The end of the two-day Holocaust denial convention in Teheran gave Mahmoud Ahmadinejad one last opportunity to provoke the Israelis, and he did not allow it to pass unfulfilled. In language that has become too familiar from Iran, Ahmadinejad repeated his assertion that Israel would not long survive:

A two-day gathering of Holocaust deniers and white supremacists ended Tuesday with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meeting participants and telling them Israel would not survive long.

“The Zionist regime will disappear soon, the same way the Soviet Union disappeared,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, according to ISNA, a government-financed news agency. Thus, “humanity will achieve freedom.”

Iran has transformed into quite the Orwellian experience over the last three decades. Humanity will achieve freedom through the annihilation of the Jews -- in favor of radical theocracies that oppress their subjects and spread terrorism throughout the region. The Islamic Republic has become nothing more than a clanging gong, hitting the same note over and over again and trying to convince everyone that they have created a symphony.

Even the Los Angeles Times recognizes the sinister repercussions of a sovereign nation so gripped with hatred that it refuses to accept history and reality, although they make a mush out of it:

Although it's tempting to shrug off a gathering of fourth-rate intellects who seethe with contempt even for each other (did Duke discuss his theories about white racial superiority?), the conference illustrated a present and growing danger to the international community: Iran is on the path to becoming a nuclear power. Any promise to "remove" its neighbors from the map must be taken seriously.

Ahmadinejad's rejection of the thousands of written and oral testimonies of Holocaust survivors, reams of scholarship, films, photographs, diaries and detailed Nazi archives has nothing to do with evidentiary standards and everything to do with playing to the extremists in his regional audience. To Ahmadinejad, attacking the legitimacy of the Holocaust allows him to attack the legitimacy of Israel, which was created by the United Nations as a result of the Holocaust. If the first act didn't happen, then the second act wasn't necessary.

The Iranian president wrapped his hateful nonsense in the false mantle of free speech. Conference delegates, he said, were breaking free from the powerful opposition to critiquing the Holocaust narrative and finally being allowed to say what they pleased.

That's not quite the real danger, either. The real danger in this effort, and the real provocation, is the promotion of old myths through the rejection of recent historical fact. If the Holocaust never occurred, as Iran and Ahmadinejad insist, then why does the myth exist? Who benefits from a Holocaust fraud? Why, it's the Jooooooos, of course -- who secretly run everything and are therefore dangerous. And if they represent that kind of power and danger, then what will Iran do about them?

That's the reason why all of this talk about wiping Israel off the map has to be taken seriously, even apart from Iran's nuclear program. When nations repeatedly talk about wiping other nations off the map, history shows that they usually follow through. Stoking anti-Semitism through bogus symposiums starring such hatemongers as David Duke fans the political fires they need to eventually take action to match their rhetoric.

With Ahmadinejad's popularity dropping, he may feel pressed to take that action sooner rather than later. Do we know how we will react to an Iranian attack on Israel?

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