Paul, the translation is wrong.

Ahmadinejad's actual words were:

"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."

Translated into English, this is:

"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time."

Nothing about maps, nothing about ethnic cleansing.

Ahmadinejad went on express hope that the Israeli state would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was not "wiped from the map" in the sense of having its peoples expelled from their territory -- rather, the regime collapsed and the people once oppressed by it now have a different form of government.

A full and fair discussion of the translation, and Ahmadinejad's (somewhat evasive) response to questions about the statement, is here:

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/norouzi.php?articleid=11025

Ahmadinejad is an implacable opponent of Zionism, but he has never publicly expressed a desire to expel or exterminate the Jewish people from the land of Israel.

European-flavoured anti-Semitism should not be mixed up with Islamic militant anti-Jewish religious sentiments... which go back 14 centuries…and are deeply ingrained in the Qur’an.

Can anyone here show us a time in history where "Palestine" was an autonomous state? In other words were there ever such a “self governing” country called Palestine?

Regardless of who or what we can blame today for the existence of the modern State of Israel – no one can charge Jews for returning to their rightful homeland.

The Israeli conflict is, and always has been, religious intolerance dating back to time immemorial. Islam is but the new player against the rightful citizens of Israel – God’s people

These "Johnny come latelys" who have come flocking to Palestine since the formation of the state of Israel have no more "right" to be there than the "Man in the Moon". I have never heard so much twaddle. Just because someone's forebears decided to embrace the Jewish faith gives them no right to take over the home of a Palestinian whose forebears have lived in the country since time immemoriam.

David

VK3AUU

I am not sure how long you have to live somewhere in order to not be a ‘Johnny come lately’ Maybe you can clear that up for me.

Can I assume you are happy to give your home back to the Aborigines who occupied this country for 40,000 years before you got here? Or have you made your own treaty with them?

I assume you are talking about the Palestinian right of return to actual houses and not a homeland as such. Since Israel, as a sovereign nation, can allow unlimited immigration if it wants.

During the 1948 war the old city of Jerusalem was taken by the Jordanian Army. Until that time, Jews and Arabs had been living together in the old city. Jews were forced to leave their homes and the area came under Jordanian control. No Palestinian state was created because the ARAB GOV”Ts of the region didn’t want the Palestinians to have one.

Nearly twenty years later, after Arab armies again tried to destroy Israel, the city of Jerusalem and the West Bank were retaken by the Israelis. This time Arab families were forced to flee.

Are you surprised that Israel doesn’t want Palestinians living in Israeli territory until an end to the conflict has been achieved?

Population increases since the formation of the state in 1948 have been mostly from the countries of the old Soviet Block, who were persecuted religiously under communist rule

Paull, the fact that I may or may not be entitled to live in Australia has no relevance to my argument about the occupation of Israel by Zionists. You are probably right, but that does not make my argument wrong. Try again.