Iran's President Calls For Israel To Be "Wiped Off The Map"

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad Oct. 26 said Israel is a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map," adding that the country was created by "the oppressor" of the Islamic world and denounced any moves to normalize relations with Israel.

President Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" at Iran's "The World Without Zionism" conference PHOTO: Fars

Ahmadinejad's comments at the Tehran "The World Without Zionism" conference came two days before the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, which Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declared in 1979 to be Qods Day (Jerusalem Day). Qods Day has been celebrated faithfully since then, not only in Iran but in countries with sizable Shiite Muslim minorities, and it has become a ritualized outpouring of hatred directed at Israel.

"I have been notifying the Muslims of the danger posed by the usurper Israel," Ayatollah Khomeini, father of Iran's Islamic Revolution, proclaimed. "I ask all the Muslims of the world and the Muslim governments to join together to sever the hand of this usurper and its supporters...and, through a ceremony demonstrating the solidarity of Muslims worldwide, announce their support for the legitimate rights of the Muslim people."

According to state radio, in his October 21 sermon at the Tehran Friday prayers, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Qods Day is especially important this year for several reasons, one of which is that some Islamic states are normalizing their relations with Israel -- he described this as "the conspiracy instigated by the Americans, the Zionists, and some of their allies." Khamenei discouraged this normalization process and suggested that countries do this just to please the United States.

Khamenei is not the only Iranian official to speak out recently against normalized relations with Israel. President Mahmud Ahmadinejad told his cabinet in Tehran on October 24 that Israel's effort to normalize relations with Muslim countries is a "new Zionist plot," state radio reported. Ahmadinejad said that "Muslim nations will not let it do so on international Qods Day." Two days later, Ahmadinejad told the conference that any government that normalizes its ties with Israel will encounter the wrath of the Islamic umma (community), the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) and state television reported.

Former President Khatami said in a October 25 speech at Ayatollah Khomeini's shrine that Iranians should participate in Qods Day rallies to show their solidarity with the Palestinians and to protest "the great oppression of our time," Mehr News Agency reported. Khatami said Palestinians are the biggest victims of state-sponsored terrorism at the hands of Israel.

Also on October 25, the Assembly of Experts, an elected body of 86 clerics, encouraged Muslims to participate in the Qods Day events and show their adherence to the ideals of Ayatollah Khomeini, Mehr News Agency reported. The Assembly of Experts statement discouraged Muslim states from normalizing relations with Israel. Hojatoleslam Ali-Akbar Mohtashami-Pur, secretary-general of the International Conference to Support the Palestinian Uprising (Intifada) series and a founder of Lebanese Hizballah, said in a October 22 interview in Tehran that Islamic countries' establishment of links with "the Zionist regime" (presumably Israel) is a crime, Mehr News Agency reported. He referred specifically to Bahrain, Pakistan, Qatar, and Turkey as being in the process of normalizing their relations with Israel. He said Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa mosque are under threat, and Islamic countries should be holding a summit on this issue.