DESCRIBES IT AS A 'MYTH'

 

Egyptian opposition
dismisses 'Holocaust' tale

 

Brotherhood chief: Holocaust a myth
Reuters Friday, 23 December 2005 / 21:11 GMT

CAIRO—The head of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition force in Egypt's parliament, has echoed Iran's president in describing the Holocaust as a myth.

"Western democracy has attacked everyone who does not share the vision of the sons of Zion as far as the myth of the Holocaust is concerned," Mohamed Akef said in a statement on Thursday.

Akef cited as evidence of Western intolerance the cases of Roger Garaudy, the writer who was convicted in France in 1998 of questioning the Holocaust, and David Irving, a British historian who faces similar charges in Austria next month.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, caused an international uproar when he said in a speech on 14 December that the Holocaust was a myth.

'Holocaust' reports exaggerated

Last week Mohamed Habib, the deputy leader of the Brotherhood, asked about Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust, said reports of Nazi attempts to wipe out European Jews might have been exaggerated.

"We don't have confirmed things to enable us to prove this matter or refute it," he said. "It needs documentation but what one can be sure of is that there were attacks on the Jews but not by means of gas chambers or perhaps not in these numbers or on this scale."

But Habib said the debate was irrelevant to the situation of the Palestinians. "What the Jews propagate about there being a Holocaust has nothing to do with the way they treat the Palestinians on the land of Palestine," he said.

US 'democracy' campaign a cover

Akef, whose group won 88 of the Egyptian parliament's 454 seats in elections in November and December, made his comment in an attack on the assertion by the US that it is promoting democracy in the Middle East.

He said the US campaign was a cover for promoting its own interests and those of the Zionist movement in the region.

"American democracy ... steers the world into the American orbit delineated by the sons of Zion, so that everyone must wear the Stars and Stripes hat and keep away from the Zionist foster child," he wrote in his weekly statement.

Hypocrisy on Palestine

He accused the US House of Representatives of hypocrisy when it threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority if the Islamist movement Hamas takes part in elections in January.

He also criticized Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, for saying that Europeans might think twice about aid to the Palestinians if Hamas members were in parliament.

Hamas says it is an extension of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in 1928 and which renounced political violence inside Egypt decades ago.

Hamas believes in armed struggle to replace Israel with an Islamic state.