Iran’s President, in New York, Says Israelis Have No Mideast Roots

The New York Times

Defying a warning by the United Nations secretary general against inflammatory remarks, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said Monday that Israelis had no historical roots in the Middle East and that the existence of Israel was just a passing phase in the region’s long history.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York on Sunday for the annual General Assembly meeting, made the remarks in a breakfast session with selected members of the media. Later on Monday he spoke at the United Nations; he will speak there again on Wednesday.

At the breakfast meeting, he said that the Israelis had been around the region for only 60 or 70 years, in contrast to the Iranians, whose civilization has existed for thousands of years.

“They have no roots there in history,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said of the Israelis, according to Reuters. “They do not even enter the equation for Iran.”

In a meeting with Iranian expatriates in New York on Sunday evening, Mr. Ahmadinejad belittled Israel’s significance and the military threats Israel has made against his country over its disputed nuclear program. “A number of uncultured Zionists that threaten the Iranian nation today are never counted and are never paid any attention in the equations of the Iranian nation,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said, according to a summary of his remarks on his English-language Web site.

The Iranian president, known for incendiary language against Israel, is in the last nine months of his final term in office, and there had been widespread expectations he would use his remaining appearance at the General Assembly to excoriate and provoke Iran’s enemies, who suspect Iran is developing the ability to make nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly denied its nuclear energy program is for military use.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who has repeatedly admonished Iranian leaders against making anti-Israel and anti-Semitic remarks, had a conversation with Mr. Ahmadinejad on Sunday to reiterate the warning that such language could cause “potentially harmful consequences,” Mr. Ban’s press office said in a statement.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech on Monday came during a one-day high level conference on implementing universal standards of law. In his comments, he sounded many of the themes that have run through all his past appearances.

Without mentioning any country by name, he lashed out at the United States for ignoring Israel’s nuclear arsenal while trying to shut down Iran’s nuclear program.

“Some members of the Security Council with veto rights have chosen silence with regard to the nuclear warheads of a fake regime, while at the same time they impede the scientific progress of other nations,” he said.

He also indirectly attacked the United States and others for defending freedom of speech even when it defames religion, a reference to the online video attacking the Prophet Muhammad that incited demonstrations around the Muslim world, including Iran, many of them violent, over the past three weeks.

“They themselves wrongly invoke the U.N. charter and misuse freedom of speech to justify their silence toward offending the sanctities of the human community and to divine prophets,” the Iranian leader said.

Mr. Ahmadinejad compared that to reactions to questions he has raised about the Holocaust, although again without being specific. However, he has made the same point over so many visits to the United Nations that the meaning was clear.

“They support these offenders and infringe upon other’s freedom and allow sacrilege to people’s beliefs and sanctities, while they criminalize posing questions or investigating into historical issues and jail the researchers,” he said.

The Iranian leader is scheduled to deliver his General Assembly speech on Wednesday, which coincides with Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s annual visits to the United Nations have become something of a media event. For the past few years he has stayed at the Warwick in Midtown Manhattan, where cordons of heavy security have kept anti-Iran demonstrators across the street.

The New York Post, which has made no secret of its hostility toward Mr. Ahmadinejad, said it had tried to deliver a gift basket over the weekend to the Warwick filled with items including Gold’s Borscht, Manischewitz gefilte fish, Murray’s Sturgeon Shop whitefish, Zabar’s cream cheese and a free ticket to the Off Broadway show “Old Jews Telling Jokes.” The Post said Iranian officials at the hotel declined to accept it.