Having been with Crikey since day one, it’s distressing to discover the freaks, fanatics and fringe dwellers that are reading us nowadays – the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fan club.

Ahmadinejad has never called for Israel to be wiped off the map, we’re told. Strictly speaking, that’s true. According to the Iranian state news agency’s report: “The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must [vanish from] the page of time”. Still, it’s hard to think Ahmadinejad meant hugs would accomplish this.

We got a very good idea of how you make a regime vanish from the page of time last year, when Ahmadinejad’s clients in Hezbollah fired 3,970 rockets into Northern Israel in one month, killing 43 civilians.

Israel is the only functioning liberal democracy in the Middle East. The best demonstration of this is Black September, September 1970, when Palestinian militants decided Israel was a better option than death at the hands of the Jordanian army. Not that the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fan club care much about democracy. Or human rights.

The title of the most recent Amnesty International report on Ahmadinejad’s country speaks volumes: Iran: The last executioner of children. Ahmadinejad hates America. That’s what matters to them. Everything else is forgiven. And of course, the Ahmadinejad fan club dare not tackle the issue of his holocaust denial. Instead, their silence actively aids and abets it.

Never, ever press them too closely on Israel. Their reasoning goes something like this. They’re not anti-Semitic. They’re just opposed to the Zionist entity. It’s, er, full of Jews.