To the Editor:

The denial of the Holocaust by Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood on the heels of the Iranian President's denial lays bare the incendiary anti-Jewish hatred ingrained in much of the Arab and Muslim world. ("Egyptian Leaders of Muslim Group Calls Holocaust a Zionist 'Myth'," (Dec. 23).

It has become standard for many Arab and Muslim commentators to decry that they have been punished by "European guilt" for the Holocaust which led to the founding of the State of Israel, ignoring the fact that the Jewish claim to Israel rests on thousands of years of connection to the land and to the concept of return and not on the Holocaust. 

The comments from Cairo and Teheran go a step further.  The Holocaust, they assert, never really happened, and is a myth perpetrated by the Jews in order to gain sympathy and support for a Jewish state and to strengthen international Jewish power. 

In denying the Holocaust, these statements demonstrate profound hatred of the Jews.