Rhetoric – Pat Lang on Israel and the Iranian Conference ¶ A Rebuttal – Updated

Edit of title :: to avoid confusion and accusation of ill intent.

Pat Lang’s diary is about the Iranian president and the holocaust reference, my diary is about the American rhetoric on foreign policy and warmongering in the media versus Iran.

NYT & Patrick Lang Beating the War Drums ¶ Exacerbates Fear of Iran

Please do read Pat Lang’s diary first:

Iranian Conference on the Holocaust ◊ by Patrick Lang
Mon Jan 16th, 2006 at 08:56:21 PM PST

“Last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech, “They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred, and place this above God, religions and the prophets.”

He added, “The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the Jews.”

He argued that the “myth” of the Holocaust served as Europe’s pretext for the existence of Israel.” CNN

Did you say CNN translation and coverage can be trusted?

It will probably surprise a lot of people that the notion that the West invented the story of the Holocaust as an excuse for the creation and continuing support of Israel is believed by many in the Arab and Islamic Worlds.

See the rubbish spouted by a Jewish rabbi Abraham Cooper from Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles. To be clear, I have great respect for Simon Wiesenthal, his courage and his work in Vienna, Austria. Los Angeles has become a center similar to AIPAC as a lobbyist organization with mostly propaganda.

More below the fold …

There are also many in those parts who think that the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is a historical document which somehow “leaked” from within Jewish circles.

It would be nice by such a general statement “There are also many in those parts”, some proof is provided or a link. I personally have never heard of these protocols, so I had to do some research and added a link to the protocols.

The president of Iran is not universally thought of as a “nut” in the Middle East. Many think he is merely indiscreet. It should be instructive to those who think that the West’s problem with the Islamic World is about communication that while this head of state can comfortably spout such tripe, to say the same thing is a felony crime in many European countries.

This alinea scares me that an educated person can sustain a vision of confrontation with the Islamic World, instead of limiting his concern to the extremists present on all sides and of all biblical times. When U.S. policy has been adepted to a Clash of Civilization, you are confronting 1.3bln muslims globally.

My father was in the government of occupied Germany and I was taken to see the camp at Dachau at the age of eight. Ahmadinejad is wrong. What would cause people to deny a historical catastrophe of this magnitude?

Did he deny the Holocaust or try to proportion the same related to the importance of the Biblical Land and Jerusalem for all religions? The Jewish nation refers to the Holocaust as exclusive for their people, discounting the many other victims of extermination in the Nazi camps and the multiple of deaths caused by WWII.

On December 8, 2005, Ahmadinejad gave a speech at a summit for Muslim nations in Saudi Arabia that denied the Holocaust and suggested Israel should be moved to Europe.

Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal

Saudi Arabia’s new ambassador to the United States denigrated in an interview with the Washington Post, the Iranian president’s description of the Holocaust as a myth. The ambassador said the “horrific genocide” is a “historical fact” no longer in dispute, adding that the Arab world has “made our peace” with the Jewish state’s establishment.

In the interview, Prince Turki al-Faisal said “As far as Saudi Arabia is concerned, [the Holocaust is] a historical fact, you cannot deny that, and people should move forward from that.”

Turki said the Arab world has “made our peace” with the creation of Israel. He noted that in 2002, the Arab League adopted a Saudi plan that committed Arab nations to a peace process that would result in the creation of Palestine and an acceptance of Israel, including normalization of relations, once it leaves territory occupied after the 1967 Six-Day War.

Many people in “the region” see life as essentially an us versus them, zero sum game in which the “other” is felt to be altogether alien, enemy and hostile. Not all people feel that way, but many do. For folk with that mentality the actions of the other must always be seen as motivated from the same kind of exclusivist hostility that they feel themselves. This is mirror imaging with a vengeance.

Another allegation and a general view of the Arab and Islamic world. I would appreciate to know, how this is substantiated. In general, I understand Islamic teachings of heretics as a fundamental problem – see Saudi Arabia and not in particular Iran. A simple generalization and poorly founded in historic context.

Hmmm … I googled for “zero-sum game” and “us versus them“

● Oil in the Caspian Region and Central Asia
– the Political Risk of the Great Game Continued

Contribution at a conference held in Boulder, USA, April 11th. 1998. Copyright: Øystein Noreng.

Interlocking Political Risk Dimensions
This article discusses the political risk involved in developing the oil and gas resources of the Caspian Region and Central Asia and in bringing the oil and gas to the market. The risks involved should be analyzed from at least three angles: the transportation problems, the great power involvement and the potential instability of the regimes in place. These three dimensions interlock.

● The New Regionalism ◊ by Allan Wallis, Ph.D.

The creation of Israel by the Zionist movement with British collusion is seen by such people as a hostile, anti-Arab, anti-Islamic plot carried out with malevolent intent. The idea that such a thing could have happened as a product of serendipitous circumstance is discounted as absurd in such a world view. The West says continuously that the impetus for the independence of Israel after WWII was the Holocaust, therefore this statement must be a lie and part of the plot.

The Western Powers have truly screwed up the region since the Ottoman Empire and the wars in Iraq by the British, CIA overthrow of regimes in Middle-East since WWII and the U.S. led invasion and occupation of the Iraq sovereign nation.

Don’t believe me? Wait and see what the judgment of the conference will be…

Pat Lang

Pat Lang provides little context to the circumstances and place of the Iranian rhetoric. A far better article on the topic can be found on the website of the Jewish Library with same biased Israeli rhetoric, however given in a fuller context. Most amazing alinea near the end:

For years, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq served as a counterweight to the regional hegemonic designs of the theocrats in Tehran; however, the removal of Saddam from power, and destruction of his army, has left Iran as the most powerful nation in the Gulf. Iran is viewed by its Arab neighbors as a menace. Iran has a long record of coveting their resources and territory, and Iran’s radical Muslim leaders have consistently sought to export their revolution beyond their nation’s borders.

So, after supporting the Kurds and charlatan Chalabi to have Saddam removed and Iraq destroyed, the Israeli government and society are happy to continue the struggle by entertaining the West with continuous propaganda of other Arab and Islamic nations in the Middle East.

The occupation of Palestinian land of the West Bank and Gaza, the Golan heights of Syria, the invasion, occupation and destruction of Southern Lebanon and Beirut in the eighties, what is next for American soldiers to die for?

Non-Jewish Aspects of WW2 ◊ by Soj

… There are other, non-jewish aspects of WW2 which are rarely mentioned or discussed, concerning German POW’s, Roma (gypsies), Poles and other Slavic peoples (esp Ukrainians), Communist party members (German) and physically handicapped people who also suffered greatly in WW2.

The Iranian president has issued many inflammatory, extremist statements. That being said, the issue of the holocaust and questions about it are not solely the province of nuts, anti-Semites and hatemongers.

Author: Oui

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