To mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, the U.N. will hold a special session today. Over 100 nations including Arab states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia reportedly support holding the session.

At last count, Syria was not among them. To understand the official Syrian position on the Holocaust one needs to read what is said in its government-controlled press. Discussing the “myth” of the Holocaust, in the September 6, 2000, edition of the Syria Times, Mohammad Daoud wrote: The “most famous myth is that of the so-called Holocaust … we strongly believe that gas chambers were not used for burning of Jews.”

Arab religious leaders also frequently espouse Holocaust denial. The Saudi sheik Adel Bin Ahmad Banama said at a mosque in Jeddah on October 22, 2000: “Today, they [the Jews] disseminate everywhere the lie of the Holocaust and claim that Hitler killed 6 million Jews in gas chambers … this is pure falsehood.” The mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrima Sabri, is imam of Al Aqsa mosque and the highest religious authority in Palestinian Arab Islam. Mr. Sabri gave an interview to the Italian newspaper La Republica on March 24, 2000, and stated: “Six million Jews dead? No way… Let’s stop with this fairytale.”

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’s 1982 doctoral dissertation was based on Holocaust denial. In the introduction to its first Arabic edition, well-known Holocaust deniers are referenced, the total number of Jews murdered is formulated at “less than a million,” and doubts are raised that gas chambers really existed.

To prove such claims, Arab press outlets often cite theories of European Holocaust deniers, who are celebrated in the Middle East. Fatma Abdallah Mahmoud wrote in Egypt’s Al-Akhbar on April 29, 2002: “With regard to the fraud of the Holocaust … many French studies have proven that this is no more than a fabrication, a lie, and a fraud!” In an article in Egypt’s Al-Gumhuriya on March 4, 2000, columnist Lutfi Nasef wrote: “Zionist propaganda continues … to raise the issue of the Nazi crematoriums for Jews, although [European] historical evidence … proved that claims that such crematoriums existed in the Nazi detention camps are jokes.”

Columnist Muhammad Abd Al-Azim also in Al-Gumhuriya on February 22, 2000 explained that “Israeli claims 6 million Jews were killed” were discredited by infamous French Holocaust denier [and convert to Islam] “the great French intellectual, Roger Garaudy.” Another European Holocaust denier, David Irving, was praised by Isam Al-Khadhr, a columnist for the Syrian paper Al-Baath, on September 7, 2000: “The English Historian David Irving’s description of the so-called Jewish Holocaust by the Nazis in gas chambers as a big lie was enough to shake the foundations of Europe and turn Irving into a target for a campaign of slander … the caliber of the ‘Holocaust’ lie, the greatest lie in History.”

In the last week of December 2004, interviews with two infamous Holocaust deniers appeared in the Iranian press. French professor Robert Faurisson, a former lecturer at Lyon University, gave an interview to Iran’s Mehr News Agency on December 18 discussing “The big lie of the alleged Holocaust.” On December 29, Australian Fredrick Toben also gave an interview to Mehr stating: “No Arabic speaking regime, except recently Egypt, has openly pushed for adopting a ‘Holocaust’ expose. It is this information that will help to dismantle the Zionist entity because the State of Israel is founded on the ‘Holocaust’ lie.”

Mr. Toben is referring to the activity of some of Egypt’s leading think tanks. For example, on June 24, 2004, Rifat Sayyed Ahmad, director of the Jaffa Research Center in Cairo published an article titled “The Lie About The Burning of the Jews” in Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party’s paper. The article stated: “Did this Holocaust indeed take place, and what is the truth about the numbers? … What interests us here is that this lie [about] the burning of the Jews in the Nazi crematoria.”

To date, only a handful of prominent Arabs have spoken against Holocaust denial. President Mubarak’s political adviser, Osama Al-Baz, has done so on numerous occasions. But this usually results from criticism of Egypt for anti-Semitism in its press. With the majority of Arab states supporting today’s U.N. special session, one can hope that this marks some aspect of change in the way the Arab world relates to supporting anti-Semitic themes such as holocaust denial.

Mr. Stalinsky is executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute.