One last comment on this newest stunt. Imagine for a minute that the opposite had happened: that Israel, in response to threats by Russia stemming from Israel's nuclear program, had threatened to murder tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Newspapers would scream about Israeli saber-rattling; the UN General Assembly would convene an emergency session to issue condemnation upon condemnation; riots would sweep the Muslim world; every pipsqueak humanitarian and self-styled activist in the West would take to the streets in solidarity; Chris Hitchens would find a way to work the phrase "Gen. Sharon" into his next Slate article; 24 hour cable coverage of the "road to war" in the Middle East. Most of these things already happen even when Israel is entirely innocent of trumped up accusations (cf. Jenin) - imagine the din if Israelis were actually guilty of atrocities.
But Iran, mutatis mutandis, issued precisely such a threat. And world outrage is not so much muted as non-existent. The generous reading is that everyone already knows that Iran is pushing the Middle East into an abyss, and so genocidal threats against Israel are noted as part of a trend. But that can't be right - polls routinely show that a plurality of Europeans consider Israel, not Iran, to be the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East. So this blase dismissal of targeted, genocidal threats isn't something new - it's not as if Ahmadinejad has created a climate in which threatening to murder millions of Israelis because of actions committed by non-Israelis is something new. Making genocidal threats against Israel has always been within the spectrum of what can be said aloud - Europeans have just wearied of going through the motions of pretending otherwise.