Former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold and his American counterpart, Richard Holbrooke, are joining former Canadian Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler, and an unprecedented coalition of victims of genocide, including representatives from Darfur and Rwanda, in speaking out against the dangers of state-sanctioned incitement to genocide, including that of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ambassador Gold heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA), which is co-sponsoring a conference in Washington DC entitled, "State-Sanctioned Incitement to Genocide: What Can Be Done." It's scheduled to coincide with Ahmadinejad's address to the UN General Assembly on September 23.
Ashley Perry of the JCPA'S Middle East Strategic Information project (www.mesi.org.uk) told Israel National Radio's Yishai Fleisher on Monday that Ahmadinejad is not alone; rather, he is emblematic of Iranian policy when he threatens to wipe Israel off the map. He added that under international law, "A leader of a state can be indicted on incitement to genocide. That clearly applies to President Ahmadinejad."
Perry said, "To really understand that there is such a danger, if you look at what was said before the Rwandan genocide, if you look at what was said before the Holocaust, you know there was a delegitimization. There was an incitement.... There was even a sort of call for your enemy to be bestialized. You know the Jews were... referred to as vermin and rats.... Ahmadinejad has called Israel and the Jews black and filthy microbes'."
During the conference, Cotler will release the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) petition, which calls on all states to bring Ahmadinejad's Iran to justice under international law. That has not been done until now, although Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper have characterized Ahmadinejad's language as genocidal, and the United States House of Representatives and Britain's House of Commons have passed resolutions declaring that Ahmadinejad's language indeed violated the Genocide Convention.
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