Say No to a Visa for Ahmadinejad

Say No to a Visa for Ahmadinejad

By Sherwin Pomerantz

The last week has seen an increase in anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric coming out of Iran.   Ahmadinejad said there was no place for the Jewish state in a future Middle East, echoing previous remarks he has made about Israel. He has also repeatedly called into question whether the Holocaust actually took place.  Khamenei said last week that Israel would one day be returned to the Palestinian nation and would cease to exist.

Last Friday, the last Friday of Ramadan which, in Tehran, is observed as Jerusalem Day, Ahmadinejad said:  ““Arrogant countries vowed to protect the Israeli entity, which is their pretext to infiltrate inside the Muslim World.  U.S. presidential candidates won’t reach the power unless they bow to the Zionist entity.  It’s for the West’s benefit to abandon the Zionists," adding that there'll be no place for the US, and Zionists in the new Middle East.

He went further:  “Today, countering the entity of Zionism and the fabricated Zionist regime safeguards rights of all human beings, defends human dignity and paves the way to save humankind from arrogance, poverty and misery,” the Iranian President stated, noting that the International al-Quds (i.e. Jerusalem) Day is the day of unity among all human beings to remove the Zionist “black stain” from the human society. The Iranian president pointed out that al-Quds will be set free, and the cancerous tumor [i.e. the Zionist entity] will be removed.

  

All of this, of course, from a member state of the United Nations against another member state.  However, it was not sufficiently destructive to stop the UN Secretary General from attending the conference of non-aligned nations meeting in Tehran next week where Iran itself will take over the chairmanship.  Need I say more?

But there is something that Americans particularly can do to show their combined displeasure regarding the vitriolic statements being made by Iran.  On September 18^th the UN General Assembly will convene for its annual meeting.  Traditionally heads of state from around the world converge on New York where each is given an opportunity to address the full General Assembly.  For the past few years Ahmadinejad has attended these meetings and has been granted a visa by the US to do so.  That is at is should be given the fact that the US hosts the United Nations on its soil. 

However, each time he traveled to the US he did more than address the General Assembly.   He has addressed a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations, met with a student group at Columbia University and has been free to do whatever he pleased in the US for the time he was there.  But the US is under no obligation to grant him a visa to do anything else but travel there, speak at the UN and go home. 

In his September 23, 2010 speech to the UN he said:  "Some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack [9/11] to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view."  Does someone who makes such insane accusations against America deserve to be granted free passage in America?  I don’t think so.

What thinking Americans should do now is write to their senators and congressmen as well as to the State Department demanding that Ahmadinejad’s visa be limited to the 24 hours he needs to be in New York for the General Assembly meeting.  Further that his travel be restricted to going to and from the airport as well as to and from his hotel and UN headquarters.  A nation that keeps Jonathan Pollard in jail for 25 years for passing information to a friendly country and then allows the personification of evil from Tehran to roam the streets of the US freely is simply not true to its own principles.  Fortunately the US remains a free country where legislators are answerable to their constituents.  Those constituents, American citizens, need to raise their voices today and keep evil off the streets.  There is no reason to do less.  Ahmadinejad must not be allowed to roam America at will.  Act now, please!