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0 Israeli Minister Agrees Ahmadinejad Never Said Israel ‘Must Be Wiped Off the Map’

Video of an Al Jazeera interview with Dan Meridor, a deputy prime minister of Israel.
In a reminder that Persian rhetoric is not always easy for English-speakers to interpret, a senior Israeli official has acknowledged that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, never actually said that Israel “must be wiped off the map.”
Those words were attributed to Mr. Ahmadinejad in 2005, in English translations of his speech to a “World Without Zionism” conference that October. As my colleague Ethan Bronner reported the next year, one problem was translating a metaphorical turn of phrase in Persian that has no exact English equivalent — there was, for instance, no mention of a map. More important, closer readings of the phrase suggested that the original statement was less of a threat than a prediction.
Last week, Teymoor Nabili of Al Jazeera suggested during an interview with Dan Meridor, Israel’s minister of intelligence and atomic energy, that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s rhetorical flourish had been misinterpreted. “This idea that Iran wants to wipe Israel out,” Mr. Nabili said, “now that’s a common trope that is put about by a lot of people in Israel, a lot of people in the United States, but as we know Ahmadinejad didn’t say that he plans to exterminate Israel, nor did he say that Iran’s policy is to exterminate Israel.”
In response, Mr. Meridor said that Mr. Ahmadinejad and Iran’s ruling cleric, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had said repeatedly “that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t say, ‘We’ll wipe it out,’ you’re right, but, ‘It will not survive.’ ”
Mr. Meridor also pointed out that after Ayatollah Khamenei compared Israel to a cancerous tumor in February — adding, it “should be cut off” — his remarks were echoed last month by the president. “Israel is unnatural, it will not exist, it’s on the verge of collapse,” Mr. Meridor said. “When you hear this from these people, you need to take it seriously.”
Although there is general agreement now among translators and scholars that Mr. Ahmadinejad did not commit his country to the project of destroying the state of Israel in that 2005 speech, the phrase that was wrongly attributed to him then remains so firmly rooted in the popular imagination that it is frequently used as evidence of Iran’s genocidal intentions.
During a visit to the White House last month, on the eve of the Jewish festival of Purim, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel presented President Obama with a copy of the Book of Esther, which recounts the tale of a Persian leader who wanted to annihilate the Jews. “Then, too, they wanted to wipe us out,” Mr. Netanyahu told the president.
In January, Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, told a New York Times Magazine writer: “The Iranians are, after all, a nation whose leaders have set themselves a strategic goal of wiping Israel off the map.”
As the Guardian columnist Jonathan Steele explained in 2006, a more direct translation of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s remarks would be: “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,” echoing a statement once made by the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
In an interview with The Lede on Tuesday, Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American writer whose father was an ambassador under the Shah, pointed out that Mr. Ahmadinejad had slightly misquoted Ayatollah Khomeini, using the Persian word for “page” instead of a similar-sounding word for “scene or stage.”
Mr. Majd, who once did a cameo as Mr. Ahmadinejad’s translator at the United Nations, also noted that in the original speech, the Iranian president had argued that while the end of Israeli rule over Jerusalem, the third holiest city in Islam, might seem impossible to imagine, the end of the Shah’s rule and the collapse of the Soviet Union both proved that change on that scale was possible.
Still, over the years, the original misinterpretation of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s remarks has been so often repeated that it has become a kind of shorthand. “In my conversations with Americans,” Mr. Majd said, very often they respond to the name Ahmadinejad by saying, “He wants to eliminate Israel.”
Mr. Majd, who recently spent time in Tehran, added that Mr. Ahmadinejad has perhaps made so little effort to explain that he was misquoted because he relishes his image as a sworn enemy of Israel, and would not want to be seen as stepping back from even threatening remarks he did not make.
Mr. Majd also said that reformers inside Iran blamed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s posturing, and his repeated and accurately translated statements denying the Holocaust, “for inflaming this Iranophobia that exists in the West.”

0 New verdict in 1974 massacre of Piazza Loggia brings historical False Flag Bombing back into the mainstream

The acquittal of four people for a bombing 38 years ago has left yet another atrocity from Italy's "Years of Lead" unsolved and underlined the failures of a chaotic justice system.

An appeal court in the northern city of Brescia at the weekend confirmed the acquittal of two neo-fascists, an informer for the secret services and a former police general for a bombing that killed eight people and wounded 103 at an anti-fascist demonstration in the centre of the city in 1974.
Although there have been no fewer than 10 trials and appeals since the bombing, nobody has been convicted of an act central to what is called a "strategy of tension" by right-wing extremists aimed at preventing Italy's then-powerful communist party coming to power at the height of the Cold War.
The PCI was the biggest communist party in the West until it collapsed after the end of the Soviet Union.
The verdict was received with bitterness in Brescia.
A handwritten sign was put up near where the bomb exploded reading "Fascist massacre of Piazza Loggia. Injustice is done!"
Brescia mayor Adriano Paroli told reporters: "The city and the whole country have been waiting for so many years for an answer - an answer that must consist of truth and justice, both of which are lacking today."
"How long will reasons of state or politics overcome the search for the truth?" asked Manlio Milani, who lost his wife in the bombing and leads an association of its victims.
A leading judge and a 1980 parliamentary commission had alleged that American CIA agents and Italian secret service officers were involved in a conspiracy to organize a string of bombings, including Brescia, and to then implicate left-wingers in order to block the rise of the communists and push voters towards the Christian Democrats.
Right-wing sympathizers in the secret services and other parts of the establishment are widely believed to have sabotaged investigations into the bombings, which coincided with the urban guerrilla warfare of the leftist Red Brigades.
EVIDENCE WASHED AWAY
Two hours after the explosion in Brescia, fire hoses were used to clean the piazza where it occurred, washing away potential evidence. Waste bins were hastily emptied.
According to some estimates, up to 2,000 people died in attacks during the Years of Lead, between the late 1960s and early 1980s, which shook the foundations of the Italian republic. The crimes included the Red Brigades' murder of former Christian Democrat prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978.
"The fact that we have still not succeeded in identifying and convicting the guilty 38 years later arouses bitterness and concern," said former interior minister Nicola Mancino.
The list of unsolved crimes includes the first of the series, the bombing of Milan's Piazza Fontana in 1969, where three trials have produced no justice for the 16 people who were killed, and a train bombing in 1974 that killed 12.

0 Second Irish Priest is "Thrown a fatwa" by the Vatican for child abuse investigation

Irish priests are at war with the Vatican again after attempts to silence a second rebel cleric.
Veteran Marist priest Fr Sean Fagan has been ordered to stop writing and commentating in public.
The 84-year-old has been reprimanded by the church after he had called for an inquiry into clerical sexual abuse in all Irish dioceses.
His order has also bought all remaining copies of a theological book written by Fr Fagan who was required to give an undertaking not to write again.
The latest move came after Fr Fagan publicly advocated allowing women and married men to be ordained as priests.
The Association of Catholic Priests has condemned the moves to silence Fr Fagan, just days after another rebel priest was ordered to return to his monastery after his newspaper column was pulled by the Church.
ACP spokesman Fr Sean McDonagh told the Irish Independent that the silencing of Fr Fagan is ‘just outrageous’.
Fr McDonagh added: “The church is throwing a fatwa at the priest. Some of the church’s recent actions are like a return to the Inquisition.
“This isn’t the time for heresy hunting. Fr Fagan’s writings were clear, well written and interesting. He wants to start a conversation about the church’s views on sexuality.
“I believe that the silencing of priests by the Vatican is out of a desire for control rather than because of sincerely held belief or intelligent argument.”
The Irish Bishops have refused to comment to the Irish Independent on the story.
 

0 Israeli Brutality Against Innocent Protester



A heroic IDF soldier defends himself from a violent left wing anarchist.... This video has caused a lot of outrage, but this shows a good insight into how the IDF handles innocent unarmed protesters, if the IDF do this to western citizens who have actual rights, what do you think they do to Palestinians?