IRAN AMBASSADOR MAKES INFLAMMATORY HOLOCAUST REMARKS AT COLUMBIA UNIV.

Iranian Ambassador Makes Inflammatory Remarks About Holocaust, FOX News at Columbia University (FOXNEWS)
NEW YORK — The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations sparked a furor Wednesday night when he said at a speech in New York that Palestinians are suffering today because of "atrocities" that happened in World War II, specifically against the Jews. Comments made by Javad Zarif about the Holocaust at Columbia University were met with animated protests from some students in the audience.

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied that the Holocaust happened and has also called for the destruction of Israel. When asked whether he believed six million Jews died in the Holocaust, Zarif answered, "I believe a great atrocity was committed in the Second World War. The question that needs to be asked is what crime was committed by Palestinians in that atrocity?"

A number of students attending his talk, hosted Wednesday evening on campus by a Columbia University international studies group called Toward Reconciliation, loudly voiced their disagreement with his statements.

"Do I have a right to freedom of expression?" Zarif challenged. "I'm answering. If you want to stifle the right of people to freedom of expression, that's your problem, not mine." [ED. PRETTY CHEEKY COMING FROM THE AMBASSADOR FROM A POLICE STATE]

He went on to say that "a large number of people were murdered" during World War II and "a large number of them were Jews. That's a crime … Genocide is a major crime, and we reject it … But what was the role of the Palestinians in that? … Palestinians have been suffering because of that without having any role in it."

Columbia University did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The head of the American Jewish Committee said the link between Israel and the Jewish people didn't begin during World War II, but rather 3,000 years earlier.

"That's something that many Arabs and Iranians would like to conveniently forget," said AJC executive director David A. Harris. "But it's historically proven. And that underlies the claim of the Jewish people to a state, to a land with which they have been connected for over three millennia.

"This notion that a 'crime' was committed against the Palestinians by the so-called imposition of a Jewish state is utter nonsense."