The right-wing Jerusalem Post was handed a propaganda coup Feb. 1 by one of Iran's official press agencies, which marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz (commemorated by media and political leaders worldwide) in its own typically heartwarming fashion: by calling the Holocaust a Zionist plot.

In an opinion piece carried by the Mehr News Agency and Tehran Times--both official government news outlets--writer Hossein Amiri said that the suffering of Jews in World War II has been exaggerated "to neutralize any opposition to their diabolical plots." The piece, printed on the day of the Auschwitz commemoration, generously concedes that "The Nazi concentration camps were not holiday resorts", but calls talk of gas chambers and industrial mass murder "strange conceptions...which a modern man can hardly accept." The goal of this hoax, of course, was the seizure of Palestinian lands. And the goal of the Holocaust commemoration was only "to promote the repressive policies of the Zionists."

This kind of thing is all too familiar to followers of the Iranian press. In December, Mehr News ran an interview with Robert Faurisson, the notorious French Holocaust revisionist. Discussing France's decision to ban Hezbollah's Al-Manar satellite TV network, Faurisson said the Jewish lobby was behind the move: "Jews...are used to treating the French as they treat Palestinians... The difference is that Palestinians refuse to obey the Jews, whereas the French obey the Jews, once more because of the Big Lie of the alleged 'Holocaust,' in which unfortunately they seem to believe."

In another article last December, Mehr News interviewed the head of the Adelaide Institute, an Australian Holocaust-denial outfit.

To the J.Post's credit, it does note other voices in Iran. On an unofficial Iranian news web site, Tehran Univeristy political scientist Dr. Kaveh L. Afrasiabi called Holocaust education in Iran a "moral imperative." The article doesn't state whether Dr. Afrasiabi is Jewish. One hopes not.

See also WW4 REPORT #7