Iran’s hardline president, who has called for Israel’s destruction, said today that the Jewish state should be moved to Europe if the West wants to make up for the Holocaust.

I’ve always loved how pragmatic Eastern leaders can be.

“Some European countries insist on saying that during World War II, Hitler burned millions of Jews and put them in concentration camps,” Ahmadinejad said. “Any historian, commentator or scientist who doubts that is taken to prison or gets condemned.”

Talking about reform and democracy in Iran, though, is an entirely different matter.

“Only recently the UN General Assembly condemned Holocaust denial and here the Iranian leader is showing himself to be fundamentally contradicting the norms of international behaviour and decency,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

He quickly added that Israel is exempt from international behaviour and decency because, well, it’s Israel.

“They certainly don’t inspire hope among any of us in the international community that the government of Iran is prepared to engage as a responsible member of that community,” [U.S.] State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said.

He added that Ahmadinejad’s comments appear “to be a consistent pattern of rhetoric that is both hostile and out of touch with values that the rest of us in the international community live by.”

Ahmedinijad, he stressed, not George W. Bush.

“An extremist with a microphone can be dangerous enough; an extremist with nuclear weapons poses a danger to the entire world,” [Rabbi David] Saperstein said in a statement.

He later clarified that he was not talking about Ariel Sharon or George W. Bush.

– Move Israel to Europe, Iran’s president urges