Cotler's right: Let's arrest Ahmadinejad...

Of course, the UN is not going to do anything...

Former Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler on Monday called on the world community to act against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad before he carries out his threats of genocide against Israel.

Cotler spoke at the opening session of a conference at the Interdisciplinary College, Herzliya, on "Human Rights and Security." The speakers included Professors Amnon Rubinstein, Alan Dershowitz and Aharon Barak.

Ahmadinejad's actions proved he was guilty of incitement to genocide, Cotler said, and should be stopped before he had the chance to carry out his plans.

"There is more evidence on a factual basis with respect to the state-sanctioned incitement to genocide in Ahmadinejad's Iran than we had with regard to [a Rwandan convicted of incitement to genocide in Canada,]" said Cotler. "So that gives you a sense therefore, of how the principles and precedents on both matters of fact and conclusion of law feed into Iran, where what you have today is the toxic convergence of the advocacy of the most horrific of crimes, namely genocide, embedded in the most virulent of ideologies, namely anti-Semitism, dramatized by the parading in the streets of Teheran of a Shihab-3 missile draped in the emblem with the words, 'Wipe Israel off the map, as the imam says,' proving that this is state sanctioned incitement to genocide."

Cotler presented several case studies of rulings by an international court that convicted Rwandans, including a former prime minister, of incitement to genocide in the murder of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi tribesmen.

In convicting them, the court invoked the United Nations Genocide Convention, which established the criteria for proving state-sanctioned incitement to genocide, including intentionality, public calls for genocide and direct incitement by use of euphemisms and dehumanizing language.