Ahmadinejad’s Speech Was Supposed To Be Even More Inflammatory
Here’s the portion of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Durban II speech that caused dozens of Western diplomats to walk out of a session yesterday at the U.N. racism conference:
The U.N. has since said that Ahmadinejad’s address would have been even more inflammatory; he apparently left out a previously planned reference to Holocaust denial that was in the original text of his speech.
In response, a former Israeli chief rabbi today — Holocaust Remembrance Day — invited Ahmadinejad to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority. “Under the international umbrella of the United Nations, the president of Iran appeared dripping with hatred toward the Jewish people,” Rabbi Yisrael Lau said during a speech at Poland’s Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. “… Come to Yad Vashem, we’ll show you all of the archives documents and memoirs. We will present you with all the evidence until you are convinced that the Holocaust actually happened.”
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
