Ahmadinejad Clarification on Israel
An informed commentator writes:
Regarding his views of the Holocaust and other issues that have been discussed on this forum, the IRI President has offered some explanations. Part of it reads:
"One must distinguish between Zionism and Judaism. The Jews have always lived in security and prosperity in Islamic lands, and they have always had freedom of religion, and will continue to have, however, Zionism itself is a western concept and a colonialist one that was established by the British in the region with secularist goals and fascist methods. Zionism now with the help and leadership of Americans and part of Europe, is massacring Muslims. The basis upon which they have created Zionism is the issue of the massacre of the Jews by the German army. About the number of the victims of this, there are two official and unofficial views in Europe, however, these views have never been the subject of a scientific debate. ...... Ethnic cleansing in our view is condemned."
The complete report in Persian is availed at the site of Iranian Labor News Agency
Let's get this straight. So Ahmadinejad would condemn the Holocaust as a form of ethnic cleansing if he believed it had occurred? And he believes that no "scientific" (i.e. scholarly or academic) findings have nailed down the course of the Holocaust? I mean, this is wilfull ignorance on a Himalayan scale. But, may one conclude that he doesn't call for Israeli Jewish noncombatants to be killed? Would that not be ethnic cleansing, which he says he is against?
posted by Juan Cole @ 1/04/2006 12:26:00 AM
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Ahmadinejad also is wrong to deny antisemitism (probably not the best term for anti Jewish activity since Arabs are semitic) in Moslem countries.
The Iranians are not the only ones with willful ignorance of this scale.
If you find that Iran has condemned suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians or stopped supporting the actions of Hamas & Islamic Jihad, then you may conclude that Ahmadinejad and the Iranian government doesn't condone the murder of Israeli non-combatants. At the moment it seems to have no problem with the murder of Israeli civilians.
On equality before the international law
According to the principle of equality before the international law, any UN member can discuss whatever problems it has with other UN members. This is exactly what diplomacy is all about! The alternative is to separate all UN members into 2 categories - good and bad, "democracies" and "dictatorships".
The problem is, this way, the notion of "human rights" which are supposedly violated by the "dictatorships", loses any practical meaning. Instead, both "democracies" and "dictatorships" are free to say and do whatever they want, using any justification they find convenient.
In fact, all this does not need getting into the trouble of meaningful diplomatic process! As for "human rights", they simply don't fit in this system.
Now does not this explain Ahmadinejad's anti-Israeli rhetoric? Apparently, it is designed to block any HR-based discussion. That is, no equality before the international law - no HR discussions, just total cold war. Either HR based on equality - or none whatsoever, it is that simple. The UN Charter was not designed by dummies.
1. Hypocrisy alive and well at the UN
The UN is in session again and a number of resolutions have been on the table. An important one dealt with human rights abuses in Darfur. But, thanks to Sudan's many allies, this resolution was expected to be defeated and removed from the agenda.
On the table were also 10 resolutions condemning Israel for human rights abuses. All of them were expected to be passed by the General Assembly.
Welcome to a typical year at the United Nations.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference — 56 Islamic states, almost 30 per cent of the UN membership — ensures that a mountain of resolutions and resources are devoted every year to demonizing Israel.
Take, for example, the UN Commission on Human Rights. In the past two years, Israel has had 101 human rights resolutions passed against it.
Of course, there are other human rights violators on the list. Let's see: Iran is a well-known human rights violator. It has had two resolutions passed against it. Syria is another. Well, it merited one resolution. Saudi Arabia is another offender, known for amputations, stonings, intolerance toward other religions, political repression, discrimination and torture. However, all this doesn't seem to bother the rights commission too much - Saudi Arabia hasn't merited any resolutions.
2. The UN Charter
The total cold war
One simple way to interpret Khomeinist anti-Israeli fantasies is to compare them with N.Korean position. Apparently, both Kim and Ahmadinejad reject two models of their relationship with the West:
-- Active military confrontation - they don't want to be destroyed.
-- Any meaningful diplomatic process - they find breaking the iron curtain counterproductive.
Domestically, the goal is to suppress local pro-Westerners.
So, their apparent goal is a total no-detente cold war. 50 years ago, N.Koreans discovered the ingenious way to fight such war and practice it ever since. What they do is combination of hostile black PR operations with demonstrations of "good will". For example, they can call top US official "psychotic" and then agree for the next round of multilateral talks. However, in the end, all this comes to nothing - as designed.
Now Ahmadinejad does exacty the same, but using specifically Khomeinist ideological language. Knowing for sure that "Holocaust denial" excludes any meaningful negotiations with the West, he makes statements to this end followed by "good will" gestures. Naturally, the West rejects these moves. On the next step, the Khomeinists claim that they "want peace" while Westerners are "warmongers", etc, etc.
On the Western side, the strategy of total cold war poses two major challenges:
-- Historical blackout. For neocons, Korean fight against the Japanese and civil war that followed is completely non-existent. Even less they want to remember any non-Israeli views of the post-WW2 period in the ME and 1948 events.
-- Irrelevant current news coverage. Each move is systematically taken out of context and heavily misrepresented.
What is to be done? All I can think about is quality historical and news analysis. Penetrating multiple layers of misrepresentation is not easy.
1. Spiegel. Michael Scott Moore. Denying the Holocaust for Political Advantage?
2. GU. Holocaust a myth, says Iranian president
3. GU. Jonathan Freedland. The sickness bequeathed by the west to the Muslim world
4. Ind. Angus McDowall, Anne Penketh. Iranian president repeats Holocaust denial
5. IC
6. JWN
7. Inplainview Iran news blog Inplainview FE news blog
2006-01-03 Ahmadinejad's case for Khomeinist "democracy"
Dr. Cole,
Can you please bring your farsi expertise to bear regarding Ahmenajad's original speech? When he called the Holocaust a "myth", I thought what he said was despicable, but I did not read that he denied that it happened; rather, it seemed he was saying that the Holocaust was part of the mythology of Jews around the world, used to cut short arguments about Israeli behavior (a rather common complaint among anti-semites, even those who are not holocaust deniers). The double meaning of the word "myth" is almost certainly absent in Persian--do you know what he actually said?
I would also be thrilled if you could describe the precarious and highly nuanced position of Jews in Iran from the benefit of your experience. From reading Sciolino's Persian Mirrors, I gathered that Iranian Muslims considered Iranian jews to be fully Iranian, but that they harbored some pernicious stereotypes about them, ranging from considering them stingy and agressive (but no worse than the stereotypical Isfahanis) to Iranian copies of the uglier stereotypes about Jews in the US Europe.
We would love to benefit from your experience in both respects;
"Moral equivalence"
In a striking similiarity, Khomeinists and radical neocons reject "moral equivalence" between themselves and their enemies, they want them dead.
1. 01/05/2005. Albawaba. Iranian president hopes Sharon is dead
2. JPost. 2003/09/10. Enough
«Inplainviewmonitor» writes «50 years ago, N.Koreans discovered the ingenious way to fight such war and practice it ever since. What they do is combination of hostile black PR operations with demonstrations of "good will". For example, they can call top US official "psychotic" and then agree for the next round of multilateral talks.» If I understand him correctly, he seems to feel that an innocent and benevolent USA has been put upon by a crafty and malevolent North Korea. It may reassure him to know that even the most superficial perusal of the press will suffice to show that in the use of non-diplomatic language and the casting of aspersions, both national and personal, the US has given as good as it's got. Moreover, as «inplainmonitor» seems to recognise, North Korea constitutes no conceivable military - or for that matter, economic or political - threat to the United States. However, the converse is not the case : the US remains a most credible military threat to the North Korean regime, a threat which by no means has lessened under the present US administration. Seeing what has happened in Iraq, which the US attacked after a 12-year war of attrition (and no few bombings, occupation of the northern third of the country, etc), it is not terribly surprising that the North Korean leadership is unwilling to strike a deal with the United States without reading the fine print carefully and insisting on substantial security guarantees. By giving such guarantees and entering into a piece treaty with North Korea - after all, the Armistice which brought an end to fighting in the Korean War was signed 53 years ago this year - rather than insisting, as in the case of Iran, that «all options are on the table» (a direct contravention of the Nürnberg Conventions prohibiting engaging in or threatening Wars of Aggression), the United States could drastically relieve tension on the Korean peninsula in particular and in Northeast Asia in general. That the present US administration does not seem to be willing to take the slightest steps toward doing so indicates, at least to observers more impressed by actions than by rhetoric, that it does not regard such a reduction of tensions to be in its interest....
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