Tehran:In a move to questions the historic dimensions of the Holocaust, Iran has published a cartoon book on the massacre of Jews during World War II, state television reported Friday. The book is titled "Holocaust" and contains satirical cartoons and texts aimed at questioning the Holocaust and how the issue was misused by Israelis. The book was presented to mark the so-called "Quds Day" and state-organised anti-Israel rallies held throughout Iran Friday.
The late leader of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had declared the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan to be "Quds Day", intended to be a day to call for the liberation of Jerusalem from Israeli occupation. Quds means Jerusalem in Arabic. The book was made by a group of Islamic students close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and members of the Basij (mobilization) militia.
One of the students told state television that the book intended to show the necessity to deal with the real dimensions of the Holocaust and "not just refer to lies so far said about the incident". Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Iran has not acknowledged Israel as a sovereign state and even refrained from using the name Israel and instead constantly referred to the Jewish state as the "Zionist regime". The tensions reached a peak in 2005 when President Ahmadinejad started his anti-Israel tirades, calling the Holocaust a "fairy tale". Tehran was also host to a Holocaust conference in December 2006 attended by renowned anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi figures.
