Iran Media Uses Erroneous But Widely Circulated Holocaust Myth To Deny Authenticity Of The Holocaust

A Iranian news website sympathetic to the regime in Tehran published an article denying the Holocaust by pointing to an erroneous Holocaust story that claims the Nazis manufactured soap from their Jewish victims. For this website, Mashregh News, this dubious story was all the evidence needed to prove that the Holocaust is a myth and that it must be exposed as a historical falsity.

The article is an example of an often-used tactic by neo-Nazi groups and prominent Holocaust deniers. By their logic, if the soap story is a fabrication, consequently all historical facts concerning the authenticity of the Holocaust are nothing more than “Jewish myths” promoted by an “international Jewish organization.”

The current Iranian regime is no stranger to Holocaust denial. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for “experts” to investigate the veracity of the Holocaust. In December 2006, Iran played host to a Holocaust denial conference, “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision,” which was attended by a diverse group of anti-Semites, including neo-Nazi, radical anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian activists, and Islamic fundamentalists.

One month prior, Iran’s Culture Ministry hosted a cartoon contest that sought entries deriding Jews and mocking the Holocaust. The winning cartoon was submitted by a Moroccan artist who depicted Israelis constructing a wall around the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, with the panels of the wall reflecting an image of the infamous railway leading to the gates of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Although Mashregh News is not directly affiliated with or run by the Iranian government, it nonetheless staunchly promotes the government’s ideology and features articles and interviews with top officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Iranian TV Exposes The “Hollywood Jew”

Screenshot from IRINN's "Apocalypse Now"

The Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN), Iran’s state-run news channel, aired a program on June 13 repeating classic conspiracies about Jewish control of the film industry.

According to the Anti-Defamation League’s translation, the program – which aired between news segments – claimed that Hollywood uses “the theories of Secularism and the ideals of the Crusaders and Zionists to deceive the whole world, and the biggest deceit is to facilitate the ‘Zionification’ of the world.”

The narrator of the program, titled “Apocalypse Now,” claimed that a Jewish-Zionist conspiracy has taken root in Hollywood, namely, a conspiracy by Jewish filmmakers to “create a Zionist society out of the audience.”

This sinister plan, according to the program, was made possible by European Jewish immigrants who were the pioneers and architects of Hollywood. Films produced by Jewish studio heads cunningly insert the cultural ideals of Zionism into their productions, which they then “fed to the American masses.”

To advance its conspiratorial anti-Semitic narrative of Jewish control over the film industry, the program focused on the Jewish ancestry and origins of a series of studio founders, described as “Hollywood moguls.”

The program ended with an accusation that these “Hollywood Jews,” including the families of studio founders and well-known Jewish movie stars, have purposely changed their names from Jewish to “Christian” ones in order to conceal their unsavory links and the promotion of Zionist values and ideas in their films.

Iran’s state-run media has long acted as the clerical regime’s mouthpiece to disseminate anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-Western sentiments.

Press TV Airs Anti-Semitic Interviews to Mark U.S.S. Liberty Anniversary

Press TV, Iran’s English-language propaganda television station, marked the 45th anniversary of the sinking of the USS Liberty by interviewing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activists Alison Weir, Michael Santomauro, and J. Bruce Campbell.

During the interview, which was held on June 8, the trio accused Israel of purposefully targeting the U.S. warship during the height of the 1967 Six-Day War. (The circumstances surrounding the U.S.S. Liberty, an American ship that was unintentionally fired on by Israeli forces, has been regular fodder for anti-Israel conspiracy theorists.) The interview also included several anti-Semitic statements and conspiratorial accusations of Jewish control over the U.S. government.

Michael Santomauro, an anti-Israel blogger and Holocaust denier, alleged that the USS Liberty is a cover-up maintained by U.S.-based Jewish support for Israel and the disproportionate influence Jews hold over the U.S. government. Jewish interest groups, whom Santomauro claimed provide over the overwhelming amount of funding to U.S. political parties, wield their power through what he termed “Jewish PAC money.”

J. Bruce Campbell, a contributing writer for the anti-Semitic website, Veterans Today, claimed that the attack on the Liberty was part of a conspiratorial U.S-Israeli plan he called Operation Cyanide, a secret military operation that Campbell alleges purposefully sent the Liberty to get sunk by the Israelis in order to place blame on Egypt. The desired result, Campbell claims, would have been for the U.S. to retaliate against Egypt and to “drop nuclear bombs on Cairo and Alexandria.” Campbell asserted that this was ordered by the U.S. to assist Israel in creating “great [sic] Israel stretching from the Nile to Euphrates rivers.”

When asked by the host whether he agrees that Israel controls the U.S. government, Campbell responded, “I would say the Jews in America [run the United States]. Israel is a euphemism … It is really American Jews who are behind this [the Iraq and Afghanistan wars] just as it was during 1967…” Campbell also claimed that American Jews want to kill “millions of Muslims” and “thousands of Americans. This is what American Jews want, this is what they make happen through Washington D.C.”

Alison Weir, president of the Council for the National Interest (CNI), an anti-Israel organization that opposes U.S. aid to Israel, added to Santomauro’s comment about the pro-Israel lobby and characterized the U.S-Israel relationship as an “extremely unhealthy situation.” Weir also said that large sums of donations from pro-Israel groups are the cause of “tragedy, misery, violence and war after war after war.” Weir’s comments are consistent with her record of using anti-Semitic imagery and portraying Israel and its agents as powerful forces that control American policy through intimidation and deception.

Press TV, which is based in Tehran, is used by the clerical regime to provide a platform for extreme elements and activists to air their views and opinions. Many of Press TV’s U.S.-based guests are frequently invited by the station specifically for their conspiratorial anti-Israel views. Earlier this year, Weir appeared as a guest on the station to discuss the 2012 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, calling the pro-Israel lobby “very dangerous to the world” and “for Americans.”

Anti-Semite Dieudonne’s Tour Cancelled in Montreal

Update: Dieudonne’s film, L’Antisémite, has been banned from the Cannes film festival for violating the festival’s policy of not “threatening public order or insulting religious beliefs.”

Four scheduled shows in Montreal by French comedian Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala, whose act routinely includes Holocaust denial, praise for Adolf Hitler, Nazi salutes, slurs against the Talmud and other anti-Semitic language, were cancelled last week by Quebec’s largest concert promoter.

The cancelled shows were part of Dieudonne’s first attempt to seriously promote his first feature film L’Antisémite, released earlier this year, in North America. The film, reportedly funded in part by the Iranian government, makes no attempt to conceal its message. The film’s trailer shows Dieudonne declaring, “It’s clear the Jews control everything — media, finance, politics. We no longer have a choice,” before arriving to the apparent punch line, “we must exterminate them.” Another short clip from the film mocks the discovery of the gas chambers at Auschwitz, suggesting that they were a fabrication.



Dieudonne has been the subject of much controversy in Europe where he has been convicted of inciting hatred in France and is under investigation in Belgium for “inciting racial hatred and xenophobia” during a performance earlier this year. Additionally, Belgian authorities recently forced Dieudonne to cancel two shows in Brussels, and French police stopped Dieudonne mid-performance on May 9 for breaking local defamation laws.

In addition to his performances, Dieudonne makes his views known outside the context of his supposed comedy, including running for the European Parliament in 2009 with the Parti Anti Sioniste (the Anti-Zionist Party), which received 1.3% of the vote. According to the party’s website, its primary goals are to remove the “Zionist intervention” from the public affairs of France, denounce all politicians who advocate for Zionism, and to eradicate all forms of Zionism from France.

In April 2010, Dieudonne was interviewed on Iran’s English-language propaganda television station Press TV, where he claimed that Zionism has organized “all the wars and disorders on the planet.” He also argued that the stock market and the unemployment that resulted from its crash are part of the “Zionist project” and that Zionists manipulate the film industry using movies as Jewish propaganda.

Dieudonne, the son of a French mother and a Cameroonian father, is also notorious for a grotesque provocation in 2008 in which he had his assistant, dressed as a Jew in a concentration camp, present an award to Robert Faurisson, a serially convicted Holocaust denier, at a show at the Zenith Theater in Paris. Dieudonne was fined €10,000 for the incident, which was considered a “public insult of people of Jewish faith or origin.”

Iranian Organizations Publishing Anti-Semitic Islamic School Textbooks

The Alavi Foundation, a New York-based Iranian organization that also operates as the Mostazafan Foundation, and Al Balagh, an Iran-based publishing house, have been publishing English-language religious books for children that promote anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories, according to a recent Canadian news report.

The books contain passages contrasting Islam with “the Jews and the Nazis,” as well as descriptions of Jews as a “racist,” “treacherous” and “crafty” people.

The books, A Glance at the life of the Holy Prophet of Islam and Prophet Muhammad: A Brief Biography, justify engagement in violent acts of jihad “whenever the time comes for it,” and claim that the Jews of Medina “conspired to kill Prophet Muhammad” after signing covenants with Muhammad and his early followers.

One of the books even highlights to the reader that the very name “Jew” has become “synonymous for treachery” and “the slaying of prophets.”

The Alavi Foundation describes itself as a non-governmental organization that promotes Iranian and Islamic culture in the U.S. Prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Alavi Foundation was named the Pahlavi Foundation, after the Shah of Iran, and provided scholastic scholarships to young Iranians wishing to study in the U.S. Upon seizing power, Ayatollah Khomeini renamed the foundation to the Mostazafan Foundation (Farsi for “the downtrodden”), and is now called the Alavi Foundation. The names of the foundation are often used interchangeably. The organization claims that it is not an organ of the Iranian regime, but U.S. prosecutors seized the foundation’s assets and arrested its president in 2008.

Recently the two books were found to be in use at a Toronto-based Islamic school, the East End Madrassa. Following complaints the school removed the publications from its websites and course curricula.

Revealing Images of “Global March to Jerusalem” in Tehran

The Union of Islamic World Students, an international Iranian government sponsored student group, released pictures on its website of the Asian delegation of the Global March to Jerusalem’s (GMJ) visit to Tehran last week.

The delegation left Indonesia on March 10 and plans to cross Israel’s borders and enter Jerusalem on March 30. The Asian delegation met with the president of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, and the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during its visit.

The pictures were taken during the delegation’s visit to the former U.S. embassy building in Tehran, which was raided in 1979 by the Islamic revolution supporters. Below are two pictures:  

GMJ members use images of Israeli officials with crosshairs superimposed over their faces as dartboards. Officials included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres.



A child wearing a Hezbollah cap at a reception for the GMJ delegation at the former U.S. embassy building.



Senior Iranian Officials Endorse “Global March to Jerusalem”

The Asian wing of the Global March to Jerusalem (GMJ) arrived Saturday in Tehran, where a delegation from the convoy met with the president of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larijani, and the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Asia GMJ convoy began its journey to Iran in Indonesia on March 10.

According to Iranian news sources, Larijani welcomed the delegation of 120 convoy members and affirmed Iran’s supportive stance towards the Palestinian cause. “We as Iranians, cannot ignore the Palestinian issue,” he said, adding, “The Palestinian people have their legitimate rights; the West and America instead of recognizing these rights are trying to obliterate and ignore them.”

Iran’s controversial nuclear program was among the topics Larijani discussed with the delegation. Accusing “the enemies” of Iran of deliberately generating an international outcry over the program, he asserted, “The U.S. is wrong if it believes that it can still impose its domination over Muslim countries, because Muslims have been awakened and the recent revolutions are an example of this Islamic Awakening.” Larijani also rejected homosexuality as immoral and deviant, charging that “the world is heading towards the end because of them.” Challenging Western criticism of Iran’s human rights record, he added, “[The enemies] accuse us of not taking human rights into account, while they ignore human rights violations committed by their cronies in the [Gulf] region.”

On Sunday, GMJ members held a brief meeting with Ahmadinejad, where he described the GMJ as a “historic movement.”

Iran’s Press TV Gives Voice to Anti-Israel Conspiracy Theorists

Mark Glenn, a contributor to the anti-Semitic, conspiracy-oriented publication American Free Press, was interviewed on March 11 by Iran’s English-language propaganda television station, Press TV. During the interview, Glenn claimed that the suffering inflicted on the Palestinians by Israel is greater than the atrocities Jews faced during the Holocaust.

Glenn, who subscribes to and promotes numerous anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, also said that “Israel’s existence is totally dependent upon keeping the people around her divided, squabbling,” and that “sympathy [for the Holocaust] has now extended itself way beyond its shelf life.”

Press TV, headquartered in Tehran, has long embraced extremist elements and activists and provided a platform for them to air their views and opinions, many of which reflect Iran’s worldview. Like Glenn. many of the guests interviewed by the station are known for their conspiratorial anti-Israel views.

For example, Alison Weir, president of the Council for the National Interest (CNI) and If Americans Knew, two anti-Israel organization that opposes U.S. aid and support to Israel, was interviewed by Press TV regarding the 2012 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference. “AIPAC is very dangerous to the world and it’s especially dangerous for Americans,” Weir said in the exclusive interview.

Another frequent guest on Press TV and ally of the Iranian regime is Imam Abdul Musa, the head of the Masjid Al Islam Mosque in Washington D.C. and founder of Sabiqun, an anti-Semitic Muslim group advocating for a global Islamic state. In a 2010 interview, Alim Musa claimed that the Israeli Mossad and the U.S. government were behind most acts of terrorism, and has frequently called the U.S. government “Zionist occupied.”

Ahmadinejad Marks Anniversary of Revolution with Holocaust Denial

In front of a crowd of thousands gathered in Azadi Square in Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again launched a tirade against Israel and engaged in Holocaust denial and mockery.

It was during his customary speech on February 11 marking the start of a week of celebration in the Islamic Republic of Iran of the 33^rd anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution when Ahmadinejad said, “We destroyed the holiness of the Holocaust, which was invented by the West and the colonialists.”

In December 11-12, 2006, Iran hosted a Holocaust denial conference, “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision,” in Tehran, which brought together a diverse group of anti-Semites, including white supremacists and neo-Nazis, radical anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian activists and Islamic extremists.

At Saturday’s event, Ahmadinejad also added that the West and imperialist power are responsible for the creation of the “Zionist entity,” an entity he claims that uses the Holocaust as an act of idol worship, invoking the Biblical story of the golden calf at Mount Sinai.

Furthermore, Ahmadinejad promised the crowds that the government would announce major advancements in Iran’s nuclear program in honor of the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. On Wednesday, the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, Iran’s central propaganda outlet, announced that Ahmadinejad oversaw the placement of 20% enriched nuclear fuel rods “into the heart of the reactor in Tehran.”

Israeli Diplomats in India and Georgia Latest Targets Abroad

Update: On February 21, the Azerbaijani National Security Ministry announced it had arrested an unspecified number of individuals working for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah for planning attacks against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish cultural center.

A bombing targeting Israeli embassy personnel in India and a similar attempt in Georgia yesterday come on the heels of recent threats by Iranian officials to attack Israeli interests world-wide.

In New Delhi, a bombing of an Israeli embassy vehicle injured the wife of the Israeli Defense Attaché to India and three others as she drove to pick up her children at school. Another bomb targeting an embassy car in Tbilisi, Georgia, was found and defused before it could explode after a Georgian employee of the embassy notified police of a suspicious object attached to the car.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “Iran and its proxy Hezbollah are behind each of these attacks.” Iran’s ambassador to India called the accusation “untrue and sheer lies, like previous times” and Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman reportedly said that “Israel perpetrated the terror actions to launch psychological warfare against Iran.”

Yesterday’s bombings appear to have been timed to coincide with the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s former Operations Chief. They are the latest in a series of attacks targeting Israeli interests in 2012. On January 12, Thai authorities arrested Artis Hussein, a Swedish-Lebanese man authorities claim is a Hezbollah operative, for allegedly targeting Israeli interests in Asia. After his arrest, Hussein led authorities to a warehouse near Bangkok where over four tons of bomb making supplies were seized. 

Less than two weeks later, Azerbaijani authorities announced that they arrested at least two local men for plotting to attack the Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan and a local rabbi. Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry indicated that the men are linked to Iranian intelligence agencies and were supplied with a sniper rifle, explosives and money to carry out the attack.

Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano stressed last week that despite increased threats to Jewish and Israeli targets worldwide, there are no specific threats against targets in the United States. 

Attacker of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo Welcomed in Iran

Dhia Al-Sawi, who gained popularity in Egypt for his role in attacking the Israeli embassy in Cairo last year, attended a conference in Tehran, Iran, under the patronage of the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The conference, held in the Iranian capital last week, was billed as “The International Conference for Youth and the Islamic Awakening.” 

Representing the “Egyptian youth,” Al-Sawi delivered a speech declaring that it was an honor to be involved in the attack on the “Zionist” embassy in September 2011. Asserting his support for Hamas and Hezbollah and his opposition to the State of Israel, Al-Sawi, stated “We are close to liberating Palestine. Just as we attacked the Zionist embassy in Cairo, a day will come, when we will liberate the prisoner mosque of Al-Aqsa.”

Al-Sawi further called on Arab and Muslim nations to unite in support of Iran’s nuclear program. “The Muslim nation and especially the new Arab revolutions should line up to support Iran’s right to possess nuclear knowledge and technology… If the Zio-American alliance and the West succeed in this battle, we will never obtain this technology.”

Al-Sawi’s speech concluded with a request that Khamenei proclaim May 15, Israel’s Independence Day, as a day to cleanse the Arab and Islamic world of Zionist embassies and consulates and attack them. In response to his request, the crowd cheered and chanted, “Death to Israel.”

Hundreds of Islamist leaders from more than 73 countries attended the conference, according to a recording of the event.