Ron Paul at 0% in Israel

bnb · Jan 4, 2012

as messed up as the whole situation is, i'm having a hard time thinking of Ahmadinejad being the peace broker entrusted with a nuke option.

HorryForThree · Jan 4, 2012

AroundTheWorld said: ↑

From your second link:

You can play semantics as much as you want, Ahmadinejad is a ruthless, fanatic dictator who cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons.

And your first link is from a right-wingnut conspiracy theorist.
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Full context of second link:

Some might question why Ahmadinejad’s precise words are important. Clearly, the Iranian government has unrelenting opposition to the state of Israel, so much so that it even rejects Palestinian efforts at statehood if that would result in Israel remaining in the Middle East. Indeed, Tehran has armed and funded Hamas, Hezbollah and other militant groups opposed to Israel. At the same time, the words allegedly uttered by Ahmadinejad have been used to suggest a change toward a more militaristic posture by Iran toward Israel.

In fact, Ahmadinejad is not the power broker in Iran; it is Khamenei. Khamenei, in fact, has been consistent in speaking of his hatred of Israel, but without a military context, as he demonstrated once again this week. Moreover, the fact that Ahmadinejad was merely quoting Khomeini suggests that even less weight should have been given to his words, especially since there is a dispute over the precise meaning in English.

“Wipe off the map,” in other words, has become easy shorthand for expressing revulsion at Iran’s anti-Israeli foreign policy. Certainly attention needs to be focused on that — and Iranian behavior in the region. But we’re going to award a Pinocchio to everyone — including ourselves — who has blithely repeated the phrase without putting it into context.
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As for who the first link was from, it's immaterial. The substance is what's important:

The Guardian's Jonathan Steele cites four different translations, from professors to the BBC to the New York Times and even pro-Israel news outlets, in none of those translations is the word "map" used. The closest translation to what the Iranian President actually said is, "The regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time," or a narrow relative thereof. In no version is the word "map" used or a context of mass genocide or hostile military action even hinted at.

The acceptance of the word "map" seemingly originated with the New York Times, who later had to back away from this false translation. The BBC also wrongly used the word and, in comments to Steele, later accepted their mistake but refused to issue a retraction.

"The fact that he compared his desired option - the elimination of "the regime occupying Jerusalem" - with the fall of the Shah's regime in Iran makes it crystal clear that he is talking about regime change, not the end of Israel. As a schoolboy opponent of the Shah in the 1970's he surely did not favor Iran's removal from the page of time. He just wanted the Shah out," writes Steele.

"It's important to note that the "quote" in question was itself a quote, writes Arash Norouzi, "they are the words of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted Khomeini to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Khomeini and not Ahmadinejad. Thus, Ahmadinejad has essentially been credited (or blamed) for a quote that is not only unoriginal, but represents a viewpoint already in place well before he ever took office."

Professor Juan Cole concurs, arguing, "Now, some might say, "So he didn't say, 'wipe off the map,' he said 'erase from the page.' What's the difference? Anyway he's saying he wants to get rid of Israel. Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope -- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government. Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that 'Israel must be wiped off the map' with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time."
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As for calling him a "ruthless, fanatic dictator who cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons," that's nothing more than an ad hominem attack (though I'd concede he's definitely not a preferred leader of any nation). I personally dont 'trust' any nation with nuclear weapons and there are an unfortunate number of unsavory leaders whose nations possess nuclear weapons, including Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Asif Ali Zirdari, and Benjamin Netanyahu.

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