Across the world, rumor has it that Iran`s president has threatened to destroy Israel. A rumor that could, obviously, have catastrophic implications. They say President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, to quote the misquote, said,“Israel Must Be Wiped Off The Map.”This statement was never made as the following analysis will prove.
Background
On Tuesday, October 25th, 2005, at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran, the whole thing happened.
Before we get to the infamous remark we should all know that the “quote” in question was a quote of Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted what Ayatollah previously said to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Ayatollah and not Ahmedinejad. A quote which was not just unoriginal but also represents a viewpoint of a late person.
The Actual Quote
So what did Ahmedinejad exactly say? Here is a quote of what he exactly said in Farsi:
“Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.”
The word “rezhim-e” means Regime. In the Farsi quote, it is noticed that Ahmedinejad did not even mention the word “Israel”. He meant the Israeli regime. Actually what he said was,”rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods” (regime occupying Jerusalem).
This actually raises an important question. What did Ahmedinejad want to wipe off the map?
The answer: Nothing. That is because the word “map” was never even 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”.
The Proof
The full quote translated directly to English:
“The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”.
Word by word translation:
Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).
Actually, the western media focused on a part of the a whole sentence. They cut the sentence to achieve their goals.
Ahmedinejad actually said,“The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise”.This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war.
The Origin
What stroke me most is when I found out that it was not the western media that twisted and mistranslated the quote.
It was The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran’s official propaganda arm, that used this phrasing in the English version of some of their news releases covering the World Without Zionism conference. And of course all international media used this to make great copy, without even trying to verify what was actually said. I do not blame those international media. The news was coming out of Iran itself.
Iran`s Foreign Minister tried afterwards to clarify the statement but what is done is done. Nothing would change what has been said.
Nobody can blame Iran. The one to blame is the one who mistranslated this statement and I think that punishment should be considered because this is an unremovable stain.
It should be noted that in other references to the conference, the IRNA’s translation changed. For instance, “map” was replaced with “earth”. In some articles it was “The Qods occupier regime should be eliminated from the surface of earth”, or the similar “The Qods occupying regime must be eliminated from the surface of earth”. The inconsistency of the IRNA’s translation should be evidence enough of the unreliability of the source, particularly when transcribing their news from Farsi into the English language.
Media used this awfully. Unfortuantely media is misleading when it comes to this statement. Even after the truth was found out, media still uses this mistranslated statement every now and then.
Here is an example:
On December 13, 2006, more than a year after The World Without Zionism conference, two leading Israeli newspapers, The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, published reports of a renewed threat from Ahmadinejad. The Jerusalem Post’s headline was Ahmadinejad: Israel will be ‘wiped out’, while Haaretz posted the title: Ahmadinejad at Holocaust conference:
Israel will soon be wiped off
Posted by Ahmed Ismail 
