‘Tumour’ of Israel will soon be destroyed - Ahmadinejad
IRAN: Israel is a “cancerous tumour” that will soon be finished off,
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday told demonstrators
holding an annual protest against the existence of the Jewish state.
“The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumour. Even if
one cell of them is left in one inch of (Palestinian) land, in the
future this story (of Israel's existence) will repeat,” he said in a
speech in Tehran marking Iran's Quds Day that was broadcast on state
television.
“The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists
in the Palestinian land.... A new Middle East will definitely be formed.
With the grace of God and help of the nations, in the new Middle East
there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists,” he said.
The diatribe took place amid heightened tensions between Israel and
Iran over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme. The Jewish state has in
recent weeks intensified its threats to possibly bomb Iran's nuclear
facilities to prevent it having the capability to produce atomic
weapons.
Iran, which is suffering under severe Western sanctions, denies its
nuclear programme is anything but peaceful. Its military has warned it
will destroy Israel if it attacks.
State television showed crowds marching under blazing sunshine in
Tehran and other Iranian cities to mark Quds Days, whose name, derived
from Arabic, designates the city of Jerusalem, the disputed future
capital of both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Demonstrators held up Palestinian flags and pictures of Iran's
supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and banners reading “Death to
Israel” and “Death to America.”
A group in Tehran was filmed burning an Israeli flag. The marches
have been an annual event during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in
Iran, ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
They underline Iran's antipathy to Israel and its ally the United
States, and support for the Palestinian cause, which Khamenei on
Wednesday said was “a religious duty.”
The supreme leader described Israel as a “bogus and fake Zionist
outgrowth”in the Middle East that “will disappear.” AFP |