Even if the whole world were to rally around Israel's condemnation of the Holocaust denial conference in Iran, it ought not satisfy the Israeli government or anyone engaged with the Holocaust. Denying the denial is not enough; and anyone who considers it important for the world to identify with the Jewish people and all other Nazi victims needs to adopt a serious, in-depth line of action to define Holocaust denial as a crime.

This conference - to give it its true dimensions - is the Arab and Muslim equivalent of a conference of the extreme anti-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Neturei Karta. The limited coverage it received in the Arab media proves that there is a rational understanding of the event. They are not ignoring it, but neither are they dancing in the streets to its drumbeats.

No devout Muslim can identify with the objectives of the conference. A Muslim raised on the values of supporting the victim and opposing the hangman, the tyrant and the aggressor, will be disgusted by the idea, even if the conference ends with the establishment of a professional committee to examine the Holocaust. The reason is that anyone who reads history knows that the Nazis planned to exterminate the Jews and other peoples; Hitler simply ran out of time. The matter does not require research; it is testified to by Nazi writers. The Germans themselves confessed their Holocaust crimes, and still do today. No serious entity in Germany doubts the historical verity of the events.

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The Arabs need to dissociate themselves completely from the Iranian conference. After all, it is clear that the Khomeinist junta that rules Iran did not convene the conference for the sake of scientific historical research. The idea was raised by a group of Arab intellectuals that decided to call a conference in Beirut in 2001. Hundreds of other Arab intellectuals, among them the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, opposed it. The idea was buried, and with it the conference.

Iran seized the opportunity, and within five years convened a conference on the same subject. The purpose was to demolish the foundations on which the State of Israel was built - not because there is an Israeli-Iranian conflict, but for entirely different reasons. Iran wants to regain its Persian imperial glory, to avenge the Arab "theft," as it sees it, of its homeland, its culture and its splendor. There is evidence of that in its violent intervention in Iraq, its unlimited support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, its unreserved aid to Syria and its recent backing of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Iran uses Arab means to hurt the Arabs. By its reckoning, the Arab world has reached a low-point in its global and regional influence, and now is the time for Iran to regain control. The quickest way to do so is to exploit the hatred of the Arab world for Israel. The destruction wrought by the Israel Defense Forces in Lebanon in the last war merely added fuel to the flames, and IDF actions in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank spread the conflagration throughout the Arab world.

The group of Holocaust deniers is not large, however, and the Arab world will not rush to identify with it. Until now, it appears that the Arab world has not been overly engaged with the subject of Holocaust denial, despite the rage and the hatred. Nevertheless, one should not play down even that power, especially in light of Iranian encouragement.

This conference must open everyone's eyes - especially those of Israel, the Arab world and the Palestinian Authority - to the fact that there is no vacuum in politics. Every day without a genuine peace process will only strengthen the extremists everywhere, and Holocaust denial will seem trivial in comparison with future plans.