Israel should be on European soil: Ahmadinejad

TEHERAN – (AFP)- Iran’s hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that if Germany and Austria feel responsible for massacring Jews during World War II, they should host a state of Israel on their own soil.

Ahmadinejad, who sparked an international outcry in October when he said Israel “must be wiped off the map”, also repeated his view that the Jewish state is a “tumour”.

“Now that you believe the Jews were oppressed, why should the Palestinian Muslims have to pay the price?” the hardline president asked in an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language satellite channel, Al Alam.

“You oppressed them, so give a part of Europe to the Zionist regime so they can establish any government they want. We would support it,” he said, according to a transcript of his original Farsi-language comments given to AFP.

“So, Germany and Austria, come and give one, two or any number of your provinces to the Zionist regime so they can create a country there which all of Europe will support and the problem will be solved at its root,” he said.

“Why do they insist on imposing themselves on other powers and creating a tumor so there is always tension and conflict?”

Al Alam, which broadcast the interview on Thursday, said the president was speaking in the holy city of Makkah, where Ahmadinejad is attending a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

“Is it not true that European countries insist that they committed a Jewish genocide? They say that Hitler burned millions of Jews in furnaces... and exiled them,” Ahmadinejad told Al Alam.

“Then because the Jews have been oppressed during the Second World War, therefore they (the Europeans) have to support the occupying regime of Qods (Jerusalem). We do not accept this,” he said.

He also noted that European countries “believe in this so much that and are so determined that any researcher who denies it (the Holocaust) with historical evidence is dealt with in a most harsh way and sent to prison.”