Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has, for the first time since the 1979 revolution, elaborated the Holocaust revisionism as a strategy in Iran's rhetorical war against Israel. Yet his comments on the Holocaust consist of two distinct parts: denying or questioning the extent of the Holocaust, on the one hand, and linking the creation of the Jewish state to the occurrence of the Holocaust in Europe, on the other. Principally this essay argues that the second part of Ahmadinejad's standpoint on the Holocaust—considering Israel as the West's compensation for that tragedy—has precedents in Iranian prerevolutionary political discourse. By reading through the utterances of several Iranian political thinkers and activists from different ideological backgrounds, this essay maintains that all these intellectuals have shown continuity in the line of their reasoning toward Israel over the past six decades.
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Fall 2009
Research Article|
October 01 2009
Iranian Anti-Zionism and the Holocaust: A Long Discourse Dismissed
Radical History Review (2009) 2009 (105): 58–78.
Citation
Mahdi Ahouie; Iranian Anti-Zionism and the Holocaust: A Long Discourse Dismissed. Radical History Review 1 January 2009; 2009 (105): 58–78. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-2009-004
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