Iran’s Holocaust Cartoon Festival Draws Hundreds of Contestants

With its second annual Holocaust cartoon contest, Iran continues promoting Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism.

Iran’s second Holocaust cartoon contest is reportedly a big success, drawing hundreds of entries from several countries around the world.

Massoud Shojayee Tabatabayee, secretary of the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, announced that 839 entries have, so far, been received by the secretariat.

Tabatabayee told Iran’s Fars News agency on Monday that “839 artworks have also been sent to the secretariat, 686 of them have been sent to the cartoon section and 153 more are related to caricature section.”

He said that a 12-day exhibition will be held in Tehran on May 9. The winner will receive a cash prize of $12,000, with those in second and third place taking home $8,000 and $5,000 respectively.

Top works from the upcoming competition will be displayed at the Palestine Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran and several other locations throughout the Iranian capital. Several artists submitted more than one cartoon.

According to the report, 312 artists have entered their cartoons, including 104 artists from Iran and 208 from other countries, including Indonesia, Brazil, France, Italy Turkey and China.

Tabatabayee said that the point of the contest and the exhibition was to display the “West’s double standard behavior” towards freedom of expression, as it allows “sacrilege of Islamic sanctities,” especially the recent publication of an “insulting cartoon” of Islam’s Prophet Mohammad by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, while preventing similar cartoons on the Holocaust due to the “Zionist regime’s steadfast opposition.”

In 2006, Iran held a similar exhibition on the Holocaust, in which cartoonists from several countries, including the US, participated. The cartoon competition was sponsored by Iranian newspaper Hamshahri in order to denounce what it called “Western hypocrisy on freedom of speech”. The event was staged in response to cartoons of Mohammad published by the Danish Jyllands-Posten.

The sponsors of the Iranian exhibition said the event was aimed at “testing the West’s tolerance towards the Holocaust.”

“The contest legitimizes Holocaust denial and encourages those who deny the Shoah to continue with their incitement,” Ron Prosor, Israeli ambassador to the UN, stated. UNESCO reportedly condemned the contests as well.

Iran, as state policy, denies the Holocaust, claiming it is a Zionist ruse to gain control of “Palestine.”

By: Aryeh Savir
Staff Writer, United with Israel 

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