An Iranian minister made the mistake of declaring that he didn’t hate Israel.
He’s about to lose his job because of it.
More than 200 Iranian parliament members slammed Vice President Esfandiar Rahim Mashai for stating that Iranians are ‘friends of all people in the world — even Israelis.’
In a condemnation statement issued by the parliament members, they called on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to “deal with his deputy with severity” – in other words, to ensure that he is dismissed.
“Mr. Mashai has no right to make such shameful remarks, and is not at the position to take such responsibility,” the statement said. “It appears that Mr. Mashai is unaware of the fact that those who he refers to as a people are the ones occupying the homes of millions of Palestinians.”
The statement noted that “these people created the illegitimate Zionist regime. We do not recognize a country called Israel, let alone its people.”
Remember that the next time Ahmadinejad lies to a reporter and says he has no problem with Jews—that it’s only “Zionists.” And the realize that when he says “Zionists,” he doesn’t mean Israelis. He means Jews. And so do his people.
[…] “We do not recognize a country called Israel, and so we cannot recognize a nation called Israel,” the lawmakers said in their statement, according to Fars, the semiofficial Iranian news agency.
“If Mr. Mashai does not have the political awareness that the Israeli people are the same people who have occupied the homes of millions of innocent and oppressed Palestinians and have created the army of the Zionist regime, he has no right to hold such a position,” the statement added.
Funny, I can’t find an AP article on this. Only one on the statement of friendship three days ago.
Iranian media are quoting the country’s vice president as saying Iranians are “friends of all people in the world — even Israelis.”
It is a rare instance of official Iranian media carrying an expression of sympathy toward Israelis from such a high-level official.
Yes, that rare instance is now going to be the reason the man is fired. God forbid an Iranian minister not be an anti-Semitic nutjob. And let us not mistake the Iranian anti-Semitism. Its client terrorist group targeted Jews and Jewish insititutions in Buenos Aires—not the Israeli embassy, or The Zionist Club Of Buenos Aires. The Iranians used to be the friends of the Jews, but Alexander is long dead and gone. Shame on his descendants.
Israel was a nation when Persians were still nomads wandering on the Iranian plateau wondering what this newfangled stuff called “pottery” was.
Cyrus the Great was the friend of the Jews. The Islamowhackjobs who are now running Iran hate him too. They hate everything from before the coming of Islam and the Arab conquerors.
Sure, Older Israelis remember a time when Israel and Persia were good friends (it became Iran in 1979).