BBC Revises Iranian Prez’s ‘Wiped Off Map’ Language

An anticolonialist blog (sent along by Joachim) says that the BBC has begun to revise its description of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s alleged threat to Israel.

[In a July 8 article,] the BBC said: "In October 2005, the Iranian
          president made a statement in which he envisaged the replacement of
          Israel with a Palestinian state. This was widely translated as a call
          for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” While he has repeated similar
          comments many times, he has insisted that Iran is not a threat to
          Israel
.
 

The BBC’s revision reflects Juan Cole’s famous retranslation of Ahmadinejad’s statement from the Persian: that Israel would vanish from the page of time. Cole, who has also been hearing revisions in the media, said lately:

Calling for a regime to vanish is not the same as calling for people to
be killed. Ahmadinejad has not to my knowledge called for anyone to be
killed.  If
Ahmadinejad is a genocidal maniac who just wants to kill Jews, then why
are there 20,000 Jews in Iran with a member of parliament in Tehran?
Couldn’t he start at home if that was what he is really about?

And for good measure, let me throw in the statement by Neturei Karta, the Orthodox Jews who oppose Zionism, after their controversial visit to the Holocaust conference in Tehran last year:

[I]n contrast to the stereotype perpetrated by the would-be
mind controllers of the media, the President’s solution to
the conflict in the Holy Land was to suggest that "a free
referendum to establish a government based on the will of the
Palestinian nation in which all Palestinians, including Jews,
Christians and Muslims will be given the chance to vote." Obviously two paths lie before the Jewish people. There
is the path of Zionism that summons Jews to a state of perpetual
war in order to "protect" Jewry and there is the
path of the Torah which calls upon us to seek peace and dialogue
with all men.To us the choice is elementary.

For myself, I have always found the Iranian threat both terrifying and confusing. Confusing because  Mahmadinejad’s belligerence has always been overlaid, in the American discourse, with Holocaust fears and hysteria; and of course Lieberman’s call to attack Iran reminds us of the neocons’ great judgment re another enemy of Israel, Iraq. The goal for all good people should be to cool off the rhetoric and try to be thoughtful about what is actually going on. That includes the understanding so lacking in the U.S., that you can oppose Zionism without being a murderer or an anti-Semite.

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