Like CJ, nothing the LA Times does surprises me. Not even this.

TEHRAN — The Iranian president delivered fiery remarks today about Israel and his country’s nuclear program on the occasion of Qods Day, the annual commemoration of the Palestinian fight against the Jewish state.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the annual occasion marking the Palestinian struggle to criticize Israel’s policies and the West’s taboos on questioning the Holocaust. He repeated his suggestion that the West relocate Israel’s Jews to “somewhere in Canada or Alaska.”

Yes, there is somewhat of a taboo on questioning a known historical event that involved the genocide of millions of innocent men, women and children. Call us crazy.

The controversial president and other officials often repeat an old slogan from Khomeini that Israel should be “eliminated from the pages of time,” which has been incorrectly translated as calling for wiping Israel off the map.

Oh, so he doesn’t want Israel wiped off the map…just eliminated. That’s so much better. However, Reuters begs to differ with the LA Times’ apologists. The first part (in italics) is a reader, the second part from the Reuters Editor.

You continue to report that “Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be ”wiped off the map“” even though many Mideast experts have stated that the interpretation of what Ahmadinejad actually said was that the “Zionist regime will not last.”

In other words, rather than calling for ethnic cleansing, as your news stories imply, Iranian officials are calling for regime change—a common enough phrase these days. Are your reporters and editors deliberately misinforming the public?

Jan

We actually had access to this speech, and heard the president’s words verbatim from our own TV footage. We stand behind our translation. In this case, he used the word “mahv,” which in Farsi means “wiped off”: Editor

However you’d like to interpret it, this leaves no room for translation. Neither does this. Nor does this.