The sickness bequeathed by the west to the Muslim world

[Colorado Blue]

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian


There were few memorable moments in the election campaign of 2005, but there's one I won't forget. It came when I was interviewing a group of Muslim voters in Edinburgh, asking how the Iraq war had unsettled their political allegiances. One older man began telling me that he did not blame Tony Blair or even George Bush for the way things had turned out, because they were mere dupes of a more powerful force. The calamity of 9/11 was not all it seemed: the authors of that event were not the 19 hijackers, but more shadowy players, unknown even to Bush. Later, as he gave me a lift to the station, I asked who these secret powers might be. The answer was "rich Jewish people".

snip

I prefer my Jewish identity to be positive, rather than defined by a perennial defence against anti-semitism.

But everyone has their limits and last week I reached mine. On Thursday the president of Iran chose to stand with the cranks, neo-fascists and racists who deny the factual truth of the Holocaust.

"Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces," said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Although we don't accept this claim..."

Suddenly, the usual apologetics won't work. No one can say Iran's president was really complaining about Israel or Zionism, rather than Jews. No one can say he was talking about the west's colonial crimes. He was peddling, instead, one of the defining tropes of the racist hard right: Holocaust denial. It is a stance that seeks to deny Jews their history, their suffering, almost their very being. Like denying that African-Americans were ever slaves, it is a move made by those who wish only harm.

In this light, Ahmadinejad's previous musings look rather different. When, in October, he stood beneath a banner that promised "A world without Zionism" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", many Jews felt a chill at what seemed an annihilationist fantasy. Cooler heads said no, this was merely the hyperbolic style of the region, deployed to press a robust anti-Zionist rather than anti-semitic case. What he wanted, they explained patiently, was a world without Zionism, not a world without Jews.

Well, now I'm done with the charitable explanations. A man who refuses to believe the historic truth is capable of anything. This is not an Arabic cable TV station or an obscure Egyptian newspaper. This is a head of government, the leader of a nation of 70 million - a country that aspires to lead the Muslim world.

snip

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1666871,00.html

[Colorado Blue]

1. Please read this article. It's important. Thanks.

[NaturalHigh]

2. Ahmadinejad is a putrid life form.

I won't even call him a human being or an animal. It always amazes me that some people have such a passionate hatred for Jews.

[Walt Starr]

3. When he wa first elected, I was willing to give him the benefit of the

doubt.

Well, I did, and he's certainly proven where he stands.

I've got no respect for anti-semites.