Israel Matzav

Annihilate Israel = 'Irreversible removal of body hairs"

The Juan Coles of the world can no longer claim that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinadinnerjacket is misunderstood.

On Saturday, Ahmadinadinnerjacket told an Arab conference of Iraqi neighbors that “All the conditions for the removal of the Zionist regime are at hand.” According to Arutz Sheva, he used the Arabic term ezaleh, which is used to describe the irreversible removal of body hairs or a woman’s virginity. But we're used to hearing those kinds of statements from Ahmadinadinnerjacket, even if Cole denies them. What we're not used to is Egypt (the third largest recipient of US foreign aid), Jordan (with whom Israel also has a 'peace treaty'), Turkey (with whom Israel allegedly has friendly relations) and the United Nations (!) going along with them:

“Nations in the region will be more furious every day. It won’t take long before the wrath of the people turns into a terrible explosion that will wipe the Zionist entity off the map,” Ahmadinejad told the foreign ministers of Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Bahrain and Egypt. The heads of the Arab League and the Islamic Conference were also present, in addition to a special United Nations representative.

None of the foreign ministers present, including Jordan, Egypt or Turkey – commonly regarded as Israel’s friends in the Arab/Muslim world - objected to the call for annihilation. Instead, the following statement was issued: “The Arab foreign ministers participating in today's Tehran meeting expressed their strong condemnation of this continuing and increasing aggression against the Palestinian people."

...

Since Ahmadinejad’s call to “wipe Israel off the map” last October, some academics have claimed the Iranian leader was mistranslated or misunderstood.

"Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map, because no such idiom exists in Persian," left-wing University of Michigan professor Juan Cole told the New York Times. "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse…Since Iran has not attacked another country aggressively for over a century, I smell the whiff of war propaganda."

Jonathan Steele of the British Guardian newspaper also told the Times: "The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran's first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that 'this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,' just as the shah's regime in Iran had vanished. He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The 'page of time' phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon."

Neither of the two have responded to Ahmadinejad’s latest clarification and call to action, which were translated and distributed by the Iranian state-run IRNA news agency.

I doubt we'll hear from Mr. Cole or Mr. Steele either.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:27 PM