An Israeli Arab lawyer from Nazareth was denied a visa to Iran to attend its two-day Holocaust conference, which will attempt to prove the Holocaust never happened.
Khaled Muhammad has made numerous efforts to teach the Arab world the Holocaust did indeed happen.
The Iranian Institute has repeatedly invited Muhammad to events, thinking he was Palestinian, but was denied a visa upon learning that he carried an Israeli passport.
“This is a political decision,” Muhammad said.
Muhammad, who has 80 pictures of the Holocaust hanging in his office alongside pictures of Palestinian suffering from the Israeli War of Independence, said his goal in attending the event was to debate the Holocaust-deniers over the extermination of six million Jews.
“The Iranian government's pseudo-academic conference...is an effort to mainstream Holocaust denial and must be unequivocally rejected,” said a statement put out by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust center.
Yad Vashem will host a seminar on Thursday for the diplomatic corps stationed in Israel entitled “Holocaust Denial: Paving the Way to Genocide.”
The US has called the conference “disgraceful.” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust is a myth and called for Israel to be wiped off the map.