New York, NY, August 15, 2006 … The Iranian staging of an exhibition of cartoons deriding the Holocaust is "outrageous, hateful and cynical," the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said today. The cartoons were submitted to a contest called by Iran last year in reaction to the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, and inspired by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comments that the Holocaust is a "myth."

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, and a Holocaust survivor, issued the following statement:
 
The Iranian sponsorship and exhibition of a cartoon contest on the Holocaust is outrageous, hateful and cynical.

One should ask two questions: Why is the outrage in the Muslim world to the cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed directed against Jews, who were not responsible for the Danish cartoons?  Why, if, as President Ahmadinejad says, the Holocaust is a myth, call for a cartoon contest to deride it?

The questions are easily answered in the fact of the constant drumbeat of anti-Semitism and demonization of Jews and Israel emanating from the Arab/Muslim world, through their media and through leaders such as Ahmadinejad. Everyday, in much of the Arab/Muslim world anti-Semitic and other hateful material is produced for mass consumption.

Denying the Holocaust and deriding the Holocaust are two sides of the same coin and must be denounced by the international community as classical anti-Semitism.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.