Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted that Israel would be "uprooted" and its leaders put on trial as he condemned Saturday's deadly Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip.
"I already said last year that the real Holocaust was in Palestine," Ahmadinejad told state television in an interview, alluding to his oft-repeated doubts about the magnitude of the mass slaughter of Jews in World War II. "For any child that is killed (in the Palestinian territories), a judicial case will formed to find those behind it. They should know they will be put on trial, one by one," he added.
Ahmadinejad, who has caused international outrage by calling the Holocaust a "myth" and repeatedly predicting Israel is doomed to disappear, said the Jewish state was facing a looming confrontation.
"Gaza is the beginning, the real issue is elsewhere. They should know that both in the prelude and in the real thing they face a defeat and this time they will be uprooted," he added. Ahmadinejad last month called Israel a "dirty microbe" and "savage animal" in a speech to a public rally, provoking a new wave of international condemnation of his anti-Israel comments.
The Islamic republic has a longstanding policy of non-recognition of Israel but its rhetoric against the Jewish state has sharpened during the presidency of Ahmadinejad. Iran insists its position is in no way anti-Semitic but anti-Zionist, pointing to the continued existence in the country of the largest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel.
Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip on Saturday killed more than 50 Palestinians, medical sources said, making it one of the deadliest Israeli operations since the September 2000 outbreak of the Palestinian uprising.