Many to correct, in little time -- of the top of my head:

1) Despite what the Israel Lobby would like you to believe, Ahmadinejad is not a "Holocaust denier." He does not deny that the Holocaust happened. He calls for more research, mostly because, currently, Holocaust research is in the grips of Zionists, who do not permit it to be studied in any way that undermines their agenda. So for instance if Hillberg cites his research to indicate that 5.1 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, a cry goes up from the Zionists who control the Holocaust message, because their "official" number, a nice round one, is 6 million.

Yes, some of the Holocaust historians are nutty, and some are flat deniers. But the Holocaust is an historical fact that can survive the nuttier fringes, and you need the nuts to define the fringes. Right now, there are no fringes, only the Zionist agenda -- "all non-Jews are ferocious Jew-killers, which rationalizes our horiffic treatment of the Palestinians. It also rationalizes why you need to give Israel so much money, Jew-killers."

2) Ahmadinejad is not in charge of Iran. He actually has relatively little real power. The clerics run the country.

Larry, you aren't making much of a case for yourself as an unbiased neutral obsverver. Your loyalties are showing, but..nice try.

"Larry, you aren't making much of a case for yourself as an unbiased neutral obsverver. Your loyalties are showing, but..nice try. "

Be that as it may, it's still true that Ahmadinejad doesn't actually deny the holocaust happened. He also never said that Israel should be "wiped off the map" either. Yet almost every article and editorial about him blithely repeats those two very "factoids". We don't know what Ahmadinejad actually thinks about Jews in general, but he claims to have no problems with them, and we don't have any proof otherwise.

Zionism is a political movement based on a version of Manifest Destiny for the Jewish people. Although most Zionists are Jews, many Jews are not Zionists, and in fact many Jews are also quite anti-Zionist. However, to say anything negative about Zionism (for example, to criticize the by-definition-Zionist Israeli lobby) is to run the risk of being called an anti-semite and dismissed by Zionists and PC gentiles alike, even if you are a Jew (i.e. a "self-hating Jew").

Of course none of this excuses Iran's domestic policies on dissedents, etc. But even compared to some of the other regimes the US considers friends, Iran is not even close to the worst and is certainly no threat. They in no way had anything to do with 9/11 and were very sympathetic to Americans when it happened.

You blithely ignore that Ahmadinejad cleverly says he has no problem "with the jewish people". A way of avoiding stating his position on Israel. In other words, jews are fine as long as they stay in their place...which is anywhere but Israel.

Ahmadinejad quoted rom Al Jazeerah, Oct. 8, 2005-

"The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," the president told a conference in Tehran on Wednesday, entitled The World without Zionism.

"The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land," he said.

"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayat Allah Khomeini.

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Sorry that I misremembered the exact phrase Ahmadinejad had used. He made an analogy to Khomeini's determination and success in getting rid of the Shah's government, which Khomeini had said "must go" (az bain bayad berad). Then Ahmadinejad defined Zionism not as an Arabi-Israeli national struggle but as a Western plot to divide the world of Islam with Israel as the pivot of this plan.

The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

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.

Again, Ariel Sharon erased the occupation regime over Gaza from the page of time.

I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem. And, I am not exactly a pacifist but have a strong preference for peaceful social activism over violence, so needless to say I condemn the sort of terror attacks against innocent civilians (including Arab Israelis) that we saw last week. I have not seen any credible evidence, however, that such attacks are the doing of Ahmadinejad, and in my view they are mainly the result of the expropriation and displacement of the long-suffering Palestinian people.

It is not realistic for Americans to call for Iran to talk directly to the Israeli government (though in the 1980s the Khomeinists did a lot of business with Israel) when the US government won't talk directly to the Iranians about most bilateral issues. In fact, an American willingness to engage in direct talks might well pave the way to an eventual settlement of these outstanding issues.

cheers

Juan Cole

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Yes, Ahmadinejad's call is for Palestinian rule of all that land. Do you really think Palestinians would retain the name of "ISRAEL" for their newly acquired nation? Thus the phrase "Israel wiped off the map" is rather literal. He would like to see Israel disappear to be replaced by Palestine. See Sampson bound and blinded and have Philistine rule.