Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Jan. 4 Irans state-run media gave unusual prominence to a historically confused news report claiming that former Saudi King Abdul-Aziz, the father of the current Saudi monarch, objected to the existence of Israel and told United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt to relocate the Jewish state to Europe. Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Jan. 4 Irans state-run media gave unusual prominence to a historically confused news report claiming that former Saudi King Abdul-Aziz, the father of the current Saudi monarch, objected to the existence of Israel and told United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt to relocate the Jewish state to Europe.
Mehr news agency, which first carried the report that was later picked up by the countrys state-run radio and television and a number of government-owned dailies, wrote on Tuesday that in 1954 Abdol-Aziz, the father of present Saudi King Abdullah, met with President Roosevelt and protested the existence of the newly-founded state of Israel.
The Jews must return to the lands they were driven out of and compensation must be paid to them by those who committed the crime and not those Arabs who were foreign spectators of this episode, the Saudi King purportedly said, referring to the Holocaust during which some six million Jews were massacred in Nazi death camps.
What harm have the Arabs done to the Jews of Europe? The Christian Germans were those who took away their homes and lives, so let the Germans pay back for this, Iranian state media quoted Abdul-Aziz as saying.
The Iranian media gave extensive coverage to the report and quotations from King Abdul-Aziz were used to defend the recent statements by Irans President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The Iranian president has described the Holocaust as a myth and called for Israel to be wiped off the map. His comments have drawn international condemnation and have twice been rebuked at the Untied Nations Security Council.
There is, however, one significant problem with what the Iranian media have been reporting; in 1954 both Roosevelt and Saudi King Abdul-Aziz were dead.
The two leaders meeting was in 1934, not 1954, and at the time Israel did not exist. Contrary to Tehrans version of history, Abdul-Aziz could not have possibly asked FDR to relocate the state of Israel to Europe.
