The editor must have missed the irony of rejecting the Israeli ambassador's claim that El Mundo was delving into moral relativism by calling his view "Manichaean". 

Ultimately, what Irving said in the interview was irrelevant. An interview in a prominent publication is a place in the sun and El Mundo gave him one.

It is worth noting that, in contrast to his Swedish colleague Carl Bildt, who chose silence in the wake of Aftonbladet's piece, the Spanish FM, Miguel Moratinos, took a robust view: "The Foreign Minister, while maintaining the most absolute respect for freedom of expression, regrets that space was given to an historian who denies one of the biggest tragedies for humanity in modern history," said a spokesman. 

Bildt, who was scheduled to arrive in Israel on official EU business on the same day that Irving's interview was published, had to cancel his trip. Moratinos, whose country will assume the EU presidency after Sweden, visited Israel as scheduled a week later.

It appears that for European editors no doubt familiar with the significant restrictions on press freedom that exist in our heavily regulated continent, Israel is an exception. To smear and slander Israel — or the historical record of the Holocaust — is an absolute right. The Aftonbladet story was less about press freedom and more about a journalist relinquishing any pretence of fairness when a chance to promote a cause to which he is sympathetic came up. A journalist writing such lurid accusations without evidence against any other government would lose face with his colleagues. In this case, Bostrom's colleagues rallied to defend him instead of criticising the likely long-term damage he caused to their profession.

Even when bad taste does not stand in the way of editorial choice, freedom of the press is not the same as the obligation to give a platform to every crank. El Mundo's editor, while waving the flag of press freedom, deleted the Israeli ambassador's letter's last and most damning paragraph, which suggested that his choice to publish Irving was dictated by sensationalism.

El Mundo and Aftonbladet both crossed a red line — making the outrageous legitimate and the extreme mainstream. The thread that runs through their stories is the singling out of Israel to apply a principle they follow less strictly elsewhere. Perhaps, in the editors' minds, Israel is indeed "beyond the pale".