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- DAMASCUS, Syria (Reuters)
- An official Syrian newspaper on Monday described the Holocaust as a myth,
accusing Israel of exaggerating the extent of the Nazi slaughter of Jews
to gain Western support and contain its opponents.
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- ``Why does Israel insist on bringing up this alleged
Holocaust policy?'' the editor of the state newspaper Tishreen, Mohamed
Kheir al-Wadi, wrote.
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- ``I believe Israel and the Zionist organizations have
two aims. The first is to receive more money from Germany and other Western
establishments on the pretext of compensation for the Holocaust.
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- ``The second aim is to invest the myth of the Holocaust
and accuse anyone opposed to Zionism and its expansionist policies of anti-Semitism.''
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- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's office had no immediate
comment on the article, but the Jerusalem office of the Nazi-hunting Simon
Wiesenthal Center called the comments ''government-sanctioned Holocaust
denial.''
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- The center's Israel director, Efraim Zuroff, said the
article appeared designed to touch a raw Israeli nerve at a time of difficulty
in peace talks between Syria and the Jewish state.
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- ``The only explanation for such a thing is that the Syrians
are upping the ante and trying to disparage Israel in one of Israel's most
sacred principles,'' Zuroff told Reuters.
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- ``We view this with particular severity because this
reflects a deeply ingrained anti-Semitism and does not bode well for the
peace process. You can't make peace with a country that denies the Holocaust,''
he said.
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- The unusually strong Syrian attack at a sensitive time
in Middle East peace negotiations followed a major conference on the Holocaust
which ended in Stockholm last week.
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- Participants from 48 countries pledged to ensure that
World War Two atrocities, including the Nazi slaughter of Jews, remained
in the spotlight.
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- The newspaper charged that Israel had convened the conference
to further Jewish lies about the Holocaust in the face of credible voices
questioning it, including that of the controversial British historian David
Irving.
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- ``Zionism is erasing from human memory 50 million Nazi
victims and concentrating on the suffering of Jews, although historical
facts prove that Zionism leaders then collaborated with the Nazis for the
Jewish problem to get worse,'' Tishreen said.
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- ``Zionism hides these dark pages of its history, blackens
them completely and invents stories about the Holocaust and exaggerates
it to astronomical levels,'' it said.
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- Syria and Israel agreed to restart peace negotiations
in December and concluded two rounds of talks in the United States.
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- But a third round failed to go ahead this month after
Syria said it had not received guarantees from Israel indicating willingness
to withdraw from the whole of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in
the 1967 Middle East war.
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- Israel wants to discuss security arrangements and other
elements of a peace deal first.
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- Syria maintains that Israel is not showing real intent
to make peace, accusing it of continuing to oppress the Palestinians and
expanding its arsenal using Western aid.
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- ``Israel, which is presenting itself as heir to the victims
of the Holocaust, committed and keeps on committing against the Arabs crimes
that are uglier than the ones committed by the old Nazis.
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- ``The Nazis, for example, did not drive out a whole nation
from their homeland and did not bury people alive, which is what the Zionists
did,'' said Tishreen.
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