Israel television news showed images Sunday night of an auditorium filled with well-dressed students at the University of Teheran.
This was no ordinary lecture. Upon signing up for the course, students were asked to choose against whom they would most like to carry out a suicide bombing. Among the choices were Israel, Americans in Iraq, and Salman Rushdie, who has an Iranian death sentence on his head for the publication of his book The Satanic Verses.
The students were shown a videos as incitement, including a mob burning a Danish flag, Palestinians clashing with the IDF, and footage from the war in Iraq.
On the stage was a sign in English, Hebrew and Persian. The text in all languages said the same thing: "Israel must be wiped off the map."
A student leader of the organization that set up the recruitment event said that they currently have 1,000 loyal and trained suicide bombers, with another 5,000 on a waiting list.
IN OTHER NEWS from Iran, the head of the Jewish community there has been invited to a TV debate over the Holocaust by the director of the Tehran-based Department for Iranian Studies, reported IRNA, the Iranian government news agency.
IRNA said it received a copy of a letter by fax from Professor Abbas Salimi Namin to Haroon Yashayee, head of Iranian Jewish community, acknowledging the "genocide of the Jews" but saying that Zionists use the Holocaust as a political and financial tool and that the death toll of Jews was less than six million.
"As you know," wrote Namin, "[the] Holocaust has only concentrated on the genocide of the Jews and made no mention of the large nomadic communities (the Gypsies) and Christian Slavs who were slaughtered by the Nazi Army."
He added, "Even the least support is not being given to victims from other communities slaughtered during World War II and large sums in compensation are being channeled from Europe and the US to the racist Zionists to continue their crimes against humanity."
Last week, Yashayee had forwarded a letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressing reservations about the president's refusal to recognize the Holocaust.
Iran on Sunday warned that any Israeli attack against it would provoke a swift response, state-run television reported.
Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehei said an Israeli attack would be "stupidity."
"In case the Zionist regime attacks Iran, it will get a swift response and will regret its action," Ejehei was quoted as saying.
