Ahmadinejad : a powerless idiot, but a misquoted one nonetheless

Countrary to the beliefs of all too many in the West, President Ahmadinejad has no real power in Iran. All the real power is in the hands of Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader (for a good explanation look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Leader_of_Iran). Ahmadinejad is something of a figurehead, technically the head of the executive, but in reality little more than a voice of the Iranian people (who directly elect him, unlike the Superme Leader who is elected by the Assemby of Experts). So when Ahmadinejad is accused by Bolton and his likes of callinf for the genocide of Israelis, the ones should be condemned are the Iranian people (-: as Brecht said, the "people should be dissolved" :-). No doubt, the repeated statements of Ahmadinejad about something being "wiped-off" the map are a world-class blunder which, while making him popular with the Iranian, Arab and Muslim "street" do not help Iran's diplomatic relations with the rest of the world, Europe in particular.

But what did Ahmadinejad *EXACLTY* say? I found the answer in an article of Haaretz (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/801672.html). The article, which blasts the Jews who participated in the revisionist conference in Tehran, also provides plenty of interesting details about the exact words of Ahmadinejad:

Neturei Karta (a small religious faction in Israel - VS)rdi can spin it any way it pleases. By licking the boots of the Iranian president, however, the rabbis effectively endorsed Ahmedinejad's vision of the erasure of Israel.

"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom," Ahmadinejad told conference participants on Tuesday.

He went on to urge elections among "Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner."

Asked to comment on the belief that Ahmadinejad's true aim is the extermination of the Jewish state, Hirsch (a Neturei Karta representative in Teheran - VS) said this week that it just wasn't so.

Ahmadinejad "says explicitly that he does not want to annihilate Israel," Hirsch told Yedioth Ahronoth. "He wants the Zionist state to cease to exist. That doesn't mean killing everyone who's here. Just as Communism passed from the world and the people there still exist, the same thing here: Zionism will disappear and the people will remain."

So from TWO Israeli sources (Haaretz and Yedihot Ahronoth) we have a confirmation that Ahmadinejad was referring to the *POLITICAL ENTITY* of the Zionist State of Israel and not to the people. He was no more advocating any genocide than an opponent of political systems the Soviet Union or South Africa advocated the genocide of the population of these countries.

Haaretz and Yedihot Ahronoth blast the jewish participants for being part of a conference which denies the gassing of 6 millions of Jews and they blast Ahmadinejad for wanting to eliminate the Zionist state of Israel, but they do not make the claim, like Bolton does, that he wants to nuke Israel and kill all its inhabitants.

The US corporate media and the Department of State are trying (and succeeding) in shifting the debate away from the nature and legitimacy of the Zionist state to a "stop the impending genocide of Jews". Frankly, Ahmadinejad's stupid choice of words and inability to understand the predictable reaction they would trigger among the philozionist Western corporate media deserve this kind of misrepresentation. It is the Western general public who deserves to be better informed and who, yet again, is lied to.

VS