mediawatchwatch.org.uk

Iran’s Holocaust Cartoon Contest winner was announced last Wednesday, but not a single Iranian newspaper published the $12,000 prize-winning cartoon. In fact, the competition, which was set up in the wake of the Motoons furore to test Western tolerance for Holocaust denying drawings, was met with yawns both abroad and at home in Iran.

The prize was won by Moroccan cartoonist Abdollah Derkaoui, who doesn’t deny the Holocaust happened. He wrote to American cartoonist Daryl Cagle, explaining himself:

I want to express my total heartfelt sympathy with the millions of Jewish victims of the Holocaust who suffered the greatest crime against humanity under the Nazis. Nobody can deny that more than six million people were massacred during the second world war by the devil Hitler and his Nazi henchmen. But the question for me and for so many others is why the Palestinian people have suffered from so much pain, and massacres, and why they continue to suffer in the current situation.

The curator of the museum which hosted the contest, however, seems to have a different attitude. Masoud Shojai said the contest will be an annual event:

Actually, we will continue until the destruction of Israel.