Dr M asked to clarify his stand on Holocaust

Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s scheduled appearance at Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum on Wednesday had attracted controversy days before he even landed on United States soil.

Pro-Israel groups had petitioned for the university not to allow Dr Mahathir to speak on campus. They wrote to the university administration and the

New York Post published an editorial titled “Columbia welcomes hate speech as long as it’s anti-Semitic”.

Speaking on “Rule of Law and Multilateralism”, the dialogue session had stayed on topic for the most part, until a student identifying herself as a member of a campus pro-Israel group asked Dr Mahathir to clarify his stand on the Holocaust.

“I am exercising my right to free speech. Why is it that I can’t say something against the Jews when a lot of people say nasty things about me, about Malaysia, and I didn’t protest, I didn’t demonstrate.”

He said if one believed in free speech, this included a willingness to listen to views that were not in one’s favour.

“Free speech is about free speech. When you say, ‘You cannot say this. You cannot be anti-Semitic’, then there is no free speech.”

He recounted how a British journalist was jailed for disputing the number of Holocaust deaths. Similar sentences were handed down on Holocaust deniers in France and Canada.

“I have not disputed them, but I have (asked) who determined these numbers? If it is somebody who is in favour, you get one figure, and somebody who is against will give another figure.

“So, I accept that there was a Holocaust, that there were many Jews killed. In fact, at one time, I was very sympathetic to them during the war, when you were not yet around but I was around at that time.”