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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2007Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mitch WeerthIranians oppose Holocaust denialIn recent weeks, as the war threat loomed, Iranian intellectuals have given us some of the finest examples of moral courage in recent years. Unlike most of the Western Left, they have continued to target both U.S. imperialism and their own theocratic regime, in equal measure. On Feb. 20, 23 Iranian intellectuals, many of them living under the Islamic Republic, penned "An open letter by a group of Iranian academics, writers, and artists regarding the Tehran Conference on Holocaust Denial" (http://www.iran-emrooz.net/index.php?/news1/12081). It pointed to "the appalling speech presented by a former Ku Klux Klan leader, a group infamous for its involvement in hate crimes against the African Americans," before stating: "The fact that since the inception of the state of Israel many crimes have been committed against the Palestinian population does not provide moral ground for the denial or undermining of the genocide of the Jewish people...Forgotten amongst all the sensationalism in the Iranian media accompanying the conference, was the bitter reality that the undermining or denial of human suffering for the sake of making political points--whatever they might be--will inevitably lead to moral degeneration." Signatories included Hassan Mortazavi, translator of Marxism and Freedom and other Marxist works. Such declarations can land one in notorious torture chambers like Evin Prison. |
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