ZOA Wrote to Pres. Obama, A-G Holder & Others
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has written to President Barack Obama, Attorney-General Eric Holder, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair John Kerry, House Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Foreign Relations Committee Chair, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, urging them to take action to have Ahmadinejad brought to trial in The Hague.
The ZOA has called upon the Obama Administration and other governments around the world to bring a suit to the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, for inciting genocide of Jews. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide outlaws not only acts of genocide, but also incitement to genocide in an effort to prevent genocide before it takes place.
Iran has been guilty of promoting genocide of Jews for many years. Some examples:
- February 2012 – Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification’ to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”
- October, 2010, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressing Hizballah: “My dear ones, you are victorious and your enemies are defeated. You will stay and your enemies, who are the enemies of humanity, are on the slippery slope to destruction.”
- June, 2008 – Ahmadinejad: “[Israel] has reached the end of its function and will soon disappear off the geographical domain.”
- June, 2007 – Ahmadinejad: “God willing, in the near future we will witness the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime…”
- August 2006 – Ahmadinejad: “At a ‘special session’ of the OIC, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for ‘the elimination of the Zionist regime.’”
- October, 2005 – Ahmadinejad: “Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine… I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world.”
- December 2001 – Former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanani: “If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession … the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel.”
[N.B. The ZOA has previously published a much longer list of genocidal statements by Muslim regimes and leaders, including many more by Iranian leaders, which can viewed here].
As Robert Bernstein, chair of Advancing Human Rights (AHR), Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Attorney-General & Minister of Justice, and Stuart Robinowitz, former adjunct faculty member at Yale Law School and current board member of AHR, have observed this week, “A website affiliated with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared in February that Iran would be justified in killing all Israeli Jews—which Tehran’s long-range missiles could accomplish in nine minutes, boasted the site. Khamenei, for his part, has called Israel a ‘cancerous tumor that must be removed’ and declared that there is ‘justification to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and Iran must take the helm.’ Also in February, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosted Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Tehran, as billboards in the city declared that it is every Muslim’s duty to ‘wipe out” Israel. ‘If all the Jews gathered in Israel, it would save us the trouble of going after them world-wide,’ Nasrallah has said. ‘It is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on the earth’” (Bernstein, Cotler & Robinowitz, ‘Inciting Genocide Is a Crime,’ Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2012).
In letters to President Obama, Attorney-General Holder and other political leaders, ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “History tells us that fanatical leaders that threaten genocide mean exactly what they say. Accordingly, we need to treat these statements by Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders with the seriousness that is warranted.
“If the U.S. and other governments around the world are to have any credibility and moral authority, they must immediately and affirmatively hold Ahmadinejad accountable for his genocidal statements against Israel and the Jewish people.
“The fact that Iran is committed to developing nuclear weapons and that Iranian officials have spoken publicly about the damage their use could inflict upon Israel highlights the dire implications of Ahmadinejad’s statements.
“Only seventy years ago, another national leader explicitly threatened to destroy the Jews. Few took notice and the genocide of European Jewry proceeded. We dare not ignore again another national leader’s call for a genocide of Jews, especially one seeking nuclear weapons.
“President Obama has often spoken of his strong commitment to human rights. One way to now express that commitment is by bringing this issue to the International Court of Justice.
“We urge the Obama Administration and other governments to bring Iran before the International Court of Justice for breaching the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.”