SWISS PRESIDENT INVITES IRAN TO OFFER "VARIOUS PERCEPTIONS OF THE HOLOCAUST" AT CONFERENCE

There was a time when Europeans' behavior was limited by a certain sense of taste and an aversion to the unseemly. That time is long past:

Switzerland secretly approached Iran offering to hold a conference regarding "various perceptions of the Holocaust" in Geneva, the Swiss magazine Weltwoche reported earlier this week. The proposal was made via confidential memorandum from Switzerland's President, Micheline Calmy-Rey, to Iranian deputy foreign minister Saaid Jalili, during his visit in Switzerland last December. The Swiss foreign ministry objected to the idea, annulling it. Calmy-Rey's proposal, which would have voiced anew the Iranian doubts over the very existence of the Holocaust, outraged many Jewish organizations, which demanded she apologize.

Charming, no? We wonder if they would have held the conference in a bank. Or maybe some kind of tastefully decorated conference room. "Mme. Calmy-Rey", the Iranian representative would say, "that's a lovely painting. Wherever did Switzerland acquire it?" To which she might respond: "oh that old thing? You know, we have no idea - it just turned up around here in the late 1940s."

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]