Outrageous, Hateful Comments By Iranian President

[B-Pep]

This is ABSOLUTELY SHOCKING. President Shmesident! Iran is an immediate threat to EVERYONE: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051214/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_holocaust;_ylt=AnzN4fgyQlgxD9F266KdQc1vaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

TEHRAN, Iran -
Iran's hard-line president lashed out with a new outburst at
Israel on Wednesday, calling the Nazi Holocaust a "myth" used as a pretext for carving out a Jewish state in the heart of the Muslim world.
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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments drew quick condemnations from Israel, the United States and Europe, which warned he is hurting Iran's position in talks aimed at resolving suspicions about his regime's nuclear program.

The White House said his remarks showed why Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Germany, one of three
European Union countries leading the nuclear talks, called his statements "shocking and unacceptable."

Iran and the Europeans are due to resume the U.S.-backed negotiations soon, possibly in late December, trying to find a compromise on reining in Tehran's nuclear program and avoiding a confrontation.

Washington says Iran is secretly trying to build warheads. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful, and Ahmadinejad reiterated Wednesday that his regime refuses to give up key processes that can produce weapons-grade material as well as fuel for atomic reactors that generate electricity.

It was difficult to measure the impact that increasing anger over Ahmadinejad might have on the negotiations.

The Europeans have not threatened to call off the talks, which they see as vital to a peaceful resolution of fears over Iran's nuclear ambitions. But Ahmadinejad's words, which come as the top U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has said it is losing patience with Tehran, could lead Europe to take a tougher stance.

So far, Ahmadinejad has appeared to only escalate his rhetoric in the face of widespread international criticism, suggesting he may be seeking to fire up supporters at home.

Some allies warn that he is isolating the country when it needs support for its nuclear program. But supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final word on all matters, has stood by the president, even calling this week for Palestinian militants to step up their fight to drive Israelis out of Jerusalem.

Ahmadinejad provoked an outcry in October when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." When that drew international anger, he responded by holding large anti-Israel rallies.

Last week, he expressed doubt about Nazi Germany's slaughter of 6 million European Jews during World War II, raising a new storm of criticism. On Wednesday, he went a step further and said for the first time that he didn't believe the Holocaust happened.

During a tour of southeastern Iran, Ahmadinejad said that if Europeans insist the Holocaust occurred, then they are responsible and should pay the price.

"Today, they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets," Ahmadinejad told thousands of people in Zahedan. "If you committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian nation pay the price?"

"This is our proposal: If you committed the crime, then give a part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them so that the Jews can establish their country," he said.

The White House said Ahmadinejad's words "only underscore why it is so important that the international community continue to work together to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons."

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the speech illustrated "the mind-set of the ruling clique in Tehran and indicate clearly the extremist policy goals of the regime."

The German government summoned the Iranian charge d'affaires to express its displeasure.

"I cannot hide the fact that this weighs on bilateral relations and on the chances for the negotiation process," Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in Berlin.

In unusually strong comments, the president of the European Union's administrative body, Jose Manuel Barroso, said Iranians "do not have the president, or the regime, they deserve."

"It calls our attention to the real danger of that regime having an atomic bomb," Barroso added.

EU foreign ministers were likely to discuss Ahmadinejad's comments during an EU summit Thursday, commission spokeswoman Emma Udwin said.

Inside Iran, moderates have called on the Islamic cleric-led regime to rein in the president. His election in June sealed the long decline of Iran's reform movement, which had largely dropped the harsh anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. rhetoric of the 1979 Islamic Revolution and sought to build international ties.

In his speech, Ahmadinejad also took aim at the United States and the West, saying they had harmed Muslims.

"If your civilization consists of aggression, making oppressed people homeless, suffocating the voices of justice and bringing poverty to a majority of the world's people, we say loudly that we hate your hollow civilization," he said.

[Berianidze]

Yes I saw this on Yahoo news earlier, very interesting indeed...I seem to like this guy more and more everytime he opens his mouth.

[Excorcism]

<eats popcorn> never freaking bored.

[Billy Score]

This guy is my new hero. the more whiney the "international community" gets the more he sticks it to them. I wouldn't be surprised if he started wearing swastika armbands just to rub it in their faces. A commendable and brave man, for very few would be willing to risk their careers to defend their people or speak plainly.

[Starr]

You gotta respect anyone who sticks it to the Jews in any way they can. As for the real reasons for his comments, anyone can probably figure out that he knows what is coming and is reaching out for Islamic support. So brave, yes and also very politically motivated.

On a related note, Pat Robertson(who has bitched about the holocaust denial thing about 6 million times) is on tv right now calling this guy the "most dangerous person in the world":222: What a pathetic jew loving worm.

[The Retard]

Bush: 'Axis of evil' member Iran is 'real threat'

Wed Dec 14, 7:13 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush called Iran "a real threat," repeated his charge from 2002 that it is part of an "axis of evil," and urged Tehran to prove it does not seek nuclear weapons.

Washington accuses the Islamic republic of using a civilian nuclear program to hide a quest for atomic weapons, and has charged that Iran is a destabilizing force in Iraq. Tehran has denied that it seeks nuclear arms.

"I called it (Iran) part of the 'axis of evil' for a reason," Bush said in an interview with Fox News. "It's a real threat."

The US president first lumped Iran with North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq in an "axis of evil" during his 2002 State of the Union speech to the US Congress.

His comments Wednesday came amid an escalating war of words with Tehran, whose hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stoked outrage in the West by calling Israel a "tumor" in the Middle East and saying that the Holocaust is a myth.

Asked how he would deal with Iran, Bush replied: "We continue to work the diplomatic front."

"I'm concerned about theocracy that has got little transparency, a country whose president has declared the destruction of Israel as part of their foreign policy, and a country that will not listen to the demands of the free world to get rid of its ambitions to have a nuclear weapon," said Bush.

Asked whether he had a message for authorities in Tehran, Bush said: "I would hope they'd be wise enough to begin to listen to the people and allow the people to participate in their government."

[Eisenhans]

Yes-leave it to the democratic systems to will the silence of the truth.

[Ixtab]

-He also says Israel should be relocated to the West; I disagree - it doesn't belong on human soil at all. Even a spot in the remotest regions of Antarctica would be highly undeserved. Maybe the bottom of the Atlantic?
-But he does have a point; and he is only expressing the views of millions in the Arab and Muslim world.

[Starr]

I think we can all agree on that.
And we certainly don't want them all coming here, which is how it would be if anything were to happen to Israel.

[Felix the Cat]

(What happened to that violin-smiley?)

The sickness bequeathed by the west to the Muslim world (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1666871,00.html)

The Iranian president's support for Holocaust denial is a measure of how far the infection of Jew-hatred has spread

There were few memorable moments in the election campaign of 2005, but there's one I won't forget. It came when I was interviewing a group of Muslim voters in Edinburgh, asking how the Iraq war had unsettled their political allegiances. One older man began telling me that he did not blame Tony Blair or even George Bush for the way things had turned out, because they were mere dupes of a more powerful force. The calamity of 9/11 was not all it seemed: the authors of that event were not the 19 hijackers, but more shadowy players, unknown even to Bush. Later, as he gave me a lift to the station, I asked who these secret powers might be. The answer was "rich Jewish people".

I told him that just as there were plenty of lies told about Muslims, so there were lies told about Jews - and that neither of us should accept either. I put the comments to one side, dismissing them as the ramblings of one man.

Again and again in recent years, I've made the same move. I've read the reports of sermons in the Arab world, denouncing Judaism and Jews, and tried to see a wider context.

So I saw the vox pop on Saudi TV asking people on the street whether they would ever shake hands with a Jew - unanimous answer: no - and guessed that perhaps this was an exceptional item, hardly indicative. I read the transcript of an interview with Basmallah, a three-year-old girl, again aired on Saudi TV, who was introduced as a "Muslim girl, a true Muslim". Here's the exchange:

Host: Basmallah, do you know the Jews?

Basmallah: Yes.

Host: Do you like them?

Basmallah: No.

Host: Why don't you like them?

Basmallah: Because they are apes and pigs.

I shuddered to read such a thing. But it was translated and distributed by the Middle East Media Research Institute, and, like others, I wondered about the group's motives: Memri was founded by a veteran of Israeli military intelligence. (On the other hand, few challenge the accuracy of Memri's translations: unpalatable though they are, the texts Memri finds are all too real.)

Such has been my standard operating procedure, constantly trying to see if there's a way to contextualise these incidents, to see them in proportion. My motivation was not complicated: I prefer my Jewish identity to be positive, rather than defined by a perennial defence against anti-semitism.

But everyone has their limits and last week I reached mine. On Thursday the president of Iran chose to stand with the cranks, neo-fascists and racists who deny the factual truth of the Holocaust.

"Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces," said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Although we don't accept this claim..."

Suddenly, the usual apologetics won't work. No one can say Iran's president was really complaining about Israel or Zionism, rather than Jews. No one can say he was talking about the west's colonial crimes. He was peddling, instead, one of the defining tropes of the racist hard right: Holocaust denial. It is a stance that seeks to deny Jews their history, their suffering, almost their very being. Like denying that African-Americans were ever slaves, it is a move made by those who wish only harm.

In this light, Ahmadinejad's previous musings look rather different. When, in October, he stood beneath a banner that promised "A world without Zionism" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", many Jews felt a chill at what seemed an annihilationist fantasy. Cooler heads said no, this was merely the hyperbolic style of the region, deployed to press a robust anti-Zionist rather than anti-semitic case. What he wanted, they explained patiently, was a world without Zionism, not a world without Jews.

Well, now I'm done with the charitable explanations. A man who refuses to believe the historic truth is capable of anything. This is not an Arabic cable TV station or an obscure Egyptian newspaper. This is a head of government, the leader of a nation of 70 million - a country that aspires to lead the Muslim world. And, lest we forget, Iran has nuclear ambitions. So now it's not paranoid to worry about a president with annihilationist dreams - it's smart.

Unfortunately, it doesn't end with Ahmadinejad, a man with no experience outside Iran, a hick who, Iranian analyst Dr Ali Ansari concedes, is a "monumental embarrassment". For he has given voice to a sentiment that runs deep in Iran and in the wider Muslim world.

Just look at this week's Iranian press. "Many revisionist historians believe the story of the Holocaust is fake and have proved it by much evidence and documents," says the conservative paper Resalat. Hardline Siyasat-e Ruz applauds the leader for "revealing the truth".

It's hardly a surprise. TV stations across the Muslim world have been running this garbage for ages, along with lurid anti-semitism. Jordanian TV's Ramadan special this year was Al-Shatat, a Syrian-produced series that speaks of a "global Jewish government" and depicts the ancient blood libel: the accusation that Jews use the blood of Christian children in preparing food for Passover. That was a follow-up to Egyptian television's Ramadan treat in 2002: Horseman without a Horse, whose central theme was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the century-old forgery concocted by the Tsarist secret police which alleged a Jewish plot to take over the world.

We can deny it no longer: the virus of anti-semitism has infected the Muslim world. And virus it is, for Jew-hatred on this scale, as Christian Europe can testify, is a kind of sickness. This is one of the grossest legacies bequeathed by the west: that Muslims have taken to heart a form of anti-semitism alien to their own lands, borrowing a language and iconography that was made in Christendom. Blood libels and the Protocols were dreamed up in Norwich, Mainz or Moscow - yet now they breathe anew in Cairo, Riyadh and Damascus.

This represents a menace to Jews, of course, but also a tragedy for Muslims. Theirs is a tradition that historically valued learning, and when an ignoramus like Ahmadinejad denies the overwhelming weight of historical evidence he makes a mockery of that tradition. In a period Jews still look back on as a golden age, Muslims were the people of scholarship, of science, of tolerance and coexistence - a contrast with the Crusader barbarians. Yet now many lap up the myths and lies that were once fed to the peasants of Europe, lies which endured through to the last century - and which led all the way to Treblinka.

Today's Muslims should want no part of such ignorance or bigotry. It demeans them. So Azzam Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain is to be applauded for his implicit condemnation of Ahmadinejad at the Stop the War conference at the weekend, telling his audience that, whatever their views, they could not deny the fact of the Holocaust. Now the Muslim Council of Britain should follow his lead, and that of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in the US, which also condemned this preacher of hate. And those non-Muslim progressives who have made alliances with Islamists should do the same. It may mean some uncomfortable conversations - but the days of denial must end.

[Starr]

It is a stance that seeks to deny Jews their history, their suffering, almost their very being

Oh, the humanity. This comment in particular cries out for the violin smilie.