Israel Launches SEO Contest Against Iran Holocaust Cartoons


By Israel News Agency Staff

Jerusalem----February 7.....In response to Iran's best-selling newspaper announcing a competition to find the best cartoons about the Holocaust, the Israel News Agency launched an SEO - Internet search engine optimization marketing contest to prevent Iran news Websites from reaching top positions in Google.

"When I heard that a newspaper in Iran was now holding a cartoon contest on the Holocaust, I knew that SEO would be the most potent tool in combating it," said Joel Leyden, publisher of the Israel News Agency. "That 12 winners in Iran would have their Holocaust cartoons published and would receive two gold coins (worth about $140 each) as a prize, I donned my SEO Israel Defense Forces uniform, cocked and loaded my keyboard. There is no way that Iran will spit on the graves of over 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust."

The Israel News Agency is asking every SEO advertising marketing professional to create Web pages and optimize the keywords: "Iran Holocaust Cartoon Contest" in order to prevent the Iran newspapers, the enemies of Israel, the Jews, the Christians and Western democracy from attaining a high Google and Google News position. The SEO contestants will wrap these keywords around their comments of how Iran has sponsored Islam suicide bombing terror attacks against innocent men, women and children in Israel. Iran directly funds the activities of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbullah.

"SEO contests are held almost every day marketing casino and other commercial Web sites," said Leyden. "It's time we used SEO Internet marketing against Islamic terrorists, those in Iran who wish to "wipe Israel off the map" and turn democracy's key principle of freedom of speech against those of us living in the US, England, France, Denmark, Israel, Turkey, Spain and all Western nations."

Iran Holocaust Cartoon Contest Links:

An Iran newspaper says it is conducting a Holocaust cartoon competition. The newspaper, citing the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, ...
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/07/world/main1289317.shtml

Iran’s biggest-selling newspaper has waded into the Muhammad controversy by launching a competition to find the 12 "best" cartoons about the Holocaust.

Farid Mortazavi, graphics editor for Iran Tehran's Hamshahri newspaper, said that the deliberately inflammatory contest would test out how committed Europeans were to the concept freedom of expression."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article727849.ece

An Iran paper holds a contest for Holocaust cartoons, to retaliate over ... An Iran paper is holding a contest for cartoons about the Holocaust, ...
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4688466.stm

CAIR Condemns Iran Holocaust Cartoon Contest

(WASHINGTON, D.C., 2/8/06) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations today condemned a plan by an Iran newspaper to solicit cartoons denying the Nazi Holocaust.

Iran’s Hamshahri newspaper says the contest is in reaction to the publication in Europe of cartoons mocking Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. The controversy over those cartoon sparked worldwide protests.

In a statement, CAIR said:

“Now is the time for responsible people of all faiths to avoid inflammatory actions that are clearly designed to incite hatred. We call on Hamshahri newspaper to drop its plans to denigrate the immense suffering caused by the Nazi Holocaust and urge the Iran government to repudiate such an insensitive proposal.

“The Quran, Islam’s revealed text, states: ‘Goodness and evil cannot be equal.
Repel (evil) with something that is better. Then you will see that he with whom you had enmity will become your close friend. And no one will be granted such goodness except those who exercise patience and self-restraint.’ (41:34-35)

“The Holocaust, like all other acts of genocide, represents one of the lowest moments in human history and should not be the subject of derogatory cartoons. One cannot demand responsible behavior from others while at the same time acting irresponsibly.” Previously, CAIR and other American Muslim groups rejected the use of violence in response to the defamatory caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in European newspapers.

In reaction to the cartoon controversy, CAIR officials met with the Norwegian and Danish ambassadors to express the Muslim community’s concerns about the caricatures and urged American Muslims to educate others about the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad.

CAIR, America's largest Muslim civil liberties group, has 31 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=1982&theType=NR

The SEO contestants will wrap these keywords "Iran Holocaust Cartoon Contest" around their comments of how Iran has sponsored Islam suicide bombing terror ...
www.israelpr.com/iranholocaustcartoonsdenmarkseocontest.html

Irans bestselling newspaper has launched a competition to find the best Iran cartoon about the Holocaust in retaliation for the publication in many countries of ...
www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200602/s1565443.htm

Iran's biggest-selling newspaper has chosen to tackle the West's ideals of "freedom of expression" by launching a competition to find the 12 "best" cartoons about the Holocaust, the Associated French Press reported on Monday. Farid Mortazavi, graphics editor for Tehran's Hamshahri newspaper, said that the deliberately inflammatory contest would test out how committed Europeans were to the concept freedom of expression.

https://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1138622562556&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

No Iran newspaper publishes winning cartoon in contest mocking Holocaust
The Associated Press
Published: November 2, 2006
TEHRAN, Iran: Iran's competition for cartoons mocking the Holocaust drew international reproach but made little impression at home, with not a single Iranian newspaper publishing the winning entries and people on the street saying it left them unmoved.

Iran awarded the first prize — worth US$12,000 (€9,400) — late Wednesday to Moroccan cartoonist Abdollah Derkaoui, who drew a picture of an Israeli crane erecting a wall of concrete blocks around Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest site. The blocks bear sections of a well-known photograph of the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz where as many as 1.5 million people — mostly Jews — died during World War II.

"The exhibition had no remarkable impact on public opinion," said Gohar Dashti, a professor at the Soureh Art University in Tehran. "It was neither a concern of students nor of the media."

Israel deplored the competition, which drew 204 entries from Iran and abroad. "The Iran regime has unfortunately joined the obscene chorus of Holocaust denial," Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

But Iran's minister of culture dismissed the criticism.

"The cartoonists expressed their hate of oppressors and their love of (Palestinian) victims," Hossein Saffar Harandi was quoted as saying in Thursday's edition of the conservative Kayhan newspaper. "Palestinians have been the victim of a deceptive history by Zionists," the minister added. The cartoons, which have been on display at the Museum of Contemporary Arts for Palestine since August, have not drawn large crowds though state schools bused their students to the show.

"Drawing cartoons ... isn't a good way to solve real and old problems," said Ahmad Nasiri, a 23-year-old architecture student. "Denying the Holocaust through cartoons doesn't contribute to humanity."

Iranian newspapers reported the results of the competition Thursday, but gave it no significant coverage. Not one paper printed the winning cartoon. The competition was launched by the Hamshahri newspaper after a series of Danish cartoons on Islam's Prophet Muhammad provoked widespread indignation among Muslims early this year.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supported the exhibition. His frequent denials of Nazi Germany's killing of 6 million Jews during World War II have made the Holocaust a feature of Iranian foreign policy. Two of the top three cartoons did not even deny the Holocaust and could be interpreted as affirming it. The point of Derkaoui's winning drawing and that of Carlos Latuff, a Brazilian who tied for second place, was to compare the Holocaust with the suffering of Palestinians today.

The exhibition was condemned worldwide. The U.S. State Department criticized it and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed his displeasure during a visit to Iran in September.

Hajar Smouni of Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based media rights group, said she was shocked by the "very poor taste" of the competition.

Associated Press Writer Jasper Mortimer contributed to this article from Cairo.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/03/africa/ME_GEN_Iran_Holocaust_Drawings.php

U.S. Denounces Iran Holocaust Cartoon Contest
Iran - Ahmadinejad, Mahmud, president, anti-Zionism conference, 26Oct2005, Tehran
Iranian President Ahmadinejad addressing an anti-Zionism conference in Tehran in October 2005
(Fars)
8 February 2006 -The United States has condemned an Iranian newspaper's plan to hold a contest for cartoons about the World War II Holocaust of Jews.

The paper announced the contest in response to Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that have outraged Muslims around the world. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack reiterated U.S. support for freedom of expression, including in Iran, but condemned the Holocaust cartoon contest.

"Any attempt to mock or to in any way denigrate the horror that was the Holocaust is simply outrageous," McCormack said. McCormack connected the contest to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's recent anti-Israeli comments, including his dismissal of the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews as a myth.

In its announcement, the "Hamshahri" newspaper said it wanted to test whether Western countries would extend freedom of expression to cartoons about the Holocaust.

(AFP, Reuters)

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/02/1b0039db-4b98-4e6f-833b-103a7e7edc9c.html

Appeals for calm over cartoon row
Muslim leader joins U.N., EU in condemning violence

Wednesday, February 8, 2006 Posted: 0734 GMT (1534 HKT)

(CNN) -- The leader of the world's largest Muslim organization has joined other world leaders in condemning violence over the publication of cartoon caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, head of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, joined with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, in calling for calm, saying they were "deeply alarmed at the repercussions" the cartoons have caused.

"We call on the authorities of all countries to protect all diplomatic premises and foreign citizens against unlawful attack," read the statement released by the three world leaders.

The violence that has swept across parts of the world has come in response to the publication -- mainly in European newspapers -- of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, something forbidden under Muslim belief. Across much of the Muslim world on Wednesday, political leaders urged calm over the dispute.

In Afghanistan, that nation's top Islamic organization called for an end to riots against the drawings, as police shot dead two protesters to stop hundreds of them from marching on a U.S. military base in southern Afghanistan Wednesday, The Associated Press reported. At least 10 people were wounded, the AP reported, quoting officials.

In Indonesia, both government and top Islamic leaders called on Muslims to prevent rallies from becoming violent, news services reported.

A prominent Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, invited artists to enter a Holocaust cartoon competition, saying it wanted to see if freedom of expression -- the banner under which many Western publications reprinted the prophet drawings -- also applied to Holocaust images. (Full story)

Thousands of protesters across the Muslim world had launched protests again Tuesday, with crowds firing on a NATO base in northwestern Afghanistan, protesters launching Molotov cocktails at the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Iran and angry demonstrators chanting slogans against European Union nations in Pakistan.

Outside the Danish embassy in Tehran, hundreds of Muslims threw rocks at the building, burned a Danish flag and clashed with police.

"Death to Denmark!" they chanted, outraged by the caricatures that were first printed in a Danish newspaper. Some other European papers have since published some of the cartoons, and they have also been reprinted in the Middle East and parts of Asia. The depiction of Mohammed is forbidden in Islam. In their joint statement, Annan, Ihsanoglu and Solana urged greater dialogue between religious and political leaders.

"These events make the need for renewed dialogue, among and between communities of different faiths and authorities of different countries, all the more urgent. We call on them to appeal for restraint and calm, in the spirit of friendship and mutual respect."

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen also appealed for restraint by demonstrators, saying the situation needs to be solved "through dialogue, not violence" and that the people of his nation are watching in "disbelief and sadness the events unfolding in the world."

"Today I want to appeal and reach out to all people and countries in the Muslim world: Let us work together in the spirit of mutual respect and tolerance," Rasmussen said in Copenhagen. Rasmussen blamed the violence on "radical extremists and fanatics" who are "adding fuel to the flames in order to push forward their own agendas," many using high-tech means -- like text messaging -- to spread false information before his country can respond to the accusations. He warned that the situation could get worse if not stopped now.

"We are facing a growing global crisis that has the potential to escalate beyond the control of government and other authorities," Rasmussen told reporters in a news conference.
Cheney: Violent protests 'overdone'

On Tuesday U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said the violent protests by thousands of Muslims angry over the cartoons was not justified, and he called their reaction "overdone."

"We think the violence is not justified, in terms of what's happened there," Cheney told PBS's "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer." "I think it's been overdone, I guess if I can put it in those terms."

In the PBS interview, Cheney was asked if the newspapers were justified in publishing the cartoons: "We believe very deeply in freedom of expression. Obviously, we think it's appropriate for people to respect one another's religion. But I don't believe that the printing of those cartoons justifies the violence that we've seen."

CNN has chosen to not show the cartoons out of respect for Islam.

-- CNN Producer Syed Mohsin Naqvi and Journalist Tom Coghlan contributed to this report

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/02/07/cartoon.protests/

In Tehran, a riposte to the Danish cartoons
By Michael Slackman The New York Times

Published: August 24, 2006
TEHRAN The title of the show is Holocaust International Cartoon Contest, or "Holocust," as the show's organizers spelled the word in promotional material. But the content has little to do with the events of World War II and Nazi Germany.

There is instead a drawing of a Jew with a very large nose, a nose so large, in fact, that it obscures his entire head. Across his chest is the word "Holocaust." Another drawing shows a vampire, wearing a big Star of David, drinking the blood of Palestinians. A third shows Ariel Sharon dressed in a Nazi uniform, emblazoned not with swastikas, but with the Star of David.

The cartoons are among more than 200 on display in the Palestinian Contemporary Art Museum in central Tehran in a show that opened earlier this month and is to run until the middle of September. The exhibition is intended as a response to the cartoons in a Danish newspaper that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad and were condemned by Muslims as blasphemous.

The message of the Holocaust-themed show is as old as the fictional Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and as contemporary as the drawings of Israeli tanks running over Palestinian men, women and children. Each picture is hung with great care, carefully matted and placed in a soft wood frame and illuminated by gentle lighting.

"It is not that we are against a specific religion," said Seyed Massoud Shojaei, curator of the show, offering a distinction that visitors to the show are certain to question. "We are against repression by the Israelis."

In February, the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri said that it would challenge the West's concepts of freedom of expression by probing one of its own taboos and challenging accounts of the Holocaust. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was condemned in the West when he called the Holocaust a myth.

The idea of the contest is to expose what some here see as Western hypocrisy for condemning Ahmadinejad, while invoking freedom of expression when it comes to cartoons that many Muslims said were deeply offensive. The cartoons prompted riots in many countries that left people dead and several European embassies burned by demonstrators.

Shojaei said that more than 1,000 pictures from 61 countries were submitted, proving that "there is a new holocaust in Guanta'namo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan." The show's provocative theme may attract the attention of the West. But it has gone little noticed here. Over a three-day period, the gallery was virtually empty at different times of the day.

A few visitors stopped by, mostly art students who said they had visited to examine artistic techniques. Many were also happy to take away a free poster: a photograph showing three military helmets piled up, the two with swastikas on the crown, a third with the Star of David.
"I came here to study the quality of the work," said Hamid Derikvand, 27, who said he was an art student at the university across the street from the gallery.

What did he think of the message? "I am not interested in politics," he said.

Technically, this is not a government show. The cash prizes that will be awarded to the winners - with a $12,000 top prize - will not come from the government, Shojaei said.

But the theme of the show fits well with the leadership's efforts to define itself as confrontational with the West and as a leader in the challenge to Israel's existence. At the height of the worldwide anger over the Danish cartoons, there were two protests in Tehran, both organized by officials. But while people here say they are sympathetic with Palestinians and Lebanese, and angry at Israel and the United States, there did not seem to be a huge rush to see the show.

"Look, these cartoons are the reflections of U.S. and Israelis' deeds, but wouldn't it have been better if they were put on display in the U.S. or even in Israel?" said Ali Eezadi, 70, a retired industrial engineer who visited the gallery Thursday afternoon.

"If this was the case," he said, "certainly there would be a rationale for it. But having this kind of exhibition in Iran does not draw much attention. I mean, these things are said, written and expressed in lots of ways that makes people apathetic." At first, Shojaei was keen to show visitors around. He was proud to point to his own drawing, a rabid dog with a Jewish star on its side and the word Holocaust around its collar.

He said there were three reasons for holding the show: The first was because, he said, in the West it is considered all right to insult religion, but impermissible to question the Holocaust.

The second, he said, is to ask why Palestinians must pay the price for the atrocities of the Holocaust - which he, unlike his president, did not deny. And the third, he said, is to draw attention to what he called the creation of a new Holocaust against Muslims, primarily Palestinians.

"We have been accused of being advocates for neo-Nazis," he said, speaking in Farsi through a translator. "This is not true."

The show took up three floors of the gallery and Shojaei was on the third floor, surrounded by images, which at most used the Holocaust as a subtext: A dove chained to a Star of David. President George W. Bush seated at a desk swatting doves. A Jew, or Israeli, asleep with three Arab heads mounted to the wall above his bed.

"We are not saying the Holocaust is a myth," he said. "We are saying that by this excuse Israelis are repressing other people."

Shojaei was not interested in answering questions or being challenged on his statements.

"You will need to make an appointment for an interview," he said abruptly, and left quickly through the front door after an attempt to engage him.

There were cartoons from other countries on display, too. China. India. Brazil. Syria. Jordan. Pakistan. An Israeli soldier holding a gas can that said Holocaust on the side as the soldier poured the fuel into a military tank.

A razor blade in the ground, like the barrier Israel is building along the West Bank, with the word Holocaust along the side. Two firemen, each with a Jewish star on his chest, using Palestinian blood to extinguish the word Holocaust, which was ablaze. Shojaei said that none of the images were intended as anti-Jewish, only anti- Zionist and anti-Israeli - and of course, anti-American and anti-British. As evidence of that idea, he said that Iranians live peacefully with the Iranian Jewish community in Iran.

But Morris Motamed, the one Jewish member of Iran's Parliament, said he did not go to the show because "it was in line with anti-Semitism and aimed at insulting Jews."

He added: "I felt if I went, I would get insulted and get hurt."


TEHRAN The title of the show is Holocaust International Cartoon Contest, or "Holocust," as the show's organizers spelled the word in promotional material. But the content has little to do with the events of World War II and Nazi Germany.

There is instead a drawing of a Jew with a very large nose, a nose so large, in fact, that it obscures his entire head. Across his chest is the word "Holocaust." Another drawing shows a vampire, wearing a big Star of David, drinking the blood of Palestinians. A third shows Ariel Sharon dressed in a Nazi uniform, emblazoned not with swastikas, but with the Star of David.

The cartoons are among more than 200 on display in the Palestinian Contemporary Art Museum in central Tehran in a show that opened earlier this month and is to run until the middle of September. The exhibition is intended as a response to the cartoons in a Danish newspaper that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad and were condemned by Muslims as blasphemous.

The message of the Holocaust-themed show is as old as the fictional Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and as contemporary as the drawings of Israeli tanks running over Palestinian men, women and children. Each picture is hung with great care, carefully matted and placed in a soft wood frame and illuminated by gentle lighting.

"It is not that we are against a specific religion," said Seyed Massoud Shojaei, curator of the show, offering a distinction that visitors to the show are certain to question. "We are against repression by the Israelis."

In February, the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri said that it would challenge the West's concepts of freedom of expression by probing one of its own taboos and challenging accounts of the Holocaust. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was condemned in the West when he called the Holocaust a myth. The idea of the contest is to expose what some here see as Western hypocrisy for condemning Ahmadinejad, while invoking freedom of expression when it comes to cartoons that many Muslims said were deeply offensive. The cartoons prompted riots in many countries that left people dead and several European embassies burned by demonstrators.

Shojaei said that more than 1,000 pictures from 61 countries were submitted, proving that "there is a new holocaust in Guanta'namo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan."
The show's provocative theme may attract the attention of the West. But it has gone little noticed here. Over a three-day period, the gallery was virtually empty at different times of the day.

A few visitors stopped by, mostly art students who said they had visited to examine artistic techniques. Many were also happy to take away a free poster: a photograph showing three military helmets piled up, the two with swastikas on the crown, a third with the Star of David.

"I came here to study the quality of the work," said Hamid Derikvand, 27, who said he was an art student at the university across the street from the gallery.
What did he think of the message? "I am not interested in politics," he said.

Technically, this is not a government show. The cash prizes that will be awarded to the winners - with a $12,000 top prize - will not come from the government, Shojaei said. But the theme of the show fits well with the leadership's efforts to define itself as confrontational with the West and as a leader in the challenge to Israel's existence. At the height of the worldwide anger over the Danish cartoons, there were two protests in Tehran, both organized by officials.

But while people here say they are sympathetic with Palestinians and Lebanese, and angry at Israel and the United States, there did not seem to be a huge rush to see the show.

"Look, these cartoons are the reflections of U.S. and Israelis' deeds, but wouldn't it have been better if they were put on display in the U.S. or even in Israel?" said Ali Eezadi, 70, a retired industrial engineer who visited the gallery Thursday afternoon.

"If this was the case," he said, "certainly there would be a rationale for it. But having this kind of exhibition in Iran does not draw much attention. I mean, these things are said, written and expressed in lots of ways that makes people apathetic. At first, Shojaei was keen to show visitors around. He was proud to point to his own drawing, a rabid dog with a Jewish star on its side and the word Holocaust around its collar.

He said there were three reasons for holding the show: The first was because, he said, in the West it is considered all right to insult religion, but impermissible to question the Holocaust.

The second, he said, is to ask why Palestinians must pay the price for the atrocities of the Holocaust - which he, unlike his president, did not deny.

And the third, he said, is to draw attention to what he called the creation of a new Holocaust against Muslims, primarily Palestinians.

"We have been accused of being advocates for neo-Nazis," he said, speaking in Farsi through a translator. "This is not true."
The show took up three floors of the gallery and Shojaei was on the third floor, surrounded by images, which at most used the Holocaust as a subtext: A dove chained to a Star of David. President George W. Bush seated at a desk swatting doves. A Jew, or Israeli, asleep with three Arab heads mounted to the wall above his bed.

"We are not saying the Holocaust is a myth," he said. "We are saying that by this excuse Israelis are repressing other people."

Shojaei was not interested in answering questions or being challenged on his statements.
You will need to make an appointment for an interview," he said abruptly, and left quickly through the front door after an attempt to engage him.

There were cartoons from other countries on display, too. China. India. Brazil. Syria. Jordan. Pakistan. An Israeli soldier holding a gas can that said Holocaust on the side as the soldier poured the fuel into a military tank.

A razor blade in the ground, like the barrier Israel is building along the West Bank, with the word Holocaust along the side. Two firemen, each with a Jewish star on his chest, using Palestinian blood to extinguish the word Holocaust, which was ablaze. Shojaei said that none of the images were intended as anti-Jewish, only anti- Zionist and anti-Israeli - and of course, anti-American and anti-British. As evidence of that idea, he said that Iranians live peacefully with the Iranian Jewish community in Iran.

But Morris Motamed, the one Jewish member of Iran's Parliament, said he did not go to the show because "it was in line with anti-Semitism and aimed at insulting Jews."

He added: "I felt if I went, I would get insulted and get hurt."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/24/news/iran.php


Iran: "We will wipe Israel off the map"
The Israel News Agency just had to add these cartoons above and below
to the Iran Holocaust Cartoon Contest!

Iran paper to run Holocaust cartoons
Robert Tait inTehran, Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Owen Bowcott
Tuesday February 7, 2006
The Guardian

Muslim protesters infuriated by cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad raised the diplomatic stakes last night as Iran's best-selling newspaper announced it would retaliate by running images satirising the Holocaust.

The decision by the rightwing Hamshari daily to launch an international competition to find the most suitable caricatures came as demonstrators hurled firebombs and stones at the Danish embassy in Tehran and the Iranian government imposed a formal trade ban on Danish imports. Last night mobs were attempting to storm the Danish compound.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoonprotests/story/0,,1703925,00.html

Moroccan wins first place in Iran Holocaust cartoon contest
By The Associated Press

Iran awarded a Moroccan artist Wednesday the top prize in an exhibition of cartoons on the Holocaust that has received international condemnation, including from UN chief Kofi Annan.

Meant to be a response to the Danish cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammed that sparked rage among Muslims around the world, the exhibit appears inspired by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's tirades calling for Israel to be destroyed. Tehran has several times announced plans to host a conference to examine the scientific evidence supporting the validity of the Holocaust, dismissing it as exaggerated. Its most recent announcement came in September during Annan's visit to the Iran capital, where he said he discussed the cartoon show with officials.

Abdollah Derkaoui received $12,000 for his work depicting an Israeli crane piling large cement blocks on Israel's security wall and gradually obscuring Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. A picture of Nazi Germany's Auschwitz concentration camp appears on the wall. Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts, next to the Palestinian Embassy, which was the Israeli diplomatic mission before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The exhibit curator, Masoud Shojai, said the contest would be an annual event. "Actually, we will continue until the destruction of Israel," he said. The display, comprising 204 entries from Iran and abroad, opened in August.

Carlos Latuff from Brazil and A. Chard from France jointly won the second prize of $8,000 and Iran's Shahram Rezai received $5,000 for third place. Many Muslims considered the cartoons published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten a violation of traditions prohibiting images of their prophet.

The Tehran daily Hamshahri, a co-sponsor of the exhibition, said it wanted to test the West's tolerance for drawings about the Nazi killing of 6 million Jews in World War II. The entries on display came from nations including United States, Indonesia and Turkey.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/782695.html

Iran Holocaust cartoon contest kicks off
AFP ^ | Febuary 13 2006 | Siavosh Ghazi

Posted on 02/13/2006 5:58:06 PM PST by jmc1969

A controversial contest for cartoons of the Holocaust was launched in Iran on Monday in a tit-for-tat move over the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that have enflamed Muslims worldwide.

The first entry was said to be from renowned Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig, according to the Website organizing the competition with Iran's biggest selling newspaper Hamshahri, triggering outrage in the United States and Germany in particular.

"As a show of solidarity with the Muslim world, and an exercise in free speech, I would like to submit a cartoon to you on the theme of the Holocaust," Leunig was quoted as saying in a statement on the Irancartoons.com Website.

Hardline President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has already prompted international anger by dismissing the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel.

The first of Leunig's two cartoons on the Website show a poor man with a Star of David on his back walking toward the Auschwitz death camp in 1945 with the words "Work Brings Freedom" over the entrance.

The second shows the same scene but depicting "Israel 2002" with the slogan "War Brings Peace" over the entrance and the same man walking toward it bearing a rifle.

"I have had some difficulty getting this work published in my own country, and I believe it would help highlight the hypocrisy of the West's attitude to free speech if you were to publish it," the Melbourne-based Leunig was quoted as saying. Hamshahri, which is published by Tehran's conservative municipality, said that the contest was officially launched on Monday with the title "What is the limit on freedom of expression in the West?"

Its graphics editor Farid Mortazavi said earlier this month that the aim was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression. Anger over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, first published in Denmark in September, has boiled over into violent demonstrations across much of the Muslim world.

"Freedom of expression has always been a pretext for Westerners ... to insult the beliefs of Muslims," Hamshahri charged in its advertisement for the contest.

"This assault is taking place while criticizing many issues such as the crimes of the United States and Israel as well as historical events like the Holocaust are seen as an unforgivable crime all over the West." Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionist historians, who maintain that the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as well as other groups during World War II has been either invented or exaggerated.

The newspaper said that the contest was open until May 5. It did not announce what the prize would be but said that each artist would receive a book of the cartoons submitted.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1577938/posts

Iran presents: Holocaust cartoon contest

Leading newspaper presents contest in response to cartoons disparaging Muhammad

Roee Nahmias
Published: 02.06.06, 22:08 / Israel News

Iran's most popular daily newspaper, Hamshahri, is set to initiate a Holocaust cartoon contest in what it says is a response to cartoons disparaging Islam's prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper.
"This will be an international cartoon competition on the topic of the Holocaust," said Farid Mortazawi, the paper's graphic editor.


The editor added the newspaper intends to fight back by claiming the publication of Holocaust cartoons is done in the name of freedom of expression.
"Western newspapers published these caricatures, which constitute desecration, under the pretense of freedom of expression," he said. "Let's see if they mean what they say once we publish Holocaust caricatures." Meanwhile, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a leading Muslim Brotherhood cleric, has condemned the harsh reactions to the cartoons among Muslim communities around the world.

Speaking on al-Jazeera's Sharia program, Qaradawi said: "The acts of destruction carried out by a minority of people in capitals around the world are unacceptable as a response to what European newspaper published. We never called on people to burn cars. We call on you to show the fury in an intelligent way as to avoid unthinkable damage."


"We condemn those who are attacking us when we do not attack them. We are bound by the laws of Allah and to his instructions," said Qaradawi, who has a major influence on the Arab Muslim community and on Muslim communities in the West. Responding to a question about churches damaged in Beirut by rioting masses, Qaradawi said: "This is unacceptable. We have seen Muslim imams preventing people from doing this, but it seems there are those who will exploit the rage of the people to pour fuel on the fire." Qaradawi has called for "sanctions on countries that published the cartoons in their newspapers. We demand an international law forbidding religions from being humiliated, and we held a rally as a response to these injuries. These are the ways to respond."

Qaradawi also condemned freedom of speech, saying: "No one has this freedom. When you drive in a car, you can't swerve right and left because there are other people on the road with you. You must drive according to traffic laws."
Meanwhile, 400 Iranian protesters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the Danish Embassy in Teheran. Earlier, the Austrian Embassy in the Iranian capital was attacked.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3212064,00.html


Wikipedia defines a SEO (search engine optimization) contests as when SEO marketing Webmasters compete to rank best on Google for a given keyword or keyword combination. They have become an often important method for webmasters to promote their web sites and gain web traffic. While the contestants compete for prizes, fame or glory, the organizing body often benefits as well. The Israel News Agency is launching an SEO contest, not for money but rather in memory of those Jews, Christians, Gypsies - men, women and children who were murdered in the gas ovens of the Holocaust.

The nigritude ultramarine competition by SearchGuild is widely acclaimed as the "mother" of all SEO contests. It was started on May 7, 2004 and was won two months later by Anil Dash. On September 1 of the same year, webmasters were challenged to rank number one on Google in three months time for the search phrase seraphim proudleduck. Currently at least one contest is taking place in France. A competition in progress as of January 1, 2006 is SEOLogs' redscowl bluesingsky, another set of made-up words. It is scheduled to end on March 1, 2006. A contest that had been announced earlier - but only started on January 15, 2006 - is the one by V7N SEO forum administrator John Scott and another search engine optimizer, WebGuerrilla. In this particular contest, both competitions use the same search phrase v7ndotcom elursrebmem, but each has its own set of special rules.

Iran made Holocaust denial government policy when Iran foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said in December that remarks made by the Iran president that the Nazi mass murder of Jews during World War II was a "myth" was the official Iranian government's position on the issue. "The words of [president] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the Holocaust and on Israel are not personal opinions, nor isolated statements but they express the view of the Iran government," Mottaki said. Ahmadinejad made the Holocaust remarks after stating in October that Israel should be "wiped off the map." "The Palestinians or Islamic nations can not be forced to pay for the injustices the Europeans believe they committed against the Jews," the minister said speaking at Tehran airport after a visit to Pakistan.

The Iran Holocaust cartoons Web site states: "Regarding to clarification of the issue of "Holocaust" this website possibly will be closed by United States, in this case please refer to the following addresses."
What does this Web site have to fear?

Freedom of speech is prevalent throughout the Western world. But Iran does not understand that, as there is no free speech in Iran. Rather this contemptible and barbaric holocaust cartoon contest for which Iran now tries to bribe artists with a 12,000 USD wining carrot. 12,000 USD to divert world attention from Iran building nuclear weapons. In Israel, we win basketball championships in Europe. We keep our eye on the ball. The ball is not the swift Iran hand saying holocaust cartoon contest, it is nuclear weapons for which Israel and the world are watching. Nice try Iran, no cigar.

Iran showed few signs that it was ready to nod yes with a Russian proposal that could lowers fears that Iran wants nuclear arms and avert possible UN sanctions. A senior US official said Russia's role was helpful but Iran was ignoring international advice on the nuclear issue. "We think Iran is clearly continuing to miscalculate the will of the world community," US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns, told reporters in Moscow, Reuters said. After two days of talks in Moscow, Russian and Iranian negotiators said they planned more discussions this week on a Russian proposal to enrich uranium for Iran, seen as a way to ensure Tehran cannot divert nuclear fuel into bomb-making. But the two sides appeared far apart, with Iran's foreign minister ruling out any return to a moratorium on uranium enrichment, which Russia has repeatedly demanded, Reuters added.

Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an anti-Semite whose country's nuclear program must be stopped at all costs, Israel interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said today. But Olmert, in his toughest public response yet to Ahmadinejad's questioning of the Holocaust and calls for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map", stopped short of discussing any direct action by Israel against its arch-foe.

"The president of Iran, with all of his statements, is a heinous anti-Semitic phenomenon. He is an Israel-hater," Olmert told parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, according to an official briefing reporters on his remarks. Israel, believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, says Iran is months away from acquiring the know-how to make nuclear weapons. Iran has defied world scrutiny on its nuclear program, saying it is for energy needs only. The stand-off has stoked speculation that Israel, perhaps in concert with its U.S. ally, could resort to military action against Iran. Israel has not ruled this out but says it prefers to see U.S.-led diplomatic pressure on Iran run its course. "I do not think that we have to state on the world stage what we will do and what we will not do," Olmert said. "We must prevent Iran from reaching a technological know-how -- with everything that entails -- and the international community has the tools to deal with this," he said.

As Iran happily collects Holocaust cartoons for a newspaper contest, Iran officials have sent a letter to the United Nations saying it wanted the organization to "remove by mid-month any seals and surveillance systems on their uranium enrichment plant, parts of which were still being monitored by international inspectors." The Los Angeles Times reports the letter also said that Iran would end all voluntary compliance with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran had been voluntarily complying with a set of rules that allowed for inspections on short notice on many facilities that are a part of Iran's nuclear energy program. Now that access to these facilities will end.

American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday that anger sparked by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed could spin out of control and urged governments, especially Iran and Syria, to "act responsibly".

"If governments do not act responsibly, we could face a sense of outrage that spins out of control and particularly if people continue to incite it," she said on the ABC television programme This Week. "It is well known that Iran and Syria bring protesters into the streets when they wish, to make a point," she said. Rice said Washington had lodged a complaint in which they told Damascus, "these are incited riots, and they need to be controlled".

The Nazis never obtained a nuclear weapon, although Historians working in Germany and the US claim to have found a 60-year-old diagram showing a Nazi nuclear bomb. The Nazis were far away from a 'classic' atomic bomb. But they hoped to combine a 'mini-nuke' with a rocket. "The Nazis were far away from a 'classic' atomic bomb. But they hoped to combine a 'mini-nuke' with a rocket," Dr Karlsch told the BBC. "The military believed they needed around six months more to bring the new weapon into action.

Where the Nazis failed in creating weapons of mass destruction, they were successful in building and maintaining Holocaust death camps.

The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were "life unworthy of life."

During the era of the Holocaust, the Nazis also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the handicapped, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. In 1933, the Jewish population of Europe stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that the Third Reich would occupy or influence during World War II. By 1945, close to two out of every three European Jews had been killed as part of the "Final Solution", the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe.

Although Jews were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included tens of thousands of Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled people were murdered in the Euthanasia Program. As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Nazis persecuted and murdered millions of other people. More than three million Soviet prisoners of war were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet citizens for forced labor in Germany or in occupied Poland. From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, homosexuals and others deemed to be behaving in a socially unacceptable way were persecuted.

Thousands of political dissidents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses) were also targeted. Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment. The Holocaust See maps Before beginning the war in 1939, the Nazis established concentration camps to imprison Jews, Roma, other victims of ethnic and racial hatred, and political opponents of Nazism. During the war years, the Nazis and their collaborators created ghettos, transit camps, and forced-labor camps.

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) carried out mass-murder operations against Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist party officials. More than a million Jewish men, women, and children were murdered by these units. Between 1942 and 1944, Nazi Germany deported millions more Jews from the occupied territories to extermination camps, where they murdered them in specially developed killing facilities. In the final months of the war, SS guards forced camp inmates on death marches in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives on Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, many of whom had survived the death marches. World War II ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of German armed forces in the west on May 7 and in the east on May 9, 1945.

Yad Veshem Israel museum in Jerusalem has a SHOAH Resource Center consisting of a comprehensive database on the Holocaust including photographs, artifacts, testimonies, documents, maps, diaries, research papers, and The Holocaust memorial center includes a chronology - a timeline of the events of the Holocaust with over 300 events and brief entries on each. A bibliography which lists over 200 books in English that are generally regarded by scholars and teachers as important in the study of the Holocaust. And documents of the Holocaust - a comprehensive collection of over 200 documents on the destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland and the Soviet Union.

As Iran focuses on securing Holocaust cartoons, the EU’s executive office today warned Iran that attempts to boycott Danish goods or cancel trade contracts with European countries would lead to a further rupture in already cool relations. The EU was trying to confirm comments made by Iran’s president that the country should boycott Danish products in protest of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, said EU spokesman Johannes Laitenberger. “A boycott of Danish goods is by definition a boycott of European goods,” Laitenberger said. “A boycott hurts the economic interests of all parties, also those who are boycotting and can damage the growing trade links between the EU and the countries concerned.”

The Brussels-based Conference of European Rabbis (CER) denounced the idea of Holocaust cartoons coming from Iran and urged the Muslim world to do likewise. Iran daily paper said the contest was designed to test the boundaries of free speech. In Paris, CER President Joseph Sitruk, who is also Chief Rabbi of France, said: "The Iranian regime has plummeted to new depths if it regards the deaths of six million Jews as a matter for humor or to score cheap political points. "Sadly, we are not surprised by this action," he said, recalling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's calls last year for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and his dismissal of the Holocaust as a myth. In a statement issued by the CER, which represents chief rabbis from over 40 European countries, Sitruk said the Iranian government menaced Jews and the whole international community. Sitruk noted that European religious leaders had condemned the publication of images likely to offend believers' feelings.

"This is a test for the Muslim world to react immediately to condemn their own co-religionists in Iran for such obscene behavior as we condemned those who sought to insult them," he said.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he saw the initiative by Iran's largest-selling paper as an extension of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's campaign of virulent anti-Israeli rhetoric. "Any attempt to mock or to in any way denigrate the horror that was the Holocaust is simply outrageous," McCormack said.

Iran Hamshahri newspaper anounced the competition over cartoons depicting the Nazi slaughter of Jews before and during World War II as a reprisal for Western papers printing satirical images of Mohammed. McCormack reiterated US support for freedom of expression throughout the world, including in Iran. But he saw no comparison between the plans by Hamshahri and the move by a Danish paper to run the Mohammed cartoons. "I don't think that anybody would draw any equivalences between, quote/unquote, 'freedom of the press' in Iran and freedom of the press in Western Europe or the United States," he said.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in response to the controversy stemming from the twelve cartoons depicting Mohammed featured in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and reprinted in other Europe newspapers: ADL is opposed to religious, racial and ethnic stereotyping in the media. The ADL said that it found some of the cartoons in Jyllands-Posten troubling, particularly the direct linkage of Mohammad and violence. "At the same time, we are gravely concerned by the extreme violent reaction these cartoons have generated in Muslim communities in Europe, and particularly in the Middle East. It is certainly the right of individuals and governments to express their disagreement with these depictions. However, the use of violence, threats, boycotts and other extreme reactions are highly inappropriate and bode ill for future debates involving Islam, democracy and free speech."

The ADL statement concluded: "what has been overlooked in the controversy is the fact that despicable anti-Jewish caricatures appear daily in newspapers across the Arab and Muslim world. In a democratic society, newspapers need to be free to publish controversial content without fear of censorship or intimidation of their writers and editors. At the same time, newspapers and all media outlets should to take into account the sensitivities of racial, ethnic and religious groups."

Iran protesters hurled petrol bombs and stones at the Danish Embassy in Tehran for a second successive day. Iran announced it had cut all trade ties with Denmark because of the cartoons and hundreds of protesters hurled rocks and fire bombs at the Danish embassy on Monday night. A Danish newspaper first published the cartoons in September, and newspapers in Norway and a dozen other countries reprinted them last month.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights and educational organization, condemned the proposed cartoons contest. "They're following the classic formula of Adolf Hitler, which says if there's a problem, it's the fault of the Jews," said Rabbi Marvin Hier from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. The Islamic demonstrations over the Muhammad cartoons so far have caused five deaths and many injuries.

Jihad Momeny, editor in Chief of a Jordanian weekly asks in a recent article; “Those who are so offended by the Danish caricatures must face their own conscience and ask themselves if beheading hostages and bombing weddings and killing innocent people is an offence to their prophet or a few tasteless satires produced by ignorant people towards the sensitivities of another culture and Islamic beliefs?”

"This is a test for SEO professionals in every democratic nation who have a rich background in public relations, marketing and advertising HTML SEO programming to make their mark and illustrate their power," said Leyden. "On-line news sites do not optimize their news stories with search engine optimization SEO technology and as a result their stories get lost in cyberspace. Rather than SEO the keywords "seraphim proudleduck", SEO PR professionals should now concentrate on "iran holocaust cartoons" and bury the Iran information PR war of incitement among Muslims world-wide."

Danish Pastries Taste Better Than Explosives From Iran

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