What did Ahmadinejad really say about Israel?

This from Juan Cole's site, where he is apparently having a tiff with Christopher Hitchens:

...I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." -- Juan Cole

see also: This article in Wiki

This article from AlJazeera: says:

Ahmadinejad: Wipe Israel off map
{I myself assume that AlJazeera would tell it like it is--J}

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has openly called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Ahmadinejad addressed students at a conference

"The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," the president told a conference in Tehran on Wednesday, entitled The World without Zionism.

"The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land," he said.

"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayat Allah Khomeini.

His comments were the first time in years that such a high-ranking Iranian official has called for Israel's eradication, even though such slogans are still regularly used at government rallies.

Call for unity

Addressing about 4000 students gathered in an Interior Ministry conference hall, Ahmadinejad also called for Palestinian unity, resistance and a point "where the annihilation of the Zionist regime will come".


Khatami was in favour of 'dialogue among civilisations'

"The Islamic umma (community) will not allow its historic enemy to live in its heartland," he said in the fiery speech that centred on a "historic war between the oppressor and the world of Islam".

The term "oppressor" is used by the clerical government to refer to the United States.

"We should not settle for a piece of land," he said of Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip.

"Anyone who signs a treaty which recognises the entity of Israel means he has signed the surrender of the Muslim world," Ahmadinejad said.

"Any leaders in the Islamic umma who recognise Israel face the wrath of their own people."

Cole says: "Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government."