Iran ayatollah tops Jewish slur list

The Times of Israel

The Simon Wiesenthal Center put Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the head of its “Top Ten Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel List” for comments he made about the Jewish state.

The top ten list cites Khamenei’s reference to Israel as the “rabid dog of the region,” whose leaders “look like beasts and cannot be called human,” as well as his continued genocidal threats against the Jewish state, the center said in a statement on Monday. The full list is to be published on December 30.

The center’s listing referred to comments attributed to Khamenei as he spoke to a November gathering of the Basij force, which is controlled by Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard. The Iranian leader referred to Israel — “the Zionist regime” — as “the rabid dog of the region.” Speaking to some 50,000 members of the paramilitary volunteer militia, he also said Israel was ripe for collapse.

“The (Israeli) Zionist regime is a regime whose pillars are extremely shaky and is doomed to collapse,” he said, according to French news agency AFP. “Any phenomenon that is created by force cannot endure.”

Khamenei also said Europe felt pressed to make concessions to the Zionists “because of their economic network.” He said Israelis “should not be called humans,” according to a Channel 2 translation of his comments.

The speech came as Western powers negotiated with Iran in Geneva to try and hammer out an agreement on rolling back Iran’s nuclear research program to prevent it from producing nuclear weapons.

In November, the meetings resulted in an interim deal that included an agreement in which Iran would pause progress on its nuclear program, including work on a plutonium reactor at the Arak facility. The deal also called on Iran to neutralize its 20-percent-enriched uranium stockpiles. Tehran has also agreed to intrusive inspections under the terms of the deals.