Mick Hartley

Here’s Ahmadinejad, on Iranian TV earlier this month:

The Western governments that carry the standard of secularism, anti-religion, and lack of respect for the rights of the peoples, and for the followers of all Abrahamic religions consider themselves the defense of the Zionist regime to be the most sacred value in the world. Zionism and the existence of the Zionist regime are so important to them that they do not even allow the raising of questions about the preparations and pretexts that led to the establishment of this regime. […]

In some of these superpowers, anyone who runs for president must first officially declare that he is committed to supporting Zionism and the Zionist regime, and he must prove this by his actions. […]

If any country in Latin America, Africa, or Asia wants to sign an agreement with any Western country, it must first recognize the Zionist regime, support it, and maintain economic ties with it. […]

They have created a certain organization, something sacred, a sacred phenomenon no one can oppose. They have all committed themselves to supporting this. This [Zionism] is the axis around which they unite. As a result, all the wars, animosity, and crimes of the Western countries have moved to other countries. They have moved these wars away from themselves, and by uniting around this [Zionist] regime, they have transferred the wars to other peoples. […]

The leaders of several Western superpowers constitute the Zionist party. They are the ones who pull the strings. They created something called Zionism, and invented the so-called “oppression” of the Jews. They themselves created the background for this, and today as well, it is they who are running the show. […]

After World War II, they invented the so-called “genocide of the Jews.” Throughout Europe and in countries under the control of the Western superpowers, they established an anti-Jewish movement. By means of propaganda and a certain psychological atmosphere, and by using the issue of the so-called “crematoria,” they created the sense that the European Jews were oppressed. They used the pretext that some Jews were oppressed and were harmed during World War II and by the wave of anti-Judaism in order to lay the foundations for the establishment of the Zionist regime. Later, of course, they called it “the massacre of the Jews,” and only after World War II did they call it “the Holocaust.” They made this issue more sacred than all the sacred things in the world. […]

Politicians who dream at night of reconciliation with the Zionist regime should know that the Palestinian people is steadfast, the Iranian people and the free peoples of the world are steadfast, and they will not rest for a day until the entire land of Palestine is liberated.

The man has something of an obsession with Jews. A not unfamiliar pathology, as Tony B was reminding us just last week. And when he talks of liberating Palestine, it strikes me as unlikely that he has in mind a long series of negotiations and compromises leading to a one-state solution of Jews and Arabs living in harmony.