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NEW YORK — Jewish activists are condemning an official Syrian newspaper for running an editorial that accuses Israel of exaggerating the Holocaust.

Eleven Holocaust scholars joined leaders of the Zionist Organization of America and other Jewish groups this week in denouncing the editorial.

Among the signers are Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who is expected to be named chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Council.

The signers agreed that the editorial contained "outrageous and offensive statements," but they were split on whether such an action should disqualify Syria from participation in the peace process.

The ZOA statement, which is scheduled to appear as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times and 15 Jewish newspapers around the country this week, as well as some Israeli papers, calls on Syrian President Hafez Assad to publicly denounce the editorial and take steps "to ensure that Syrian government publications in the future refrain from denying or distorting the Holocaust."

Leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Anti-Defamation League also signed the statement.

Morton Klein, ZOA's national president, organized the effort.

Until the Syrians "begin to preach peace, conciliation and the truth about the Holocaust," he said, there should be "no consideration of giving this terroristic dictator any land or U.S. aid."

Not all the scholars share that contention, which was not included in the joint statement. Michael Berenbaum is one of them.

"I part company with the ZOA, whose policies I abhor. But I also abhor Holocaust denial," said Berenbaum, a professor of Holocaust studies and the former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Research Institute.

All the scholars said the Jan. 31 Syrian editorial — which called the Holocaust a "myth" and said "Israeli policies are worse than Nazi policies" — merits strong condemnation and does not create a good atmosphere for discussing peace.

Berenbaum, who described himself as an "ardent supporter" of Israel's efforts to achieve peace with Syria, said he does not think a Syrian condemnation of the editorial should be a precondition for continued negotiations. But, he added, the editorial "indicates there has not yet been a full change of heart" among Syria's leadership.

A few of the scholars, like Hebrew University Professor Emil Fackenheim, share ZOA's wariness of Middle East peace efforts and believe Israel should be careful in negotiating with a country that foments hate against it.

Others said they were not usually comfortable with the ZOA or were worried that their participation in the statement could appear to be political.

"It doesn't say anything about the peace process, does it?" Alvin Rosenfeld, director of the Jewish studies program at Indiana University, asked when contacted by JTA.

Rosenfeld said he had agreed to put his name on the statement only after being reassured that it did not mention the peace talks.

"I did not sign it as a political statement, but in my capacity as a scholar of the Holocaust and as one of the many people who object to the defamation of the Holocaust," he said. "The political dimensions don't figure into it. That could be naive, but that's my position."

Meanwhile, a Lebanese newspaper this week defended the Syrian paper's charge that Israel exaggerated the extent of the Holocaust for its own benefit.

"The American and European political milieu and public opinion are drugged by Zionist lies and terrified of being accused of anti-Semitism," Lebanon's Al-Diyar newspaper said Monday.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, condemned the Syrian editorial but declined to comment on whether it would stand in the way of talks resuming between Israel and Syria.