Another Phoney AP Photo

As Iraq's holocaust denial conference opens today, AP is running the photo above, taken at the conference. It implied to me, even after reading the caption, that religious Jews were attending the conference and that it was perhaps more open than I'd previously thought. Here's the caption:

Rabbi Moishe Ayre Friedman, left, from Austria, give his business card to a Muslim clergyman, as Rabbi Ahron Cohen from England, looks on, at a conference on the Holocaust, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Dec. 11, 2006. Iran on Monday opened a conference that it said would examine whether the Holocaust took place, claiming the meeting was an opportunity to discuss the World War II genocide in an atmosphere free of what it termed Western taboos. Even before it opened, the gathering was condemned by Germany, the United States and Israel. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

The caption reinforces the idea that this is an open conference, doesn't it? I found out more about this photo at a blog called The Pool Bar, which you might want to bookmark since bar proprietor Eric will be tracking all the news he can find on the conference. Eric explains the photo:

And AP is up to their usual tricks. In the photo below, it's implied that ordinary Jews were welcomed to participate in the conference. Nowhere in the caption is it mentioned that these Rabbis are members of Neturei Karta.

Neturei Karta is a small, decidedly small, group of Ultraorthodox Jews that reject all forms of Zionism and actively oppose the state of Israel. Wikipedia:

Adherents of Neturei Karta stress those portions in rabbinic literature which state that the Jewish people were first sent into exile from the land of Israel for their sins. Additionally, they maintain the view that any form of forceful recapture of the Land of Israel is a violation of divine will (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Ketubot 111). They believe that the true Commonwealth of Israel can only be reestablished with the coming of the Messiah. ...

Under the guidance of Rabbi Moshe Hirsch, Neturei Karta has endorsed Yasser Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization and later, the Palestinian Authority as the rightful rulers of the Land of Israel, which includes the modern-day State of Israel. Other Jewish groups have criticized this alignment, describing it as condoning or even abetting Palestinian terrorism.

Ironically, the members of Neturei Karta have no reason to deny the holocaust themselves. Wikipedia again:

Their opposition to Israel and Zionism became all the more extreme, especially under the leadership of Rabbi Amram Blau and his wife, a convert and former member of the French Resistance, who had rescued Blau during the Holocaust. (emphasis added)

Their presence at the conference underscores the true nature of the conference, which is being held not to deny the holocaust, but to deny Israel. The AP report accompanying the misrepresented photo includes this:

"The objective for organizing this conference is to create an atmosphere to raise various opinions about a historical issue. We are not seeking to deny or prove the Holocaust," Mottaki said.

"If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt. And if, during this review, it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?" Mottaki said.

So, once the conference provesthe existence of the holocaust to the legions of Muslim clerics who deny it, it will go on with a flashy show to "prove" that it was the Jews who brought on the Holocaust.

With those two points, one unrefutable, one undeniably anti-Semitic and wrong, they will be able to fan the flames of anti-Israel, anti-Jew sentiments in Islamdom, holding up the Palestinians once again as hapless victims, not the world's most incompetent nation wannabe, thereby "justifying" Ahmadinejad's desire to wipe Israel off the map.

Related Tags: Holocaust, Ahmadinejad, Israel, Iran