Factoid (n) : "A piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented
in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then
accepted as true because of frequent repetition." - Answers.com
The
assertion that the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wished to "wipe Israel
off the map" is the official candidate for factoid of the millenium. In an era
of total information recall it is astounding that this absolute and utter
fabrication has received and continues to command so much mileage on the
information superhighway. The "wipe Israel off the map" attribution is a
deliberately propagandistic mistranslation of an Ahmadinejad speech whose
repetition corresponds more to the wish-fulfillment of political hawks than any
observed reality. What is more, a 10yr old with internet access and a modicum of
journalistic savvy would be able to tell you this.
On October 25th, 2005
at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran, newly elected Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at a conference entitled "The
World Without Zionism." It was in this speech that he quoted the words of the
late Ayatollah Khomeini which were fated to be not only mistranslated but
falsely attributed to him. The exact quote in Farsi is as follows:
"Imam
ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv
shavad."
As every Farsi scholar whose opinion has been solicited has
subsequently declared this passage is most accurately translated word for word
as follows;
"Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime)
ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from
page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from)".
Or, to put it more clearly;
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of
time." There is obviously a vast difference between calling for a nation, people
or country to be wiped from the face of the earth - basically an act of genocide
- and the call for the end of an ideology associated with a particular regime.
Neither Ahmadinejad (nor Khomeini) wanted anything wiped from 'the map' because
the Persian word for map "nagsheh" is not contained anywhere in the original
Farsi quote. In the context of the argument which Ahmadinejad was putting forth
he says that the "Zionist regime" was imposed as a strategic bridgehead to
ensure Western hegemony over the region and its assets. Whether or not you agree
with his historical analysis you cannot go on to aver based on this evidence
alone that he is calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.
He
is simply borrowing approvingly from Khomeini a quote to reinforce his argument
that an aggressive, non-accommodating Israeli regime which repeatedly tramples
on Palestinian rights must surely vanish from 'the page of time'. He goes on to
bolster his case by saying that other seemingly invincible regimes have since
collapsed and crumbled; the Soviet Union, the Iran of the U.S. backed Shah and
Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
It was in fact the Islamic Republic News Agency
who reported from the "World without Zionism" conference who were responsible
for the inflammatory "wiped off the map" misquote and this line, which made such
good copy, was gleefully picked up by all the major Western outlets such as
Time, CNN, Fox, the BBC (as well as Al Jazeera) without any attempt to
doublecheck its accuracy. The mistranslated quote has since been spread
worldwide and has been repeated ad infinitum by journalists,
broadcasters, pundits and politicians usually as a preamble to justifying
further sanctions and calling for an end to the Iranian nuclear enrichment
programme. President Bush said the comments represented "a specific threat to
Israel" and in a speech in Cleveland in March 2006 vowed he would resort to war
to protect Israel because, "the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated
objective to destroy our ally Israel."
An October 2006 memo released by
the Israeli lobby group AIPAC warns that; "Ahmadinejad and other top Iranian
leaders are issuing increasingly belligerent statements threatening to destroy
the United States, Europe and Israel." Ariel Sharon has demanded that Iran be
expelled from the UN for calling for Israel's destruction and Shimon Peres in
turn has threatened to wipe Iran off the map. Benjamin Netanyahu went a
step further by warning that Iran was "preparing another Holocaust for the
Jewish state" and that Ahmadinejad should be tried for war crimes for inciting
genocide.
Tony Blair meanwhile expressed his "revulsion" whilst mooting
the possibility that it might be necessary to attack Iran. As recently as the
presidential debates both John McCain and Sarah Palin repeated the misquote as
justification for not sitting down for talks "without preconditions" with the
Iranian leadership. Neither of them were subsequently corrected by either Joe
Biden or Barack Obama whom we must assume either agreed with their assessment or
were unaware that the quote was falsely attributed or were aware but simply
didn't wish to seem too dove-like given their position on troop withdrawal from
Iraq. It is difficult to believe that with the resources at their disposal these
politicians were unaware that the "wipe Israel off the map" quote was falsely
attributed and taken out of context and yet they are happy to feed the myth
themselves by repeating the falsehood on every available occasion.
We
need to keep a close eye on this factoid. A politician's willingness to repeat
it is a useful barometer of the truth - if and when the war drums begin to beat
again.
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