Iranians have not been flocking to the museum in Tehran where 204 winning entries in the “Holocaust International Cartoon Contest” are on exhibit. Their indifference is because they think the images are a propaganda by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who seeks to divert Iran’s neighbours from worrying about the projection of Iranian power through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon.

One image is a caricature of a Jew with a long nose that impales an Arab figure; the nose is labelled “Holocaust.” Another depicts the Statue of Liberty holding a book on the Holocaust and raising the other hand in a Nazi salute.

The organisers say the purpose is to reveal Western double standards concerning free speech. Since the West justified publication of Danish cartoons mocking prophet Mohammed, they say, the Holocaust toons will test the depth of Westerners’ freedom of expression.

In an interview with Der Spiegel last May Ahmadinejad said, “If the Holocaust occurred, then Europe must draw the consequences and if it didn’t occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from. And the Germans are also prisoners of the Holocaust.”

Germans would side with Ahmadinejad if only they had not been made to feel guilty by the Holocaust myth. Like the cartoons, Ahmadinejad’s notions are no less repulsive. — The Boston Globe