Former Editor-in-Chief of Egyptian Government Paper: 'We were Educated from Childhood that the Holocaust is a Big Lie'

On a recent program on Egypt's Al-Mihwar TV, a group of politicians and journalists discussed the issue of Holocaust denial. The panel included former newspaper editor Muhammad Al-Zurqani, columnist Abd Al-Qader Yassin, and author Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad, who recently made news for publishing an article in the Egyptian government daily Al-Liwaa Al-Islami titled "The Lie about the Burning of the Jews," which alleged that the annihilation of the Jews in gas chambers during World War II was a lie invented by Zionists in order to blackmail the West and to make possible the realization of the Zionist project. [1] Muhammad Al-Zurqani was the Editor-in-Chief of the paper at the time that the article was published, and he resigned following the ensuing controversy. The following is text from the discussion on Egyptian TV. [2] To view the clip, visit http://memritv.org/clip/en/229.htm:

Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad, president of Jaffa Research Center in Cairo: "This article was scientific research, which relied on many European and American sources concerning this lie, one of the lies upon which the State of Israel was establish - the lie about the burning of the Jews in the Nazis' ovens. The original intention of the article, its main aim and philosophy, was not to go into this issue in depth, but rather to use it in order to highlight the current Holocaust that we are experiencing in Palestine and which does not cause the West the same pain that it feels about an event that was, at the very least, falsified or exaggerated."

Sayyd Ali, host: "Or whose truth is in doubt…"

Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad: "Or whose truth has been in doubt for sixty years, while today a true Holocaust is occurring from Rafah to Jenin, Nablus, Baghdad, and Nafaj. This is the Holocaust that our nation and our region is experiencing today, and the West does not pay attention to it and doesn't feel the same level of pain that it feels concerning the old Holocaust. When this article was published, the Zionist MEMRI organization in America and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is also Zionist, translated the article and then disseminated it and sent letters to the American Congress, to the American Embassy in Cairo and to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, and other places."

On the Phone - Muhammad Al-Zurqani, former editor-in-chief of Al-Liwaa Al-Islami: "I agree with what Dr. Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad wrote and I accept full responsibility. I think, Dr. Sayyed, that you and I are of the same generation, colleagues who worked together. We were educated from childhood that the Holocaust is a big lie."

Sayyd Ali:"Of course."

Abd Al-Qader Yassin, Palestinian politician: "The 'Chosen People'… The Jews borrowed from Nazism all of its concepts - that they are exceptional and that they are the best among the nations, exactly as Hitler thought of the Aryan people. The truth is that in today's world, it is impossible to speak of race. One can speak of nationalities, but they aren't even a nation. No, they [the Jews] are a religion."

Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad:"Antisemitism is a new pretext that the Zionist Jews have used since the '40s to blackmail both the West and the East. They used this pretext to claim that anyone who says even a single word against the Zionist enterprise is antisemitic. Semitic means in this case the Jewish religion and the tribulations and tragedies that the Jews have undergone at the hands of all humanity, including Hitler.

"In WWII, 18 million Germans were killed. Out of those 18 million, the million and a half Jews they keep talking about - if they were killed, and I am only saying for the sake of argument that one and a half million were killed in this Holocaust - they were killed as a result of the war, and were not killed by the…

"Of course I did not anticipate [these reactions], and if I had anticipated them I would have written more. I would have done more to expose this illusion."

Abd Al-Qader Yassin:"The Holocaust was carried out with the agreement of the Zionist and the German leaderships. There was a very well-known agreement between the leadership of the World Zionist Organization and Hitler. But there is doubt as to the truth of this story. The Transfer [Agreement]. There is also a book by Farris Glubb, the son of the Irishman John Bagot Glubb, ' The Star of David and the Swastika.' Also, our brother Mahmoud Abbas, 'Abu Mazen,' published a book for which he received a doctorate from the former USSR, about the ties… Let's read the title so as not to make a mistake… ' The Other Face – The Secret Ties Between Nazism and Zionism,' published by Ibn Rushd publications in Amman.

" Goldmann met with Mussolini. Jabotinsky met with Mussolini. They published joint statements which read 'We and you are the same,' fascism and [Zionism]. If I say these things, which have been proven by books from the West, from the East, from China and elsewhere, then I'm an antisemite?"

Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad:"The Palestinian prisoners today, who are leading the Palestinian Intifada in the start of its fifth year, and on an empty stomach, are suffering in the Palestinian jails [sic] a greater suffering than what the Jews or others suffered in Nazi prisons. This suffering has reached such a level that it has been said that all of the experiments conducted in the Abu Ghraib prison on Iraqi prisoners or in Guantanamo were first conducted on the Palestinian prisoners, whose numbers reach 8,000, and among them 300 women and 300 children. Some of them suffered from experiments that turned their bodies into germ laboratories and turned them into human guinea pigs."

Sayyd Ali, Host: "Into laboratory mice…"

Rif'at Sayyed Ahmad: "They have made them laboratory mice out of these heroic prisoners. This is an example of the modern Holocaust that we are now experiencing. A fresh Holocaust. Where is the West's conscience? I ask where is Anne Marie, the media advisor in the U.S. Embassy, on this issue? Where is Bush himself?

"The annihilation of olive trees… In the last two years half a million olive trees have been annihilated in Palestine. The olive tree is the oldest and deepest-rooted tree in Palestine. Why are they being annihilated? Is this not Nazism? Is this not a modern Holocaust?"

On the Phone - I mad Jad, Arabs Against Discrimination: "I believe that these organizations, and MEMRI in particular, which is one of the most prominent of those who monitor Arabic publications in this field - by the way, this organization is composed of officers from Israeli military intelligence and it is not a research institute. They monitored these two articles and said that they appeared in a newspaper which represents the Egyptian ruling party and not in the opposition newspapers. Afterwards, they began making a big deal and claimed that the article represents what is being written in Egypt in this field."