TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days were numbered.
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Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War Two as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map," launched another verbal attack on the Jewish state.
"Thanks to people's wishes and God's will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he said.
"Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added.
His words received warm applause from delegates at the Holocaust conference, who included ultra-Orthodox anti-Israel Jews and European and American writers who argue the Holocaust was either fabricated or exaggerated.
The Vatican, Germany and the European Commission added their voices on Tuesday to others -- such as the United States and Israel -- who have condemned the Tehran meeting.
Iran says it organized the conference to shed light on the reasons behind the formation of the state of Israel after World War Two and to allow researchers from countries where it is a crime to question the Holocaust to speak freely.
"Iran is your home and is the home of all freedom seekers of the world," Ahmadinejad said. "Here you can express your views and exchange opinions in a friendly, brotherly and free atmosphere."
"FACT-FINDING" COMMITTEE FORMED
He urged countries where Holocaust denial is a crime, to respect freedom of speech and not to take action against any of the conference participants on their return.
Human rights groups frequently number Iran as one of the world's worst violators of free speech, where scores of newspapers have been closed, journalists jailed, access to Web sites blocked and government critics hounded out of the country.
Delegates at the meeting earlier on Tuesday agreed to form a "fact-finding" committee to study the Holocaust.
The head of the new committee, identified as Iranian academic Mohammad Ali Ramin, said its members were "not racist or opposed to any particular group."
"Rather they are just seeking the truth to set humanity truly free," the ISNA students news agency quoted him as saying, without naming the committee members.
Robert Faurisson, a French scholar who has described the Holocaust as a "historical lie," said the committee included members from the United States, France, Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Iran, Bahrain and Syria, ISNA reported.
The Vatican called the Holocaust an "immense tragedy" which had to remain forever a warning for all people to respect the rights of others.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the Tehran meeting "shows the danger of the situation Israel is in and in particular the threat that Israel lives under."
She was speaking after meeting Ehud Olmert, who was on his first visit to Germany as Israeli Prime Minister.
Germany has made it a priority to support Israel since the Holocaust under the Nazis and the end of World War Two in 1945.
EU Commissioner Franco Frattini expressed "shock and indignation," adding: "Anti-Semitism has no place in Europe; nor should it in any other part of the world."
Posts: 1178 | From: Mobile, AL | Registered: Aug 2005
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i cocnur with irans presidents view on america, and that isreal is a pos country who has been taken under the wings of higher powers (not necessarily meritted) but his holocaust hoax thing makes him and so many others look so stupid. i just dont get it... but i do believe isreals days are numbered....to much hatred (earned) from the middle east
Posts: 3086 | From: miami | Registered: Nov 2005
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and the sad thing is we will be dragged into it.
-------------------- "Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over." Herbert Hoover 1930 Posts: 678 | From: currently in hiding due to investigation | Registered: Oct 2004
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"i cocnur with irans presidents view on america, and that isreal is a pos country who has been taken under the wings of higher powers (not necessarily meritted)...."
Why?
Posts: 1178 | From: Mobile, AL | Registered: Aug 2005
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Many news sources have presented one of Ahmadinejad's phrases in Persian as a statement that "Israel must be wiped off the map"[4][5][6], an English idiom which means to cause a place to stop existing[7].
Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, translates the Persian phrase as:
The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).[8]
According to Cole, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map because no such idiom exists in Persian" and "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."[1]
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translates the phrase similarly:
[T]his regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.[9]
On 20 February 2006, Iran’s foreign minister denied that Tehran wanted to see Israel “wiped off the map,” saying Ahmadinejad had been misunderstood. "Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference, speaking in English, after addressing the European Parliament. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognise legally this regime," he said. [10][11][12]
In a June 11, 2006 analysis of the translation controversy, New York Times deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner concluded that Ahmadinejad had in fact said that Israel was to be wiped off the map. After noting the objections of critics such as Cole and Steele, Bronner said: "But translators in Tehran who work for the president's office and the foreign ministry disagree with them. All official translations of Mr. Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on his Web site (www.president.ir/eng/), refer to wiping Israel away." Bronner stated: "So did Iran's president call for Israel to be wiped off the map? It certainly seems so. Did that amount to a call for war? That remains an open question." [2]
On June 15, 2006 The Guardian columnist and foreign correspondent Jonathan Steele cites several Persian speakers and translators who state that the phrase in question is more accurately translated as "eliminated" or "wiped off" or "wiped away" from "the page of time" or "the pages of history", rather than "wiped off the map". [13]
A synopsis of Mr Ahmadinejad's speech on the Iranian Presidential website states:
He further expressed his firm belief that the new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away. [14]
Posts: 1178 | From: Mobile, AL | Registered: Aug 2005
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Israel will probably cease to exist in.. 2024, when several nuclear devices are detonated within their 4 or 5 major cities. That will be the end.
Thank God for our 2 oceans separating us from the barbarians.
-------------------- Stick with Repo's plan in '07 - FRPT/DKAM! Posts: 6379 | From: PA | Registered: Dec 2004
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Well, now we know how repo feels about globalization.
It's the same old song. Let the smooth talker have his conference. He's a media hound, thinks it makes him important.
-------------------- No longer eligible for government service due to lack of tax issues. Posts: 5178 | From: Up North | Registered: Dec 2005
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