Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday Europe was stirring up hatred in the Middle East by supporting Israel and warned it “may get hurt” if anger in the region boiled over.
“You should believe that this regime (Israel) cannot last and has no more benefit to you. What benefit have you got in supporting this regime, except the hatred of the nations?” he said in a speech broadcast on state radio.
“We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbours of the nations in this region. We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt.”
And this isn’t going to get Europeans thinking: “Bring it on!”. 🙂
meh, they are too busy screwing together IKEA junk to even hear the drums of war.
Europe supports Israel?
Boom!
What a MOPE! No wonder the Middle East gets treated like a Third World region.
It just goes to show you that you can give the terrorist a little money and a world stage and deep down inside he’s still a terrorist.
It’s only a matter of time before they develop a nuke, and send their little terrorist lackeys out somewhere to pop it off. I hope the current occupant of the Whitehouse has the stones to Nuke every single one of Iran’s nuclear research sites in retaliation.
Don
Same rhetoric for years. Several European Nations has been using Israel to balance the growing militant Islamic movements. They also play the Arab states against Israel when convenient. This chess game hasn’t been going very well of late.
He talks like a supervillian…
Sounds like simple posturing for his own domestic constituency to me. The Iranian regime has to CONTINUOUSLY reinforce the notion that there are big huge scary Western enemies hurting Muslims, while simultaneously signaling that, you know, the Iranian regime has a plan.
If they don’t do this, and people start looking at how corrupt and oppressive their own governments are, the jig is up and they lose power. That holds true in many many places in the Middle East, and dare I say it, here as well.
Also, sub rosa he may be telling European leaders a very different story.
He talks like a supervillian…
Am I the only one thinking Europe will repeat the mistakes of the past and end up at his mercy, just like they were with the last supervillian or our era. Ah, but I forgot we’re the stupid ones and Europeans are enlightened.
we maybe far away, but our military/nuclear arsenal has a really long reach.
Since when does Europe support Israel?
#11
I ask as well.
As far as I know, Europe has been PLO supporters for at least 20 years.
#12
That’s true, and should come as a surprise to anyone following European politics.
Please, most Americans haven’t a clue about European politics. They’re as fractured as we are on the Middle East.
I think this rhetoric is perhaps more intended to stir the growing Islamic populations in Europe. Hopefully goofballs like Ahmadinejad and Chavez will fall out of favor within the next decade.
#14
“…most Americans haven’t a clue about European politics….”
That’s probably true Smartalix. But I have lived there for many years, and trust me, Arafat was given all the benefit of doubt he needed, while the Israelis always were the ones that murdered and attacked.
When this attitude is the official take from public TV and even politicians, it has tremendous effect. The result is a public all psyched against Israel.
On a totally unrelated note; Yikes, gotta love Firefox 2.0 and the spell check 🙂
Why don’t we migrate the Jews from Israel to a new promised land? Let’s give them the state of New Jersey. We kick out everybody in NJ and grant all the land to the Jews as a sovereign nation. The U.S. will become 49 states. Problem fixed. We could also transport their holy sites by dissasembling them brick by brick and reasembling them in New Jersey. Don’t laugh, London Bridge is in America. Why did we have to uproot the Palestinians by taking away their land to give it to someone else. No, I’m not saying that Jews don’t deserve a nation, I’m saying let’s give them OUR land, not some 3rd world country that can’t fight back Uncle Sam (the Bully Uncle Sam).
#17, you are right.
People in the West don’t understand or don’t want to understand that most Israelis are Europeans and that most of the migrated to Palestine only after WW-II.
Arabs had been living there for more than 2000 years but their lands have been stolen by squatters from outside.
What you have in Israel is the world’s largest ghetto. It is nothing to be proud of. Jews should live in the land they originally belonged to. It is the duty of their original Christian neighbours to see that Jews are welcome.
#19. Actually some of it was stolen during the 1948 and 67 wars, but a LOT of it was bought by Jewish settlers. Ever since the begining of the Zionist movement, Arab nationalists were complaining about Arab landowners selling land to Jewish buyers.
When the United Nations divided Palestine, Jews owned 7% of the land but were given 55% of the land.
#23. really? cite please. and please note that Arabs could stay in Israel if they saw fit, as many now do. there was a combination of voluntary departures and involuntary expulsions that created the refugee crisis.
20,
politicians all over the world play to the gallery. Chavez does it just as Bush does it.
The good thing about Chavez is that he puts oil profits to benefit the people of Venezuela. It may not make economic sense in the long term but at least he has the common sense to know that allowing foreign firms to stealing his country’s wealth will not help his people either.
Chavez is angry with the U.S. because opposition politicians, military generals, journalists are taking orders from the U.S. embassy.
In Ukraine, the U.S. seems to have spent billions of dollars – at least that’s what the USAID Yellowbook for 2001 says – $1.7 billion in one contract for Freedom House.
I asked the Center for Public Integrity (not quite sure of the name) about this and they said this sort of money is not available for a country like Ukraine.
This sort of money is not available for the fight against poverty or AIDS.
U.S. government claims they are “helping democracy” but what happens is bribes are paid to politicians, journalists, protestors, pollsters and others so that when the pro-West candidates wins or if he loses it can be claimed that the election was fraudulent.
If people like the Iranian President rail against the U.S., this is a big reason. Iran would have been a democracy had not the U.S. and Britain brought down democratically elected Dr. Mossdegh in a coup to install monarchy.
Prior to the coup, Iran was a pioneer in democracy in the Middle East. By installing monarchy, the West paved way for the Islamic Revolution.
Doug,
I wrote the article long ago and I have no references now with me but a search on Google brings up a lot of results.
The numbers vary but all of them are single digits – % of land owned by Jews at the time of partition.
Here is an Israeli guy Ami Isserof
“Partition – The United Nations Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended that Palestine be divided into an Arab state and a Jewish state. The commission called for Jerusalem to be put under international administration The UN General Assembly adopted this plan on Nov. 29, 1947 as UN Resolution (GA 181), owing to support of both the US and the Soviet Union, and in particular, the personal support of US President Harry S. Truman. Many factors contributed to Truman’s decision to support partition, including domestic politics and intense Zionist lobbying, no doubt. Truman wrote in his diary, however, “I think the proper thing to do, and the thing I have been doing, is to do what I think is right and let them all go to hell.”
The Jews accepted the UN decision, but the Arabs rejected it. The resolution divided the land into two approximately equal portions in a complicated scheme with zig-zag borders. The intention was an economic union between the two states with open borders. At the time of partition, slightly less than half the land in all of Palestine was owned by Arabs, slightly less than half was “crown lands” belonging to the state, and about 8% was owned by Jews or the Jewish Agency. There were about 600,000 Jews in Palestine, almost all living in the areas allotted to the Jewish state or in the internationalized zone of Jerusalem, and about 1.2 million Arabs. The allocation of land by Resolution 181 was intended to produce two areas with Jewish and Arab majorities respectively. Jerusalem and environs were to be internationalized. The relatively large Jewish population of Jerusalem and the surroundings, about 100,000, were geographically cut off from the rest of the Jewish state, separated by a relatively large area, the “corridor,” allotted to the Palestinian state. The corridor included the populous Arab towns of Lod and Ramla and the smaller towns of Qoloniyeh, Emaus, Qastel and others that guarded the road to Jerusalem.”
24
“please note that Arabs could stay in Israel if they saw fit, as many now do”
It’s their land. Nobody else decided if they can stay or not.
Sure, there are Arabs live in Israel as its citizens but as second class citizens. During the recent war with Lebanon, Jews had underground bunkers and emergency care but Arab citizens were left to fend for themselve. No warning sirens no ambulances. Nothing.
The fact that oil profits spent on social causes has earned a lot of goodwill and support for Chavez has been well recognized by the international media.
There is something about the oil industry that you must know.
Oil marketers, not producers, make the cleanest cut in profits.
Saudi Aramco maybe the world’s largest oil production company in the world but it is Big Oil (Western oil companies), which gets to market the oil.
Chavez can call Bush a devil because he very well knows that U.S. has put its tail between its legs and come with bowl (or barrel) in to buy oil from Venezuela, just as it did with Saddam when Iraq was under sanctions.
Americans, kid themselves, when they talk about “funding” these regimes. If the U.S. will not buy oil from them, there are others to fill the slot.
Pedro, I think the $16 billion figure is an exaggeration.
About Cubans in Venezuela: More than soldiers, there are a lots of Cuban doctors who are now working among the poor and needy in Venezuela under Chavez social benefit programmes.
Even in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), where the earthquake occurred, it was Cuban doctors more than others who earned all round praise.
High oil prices is the reason why Chavez is still standing. Otherwise, his social programmes would have collapsed. Economic sabotage and civil unrest abetted by the U.S. would have succeeded.
There is no depth that U.S. government will not stoop to. In Cuba, they introduced various forms of pestilence to induce crop failures, expecting that this would make Castro less popular. In Vietnam, they used chemical agents such as Agent Orange to destroy vegetation and deny the Viet Cong forest cover. Fresh on every ones mind, you have Iraq, particularly Fallujah and Abu Ghraib. Don’t forget Guantanamo.
So, if Chavez says something bad about the U.S. I will believe it blindly. Bush is not the devil of course. But if the Devil was the U.S. president, he may behave like Bush.
Finally, Pedro, I think you should start reading the Guardian newspaper.
#27. “It’s their land. Nobody else decided if they can stay or not.”
yes, many Arabs decided that they could stay in Israel.
“Sure, there are Arabs live in Israel as its citizens but as second class citizens. During the recent war with Lebanon, Jews had underground bunkers and emergency care but Arab citizens were left to fend for themselve. No warning sirens no ambulances. Nothing. ”
I would rather be an Israeli Arab than a Jew in an Arab country. Oh, wait – ALL of them were killed, fled or were driven out.
The average Israeli Arab no doubt has more rights and a better standard of living than the average Egyptian or Syrian. For example, the Arab Israeli political party sometimes forms a coalition with Labor when they are in power. The opposition parties in Syria .. oh, I forgot – there aren’t any. But in Egypt, the challenger for the presidency … aw, shucks, there I go again …
I haven’t noticed an Israeli Arab scramble to join their bretheren in Palestine, either.
When it comes right down to it – two state solution, Israel and Palestine, both of which have the right to exist. The only real question is some zigs and zags of the border.
32.
About: “yes, many Arabs decided that they could stay in Israel.”
That one of the many mistakes I made when I was typing. This is what I meant.
“It’s their (Arabs’) land. Nobody else can decide if they can stay or not.”
Sure, Israel can build an utopia but they should have built on their own land. It does not matter if Arabs were still uncivilized and hanging from trees, their land is theirs. Outsiders cannot take control of it.
About Israel’s prosperity: Why is Israel the biggest recipient of foreign aid from the U.S? Aren’t Israelis prosperous?
About democracy in Middle East: Why is Egypt and Jordan right next to Israel on the list of biggest recipients of aid money? Is it protection money? Money to keep Islamists from coming to power in these countries?
Why is not the U.S. talking about democracy in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait?
People should live with dignity. That is more important than money.
If Palestinian Arabs leave Israel then who is the winner?
Pedro, I had often wondered why some misguided people in countries like Ukraine walk in the trap set by the U.S.
About the oil business, I left out one more important thing: Oil producers also invest their profits in, guess what, American securities, dollars, and assets. So, it is not just Big Oil but the entire Wall Street lot that is interested in Western control of oil producing countries.
32.
[I would rather be an Israeli Arab than a Jew in an Arab country. Oh, wait – ALL of them were killed, fled or were driven out. ]
The Jew became a bad word in Arab lexicon only after what they did to the people of Palestine.
Yet, there are Jews in Iraq and Iran. Iranians are not Arabs but hey they are just as bad!
Dissolution of the Jewish and the establishment of Palestine Arab state in its place is the only solution. Jews should be allowed to go back to their countries and be able live in peace and dignity wherever they are from.
The two state solution confers rights that are not due.
And, Pedro obviously reads news put out by organizations run by U.S. PR companies. For an example in Russia, you have MosNews.com