I do agree with Mark Disney that Columbia's venom against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was uncalled for and the university president had made "an unbelievably rude attack on a guest" .

However, Disney's claim of 'fact' that "Ahmadinejad did not say he wants to 'wipe Israel off the map'; and he did not deny that the Holocaust happened" is splitting hairs. To make a coherent reading out of Disney's ambiguity is almost as annoying as his deliberately reading the Iranian Prez so ambiguously.

If Malaysiakini readers were to be taken in by Disney's fudging, they would be misled into thinking that there was no basis for the uproar following Ahmadinejad's 'wipe off' statement.

Granted that Ahmadinejad did not say that 'he', personally, 'wants to' wipe Israel off the map; what he meant was [merely] that Israel should be wiped off the map.

It was Iran's own official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) which first used the phrase 'wiped off the map' to translate his words. The quote was disseminated in the English version of its coverage of Ahmadinejad's speech on Oct 26, 2005, five months after the Prez assumed office.

He had been speaking to 4,000 students at 'The world without Zionism' conference. Sourcing the Iranian Students News Agency transcript in Farsi , the New York Times gave the same translation. NYT had Ahmadinejad as saying: "Our dear Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement", and the newspaper printed the speech in full on Oct 30.

Defending its choice of words, NYT maintained that all official translations of Ahmadinejad's statement, including a description of it on his presidential website, refer to 'wiping Israel away'.

Head of BBC News Helen Boaden explains: "There is no direct translation into English of the Farsi phrase in question. Therefore, there are a number of possible ways of rendering the phrase into English."

Boaden states that in the judgement of its specialist Farsi translators, the broadcaster had given a fair and accurate reflection of what the Prez had meant, to wit 'wipe [it, either the illegitimate regime or the unrecognised country] off the map'.

The Al Jazeera online version was: "As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map".

The Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri) accused by one Muslim Malaysiakini reader as being a Zionist entity gave the sentence a less inflammatory tone, "Imam said: This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history."

To read it in context, here's the rest of the paragraph: "Our dear Imam said a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine. Is it possible to create a new front in the heart of an old front? This would be a defeat and whoever accepts the legitimacy of this regime [Israel] has in fact, signed the defeat of the Islamic world.

"Our dear Imam targeted the heart of the world oppressor in his struggle, meaning the occupying regime. I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world." ( NYT )

I don't believe it had been in Ahmadinejad's mind to remove the "disgraceful stain" (shades of Singapore as that 'little red dot' on the map) with err, powerful detergent?

One apologetic American version, disputed by Iranian translators, goes: the regime "should vanish from the page of time". Indeed. Are the five million Jews living in Israel to 'vanish' too like a torn-off page?

In this regard, Ahmadinejad with delicious irony reasons that Israel should by rights have been sited in Germany or Austria, or relocated to Canada or Alaska which has land to spare, if it is after all the Westerners who feel the need to assuage their guilt.

This year on March 22, the 'map' issue still dogged the Prez. Replying to French TV's TF2 Channel, Ahmadinejad said: "Let me ask you this question: where is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics now? Was it not wiped off [the map]? How was it wiped off?"

His meaning is either 'regime change' or 'dissolution of the state', which nonetheless implies that Israel in its present form, not unlike the disintegrated USSR, should cease to exist.

Recently on Aug 18, the Islamic hardliner addressed an international religious conference in Tehran, saying: "The Zionist regime is the flag bearer of violation and occupation and this regime is the flag of Satan." Just as Ahmadinejad is demonised, he himself too and very literally demonises Israel.

I don't believe anything significant has been lost in translation. If you'll go to Malaysia's Ministry of Information website , an article dated Aug 3, on the emergency meeting called by OIC chair Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, reads: "One of the key Islamic leaders at the one-day meeting, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reportedly said behind closed doors that wiping out Israel would solve the current crisis."

"'The real cure for the conflict is elimination of the Zionist regime, but there should be first an immediate ceasefire [in Lebanon],' he was quoted as saying by an Iranian news agency."

Ahmadinejad has consistently and repeatedly made statements to the effect of wiping the regime/Israel off the map and quoted by many news agencies, including our own national outfit Bernama . I'm at a loss as to how Disney can so blithely make his misleading assertions.

His second claim of 'fact' that Ahmadinejad did not deny the Holocaust is quibbling over the form while glossing over the substance which is that the Prez though devilishly handsome (my woman's opinion) is nonetheless a sick man sick as in 'meloyakan', not 'sakit'.

Last year on Dec 11, Ahmadinejad opened the conference, 'Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision' where he gave participants a warm welcome saying "Iran is your home, and here you can express your opinions freely, in a friendly manner and in a free atmosphere." The rationale behind his words is that there are laws against Holocaust denial in several European countries. But then again, are Iranians themselves free to question the mullahs' religious edicts either?

The Tehran gathering was a case of Iran inviting the worst Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites of the world to tea and a bitching session. Ahmadinejad reiterated at the conference: "Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out."

Iran's Culture Ministry had earlier in the wake of the Danish provocation sponsored a contest for cartoonists to mock the Holocaust.

Nonetheless, it is correct that Ahmadinejad has been misrepresented on his allusion to the Holocaust as a 'myth'. He meant 'myth-making' i.e. Jews shaping and building up the genocide story to extract sympathy, not that it was a fiction or it never happened. But he has downplayed its extent and severity.

It does the media no credit though to paint the Iranian president as an irrational, illogical firebrand. Without doubt Ahmadinejad is a populist orator his personal website is called Mardomyar (the People's Friend) but he's certainly not simplistic; on the contrary, he's smartly calculated.

The fallacious portrayal comes from his quotes being excerpted in piecemeal fashion and layered by the media's editorial and institutional biases.

A PhD holder and formerly lecturer in Iran's University of Science and Technology, Ahmadinejad's delivery is nuanced and some of his other arguments persuasive enough that parts of the world will lend credence to them.

His stinging ripostes find favour not only among Muslims but also with the liberal left the bunch that are similarly fan boys of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez for showing up Western hypocrisy, including on the matter of nuclear ambitions.

In his recent visit to New York, Ahmadinejad had wanted to lay a wreath at Ground Zero, a conciliatory gesture. Since the 9/11 hijackers were in the main Saudis and not Iranians, what sense does it make for the city to deny the Iranian president his request?

On the whole, the American hosts were uncivil to a foreign dignitary who is a visiting head of state. In terms of a PR coup, and here I find myself in accord with Mark Disney - it is Iran 1, USA 0.