Iran held its Quds Day celebrations on the last Friday of Ramadan, and last Friday it indulged itself in an orgy of hatred towards Israel and America, demanding the destruction of both. As Steven Stalinsky notes at the New York Sun, the only aspect of Quds Day more astonishing than the day-long hate festival was the utter lack of interest in it by the Western media:

It is disturbing when the entire leadership of one nation, along with hundreds of thousands of its citizens, comes out with celebrations and parades every year that call for the annihilation of another country.

It is more twisted that no world leaders or international bodies, including the United Nations, have denounced the activities surrounding Quds Day, an Iranian holiday introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini that is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan. ...

President Ahmadinejad gave a series of speeches leading up to and on Quds Day. At an Iftar address on October 14, he discussed his "connection with God" and said: "The president of America is like us. That is, he too is inspired ... but [his] inspiration is of the satanic kind. Satan gives inspiration to the president of America."

Mr. Ahmadinejad delivered his Quds Day speech under a banner that read, "Israel must be wiped off the face of the world." He described the holiday as "a day for confrontation between the Islamic faith with the global arrogance." ...

A who's who of the Iranian leadership marched in the main Quds Day parade before crowds chanting "death to Israel" and "death to America." The marchers included a former Iranian president, Mohammed Khatemi, and a spokesman for the parliament presidency board, Mohsen Kouhkan, who predicted a quick "final and total defeat of America and the Zionist regime."

Mohammed Khatami often gets sympathetic press in the West as a "reformer" on the inside of the Iranian mullahcracy. The Bush administration reportedly tried to connect with Khatami on his recent visit to the US as a back channel for negotiations with Teheran in an attempt to get them to stop uranium enrichment. It's a mark of the nature of the regime when their reformers march to the rhythm of a chant of annihilation directed at the United States and Israel.

Nor was Khatami alone amongst "reformers" at the hate-in, nor the only former president. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani also spoke at Quds Day in 2001, telling rapturous listeners that their jihad would lead to a conflict between forces of "colonialism" and martyrs, apparently leaving no doubt as to the victors in the coming war, and this was just weeks after 9/11. This year, Rafsanjani upheld Quds Day as an important factor for Muslim jihad, and emphasized that all 1.5 billion Muslims supported it.

Do you recall the massive coverage provided to this event, in which present and former heads of state held a national celebration calling for our destruction? Have CQ readers seen any journalists covering the massive rallies, complete with burning effigies of George Bush and Tony Blair and burning flags of the US and Israel? Did any TV network note that the winner of Iran's Quds Day engineering competition, Isfahan University, produced a design for a pilotless plane to replace suicide bombers in the glorious jihad?

I certainly don't recall hearing anything about this, and I'm a person inclined to follow several media outlets on a daily basis. Western media didn't have any interest in providing this information to its consumers, and one has to wonder why. In the middle of midterm elections, does the media want to keep us from considering this particular threat, and if so, why?

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A look at Quds DayScott Johnson MEMRI executive director Steven Stalinsky takes a look at Quds Day, an Iranian holiday introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini that is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan: Western press ignores Iran's hate-filled Quds day. [Read More]

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Would you consider it news if a country widely believed to be developing nuclear weapons held a parade in which its leadership marched to chants of Death to America! and one of the speeches predicted a quick final and total defeat of America? Apparentl... [Read More]

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Would you consider it news if a country widely believed to be developing nuclear weapons held a parade in which its leadership marched to chants of Death to America! and one of the speeches predicted a quick final and total defeat of America? Apparentl... [Read More]

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Would you consider it news if a country widely believed to be developing nuclear weapons held a parade in which its leadership marched to chants of Death to America! and one of the speeches predicted a quick final and total defeat of America? Apparentl... [Read More]

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Would you consider it news if a country widely believed to be developing nuclear weapons held a parade in which its leadership marched to chants of Death to America! and one of the speeches predicted a quick final and total defeat of America? Apparentl... [Read More]

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