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Source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-iran13dec13,0,2528243.story
Holocaust Denial Can Be Dangerous
[Los Angeles Times] Editorial - Iran wrapped its two-day gathering of neo-Nazis, hard-line racists, and half-baked historians with a rousing speech from Iranian President Ahmadinejad on Tuesday who said that Israel's days were numbered. Although it's tempting to shrug off a gathering of fourth-rate intellects, the conference illustrated a present and growing danger to the international community: Iran is on the path to becoming a nuclear power. Any promise to "remove" its neighbors from the map must be taken seriously. Ahmadinejad's rejection of the thousands of written and oral testimonies of Holocaust survivors, reams of scholarship, films, photographs, diaries, and detailed Nazi archives has nothing to do with evidentiary standards and everything to do with playing to the extremists in his regional audience. To Ahmadinejad, attacking the legitimacy of the Holocaust allows him to attack the legitimacy of Israel, which was created by the United Nations as a result of the Holocaust. If the first act didn't happen, then the second act wasn't necessary.