Iran’s Odious Holocaust Cartoon Contest

For the third time since 2006, Iran is hosting a contest of cartoons about the Holocaust. The cartoons submitted this year, as in the past, play on tired and odious comparisons of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler, try to equate Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to what the Nazis did to the Jews, peddle the notion that Jews use the Holocaust to extort money and support from a guilty international community, and simultaneously try to deny that the Holocaust even occurred.

Along with just about every other responsible state, Germany condemned the whole Iranian dog and pony show. German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Schaefer said that "The murder of 6 million men, women and children during the Holocaust, for which we Germans bear guilt and responsibility, must not be abandoned to ridicule.” The United States and other European countries all expressed their disapproval or even disgust towards the event.

In response, Iranian officials tried to claim that the event is not government-supported, even while they attended it, reportedly provided financial backing for it, and rhetorically defended it. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told the New Yorker magazine “Why does the United States have the Ku Klux Klan? Is the government of the United States responsible for the fact that there are racially hateful organizations in the United States?” He advised people not to consider Iran a “monolith,” insisting that "The Iranian government does not support, nor does it organize, any cartoon festival of the nature that you're talking about. When you stop your own organizations from doing things, then you can ask others to do likewise."  

Of course, when Iran’s Supreme Leader and presidents have called the Holocaust a myth, perhaps others might be forgiven for viewing the Iranian government, if not the Iranian people, as a monolith and suspecting that the regime is very much behind this event. 

Masoud Shojaei-Tabatabaei, the event’s organizer, also told an Arab television station that “This exhibition constitutes a response to the publications of cartoons by the French Charlie Hebdo magazine, which affronted the Prophet Muhammad, as well as an expression of [our opposition] to the massacres perpetrated against the Palestinian people.” 

The logic here appears twisted indeed. Because Christian Danish and French cartoonists drew offensive pictures of Muhammad, the Iranians must ask people to draw cartoons offensive to Jews. By the same reasoning, Americans should attack Sikhs in response to 9/11 (something which actually happened, although instead of a government-supported foundation committing the sin, it was an ignorant American individual). And if the Jews are to be punished for a Jewish state’s misdeeds against Palestinians, should Muslims everywhere be punished for the misdeeds of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or “the Islamic State”?

Of course, the Iranians also argued that the whole event was also intended to promote freedom of expression and probe the West’s double standards (given taboos about Holocaust denial but permission of cartoons mocking Muhammad and such). What the Iranians seem to miss, however, is that with the exception of Germany and France, Western countries actually permit speech that denies the Holocaust. The people making these denials are perfectly free to announce to the world that they are bigoted idiots, just as are those who draw degrading pictures of other religions’ sacred figures. Nor were any of the various outlets publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were backed or endorsed by Western governments.

If the Iranians really want to promote freedom of expression and probe double standards, perhaps they could hold an event questioning official government interpretations of Islam. Or they could allow the Kurds to publish things in Kurdish. Or they could hold a conference aimed at fostering a greater understanding and acceptance of the Bahai faith. Iran could surely use all of these things. As regards the Bahai, their treatment in Iran remains so absolutely abysmal – with official government outlets calling them “unclean” and denying them everything from admission to university to jobs – that they are one of the only groups that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees grants prima facie refugee status to. This means that a Bahai from Iran does not have to prove to the UNHCR that they face persecution and threats in their home country; rather, they just have to prove that they are a Bahai from Iran. 
  
If the Bahai enjoyed the rights that Arabs in Israel enjoy, they would in fact be much better off. While Arabs under Israeli rule can practice their religion and use their language freely, Bahai, Kurds and other minorities in Iran are denied these simple rights. Which brings us to the more likely purpose of Iran’s Holocaust International Cartoon Contest: When a child gets caught doing something bad, before too much can be made of their transgression, they quickly blurt out the details of something bad that their sibling or classmate did. 

Perhaps one day more regimes and people in the region will no longer find it necessary to deny the historical traumas of their enemies. Israelis can acknowledge the Palestinian Nakba, Arabs and Muslims can acknowledge the Holocaust and the expulsion of Jewish communities from their midst, Turks can acknowledge the Armenian genocide, just about everyone can acknowledge the unjust lot of the Kurds after World War One, and so forth. 

David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.