Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that he is not an anti-Semite and calls on the United States and the Islamic Republic to end their disagreement through dialogue, criticizing Iran’s involvement in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
In spite of his remarks, there was no apology for his previous remarks, which he made at a Holocaust conference in 2006, a conference that brought Holocaust deniers to Tehran. Some of the Holocaust deniers were Neturei Karta, who also denied that six million perished in the Holocaust.
Ahmadinejad said during an interview with The Nation magazine that “Trump opposes the Iranian government – can we say that he is anti-Muslim?”
During his interview, he added, “The violations of the Zionists regime were also condemned by the United Nations. If someone else says these things, does that make him an anti-Semite? You are a Jew and I am Muslim, and we are taking” he told The Nation. “Are we fighting? Are we at war?” he added.
The former president continued. “I am opposed to acts that violate the rights of others. It does not matter who commits them.”
He criticized Iran’s role in the Syrian civil war, a war with Israeli air strike on Iranian bases and Iranian missiles fired at Israeli territory. In a direct response to Iran’s involvement in Syria, he said, “no one has the right to interfere in the affairs of others.”
Ahmadinejad’s aides refused a request from the interviewer to address his remarks against the State of Israel, remarks made while he was president of Iran, when he called for the destruction of the State of Israel.
Iran’s president, who once described the Holocaust as a “myth,” hosted the 2006 conference meant to question the scale of the Nazi genocide of Jews — and whether it even happened.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad initiated the two-day Holocaust conference in Tehran, insisting its purpose was not to deny the Holocaust, but merely to discuss it in an “unrestricted atmosphere”.
Ahmadinejad has repeatedly expressed anti-Semitic opinions, said he didn’t believe in the well-documented genocide of millions of Jews during the Second World War and has repeatedly called for the state of Israel to be “wiped off the map.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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3 Responses
He “denies that he is not an anti-semite.” That means that he is saying that he is an antisemite! (When you deny something, you are saying that it’s not true, and A is DENYING that he is NOT an antisemite.)
“Denies that he is not an anti-Semite”
The family was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.
His family changed its name to Ahmadinejad probably when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.
The Sabourjians, according to reports, traditionally hail from Aradan, Ahmadinejad’s birthplace, and the name derives from “weaver of the Sabour”, the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia.