"It is not covert to anybody that the Zionist regime has over 250 atomic warheads.

"It is clear that the regime's atomic threat against the Palestinian people cannot target them directly. In fact, the threat will be just a suicide operation," he said.

He added, "Start of the first Intifada (uprising) in the occupied lands just after publication of news on Israel's nuclear weapons is another proof of the Zionist regime's ineffective threats against Palestinians.

"Officials of the Zionist regime have access to atomic weapons to tilt the balance in their own favor and against countries which support the Palestinian nation."

The Iranian envoy expressed his regret over 10-year unsuccessful performance of the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in settling international problems including restoration of the Palestinians' rights and the US attack on Iraq and massacre of its nation.

Annan has confessed that the UN Security Council has turned into another place to serve the interests of big powers while it was founded after World War II to establish and consolidate peace and security in the world.

"Olmert, confident of the US support, is well aware of the fact that the UN Security Council will take no measure against the Zionist regime's extremism."

Kamalvandi stated that senior US and French official made similar remarks during the past two years on use of nuclear weapons which contradicted with peace-seeking intentions of humans and were against their international responsibilities including

implementation of Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) concerning fight against nuclear weapons.

Pointing to the US all-out support for the Zionist regime in its 33-day attack on Lebanon, he said Israel failed to achieve even its minor goals including release of two of its soldiers and disarmament of Lebanese Hezbollah.

"Unfortunately, information released on Washington's policies and measures are not true, a clear instance of which was seen when the US hid its goals behind its attack on Iraq.

"Israel intends to make the international community and regional states and Iran in particular not to pursue restoration of the Palestinians' rights or provide support for them," he added.

"Israel is ignorant of the fact that the threat will be another sign of its weakness," he said.

"I have a beard and wear a yarmulke. [Most] people do not know the difference between this [Neturei Karta] person in the paper or someone in Crown Heights, and me. These people [Neturei Karta rabbis] should be locked up."

Rabbi Mordechai Gutnick, president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia, also distanced the Australian rabbinate from the rabbis.

"People should not in any way believe this is representative of Orthodox Jewry. They're [Neturei Karta] out on their own and that's where they should stay."

In a rare public statement, the ultra-Orthodox congregation of Adass Israel Australia - which has communities in Melbourne and Sydney denounced the "nefarious and totally irresponsible handful of Jewish charlatans who attended the recent Holocaust-denial conference of Jew haters in Tehran".

"We are disgusted and repelled by the treacherous and contemptible conduct of this deranged and reviled group of misfits and mechallelei Hashem [desecraters of God's name], who in their boundless and obsessive craving for publicity habitually raise their ugly heads and besmirch the reputation and honour of all observant Jews," the statement said.

"Under no circumstances, should ... their garb and their calling themselves 'rabbis' deceive anyone. In fact, they are an insignificant group of unemployed parasites who represent nobody but themselves.

"The Adass Israel community, which is made up of first-, second- and third-generation Holocaust survivors, cannot ignore, and will never forgive, the desecration of the memory of our kedoshim by these self-hating Jews."

But Rabbi Joseph Gutnick called on Adass' spiritual leader, Rabbi Avrohom Tzvi Beck, whose brother is reportedly associated with Neturei Karta, to personally condemn the delegation that went to Tehran.

"I don't think it [the Adass statement] is sufficient under the circumstances," Rabbi Gutnick said. "The community needs the Adass spiritual leader, whom many of us deeply respect, to come out with an outright statement endorsed by himself personally."

Rabbi Moshe Gutnick, a judge on the Sydney Beth Din, said Jews the world over should dismiss the Neturei Karta as a "few lunatics".

"They do not reflect the view of even the most right-wing Jews in Israel," Rabbi Gutnick told the AJN by phone en route from Israel.

In calling for the rabbis' cherem, or excommunication, Israeli Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger said: "They betrayed the Jewish people and their heritage and particularly disgraced the Shoah and desecrated its memory. They tried to stain the Jewish people, who shy away from this low behaviour, with their shameful behaviour."

Israel's former chief rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, said the Neturei Karta rabbis' actions were "insane".

"If it's possible that there is any Jew, who for some reason or another can support a Holocaust denier in a generation where people with numbers tattooed on their arms are still among us it's an insanity that has no justification and no explanation."

Speakers at the two-day conference included Adelaide-based Holocaust-denier Dr Frederick Toben, who upon his return to Australia faces contempt charges for flouting a 2002 Federal Court order to remove hate material from his website Australian socialite Michelle Renouf, a supporter of jailed revisionist Dr David Irving, who is reportedly on a committee to organise the next denial conference and Richard Krege, an electrical engineer for Airservices Australia in Canberra.

This week, Melbourne Child Survivors of the Holocaust president Henri Korn expressed his "anxious voice of protest" against the Tehran conference.

He said the threat from Iran poses more danger to Jews and the West than the Nazis did in World War II.

"Let us be warned, alarmed and ready to face the scourge of the 21st century. Let us emphasise the dangers we face, be prepared and we shall be victorious."

Irving said he was "fit and well" after serving more than a year in jail. He added that he would be calling for an academic boycott of German and Austrian historians until their governments stopped putting historians in prison.

Irving was jailed in February after he admitted denying the Holocaust in two speeches during a visit to Austria in 1989.

The speeches included a call for an end to the "gas chambers fairytale" and claims that Hitler had "helped" Europe's Jews and that the Holocaust was a myth.

At his trial in February, Irving said he had revised his opinion after seeing the personal files of Adolf Eichmann. Speaking in German, he told the court he now accepted that the Nazis had killed millions of Jews.

Austria has the world's toughest laws against denying the Holocaust, and Irving could have received a maximum of 10 years in prison.

In 2000, Irving sued the US Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt for libel at the high court in London, losing the case. Charles Gray, the presiding judge in that case, wrote that Irving was "an active Holocaust denier ... anti-Semitic and racist".

In Germany in 1992, he was fined several thousand pounds for saying the Auschwitz gas chambers were a hoax.

Irving has contended in the past that most of the people who died at concentration camps such as Auschwitz were not murdered but succumbed to diseases.

Dror is accused of taking $20,000 in bribes, as well as other benefits and gifts, from a Russian named Georgy Rienko, an employee of a Russian travel agency, in exchange for issuing hundreds of Israeli visas.

Rienko allegedly gave Dror dozens of visa applications from citizens of Russia and other CIS states, where the local Israeli consul was not authorized to handle visas. The applications were based on false declarations and forged documents.

For six months, Dror allegedly received a weekly $800 bribe from Rienko, who also paid for a holiday for Dror and his wife outside of Moscow, repaired the Dror's private car, and provided gifts, including a leather bag and alcoholic beverages.

In early meetings, House Democrats have agreed largely on what party leaders tout as their legislative agenda for the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress. The agenda underlines fiscal responsibility and middle-class benefits such as student loans, while steering clear of controversial issues that do not have a chance of gaining bipartisan approval.

The 29 Jewish Democrats in the House, who make up some 12.5% of the Democratic caucus, have a particularly delicate balance to maintain, symbolically representing a constituency that is well to the left of the electorate at large, but is deeply concerned about terrorism and the Middle East.

"The Jewish community, which tends to be more liberal, will see that those among us who hold liberal views will continue to work on issues related to their agenda," said Rep. Henry Waxman, the longest-serving Jewish member and dean of the informal Jewish members' caucus.

At the same time, Waxman cautioned, liberal hopes of sweeping legislative change "have great limitations, because of the Senate filibuster and the presidential veto. We would like to do more on prescription drug benefits, for example, but it will be difficult due to the many obstacles."

"Our main goal is to achieve a real record with the voters in the next two years," said a congressional staffer who asked not to be identified. "The Republicans want us to fall, and that will only happen if we move too fast with a liberal agenda."

Thorniest of all is the issue of Iraq, which the administration - and many Jewish groups - presents as a touchstone of the struggle against Islamic extremism. Democrats see unhappiness with the war as the top reason for their win last month, but they have been unable to agree on an alternative policy.

Conventional wisdom in the capital suggests that the election produced a more centrist Democratic caucus in the House, symbolized by the growth of the so-called Blue Dog Coalition of moderate-to-conservative Democrats. The Blue Dogs gained nine new members last month, bringing their total to 44. They are still far from becoming the party's leading ideological group, but many observers see the rise of moderate Democrats as a cursor pointing to the route the party is about to take in Congress.

"This was a victory for the center in both parties. The pendulum has landed exactly in the middle," said New York Democratic Rep. Steve Israel, one of the few Jewish lawmakers affiliated with the Blue Dog Coalition. During this year's campaign, Israel was chosen to lead the Democrats' campaign on national security issues and was in charge of conveying a message of strong support for the State of Israel to the Jewish community.

Still, liberals insist that the party did not suddenly turn conservative. Even after the election, they note, the left-liberal Progressive Caucus is the biggest single faction among House Democrats. Moreover, liberal Democrats fared well in most races they ran. "It is a misreading of the political map to claim that the party has shifted to the center," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York. Nadler, who places himself on the liberal side of the Democratic spectrum, said he "feels perfectly comfortable with where the party is" after the elections.

Another sign pointed out by congressional staffers as proof that Democrats aren't going centrist is the blow dealt to conservative Rep. Jane Harman of California, who lost her bid for chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Harman's fellow Blue Dog Democrats wrote to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the incoming speaker, urging her to give Harman the job, but Pelosi refused.

Harman is Jewish, but Jewish members did not rally behind her as a group, dividing their support among various contenders along ideological and regional lines. Pelosi ended up tapping Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas, a former Border Guard officer, to head the intelligence panel.

According to exit polls, Jews voted Democratic in higher proportions than any other ethnic or religious group except for blacks. Recent surveys suggest that Jews are closer to the liberal pole of the Democratic spectrum and that they have not undergone a swing toward the center of the political map, despite repeated predictions by conservative groups.

Congressional sources stress that in Democratic caucus meetings held after the elections, there were no signs of dispute over the agenda proposed by the party leadership for the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress.

In crafting the agenda, Democrats put an emphasis on social issues relating to the middle class and the needy. Top goals, they say, include cutting interest on federally funded student loans, funding stem-cell research and lowering costs of Medicare drugs by enabling the government to negotiate prices.

Other priority issues include ethics reform, implementation of the 9-11 Commission Report and increased oversight on presidential authority regarding surveillance and eavesdropping. "These are all legislative issues that are close to the Jewish community," Israel said. "It doesn't matter if you are a liberal Jew or a conservative Jew - you still want us to adopt the 9/11 Commission recommendations."

But other issues, seen as hot-button, socially divisive topics, will not be high on the Democratic legislative agenda. Same-sex marriage, school choice and abortion are not seen as issues on which the Democrats can make progress, and they will be largely left aside, insiders say.

Democratic strategist Jim Gerstein ran focus groups in 14 congressional districts leading up to this year's elections and examined the voters' reactions to these issues. He found that they did not evoke the same reaction as in previous elections. "The so-called values issues were not part of the elections," Gerstein said. "The country does not want a huge fight on these issues now. That's not what Congress was sent to do."

The issue of Iraq, which dominated the elections, is still being debated among Democrats. While some lawmakers argue that the administration has begun to recognize the need to change course on Iraq and that it will have to cooperate with the Democrats, they also admit they have no agreed plan of action. Ideas range from increased congressional oversight over the war's conduct to a direct call for setting a withdrawal timetable. But so far, none of the suggestions has become a legislative policy of the Democratic caucus.

"I don't think we can all unite over one policy regarding Iraq, but there is a growing consensus that it is a disastrous situation and that the administration's policy causes instability in the entire region," said Waxman, who will be leading congressional investigations on the issue as chairman of the Government Reform Committee, the main House investigative body.

President Bush, in his decision to resubmit Bolton's name to the Senate last month despite the clear statement of the national will, as expressed by the voters, managed to demonstrate once again the deep capacity for denial of reality that guides him as a leader. Bolton, at least, had the wisdom to see the midterm election for what it was: a national repudiation of the Bush governing style. His decision to pack his bags is an occasion for a national sigh of relief and even gratitude.

Alas, one major constituency on the public stage has chosen to greet Bolton's resignation not with relief but with regret. In a noisy, tin-eared outpouring of sycophantic unanimity, a phalanx of America's most influential and respected Jewish organizations has flooded cyberspace this week with heartfelt salutes to Bolton and laments of his departure. At last count, the list included the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the World Jewish Congress, B'nai B'rith International, the Orthodox Union and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. In statement after statement, the agencies hail Bolton for his supposed effectiveness and passion in defending Israel and advancing the causes of democracy and U.N. reform.

The passion, let it be said, is real. The effectiveness, on the other hand, is wholly imagined. Bolton is a man of brilliant, articulate intellect. He has stood at Israel's side throughout his career. As an assistant secretary of state during the first Bush administration, he quarterbacked the successful campaign to repeal the infamous U.N. Zionism-racism resolution. As U.N. ambassador, he has bluntly spoken truth to power. But every American ambassador to the U.N., with a handful of notable exceptions (Andrew Young and the senior George Bush come to mind), has been a staunch defender of Israel. Every one has used the American veto liberally in the Security Council to block unfair resolutions. All have sought to use American power and influence more broadly to protect Israel from the designs of its enemies.

That said, none of them has done as much as Bolton to undermine that American influence by alienating the rest of the world community. His actions, and the larger Bush administration policies that they reflect, have left Israel and America huddled together in utter isolation, facing ever-growing, worldwide impatience and disdain. Even the signature cause of U.N. reform, which had been taken up by Kofi Annan and advocated with determination in the Clinton and current Bush administrations, suffered crippling setbacks as a result of Bolton's inflexibility, his insistence on holding out for the unattainable and refusing to accept the best deals possible.

All this is now obvious to the American public, to the Congress - even to the outgoing, Republican-led Congress - and, in the end, to Bolton himself. Everyone gets it except the Jewish advocacy community.

It's no great secret why the Jewish agencies continue to trumpet support for the discredited policies of this failed administration. They see defense of Israel as their number-one goal, trumping all other items on the agenda. That single-mindedness binds them ever closer to a White House that has made combating Islamic terrorism its signature campaign. The campaign's effects on the world have been catastrophic. But that is no concern of the Jewish agencies. Given the record, the agencies' paeans to Bolton come as no surprise. And yet, they still offend. Coming barely a month after the midterm elections, in which Jews voted 7-1 against the Bush record, the statements show a communal representative structure working directly against the wishes and values of the community it purports to represent.

As Nathan Guttman reports from Washington this week, congressional Democratic leaders are scrambling right now to reassure the Jewish voting public that the party will not abandon its liberal traditions come January in the name of pragmatism. They know that the Jewish community, despite its small numbers, is an essential, influential bloc within the party, and within the larger American mosaic. And they know that American Jews cling in overwhelming numbers to values of liberalism and inclusiveness.

Those liberal values are the irreducible underpinning of Jewish freedom in American society. Defending them is the most basic duty of the advocacy institutions created by the community. If they can't understand their job, it's time that somebody else stepped forward.

The 35-year-old British comic is an observant Jew whose mother was born in Israel and whose grandmother still lives in Haifa. In high school he belonged to a Zionist Jewish youth group, Habonim Dror, and upon graduation spent a year working and studying on a kibbutz, or collective farm, in northern Israel, according to the Associated Press.


The irony of a Hebrew-speaking anti-semite is not lost on the admiring Israeli audience, which has made the movie a huge hit in the country. "It is extremely funny and kind of cool to realise that you are understanding something no one else does," said Gaby Goldman, 33, of Tel Aviv. "It's not just the Hebrew but also the way he speaks. He sounds almost Israeli, he sounds like one of us."

The film is peppered with Hebrew expressions and Israeli slang, inside jokes only Israelis could truly appreciate. In one scene, Borat sings the lyrics of a Hebrew folk song, Koom Bachur Atzel, which means "get up lazy boy". Later, he refers to a Kazakh government scientist, "Dr Yarmulke," who proved that a woman's brain is the size of a squirrel's. Even Borat's signature catchphrase - "Wa wa wee wa," an expression for wow - derives from a skit on a popular comedy show and is often heard in Israel.

Some American Jews fear Borat's humour will go over people's heads and reinforce bigotry. But in Israel, Borat's fans are clearly in on the fun. "It was sort of like a wink to the Hebrew speaker," Oded Volovitz, 32, said. "It was a message that basically said, 'Although the movie is very anti (Jewish), I am still with you, I am still the same Mr Cohen. I'm just trying to send a message here and I hope you guys understand it."'