Histories Clash: The Case of Denying the Jewish Holocaust.

History is the documentation of the past. When historians intentionally or unintentionally omit an event from their writings or describe it in a distorted way, it is as if that event has never happened or it occurred differently than it truly did. This paper will discuss the rising trend of underestimation or even denial of the Jewish Holocaust. This paper argues that these efforts are part of an attempt to establish Holocaust denial as an accepted norm in the academia and in international politics. Although most Western democracies still perceive the Holocaust as the manifestation of ultimate evil, this perception is increasingly challenged by some academics and so-called historians, which the paper refers to as Holocaust deniers and falsifiers. It appears that Holocaust deniers and falsifiers are trying to replace the existing knowledge, narrative history, and norms related to the Holocaust with new ones based on lies, in order to re-establish Nazism as an accepted ideology again. Despite their lies and distorted interpretation of historic events, Holocaust deniers gain more and more supporters. One can not dismiss the phenomenon as a marginal, insignificant, and ephemeral trend. The paper will begin by discussing the meaning of international norms and their relations to networks of knowledge; it will define two key concepts: collective memory and historical narrative and will discuss their importance. It will then describe the historical roots of Holocaust denial and its development. In addition, the paper will distinguish between various forms of denial, and will discuss the motives for denial in the West and in the Middle East, using such examples as Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadininejad, rhetoric. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]