"Iranian Leader Promises 2nd Holocaust Even as He Denies the 1st One"

On Wednesday, in a speech broadcast live on Iranian state television, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands that the Nazi destruction of European Jewry never happened. As he put it in October, Israel must be ''wiped off the map." And, vowed the president of the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism, ''a new wave in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world." Thus Ahmadinejad promises a second Holocaust even as he denies the first one. Dictators who talk about wiping nations from the face of the earth generally mean what they say. We should know by now that it isn't only Jews who are endangered by the mullahs and their threats. All of us are. And time is wasting.

Remarks by Iran's hard-line president that the Holocaust was a "myth" and Israel should be "wiped off the map" are not just wild comments by a novice leader, but part of a strategy to keep anti-Israel sentiment alive in the Middle East, analysts said Saturday. Ahmadinejad "is still living in 1979 and believes Iran represents a revolution more than just a state," said Mustafa Alani, director of security studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. "He believes (verbally) attacking Israel, which was a key principle of the revolution, will serve Iranian interests in the region more than polite, rational policies."