed your post

As an Iranian-Canadian I have the least interest in Israel-Palestine politics nonetheless I cannot understand why the Iranian government wants to be involved. Why not let Arabs decide it on their own... since Arabs have never been true allies to Iran anyway. Iran needs to focus on it's own problems and they got plenty.

just expressing my opinion

They should kill two jews with one stone at this conference and also have an inquiry into the authenticity of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

Formal entity or not, the ppl who lived there, the palestinian arabs, were protesting the immigration.

Arabs were the majority in the land that was to be half partitioned in 47.

Your way of presenting the issue is misleading. A fictional example to make you realize.

If in an hipothetical land to be partitioned you have

60% of a given ethnicity (ppl A) and
40% of another (ppl B)

basing on what you say you could divide the land

State A 25% (all ppl A)
State B 75% (ppl B and the rest of ppl A)

and positively affirm that the partition is fair because ppl B was assigned only areas with a ppl B majority.
But noone neutral would really think the partition would be fair.

Arabs were rioting in order to stop being screwed with the immigration not because of "their hatred of jews".
They were asking the British to stop the jewish immigration cause they feared they would have lost their land.
It's a rather easy to understand reaction if you're not blindfolded by partisanship.

I guess you missed my point. No surprise.

uh?? I guess you don't edit wikipedia too often... you don't look like the perfect unbiased contributor.

How do you steal someone's land by buying it from them?

You still haven't provided stats that arabs were the majority in '47.

Your fictional example (as you put it) is just that.

Your view of why they were rioting is not supported by history.

I don't feel like starting another useless discussion on the usual assorted historical propaganda myths.

http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm

http://www.mideastweb.org/index.html

Read again my first reply.

What part of wikipedia didn't you understand. I can quote endless other sources, but you'll describe them as biased. Again, here's what wikipedia says
Before 1947

Tensions erupted between the Jews and Arabs after 1880s, when Jews bought up land from Ottoman and individual Arab landholders and established agricultural settlements there.

And here's what the Peel Commission Report said:

The underlying causes of the disturbances of 1936 were--

(1) The desire of the Arabs for national independence;

(2) their hatred and fear of the establishment of the Jewish National Home.

These two causes were the same as those of all the previous outbreaks and have always been inextricably linked together. Of several subsidiary factors, the more important were--

(1) the advance of Arab nationalism outside Palestine;

(2) the increased immigration of Jews since 1933;

(3) the opportunity enjoyed by the Jews for influencing public opinion in Britain;

(4) Arab distrust in the sincerity of the British Government;

(5) Arab alarm at the continued Jewish purchase of land;

(6) the general uncertainty as to the ultimate intentions of the Mandatory Power.

Yeah, you are still wrong and misinformed.

Do me a favor and actually link to your facts.

Fuck, people, what the hell?

Is anyone else pissed that the Iranian posters are up to their old forumjacking ways? Didn't we have a thread where they could all circle-jerk?