Quick takes // By Ben FrankelNuremberg lives: Should Iran’s leaders be charged with incitement to genocide?
Earlier this week, at a UN forum on the global drug trade, Iran’s vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi delivered a speech which the New York Times described as “baldly anti-Semitic”; Rahmini charged that the Jews, among other things, are responsible for, and are in firm control of, the global drug trade, and that gynecologists are killing black babies on the orders of Jews; law professors Alan Dershowitz and Irwin Cotler argue that the openly anti-Semitic pronouncements by Iran’s leaders, and the repeated threats they make against the Jewish people, merit bringing Iran’s leaders before the International Criminal Court to face charges of incitement to genocide
In a speech delivered earlier this week at a UN forum on the global drug trade, Iran’s vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi, who is second in line to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said the Jews are the reason for, and are in firm control of, the illegal drug trade around the world. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will pay for anybody who can research and find one single Zionist who is an addict,” Rahmini said. “They do not exist. This is the proof of their involvement in drugs trade.”
The New York Times reports that Rahmini said that the spread of the drug trade and other evils that Jews are responsible for are the result of the Talmud, a central text of Judaism, which teaches people who study it to “destroy everyone who opposes the Jews.”
Rahmini told stories of gynecologists’ killing black babies on the orders of the Jews and claimed that the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was started by Jews, adding that mysteriously, no Jews died in that uprising.
“The Talmud teaches that it is lawful to acquire wealth through legal and illegal means… which gives (the Jews) the right to destroy humanity,” he said.
Since this was a UN conference on drugs, Rahmini, came back to the topic at the end of his speech, saying: “The spread of narcotics in the world emanates from the teachings of the Talmud… whose objective is the destruction of the world.”
Rahimi’s comments were posted on the official Web site of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as well as Iran’s state media.
AsiaOne reports that UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, on Wednesday, pointedly criticized Iran’s vice president. “The secretary general has on many occasions called on Iranian officials to refrain from these kinds of anti-Semitic statements. He does so again in response to these latest reported comments,” said UN spokesman Martin Nesirky. “He believes it is the responsibility of leaders to promote harmony and understanding and he deeply regrets expressions of hatred and religious intolerance,” Nesirky added.
Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz notes that Iran’s surrogate, Hezbollah, has invited all the Jews of the world to move to Israel so that it will be easier to destroy them in one fell swoop (presumably, after Iran acquires nuclear weapons).
Dershowitz says that taken together, the flagrantly anti-Semitic statements by Iranian leaders and official government organs constitute a clear incitement to genocide, which is explicitly prohibited by international law and by the rules governing the International Criminal Court.
Dershowitz says he agrees with Professor Irwin Cotler, former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, who has drafted a brilliant brief making the case for indicting the Iranian leaders for inciting genocide against the Jewish people (also see Cotler’s dicsussion of the topic at Columbia University).
Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security News Wire
