Despite a barrage of international criticism over his allegedly anti-Semitic remarks, an unrepentant Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad maintains that Jews are arrogant and insists they do control the world.
Among an array of world leaders, US President George W. Bush personally condemned Mahathir's statements and pulled him aside at the APEC meeting to say the remarks were "wrong and divisive," a White House spokesman said.
But Mahathir, who retires at the month's end after 22 years as the leader of mainly Muslim Malaysia, said the global reaction "shows that [Jews] do control the world," the Bangkok Post yesterday quoted him as saying.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"Israel is a small country. There are not many Jews in the world. But they are so arrogant that they defy the whole world. Even if the United Nations say no, they go ahead. Why? Because they have the backing of all these people," said Mahathir, who often makes acerbic speeches against globalization and US policy in the Middle East.
Mahathir triggered an uproar last week at a summit of Islamic countries by stating that "Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."
The issue trailed him to the APEC summit, which was to close yesterday, where leaders ranging from Australia to the US continued to criticize Asia's senior statesman.
Shortly before Bush and Mahathir sat down together in the same room with 19 other APEC leaders Monday, US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the American president "thinks those remarks were reprehensible. I do not think they are emblematic of the Muslim world."
Later White House press secretary Scott McClellan quoted Bush as telling the Malaysian leader face to face that, "It stands squarely against what I believe in."
After Mahathir's latest comments published yesterday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard -- himself a regular target of Malaysia's ire because of his government's close ties to the US -- said, "any attempt to divide this world according to religious affiliation is the last thing we want."
The thrust of Mahathir's address, made at the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur, was that the world's 1.3 billion Muslims had been outmaneuvered by "a few million Jews" and needed to give up violence and think hard about greater unity and improved education to defend their interests peacefully.
Mahathir said in the Bangkok Post interview that his remarks had been taken out of context,
"In my speech I condemned all violence, even the suicide bombings and I told the Muslims it's about time we stopped all these things and paused to think and do something that is much more productive," he said. "That was the whole tone of my speech, but they picked up one sentence where I said that the Jews control the world."
ROCKY RELATIONS: The figures on residents come as Chinese tourist numbers drop following Beijing’s warnings to avoid traveling to Japan The number of Chinese residents in Japan has continued to rise, even as ties between the two countries have become increasingly fractious, data released on Friday showed. As of the end of December last year, the number of Chinese residents had increased by 6.5 percent from the previous year to 930,428. Chinese people accounted for 22.6 percent of all foreign residents in Japan, making them by far the largest group, Japanese Ministry of Justice data showed. Beijing has criticized Tokyo in increasingly strident terms since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last year suggested that a military conflict around Taiwan could
A retired US colonel behind a privately financed rocket launch site in the Dominican Republic sees the project as a response to China’s dominance of the space race in Latin America. Florida-based Launch on Demand is slated to begin building a US$600 million facility in a remote region near the border with Haiti late this year. The project is designed to meet surging demand for the heavy-lift rockets needed to put clusters of satellites into orbit. It is also an answer to China’s growing presence in the region, said CEO Burton Catledge, a former commander of the US Air Force’s 45th Operations
Germany is considering Australia’s Ghost Bat robot fighter as it looks to select a combat drone to modernize its air force, German Minister of Defense Boris Pistorius said yesterday. Germany has said it wants to field hundreds of uncrewed fighter jets by 2029, and would make a decision soon as it considers a range of German, European and US projects developing so-called “collaborative combat aircraft.” Australia has said it will integrate the Ghost Bat, jointly developed by Boeing Australia and the Royal Australian Air Force, into its military after a successful weapons test last year. After inspecting the Ghost Bat in Queensland yesterday,
A pro-Iran hacking group claimed to breach FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal e-mail inbox and posted some of the contents online. The e-mails provided by the hacking group include travel details, correspondence with leasing agents in Washington and global entry, and loyalty account numbers. The e-mail address the hackers claim to have compromised has been previously tied to Patel’s personal details, and the leaked e-mails contain photos of Patel and others, in addition to correspondence with family members and colleagues. “The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information,” the agency said in a statement on
RSS