The Biggest Lie Told To The American People: Ahmadinejad's Alleged Remarks On Israel

As the Bush Administration beats the drums for another war of choice with another country that had nothing to do with 9/11, they are using another series of fabricated facts to indoctrinate the American people into thinking that Iran poses a serious threat to our security. At the core of these fabrications is the claim that on October 25, 2005, during a speech at the Ministry of Interior conference hall, the then newly-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remarked that "Israel must be wiped off the map." As someone who was born in Tehran, lived there for seventeen years and is a native Farsi speaker, I have read the original transcripts of the speech in Farsi and want to inform you that Ahmadinejad never said "Israel must be wiped off the map," but rather, his statement was grossly mistranslated and taken out of context, perhaps to help make a case for military action against Iran.

Let's analyze what Ahmadinejad said. His exact words in Farsi were as follows: "Emam goft een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzegar mahv shavad."

The correct translation of the statement is as follows: "Imam said this occupying regime in Jerusalem must vanish from the page of times."

And the word-to-word translation of the statement is as follows: Emam: Imam (Khomeini, leader of the 1979 revolution); Goft: said; Een: this; Rezhim-e eshghalgar: occupying regime; Qods: Jorusalem; Bayad: must; Az: from; Safheye: page of; Ruzegar: times; Mahv shaved: vanish.

There are several important points to understand about this quote:

1) The original transcript does not contain the words "Israel," "wipe off" or "map."

2) Ahmadinejad in fact misquoted Imam Khomeini who really said "sahneyeh roozegar," or "stage of times," not "safheyeh roozegar."

3) "Occupying regime in Jerusalem " does not refer to the state of Israel because the word "regime" does not mean "state" or "country." Merriam-Webster defines the term "regime" as a "mode of rule or management" or "a government in power." Furthermore, the terms "stage of times" or "page of times" both are highly abstract and metaphorical terms and cannot possibly be translated to "map," which is a real object illustrating countries with defined political borders. To translate "page of times" to "map" shows a conscious effort to give people the idea that Ahmadinejad's statement was not a metaphorical expression of discontent but a real foreign policy declaration. This effort becomes even clearer when one learns that Ahmadinejad used the verb "vanish" - not "wiped off" - to describe what he wished would happen to the regime in Israel. Vanish is a transitive verb, meaning "to disappear." By definition, disappearance is something that an object does to itself or naturally happens to it without an outside party's intervention. "Wipe off," on the other hand, has a strong emphasis on the party that does the wiping off. In other words, as opposed to vanishing, things can't wipe themselves off; they require some external force to do the wiping off. By translating "mahv shavad" to "wiped off" instead of the correct translation "vanish," the translators consciously framed Ahmadinejad as implying that an outside party - i.e. Iran, by implication - should have a role in wiping off the regime in Israel while he was merely wishing an outcome on a regime he did not agree with. He could have said "wiped off" or "Iran will (or shall) wipe Israel (or the regime in Israel) off the map," but he did not. The U.S.'s official translation of his statement misrepresents what Ahmadinejad said or meant.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-sedaei/the-biggest-lie-told-to-t_b_70248.html

this admin and knee-jerkers who think AIPAC is a force for good.

Stop the liars! Impeach, indict and imprison the treasonous Bush/PNAC cabal! :grr:

not.

:kick: & R

and this missive is actually trying to suggest that means something substantively different from "wiped off the map?"

OK, fine. :eyes:

Look, I am no fan of war with Iran, but to torturously claim that this guy didn't say something that leaves one with the impression that he wants all Jews in the state of Israel pushed into the sea (and let them swim for Egypt, for all I know he thinks) is just ludicrous.

This is too much of a stretch. You can't justify hate speech, even if you don't want to go to war with a country. Just say "What an asshole, but that kind of bullshit talk doesn't merit an attack," and leave it at that.

and yes, it does make a hell of a lot of a difference, He should have been quoted correctly from the start.

Israel would be right behind any invasion of Iran, there is calls for it in Israel, is that Hate speech? calling for the Iranian Regime to be.. Ahem, wiped off the map?

Do you also agree with Holocaust "revision" like him? Another case of propaganda aimed at Israel.

BTW I am no ally of Israel but you must place this all into the ME context.

Nor do I agree with it being used as political leverage.

But hey, that word twisting shit is a two-way street.

And I really don't give a fuck if "Israel would be right behind any invasion of Iran" --- DUH. Of COURSE they would. But just because they would, doesn't make it right to toss crap assertions that the Midget Mayor didn't mean that he wanted those Jews GONE. That's EXACTLY what he meant, and to say otherwise is to stretch credulity past the breaking point.

It sure made the few remaining Jews in Iran feel a bit nervous.

Here, let's review what he said: "Imam said this occupying regime in Jerusalem must vanish from the page of times."

"Occupying regime" to me means the government, and those who are "occupying" that land. And 'Vanish from the page of times' is a close enough cousin to 'Erased from the history books' or 'Wiped off the map' to be used in that very same context, because the meaning is the SAME.

But whatever...As Chubby Checker sez, twist again, like we did last summer.

How dare a ceremonial "leader" pander to his Electorate...

erased from the pages of time?

Please. You don't have to like Israel, but the "two wrongs make a right" justifications are pretty fucking lame, to say nothing of sick.

And if you don't mind a ceremonial leader pandering to his electorate, well, surely you must be quite at peace with Bush's "Saddam has WMD" statements, or his Mission Accomplished stunt on that aircraft carrier, eh? After all, he was 'just' pandering to his electorate....nothing to worry about, move along, ClosetPresident Cheney has everything well in hand....

Like Roosevelt said, "Speak softly and carry a big stick". Amadingynutcase is going around talking of making people vanish. Unless he's a good magician, there's no way his phrase could be translated into anything NOT resembling a threat worthy of scrutiny.

Russia and China wanting to defend that nit-wit isn't helping matters either, unfortunately.

There won't be war, but I sure as hell have no qualms against sanctions or anything else to bottle Iran up. They are a threat, sad but true.

War is good for some businesses.

the entertainment industry, with its glamorisation of guns and promotion of killing as heroic, and those interests which profit from this as well.

hateful acts are worse.

This wasn't just a lie told to the US.

"I want Israel gone."

This view is not exactly uncommon in the middle east.

Ahmad. has every desire to issue propaganda against Israel, including holocaust denial.

This has been brought up many many times here and it really changes nothing.

FACT: IRAN HATES ISRAEL.

You'll dampen the unreasonable outrage, you see.

i'll be sure and send it to people that think we need to bomb Iran.

Peace!

It's still genocide... only he managed to get Doctor Who to help him... :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

Okay, we know they have no time machine, but even the most repute of translations still makes it abundantly clear - they want Israel gone for good.

By what means? Asking them nicely to go away? Getting David Copperfield to do a magic vanishing trick? How about playing a game of "Go Fish" and stacking the deck against the Israelis so they're bound to lose and bugger off?! I don't think so!

Amadingynutcase is still a psychopath and the translation, while not word-for-word accurate, still isn't an untruth!! The attempt to rationalize that loony has a net effect of zero. 0. Zilch. Nada. The value of the dollar. The quantity of morality in television. The amount of real sugar in a bottle of diet cola. And so on.

"this occupying regime in Jerusalem must vanish from the page of times."

Doesn't sound like a picnic to me. How can it for anybody? How can Amadingynutcase still be justified?! One translator fudged some words. Another translator did a better job with the words but the result is still the same. How can people not see that?!?!

I'm looking for the sarcasm smilie. Nope, not there.

The al Quds brigade isn't named that for typing practice: it is the Jerusalem Brigade.

This is sour grapes over the loss of Jerusalem specifically and the West Bank of the Jordan in general to the Israelis. It seems that Jerusalem and the West Bank (and occasionally Gaza and the Golan Heights) are the real problem with Arab- and Persian-Israeli relations.

Man 1967 shore changed a lot of things in the Middle East, and it seems that memories are not going to fade away gracefully.

and Brits reguarly write to the BBC and other British media making the same point. None of it makes a ha'porth of difference. The official narrative of the west is locked around powerful lies and prejudices which few have the moral courage to challenge.

It's on his President Website in ENGLISH...but guess what?? It AIN'T THERE in FARSI!!! SNIP, snip.....!!! They cut that ENTIRE exchange out!!!

See, to the people who don't speak English, he NEVER SAID IT!!! It never happened!!! Nothing to see here, move along....

Thank you , it was very interesting and informative.

as he was speaking pedagogically, according to the reporter.

Loose lips for reals -- similar to W threatening WW3 with Russia.

I watched him answer questions about that statement in a series of interviews. Ahmadinejad didn't deny that he wanted to destroy Israel and avoided the question by returning to his accusations against the US and Israel. If Ahmadinejad wants to unequivocally state that he won't attack Israel I'm all ears.

but since we want to wipe Iran off the map everyone will hold on to that little piece of rhetoric and keep screaming it from the roof tops until they get the war they want. America is being propagandized in the highest order, especially by Fox news. I'm not real sure what the benefit for Big Oil and Halliburton is exactly but it has to be about big business. I think it's about the pipe lines coming from Afghanistan needing a short cut through Iran. It is exactly the tactic America had used on us to have the Iraq war perpetrated in our name. We need to stop the Iran war before it ever starts. Our country has been hijacked by mad men and we have nuclear weapons, should we be bombed?