No one has really taken a closer look at the Iranian cartoon “contest” regarding the Holocaust. This is what they say:

“We don’t intend retaliation over the drawings of the prophet. We just want to show that freedom is restricted in the West,” said Davood Kazemi, who has been cartoon editor at the paper since 1992 and is executive manager of the contest.

To be clear: As a reaction to a Danish — non-Jewish — newspaper publishing cartoons of the Muslim prophet Mohammed, the Iranians are holding a contest for cartoons that satirize the Holocaust.

Let me repeat that: Cartoons that satirize the Holocaust. Because, gee, the Holocaust is such a funny issue to begin with, what with its destruction of two-thirds of European Jewry, and hey, it’s not like the Muslim world doesn’t use Nazi and Holocaust imagery in their viciously anti-Semitic cartoons on a daily basis.

The hypocrisy of this contest is simply mind-boggling, but even more mind-boggling is that the media presents it in such a way as to give it more importance (and less context) than it deserves. And the AP takes special note to add to the Iranian conflation of the two issues.

The contest comes in the wake of widespread Muslim fury over the drawings of the Prophet Muhammad and a few months after hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked outrage in Europe for saying Israel should be “wiped off the map” and that the Holocaust was a “myth.”

The drawings of Islam’s most revered figure - including one that depicts the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb - first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September. They were recently reprinted in several publications in Europe, the United States and elsewhere in what publishers said was a show of solidarity for freedom of expression.

Islam widely holds that representations of the prophet are banned for fear they could lead to idolatry.

You see that the context of the Mohammed cartoons is properly set. The next paragraph does not say “Holocaust imagery is used throughout the Muslim world in viciously anti-Semitic cartoons, usually about Israel.” However, we do get this:

“We expect those papers who published the cartoons (of Muhammad) to reproduce the cartoons which will be selected during our competition,” Kazemi said. “Even Israeli cartoonists could send their works to the contest.”

[...] Kazemi noted that the Iranian paper would not accept any “insulting” cartoons. He did not elaborate.

Once again, let us note the logic here:

1. A Danish newspaper calls for cartoonists to draw pictures of Mohammed as an exercise in freedom of expression
2. The Muslim world gets enraged, riots, protests, calls for the death of the cartoonists
3. Almost nobody else publishes the cartoons, but everywhere they do, Muslims protest
4. Iran, a nation without a free press , via its major newspaper (which is controlled by its president), calls for a contest of Holocaust cartoons to prove the Western values of freedom of expression are selective, and insists that if the entire Western media do not publish the cartoons, the West is hypocritical

It is the logic of a twelve-year-old, but apparently, radical Islamists fit right into that Mad Hatter logic.

The response to this is utterly predictable. (Well, except for this: An Israeli anti-Semitic cartoon contest.) I expect to see the cartoons in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and of course, in AP and Reuters. I doubt I will be disappointed. But that isn’t the point.

The real logic behind the cartoon contest is the Iranian push to diminish the Holocaust. They are holding a Holocaust “conference” in which they intend to take a “scientific look” at the Holocaust — as if it hasn’t already been documented to death — in another attempt to prove that the Holocaust didn’t happen. The news media have been printing and reprinting the Iranian president’s lie that the Holocaust was a “myth.” The AP repeats it at any given moment, and has published it dozens of times since Ahmadinejad made it, and puts it into its Iran stories as a boilerplate now. The statement is repeated. And repeated. And repeated.

This is the true Iranian purpose behind the Holocaust cartoon contest. They don’t care about the freedom of expression issue. What Ahmadinejad wants, and what radical Islam wants, is to delegitimize Israel. They are working under the assumption that Israel only exists because Europe and America felt guilty about the Holocaust. They ignore the 3,500-year history of Jews in Israel, because it doesn’t fit into their worldview. Jews, frankly, do not fit into the Islamist worldview, in spite of their protestations that they are not anti-Semitic, only anti-Zionist. (There is no difference. If you are against the establishment and continuance of the state of Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, you are an anti-Semite.)

Make no mistake. The Iranians have a plan. They know what they are doing. As far as I can see, the world media is falling into step, either in ignorance or willingly, and the message is getting out: “Those damned Jews, always so pushy. Maybe the Iranians are right, maybe the Holocaust wasn’t such a big deal. Maybe we’ve been lied to all these years. There are books out there that say so, right? And don’t they keep on throwing those guys in jail, the ones who say the Holocaust was a hoax?”

The message is getting out. The virus is spreading. The denials follow every insane lie from Ahmadinejad, but his lies get published throughout the world. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that this contest is something to laugh about or overlook. It is deadly serious, and is part of a chain of consequences that could be extremely deadly for Jews — especially those in Israel.

Iran is close to getting a nuclear bomb. Iran has missiles that can reach Israel.

This Holocaust cartoon contest is no joke.