Iran's leader: 'Zionist regime will soon be wiped out'

[Amianthus]

POSTED: 11:54 p.m. EST, December 12, 2006
TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days were numbered.

Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of 6 million Jews in World War II 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.

His remarks were condemned in Washington, where U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters that the Iranian president's behavior was "despicable" and called his comment "absolutely outrageous."

The Vatican, Germany and the European Commission added their voices 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 II 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."

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.
Article

[Amianthus]

"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."

Wonder how much he'd appreciate freedom of speech if someone stood up on a soapbox in Tehran and used a bullhorn to defame "the Prophet"?

[Xavier_Onassis]

Wonder how much he'd appreciate freedom of speech if someone stood up on a soapbox in Tehran and used a bullhorn to defame "the Prophet"?

===================================================================
He would naturally not appreciate it, and would point out that Mohammad was the Messenger of God, and therefore any blasphemizing of him would be satanic.

But he always makes a distinction between the ZIONISTS (ie, the current apartheid regime of Israel) and the JEWS, not all of whom are Zionists, who could continue to live in a Palisraeli state where Jews were not automatically favored citizens, and Muslims were not accorded equal rights with Jews.

Ahmedinejad thinks a nonreligious single stae, incorporating and combining the Jews and their Arab neighbors would be a better solution to the problem. This isn't all that different from the US insisting that a one-state solution in the Republic of South Africa was a better solution than a white RSA and an assortment of poverty-striken Bantustans.

Really, what would Palestine be but a poverty stricken assortment of Bantustans?

The fact is that a state based on one ethnicity triumphant over its minorities or one religion over its minorities nopt only is illegal in the US, but sucks everywhere, including both in Israel as well as in the Muslim world. A state without a written Constitution and constitutional guarantees (like Israel) sucks as deeply as its Arab neighbors, where there is a constitution and the rights it grants to citizens are ignored, as is the case in Egypt, Syria, Algeria and many others. 

Israel, as a concept, sucks. So does the idea of an Islamic state. That also sucks, and for the same reason.
 
A pox on BOTH their houses.

Ahmedinejad is deliberately trying to piss off Israel and the Neocons, and is succeeding magnificently at it.

The Zionists have been treating the Arabs, citizen and noncitizen alike, like sh*t for the past 50 years, and that has pissed said Arabs off immeasureably.  It would be perfect poetic justice, if both sides were not financing both sides with American money: Israel is a beggar nation that owes its middle class standard of living to US arms and charity. Iran is a country that owes its prosperity to exploiting the scarcity of petroleum. The US citizen is footing much of the bill for both sides in this conflict.

If I were Bhutanese, I would be laughing my Buddhist head off.