Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday defended his inflammatory anti-Israeli remarks earlier this week, saying that Israel does not want to hear any criticism.
”They [Israelis] kill innocent Palestinian men, women, children, destroy their houses, steal their belongings, deliberately kill Palestinian officials and then expect that nobody should voice any criticism,” Ahmadinejad told the Iranian state news agency, Irna.
”[The West] is always making demands and thinks that the whole world must be obedient to their demands, so therefore it is natural that they show such a reaction to reasonable remarks,” the president said in reference to worldwide condemnation of his wish to see Israel eradicated from the Islamic world.
The news agency Fars quoted Ahmadinejad as saying that ”the struggle against Zionism must go on”.
The president was among thousands of people who took part in state-organised anti-Israel rallies on Friday in Tehran and other cities around the country.
Ahmadinejad was accompanied by several Cabinet ministers, including Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki.
New significance
The annual state-organised rallies took on a new significance this year following the Iranian president’s anti-Israeli comments.
Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday the late Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s prediction that Israel would be destroyed would soon be realised.
”God willing, the eradication of Israel would soon be realised through the continued wisdom of the Palestinian nation,” he said, describing Israel as an imperialist plant by the West against Islam.
The remarks were harshly condemned in the Western world and by the Palestinians themselves, with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat calling them ”unacceptable” and noting that the Palestinians ”have recognised the state of Israel”.
Israel, for its part, has filed an official demand to have Iran expelled from the United Nations.
Mottaki on Thursday tried to calm tensions, telling state television that Ahmadinejad was just quoting Ayatollah Khomeini, the late leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
He added that Iran’s rejection of the Israeli state has been one of the main principles of Iranian foreign policy since the revolution and is therefore ”nothing new”.
The Qods (Jerusalem) Day demonstrations, staged by the Iranian administration every year on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan, are aimed at liberating Jerusalem, the second-holiest place for Moslems after Mecca, from Israeli occupation.
‘We respect Judaism’
Other Iranian politicians tried to downplay the importance of Ahmadinejad’s remarks on Friday.
Ex-president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani said on Friday that Iran respects both Jews and Judaism.
”We have no problems with Jews and highly respect Judaism as a holy religion,” Rafsanjani said at Friday prayers following the anti-Israeli demonstrations.
Rafsanjani, who is an opponent to Ahmadinejad’s hard-line rhetoric and policies, said ”we only have problems with Zionist circles in Israel, which we hold responsible for the suppression of the Palestinian nation”.
Meanwhile, Iran’s National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani said the West is misusing the remarks to bolster the case for halting Iran’s nuclear programme at the UN Security Council.
”The West is misusing the issue to create a bridge to the nuclear issue,” Larijani told news agency Isna.
Iran insists that its nuclear programme is intended for domestic power production and not to produce weapons.
In August, despite widespread global protest, Tehran restarted uranium conversion in the Isfahan plant in central Iran. In a resolution last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency called on Iran to stop uranium conversion or face referral to the UN Security Council. — Sapa-DPA