He grins, we bear it: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has an Israeli fixation. (Rick Gershon/Getty Images)
You'd think Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was president of Palestine, not Iran. He spends so much time obsessing about Israel, usually in terms more delirious than coherent and in equal parts bigoted and belligerent, that Iranians can reasonably wonder: Would Ahmadinejad not be better off brawling with the West Bank's more fanatic Jewish settlers--who can match him derision for derision in bigotry and belligerence--than running for a second term? We'll find out on June 12, when Iran's presidential election may (dare we hope?) send Ahmadinejad packing.
Meanwhile, he spews on. His latest grinning outburst took place yesterday at the United Nations' conference on racism in Geneva, where Ahmadinejad, the only head of state attending the conference, launched into a tirade that rapidly degenerated into attacks on Israel as a "totally racist government in occupied Palestine." (Ahmadinejad does not bother to differentiate between Israel proper and those portions of Occupied Territories that may legitimately be called occupied Palestine.)
This on the very day when Israel was marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Israel, the United States, Germany, Poland, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, New Zealand and Australia were already boycotting the conference, whose documents endorsed the Durban, South Africa conference in racism in 2001. That thing had turned into an anti-Israel bacchanal.
Once Ahmadinejad began his own one-man show in Geneva, delegates from those European nations that had turned up walked out, but with the exception of the Czech Republic, only on the speech, not the conference. The Czechs joined the boycott. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner went the other way. The meeting is "not at all a failure but the beginning of a success," he said on Europe-1 radio. Ahmadinejad's speech was "unacceptable, but we're not going to leave the conference."
Israel's vice prime minister, Silvan Shalom , launching in exaggerated warnings of his own from Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former Nazi death camp, that Iran was comparable to Nazi Germany ("What Iran is trying to do right now," he was quoted as saying in Le Monde, "isn't at all far from what Hitler did to the Jewish people 65 years ago." It's worth noting that the Iranian regime to date hasn't murdered a single Jew.)
Former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Lau, a Holocaust survivor, was also at Auschwitz, but he had a better suggestion for the man who "appeared dripping with hatred toward the Jewish people." To Ahmadinejad, he said: "Come to Yad Vashem, we'll show you all of the archives documents and memoirs. We will present you with all the evidence until you are convinced that the Holocaust actually happened."
Ahmadinejad's outburst seemed bound to include a reprise of his standard Holocaust-denying outbreaks. But according to the Jerusalem Post, he "dropped language describing the Holocaust as 'ambiguous and dubious'" from his speech. "The UN and the Iranian Mission in Geneva did not comment on why the change was made, but UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday that he had met with Ahmadinejad before his speech and reminded him that the UN had adopted resolutions "to revoke the equation of Zionism with racism and to reaffirm the historical facts of the Holocaust."
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Comments
As European I am profoundly humiliated to be represented by the EU members who walked out during Dr. Ahmadinejad’s speech. It is quite evident to me that he spoke the truth and it hurt. It is equally evident that the Europeans and Americans were simply following orders from the people who run their banks, their media, their film industries, theri judicial systems and their ‘Human rights’ lobbies. The Jewish clowns did well to introduce the walkout with their own little circus!
Henry, you do realize, I hope, that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a fraud and a fiction, don’t you?
There may be elements of racism in a nation’s comportment or policies–the institutional racism of the American South before the civil rights era, the subtly racist suggestion that American might alone could save Iraq from itself, even Israel’s policies in the Occupied Territories (separate and unequal roads, judicial standards, travel rights etc.), or Avigdor Lieberman’s attitude toward Arabs, which I certainly find racist. But to cast an entire nation and people as racist, as Ahmadinejad did, or to resort to exhausted, never-valid cliches about who controls what, as you did, is not only offensive; it does nothing to advance the debate. It cripple it.
Pierre,
The Protocols? Huh? Talk about a red herring!
Anyway, what debate? You’re having me one, aren’t you?
Why can anything, and I mean ANYTHING (including the most foul insults towards Jesus, Mary and anything we hold sacred) be expressed freely but not comments about the holocaust? If you do so, you go to prison. Period. What sort of historical ‘truth’ needs judicial enforcement?
Until the holocaust can be openly debated, and I mean OPENLY, the word ‘debate’ is a joke.
Meanwhile T-shirts showing a pregnant Palestinian woman in a gun sight with the words “Two for One” are freely for sale in Israel – why are these not banned as racial hate?
Henry
PS 1. I forgot to add Wikipedia, Facebook and the universities to my list before.
PS 2. For starters, read Israel Shamir and Kevin Macdonald. Oh, yes, LISTEN to Dr. Ahmadinenjad’s speech before commenting on it – he never said what claim he said (nor, btw, did he ever say he intended to “wipe Israel off the map” It is Fox News, CBS, CNN and the rest of the zionist media that claims he did. Get informed!
“Let him who has ears, listen”
Henry,
You can add E. Michael Jones’ book “The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History ” to the reading list as well. There are some good free audio files available on the Jones’ Culture Wars site too, well worth listening too
Henry, anything can be said about the Holocaust, and is. What you’re referring to isn’t commenting about the Holocaust, but denying it–which, in the United States, is perfectly legal, thanks to the First Amendment. I happen to be a First Amendment absolutist: no speech codes, no exceptions. I consider those laws in England, Germany and a few other European nations that actually render Holocaust denial actionable nuts. But I also consider Holocaust deniers beyond nuts. Morally criminal, if you wish. That is, Ahmadinejadian. “Openly debate” the Holocaust? That’s not what you have in mind. You want to open a door to denigration. That’s like the guy who wants to “openly debate” whether that other holocaust, the Hiroshima bombing, took place. Spare us the faux pleas.
As for those t-shirts in Israel, better ban the practices that enabled them than ban the shirt themselves, wouldn’t you say?
Pierre,
Let noone dare say that the Frankfurt School indoctrination (add that to my list above too btw) has not worked on you!
As far as your debating skills are concerned, well, you’ve got me floored. I has no defence against red herrings, changing the subject, playing with words (“Open debate, yes, denying, no”!). To me, open debate, means just that – OPEN.
So, for the sake of peace of mind and saving precious time I hereby opt out of this silly ‘debate’.
Henry, I don’t debate dishonesty, yours or anyone else’s. The most I can do is try to set it straight as long as it’s on my turf, though as you probably know, from experience, it’s usually as futile as reasoning with a cinder block.
Why do we debate when people are dying out there? I think we as humans worry to much about the attributes of situations then the actual problem! Learn to find the actual problem and you will find your answers!
Pierre, I find your article outrageously biased.
You should have printed the entire speech–>> http://votersforpeace.us/press/index.php?itemid=1379
Horatio, Educate me, why don’t you. Give me a defense of Ahmadinejad’s speech. Please. By all means. And while you’re at it, give me a defense of his latest frauds, too. Then let’s talk bias.