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Public Service Announcement: Associated Press consistently prints lies about Ahmadinejad · 714 days ago

For those of you who don’t know, Associated Press, the New York Times, and every other major media outlet continues to publish anti-Iranian propaganda in the form of claims that Iranian President Ahmadinejad claims the holocaust was a myth, and that Israel will be wiped off the face of the map. Both of these quotes are repeated as facts in every article I’ve seen written about him. In reality he never explicitly said either of those things, and they are also taken out of context in addition to being mistranslated on purpose.

From Associated Press:


The conference, “Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision,” was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has described the Holocaust as a “myth” and called for
Israel to be wiped off the map.

...

The conference was expected to receive a message from Ahmadinejad, who has said that the killing of six million Jews by the Nazi German regime during World War II was a “myth” and “exaggerated.”

The people who originally reported on his quotes did not have a firm grasp of Farsi. All of the English translations of the quotes written in Iranian media used different wording, as well as providing an accurate context that make his words reasonably palatable, if not agreeable to some.

From comment is free:


Again it is four short words, though the distortion is worse than in the Khrushchev case. The remarks are not out of context. They are wrong, pure and simple. Ahmadinejad never said them. Farsi speakers have pointed out that he was mistranslated. The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran’s first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” just as the Shah’s regime in Iran had vanished.

He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The “page of time” phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon. There was no implication that either Khomeini, when he first made the statement, or Ahmadinejad, in repeating it, felt it was imminent, or that Iran would be involved in bringing it about.

And from Wikipedia:


According to the Iran’s official news agency:

If the Europeans are telling the truth in their claim that they have killed six million Jews in the Holocaust during the World War II – which seems they are right in their claim because they insist on it and arrest and imprison those who oppose it, why should the Palestinian nation pay for the crime. Why have they come to the very heart of the Islamic world and are committing crimes against the dear Palestine using their bombs, rockets, missiles and sanctions. [...] The same European countries have imposed the illegally-established Zionist regime on the oppressed nation of Palestine. If you have committed the crimes so give a piece of your land somewhere in Europe or America and Canada or Alaska to them to set up their own state there. Then the Iranian nation will have no objections, will stage no rallies on the Qods Day and will support your decision.

According to United States media:

They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets. The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews, even more significant than God, religion, and the prophets, (it) deals very severely with those who deny this myth but does not do anything to those who deny God, religion, and the prophet. If you have burned the Jews, why don’t you give a piece of Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to Israel? Our question is, if you have committed this huge crime, why should the innocent nation of Palestine pay for this crime?

I love how a showing of healthy skepticism from someone without a solid education turns into an excuse to print outright lies about what they said and turn the person into a recipient of condemnation from world leaders. Ahmadinejad is an engineer, and Iran’s not exactly know for academic freedom, so most Iranians are probably misinformed about Jewish history. When authority figures tell you something is so true that it cannot even be questioned publicly, usually that’s a sign of a myth. If there’s plenty of evidence available of the details of the Holocaust, then surely there can be public discourse and debate without resorting to personal attacks?

More on this can be found at Holocaust Now.

UPDATE: Stephan Gowans over at CounterPunch just wrote an article about this Ahmadinejad slandering too.

— SWAT Team

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