During a recent military parade in Tehran, Ahmadinejad’s threatening slogan was draped over a Shihab-3 missile, capable of reaching Israeli territory. His advisers sought to build on his rhetoric; one stated that the Jews were “the source of deadly diseases such as the plague and typhus”.

As with other regimes seeking to prepare the groundwork for mass murder, Ahmadinejad’s Government used language that dehumanised the Jewish people and openly said that people in Israel had already “pushed the button of their own destruction”.

The Australian Labor leader is not alone in criticising Ahmadinejad. In June, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly adopted legislation (411-2) determining that Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric did indeed violate the genocide convention.

Earlier in the year, Conservative and Labour members of the British House of Commons lent support to this idea, as did Nobel Peace Prize laureates David Trimble and Elie Wiesel.

It is important to recall that the genocide convention was really born in 1946 when the UN General Assembly first characterised genocide as a crime under international law.

As the horrors of the Holocaust sank into the conscience of the newly formed UN, this resolution evolved into a binding international treaty. The resulting convention, however, was conceived to punish the crime of genocide and to prevent genocide. To accomplish this goal, article three of the convention stated that “direct and public incitement to commit genocide” was a punishable act.

The most recent case where legal proceedings were initiated on the crime of incitement to genocide was in the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the UN Security Council in 1994.

Before the mass murder of 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsis, by Hutu extremists, a Hutu radio station engaged in systematic incitement to genocide. Ultimately, the UN’s Rwanda tribunal convicted more than a half dozen Rwandan Hutus for incitement to genocide, as well as the Rwandan prime minister at the time, Jean Kambanda, for his use of incendiary language that dehumanised his victims.

Actions in Canada against Ahmadinejad are particularly interesting. Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former attorney-general, undertook legal proceedings in Canada against Rwandan Hutus involved in incitement to genocide. According to Cotler, Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric was “as direct and public, clear and compelling” a case of incitement to genocide as he had seen, even in comparison with the Rwandan case. He did not leave this as a rhetorical judgment alone.

A Canadian parliamentary committee adopted a motion by Cotler to refer Ahmadinejad’s genocidal incitement to the UN Security Council to obtain action by the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has also characterised Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric as genocidal.

Ahmadinejad is testing the waters of international reaction with his threats to destroy Israel and his denial of the Holocaust. To threaten the use of force against a fellow UN member state is a blatant violation of the UN charter. Yet Ahmadinejad gets away with it. He even gets to address the UN General Assembly, as he did last month.

The failure of the international community to even register any serious complaint only whets his appetite. It becomes difficult for his rivals in Tehran to argue that he has gone too far or that he should accept full international inspection of the Iranian nuclear program. Thus this is not just a point of discussion for international legal experts but a matter affecting international security. For at this point, Ahmadinejad has managed to use genocidal language with impunity.

Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has described the UN’s past treatment of the Rwandan genocide as “our collective failure”.

The warning signs were present and even reported by UN officials, yet nothing was done. The same failure is being repeated in Darfur. In Rwanda, the preferred instrument for mass murder was the machete. In the case of Iran, it is a nuclear-tipped missile. The genocide convention is too important to just ignore.

Australia is uniquely positioned to take a stand based on principle over Iran’s repeated statements on the destruction of Israel.

Moreover, by leading the defence of international law, Australia could also enhance international security, as the Iranians come to realise that a coalition of states can emerge that will not stand for the rhetoric of mass murder.

Dore Gold was Israel’s ambassador to the UN and heads the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs.