Many news sources repeated the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) statement that Ahmadinejad had demanded that "Israel must be wiped off the map",[5][6] an English idiom which means to "cause a place to stop existing",[7] or to "obliterate totally",[8] or "destroy completely".[9]
Ahmadinejad's phrase was " بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود " according to the text published on the President's Office's website, and was a quote of Ayatollah Khomeini.[10]
According to Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, Ahmadinejad's statement should be translated as:
The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).[11]
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translates the phrase similarly, as "be eliminated from the pages of history."[12]
According to Cole, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to 'wipe Israel off the map' because no such idiom exists in Persian". Instead, "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."[13]
On June 2, 2006 The Guardian columnist and foreign correspondent Jonathan Steele published an article based on this line of reasoning.[14]
That's your article- so okay, I'll buy it- Ahmadinejad never said he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map." He said he wanted to wipe it from pages of history. Plus that was not even close to the only speech in which he said threatening things about Israel - http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0261250620080603
And um, what about the times he has denied the Holocaust. That's kind of crappy too.
I'm so sorry, but is that really enough of a basis to say America is demonizing him for nothing?
Many news sources repeated the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) statement that Ahmadinejad had demanded that "Israel must be wiped off the map",[5][6] an English idiom which means to "cause a place to stop existing",[7] or to "obliterate totally",[8] or "destroy completely".[9]
Ahmadinejad's phrase was " بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود " according to the text published on the President's Office's website, and was a quote of Ayatollah Khomeini.[10]
According to Juan Cole, a University of Michigan Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, Ahmadinejad's statement should be translated as:
The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).[11]
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translates the phrase similarly, as "be eliminated from the pages of history."[12]
According to Cole, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to 'wipe Israel off the map' because no such idiom exists in Persian". Instead, "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse."[13]
On June 2, 2006 The Guardian columnist and foreign correspondent Jonathan Steele published an article based on this line of reasoning.[14]
(yeah I cited wikipedia, but it's very well sourced!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel
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That's your article- so okay, I'll buy it- Ahmadinejad never said he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map." He said he wanted to wipe it from pages of history. Plus that was not even close to the only speech in which he said threatening things about Israel - http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0261250620080603
And um, what about the times he has denied the Holocaust. That's kind of crappy too.
I'm so sorry, but is that really enough of a basis to say America is demonizing him for nothing?
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