Israeli Arab says snubbed by Iran Holocaust parley

JERUSALEM, Dec 11 (Reuters) An Israeli Arab said today that Iran had refused him permission to attend a conference questioning the facts of the Holocaust, where he had planned to confront those who deny the Nazi genocide took place.

Dubbed ''Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision'' and held under the auspices of Iran's Foreign Ministry, the two-day parley has drawn international condemnation. Its organisers say they seek to encourage free historical debate.

Khaled Mahameed, a Muslim lawyer who last year opened a Holocaust museum geared to Arab audiences in the racially mixed town of Nazareth, said he tried to attend the event and debate those who deny Nazi Germany slaughtered 6 million Jews.

But he said his visa application in neighbouring Jordan was turned down.

''I am disappointed because I wanted to go to the conference and confront those who denied the Holocaust had taken place,'' Mahameed, 44, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Mahameed's community is descended from Arab residents of British Mandate Palestine who stayed on during the 1948 war of the Jewish state's founding. Hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled during the fighting.

Mahameed noted that many Arabs resent Israel, seeing it as a shelter for Holocaust survivors that was created with the backing of Western nations seeking to expunge guilt for inaction during World War Two.

HISTORICAL SUFFERING Redress would begin with Israelis and Palestinians each recognising the other's historical suffering, he said.

''I have my own vision about the Holocaust ... If we as Arabs and Muslims, and as Palestinians, recognised the Holocaust, we could make greater international political gains.'' The Jewish response to Mahameed's museum, a gallery with dozens of Holocaust images set against a smaller number of Palestinian-related pictures, has been mixed.

He won praise for his initiative, which some in Israel hoped would improve Jewish-Arab relations strained by Israeli crackdowns against a more than 6-year-old Palestinian uprising.

But the Anti-Defamation League, which aims to combat anti-Semitism, criticised Mahameed for suggesting Palestinians were made to pay the price for Europe's Holocaust. Many Jewish Israelis claim an ancient birthright to the Holy Land.

The Holocaust conference comes at time of spiralling tension between Israel and Iran, whose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for the ''Zionist entity'' to be eliminated.

REUTERS BDP RN2011