President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s stance on the Zionist regime has been overblown and became a heated subject of debate among sections of the international print media in the past week.
The plain truth is that the president’s comment that has attracted so much fire from Israel’s known backers was not a bolt from the blue.
It was neither an invention nor did it contain anything new.
Post-revolution Iran has never recognized the usurper state and the uncompromising official stance has been such that even our sportsmen have refused to participate in global contests in which the Israelis are involved directly.
Ahmadinejad’s comments are a repeat of the known ideals of the late Imam Khomeini in the 1960s and a reflection of what our people have made known over the past 27 years.
However, from some angles the president’s public pronouncements contained rather new points and set in motion serious challenges against the West.
According to the chief executive, if the holocaust in World War II is a reality, why should Muslims and the long-oppressed Palestinians pay for it?
The president noted that if the western world really feels a sense of guilt and is ashamed of the way it treated the Jews more than half a century ago, it has a duty to right the wrong and bear the burden.
One solution, he urged the West to consider, is that Europe and America accommodate the Jews on their territories and let them create their own state in that part of the world.
It was indeed this part of the statement that unnerved the western halls of power.
One impartial western observer in a no-nonsense review said “Proposal of creating Israel on their land was like a 10 Richter earthquake. Otherwise the western powers are hardly interested in what happens“ to the occupying power, the Palestinians or for the matter peace in the Middle East.
However, large sections of the western media mobilized their efforts and have tried to exaggerate that part of the president’s comment which cast some doubt on the authenticity of the holocaust that several prominent western writers (including Jews) believe has become a lucrative “industry“ for Israel and its strong lobbies in the West.
Iran has never invaded or attacked a country. Nor will it ever do so. But in recent years Israel at regular intervals has openly threatened to take military action against Iran “to take out its nukes.“
The so-called civilized world has never objected to nor ever censured Israel for making such irresponsible statements.
It needs recalling that political parties in the country have no difference of opinion regarding the Zionist regime and its illegitimate and oppressive nature.
This indeed has roots in the lofty and revolutionary causes of the late founder of the Islamic Republic and the people of Iran.
Some western radio stations and their financers are doing overtime trying to inculcate the false notion that Ahmadinejad wants to create global tensions instead of solving the problems of his own people. This is while in the relatively short period that the new government has taken over, the president and his cabinet has toured three deprived provinces to study their problems at close range and find effective solutions.
Some countries have threatened to work for isolating Iran in the international community, imposing further economic sanctions, and
even ban Iran from the next World Cup.
Now, how does a sane person approach this hysteria? What can possibly justify moves to condemn, punish and isolate Iran while Israel and its verified lawlessness enjoys solid support from the US and western capitals? Likewise, who is really responsible for the death, destruction and wholesale state-sponsored terrorism visiting the impoverished Palestinians for almost five decades?
Would the western world be irrelevant without the deadly presence of the occupying power in the strategic Middle East? So it seems.