The Obama administration is moving to improve relations with Iran, but the nation may not have helped those efforts by hosting a Holocaust cartoon contest.
Roughly 150 works from 50 countries are on display at the contest, which officially opened Saturday and runs through May 30.
Saturday was the anniversary of Israel’s creation in 1948.
The event was the third of its kind. Iranian organizers claim the contest is not a denial of the Nazi crimes against Jews but rather a way to equate the Holocaust with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
“We have never been after denying of the Holocaust or ridiculing its victims,” contest organizer Masuod Shojai Tabatabaei asserted in a speech opening the event. “If you find a single design that ridicules victims or denies, we are ready to close the exhibition. Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust were subject to oppression by Nazis.”
“Holocaust means mass killing,” Tabatabaei said, adding, “We are witnessing the biggest killings by the Zionist regime in Gaza and Palestine.”
According to The Times of Israel, the contest is organized and sponsored by non-governmental bodies.
Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made sure to distance the administration of President Hassan Rouhani from the contest, emphasizing to the New Yorker in an interview that the contest was sponsored by private nongovernmental organizations.
A previous contest was held in 2006 under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called the Holocaust a myth.
Some $50,000 in prize money will go to 16 finalists, with the top winner receiving $12,000, according to a report.
The contest and its subsequent backlash comes as the Obama administration continues to try and work with the Iranian government following last summer’s nuclear deal.
