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Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi: ''I've always been, I would say naturally, a friend of Israel."
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PARIS-ROME (EJP)---Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi implicitely compared Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler at an award ceremony in Paris.
Speaking in the French capital last week a dinner where he received an award from the Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal in France, Berlusconi was quoted as saying in a reference to Ahmadinejad :''We must all be extremely wary of the lunacy of those who say, even if only for domestic political reasons, that Israel must be wiped off the world map.”
Referring to Hitler, he said, ''We don't believe such things are real, but there has already been a certain gentleman who started off as a democrat but who went on to do what he did."
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Ahead of his appearance this week at the UN General Assembly in New York, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel “will not survive, even if it gives up land for a Palestinian state.” He repeated previous anti-Israel comments, calling the Holocaust a "fake" and saying that Israel is perpetrating a Holocaust on the Palestinian people.
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At the ceremony, the Italian Prime Minister reiterated his support for Israel.
''I've always been, I would say naturally, a friend of Israel,'' he said. ''In my childhood I had Jewish friends who I loved and who loved me back. Then I visited Auschwitz and in that moment I felt Israeli, too.''
A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, Hassan Qashqavi, called Berlusconi’s comments "absurd".
"He has made such comments in the past, and they lack any logic and the high values of the Italian people and culture," Qashqavi said.
He also criticised Berlusconi for "defending the Zionist criminals whose hands bear the blood of thousands of Palestinian children, women and people".