Christian group urges sanctions on Iran

Int'l Christian Embassy head: We've decided it's time for us to take action.

By ETGAR LEFKOVITS
ahmadinejad 298.88 (photo credit: )
ahmadinejad 298.88
(photo credit: )
A prominent evangelical Christian organization in Jerusalem has launched a worldwide petition urging the United Nations to take stronger measures to confront Iran's nuclear program and incitement to genocide against Israel, the group announced Wednesday. "Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction and the radical regime in Tehran appears bent on acquiring the nuclear means to carry out this threat," said Rev. Malcolm Hedding, the Executive Director of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. "I'm very cautious about ever drawing comparisons to the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people, but here the analogy is getting too close for comfort, and we have decided that it's time for us to take action as Christians," Hedding added.
THE IRANIAN THREAT
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The petition, which will be carried out in the coming months among Christians in more than 100 nations around the world, will be presented to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other world leaders. Ahmadinejad, who has dismissed the Holocaust as "a myth," has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map. The petition expresses "outrage and alarm at the repeated threats of genocide against the State of Israel emanating from the government of Iran … [in] clear violation of the UN Charter and the international convention for preventing and punishing the crime of genocide," and voices "extreme disappointment at the resounding failure of the United Nations and its organs to take any serious measures to redress this hostile campaign of public incitement to genocide." "We call upon the United Nations to act without delay to censure and penalize Iran to the fullest extent possible, lest the very body founded to shield nations against such heinous crimes shamefully stands by while another disastrous genocidal attempt against the Jewish people takes shape," the petition reads.