JERUSALEM—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly condemned an Iran-hosted, Holocaust-themed cartoon competition over the weekend, stating that while Iran ridicules and denies the Holocaust, it is preparing for another.

“We are raising this issue here because it is important to understand our problem with Iran,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday. “It is not just their subversive and aggressive regional policy, it is also the values on which it is founded. Iran denies the Holocaust, it ridicules the Holocaust, and it is preparing another Holocaust.”

Netanyahu also had a conversation with United States Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday night where he brought up the competition, probably in an effort to highlight that the nuclear deal has not resulted in a more moderate Iran.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wGTmoVajN4&feature=youtu.be

The cartoon competition is the third such exhibition since it was inaugurated in 2006 under the leadership of hard-liner and former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, himself famous for denying the Holocaust ever took place. Current President Hassan Rouhani has taken a softer approach, indicating that it took place but its scope is widely exaggerated.

Many of the entrants into this year’s competition do not necessarily deny the Holocaust, but rather graphically mock it because they believe Israel uses its memory to distract from the suffering of the Palestinians. In that light, many of the cartoons equate Prime Minister Netanyahu to German dictator Adolf Hitler, the man who directed the horrific murder of 6 million Jews in World War ii.

https://twitter.com/IsraelNitzan/status/731069145861738496?s=09

In comments to the New Yorker in April, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tried to distance the government from the competition, saying, “The Iranian government does not support, nor does it organize” the event. While that statement itself was later proven false, if Iran had wanted to show the world its moderated worldview, nothing prevents the government from condemning such a competition.

Many in Iran, including Zarif, insist Holocaust denial is simply Ahmadinejad’s belief. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, however, refuses to state that it definitely took place. In fact, he used this year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day as an opportunity to publicly question the “reality” of the genocide.

Rather than moderating Iran, the nuclear deal has all but assured that it will be able to proceed toward fulfilling Ahmadinejad’s goal of wiping Israel off the map. For more, read editor in chief Gerald Flurry’s article “The Worst Foreign-Policy Blunder in American History.”