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Lebanon Denies Venue for Holocaust Deniers
Lebanese officials said on Thursday that they would not allow a gathering of Holocaust deniers in Beirut planned for later this month, but also tried to deny that any such conference was ever planned.

"This conference will not be held in Beirut," Prime Minister Rafik Hariri said yesterday, several hours after a Cabinet meeting that discussed the issue. The move won the praise of Jewish groups, which had called the conference organized by groups that say accounts of Holocaust atrocities are exaggerated "a gathering of hate."

But Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi claimed yesterday that reports about the conference were part of a "disinformation campaign" against Lebanon. He said that no group had applied for a permit to hold such a conference, and described reports about it as part of "a political, diplomatic and media campaign against Lebanon."

The California-based Institute for Historical Review, one of the organizers of the conference, had described the planned meeting as a "landmark" reflecting "cooperation between [Holocaust] revisionists in the West and Muslim countries." But upon hearing of the Beirut government's decision, the Institute's director, Mark Weber, accused Lebanon of giving in to pressure from Jewish groups. "I regard this as outrageous," Weber said.

Extremist groups, such as the conference organizers, question the historical record that six million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II. Scholars and Jewish groups accuse them of distorting history and anti-Semitism.

The organizers were counting on finding sympathy among Arabs hostile to Israel and Jews. Anti-Semitic writing, some of it denying the Holocaust or accusing Israel of imposing a new Holocaust on the Palestinians, has appeared often in Arab media.

But some Arabs said that such a meeting in Lebanon would only bring bad publicity. The widely read pan-Arab newspaper AL-HAYAT said in an editorial last week that the meeting's "damage to Lebanon is guaranteed." And in a surprise move, fourteen Arab intellectuals, including prominent Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish and discredited Columbia Professor Edward Said, signed a letter last week calling for "this anti-Semitic undertaking" to be canceled.

Used with Permission from International Christian Embassy Jerusalem.

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