Phil > I just don't understand why Ahmadinejad uses these provocative words which he must know enflames the situation and adds ammunition to those who would use any excuse for war.
I think it's self-evident -- he is provoking Israel to do its worst, whatever that is, and if they don't their paranoia gets cranked up even higher. He's driving them crazy, in other words.
Meanwhile, there is much confusion regarding what he actually did say.
en.wikipedia.org
>>Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, translates the Persian phrase as:
The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).[10]
According to Cole, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to 'wipe Israel off the map' because no such idiom exists in Persian" and "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."[11]
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translates the phrase similarly:
[T]his regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.[12]
Iran has repeatedly rejected the allegations that Ahmadinejad has stated 'Israel must be wiped off the map'. [13][14][15] On 20 February 2006, Iran’s foreign minister denied that Tehran wanted to see Israel “wiped off the map,” saying Ahmadinejad had been misunderstood. "Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," Manouchehr Mottaki told a news conference, speaking in English, after addressing the European Parliament. "How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognise legally this regime," he said. [16][17][18]<< |
