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EU Should Ban Ahmadinejad over Holocaust Denial

(Ha'aretz) Shlomo Avineri - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of Israel. Assume for a moment that the head of a European country were to say that the Holocaust did not take place and that the State of Israel must be destroyed. There is no doubt that the EU reaction would have been to recall ambassadors, if not to break off diplomatic relations or declare that leader persona non grata in EU member states. Because of less severe statements by Joerg Haider, Austria was almost banished from the EU. And the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko - who is not a danger to anyone except the citizens of his country - has been forbidden from entering any of the EU countries. Sanctions of this kind were not imposed on Ahmadinejad and this constitutes a severe political and moral failure, especially on the part of Europe which in recent years has taken significant steps to include remembrance of the Holocaust in textbooks and in the collective memory. It is not too late. There is no reason why the EU should not declare Ahmadinejad persona non grata in its region, which will send an important message to the Iranian people. It is intolerable that such a step has not yet been taken. There are issues about which one must not remain silent. One of those is the denial of the Holocaust by the leader of a country and his declared intention to destroy another country. There is no reason why demonstrations should not be held outside Iranian embassies in any place in the world, why Iranian ambassadors should not be accompanied at every appearance or trip by demonstrators carrying placards with "Holocaust deniers - out!" The writer, a professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is a former director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry.
2012-01-06 00:00:00
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