Ahmadinejad in New York

If the Holocaust-denying, nuclear bomb-building, terrorism-sponsoring president of Iran thinks he's going to flit into New York next week for the U.N. General Assembly and escape unchallenged, boy is he going to be in for a surprise. Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel yesterday added his name to a small but high-powered international group of private citizens who are pushing to have Iran thrown out of the United Nations in response to Iran's violations of the 1948 Convention to Prevent and Punish the Crime of Genocide.

President Ahmadinejad will also be met with a large rally on September 20 outside the U.N. at noon organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, and the UJA-Federation of New York. The rally, in support of Israel, calls for implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for disarming Iran's proxy army Hezbollah. It also calls for supporting the war against state sponsors of terror, including Iran. The executive vice chairman of the Conference, Malcolm Hoenlein, told us yesterday that he's received requests from as far away as Texas, Arkansas, Ottawa, and New Hampshire to participate in the rally.

The legal effort in which Mr. Wiesel is involved, established at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, includes a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, and a former Israeli ambassador to America, Meir Rosenne. "It is hard to believe that at a time when the president of Iran is making statements denying the Holocaust and does not hide his intention to erase Israel from the map, the enlightened world is planning to host Ahmadinejad at the opening of the General Assembly instead of evicting his country from the U.N. altogether," the group said in a statement issued yesterday.

It might seem farfetched to invoke a genocide convention against Iran when, thank goodness, no genocide has happened yet. But the treaty — which Iran itself signed and ratified — is called the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, the United Nations and the world waited until after the slaughter to act. In this case, there has been a warning. The leader of Iran's proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah, has stated that if the Jews "all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide," and said, "it is an open war until the elimination of Israel and until the death of the last Jew on earth."

The treaty states that "Direct and public incitement to commit genocide" is punishable. We don't have much confidence in the enforceability of international law, which seems to be used in practice mainly as a hammer by neutralist groups like Human Rights Watch to pound Israel and America. Yet the legal campaign, like the rally to be held in New York, is significant in shaping public awareness of Iran's intentions — an awareness that is vital to preventing the genocide that Iran openly boasts that it intends.