Iran paper to publish Holocaust ‘cartoons’
In apparent retaliation for the publishing and reprinting of the infamous Mohammed cartoons by various papers overseas, an Iranian paper has announced that it is going to hold a contest on cartoons on the Holocaust. Via Australia’s NEWS.com.au:
IRAN’S largest selling newspaper announced today it was holding a contest on cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publishing in European papers of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.
“It will be an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust,” said Farid Mortazavi, the graphics editor for Hamshahri newspaper – which is published by Teheran’s conservative municipality.
He said the plan was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression.
“The Western papers printed these sacrilegious cartoons on the pretext of freedom of expression, so let’s see if they mean what they say and also print these Holocaust cartoons,” he said.
Iran’s fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionist historians, who maintain the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe’s Jews as well as other groups during World War II has been either invented or exaggerated.
Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted international anger when he dismissed the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe’s Jews as a “myth” used to justify the creation of Israel.
Mr Mortazavi said tomorrow’s edition of the paper will invite cartoonists to enter the competition, with “private individuals” offering gold coins to the best 12 artists – the same number of cartoons that appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
Um, the obvious question would be: what in the world does an Iranian newspaper know about the freedom of expression?
I know that the paper is claiming that this is in retalation for those ‘offensive’ cartoons, but the real story here is not so much about the cartoons as it is about Iran taking yet another opportunity to openly taunt Israel and the West by openly denying the Holocaust yet again.
Read more commentary on this via Gina Cobb, Debbie Schlussel, Tigerhawk, Confederate Yankee, Stop The ACLU
Related Toldjah So posts:
- Another US media double standard re: cartoons
- US media will print Abu Ghraib photos but not controversial cartoons
- Multicultural sensitivity and how it can have brutal consequences
- US sides with Muslims in cartoon controversy
- More European papers reprinting “offensive” Islamic cartoons
- Bomb threats made against Danish paper over Mohammed cartoons