It won’t end at Holocaust denial

This week, Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, opened the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust in Tehran. Cutting through the big words, this means that Iran is hosting a nationally-sponsored Holocaust denial convention, in which people from around the globe get together and discuss conspiracy theories, quotes taken out of context, and doctored evidence, all “supporting” the conjecture that the Nazi-run mass genocide never happened, or at least, did not happen on the scale written in history books and supported by solid evidence. While this concept (and most likely President Ahmadinejad) is obviously completely crazy, that’s not this article is about. Instead, I want to contemplate on the Iranian President’s motivations for launching a public display that would inevitably draw so much unfettered scorn from the rest of the world.

A Holocaust denial convention is one of those things that, if created, will undoubtedly guarantee outrage throughout the international community. So why would President Ahmadinejad host one? I believe he did this not from a desire to merely disprove the Holocaust, but as a step in a far greater plan to return the country of Israel to the Palestinians.

There are many issues on which most countries in the Middle East disagree vehemently. However, the one thing they can almost always agree on is their hatred of Israel. Many in the area, including President Ahmadinejad, still see the creation of Israel as illegitimate and a crime against the Palestinian nation. In this, they are not wholly unjustified. Israel was created after World War II, a time where new countries and borders were being drawn all over the place, often without regard for religious or ethnic ties (take a look at the civil wars and divisions that have plagued the former Yugoslavia).

The country that is now Israel was divided by Great Britain into two separate Jewish and Arab sections, with Jerusalem remaining as a U.N.-administered area to avoid conflict over its status. However, while Jewish representatives accepted the partition, the Arabs did not, initiating a war and leaving the now completely Jewish nation of Israel with more territory than the British partition had originally stated.

So while the outcome of these events ended with the Palestinians being displaced, the blame for it rested squarely on their shoulders. If the Palestinian representatives during partitioning had accepted the agreement, they would control half of Israel for themselves and the holy city of Jerusalem would rest in internationally-controlled hands.

Over 50 years later, the countries of the Middle East continue to rage over the creation of Israel. At the head of this movement most recently as been President Ahmadinejad, who has been vocal about his belief that Israel should be returned to the Palestinians. He sees Israel’s creation as a Jewish state as a form of reparation to Jews for the Holocaust, which of course, it is not. In a letter he sent to President Bush earlier this year, he spent a great deal of time addressing the reasons for the formation of Israel, which in his eyes, are unjustified.

So this week, President Ahmadinejad is hosting a Holocaust denial convention, a conference that is designed to erode what he believes is the primary reason for Israel’s existence. By doing this, he is trying to unify Iran’s neighbors into the belief that a Jewish Israel should be wiped from the face of the Earth.

Lately, Iran has been working on building a nuclear weapons program, possibly to counter Israel’s. Its president has also openly denounced the U.S. government, Israel’s biggest supporter, and it is suspected that the country has been funneling weapons and other aid into Iraq to support the ongoing violence there, weakening our military position in the Middle East and increasing war weariness at home. Now it is attempting to attack the reasons for Israel’s very existence. It seems that Iran’s President is attempting to unify his neighbors while eroding support for Israel.

Call Mahmoud Ahmadinejad what you will, but it seems like he has a plan. It is multi-faceted, and involves consolidating his power while undermining that of his opposition, so that his dream of an Israel-free Middle East can one day be realized. It is easy to dismiss things like this conference as the ravings of a deranged man that will only appeal to more deranged men. We can hope that that is what they are, but in the mean time, the international community should keep a close eye on Iran and President Ahmadinejad’s political machinations.