Iran President Wants Jews Walled In

Dec. 8, 2005 17:27 | Updated Dec. 8, 2005 23:15
'Europeans should create Jewish State'
By JPOST.COM STAFF



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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continued his anti-Israel rhetoric Thursday afternoon, denying the Holocaust and calling on Germany and Austria to create a Jewish State within their borders, Israel Radio reported.

"We do not believe that Hitler killed six million Jews, but even if this is true by some chance, then why should the Palestinians pay the price for it," he asked, and suggested that the governments in Vienna and Berlin concede two or three provinces to the Zionists and settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all.

"If Germany and Austria feel responsible that the Jewish people suffered at their hands during the Second World War, then all they should do is create a Zionist State in their territory," he said in a television interview in Teheran.

Israeli officials condemned Ahmadinejad's comments as "outrageous and even racist."

"Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the president of Iran has made outrageous and even racist remarks concerning Jews and Israel," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.

"Only recently the UN General Assembly condemned Holocaust denial and here the Iranian leader is showing himself to be fundamentally contradicting the norms of international behavior and decency," he added. "I hope that anyone who had illusions about the true nature of the Iranian regime has received these recent remarks as a wake up call."

A US State Department spokesman responded to Ahmadinejad, saying that his comments only proved why the Iranian government should not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said, "The comments attributed to President Ahmadinejad are wholly unacceptable, and I condemn them unreservedly. They have no place in civilised political debate."

Ahmadinejad's statement comes only a couple of weeks after his call to wipe Israel off the map.

Earlier in the week Iran intensified its diplomatic attacks on Israel, claiming that the recent political crisis exposed the fact that Israel is leading the international pressure on Teheran.

The spokesman for the Iranian Foreign Ministry implied that if Israel were to attack its nuclear facilities, they would respond with an inevitable painful blow. These statements came in response to harsh comments released by the Israeli Foreign Ministry regarding the Iranian nuclear project.

An Iranian spokesman referred to an "internal crisis of the Zionists," adding that the Israeli threats against it were born of the failure of Jerusalem to turn the international community against Teheran.

Sources close to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Monday that Israel knows well what to do about Iran, and that the noisy suggestions about Iran on the part of Israeli politicians only harm Israel's security.