Charge Ahmadinejad with incitement to genocide, say former U.S., Israeli envoys to UN

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statements professing a desire to "wipe Israel off the map" are sufficient to serve as the basis for charges of incitement to genocide, two prominent former diplomats from the United States and Israel said on Tuesday.

Dore Gold, Jerusalem's former envoy to the United Nations, and former U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke are among a group of scholars, lawmakers, and survivors of genocide from Rwanda and Sudan who gathered in Washington on Tuesday for a conference examining the plausibility of being the Iranian president before an international tribunal.

Gold submitted that Ahmadinejad's threats can't be dismissed as mere expressions of "dissatisfaction with the Israeli government and its policies."

"We're in the middle of a great struggle - over who he is and what his role is," Gold said. "He's planning to break bread with Quaker organizations, to meet with the press in his hotel, to become a legitimate leader. But if his words since his elections amount to crime under the anti-genocide convention, should he be viewed as a legitimate leader?" he asked.

The ambassador said the Iranian leader's statements violate the 1948 UN convention of the prevention and punishment of the crimes of genocide.

"When he talks about the decay of Israel, he has in mind the collapse of the Soviet Union, i.e. he just describes historical process," people say. "But [proclaiming that Israel must be wiped out of the face of the world] suggests we're not talking about the political theory. If the West will fail to respond to Iran's incitement to genocide, Iran will feel it can act. Deterring Iran now is vital, not only for the security of Israel, but of all of us."

"Words matter," Holbrooke said. "When people say: 'Don't pay too much attention, they don't mean it' - it reminds me of my grandfather in Hamburg, who read Mein Kampf, and he took it for real, but many other people didn't. Because everyone takes for granted Ahmadinejad's statements on Israel, people take for granted that it's kind of unique danger for Israel, because of the specific threats to another country."

"Divestment can only have a limited success," Gold said. "It's very much worth doing, but unless you put Iranians in a position that the South African government was in the eighties, it won't work. His talk amounts to a violation of genocide convention. The more we have voices around the world who agree with us, the more support we?ll have to this idea."

The group said Ahmadinejad's pronouncements are alarmingly similar to the coded statements of incitement that preceded the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis in 1994, which the international community failed to prevent.

	A man holds a sign in New York on Tuesday in protest of Iranian President Ahmadinejad's appearance at the UN. (Shahar Azran)