Other Victims of Denial by Mahmoud Al-Safadi
Mr. President, I write to you following the announcement of your intention to organize a conference on the Holocaust in Teheran on 11-12 December, and I sincerely hope that this letter will be brought to your attention.
First of all, allow me to introduce myself: Mahmoud Al-Safadi, a former prisoner from occupied Jerusalem. I was released less than three months ago from the Israeli prison where I had been locked up for eighteen years for having been a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and having taken an active part in resistance to the occupation during the first Intifada. Since you were elected president, I have followed your declarations with great interest -- in particular those relating to the Holocaust. I respect your opposition to the American and Western injunctions concerning the Iranian nuclear program and believe it legitimate that you complain of the double standard that the world has with regard to the nuclear development of certain regimes.
But I am furious about your insistence on claiming that the Holocaust never took place and about your doubts about the number of Jews who were murdered in the extermination and concentration camps, organized massacres, and gas chambers, consequently denying the universal historical significance of the Nazi period.
