Calling his remarks a “fake story”, Zarif wrote on his Twitter account that “to sell bigoted lies against a nation which has saved Jews 3 times, Netanyahu resorting to fake history and falsifying Torah. Force of habit.”
Zarif, in an attachment to the post, also wrote “once again Benjamin Netanyahu not only distorts the realities of today, but also distorts the past — including Jewish scripture. It is truly regrettable that bigotry gets to the point of making allegations against an entire nation which has saved the Jews three times in its history.”
“The Book of Esther tells of how Xerxes I saved Jews from a plot hatched by Haman the Agagite, which is marked on this very day,” he wrote.
Jews don’t view Ahasuerus as a savior, as he originally approved Haman’s order to kill the Jews; rather, they look to the Jewish Queen Esther as the heroine of the tale.
“Again, during the time of Cyrus the Great, an Iranian king saved the Jews — this time from captivity in Babylon; and during the Second World War, when Jews were being slaughtered in Europe, Iran gladly took them in,” Zarif wrote.
Meantime, Iranian parliament Speaker Ali Larijani also criticized Netanyahu for manipulating stories against Iranian nation, saying “apparently, Netanyahu has neither studied the history, nor has read the Torah.”
Larijani added that Netanyahu “has distorted the Iranians’ pre-Islam historical era and attempted to misrepresent events,” noting that nothing more than presenting such lies is expected from a wicked Zionist.”
In a meeting with Putin in Moscow on Friday, Netanyahu accused Persians to make “an attempt to destroy the Jewish people that did not succeed some 2,500 years ago;” an event commemorated on the Jewish holiday of Purim.
He also accused Modern Iran, calling it “Persia’s heir”, to do the same in destroying the Jews, pointing to the test-firing of Iran’s ballistic missiles as the witness to his comments.
Putin rejected Netanyahu’s Purim parallel, telling him that the events described had taken place in the fifth century BCE. “We now live in a different world. Let us talk about that now.”
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