Ahmadinejad's Letter to Merkel

Here's the full text in translation. Give it a read.

If this translation is accurate, then the media hype of the content of the letter is just that - hype.

In it, Ahmadinejad doesn't call the Holocaust a lie. Instead (unless my reading comprehension has gone down the tubes) he makes the argument that the Holocaust was indeed a very terrible thing but that after 60 years it is time to stop using it as a carte-blanche and as a blackmail tool to generate sympathy for the nation of Israel which has nothing to do with its current actions and motives.

That's a fair point for debate. It is one I've heard moderate American Jews make too. It is not the same as outright Holocaust-denial.

He doesn't call for the destruction of Israel either. He makes a point common to Muslims that the Great Powers after WW2 imposed a new Israeli state upon land that they had become accustomed to thinking of as their own. He then asks why the new state couldn't have been somewhere else, like in Europe or America - the main protagonists for that state. If they wanted it so much, he is saying, why didn't they establish it in their own backyards and save all this bloodshed and strife?

It's a fair-ish point but is largely trumped by going even deeper into history. Jerusalem and its environs were Jewish long before they were Muslim.

Just how far back in history is too far?

Can the pagans have Rome and Egypt back, please? We would settle for Scotland or Norway. Or Israel, or Iran, or France, or...you get the idea. Arguments for the primacy of one group over another, when it comes to territorial claims based upon history, eventually all come back to the reductio of Mother Goddess.

But still, it's a long way from calling for Israel's destruction - it is more like calling for its relocation. That's a very different kettle of rhetorical fish from what we've been told by the warmongers and their tame media.

What do you make of it?