You Gotta Hear This...

Manchester - A British rabbi who angered fellow Jews by speaking at a "Holocaust denial" conference in Iran now says millions did die in gas chambers but may have deserved it. Ahron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew from Greater Manchester and a leading member of the Neturei Karta movement, sparked new controversy on his return from Tehran by suggesting that God would have saved the victims of the Nazis if they had deserved to live. Cohen, whose house in Salford was pelted with 1,000 eggs last year because of his extremist views, said "There is no question that there was a Holocaust and gas chambers. There are too many eyewitnesses. "However, our approach is that when one suffers, the one who perpetrates the suffering is obviously guilty but he will never succeed if the victim did not deserve it in one way or another. Cohen's trip to Tehran — along with four American rabbis from the same sect — was paid for by the Iranian foreign ministry, which organised the conference entitled The Holocaust: A Global Vision. They were warmly greeted by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and had two meetings with him. Cohen said on his return: "President Ahmadinejad is not a man of war. He is a man of peace. I have received criticism for meeting him and attending the conference, but Jewish people are adopting an attitude of criticism from an emotional point of view, not a logical or sensible one. Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, registrar of the Jewish Ecclesiastical Court for Greater Manchester, said regarding Rabbi Cohen. "He represents an insignificant minority. His involvement is a stab in the heart of the Jewish community and of all decent law-abiding people."