TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 11 (UPI) -- A Holocaust denial conference that the Iranian government opened in Tehran, Monday, elicited emotional reactions among Jews around the world: An Israeli legislator choked with emotion when he described his family's fate, and Israel's foreign minister accused Iran of seeking to legitimize her country's destruction.
The Knesset's speaker, Dalia Itzik, referred to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "primitive."
Sixty-seven people from 30 countries, including the United States, are reportedly attending the two-day conference. It was convened after Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed six million Jews, was a myth and exaggerated.
Iranian Foreign Minister Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the conference was supposed to create a suitable atmosphere for raising different points of view on the Holocaust, Iran's news agency IRNA reported.
"If the occurrence of the event is officially questioned, the identity of the Zionist regime will also be put under question," Mottaki said.
At least six anti-Zionist Jews in long black coats were seated in the front row of the Institute for Political and International Studies where the conference was held. IRNA said they marched through the corridors sporting Israel's flag with a big red line through it and a slogan, "We are Jews, not Zionists." Some ultra-orthodox Jews believe Israel should be established only when the Messiah appears and consequently oppose Israel.
One of the Jews at the conference, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, said he did not dispute the Holocaust but, "Came here ... to reveal to the world the misuse of the Holocaust by the Zionists," IRNA said.
An Australian historian, Frederick Toeben, maintained it was his duty to be in Iran. "If we cannot speak freely it is a crime against humanity," he said according to IRNA.
Posters at the conference doubted smoke ever rose from chimneys at the Auschwitz death camp, in Poland, where Jews were gassed to death.
In a Knesset debate in Jerusalem, Monday, Rabbi Shmuel Halpert choked with emotion as he recalled his family's fate. According to Halpert, who was born in Romania six months before World War II erupted, in addition to his parents only one cousin survived on his father's side. One of his mother's eight brothers and sisters emerged alive. "I never had the fortune of saying, 'Grandpa' or 'Grandma,'" he added, crying.
A Jewish organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, organized a videoconference in Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto to allow Holocaust survivors to provide first-hand accounts.
Tel Aviv University Philosophy Professor Assa Kasher told United Press International that if such a conference were held in a remote place, Israeli Jews might have ignored it. They would feel their country is strong enough not to pay attention to every anti-Semitic event.
However, when the Iranian president seeks to destroy Israel and his country is "not far" from obtaining a nuclear bomb, the phenomenon cannot be ignored. The danger Ahmadinejad poses would be worse than the danger Hitler posed, Kasher said.
Israeli historian Yehuda Baueur noted in an article in the Yediot Aharonot newspaper that up to now Holocaust deniers had failed to gather a big forum to present their views. Their last attempt to do so was in Beirut, about a year ago, and Arab intellectuals foiled it.
He noted very big differences -- but also something in common -- among Islamic anti-Judaism, Nazism and Stalin's version of anti-Semitism.
Radical Islam, national socialism and Stalinism emerged at about the same time. Hitler first outlined his anti-Semitic goals in 1919, the October Revolution occurred in 1917, and the Muslim Brotherhood was established in Egypt in 1928.
"These three movements are religious, or pseudo-religious, and wanted, or want to control the world by force. In order to do so are ready for mass murder," Baueur noted.
He feared the conference could boost Holocaust denial in the Muslim world.
Kasher feared the conference might radicalize Muslims who never met Jews.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry thus called the conference, "A shameless initiative."
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni issued a statement saying, "By denying or questioning the Holocaust, the most extreme form of genocide to date, he (Ahmadinejad) is challenging the essence of the notion of universal human rights, which was developed by the international community after -- and because of -- the Shoah ... By denying the Holocaust, the president of Iran seeks to create legitimacy for his declared intention to destroy Israel and to spread his extremist doctrine, which contravene the values of the free world," Livni added.
