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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: ripe to be wiped
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| By Israel Insider staff and partners December 13, 2006 |
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Iran's fanatical president declared Tuesday that Israel will be one day soon be "wiped out" just like the Soviet Union was, drawing applause from participants in a pseudo-academic conference casting doubt on the Nazi Holocaust during World War II.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments were likely to further fuel the outcry sparked by his hosting of the two-day gathering, which has gathered some of Europe and the United States' most infamous Holocaust deniers.
Anger over the conference could have political fallout, further isolating Iran and prompting a harder line from the West, which is considering sanctions against Tehran in the standoff of its nuclear program.
But Ahmadinejad appeared to revel in his meeting Tuesday with the conference "delegates," shaking hands with American delegates and sitting near six anti-Israeli Jewish participants of the Neturei Karta sect, dressed in black ultra-Orthodox coats and hats.
Ahmadinejad repeated predictions that Israel will be "wiped out," a phrase he first used in a speech in October, raising a firestorm of international criticism.
"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom," Ahmadinejad told the participants during Tuesday's meeting in his offices, according to the official IRNA news agency.
He said elections should be held among "Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner."
"By the grace of God, the arc of the Zionist regime's life has reversed and is heading downward. This is a divine promise and the public demand of all nations of the world," he said, bringing applause from the delegates.
Ahmadinejad has used anti-Israeli rhetoric and comments casting doubt on the Holocaust to rally anti-Western supporters at home and abroad, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. Several times he has referred to the Holocaust as a "myth" used to impose the state of Israel on the Arab world.
Ahmadinejad announced that the conference had decided to set up a "fact-finding commission" determine whether the Holocaust happened or not. The commission will "help end a 60-year-old dispute," the president said.
He called on Western governments "not to harrass members of this commission and allow them to carry out more research and make all issues transparent."
The Tehran conference was touted by participants and organizers as an exercise in academic free expression, a chance to openly consider whether 6 million Jews really died in the Holocaust far from laws in several European countries that ban questioning some details of the Nazi genocide during World War II.
It gathered 67 writers and researchers from 30 countries, most of whom argue that either the Holocaust did not happen or was vastly exaggerated. Many had been jailed or fined in France, Germany or Austria, which have criminalized Holocast denial.
Participants milled around a model of the Auschwitz concentration camp brought by one speaker, Australian Frederick Toben, who uses the mock-up in lectures contending that the camp was too small to kill mass numbers of Jews. More than 1 million people are estimated to have been killed there.
"This conference has an incredible impact on Holocaust studies all over the world," said American David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader and former state representative in Louisiana.
"The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder," Duke told The Associated Press.
Rabbi Moshe David Weiss, one of six members attending from the group Jews United Against Zionism, told delegates in his address, "We don't want to deny the killing of Jews in World War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for how many people were killed."
"They have used the Holocaust as a device to justify their oppression," he said. His group rejects the creation of Israel on the grounds that it violates Jewish religious law.
The semi-official news agency ISNA said that the fact-finding commission announced by the conference would be led by an Iranian and include members from France, Bahrain, Austria, Canada, the United States, Syria and Switzerland. It did not name the members but it appeared they would be drawn from the conference participants.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that the conference was "shocking beyond belief" and called the conference "a symbol of sectarianism and hatred."
He said he saw little hope of engaging Iran in constructive action in the Middle East, saying, "I look around the region at the moment, and everything Iran is doing is negative."
In Washington, the White House condemned Iran for convening a conference it called "an affront to the entire civilized world."
The AP contributed to this report. |
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