Via Allah and Alarming News, this potential bombshell (though its best to retain a healthy skepticism at this point). From Iran Focus-News, “Helmut Kohl agrees with Ahmadinejad on Holocaust”:
Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl reportedly told Iranian businessmen in Germany that he agreed with statements by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Holocaust was a “mythâ€Â, the semi-official Jomhouri Islami reported on Monday.
The government-owned daily wrote that at a dinner gala with Iranian hoteliers and entrepreneurs, Kohl said that he “heartily agreed†with Ahmadinejad’s remarks about the Holocaust.
“What Ahmadinejad said about the Holocaust was in our bosomsâ€Â, the former German chancellor was quoted as saying. “For years we wanted to say this, but we did not have the courage to speak outâ€Â.
Ahmadinejad caused an international furore last year when he publicly declared that the Holocaust was a “myth†and threatened that Israel must be “wiped off the mapâ€Â.
His comments were supported by senior Iranian officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The country’s state-run media have systematically defended the position of the Iranian president and given extensive coverage to historians and “experts†who deny the Holocaust took place.
Personally, that quote sounds to me a bit too much like an Iranian propagandist trying to mimic a western leader, so take it with a grain of salt.
Still, western Europe’s slow steady creep toward a renewed anti-semitism—posing as a critique of Zionism—sadly makes such a statement at least plausible.
It is unlikely, though, that a seasoned statesman like Kohl would make such a public gaffe. But then again, who’d have thought a former VP (and likely 2008 US presidential candidate) would stand before a Wahabbist audience and essentially accuse his own country of the mistreatment of Muslims in a war that the administration has taken great pains not to frame as a clash of civilizations.
I mean, honestly? I just don’t know anymore. My incredulism meter, once very reliable, has been damaged beyond repair by the partisan rhetoric of the last few years.
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Ace has additional commentary.
Wasn’t there a similar fake story like this by an Iranian newspaper a while ago? And couldn’t Kohl face possible criminal prosecution in Germany for saying something like that? I’m thinking unlikely.
I gotta admit, I’d bet against this story being true. Still…
Kohl said ‘bosoms’? I’m not seeing it.
TW: Between something, at least…
Personally, that quote sounds to me a bit too much like an Iranian propagandist trying to mimic a western leader
And not trying very hard, at that.
Dude. It’s an Iranian government-controlled newspaper. And you’re thinking of the possibility of maybe taking it seriously? Naaaahhhh.
Also, German politicians are generally not anti-Semitic, as far as I can tell. They seem to have sublimated the impulse into raging anti-Americanism, complete with hauntingly familiar stereotypes. Now certain low-rent French politicians, maybe. (But a French politician would never utter that remark about not having courage, either.)
I still believe the line that “Jews are the canaries” in our social coal mines. And they are getting snuffed out left and right, figuratively and literally.
Well I’m waiting to see it on the front page of the NYT before I’m absolutely sure it’s fake.
You could actually make a case for wanting the Iranians to be this bold. When it gets to the point that they think they can just make up weird shit all the time. . .
I personally think that they have told themselves that there is no “line” anymore. Having snowed the IAEA, the UN, the EU, and the US with the most textbook rope-a-dope since Hitler they assume they can just say whatever, whenever. And they may be right, but lately they’ve
No way did Kohl say this. He’s one of the old generation of Germans, committed to the idea of Trauerdienst (the duty of Germans to acknowledge the crimes committed by their country under the Nazis).
They should have pinned this one on Schroder.
BTW younger Germans are not committed to Trauerdienst in my experience. I recently had a German woman tell me that apartheid in South Africa was worse than the Holocaust; which is a statement that’s so divorced from reality that you really don’t know how to respond.
Perhaps you just don’t want to see Kohl saying “bosoms”.
I know I don’t. I just ate.
BTW younger Germans are not committed to Trauerdienst in my experience.
The last person I heard use the word “nigger” as a serious epithet was a long-haired, granola-eating, tree-hugging, German exchange student. I guess he figured I’d join in, my being a Southerner and all. My long-time friendship with a Portuguese professor ended after 911 when the guy’s latent anti-Semitism flared up. The dumbass, a leading researcher in his field, seriously entertained the notion that the Jews were behind the 911 attacks.
The beast is still there, waiting for another chance.