"Wiped off the Map" - The Rumor of the Century

[laststeamtrain]

"Wiped off the Map" - The Rumor of the Century

by Arash Norouzi

Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map". Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made, as the following article will prove.



BACKGROUND:



On Tuesday, October 25th, 2005 at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran, newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at a program, reportedly attended by thousands, titled "The World Without Zionism". Large posters surrounding him displayed this title prominently in English, obviously for the benefit of the international press. Below the poster's title was a slick graphic depicting an hour glass containing planet Earth at its top. Two small round orbs representing the United States and Israel are shown falling through the hour glass' narrow neck and crashing to the bottom.



Before we get to the infamous remark, it's important to note that the "quote" in question was itself a quote— they are the words of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted Khomeini to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Khomeini and not Ahmadinejad. Thus, Ahmadinejad has essentially been credited (or blamed) for a quote that is not only unoriginal, but represents a viewpoint already in place well before he ever took office.



THE ACTUAL QUOTE:



So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in farsi:



"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."



That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "Regime", pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).



So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh", is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's President threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", despite never having uttered the words "map", "wipe out" or even "Israel".

<more>

http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/rumor-of-the-century/

[Fridays Child]

1. k/r

[wakeme2008]

2. Don't you just love it when Neocons invent things

:grr:

[Igel]

11. You *do* know the origin of the 'wiped off the map' quote?

IRNA. Yep, a staff translator working for the Iranian state press agency provided the translation.

One of those Iranian neocons. Yeah, that's it.




Quick! Look! Other there! There's a yeti!

[Up2Late]

3. The MSM does the same thing with Chavez, because they know...

...that most Americans don't speak Spanish (or Farsi), and if they are ever called on it, they just blame it on a "bad translation."

Hell, most Americans think most Iranians are Arabs.

[dsc]

15. In regards to Spanish that is totally absurd

I can't imagine that there is a single US high school of any size in which you can't find a teacher of Spanish. Heck I could find no fewer than a couple dozen students who would know enough Spanish to translate Chavez or anyone else.

[loudsue]

4. That REALLY pisses me off! Shows just how much the media gives a shit

about America.

:kick::kick::kick:

[baldguy]

5. A lot of people don't see the difference.

There is no difference between the government of Israel, it's policy of Zionism, and the state of Israel. And Israel isn't complete without Jerusalem.

And making it "vanish from the page of time" is Orwellian - not just erasing Israel from the map, but from living memory as well.

[dave_p]

7. There's every difference

Governments aren't states. And policies are distinct from both. Zionism existed without the state. And states survive when their founding rationale is long spent. Israel will certainly survive without its present government of paranoid inadequate warmongers, in fact I think it'd fare a lot better.

Israel isn't complete without the whole of Palestine, accoring to many of its advocates, and I'm sure there are other Arab territories they'd thrown in for good measure. Official Israel didn't have any problem with decades of trying to expunge the very word "Palestinian" from usage, let alone memory. What Israel might feel "complete" with doesn't constitute my idea of the basis of a legitimate settlement.

[Lurking Dem]

14. Gotta link for that?

Official Israel didn't have any problem with decades of trying to expunge the very word "Palestinian" from usage, let alone memory.

[dave_p]

18. Off the map

Hmm, it's hard to find a link to the absence of something. It's part of Israel's founding myth: "A land without a people for a people without a land". Until the 1970s Palestinians were only officially termed "Arabs". "There was no such thing as a Palestinian people", Israeli premier Golda Meir claimed in 1969, "It's not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist." The first official Israeli recognition of Palestinians' existence seems to be in the 1978 Camp David accords (where they're referred to once as "a people" and once rather oddly as "peoples").

[Lurking Dem]

22. Hmmmm indeed

The actual translation of the saying you're quoting is, "A land without a nation, a nation without a land." That said, it is disingenuous to ignore the influx of Arab immigrants into the Mandate who displaced Berbers among others, sometimes through violent means.

Human migration, whether to a more prosperous area, to avoid violent conflicts, natural disasters, family ties, whatever, is a universal event.

Until the 1970's the Palestinian Arabs did not largely refer to themselves as "Palestinians". Most referred to themselves as "Syrians". (Not as in current day Syria but as in Greater Syria - their belief in a single Arab nation.)

The resident Jews were referred to as "Palestinian", for that matter. Hell, even the character in Exodus called "The Palestinian" was a Jew.

Parsing out Golda Meir's quotation is done on DU all the time and is the height of hypocrisy. And it is pointed out here all the time and explained. So people who insist on continuing this calumny clearly have an objective that is at odds with honest erudition.

The full quotation (in answer to the question, "Do you think the emergence of the Palestinian fighting forces, the Fedayeen, an important new factor in the Middle East?" is: "Important, no. A new factor, yes. There was no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian State? It was either southern Syria before the First World War and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist."

She is quite clearly referring to "Palestinian people" as a nation with legal borders. There was no nation of Palestine. There has never been a nation of Palestine. She was not denying that the local Arab population had a regional identity or that they weren't a people. She is also, you will carefully note, speaking in the past tense.

As to the maps, maybe one of the resident Israelis can speak to what is and what is not on maps printed in Israel. I know that the maps I have seen clearly demarcate the West Bank and Gaza with borders and different colors than what is marked as "Israel". One would think that on the formation of a nation named "Palestine" those designations would change to reflect the legal name of that sovereign country.

Your answer still didn't address your quotation I asked you about. Official Israel didn't have any problem with decades of trying to expunge the very word "Palestinian" from usage, let alone memory.

That is a more encompassing statement than arguing about maps (which both sides of the IP debate could argue, I warrant). Nor does it address the use of "Zionist regime" by Ahmadinejad as a euphemism for the state of Israel.

[pelsar]

20. is this stuff just made up...or is there a website?

Official Israel didn't have any problem with decades of trying to expunge the very word "Palestinian" from usage, let alone memory...i'm not sure what that means given that the word palestenian is in the paper, used on tv and the radio everyday....

i think one should make a list of all of the made up stuff about israel......though i've always wondered why people have a need to do so.


anyway back to the post i was replying to....any links or anything that supports such claims....not to mention the "israel isnt complete"..is that referring to israelis not feeling complete or the "country" (which includes arab muslim and christians, druze and bedouin)

[formercia]

6. More notorious translation

FBI translators?

[Igel]

12. Iranian. n/t

[formercia]

13. I was referring to the original propaganda version.

Sorry about the confusion.

[Igel]

23. The original propaganda version was lifted off of a

website run by an Iranian state-run news agency, translated from Persian to English by an employee of the agency.

The entire "wiped off the map" translation of Neejad's speech was an Iranian-only affair.

[Demeter]

8. Please Tell Me When Truth Ever Came Back In Fashion?

Sincerely,

Diogenes

[Prophet 451]

24. The truth has never been in fashion

What was it Churchill said about truth being so precious? It's easier to deal with the reality that lives in your head.

[slipslidingaway]

9. K&R n/t

[Solo_in_MD]

10. I would like to see this position examined by some one without an axe to grind

with independently taken video. If its true it should have come out quite some time ago...

[Lurking Dem]

16. How about his defense of what he said?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4384264.stm

[nashville_brook]

19. i heard it on NPR months ago

[wiggs]

17. What MSM outlet was it that incorrectly translated the original words "nuclear energy"

into English but changed it to "nuclear weapons" and used it in a story until someone caught it? Remember that?

[Vidar]

21. Good find.