An outspoken Palestinian lawyer was hoping to challenge Holocaust deniers during a provocative conference that opens in Iran today. The international gathering will question whether six million Jews were actually slaughtered by the Nazis in the Second World War.

But yesterday Khaled Kasab Mahameed learnt from the Iranian Foreign Ministry — which had invited him to speak — that he would not receive a visa. No reason was given.

Mr Mahameed suspects that it was because he has an Israeli passport. It may also have been because he has made clear what he intended to say.

“I’m bitterly disappointed,” Mr Mahameed, who studied at a British university, told The Times. He was seeking a personal audience with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, to tell him that denials or questioning of “such huge, monstrous horror” harmed the Palestinian cause.

Mr Mahameed lives in Israel, where he has established the Arab Institute for Holocaust Research and Education, the Arab world’s first Holocaust museum, in Nazareth. He believes that the “study, analysis and acknowledgement” of the Holocaust by Arabs is important for a durable peace between the Palestinians and Israel. “It’s not enough to curse these Holocaust deniers as foolish. We have to convince them the Holocaust did happen,” Mr Mahameed said.

His attendance at the meeting in Tehran may have given credibility to claims by Iranian officials that the conference would not be a forum for anti-Semites or neo-Nazis.

Figures such as Fredrick Toben, a German-born Holocaust denier who lives in Australia, had little trouble getting a visa to attend the conference. There were reports that Lady Michele Renouf, an Australian-born model and socialite, was also on her way to Tehran. She was ejected from the Reform Club in London three years ago after attempting to get David Irving, the right-wing British historian, to speak there.

Irving was understood to be on the original invitation list to the Tehran conference when Mr Ahmadinejad first proposed the gathering last January. But a month later Irving was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in Austria after disputing the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz.

By the admission of Manouchehr Mohammadi, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister, the conference will address issues such as “whether the gas chambers were actually used by the Nazis”.

The conference, which has been condemned as disgraceful by several countries, including the US, comes as the Bush Administration is under growing domestic pressure to talk to Iran about tackling the violence in Iraq.

Mr Ahmadinejad ignited fury abroad a year ago by describing the Holocaust as a myth. In remarks that heightened Western concerns over the Iranian nuclear programme, he also labelled Israel a “tumour” that should be “wiped off the map” or moved to Europe or Alaska.

Tehran claims that 67 “intellectuals and researchers” from 30 countries, including Britain, Germany and France, will attend but has refused to name them. Iran is portraying the gathering as an exercise in free speech, claiming that open discussion of the Holocaust is denied in the West, where some countries make Holocaust denial a crime.

“For 60 years talking about the Holocaust was a crime in the West, but now there is a serious debate about the Holocaust in the media and also in political and popular meetings,” Mr Ahmadinejad said at the weekend. “Even some Western politicians have declared that the original foundation of the Zionist regime was a mistake,” he added.

Mr Ahmadinejad has faced domestic opposition to his inflammatory remarks about the Holocaust, which Iranian reformists and conservative pragmatists believe are damaging their country.

Mohammad Khatami, his reformist predecessor, declared earlier this year: “We should speak out if even a single Jew is killed.” He went on to insist that the Holocaust should be recognised “even if this historical reality has been misused and there is enormous pressure on the Palestinian people”.

Against Israel

Ahmadinejad on Israel

“As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map . . . Anyone who signs a treaty which recognises the entity of Israel means he has signed the surrender of the Muslim world.” October 2005

“They have fabricated a legend under the name ‘Massacre of the Jews’, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves.” December 2005

“Anti-Semitism in Europe has forced Jews to leave their countries of origin, but what they did instead was occupy a country which is not theirs but that of Palestinians. Why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for this crime?” April 2006

Source: Times database

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