This Jew-hating, terrorist-excusing conspiracy theorist was actually the elected leader of Malaysia - and spoke at a Muslim gathering where he expected his views to win support:
“There is strong evidence that the attacks were staged. If they can make Avatar, they can make anything,’ Mahathir told the Conference for the Support of Al-Quds (Jerusalem), as quoted by local media.
The former premier also blamed Jews for hindering progress in US foreign policy. Voicing his disappointment that Barack Obama had not yet ended the war in Afghanistan or closed the US terror detention center at Guantanamo, he explained that “there are forces in the United States which prevent the president from doing some things. One of the forces is the Jewish lobby.”
Jews “had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole governments to ransom,” Mahathir said.
“Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world.”
Here’s the frightening question: For how many Muslims does Mahathir speak?
And perhaps we should for once ask to what extent this man’s disgraceful bigotry and victimology is driven by Islam rather than seek again to blame ourselves for his vileness, as in this recent effort, reported in The Age:
Malaysia’s relationship with Canberra was at best prickly and diplomats could not understand why Dr Mahathir held such a jaundiced view. Barry Wain, an Australian journalist who has observed Dr Mahathir for 37 years, provides some of the answers to the mystery.
In 1969 Dr Mahathir, a first-term politician and a rising political star, was invited on an all-expenses-paid trip to Australia as a guest of the Foreign Ministry in Canberra. But he lost his seat in an election that year and a few days before he was due to depart the Australians asked him to postpone the trip....
Two years later Dr Mahathir accepted an Australian Government offer to visit Canberra after attending a seminar at his own expense at Monash University, only to find the hospitality in the capital as bleak as the weather. In his book, Malaysian Maverick: Mahathir Mohamad in Turbulent Times, Wain maintains Dr Mahathir never forgot how he was treated all those years ago.
So does cold hospitality in Canberra also explain why Mahathir believes Jews “had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred”? Or has some faith or ideology pushed him to that conclusion?
Under Mahathir, Malaysia was a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause, and established diplomatic relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization. (Israeli citizens remain banned from entering Malaysia and Malaysian citizens from Israel without special government permission.) In 1986, a major diplomatic row erupted with neighbouring Singapore when Chaim Herzog, the President of Israel, paid a state visit.
Mahathir's public remarks about Jews date back as early as 1970 when he wrote in his controversial book The Malay Dilemma: "The Jews for example are not merely hook-nosed, but understand money instinctively."
In 1997, during the financial crisis, he attributed the collapse of the Malaysian ringgit to a conspiracy of Jews against a prosperous Muslim state: "The Jews robbed the Palestinians of everything, but in Malaysia they could not do so, hence they do this, depress the ringgit." Under strong international criticism, he issued a partial retraction, but not in Malay language media sources.
On 16 October 2003, shortly before he stepped down as prime minister, Mahathir said during a summit for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Putrajaya, that:
“ We [Muslims] are actually very strong, 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped out. The Nazis killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million [during the Holocaust]. But today the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them. They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries. And they, this tiny community, have become a world power. ” He also named Israel as "the enemy allied with most powerful nations." Israel strongly criticized the remarks. The speech was also condemned by most nations from the West. Speaking on behalf of the European Union, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that Dr Mahathir had employed "expressions that were gravely offensive, very strongly anti-Semitic and... strongly counter to principles of tolerance, dialogue and understanding'." At the same time, Mahathir's speech was defended by several Muslim leaders and politicians, including Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Maher and Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai. United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Bush considered the comments "reprehensible and hateful." The Muslim Public Affairs Council condemned Mahathir's remarks as "extremely offensive, anti-Semitic comments." The Malaysian prime minister's comments were also condemned by Jewish organizations and the government of Israel.
His comments were widely criticized in the West, but the issue was ignored in Asia and Islamic countries, which felt that his remark had been taken out of context. Mahathir later defended his remarks, saying: "I am not anti-Semitic ... I am against those Jews who kill Muslims and the Jews who support the killers of Muslims." He tagged the West as "anti-Muslim", for double standards by "protecting Jews while allowing others to insult Islam." He also said "But when somebody condemns the Muslims, calls my prophet, "terrorist", did the European Union say anything?"[45] Despite saying he is not anti-semitic, many of his speeches criticizes and condemns Jews directly as he said recently,
“The Jews had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole governments to ransom."
He even went on saying something that can be perceived as supporting the Nazi Germany policy and the Holocaust.
“Even after their massacre by the Nazis of Germany, they survived to continue to be a source of even greater problems for the world. The Holocaust failed as a final solution,”
In 2006 he had a 2-hour talk with James W. Walter and William Rodriguez with regards to the US Government involvement in the 9/11 attacks. He urged the world's 1.3 billion Muslims to boycott Dutch products following the release of the anti-Islam movie Fitna by the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, it was reported on 30 March 2008.
