'Ahmadinejad anti-Semitic rant a wake up call'

Responding to Iranian president's call for world forces to annihilate Israel, Netanyahu spokesman pushes need to deny Tehran nuclear weapons, calls Ahmadinejad's language "par for the course for Iranian leadership."

By JOANNA PARASZCZUK, HERB KEINON
Iran flags ahmadinejad 311 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Iran flags ahmadinejad 311
(photo credit: REUTERS)
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s most recent anti-Semitic tirade should serve as a “wake-up call” and erode any doubts in the world as to the “true character of the Iranian government,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev said Thursday.
Regev was responding to a speech published on Ahmadinejad’s website Thursday in which the Iranian president said the ultimate goal of world forces must be the annihilation of Israel.
“Unfortunately, these comments do not come as a surprise,” Regev said. “This sort of extreme poisonous language is unfortunately par for the course for the Iranian leadership.”
Regev said that it was incumbent upon the international community to “prevent the Iranian regime – with its fanatical and hate-filled agenda – from obtaining nuclear capability.”
Asked why he thought Ahmadinejad would make these comments now, Regev replied simply. “because he believes it.”
Click here for full Jpost coverage of the Iranian threat
Click here for full Jpost coverage of the Iranian threat
Speaking to ambassadors from Islamic countries ahead of “Al Quds Day” (Jerusalem Day) – an annual Iranian anti- Zionist event established in 1979 by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini – which falls on August 17 this year, Ahmadinejad said that a “horrible Zionist current” had been managing world affairs for “about 400 years.”
Repeating traditional anti-Semitic slurs, the Iranian president accused “Zionists” of controlling the world’s media and financial systems.
It was Zionists, he said, who were “behind the scene of the world’s main powers, media, monetary and banking centers. They are the decision makers, to the extent that the presidential election hopefuls [of the US] must go and kiss the feet of the Zionists to ensure their election victory,” he added.
Ahmadinejad added that “liberating Palestine” would solve all the world’s problems, although he did not elaborate on exactly how that might work.
“Quds Day is not merely a strategic solution for the Palestinian problem, as it is to be viewed as a key for solving the world problems,” he said.
He added: “Anyone who loves freedom and justice must strive for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the way for world justice and freedom.”
The Iranian president said that Israel reinforced “the dominance of arrogant powers in the region and across the globe” and that Arab countries in particular – he cited Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Turkey – were affected by Israel’s “plots.”
Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust a myth, has previously called for Israel’s annihilation. In a 2005 speech he used a Persian phrase that translates as “wiped off the page of time.”