Hoenlein: Ahmadinejad Is Irrelevant

Those focusing on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as being the important political figure in Iran are off base. That’s the feeling of Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice President of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, as articulated in the Yated Ne’eman newspaper in the US in an interview with Hoenlein published before Sukkos.

With elections scheduled for the presidency of Iran, Ahmadinejad “will be off the scene in a few months,” says Hoenlein, “and Khamenei would not let him run again. The divisions there are very deep.”

It is for this reason, says Hoenlein, that “we should not talk about Ahmadinejad and we should not demonstrate against Ahmadinejad, because he is not important. Khamenei is the critical person. If we make a big deal about Ahmadinejad, when he moves off the scene, people will delay and say, ‘They got a new president… You have to give it a chance… You have to work with him… We have to see…’”

If Khamenei is calling the shots, the regime policy will stay the same, said Hoenlein.

“Putting a new face on it is irrelevant,” he explained. “For people who always press about certain things, it’s important to understand that to focus on Ahmadinejad now will, in a few months, prove counterproductive.”

President Shimon Peres visiting the sukkah of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef on Tuesday

President Shimon Peres described Iran’s president as “a modern-day Haman,” during a meeting with Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef on Tuesday.

Despite comparing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the ancient Persian official who sought to eradicate all the Jews in the empire in the fifth century BCE, Peres said that “we would be happy to be rid of him through non-military means.”

Peres’s comments came during a holiday visit to Yosef’s sukkah. The meeting was part of the president’s yearly visits to the sukkot of Israel’s current and past chief rabbis.

In an early September meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi, Peres compared Ahmadinejad to another enemy of the Jews saying that “not since Hitler has there been a leader like Ahmadinejad, who openly calls for the annihilation of a people.”

Last week, while decorating the sukkah at the President’s Residence, Peres blasted Ahmadinejad’s speech at the UN, in which the Iranian leader claimed that the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel is only 60-70 years old.

Peres said that the speech was proof of the Iranian leader’s “profound historical ignorance” and that Ahmadinejad needs to be taught a history lesson about the ancient Persian king Koresh, who “more than 2,500 years ago allowed the Jews … to return to Israel and rebuild their home.”

A Hitler Wannabe Visits New York By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Autumn is here and with it the annual trip that makes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad positively giddy. The Iranian President gets to leave the country whose citizens he mowed down in the streets to seize power and travel to New York to show the Jews they have no power. Lecturing each year from the rostrum of the United Nations is Ahmadinejad’s equivalent of popping Viagra, a yearly demonstration of his own virility amid utter Jewish impotence. For all Ahmadinejad’s protestations of a Zionist world conspiracy and how we Jews control everything, he is well aware of just how weak we Jews are and he loves to rub it in our faces. Like clockwork he is here in late September each year to call for the destruction of the Jewish State right smack in the heart of Jew York, a city that has more Jews in it than any other on earth. He accomplishes the unique feat of calling for a new holocaust while simultaneously denying the original ever took place. And do you know what the Jews do about it? Nothing.

OK, not quite. There is a protest or two featuring a few hundred brave souls with a megaphone and I plan to join them. But Jewish economic power cannot stop the perfidious Warwick hotel from hosting Ahmadinejad and his retinue. The billionaire Jewish mayor of New York cannot stop him from landing in his city and touring its landmarks. And the 2.5 million Jews of New York cannot stop his motorcade from moving about the city like he owns the place. How helpless must a people be to watch someone calling for their extermination in a city where they are so entrenched and numerous.

I often wish that we Jews could produce a leader with the courage of Martin Luther King. When King’s people – our fellow Americans whose only crime was to be born with a darker shade of skin – were treated like garbage in the South, King shut the place down. He boycotted their buses, staged sit-ins at their cafes, sent freedom riders to coopt their transportation routes, took over their highways with long marches, and even sent fearless children into the fangs of dangerous canines, all while being pushed back by fire hoses operating at maximum strength. He ended up forfeiting his life so that his people could be treated with dignity and equality.

Contrast that with near inaction of 2.5 million Jews in the greater New York metropolitan area who this year, on the holy day of Yom Kippur itself, will bear witness to the spectacle of a man calling for the genocide of all our Jewish brothers in Israel. Amid his call for the annihilation of the Jewish state, we Jews don’t shut down the streets where he travels, don’t impede the buses that pass in front of his hotel, and don’t call for an economic boycott of the hotels with the chutzpa to host a mass murderer. No, we go about our business, content to allow an aspiring Hitler invade this town while he separately desecrates the memory of six million martyrs who have already paid with their lives for the earlier Hitler that the world similarly did not take seriously.

And still some people believe that the Jews control the banks, the media, and Hollywood. It turns out they control nothing at all.

Even as we witness an Israeli Prime Minister having to humiliate himself by pleading for a meeting with the American president, Obama has no fear snubbing Netanyahu, so confident is he of there being no price to pay from Jewish voters. I have even heard more than a few pro-Israel activists say that Bibi needlessly pokes his finger in Obama’s eye, which is a strange allegation to make against the leader of a nation who had one third its number gassed just 70 years ago. Surely one can forgive that leader for pushing hard to insist on American red lines in the Iranian nuclear program.

Lest we forget, it was not the Israeli Embassy that was taken over by Khomeini’s hoodlums in 1979 and it was not Israeli diplomats who were held hostage for 444 days. No, it was the United States of America, the country that Iran hates above all others that experienced the wrath of Iran’s mullahs. And it is the United States which is the foremost target of an Iranian nuclear program that speeds to the production of a bomb that is squarely aimed at a nation that stands for the freedom and liberty that Iran so fanatically hates.

I. Cotler - Ahmadinejad: Criminal non grata The Iranian president, who should be in the dock of the accused, will instead be given a podium. IRWIN COTLER

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrives in New York to address the UN General Assembly, a man who should be in the dock of the accused will instead be given an international podium – a cruel parody of law and justice that will put us on the wrong side of history.

Ahmadinejad will enter the US despite being inadmissible under American law. He will address the UN General Assembly despite being in violation of its UN Charter and international law. And he will be indulged by universities, institutes and the media, thereby sanitizing his crimes and mocking the suffering of the Iranian people.

Let there be no mistake about it: A person who pursues the most destructive of weaponry in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, who incites to genocide, who is complicit in crimes against humanity, who is engaged in a massive repression of the human rights of his own citizens, who assaults the basic tenants of the UN Charter – such a person should be indicted by this international body; rather than have it provide a pulpit.

Simply put, this charade – repeated annually since 2007 – ignores and undermines basic principles of domestic, international and humanitarian law.

Indeed, Ahmadinejad belongs on the US “watchlist” – those who “aid terrorists... persecute religious minorities... or are prohibited from entering the US.

The evidence of Ahmadinejad’s criminality on each of these counts is compelling.

In the matter of aiding terrorists, the US State Department has once again named Iran as the leading state sponsor of international terrorism. In particular, Ahmadinejad’s Iran recruits, trains, finances, instigates and arms its terrorist proxies, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, whose platforms and policies are themselves replete with genocidal calls for the destruction of Israel.

Indeed, Iran and Hezbollah have their footprints not only in the recent attack on Israelis in Bulgaria, but in terrorist attacks spanning five continents in 2012 alone.

Moreover, Iran is complicit in the international criminality of Bashar Assad’s Syrian regime. This criminal support includes sending military equipment, munitions and surveillance technology – involving also Iranian al-Quds special forces – all to help sustain the brutality of the Assad regime.

In the matter of religious persecution, one need only recall Iran’s massive domestic repression, particularly targeting religious minorities, especially the Baha’i – Iran’s largest such group – whose members are subject to harassment, repression, torture, imprisonment and execution.

Women, students, workers, dissidents, journalists and academics – and those who would defend them – are also routinely persecuted. Moreover, Iran leads the world in per capita executions and the execution of minors – as well as in the imprisonment of journalists and bloggers.

In the matter of incitement to genocide, the evidence here is particularly compelling and disturbing, as Ahmadinejad’s genocidal incitement is the terrifying and vilifying context for Iran’s illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Last month alone, Ahmadinejad called to “remove the Zionist black stain from the human society,” adding that “the very existence of Israel is an insult to humankind and an affront to all world nations,” and requiring the wiping out of this “scarlet letter from the... forehead of humanity.”

Indeed, this state-sanctioned culture of hate and incitement to genocide has been persistent, pervasive and pernicious.

The 21st century began with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calling for “the annihilation of the Jewish state.” It was followed by the parading in the streets of Tehran of a Shihab-3 missile draped in the emblem “Wipe Israel off the map, as the Imam says.”

It has continued with the use of epidemiological metaphors referring to Jews as “filthy bacteria,” and Israel as “a cancer that must be removed,” reminiscent of the Nazis calling the Jews “vermin” and the Rwandan Hutus calling the Tutsis “cockroaches,” the whole as prologue to and justification for a genocide foretold.

Instead of being granted a podium at the UN General Assembly, Ahmadinejad should be the object of a criminal indictment.

Simply put, a person who has already committed the crime of “direct and public incitement to genocide” in violation of international law – punishable whether or not a genocide has occurred – who is complicit in crimes against humanity both at home and abroad – has no place at the UN. Let alone at its most distinguished podium.

Indeed, how can a UN forum host one who openly and avowedly seeks the destruction of a member state? As UN Secretary-General Ban Kimoon said recently in Tehran, “I strongly reject threats by any member state to destroy another or outrageous attempts to deny historical facts, such as the Holocaust” – yet, Ahmadinejad continues to call for the destruction of Israel while denying the Holocaust.

Despite the clear and compelling evidence of Ahmadinejad’s inadmissibility to the US under both domestic and international law, he is likely to return to the UN because of the 1947 Headquarters Agreement – a UN treaty wherein the US agreed not to impede access of representatives of member states to UN headquarters in New York.

While this agreement is said to trump American domestic law, the fact is that the Vienna Law of Treaties affirms that jus cogens – the preemptory norms of international law – such as incitement to genocide and crimes against humanity – override any treaty. Ahmadinejad’s crimes are such jus cogens crimes. The Headquarters Agreement should not avail and must not prevail.

Moreover, Article 99 of the UN Charter grants the secretary-general the power to refer issues that “threaten the maintenance of international peace and security” to the UN Security Council. This can – and should – be done, as surely there is no greater threat to international peace and security today than Ahmadinejad’s Iran.

Member states should call on the secretary-general to take proactive measures to ensure the UN does not provide a forum to one who callously and deliberately defies, mocks and violates the principles and decisions of the UN and its respective agencies, its charter, and American law itself.

If the US nonetheless allows him entry, Ahmadinejad’s travel should be restricted to only those parts of New York under UN authority, the Iranian Mission and the airport. The US government is not obliged to treat him as an innocent tourist; rather, it should isolate and shun him as the war criminal he is.

Even if none of these options is exercised, there are ways to break this cycle of impunity and hold the Iranian leadership accountable for its crimes.

The international community should act in solidarity with the oppressed people of Iran by providing neither shield nor platform for their oppressors.

Countries should fulfill their responsibilities under international law – including the Genocide Convention – and refer the Iranian leaders’ criminal incitement to genocide to appropriate UN agencies for investigation and sanction.

It is astonishing that this criminal incitement has yet to be addressed by any UN body, though the UN finds it fit to give Ahmadinejad a podium this week.

Moreover, inter-state complaints against Iran could be initiated at the International Court of Justice, while the Iranian leadership could be made to answer for its crimes at the International Criminal Court.

Similarly, Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders should be placed on a watchlist by concerned countries, preventing their entrance as “inadmissible persons.”

Finally, enhanced comprehensive, consequential and targeted multilateral sanctions must be adopted – and enforced – not only for Iran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons, but also for its sponsorship of international terrorism and massive violations of human rights.

History shows that sustained international juridical efforts can bring dictators like Milosevic and Pinochet to justice.

Ahmadinejad must be held to account for his criminality – not rewarded for it. Our choice is clear: We can either act or be on the wrong side of history.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Israel

NY Post's gift basket to Ahmadinejad - Shalom & welcome to NYC

Feel the love, Mahmoud — and taste the gefilte fish.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived last night at the Warwick Hotel in Midtown in advance of his annual hate-spewing address to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday — and The Post tried to deliver him a gift fit for a despot.

The anti-Semite’s special welcome basket — from New Yorkers with love — included such locally procured goodies as Gold’s Borscht, Manischewitz Gefilte Fish and smoked whitefish from the world-famous Murray’s Sturgeon House on the Upper West Side.

If Ahmadinejad (pronounced: I’m a dinner jacket) needed midnight munchies during his visit to this infidel city, there were also plenty of H&H bagels, onion bialys and Zabar’s cream cheese.

To cheer up the sourpuss hatemonger, there’s a $125 comped ticket to the off-Broadway play “Old Jews Telling Jokes” — booked in his name. It just might take the edge off his bloodthirsty desire to develop nuclear weapons and wipe Israel off the map.

Anticipating the schlumpy, unshaven dictator’s penchant for wearing the same suit all week long, we thoughtfully included “I ♥ NY” undies and a stick of Irish Spring deodorant, to keep the flies away.

For those quiet moments away from spinning centrifuges, he can relax with a good book. But since it’s likely he can’t read the truth about 9/11, which he condemns as “a big lie,” there’s a picture book, “The 9/11 Report,” a graphic adaptation by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon.

There’s also a bobblehead Statue of Liberty to keep on his night table, a teddy bear to cuddle with during those cold Persian nights and a 9/11 American-flag refrigerator magnet that he can stick on the minibar.

The Holocaust denier might want to learn something about the subject by taking in a tour of downtown’s Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. We packed a brochure.

Of course, a basket of cheer wouldn’t be complete without a card — the little kitty on the cover might melt his evil heart — and New Yorkers lined up to pen their personal greetings.

“Happy [Jewish] New Year 5773. Available for counseling if you need it,” wrote psychologist Alan Hifler, 64, outside Zabar’s deli on the Upper West Side.

“Welcome to New York and the USA! Home of all that is good!” scribbled student Gabriella Guimaraes, 20.

“We’d gladly burn your tongue with coffee,” another woman wrote.

Mark Kirszner, 69, a retired social worker, said, “He could choke on it.”

The Post tried to deliver the care package to Ahmadinejad at the Warwick last night, but his goons weren’t too appreciative of the generous gesture.

One A-Jad operative seemed so horrified at the sight of a Post reporter and photographer that she snarled, “You’re going to endanger my life!”

That’s prompted a US Secret Service agent to walk over and say, “This isn’t gonna happen. You have to go.”

Prayers at the Western Wall: Blot Out Wicked Enemy Iran

Shas leader prays for God to thwart Iranian plans for death and destruction in IsraelDays after receiving briefing on nuclear threat from Netanyahu adviser, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef compares Iranian regime to biblical Haman, who sought to wipe out the Jews of Persia

The spiritual leader of the Shas ultra-Orthodox party, a key faction in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, said in a sermon that the Iranian nuclear threat could result in death and destruction for the Jewish state, and appealed to God to thwart the Islamic regime’s plans.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef made the remarks in a sermon on Sunday, days after he was briefed on the Iranian threat by Netanyahu’s National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror.

“Heaven forbid, they [the Iranians] could bring upon us death and destruction. May God thwart their plans,” the rabbi said.

Amidror was dispatched by Netanyahu to visit Yosef in order to win over the 92-year-old rabbi’s support — and thus the votes of Shas ministers in the government — for a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, the Kikar Shabbat Hebrew news site reported.

The report quoted Yosef as saying in his sermon, “We beg of Him [God] not to allow those evil people’s plot [to come to fruition]… to thwart their plan and ruin their thoughts, and do to them as they plan to do to us.

He reportedly likened the Iranian regime to Haman — the royal adviser in ancient Persia who, in the Old Testament Book of Esther, died at the gallows after planning to slaughter the Jews of Persia. Yosef prayed that God bring light unto the Jewish people.

Yosef called upon Jews to say slichot — prayers traditionally recited in the month leading up to Yom Kippur, the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar.

Amidror was accompanied to Yosef’s home by Interior Minister and Shas political head Eli Yishai, a senior member of cabinet who has been said, in some reports, to oppose an Israeli strike on Iran.

Iran claims its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Israel believes that the program is military in nature and Netanyahu reportedly fears that Iran will soon cross a threshold after which it will be nearly impossible to stop the Islamic Republic from developing nuclear weapons.

'Tumour' of Israel will soon be destroyed: Ahmadinejad

TEHRAN — Israel is a "cancerous tumour" that will soon be finished off, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday told demonstrators holding an annual protest against the existence of the Jewish state.

"The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumour. Even if one cell of them is left in one inch of (Palestinian) land, in the future this story (of Israel's existence) will repeat," he said in a speech in Tehran marking Iran's Quds Day that was broadcast on state television.

"The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land.... A new Middle East will definitely be formed. With the grace of God and help of the nations, in the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists," he said.

The diatribe took place amid heightened tensions between Israel and Iran over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme.

The Jewish state has in recent weeks intensified its threats to possibly bomb Iran's nuclear facilities to prevent it having the capability to produce atomic weapons.

Iran, which is suffering under severe Western sanctions, denies its nuclear programme is anything but peaceful. Its military has warned it will destroy Israel if it attacks.

"They (the Israelis) know very well they don't have the ability" to successfully attack Iran, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

"If they make a mistake, our nation's reaction will lead to the end of the Zionist regime," he said.

State television showed crowds marching under blazing sunshine in Tehran and other Iranian cities to mark Quds Days, whose name, derived from Arabic, designates the city of Jerusalem, the disputed future capital of both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Demonstrators held up Palestinian flags and pictures of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and banners reading "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." A group in Tehran was shown burning an Israeli flag.

The marches have been an annual event during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in Iran, ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

They underline Iran's antipathy to Israel and its ally the United States, and support for the Palestinian cause, which Khamenei on Wednesday called "a religious duty."

The supreme leader described Israel as a "bogus and fake Zionist outgrowth" in the Middle East that "will disappear."

The head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, told the Fars news agency as he attended the Tehran rally that "the Iranian nation has always been at the forefront of the (regional anti-Israeli) resistance in showing its animosity with Israel."

He added that Iran intended to maintain that virulent stance.

Ahmadinejad, in his speech, claimed that "Zionists" triggered the first and second world wars, and had "taken control over world affairs since the moment they became dominant over the US government."

He asserted that major governments, banks and media were in thrall to a Zionist cabal whose aim was to "destroy the cultures, values and sovereignty of nations."

Ahmadinejad's past broadsides against Israel and its Jewish supports, and his denial that the Holocaust occurred, have earned him opprobrium from Western and other nations, and walk-outs during his addresses to the UN General Assembly.

Israel has been employing its own invective against Iran and its leaders, invoking the image of Hitler and the Nazis on the eve of World War II and accusing Tehran of being bent on Israeli genocide.

Ahmadinejad is Hitler

My mother is a Holocaust survivor who lived through the death camp at Auschwitz. Many members of her family, among them small children, were on the ramp at Birkenau and were then taken to the crematoria, ascending to the heavens in a storm of fire and ash together with millions of their brothers and sisters.

From the dawn of my youth, my mother taught me to be a Jew, which meant, among other things, to be constantly ready for attempts at my extermination and destruction. Hatred towards Jews appeared back in the days of Pharaoh and Amalek and did not end with the fall of Hitler and the Third Reich. My mother insists the Hitlers will never die. In every generation they appear in new form, speaking a different language and using a different means to accomplish the same goal: the elimination of the Jews.

There is no real reason to hate Israel. In Poland, they hated us because we were different from them in our customs and in our dress. In Germany, they hated us because we were similar to them in language and culture. Now, ever since the establishment of the state of Israel, the new anti-Semitism has assumed the form of anti-Israel sentiment. This global hypocrisy has been recruited in the campaign against the state of Israel.
This is the national homeland for the Jews, remaining after the destruction of the temple, 2,000 years of exile, suffering and misery, and finally returning to their historic homeland. But in all international forums, Israel is responsible for the ills of all humanity. This is an exact repetition of the blood libels of the Middle Ages. The plight of the Jews has never mattered to intellectuals, even from religions and cultures that were ostensibly humanistic, open and in search of the truth.

The European Jewish Holocaust did not burst forth out of a void, as if from nowhere. The Church and the monarchies in Europe manufactured and maintained dehumanization of the Jews for centuries. Jewish suffering is perceived as proof of Jewish responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion and the triumph of Christian theology. Nazi ideology and the Final Solution were intended to be the final chord in this black concert, which was organized by the successors of such minds as Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche.

Several years ago, I visited the extermination camps in Poland with a group of officers and soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces. I stood with them in a military parade, on that very same ramp in Birkenau from which my family members were sent to their deaths. In the sky above, three F-15 planes from the Israel Air Force flew over us. I looked at the sky and I imagined the smoke from the planes connecting directly with the smoke from the crematoria.

At that moment I realized fully that the establishment of the state of Israel and the power of the IDF are the fulfillment of the testament to six million Jews and the saying, "Never again." Filled with emotion, I did not notice that the military parade ended and did not realize that the soldiers had left the area. I stood for a few long minutes, rooted to the ramp by emotion: a ramp next to train tracks that no trains will ever pass over again.

These days, new Hitlers are emerging again, in the form of the Iranian ayatollahs and their lackeys. Now, as 70 years ago, we hear voices calling for the destruction of the Zionist entity. These are not only voices; Iran is very close to having nuclear weapons which can be directed against Israel.

Israel has no choice. The essence of its existence is to ensure the safety and future of the Jews. We returned to the land of Israel in order to build and be rebuilt, and we must protect our home. We do not have the luxury of relying on others to do the job for us. It has been shown more than once throughout history that no one really cares about the fate of the Jews.

David Ben-Gurion knew this during the War of Independence; Levi Eshkol, Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin knew this in the Six-Day War, and Menachen Begin knew this when he decided to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor, and the IAF did the job. This is how we have acted in the past and this is how we must act now in the face of the Iranian threat. History has taught us that we must not underestimate threats to the existence of the Jewish people. Even Hitler was perceived as comic when he started out on his path.

As an Israeli citizen, I trust the Israeli government and the IDF to carry out the necessary actions to eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat. The IDF has enough talent and ability to deal with it. The Midrash tells us, "Next to kill you, first kill him." Our ancestors taught us this and, 2,000 years later, we can carry out their command; let us not be late to comply.