I've taken some time with this issue, looking at various translations of Ahmedinajan's speeches -- including the MEMRI translation site (which was founded by an Israeli military intelligence officer, btw). I do not speak or read Farsi, so, like most people (including you, I would guess) I have to rely on translations. Therefore, I look to sources who DO speak/read Farsi in order to hopefully get as close to the truth as possible -- instead of relying on propaganda.
Here's a good example of how translations matter:
Lost in translationLost in translation
Experts confirm that Iran's president did not call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'. Reports that he did serve to strengthen western hawks.
<snip>
The New York Times's Ethan Bronner and Nazila Fathi, one of the paper's Tehran staff, make a more serious case. They consulted several sources in Tehran. "Sohrab Mahdavi, one of Iran's most prominent translators, and Siamak Namazi, managing director of a Tehran consulting firm, who is bilingual, both say 'wipe off' or 'wipe away' is more accurate than 'vanish' because the Persian verb is active and transitive," Bronner writes.
The New York Times goes on: "The second translation issue concerns the word 'map'. Khomeini's words were abstract: 'Sahneh roozgar.' Sahneh means scene or stage, and roozgar means time. The phrase was widely interpreted as 'map', and for years, no one objected. In October, when Mr Ahmadinejad quoted Khomeini, he actually misquoted him, saying not 'Sahneh roozgar' but 'Safheh roozgar', meaning pages of time or history. No one noticed the change, and news agencies used the word 'map' again."
This, in my view, is the crucial point and I'm glad the NYT accepts that the word "map" was not used by Ahmadinejad. (By the way, the Wikipedia entry on the controversy gets the NYT wrong, claiming falsely that Ethan Bronner "concluded that Ahmadinejad had in fact said that Israel was to be wiped off the map".)
If the Iranian president made a mistake and used "safheh" rather than "sahneh", that is of little moment. A native English speaker could equally confuse "stage of history" with "page of history".
The significant issue is that both phrases refer to time rather than place. As I wrote in my original post, the Iranian president was expressing a vague wish for the future. He was not threatening an Iranian-initiated war to remove Israeli control over Jerusalem. (my emphasis)
There's much more at the link, and I sincerely wish that you would go there and read the whole piece. It is easy to get caught up in emotions, it takes a bit more effort to take some time to do some dispassionate research and understand that there are people in power who have their own reasons for whipping up fear and militarism among the citizenry.
Why would any rational human being allow him/herself to be manipulated thus, by the powerful for their own ends, without seeking knowledge and answers for oneself? Are you that ready to call death down upon thousands of your fellow human beings because your leaders tell you it must be done? Have you no internal sense of morality that recoils at such monstrous calculations, have you no understanding of how warfare serves the interests of those in power and no one else?
In the 50's Nikita Kruschev banged his shoe on the U.N. podium and proclaimed,
"WE WILL BURY YOU!" (I am old enough to have watched this on TV at the time) Should the U.S. have then started bombing Russia? Is it not much preferable that we did not?
Ahmedinajad has less power to direct Iran than Kruschev did the U.S.S.R. (And much MORE chance of being voted out of office within a couple years or so.) He is NOT directly threatening Israel, he is expressing his wish and belief that the "Zionist
Regime" (meaning the government) will eventually fade away -- just as ALL regimes eventually fade away in time.
sw