What Iranian leaders Really Say About doing Away with Israel Print E-mail
Tuesday, 08 July 2008

Over the past several years, Iranian leaders – most prominently, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad– have made numerous statements calling for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. Some of these statements have been interpreted by certain journalists and experts on Iran to be simple expressions of dissatisfaction with the Israeli presence in the West Bank or eastern Jerusalem, or with the current Israeli
government and its policies.

Scholars continue to soft-pedal the Iranian President’s words. Professor Stephen Walt, who previously served as academic dean of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and co-authored The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy along with Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, told a Jerusalem audience during a joint appearance in early June 2008, “I don’t think he is inciting to
genocide,” when asked about Ahmadinejad’s call to wipe Israel off the map.2

In reality, the intent behind Ahmadinejad’s language is clear. Those who seek to excuse Iranian leaders should not remain unchallenged when they use the tools of scholarship as a smokescreen to obfuscate these extreme and deliberate calls for the destruction of Israel. Language entails meaning. These statements have been interpreted by leading Iranian blogs and news outlets – some official – to mean the destruction of Israel.

A common motif of genocide incitement is the dehumanization of the target population. The Nazi weekly Der Stürmer portrayed Jews as parasites and locusts. Ahmadinejad said in a speech on February 20, 2008: “In the Middle East, they [the global powers] have created a black and filthy microbe called the Zionist regime.”

Michael Axworthy, who served as the Head of the Iran Section of Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office, notes that when the slogan “Israel must be wiped off the map” appeared “draped over missiles in military parades, that meaning was pretty clear.”

 

Source: TEITELBAUM, J. (2008) What Iranian leaders Really Say About doing Away with Israel. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.