ICEJ unveils Christian-Jewish campaign to indict Ahmadinejad

Effort aims to "hold Ahmadinejad accountable for his radioactive rhetoric against the Jewish State."

By ABE SELIG
Ahmadinejad UN 224.88 (photo credit: AP)
Ahmadinejad UN 224.88
(photo credit: AP)
Using the ongoing Feast of Tabernacles event in the capital as a backdrop, the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem announced on Thursday that a growing list of prominent Christian ministries has joined the effort to indict Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide against Israel. "With the addition of Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer and other prominent Christian leaders [to this initiative], we are making an important and bold statement that Jews and Christians have joined hands like never before to confront the looming Iranian threat against Israel," said Rev. Malcolm Hedding, executive director of the ICEJ. "We are confident that the growing momentum of this global campaign will eventually succeed in holding Ahmadinejad accountable for his radioactive rhetoric against the Jewish State." The overall plan, which was launched nearly two years ago at the behest of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs - headed by former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold - soon garnered the support of Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, Canadian MP Irwin Cotler and the ICEJ. More recently, former US presidential nominee Sen. Hillary Clinton expressed her support for the initiative, along with an "overwhelming majority" of the US House of Representatives, the ICEJ said. However, the ICEJ added, "Joe Biden, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has not allowed the indictment initiative to come up for a vote in over a year. We see this as being weak on Iran, as far as Biden is concerned." In addition to these efforts in the US political arena, a global petition signed by more than 55,000 Christians from over 120 countries was delivered by the ICEJ to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon last month, before Ahmadinejad gave his third speech to the General Assembly. After that appearance, in which the Iranian leader launched into yet another anti-Israel - and what many felt was an anti-Semitic - tirade, accusing "a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists" of dominating financial and political centers in Europe and the US in "a deceitful, complex and furtive manner," Ahmadinejad dined with a group of Mennonite and Quaker pacifists, who explained afterward that it was their duty to pursue peace, no matter with whom. "We were outraged that [Ahmadinejad] was on American soil in the first place, and that Christians met with him at all," said Hedding. "We fear that it's an appeasement of wickedness." He continued, "We represent the true Christian voice when it comes to the relationship between Christians and Israel. And after the failure of churches to speak out in the face of Nazi Germany's anti-Semitism in the 1930s, we dare not be silent again." Gold also spoke at the press conference, where he described the legal precedent for such an indictment. "The UN's own Convention to Prevent and Punish the Crime of Genocide specifically mentions just that - preventing genocide, before it happens," Gold said. "It lists 'direct and public incitement to commit genocide' as a specific offense, and Ahmadinejad has done that time and time again." While not explicitly discussing the logistics of indicting the Iranian leader or how he would be brought to trial before a UN tribunal, Gold did explain that the indictment itself would be enough to stir much debate inside Iran as to the direction the country was heading, along with the economic ramifications such an indictment would have on European firms that currently do business with the Islamic Republic but might think twice if its leader were indicted for incitement to genocide. "Challenging the Iranian threat can only be a moral issue," Gold said. "There are plenty of reasons why countries won't support an indictment of Ahmadinejad - economic worries, fear of terrorism. We have to make it a moral issue." Responding to some who have claimed that Ahmadinejad's words have been taken out of context or mistranslated, Gold emphasized that "that argument loses its credibility as soon as the Iranians write his exact words on the head of a Shihab-3 missile." Nonetheless, Gold concluded that the legal precedent within the UN's charter, as well as the outpouring of global support for the indictment, was reason for optimism - a view shared by his ICEJ colleagues. Still, both Gold and the ICEJ said that more support was needed, and that larger challenges still lay ahead.