This week in "He didn't really mean it!...He was being metaphorical!...I swear!": Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls for Israel to be wiped off the map.
Personally I think the call made famous by first PLO leader Ahmed Shukairy - "We will drive the Jews into the sea" - had more of a ring to it.
| Tehran - Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday openly called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". "The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," the president told a conference in Tehran entitled 'The World without Zionism'. "The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land," he said. "As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. His comments were the first time in years that such a high-ranking Iranian official has called for Israel's eradication, even though such slogans are still regularly used at regime rallies. Addressing some 4 000 students gathered in an interior ministry conference hall, Ahmadinejad also called for Palestinian unity, resistance and a point "where the annihilation of the Zionist regime will come". "The Islamic umma (community) will not allow its historic enemy to live in its heartland," he said in the fiery speech that centred on an "historic war between the oppressor and the world of Islam". "Anyone who signs a treaty which recognises the entity of Israel means he has signed the surrender of the Muslim world," Ahmadinejad said. "Any leaders in the Islamic umma who recognise Israel face the wrath of their own people." |
Now what would a nation holding conferences titled "the world without Zionism" want with nuclear capabilities? An environmentally friendly source of power?
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