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Did Ahmadinejad call Holocaust a Lie?

ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
edited September 2009 in A Moving Train
Just seems odd to me, that not one single news report is able to publish what he actually said, in context, without resorting to the use of brackets to insert the word 'holocaust' into the sentence. Why not simply report what he actually said in it's proper context?

How do we know that he was actually talking about the holocaust as being the pretext for the Zionist creation of Israel? He may have been talking about the 2000 year old claim to the land of Israel for all anyone knows. Until someone can provide the full speech in it's proper context then I'm going to remain skeptical.


BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8264111.stm
"The pretext [the Holocaust] for the creation of the Zionist regime [Israel] is false," he told worshippers at Tehran university.

"It is a lie based on an unproveable and mythical claim."


One News
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/holocaust- ... ly-2998937
"The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim," he told worshippers at Tehran University at the end of an annual anti-Israel "Qods (Jerusalem) Day" rally.

"Confronting the Zionist regime is a national and religious duty."

Herald Sun
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaki ... public_rss
"The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim," he told worshippers at Tehran University at the end of an annual anti-Israel "Qods (Jerusalem) Day" rally.

"Confronting the Zionist regime is a national and religious duty."

Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115657.html
"The pretext [Holocaust] for the creation of the Zionist regime [Israel] is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim."

Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/ ... WE20090918
"The pretext (Holocaust) for the creation of the Zionist regime (Israel) is false ... It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim,"
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    This from the Guardian:


    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/se ... n-quds-day
    "The pretext for establishing the Zionist regime is a lie … a lie which relies on an unreliable claim, a mythical claim, and the occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust."

    'and' the occupation of Palestine has nothing to do with the Holocaust'. Maybe I'm wrong, but, is he not talking about two different things here, as suggested by his use of the word 'and'?
  • Cliffy6745Cliffy6745 Posts: 33,957
    It's not the first time he has said something like this. Not sure why an exact quote is not out though.

    Glad to see the people stand up today.
  • CosmoCosmo Posts: 12,225
    From CBS News, 14December2005
    http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/ ... 4255.shtml

    Speaking to thousands of people in the southeastern city of Zahedan, Ahmadinejad said: "Today, they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets."
    "If you committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian nation pay the price?" Ahmadinejad asked.
    "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 (Jews), so that the Jews can establish their country," he said.
    ...
    He also said there were no Gay people in Iran.
    He says some kooky stuff... but, if you look at it objectively (without the help of Red, White and Blue colored glasses)... he makes a point.
    Do I agree? Nope. Judea was the Biblical setting for the Jews. I just wish the thing was worked out better than it was.
    ...
    Maybe we could relocate Israel... how 'bout North Dakota, because come on... what's going on in North Dakota anyway, right?
    Allen Fieldhouse, home of the 2008 NCAA men's Basketball Champions! Go Jayhawks!
    Hail, Hail!!!
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    Cosmo wrote:
    Judea was the Biblical setting for the Jews.

    Michael Neumann:
    'In the case of a Jewish claim to Palestine, the claims are themselves dubious. Here it is not necessary to have decided on a truth, which may elude researchers forever. It is enough to show that there is serious controversy, and that is easily done. One account of recent findings can be found in 'The Bible Unearthed: Archeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the origin of It's sacred Texts'. It's authors are Israel Finkelstein, director of an archeological institute at Tel Aviv Uuniversity, and Neil Asher Silberman, director of a Belgian archeological institute and a contributing editor to 'Archeology' magazine. These writers display no political agenda and repeat to the point of saturation their admiration and respect for the Bible. Asher and Silberman introduce their work with the claim that:

    "The historical sage contained in the Bible - from Abraham's encounter with God and his journey to Canaan, to Moses's delverance of the children of Israe from bondage, to the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Israel and Judah - was not a miraculous revelation, but a brilliant product of the human imagination."

    This is the authors' exceedingly polite way of saying that the Biblical accounts are sometimes nonsense, sometimes deliberate lies, exaggerations, and distortions. The status of the Biblical Kingdom is particularly relevant to the Jewish claims to Palestine. One of Asher and Silberman's more devastating findings is that:

    "The Biblical borders of the land of Israel as outlined in the book of Joshua had seemingly assumed a sacred inviolability...the Bible pictures a stormy but basically continuous Israelite occupation of the land of Israel all the way to the Assyrian conquest. But a reexamination of the archelogical evidence...points to a period of a few decades [in which Israel existed], between around 835-800B.C.E..."

    In other words, they find that the "Great" Jewish Kingdom existed in something like their fabled extent for a tiny fraction of the period traditionally alleged. Even then, their boundaries nver came close to the "Greater Israel" of contemporary Jewish fundamentalism. The rest of the time. Judah and Israel are thought to have been, for the most part, very primitive entities, devoid of literate culture or substantial administrative structure, extending to only a small, landlocked part of what is now called Palestine. The great structures of the Biblical era are, all of them, attributed to Canaanite cultures. Moreover, the inhabitants of Biblical Israel and Judah seem to have, for most of the time and for the most part, practitioners of Canaanite religions rather than Judaism, or of various syncretic cults. These "Israelites" were not, that is, "Jewish" in one important sense of the term. The authors refer to the Biblical Kingdom at it existed as a "a multi-ethnic society." The idea that such a past could validate a Jewish historical claim to Palestine is simply ludicrous, even if it could be shown - which it cannot - that today's Jews are in some legal sense, heirs to the ancient Israelite Kingdoms.'
  • fuckfuck Posts: 4,069
    I found this article kinda interesting:

    http://reviewcanada.ca/essays/2007/06/0 ... ver-heard/

    'The anti-intellectual storm at St. FX was driven by two fallacies pushed by the media and the literati. The first is that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth” and threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” In fact, Ahmadinejad has not denied the Holocaust or proposed Israel’s liquidation; he has never done so in any of his speeches on the subject (all delivered in Farsi/Persian). As an Iran specialist, I can attest that both accusations are false. U.S. Iran experts such as Juan Cole and UK journalists such as Jonathan Steele have come to the same conclusion.1

    As Cole correctly notes, Ahmadinejad was quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini in the specific speech under discussion: what he said was that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.”2 No state action is envisaged in this lament; it denotes a spiritual wish, whereas the erroneous translation—“wipe Israel off the map”—suggests a military threat. There is a huge chasm between the correct and the incorrect translations. The notion that Iran can “wipe out” U.S.-backed, nuclear-armed Israel is ludicrous.

    What Ahmadinejad has questioned is the mythologizing, the sacralization, of the Holocaust and the “Zionist regime’s” continued killing of Palestinians and Muslims. He has even raised doubts about the scale of the Holocaust. His rhetoric has been excessive and provocative. And he does not really care what we in the West think about Iran or Muslims; he does not kowtow to western or Israeli diktat. Such questioning and criticism are not new: Jewish scholars such as Adi Ophir, Ilan Pappe, Boas Evron, Tom Segev and Uri Davis have been doing it for two decades. None of this is Holocaust denial.The anti-intellectual storm at St. FX was driven by two fallacies pushed by the media and the literati. The first is that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth” and threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” In fact, Ahmadinejad has not denied the Holocaust or proposed Israel’s liquidation; he has never done so in any of his speeches on the subject (all delivered in Farsi/Persian). As an Iran specialist, I can attest that both accusations are false. U.S. Iran experts such as Juan Cole and UK journalists such as Jonathan Steele have come to the same conclusion.1

    As Cole correctly notes, Ahmadinejad was quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini in the specific speech under discussion: what he said was that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.”2 No state action is envisaged in this lament; it denotes a spiritual wish, whereas the erroneous translation—“wipe Israel off the map”—suggests a military threat. There is a huge chasm between the correct and the incorrect translations. The notion that Iran can “wipe out” U.S.-backed, nuclear-armed Israel is ludicrous.

    What Ahmadinejad has questioned is the mythologizing, the sacralization, of the Holocaust and the “Zionist regime’s” continued killing of Palestinians and Muslims. He has even raised doubts about the scale of the Holocaust. His rhetoric has been excessive and provocative. And he does not really care what we in the West think about Iran or Muslims; he does not kowtow to western or Israeli diktat. Such questioning and criticism are not new: Jewish scholars such as Adi Ophir, Ilan Pappe, Boas Evron, Tom Segev and Uri Davis have been doing it for two decades. None of this is Holocaust denial.'
  • ByrnzieByrnzie Posts: 21,037
    _outlaw wrote:
    I found this article kinda interesting:

    http://reviewcanada.ca/essays/2007/06/0 ... ver-heard/

    'The anti-intellectual storm at St. FX was driven by two fallacies pushed by the media and the literati. The first is that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth” and threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” In fact, Ahmadinejad has not denied the Holocaust or proposed Israel’s liquidation; he has never done so in any of his speeches on the subject (all delivered in Farsi/Persian). As an Iran specialist, I can attest that both accusations are false. U.S. Iran experts such as Juan Cole and UK journalists such as Jonathan Steele have come to the same conclusion.1

    As Cole correctly notes, Ahmadinejad was quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini in the specific speech under discussion: what he said was that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.”2 No state action is envisaged in this lament; it denotes a spiritual wish, whereas the erroneous translation—“wipe Israel off the map”—suggests a military threat. There is a huge chasm between the correct and the incorrect translations. The notion that Iran can “wipe out” U.S.-backed, nuclear-armed Israel is ludicrous.

    What Ahmadinejad has questioned is the mythologizing, the sacralization, of the Holocaust and the “Zionist regime’s” continued killing of Palestinians and Muslims. He has even raised doubts about the scale of the Holocaust. His rhetoric has been excessive and provocative. And he does not really care what we in the West think about Iran or Muslims; he does not kowtow to western or Israeli diktat. Such questioning and criticism are not new: Jewish scholars such as Adi Ophir, Ilan Pappe, Boas Evron, Tom Segev and Uri Davis have been doing it for two decades. None of this is Holocaust denial.The anti-intellectual storm at St. FX was driven by two fallacies pushed by the media and the literati. The first is that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth” and threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” In fact, Ahmadinejad has not denied the Holocaust or proposed Israel’s liquidation; he has never done so in any of his speeches on the subject (all delivered in Farsi/Persian). As an Iran specialist, I can attest that both accusations are false. U.S. Iran experts such as Juan Cole and UK journalists such as Jonathan Steele have come to the same conclusion.1

    As Cole correctly notes, Ahmadinejad was quoting the Ayatollah Khomeini in the specific speech under discussion: what he said was that “the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time.”2 No state action is envisaged in this lament; it denotes a spiritual wish, whereas the erroneous translation—“wipe Israel off the map”—suggests a military threat. There is a huge chasm between the correct and the incorrect translations. The notion that Iran can “wipe out” U.S.-backed, nuclear-armed Israel is ludicrous.

    What Ahmadinejad has questioned is the mythologizing, the sacralization, of the Holocaust and the “Zionist regime’s” continued killing of Palestinians and Muslims. He has even raised doubts about the scale of the Holocaust. His rhetoric has been excessive and provocative. And he does not really care what we in the West think about Iran or Muslims; he does not kowtow to western or Israeli diktat. Such questioning and criticism are not new: Jewish scholars such as Adi Ophir, Ilan Pappe, Boas Evron, Tom Segev and Uri Davis have been doing it for two decades. None of this is Holocaust denial.'

    Thanks for posting this. It seems to also apply with what was said yesterday in Iran re: the comments about a 'myth'.
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