‘’It is about time an Iranian leader recognized the crimes of the Nazi era,’’ said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s comments about the Holocaust on CNN Tuesday.
'But the group deplored the fact that his remarks were “minimized by his gratuitous swipe at the survivors.”
In the interview, Rouhani could not explicity acknowledge the historical truth of the deaths of six million Jews. "I am not a historian," he said.
"When it comes to speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust, it is the historians that should reflect on it,’’ he added.
"But in general I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis committed towards the Jews, as well as non-Jewish people, is reprehensible and condemnable as far as we are concerned."
His immediate predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had repeatedly called the Holocaust ‘’a myth.’’
In his statements, however, Rouhani coupled his remarks on the Holocaust with an implicit attack on Israel, saying: ''This does not mean that, on the other hand, you can say Nazis committed crimes against a group, now therefore they must usurp the land of another group and occupy it. This too is an act that should be condemned. There should be an even-handed discussion.''
‘’It is about time an Iranian leader acknowledged the Holocaust as a tragic fact of history. But in practically the same breath President Rouhani engaged in the more subtle form of Holocaust revisionism, minimizing it by accusing the Jewish survivors of taking vengeance on the Palestinians in fulfilling their 2,000-year-old dream of returning to their homeland, Israel. This was a gratuitous swipe at the survivors,’’ said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor.
‘’There is no moral equivalency between the slaughter of six million Jews and millions of other innocent men, women and children in the Nazi gas chambers and the plight of the Palestinian people living in the West Bank and Gaza,’’ he declared.