Tells Wallace One Thing - Iranians Another!

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad explicitly called for Israel's “death” - just days before assuring American journalist Mike Wallace that he merely wants to move the Jewish state to Germany.

Mike Wallace, the retired host of the popular “60 Minutes” weekly television program, interviewed the Iranian president last week. Wallace returned from the interview describing Ahmadinejad in glowing terms and insisting he was not an anti-Semite. The interview is set to air Sunday night.

“He doesn't like the United States for the reason that it's supporting the Zionist entity - he doesn't talk about Israel,” Wallace told radio host Sean Hannity.

“So you don't think he's an anti-Semite?” asked Hannity.

“He himself, an anti-Semite, an anti-Jew?” Wallace responded.

“Yes,” said Hannity.

“No, I don't,” Wallace said.

Asked by Hannity what Ahmadinejad meant when he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” Wallace said: “Yes, he says ‘wiped off the map,’ and of course I asked him over and over about that. He says in effect, ‘It's perfectly sensible that, if there is a Holocaust - and let's buy the fact that there was a Holocaust – [we ask] where did the Holocaust take place? Did it take place in an Arab neighborhood? Did it take place in Jerusalem? No. It took place in Germany. Then it seems to me, under those circumstances, take Israel, the Zionist entity,’ he called it, ‘move it to Germany. Move it to Europe. That's where it happened.’”

The Iranian President himself, however, when speaking to his own people, seems to have a different sort of end of the Jewish state in mind. Ahmadinejad addressed a large crowd of Iranians just a week prior to his interview with Wallace, in which he not only led a chant of “Death to Israel,” but explained that he was not alone in such a pursuit.

“I hereby declare that this sinister regime [Israel] is the banner of Satan. It is the banner of the Great Satan,” Ahmadinejad is seen saying in a speech broadcast by the Iranian News Channel (IRINN) on August 2. “From the southernmost point in South America to the easternmost point in Asia, all the people are shouting a single cry. With placards in their hands and clenched fists, they shout: ‘Death to Israel.’”

At that point the crowd chants, “Death to Israel. Death to Israel.”

Arutz Sheva
08.14.06