West should be more "tolerant" of holocaust deniers...

[48Highlander]

It seems the Iranian administration is pretty determined to piss off the US.   In support of their president stating that the holocaust never happened, and that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth, Iran's foreign ministry recenty stated that "the west" should "learn to listen to different views":

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust is a matter for academic discussion and the West should be more tolerant of his views, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

Ahmadinejad last week called the Holocaust a myth and suggested Israel be moved to Germany or Alaska, remarks that sparked international uproar and threaten diplomatic talks with Europe over Iran's nuclear programme.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi defended the president's remarks, which also drew a rebuke from the U.N. Security Council.

"What the president said is an academic issue. The West's reaction shows their continued support for Zionists," Asefi told a weekly news conference.

"Westerners are used to leading a monologue but they should learn to listen to different views," he added.

Some 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis and their allies between 1933 and 1945.

Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guardsman who was elected president, also said in October Israel was a "tumour" that must be "wiped off the map".

A statement drafted by European Union leaders described last week's Holocaust comment as "wholly unacceptable". The White House termed the remarks "outrageous".

Asefi denounced international condemnation as emotional and illogical.

"The EU statement is not based on international diplomatic norms. They should avoid illogical methods," he said.

"Westerners are used to leading a monologue, but they should learn to listen to different views."

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the Holocaust remarks could weigh on European Union efforts to resolve the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme.

Britain, Germany and France had tentatively planned to hold talks later this month on the nuclear programme, which the United States and the EU fear is a cover to make nuclear bombs. Iran says it needs it to generate electricity.

When asked whether Ahmadinejad's remarks could hinder talks to resolve Iran's nuclear stand-off with the West, Asefi said: "We do not make any hasty judgment. But Iran's right should be respected. We will never abandon our right to nuclear technology."

 

[Slim]

NEXT...!!
Mark my words!

 

[Jungle]

Maybe Iran should be more tolerant of the West... more specifically the US.  

 

[DFW2T]

NEXT...!!
Mark my words!

You said it brother!   Looks like I may have work for a little while!

DFW2T

 

[Pencil Tech]

NEXT...!!
Mark my words!

Yeah, well it should have been more like "FIRST!!", but I guess Iraq was a bigger threat.  :

 

[Cloud Cover]

The thought of that is downright sobering. There are hundreds of thousands of supporters of Iran in this country because of its open hostility to Christianity and the Jewish religion - and the West in general, and probably millions more who indirectly support them. If the US goes after Iran, we will see American and Canadian blood spilled in North American cities as well, IMO.

Any Western incursion into Iran would likely involve a massive effort to prepare for domestic terrorism as a necessary first step which would likely be domestically opposed on a number of fronts- political, judicial and social. Any efforts taken to deal with the enemy at home will necessarily involve a suppresion of fundamental freedoms across a broad spectrum which would affect all of us.

I prefer the slow route- breathe life into the opposition in Iran and let them kill each other rather than try and kill us.  

 

[DG-41]

The key way to prepare to defeat any enemy - or any potential enemy - is to put yourself in their shoes and try and understand their point of view.

The vast majority of people are not crazy, and at the core of any action or statement, there is a rational explination that makes the action taken or statement uttered understandable. And one you understand the adversaries' motives, then you can start figuring out how to defeat him.

This becomes very difficult for any Westerner to do when we start talking about Isreal, because all our perceptions are filtered through the lens of WW2 and the Holocost. Anything anti-Isreal is automatically anti-Semitic, and that in turn tars whoever is uttering the anti-Isreali statements with the Nazi brush. And as soon as you are seen as being in league with or sympathetic to the Nazis or the Nazi cause, you are automatically evil and irrational, just like the Nazis were.

But see things through Arab eyes for a moment. The land that currently constitutes Isreal used to belong to Arabs. Jerusalem contains a (some?) Muslim holy sites. Then all of a sudden, foreigners and infidels took this land away, and used it to create a homeland for this third group of people, and justified this land grab by pointing out just how badly this third group was mistreated at the hands of of non-Arabs.

His point here is "Why should Arabs (the Palestinians) lose their land and freedom because Germans slaughtered Jews?" He asks "Why wasn't Isreal carved out of German territory after WW2, instead of out of Arab territory?" And you know something? I think those are excellent and entirely valid questions.

Yes, it is all couched in inflammatory rhetoric. That may be flowerly language that translates poorly to English, or it may actually reflect the man's true beliefs; I don't know.

But the core complaint in the Middle East steams from the Western decision to create the state of Isreal in Palestine without adequate consultation with the actual Palestineans, and then the subsequent mistreatment of the Palestineans at the hands of the Isrealis. This is a problem that the West made for itself; first by executing the Holocost (the Nazis were Westerners) and then by imposing the state of Isreal on the Arabs in (what I believe) was a legitimate good-faith attempt by the West to atone for the Holocost.

I am simplifying a very complex situation into a couple of paragraphs; there is MUCH more to the situation than all this, and it is entirely possible that the President of Iran really is an anti-Semitic racist - certainly (and sadly) the word does not lack them. But we in the West need to understand the nature of the Arab complaint against Isreal, and realize that it isn't just good old fashioned Nazi-esque anti-Semitism rearing its head again; that there really IS a legit complaint in there at its core, and that we have some degree of responsibility for that complaint existing.

DG

 

[Michael Dorosh]

DG ans whiskey have the most intelligent responses so far in this thread - well stated. 

 

[DFW2T]

DG ans whiskey have the most intelligent responses so far in this thread - well stated.  

I think you mean  DG UND VISKEY...............

 

[GO!!!]

Many good points brought up here.

Interestingly, Israel so strongly identifies with the US and their fight with "global terrorism", despite the fact that their own nation was founded partly as a result of the murderous activities of the Irgun Tsvai Leumi, a zionist terrorist ogranisation comitted to forcing the british out of palestine.

If anything, modern terrorism in the post WW2 context was defined by the Irgun in 1931 to 1948, as they orchestrated bombings and assassinations of british officials and their families. The Israelis themselves demonstrated that terrorism is an effective means of furthering a political agenda, and their support of US activities in Iraq seems to me, to ring a bit hollow.

The Irgun was every bit as bloodthirsty and ruthless as the religious zealots that attack coalition forces. The President of Iran brings up an interesting point when he questions the difference between Iran and Israel in respect to the possession of nuclear weapons. Both nations are controlled by a religiously homogenous elite, both nations have official ties to a fundamentalist version of religion, and both have strong ties to terror activities. Yet one is given nuclear weapons, while the other is threatened with war for even the possibility of trying to acquire them.

A wee bit of a double standard - no?

 

[Jungle]

A wee bit of a double standard - no?

Israel is a democracy... Iran is not. Israel is not threatening it's neighbours, Iran is.

 

[GO!!!]

Israel is a democracy... Iran is not. Israel is not threatening it's neighbours, Iran is.

Israel has ATTACKED it's neighbours on a regular basis for the last thirty years! It also denies citizenship to Arabs that live there, and the right to vote. It is also the only democracy to deny citizenship to the children born there, if they are of the "incorrect" ethnicity.

Quite the democracy!

Israel is a nuclear power controlled by religious zealots, just like Iran, it has attacked it's neigbours, just like Iran, and has a government that ignores the wishes of the majority who reside there, just like Iran.

 

[48Highlander]

Israel has ATTACKED it's neighbours on a regular basis for the last thirty years! It also denies citizenship to Arabs that live there, and the right to vote.

Excuse me?  Israel has Arab citizens working within it's government!  Almost 20% of the Israeli population is Arab, and they enjoy a higher standard of living per-capita than Arabs anywhere else in the middle-east.

In fact, when Israel was initialy formed they invited Arabs to become citizens of the state of Israel.  The Arabs in what is today called Palestine were not forced out of their homes by "zionist aggression", they left because the Arab states told them to get out of the way while they exterminated Israel.  The vast majority left on their own, expecting to return as soon as the Jewish Problem had been eliminated.

As for the idea that Israel is a terrorist state or that they've been atacking neighbouring states for years...well, let's not go there.  Let's just say that anyone who's read about the history of the region from an impartial perspective would be hard pressed to paint the Israelis as the bad guys.

 

[Infanteer]

LLLLLLLEEEEEETTTTTSSSSS GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!!!!

Geez, we haven't beat this horse for a while - everyone bored over the holiday season?

 

[48Highlander]

LLLLLLLEEEEEETTTTTSSSSS GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!!!!

Geez, we haven't beat this horse for a while - everyone bored over the holiday season?

Let me get some egg-nog into me first

 

[Jungle]

Israel has ATTACKED it's neighbours on a regular basis for the last thirty years!

Israel has been on the defensive since 1948... as for the rest, 48Highlander is correct.

 

[Shec]

Just to correct some of GO!!!'s factual inaccuracies about Israeli democracy:

1.    9 Arabs and 2 Druze are freely elected Members of the Knesset, ie.   Members of Parliament.
2.    One of them is a Cabinet Minister, and he was not kicked out of office for publicly refusing to sing the National Anthem.
3.    Re:   religious zealots controlling nuclear policy (ie, the bomb).   The fact that the extreme ultra-right wing religious Kach party was outlawed hardly reinforces your assertion.    

Next...?

 

[Infanteer]

An interesting thing to explore would be the difference of the source of conflict pre and post 1972.  Before 1972, Israel was on a defensive against Egypt, Syria and Jordan and a PLO that was largely a puppet of these states; conventional states threatened to "push the Jews into the Sea".

Post 1972, the PLO becomes its own entity, militant islamist thought overtakes left-wing nationalist ideology in the Middle East leading to groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad.  Moderate Palestinians have the impetus to rise to arms in the Intifada.

The conflict has indeed morphed from "3rd Generation" to "4th Generation".  Preemptive attacks and/or counterattacks by the IDF against other states has been replaced by generally on-going insurgency conducted by a smattering of insurgent organizations and/or terrorist groups.  The occupied territories, which have been referred to as physical highground, seem irrelevant in an age where the IDF is the dominant military force in the region - rather, the shift is to the moral level; Lebanon, the Occupied Territories, and the Intifada certainly complicate the argument of an Israel holding this moral highground.

Add religious nuts on both side to the mix, and you got a nice mess.  Islamic states and a Jewish state fighting for control of a pile of sand - this one is as tribal as it gets.

(Here is an interesting program)

 

[Shec]

Thanks for the link to the PBS program Infanteer but don't get sucked in by the media hyperbole. The Kahanists are the supporters of the same outlawed Kach party I referenced above.  They constituted the majority of the settlers who were removed from Gaza and are the same lunatics who assassinated Rabin.  As both immigrants and religious zealots they do not have the support of the secular body-politic who, to put it simply,  resent a bunch of cranks just off the plane and who have never served in the IDF or paid taxes telling them how to live.    And despite their high birth-rates and moral self-righteousness their chances of dominating Israeli life diminishes with each new BMW that cruises down Dizengoff Street.

 

[Cloud Cover]

The thought of that is downright sobering. There are hundreds of thousands of supporters of Iran in this country because of its open hostility to Christianity and the Jewish religion - and the West in general, and probably millions more who indirectly support them. If the US goes after Iran, we will see American and Canadian blood spilled in North American cities as well, IMO.

Ahem. Just clarify, I was referring to Iran as being hostile to Christianity and the Jewish religion- and not Canada. To my knowledge it is still okay to be Christian or Jewish in Canada, althoug apparently some beg to differ. Thanks for all the kindly worded PM's.  >

Cheers.