In his sermon today, Tehran Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami pointed to the Zionist regime's crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories and said, "The criminal Zionists seek to destroy the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque, the first Qibla [direction of prayer] of Muslims."

He said that the Zionists had agreed that East Quds [Jerusalem] became free from Judaism, but now are trying to Judaize the holy place. "Bayt al-Muqaddas belongs to Islam and Muslims, and the Islamic world could not be indifferent in this regard," he added.

The "liar president of America," he noted, had said that he want to have a different view over the occupied territories, but that despite his lying mottos, he is acting like his criminal predecessors.

"More than one thousand days of food, sanitation and medicine blockade of Gaza have passed, but unfortunately the international organizations have not protested against it," Ayatollah Khatami reiterated.

He also warned the Zionist regime against their crimes in the Palestinian lands and said that the regime may be destroyed through the third Intifada.

(For the MEMRI TV page on Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, click here)

Source: IRIBnews, Iran, March 19, 2010