UPDATES BELOW
Bahrain's oldest paper, Gulf News, has been shut down by the state for "violating the country's press code" related to an opinion piece it published calling Ahmadinejad a Jew.
From al-Arabiya:
The paper, Akhbar Al-Khaleej, or "Gulf News," was shut down as it was about to to print late Sunday night and is to remain shut until further notice, a note on the paper's website explained.
The official BNA news agency carried the same notice but did not elaborate on the nature of the violation and the reasons behind the abrupt closure were unclear.
[...]
Rajab wrote: "In a televised live debate between Mehdi Karroubi and Ahmadinejad, Karroubi took a jab at Ahmadinejad's origins and said 'my full name is Mehdi so and so Karroubi' so what is your full name?'"
Rajab went on to write that Ahmadinejad stated his name but failed to mention his "real" surname "which all Iranians know to be Jewish and that is what Karroubi was trying to get at."
See the article from Gulf News that announces the lift of the suspension and their explanation to the background of the story.
The original piece, "Islamic Republic--Popular Fury" is nowhere to be found on the Gulf News website.
UPDATE (10/03/09): Today the Daily Telegraph is reporting what many people suspected all along, that Ahmadinejad is Jewish.
A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.
A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.
Now what? Is he? Isn't he?
UPDATE (10/5/09): Ok, Maybe Ahmadinejad is NOT a Jew...
Allen McDuffee is a political reporter, investigative journalist and blogger. From 2011 to 2013 he covered policy, politics, ideas and think tanks for The Washington Post and has also written for The Nation, The American Prospect, Huffington Post and New York Observer, among others.
