Masood Shojaei, the director of Iran's Caricature House which cosponsored the competition also said: "Iran's Caricature House, as the only technically qualified center involved in the competition regards the Holocaust topic as a terrible and saddening issue". The exhibition put on by The Iran Cartoon Organisation and "Hamshahri" newspaper opened on August 14, 2006. After the winners were announced in November 2006, Shojaei said the competition would become an annual event. The Associated Press quoted him as saying "Actually, we will continue until the destruction of Israel". However, Shojaei categorically denies that he even spoke to the Associated Press reporter. Conservative newspapers such as "Kayhan" and "Jomhouri Eslami" have hailed the decision by "Hamshahri" for the contest, and their cartoonists, such as Maziyar Bizhani have actively entered the competition. Several reformers criticized the cartoon competition and also the president's statements about the Holocaust. Emadoddin Baghi, a member of the religious-intellectuals circle, Ebrahim Yazdi, the head of Nehzat Azadi Party, Hamid Reza Jalaeipour, a prominent figure of Islamic Iran Participation Front and Sadeq Zibakalam, a prominent political analyst of the Kargozaran party criticized these new policies by calling them "useless, scientifically-baseless and purely political actions which originates from the authorities' lack of historical knowledge". In an interview with BBC, Nikahang Kowsar, a former cartoonist for "Hamshahri", said he thought the competition was the wrong approach. "It's a bad reaction to a bad action coming from the Danish newspaper", he told the BBC. He also claimed in his weblog that, "Hamshahri" cartoonists will have a bad fate if they refuse to take part in the competition. Israeli artists spoofed the contest by the Israeli antisemitic cartoons contest. On February 8, 2006 Flemming Rose (the cultural editor for "Jyllands-Posten"), told CNN: "My newspaper is trying to establish a contact with that Iranian newspaper "Hamshahri", and we would run the cartoons the same day as they publish them". Later that day, the paper's editor-in-chief said that "Jyllands-posten" would under no circumstances publish the Holocaust cartoons. Six of the least controversial cartoons of the International Holocaust Cartoon Competition were republished by Danish Newspaper "Dagbladet Information" on September 8, 2006 after the editor consulted the main rabbi in Copenhagen, and three cartoons were later reprinted in "Jyllands-Posten" as well.