Monday April 20, 2009, 3:26 pm
To those of my fellow Care2 readers whose fanatical mission it is to discredit Israel at every moment and point. Comments like these is what legitimizes the need for a separate Jewish state, the fact that anti-Semitism is a form of racism and that anti-Semites can never legitimately grant for Jews the same rights to national self-determination that they themselves enjoy. It is encouraging and astounding that even those largely in favor of legitimate Palestinian rights walked out on these foul lies and diatribes at the UN..

Monday April 20, 2009, 4:19 pm
well stated Cal!

Monday April 20, 2009, 7:07 pm
In case there was any doubt about Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Al-queda. There is no looking the other way while these groups openly state verbally and in writing that there supreme mission is to kill Jews.

Never Again

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 3:24 am
David I agree, all thy are out for is killing and destruction of the Jews.

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 7:47 am
My sentiments exactly.....(I mean the comments here)

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 9:19 am
Doese this not demonstrate that people are not willing to listen to complaints.
Dear michael please see ! I hope it helps you to the path you claim
http://www.metimes.com/Politics/2009/04/14/papal_visit_bittersweet_for_gaza_catholics/afp/

Dear cal there is nothing more we can share peace be with you

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 10:19 am
Agree Cal. Ahmadinejad is a dangerous psychopath.

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 10:23 am
I believe your Western values, much like the delegates, unable you to listen to what this man has to say.
He actually is right--as the 'secret ghettoes' of Palestine so recently demonstrated--we've got to be FAIR, to EVERYONE--not simply those who control our version of 'history'.

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 12:59 pm
Therefore, what President Ahmedinijad said (that Israel is a racist colonial regime) is true.

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 1:01 pm
Hmmm... my comments were published in reverse order, because of a Care2 computer error, I guess. Please read my second comment first. ; )

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 1:01 pm
(1) Anti-semitism is racism against semites. Jews are not the only semites. The Palestinian, Lebanese and Arab people are all semites. Israel is therefore an anti-semitic state, and has moral foundation from which to accuse others of anti-semitism.

(2) Israel is a racist apartheid state that brutally occupies, blockades and oppresses the Indigenous people of Palestine, against numerous U.N. resolutions telling Israel to end its racism.

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 1:02 pm
Hmmm... that is weird. My comments were published by Care2 out of order.... Anyway, I don't reckon it's that important. If you read what I wrote, it will make sense. ; )

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 1:15 pm
By the way, from what I can tell, the essence of Cal's argument is that:

PREMISE: a president of another country accuses Israel of racism... (and some leaders of other countries - first world European countries - walk out, while others - leaders of non-white nations - stay and show their agreement with what that president said by applauding.

CONCLUSION: this justifies Israel choosing to continue to be racist.

That conclusion does not logically follow from that premise. It is what we call a "non-sequitur".

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 1:40 pm
Anti-Semitism's definition is now regarded as racism against Jews, something which is continually offered by various people on the board. Sometimes this is hidden under a cloak of anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism. Zionism is the act or desire of travelling to Israel to live there yet it is often quoted as some vast conspiracy!

As for the indigenous people in what is now Israel, Jews have lived there for over 2,000 years so how is their claim not legitimate? As for the people now known as the Palestinians, they did not exist until 19 years AFTER the legal establishment of Israel, they only came into being AFTER the surrounding Arab countries found that they could not destroy Israel.

I have often asked why people do not attack Jordan for stealing over 90% of the "Palestinian" land yet there has been no response. I have also asked why no-one is interested in the greater number of Jewish refugees from the Arab countries, no answer. I have also why no-one shows any interest in Palestinian child abuse. I have asked why no-one shows any interest in the murder of Druze and other Christians in Israel by Muslims? I have wondered why no-one shows any interest in the welfare of the Gazans/Palestinians who are murdered and abused by Hamas or Hezbollah and used as human shields.

I also wonder why there is no concern for the indigenous peoples of the countries that the anti-Israel people live in. None have offered to hand back the land that they illegally live on nor do they campaign for their welfare.

I expect I will wait a long time as it appears that these attacks are driven purely by racism and using Palestinian concern as their cover.

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 4:05 pm
Well, Simon, attacking me for issuing a non-sequitur is just part of the exercise of democracy that this forum allows. Ironiclly, were you publishing this in Iran, Simon,no such luxury would exist--there is no freedom the press. there is in Israel, though.
Arguing with Simon is like playing that old children's game--yes, you know it--SIMON SAYS--Anything that Simon Says is fact and what others say when they differ with him--is heresy and evil--convenient black and white nonsense. Simon can't tolerate the differing opinions of others without putting someone down for it and that is a real character flaw, a true measure of your character and lack thereof--not a Non-Sequitur at all in your case!

Tuesday April 21, 2009, 8:32 pm
Kudos to the nations who walked out, and those who stayed away to begin with.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 12:11 am
NEVER AGAIN

(unless we do it)

Come on Cal, attack? You preach about the superiority of a "free press" and at the same time call people with differing opinions names only to cry "victim" to elicit sympathy for the fifth largest army in the world "being forced to defend it's self" by engaging in genocide. The news item, very predictable, but news? Iran has been called much worse, no?

As for Simon, he's an idealist. He thinks all native peoples got along just fine until the man invented the written word. Weren't you ever an idealist once? As for his observations on Israel, he's spot on.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 12:16 am
Sorry, should read "until man invented the written word."

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 1:10 am
Well, Locan, racism is racism, isn't it---- NOT idealism! Pretending to defend human rights for one and not for all isn't idealism, it's discrimination and anti-Semitism n this case. Why do Palestinians have more rights to self-determination than Jews?. Why are attacks like this OK with you? Time to look deep and stop blindly defending your friends, Locan.
Now, while the rain of hypocrite comments hurtling comes towards me, let's realize that this was an anti=Racism UN conference focused on combating racism for all people everywhere.and the Iranian leader was the one hurling hate speech at one group of people only. That's not idealism, again, Locan, it's racism.

And it is a fact that free press doesn't exist in Iran and does to a much greater extent in Israel. But my comments weren't a tome on Iranian hypocrisy and barbarism--that could fill l many columns.The UN has condemned racism before and the countries that walked out of the hall when the Iranian leaders spoke, also condemned Zionism and anti_Semitism before.It was an inappropriate forum and racist in intent and form and it disappoints me that you and Simon are silent and by your silence accept that these remarks are valid.I wonder what your morals are in comparing Palestinian murder of Israeli citizens vs. the opposite.

This is Idealism???

I know where I stand (two-state solution), and my comments and opinions on that have been well stated on the Mideast conflict and are well known, Somehow idealism can better be expressed on topics other than this. I still have my ideals on some topics (e.g. the environment, animal rights) Locan, and I hope you do too!

Finally, I wasn't defending the excesses of one people in defending its right to self-determination, but defending that pure inalienable right to have a nation itself to begin with. It's pathetic that you link the two, because none of my comments talk about the necessity of nationhood by any means for Israel or the Palestinians. That's either just your interpretation of what I said, which is not what I meant in any way or a sly method of fitting my comments to your world view,on the Mideast peace issues/your slant on Israel and its policies since becoming a nation.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 3:07 am
Simon is Racist? Self-hating white? Thanks for the new approach, never heard that before.
You make a lot of assumptions about me and that is understandable. We don't know each other. We do have a lot in common and I thank you for your efforts and yes, integrity. Your an enigma to me with your willful disconnect from humanity with regards to all things Israel. That is what, unfortunately, has dominated the interaction between you and I. The never again comment was directed toward our local chest-thumping, token care2 "justified" Zinofacist terrorist, David R and I apologize for my lack of clarity.

As to the article and your feigned outrage and name-calling in your first comment, all but inviting mud slinging, Did the man say anything he hadn't before?

"let's realize that this was an anti=Racism UN conference focused on combating racism for all people everywhere." So..........why were Israel and the US not there? The stage was all but handed to him.

The killing of innocent civilians is ALWAYS deplorable. The Israeli dead don't lack of press coverage and every article posted here at care2 reporting Palestinian dead (especially children) is littered with comments justifying their slaughter in an attempt to discredit the article, the poster or any sympathetic reader. It is dehumanizing. Can we at least agree on that?

The "two-state solution" has always appeared to me to resemble the separate-but-equal doctrine employed in America at one time and we all know how that turned out. I look at the examples set by the Jewish state's governmental actions toward non-Jews. Claiming it could be worse does not say much and is an example of lowest common denominator thinking. Is that really the best they can do? Thats just my opinion and I don't claim anything besides that.

Though I may not agree with you, I respect your opinions and appreciate your demonstrated willingness to look at other points of view. I think interactions between us have gotten off on the wrong foot and I regret that.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 3:18 am
Ahmedinijad was only stating what the rest of the world has known for 60 years, but those here in the West have chosen to ignore. The world has paid it's debt for the Holocaust. It should never be allowed to happen again, to Palestinians, or any other humans, and yet it does; racism and persecution of minorities is alive and well and pactised, not just in Israel, but in many other countries. Israel happens to be the most prominent example because of the West's acquiesance and encouragement of Israel's actions. Pity more world leaders have'nt the courage to speak the truth.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 3:27 am
LOCAN, THANKS FOR CLARIFYING

.I THINK that if you look at my overall positions on issues, they are overwhelmingly positive and progressive, and I think that we probably have more overall in common on that than not. I wish that Palestinians and Israelis could get along, but history and current events tell me otherwise. I admire the idealism of hoping for a united society, but it just doesn't seem like it could work given the bitterness of decades and probably much longer of strife over who owned the land.
I respect your opinions on this, also, and I'm willing to admit that discrimination and suffering is a two way street in the Mideast and has been for awhile. Zionism didn't start out as a movement to inflict suffering at times, but as a national liberation movement in response to massive Jewish suffering throughout Europe especially in Czarist Russia and Poland and later in the Holocaust era.I still support the concept that all peoples have the right to self-determination and that's why condemning Zionism as a movement is inherently unacceptable. discriminatory, and politically regressive in my mind any more so than rejecting the national aspirations of the Palestinians, Kurds, Tamils, and other peoples who seek their own country partially to preserve their own identity and as a sanctuary for their culture(s).

Let's keep contact, Locan, and exchange opinions on all sorts of issues. I admire your ability to reach out and hear the other side of things also, and I wish some of your friends could do the same.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 6:55 am
Jews sans frontieres
An Anti-Zionist blog - browsing the media

21.4.09
Holocaust lost in translation
Most readers who come here, deliberately anyway, will have seen or heard or heard something about the speech of Iranian President Ahmadinejad to the Durban II conference. I watched several BBC newses last night and all they had Ahmadinejad saying was that Israel was a cruel and racist government and that the west had used "Jewish suffering" (I'm literally quoting, that is what the translator said) to migrate Jews from Europe and America to Palestine, drive out the Palestinians and establish, what the translator said was a "racist government".

Well the Guardian has an article headed thus:
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attack on Israel triggers walkout at UN racism conference
• Iran's president launches tirade at tolerance summit
• Diplomats stage protest as speech denies Holocaust

http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2009/04/holocaust-lost-in-translation.html


And in the article it says this:
"Following world war two, [powerful states] resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless, on the pretext of Jewish suffering and the ambiguous and dubious question of the Holocaust .... and they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racists in Palestine," he said.
But the same passage in the Iranian state broadcaster, Press TV's website it says this:
Following World War II, they resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering and they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in occupied Palestine. And, in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine.
Sensitive stuff except the support of western governments for zionism goes back to WWI not WWII and the only government to change its position from the end of WWI to the end of WWII was that of Joe Stalin. I don't think he was ever in the business of compensation for ethnic cleansing.

But anyway, if you see the Guardian video clip, it has no translation going on while he talks. What you hear is what you get. It's the man himself, Ahmadinejad. I can't load the clip here but if you go there and listen, he clearly says the word "holocaust". So why does it not appear in the Press TV transcript?

It's like that ridiculous carry on when that Israeli minister prematurely announced "cast lead" by saying that Israel was going to inflict an "even bigger shoah" on Gaza. I think mad Mel Phlips called that the "mother of all mistranslations". I wonder what she'll say about this.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 6:58 am
the whole conference and the walk-out was a Festival of Fools. No one walked out because Ahmedinejad is a Holocaust denier, those who walked out (as those who boycotted it from the start) are apparatchiks of states that support the racist Zionist regime. Period. Those who clapped or stayed were mainly apparatchiks of states that oppose Israel. Well done Israel and US for sabotaging what could essentially be one of the most important conferences in the world

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 7:05 am
let me add Canada to that was one of the leading countries to boycott with israel the conference, i think even before the USA, canada is in thick with Israel and has made illegal agreements with it against our charter.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 8:13 am
What Ahmedinejad said is absoluely true. God forbid anyone stand up to 'israel' It's just that the world has been so blinded and brainwashed by pro zionists and it's leaders.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 8:19 am
Also Simon is an absolute realist with high ideals and a hamanistic approach. He is on the right track . If only there were more like him!!! Thankyou for standing up for truth always Simon.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 8:32 am
Correction Simon has a humanistic approach...



"Palestine is not the original home of the Jews. It was acquired by them after a ruthless conquest, and they have never occupied the whole of it, which they now openly demand. They have no more valid claim to Palestine than the descendants of the ancient Romans have to this country. The Romans occupied Britain as long as the Israelites occupied Palestine, and they left behind them in this country far more valuable and useful work. If we are going to admit claims based on conquest thousands of years ago, the whole world will have to be turned upside down."
(Lord Sydenham, 21 June 1922)

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 9:41 am
HERE WE GO AGAIN. TO FOLLOW THE LOGIC OF THIS PERSON IS TO FIND THE SUN BY LOOKING IN A HOLE. IN NATURE SPIECIES EITHER ADAPT OR DIE. ISRAEL IS TOO POWERFUL FOR THE PALESTINIANS TO OVERCOME, THEREFORE THE RIGHT TACK TO TAKE IS FOR THEM TO FIND A CREATIVE WAY OUT. THE ARAB WORLD'S FOCUS ON ONLY PLYING THE WATERS OF HATRED WILL DISTROY THEM BY WASTING THEIR WONDERFULLY CREATIVE POWERS. THE NUKE THAT IRAN WANTS TO USE WOULD DESTROY JERUSALEM, FOREVER. THIS IS ALSO THEIR HOLLY SITE AND ISRAEL HAS HOW MANY?...)
Op-Ed on Official Iranian News Website:

'You Could Never Find Even One Single Person Who Is an Auschwitz Survivor'

(NOT ONE? HERE IS PROOF OF THEIR COSMIC INSANITY! TO SAY THAT THE JEWS MADE UP THI STORY, EVEN THOUGH THE ANAL-RETENTIVE GERMAN DOCUMENTATION OF EVERY ASPECT OF THE WAR, WARS, PROVES BEYOUND ANY REASONABLE PERSON ABILITY TO DOUBT THAT IT IS TRUE. WHAT PROOF DID THES PEOPLE SEEK TO TRY TO FIND THAT COULD SUPPORT THIS FOOLISHNESS? THIS IS THE SAME PEOPLE THAT TREAT WOMAN AS MUCH LESS THAN HUMANS. WHAT MINDSET WOULD FIND THIS REASONABLE? ONLY THOSE WHO SEEK TO HIDE FROM REALITY SPEEK LIKE THIS.
In an April 21, 2009 op-ed on the website of the official Iranian news agency IRNA, titled "Israel Emerges from Auschwitz, the author, Hamid Esmaili, showcases statements by well-known Holocaust deniers and says that "for Zionists, Auschwitz is...the symbol and the embodiment of all those things which constitute the identity and essence of a regime called Israel..."(1)

The following is the op-ed, in the original English.


"Holocaust, From Any Angle, is the Most Significant Excuse Used by the Zionists' Godfather, Theodor Herzl, And His Comrades to Justify Their Efforts to Set Up a Zionist System"

"Holocaust forms the backbone of founding Israel in the Middle East at the expense of making millions of Palestinians displaced from their homeland and collecting homeless Jewish people from across the world in Holy land of Palestine.

"Holocaust, from any angle, is the most significant excuse used by the Zionists' godfather, Theodor Herzl, and his comrades to justify their efforts to set up a Zionist system by zooming on the topic and even by distorting historical facts through making frequent references to forged names and non-existing places.

"They founded their claims on the fact that Prophet David and his dynasty ruled the ancient land of Kan'an for some 76 years and used this to prove that the territory belonged to Zionists. In the midst of all this, another fact was neglected: that the land of Palestine had been in possession of Arabs for over four thousand years after that.


"Many Linguists Believe that the Word Holocaust... Was Originally Coined to Refer to a Criminal Incident in Ancient Yemen Committed by Jews Who Burnt Alive a Large Group... of Men, Women, and Children"

"Many linguists believe that the word holocaust, which is a Greek word – holo means all and caust meaning 'to burn to ashes' – was originally coined to refer to a criminal incident in ancient Yemen committed by Jews who burnt alive a large group of chained and handcuffed men, women, and children for their adherence to teachings [of] Jesus Christ (PBUH).

"However, the bitter historical irony is that the word was later exploited by Zionists to establish a regime by building on the false claim that over six million Jews had been killed in Auschwitz ovens, thus triggering the sympathy of the [W]estern people. They embarked on a relentless campaign, producing tens of films, publishing thousands of books and research works to win the sympathy of [W]estern public opinion particularly that of Europe to drive a nation which enjoyed a rich and old civilization and culture out of its homeland."


"In European Countries, Which Claim a Highly Intellectual Atmosphere And Boast of Supporting Research and Scientific Movements... It Is Absolutely Forbidden to Question the Authenticity of Holocaust"

"From among all so-called death camps in Europe which mainly concentrated in Poland, Auschwitz is the most famous one, so the Zionists focused all their documentation on the place and made up many horrifying tales every single of which makes the hair stand on end.

"Many Zionists claimed the establishment of Israel was the God's answer to Auschwitz, while there were others to strongly believe that holocaust encouraged establishment of Israel.

"However, the bitter fact, here, is that in European countries which claim a highly intellectual atmosphere and boast of supporting research and scientific movements and trends, it is absolutely forbidden to question the authenticity of holocaust or even conduct any investigative research on the quality and quantity of the incident. If anybody dares to ignore the law, then the 'anti-Semitism' law would promptly be used to suppress the antagonist voice."


"The World-Famous Holocaust Denier Faurisson... Irritates the Zionist Regime's Puppets"

"The world-famous holocaust denier, Professor Robert Faurisson, is one of those people who once in a time irritates the Zionist regime's puppets by his remarks. He denies the overall incident of burning Jews into ashes by the Nazi Germans. In his latest remarks, he questions the very existence of any gas chambers in Auschwitz, describing the claim as a big lie.

"However, he believes there is still another more dangerous, bigger lie which claims the gas chambers were constructed later on after the end of the war, or that the existing building was one similar to the original one which is not constructed in as good shape as the first, or still that the gas chambers went under reconstruction projects after the end of the second world war.

"He believes many efforts were undertaken after the war to re-make Auschwitz to resemble a death camp, to create the false impression that it was exclusively used as a place to kill Jews, while the whole project was more of a construction attempt rather than a reconstruction plan.

"He mentions documents which were never published publicly, adding: 'I got plans of the four crematoria chambers in Auschwitz and Birkenau which lacked any openings in their roofs. At a single one of these crematoria, although it is in ruins, is it today possible to go and examine the room said to have been a gas chamber and is the presumed scene of the crime …We are told that, in order to kill the Jewish detainees locked inside, an SS man, moving about on the concrete roof of the said gas chamber, poured Zyklon-B pellets through four regular openings situated in the roof.

"'However, one need only have eyes to realize that no such openings have ever existed there. Therefore such a crime cannot have been committed.'


"The Zionists Are Basically Exploiting the Forged Term of 'Holocaust'..."

"Despite all their claims, these very countries never allow people to say a single word against holocaust. They use the anti-Semitism law as a tool to suppress any voices rising against the influential Zionists sitting in Tel Aviv even though what they say is utterly based on scientific research conclusions.

"They are scared of seeing people realize the fact that contrary to what they are trying to pretend, the Zionists see the establishment of the Hitlerite Nazism not as a catastrophe but as a brilliant and unique historical opportunity to get to their objectives; given the fact that it provided the chance for the Jewish agency to materialize its old dream of the congregational movement of Jews from all parts of the world to the so-called 'promised land.'

"The Zionists are basically exploiting the forged term of 'holocaust,' with all its implied political, economic, and psychological applications, to attain two principle objectives. By trying to depict the Jews as victims of holocaust and sanctifying it, the Zionists want to 1) provoke the feelings of the Jewish tribe and 2) bar any broad and global opposition to the Israeli criminal actions against the Palestinians.

"That is exactly for these reasons that the Zionists are reluctant to hear any antagonistic voices from world politicians, thinkers and intellectuals. The remarks made by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [asking] why the Palestinian people must pay the price for the holocaust terrified Tel Aviv leaders. They are fully aware that [the] challenging [of the] dimensions of holocaust by the head of a country which is considered a key player in the international scene would bring despair for them. They know that any breaking of the old-established taboo of making anti-Zionist remarks in the United Nations – before the heads of as many as 200 world countries – would pave the way for other scholars and thinkers who like the Iranian president have serious doubts about the authenticity and nature of Zionist claims about holocaust but lack his courage or the opportunity to publicly express their attitudes.

"Director of the Canadian Association for Free Speech Paul Fromm agrees with President Ahmadinejad's remarks, saying: 'I believe it is wrong to have Palestinians pay the price for the crimes committed by Europeans and for them to lose their country. I also believe that the hollow myth of holocaust was originally made up to project a sense of guilt and shame in northern Europe and North American nations.'

"The myth has so far enabled the Jews to get billions of dollars from Germany and other world countries. The notion of holocaust has also prepared the minds of people in Europe and America to justify the brutality of the Zionist regime against Palestinians.

"Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, too, has already elaborated on the objectives the Zionists are pursuing by focusing on the issue of holocaust and the crematoria ovens as a propaganda strategy: the aim is to show the Jews as a victimized tribe.

"The fact that visiting the holocaust museum is included on the schedule of any ranking official visiting Palestine proves this very point."


"For Zionists, Auschwitz Is...The Symbol and the Embodiment of All Those Things Which Constitute the Identity and Essence of a Regime Called Israel... You Could Never Find Even One Single Person Who Is an Auschwitz Survivor Himself"

"Anyway, Auschwitz occupies the most significant position in the myth of holocaust Zionists are trying so hard to sanctify. For Zionists, Auschwitz is not merely a so-called death camp or a crematorium; it is the symbol and the embodiment of all those things which constitute the identity and essence of a regime called Israel.

"Yes, the Zionists keep telling the most horrifying stories about the Auschwitz, quoting those who survived the death camp, but the point is that you could never find even one single person who is an Auschwitz survivor himself while many World War II veterans are still alive, living their ordinary lives. There are only photos and pictures about Auschwitz.

"Hollywood, too, has been earnestly fulfilling its duty of serving the myth of holocaust and Auschwitz. It employs the whole of its vast and glamorous empire to hire the most outstanding directors and actors to produce tens of works about the prisoners who lives in concentration camps, particularly in Auschwitz. From among the most brilliant works produced so far on the topic by Hollywood is the film recently directed [by] the world-renown[ed] Jewish pianist Roman Polanski, which triggered much controversy.

"At the end of the story of the setting up Tel Aviv regime, the Jews were finally settled down in Palestine instead of Ethiopia or Uganda only to enable the Western countries to get to their goal of getting access to one of world's most strategic and sensitive spots which is also situated at the very heart of the Islamic world.

"The Westerners pretend to regret their oppressive behaviors towards Jews and do everything to get themselves [out] of this nightmare, but at the expense of the Palestinian nation.

"While Europeans have been always boasting of their intellectual attitudes and democratic manners and look worried about what is going on in the remotest deserts in Darfur or the way the military is treating the public in Burma, they seem absolutely reluctant to see the humanitarian tragedy created by Zionists in Gaza, which is virtually turned into the world's biggest death camp in December 2008-January 2009."

Endnote:
(1) IRNA (Iran), April 21, 2009. The text has been lightly edited for clarity.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 10:20 am
I am SICK of hearing about the 'holocaust' a lot of others suffered too. My own father survivred a concentration camp. He was not a jew!!!
As for Iran 'nuking' 'israel'. Won't happen!! Ahmedinajad is an intelligent man. he knows that to do that would have a world war as USA is 53rd state.
Lame excuse!!

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 11:34 am
Ahmadinejad is not only after Israel, he is after US as well: it is easier to take on "Little Satan" before taking on "The Great Satan". The guy is ruinning Iranian economy, but he doesn't care, as long as he can achieve some of his messianic dreams.

Israel is not the only one, worried about Iran having nukes: all Sunnis are, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 11:35 am
You are just too funny Josh!! That made no sense at all!!

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 11:44 am
I was only relating Ahmadinejad ideas - read his statementsyourself, or I can help you as well.

Which part of the message was hard to understand?

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 12:34 pm
Anita, it's not "too funny", after another Iranian official claimed that Bahrain should be an Iranian province:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has sent a message to Bahrain's King Hamad in an effort to smooth relations, state media said on Tuesday, after an Iranian official questioned the island nation's sovereignty.
The message was discussed during a meeting between King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and Iran's Minister of Interior Sadeq Mahsouli in Manama on Monday, the official news agency said.

Ahmadinejad said he would "not allow anyone who does not have good intentions for both countries to violate these good brotherly relations", it reported.

According to media reports, Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, an adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said earlier this month that Iran had sovereignty over the kingdom.

Bahrain halted talks with Iran over natural gas imports over the reported comments and Bahrain's foreign minister summoned the Iranian ambassador to protest earlier in February. The Bahrain News Agency report made no mention of the gas talks.

Gulf Arab states this week called on Iran to condemn the remarks at a foreign ministers meeting in Riyadh on Sunday. Iran said on Monday the reports on the official's remarks had been misunderstood and misinterpreted.

Iran has denied having claims over Bahrain but the tensions have underscored the suspicions between Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab nations and non-Arab, Shi'ite Muslim Iran.

Gulf Arab states are concerned about Iran's rising influence in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories and its potential effect on their own Shi'ite communities.

The issue is particularly sensitive in Bahrain, which has a sizable Muslim Shi'ite population.

see for yourself: http://www.javno.com/en-world/iran-president-seeks-to-ease-tension-with-bahrain_237073

Still doesn't make sense?

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 4:15 pm
Gandhi was wrong when he was asked how the Jews should deal with the NAZIS. He thought that they should use non-violent, passive resistance like he used with the Brits. The British are not like the NAZIS. They had some established ethical rules and use reason. The NAZIS did not. The extremist Muslim regimes are similar in their avoidance of reason. If they are worthy of our respect then they must treat woman, amongst others, with love and understanding. Do you hear much in their writings about forgiving those who trespass against them. They would rather punish than forgive. Love and reason should propel society not diminish it as hate will always do...

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 4:28 pm
The difference is that like the Gypsies, the Jews had no homeland to go back to after the war. Also in Russia there was also a Holocaust, but records were not kept because Stalin was not interested in know how many he killed. So altogether 10,000,000, or more Jews died during the war. He killed 24,000,000 Russian, Germans and Eastern Block peoples at the same time Hitler killed about 16,000,000. So what would you do if you found yourself in this situation? For 2,000 years we said; "Next year in Jerusalem". What do you think would be their next move?

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 4:55 pm



In an article posted April 21, 2009 on the liberal Arab website www.elaph.com, reformist writer Basem Muhammad Habib condemns the Holocaust denial in the Arab world. He states that this trend, which is unreasonable and inhumane, is motivated by political agendas, and by a false belief that empathy for the victims of the Holocaust amounts to a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. He calls on the Arabs to separate these two issues, and to join the world in commemorating the Holocaust, for it was an attack on the very essence of humanity.

Following are excerpts:


There Is No Connection at All Between the Reality of the Holocaust and What Has Happened in Palestine

"These days, the world is commemorating the Holocaust, because it was one of the biggest massacres in history, which surpassed other massacres in its barbarity, even those committed by primitive civilizations. Abundant [evidence] indicates that more than six million Jews were killed during the 1930s and 1940s, having been accused by the Nazi authorities of conspiring with the Allies, of causing the Germany's defeat in World War I, and of cooperating with the efforts of its enemies in World War II. This racist thinking fed the feelings of hatred towards the Jews, and led to this horrible massacre, whose wounds are still tormenting the world even decades later.

"Though this horrible event has become part of history, and cannot possibly be denied, there are nevertheless some who insist on denying it and on questioning [the validity of] the numbers, out of motivations that are mostly political. [This is true] especially in our region, which is steeped in [psychological] complexes and feelings of resentment. Many [in our region] attempt to link the Holocaust and the issue of Palestine, believing that to recognize and commemorate the Holocaust is to betray the Palestinian cause. This approach raises questions about the soundness of the ideologies that dominate our attitudes and feelings – ideologies that are clearly not anchored in sound logic, and are not at all consistent with our human values. Thus, we unwittingly turn our backs on the proper human attitude, just because our feelings of hatred get the better of us.

"There is no connection at all between the reality of the Holocaust and what has happened in Palestine. These are two different matters that [occurred in different] times and places, and we can assess each of them independently of the other. [Only] then... will our judgment be free and grounded in correct values and sincere sentiments.

"Instead of doubting [the historicity of the Holocaust], we should admire the Jewish political leaders for the interest they show in the Jewish [Holocaust] victims and for their constant remembrance of those atrocities. They dedicate much effort to honoring their memory, documenting their trials, and fighting for [the survivors'] rights, wherever they are. This is something we hardly ever see in our region, where people are killed for the most trivial reasons, and their suffering and pain are quickly forgotten. In Iraq, for example, hundreds of thousands were killed [under Saddam Hussein's] reign of terror and tyranny, yet we have never heard of any attempt to commemorate these victims, nor have we seen any concern for their lost rights...

"Today, the world has become free of [fascist] ideologies, and the reign of reason is expanding. Even Germany, which witnessed this criminal massacre, has acknowledged this catastrophe, and has begun to atone for it in various ways, [for example] by providing annual economic support to Israel. The U.N., for its part, has issued a resolution designating January 27 as [International] Holocaust Remembrance Day... This date was chosen in honor of the few survivors who were discovered in Auschwitz by the Allies [when they liberated the camp on January 27,] 1945 – [survivors] who were among the few who experienced the horror [of the Holocaust] and lived to tell the tale."


Holocaust Denial Usually Stems Not from Scholarly Motivations, But from Political Ones

"Because of the doubts raised by many [people about the Holocaust], some countries have been forced to issue laws that criminalize any attempt to doubt or deny this event – for the casting of doubt does not usually stem from scholarly motivations but [comes to serve] political and ideological goals... Some regard such laws as undemocratic, and as indicating a pro-Israel bias. However, the truth is that [these laws] came in response to a wave of irrational doubt, promoted by certain parties under the guise of scientific inquiry.

"The Holocaust deserves to be [recognized as] a momentous world event, because it targeted [the very essence of] our humanity. At the time, there was no Jewish state and most of those who suffered this injustice lived in Europe in small diaspora communities.

"We [Arabs] should feel empathy for the victims of the Holocaust and commemorate them, as do others [throughout the world]. Certainly, our participation in commemorating this event will help our international position and change the way people regard us. Perhaps we will be able to improve our image in the eyes of the world and reverse some of the damage that the terrorists have done."

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 7:25 pm
Why has the topic shifted to holocaust denial? It's unfortunate that we can't read his words. All I read is snippets of incomplete sentences and the opinions of people.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 7:28 pm
I applaud Howard Jacobson for his insight and ability to call Jew hating disguised as a political statement just plain Jew hating. The UN should be ashamed of itself for having this Holocaust denier and inciter of racial and religious hate as a speaker on the anniversary of the day Auschwitz was liberated.

Never Forget-Never Again

Howard Jacobson: Let’s see the 'criticism' of Israel for what it really is

Emotions have run high over recent events in Gaza. And in this impassioned and searching essay, our writer argues that just below the surface runs a vicious strain of ancient prejudice

I was once in Melbourne when bush fires were raging 20 or 30 miles north of the city. Even from that distance you could smell the burning. Fine fragments of ash, like slivers of charcoal confetti, covered the pavements. The very air was charred. It has been the same here these past couple of months with the fighting in Gaza. Only the air has been charred not with devastation but with hatred. And I don’t mean the hatred of the warring parties for each other. I mean the hatred of Israel expressed in our streets, on our campuses, in our newspapers, on our radios and televisions, and now in our theatres.

A discriminatory, over-and-above hatred, inexplicable in its hysteria and virulence whatever justification is adduced for it; an unreasoning, deranged and as far as I can see irreversible revulsion that is poisoning everything we are supposed to believe in here – the free exchange of opinions, the clear-headedness of thinkers and teachers, the fine tracery of social interdependence we call community relations, modernity of outlook, tolerance, truth. You can taste the toxins on your tongue.

But I am not allowed to ascribe any of this to anti-Semitism. It is, I am assured, “criticism” of Israel, pure and simple. In the matter of Israel and the Palestinians this country has been heading towards a dictatorship of the one-minded for a long time; we seem now to have attained it. Deviate a fraction of a moral millimetre from the prevailing othodoxy and you are either not listened to or you are jeered at and abused, your reading of history trashed, your humanity itself called into question. I don’t say that self-pityingly. As always with dictatorships of the mind, the worst harmed are not the ones not listened to, but the ones not listening. So leave them to it, has essentially been my philosophy. A life spent singing anti-Zionist carols in the company of Ken Livingstone and George Galloway is its own punishment.

But responses to the fighting in Gaza have been such as to drive even the most quiescent of English Jews – whether quiescent because we have learnt to expect nothing else, or because we are desperate to avoid trouble, or because we have our own frustrations with Israel to deal with – out of our usual stoical reserve. Some things cannot any longer go unchallenged.

My first challenge is implicit in the phrase “the fighting in Gaza”, which more justly describes the event than the words “Massacre” and “Slaughter” which anti-Israel demonstrators carry on their placards. This is not a linguistic ploy on my part to play down the horror of Gaza or to minimise the loss of life. In an article in this newspaper last week, Robert Fisk argued that “a Palestinian woman and her child are as worthy of life as a Jewish woman and her child on the back of a lorry in Auschwitz”. I am not sure who he was arguing with, but it certainly isn’t me.

I do not differentiate between the worth of lives and no more wish to harm or see harmed the hair of a single Palestinian than do those who make cause, here in safe cosy old easy-come easy-go England, with Hamas. Indeed, given Hamas’s record of violence to its own people – read the latest report from Amnesty if you doubt it – it’s possible I wish to harm the hair of a single Palestinian less. But that might be rhetoric in which case I apologise for it.

Rhetoric is precisely what has warped report and analysis these past months, and in the process made life fraught for most English Jews who, like me, do not differentiate between the worth of Jewish and Palestinian lives, though the imputation – loud and clear in a new hate-fuelled little chamber-piece by Caryl Churchill – is that Jews do. “Massacre” and “Slaughter” are rhetorical terms. They determine the issue before it can begin to be discussed. Are you for massacre or are you not? When did you stop slaughtering your wife?

I watched demonstrators approach members of the public with their petitions. “Do you want an end to the slaughter in Gaza?” What were those approached expected to reply? – “No, I want it to continue unabated.” If “Massacre” presumes indiscriminate, “Slaughter” presumes innocence. There is no dodging the second of those. In Gaza the innocent have suffered unbearably. But it is in the nature of modern war, where soldiers no longer toss grenades at one another from their trenches, that the innocent pay.

Live television pictures of civilian fatalities rightly distress and anger us. Similar pictures of the damage this country did to the innocent of Berlin would have distressed and angered us no less. The outrage we feel does credit to our humanity, but says nothing about the justice of a particular war. Insist that all wars are too cruel ever to be called just, argue that any discharge of weapons in the vicinity of the innocent is murderous, and you will meet no resistance from me; but you will have in the same breath to implicate Hamas who make a virtue of endangering their own civilian population, and who, as everyone knows but many choose to discount, have been firing rockets into Israeli towns for years.

The inefficiency of those rockets, landing God knows where and upon God knows whom, is often cited to minimise the offence. As though murderous intention can be mitigated by the obsolescence of the weaponry. In fact the inefficiency only exacerbates the crime. How much more indiscriminate can you be than to lob unstable rockets into civilian areas and hope for a hit? Massacre manqué, we might call it – slaughter in all but a good aim. And this not from some disaffected group we might liken to the IRA, but the legitimately elected government of Gaza.

If it is a war crime for one government to fire on civilians, it is a war crime for another. But when a protester joined a demonstration at Sheffield University recently, calling on both sides to desist, her placard was seized and trampled underfoot, while the young in their liberation scarves and embryo compassion looked on and said not one word.

And Israel? Well, speaking on BBC television at the height of the fighting, Richard Kemp, former commander of British Troops in Afghanistan and a senior military adviser to the British government, said the following: “I don’t think there has ever been a time in the history of warfare where any army has made more efforts to reduce civilian casualties and deaths of civilians than the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) is doing today in Gaza.” A judgement I can no more corroborate than those who think very differently can disprove.

Right or wrong, it was a contribution to the argument from someone who is more informed on military matters than most of us, but did it make a blind bit of difference to the tone of popular execration? It did not. When it comes to Israel we hear no good, see no good, speak no good. We turn our backsides to what we do not want to know about and bury it in distaste, like our own ordure. We did it and go on doing it with all official contestation of the mortality figures provided by Hamas. We do it with Hamas’s own private executions and their policy of deploying human shields. We do it with the sotto voce admission by the UN that “a clerical error” caused it to mis-describe the bombing of that UN school which at the time was all the proof we needed of Israel’s savagery. It now turns out that Israel did not bomb the school at all. But there’s no emotional mileage in a correction. The libel sticks, the retraction goes unnoticed.

But I am not allowed to ascribe any of this to anti-Semitism. It is criticism of Israel, pure and simple.

A laughably benign locution, “criticism”, for what is in fact – what has in recent years become – a desire to word a country not just out of the commonwealth of nations but out of physical existence altogether. Richard Ingrams daydreams of the time when Israel will no longer be, an after-dinner sleep which is more than an old man’s idle prophesying. It is for him a consummation devoutly to be wished. This week Bruce Anderson also looked to such a time, but in his case with profound regret. Israel has missed and goes on missing chances to be magnanimous, he argued, as no victor has ever been before. That’s a high expectation, but I am in sympathy with it, and it is an expectation in line with what Israel’s greatest writers and peace campaigners – Amos Oz, A.B. Yehoshua, David Grossman – have been saying for years. Though it is interesting that not a one of those believed such magnanimity included allowing Hamas’s rockets to go on falling unhindered into Israel.

Was not the original withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantling of the rightly detested settlements a sufficient signal of peaceful intent, and a sufficient opportunity for it to be reciprocated? Magnanimity is by definition unilateral, but it takes two for it to be more than a suicidal gesture. And the question has to be asked whether a Jewish state, however magnanimous and conciliatory, will ever be accepted in the Middle East.

But my argument is not with the Palestinians or even with Hamas. People in the thick of it pursue their own agenda as best they can. But what’s our agenda? What do we, in the cosy safety of tolerant old England, think we are doing when we call the Israelis Nazis and liken Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto? Do those who blithely make these comparisons know anything whereof they speak?

In the early 1940s some 100,000 Jews and Romanis died of engineered starvation and disease in the Warsaw Ghetto, another quarter of a million were transported to the death camps, and when the Ghetto rose up it was liquidated, the last 50,000 residents being either shot on the spot or sent to be murdered more hygienically in Treblinka. Don’t mistake me: every Palestinian killed in Gaza is a Palestinian too many, but there is not the remotest similarity, either in intention or in deed – even in the most grossly mis-reported deed – between Gaza and Warsaw.

Given the number of besieged and battered cities there have been in however many thousands of years of pitiless warfare there is only one explanation for this invocation of Warsaw before any of those – it is to wound Jews in their recent and most anguished history and to punish them with their own grief. Its aim is a sort of retrospective retribution, cancelling out all debts of guilt and sorrow. It is as though, by a reversal of the usual laws of cause and effect, Jewish actions of today prove that Jews had it coming to them yesterday.

Berating Jews with their own history, disinheriting them of pity, as though pity is negotiable or has a sell-by date, is the latest species of Holocaust denial, infinitely more subtle than the David Irving version with its clunking body counts and quibbles over gas-chamber capability and chimney sizes. Instead of saying the Holocaust didn’t happen, the modern sophisticated denier accepts the event in all its terrible enormity, only to accuse the Jews of trying to profit from it, either in the form of moral blackmail or downright territorial theft. According to this thinking, the Jews have betrayed the Holocaust and become unworthy of it, the true heirs to their suffering being the Palestinians. Thus, here and there throughout the world this year, Holocaust day was temporarily annulled or boycotted on account of Gaza, dead Jews being found guilty of the sins of live ones.

Anti-Semitism? Absolutely not. It is “criticism” of Israel, pure and simple. A number of variations on the above sophistical nastiness have been fermenting in the more febrile of our campuses for some time. One particularly popular version, pseudo-scientific in tone, understands Zionism as a political form given to a psychological condition – Jews visiting upon others the traumas suffered by themselves, with Israel figuring as the torture room in which they do it. This is is pretty well the thesis of Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children, an audacious 10-minute encapsulation of Israel’s moral collapse – the audacity residing in its ignorance or its dishonesty – currently playing at the Royal Court. The play is conceived in the form of a family roundelay, with different voices chiming in with suggestions as to the best way to bring up, protect, inform, and ultimately inflame into animality an unseen child in each of the chosen seven periods of contemporary Jewish history. It begins with the Holocaust, partly to establish the playwright’s sympathetic bona fides (“Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting”), partly to explain what has befallen Palestine, because no sooner are the Jews out of the hell of Hitler’s Europe than they are constructing a parallel hell for Palestinians.

Anyone with scant knowledge of the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations – that is to say, judging from what they chant, the majority of anti-Israel demonstrators – would assume from this that Jews descended on the country as from a clear blue sky; that they had no prior association with the land other than in religious fantasy and through some scarce remembered genealogical affiliation: “Tell her it’s the land God gave us/... Tell her her great great great great lots of greats grandad lived there” – the latter line garnering much knowing laughter in the theatre the night I was there, by virtue of the predatiousness lurking behind the childlike vagueness.

You cannot of course tell the whole story of anywhere in 10 minutes, but then why would you want to unless you conceive it to be simple and one-sided? The staccato form of the piece – every line beginning “Tell her” or “Don’t tell her” – is skilfully contrived to suggest a people not just forever fraught and frightened but forever covert and deceitful. Nothing is true. Boasts are denials and denials are boasts. Everything is mediated through the desire to put the best face, first on fear, then on devious appropriation, and finally on evil.

That being the case, it is hard to be certain what the playwright knows and what she doesn’t, what she, in her turn, means deliberately to twist or just unthinkingly helps herself to from the poor box of leftist propaganda. The overall impression, nonetheless, is of a narrative slavishly in line with the familiar rhetoric, making little or nothing of the Jews’ unbroken connection with the country going back to the Arab conquest more than a thousand years before, the piety felt for the land, the respect for its non-Jewish inhabitants (their rights must “be guarded and honoured punctiliously,” Ben Gurion wrote in 1918), the waves of idealistic immigration which long predated the post-Holocaust influx with its twisted psychology, and the hopes of peaceful co-existence, for the tragic dashing of which Arab countries in their own obduracy and intolerance bear no less responsibility.

Quite simply, in this wantonly inflammatory piece, the Jews drop in on somewhere they have no right to be, despise, conquer, and at last revel in the spilling of Palestinian blood. There is a one-line equivocal mention of a suicide bomber, and ditto of rockets, both compromised by the “Tell her” device, otherwise no Arab lifts a finger against a Jew. “Tell her about Jerusalem,” but no one tells her, for example, that the Jewish population of East Jersusalem was expelled at about the time our survivors turn up, that it was cleansed from the city and its sacred places desecrated or destroyed. Only in the crazed brains of Israelis can the motives for any of their subsequent actions be found.

Thus lie follows lie, omission follows omission, until, in the tenth and final minute, we have a stage populated by monsters who kill babies by design – “Tell her we killed the babies by mistake,” one says, meaning don’t tell her what we really did – who laugh when they see a dead Palestinian policeman (“Tell her they’re animals... Tell her I wouldn’t care if we wiped them out”), who consider themselves the “chosen people”, and who admit to feeling happy when they see Palestinian “children covered in blood”.

Anti-Semitic? No, no. Just criticism of Israel.

Only imagine this as Seven Muslim Children and we know that the Royal Court would never have had the courage or the foolhardiness to stage it. I say that with no malice towards Muslims. I do not approve of censorship but I admire their unwillingness to be traduced. It would seem that we Jews, however, for all our ingrained brutality – we English Jews at least – are considered a soft touch. You can say what you like about us, safe in the knowledge that while we slaughter babies and laugh at murdered policemen (“Tell her we’re the iron fist now”) we will squeak no louder than a mouse when we are abused.

Caryl Churchill will argue that her play is about Israelis not Jews, but once you venture on to “chosen people” territory – feeding all the ancient prejudice against that miscomprehended phrase – once you repeat in another form the medieval blood-libel of Jews rejoicing in the murder of little children, you have crossed over. This is the old stuff. Jew-hating pure and simple – Jew-hating which the haters don’t even recognise in themselves, so acculturated is it – the Jew-hating which many of us have always suspected was the only explanation for the disgust that contorts and disfigures faces when the mere word Israel crops up in conversation. So for that we are grateful. At last that mystery is solved and that lie finally nailed. No, you don’t have to be an anti-Semite to criticise Israel. It just so happens that you are.

If one could simply leave them to it one would. It’s a hell of its own making, hating Jews for a living. Only think of the company you must keep. But these things are catching. Take Michael Billington’s somnolent review of the play in the Guardian. I would imagine that any accusation of anti-Semitism would horrify Michael Billington. And I certainly don’t make it. But if you wanted an example of how language itself can sleepwalk the most innocent towards racism, then here it is. “Churchill shows us,” he writes, “how Jewish children are bred to believe in the ‘otherness’ of Palestinians...”

It is not just the adopted elision of Israeli children into Jewish children that is alarming, or the unquestioning acceptance of Caryl Churchill’s offered insider knowledge of Israeli child-rearing, what’s most chilling is that lazy use of the word “bred”, so rich in eugenic and bestial connotations, but inadvertently slipped back into the conversation now, as truth. Fact: Jews breed children in order to deny Palestinians their humanity. Watching another play in the same week, Billington complains about its manipulation of racial stereotypes. He doesn’t, you see, even notice the inconsistency.

And so it happens. Without one’s being aware of it, it happens. A gradual habituation to the language of loathing. Passed from the culpable to the unwary and back again. And soon, before you know it...

Not here, though. Not in cosy old lazy old easy-come easy-go England.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/howard-jacobson/howard-jacobson-let8217s-see-the-8216criticism8217-of-israel-for-what-it-really-is-1624827.html

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 7:31 pm
Locan, it's not the switch from topic - Holocaust denial is just one of the things Ahmedinejad is famous for. In his own words.

People listed his other "great" ideas to make a complete picture of the guy.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 8:52 pm
Josh i think Ahmadinejab is just fed up with zionist rhetoric...being the very intelligent shrewd man he is he probably says this to annoy!! I don't think he gives a damn whether or how many jews were killed . he is more interested in protecting moslem countries from the zionist takeover which is 100% backed by the 53rd state. After all as i already stated we are all fed up with hearing about the damn holocaust..do you know how many Russians were killed etc etc. my father survived a concentration camp. Of course one doesn't forget these things but i am sick of having it shoved down my throat. Good for Ahmadinejab for walking out. Seems to me he doesn't bow down to the zionist leaders and their co-horts.

Wednesday April 22, 2009, 11:02 pm
Anita, he had his guys to declare that Bahrain is Iranian province because he is "the very intelligent shrewd man" and "he is more interested in protecting moslem countries from the zionist takeover"?

Thursday April 23, 2009, 12:39 am
Well Bahrain was part of Iran...so what is wrong with his saying that?
This article is not about whether or not he see Bahrain as part of Iran. It is about the integrity this man had to speak the truth about 'israel''s barbaric policies.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 2:34 am
Yes, but he spoke it at the wrong venue

Thursday April 23, 2009, 5:51 am
What was - was, Anita. Bahrain is a sovereign country, not willing to join Iran. Ahmedinejad looks as the world through lenses of Islamic Revolution to be spread over the world. His anti-Israel rhetoric and Holocaust denial are just two pieces out of a chain. Suppressing personal freedoms in Iran - another. Anti-Egyptian sentiment - another.

Those who like this view may call him "the very intelligent shrewd man". For those who don't like this idea will call him "messianic" fanatic. And such fanatics with nukes are quite scarry to have around on this small planet.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 7:50 am
Well and look at the USA with israel's full backing and coaching goes into sovereign nations and destroys whole cultures. Ahmadinajab has doen done of that evil...sure he might deny the holocaust ..who gives a damn??? I don't!!! Read my former posts. I'll say it again, this man stays true to his integrity. He was the only one to stand up and speak truth, and this is what this post is all about!!

Thursday April 23, 2009, 8:09 am
"Ahmadinajab has doen done of that evil" (typo) Ahmadinajab has done none of that.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 8:12 am
Oh and Josh,If the USA and 'israel' can have nukes...why the hell can't Iran??

Thursday April 23, 2009, 9:20 am
Because those countries have not publicly stated that another country must be wiped off the map. Isn't that enough reason? I'm not siding with any side, but Iran with Nuclear weapons scares the living daylights out of me.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 9:49 am
Anita, you may "not give a damn" when somebody denied Holocaust. Do you "give a damn" when somebody denies existance of Communist concentration camps, where you say some of your relitives were held?

Besides Iran-Israel, what do you think of Ahmedinejad's idea to export Islamic Revolution to the whole World?

Thursday April 23, 2009, 9:59 am
Josh K. Islamic Revolution being visited on the whole world? That is a terrifying idea.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 11:09 am
Whether he denies the holocaust or not is irrelevenat. And...actually no i don't give a damn if anyone denies what my father went through...because i know he did...and so do the people who matter. Marena did it occur to you that the USA might be considered terrorist by other countries???

Thursday April 23, 2009, 11:47 am
To claim that the Holocaust did not happen is absolutely rediculous.
For Muslim sects constantly to try to destroy the other is even more rediculous.
If Israel was not in the picture the Middle East would still be on fire. Woman in that part of the world have no rights and can be killed and tortured because the thinking is that of the 13th century.
If anything is to change this thought process or lack of one, it is the more evolved Western system. Israel, though overflexed, is one of the forces that will save woman and children caught in the throws of the anal-maniacle leadership as is seen in Ahmadinejad and Arafat.
Wisdom is not theirs, nor is reason and until they treat woman and children as equally created then no resolve will come from these fools on the hills.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 11:50 am
AniTa, what is terrorism? Who bombed Afghanistan indiscriminately and Iraq? How much terror was struck in the hearts of Afghanis and Iraqis? And these are just the most recent terrorist acts of the USA. Israel is a racist state and just because some people don't like it doesn't mean it isn't true. Who bombed Gaza? Was that not terrorism? The deniers of Israeli atrocities are just as guilty as holocaust deniers. Because I believe that Israel is terrorist and racist does not make me a Jew-hater. That is so convenient a response. No one can criticise Israeli actions without being accused of being a Jew-hater. Ahmedinejad spoke the truth when he said Israel is a racist state. And he didn't ever say he wanted the Israeli people pushed into the sea. Some things are often deliberately not translated well. The state of Israel can go without any people being harmed. Jews will be equal citizens of Palestine when it is restored to its rightful owners I hope one day.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 12:03 pm
Eleanor B...
The Palestinians can not win back their land because the force that they would need to use is not theirs and even if it were this sacred land would be nothing but ashes and bone. To destroy a garden is an act of the insane. It is a sword fight in a rubber raft. Beating a child or a woman to force it to love you. You are pushing a boulder up a slippery slope that leads nowhere.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 12:38 pm
Anita, if somebody will tell the world that people in Russian prions camps just drunk beer and ate potatos, and comrade Stalin was a great and enlightened leader you wouldn't say a thing?

Do you think your father would?

My account was already deleted by moderators - they don't explain me why -, so the comment will appear as Past Member. That's still me - Josh.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 1:30 pm
What this all boils down to is what kind of world do we want to live in in the next 20 years? Do we want to be free people or live under an oppressive regime where women are treated like filth and killed and raped. I choose to have my freedom, not to be under the regime led by terrorists. If that is what you want, then go live with them now, just to be sure that is what kind of life you really want to live.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 1:52 pm
What the Israel dislikers appear to refuse to acknowledge is the war crimes that Hamas carries out and then blame Israel for Hamas using the Gazans/Palestinians as human shields. They also object to the right that every country has of protecting their own citizens. We ask them how they would feel living under bombings for 6 years but they ignore the question because it means that they would have to accept that Israel may have rights, totally unacceptable! They blame Israel for stealing land (which they haven't under international law) but they live in properties stolen from indigenous peoples which they refuse to acknowledge or return.

I am not saying that Israel is perfect, every government does things that some citizens object to. However, the difference between any Muslim country and Israel is that Israel is a democratic country which allows people from over 60 ethnic backgrounds to live there including Palestinians! All of these people have access to medicine, education, food and politics. How many Muslim countries have any other people in their governments than Muslims? Israel has Arabs in the government. How many countries have Jews or any other person of a different ethnic origin to live and worship in peace? Which country in the Middle East, apart from Israel, offers assistance to another country when there is a national disaster such as the tsunami in Bali? Did you know that Israel has given them a warning system?

As for nuclear weapons, does anyone have any evidence that Israel has any? If not, accusing Israel of having them does not mean that they do.

All of the people making accusations need to examine their motives as anti-Semitism is a form of racism and this is unacceptable, not only on these boards, but in everyday life.

Thursday April 23, 2009, 9:09 pm
Marena, that is a misquote. He never said he'd wipe Israel off the map. Can you find the quote? (Not a translation)Or you can be like so many willfully ignorant. Don't let the truth get in the way of making a point. All you apologists remind me of the OJ trial with the prosecutions "mountains of evidence" that in the end didn't amount to a hill of $#&t. This is a real kitchen sink thread.

David I appreciate the quote but it would mean more if you said it. What are YOUR thoughts? I could care less about some English dude that isn't a member of care2.

Gillian "As for nuclear weapons, does anyone have any evidence that Israel has any? If not, accusing Israel of having them does not mean that they do." LOL

Friday April 24, 2009, 3:37 am
No Locan, it is NOT a misquote. I heard him say it on BERNAMA NEWS (our own international news service) And I resent being discribed as willfully ignorant. That is so disrespectful towards other people and their point of view. We can politely agree to disagree, but not to talk down on those who are of a different opinion in a derogatory manner. This is not a place and topic where I want to participate any longer.

Friday April 24, 2009, 6:46 am
Marena, Locan would not reject or critisize Ahmedinejad's idea to export Islamic Revolution to the whole World. If he/she thinks the same way as Ahmedinejad, the rest of the arguments simply fades. May be he/she will clarify it, but not done it yet.

For some reasons, my account displays my name as Past Member instead of Josh.

Friday April 24, 2009, 6:58 am
“Whosoever saves a single life, saves an entire universe"
(Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5)

Here is proof that Israel is an honorable nation. They give great honor to those who, in some cases gave their lives to save the lives of those who had no other way out. Would this same action be taken in any other Middle Eastern country, or in most other countries?

The Righteous Among the Nations
“I believe that it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much for his material aid, as for his having constantly reminded me by his presence… that there still existed a just world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole… for which it was worth surviving”

Primo Levi describes his rescuer, Lorenzo Perrone (If This Is A Man)

Attitudes towards the Jews during the Holocaust mostly ranged from indifference to hostility. The mainstream watched as their former neighbors were rounded up and killed; some collaborated with the perpetrators; many benefited from the expropriation of the Jews property. But in this world of moral collapse there was a small minority who mustered extraordinary courage to uphold human values.

One of the principal duties of Yad Vashem is to convey the gratitude of the State of Israel and the Jewish people to those non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. This mission was defined by the law establishing Yad Vashem, and in 1963 the Remembrance Authority embarked upon a worldwide project to grant the title of Righteous Among the Nations to the few who helped Jews in the darkest time in their history. To this end, Yad Vashem set up a public Commission, headed by a Supreme Court Justice, which examines each case and is responsible for granting the title. Those recognized receive a medal and a certificate of honor and their names are commemorated on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem.

This project is an unprecedented attempt by the victims to pay tribute to people who stood by their side at a time of persecution and great tragedy. Based on the principle that each individual is responsible for his or her deeds, the program is aimed at singling out within the nations of perpetrators, collaborators and bystanders persons who bucked the general trend and helped the persecuted Jews. One of the great challenges of the program was to define set criteria for awarding the title. The concept of the Righteous, as defined by the Yad Vashem Law, has become a revered worldwide term of honor denoting a most singular form of human heroism and of choosing good in the face of evil.

The Righteous honored by Yad Vashem come from 44 countries; they are Christians from all denominations as well as Muslims, religious and agnostic, men and women, people from all walks of life, of all ages, educated professionals and illiterate peasants, rich and poor. The only common denominator is the humanity and the courage they displayed by standing up for their moral principles.

Friday April 24, 2009, 10:40 pm
If it weren't for German science and their excellent documentation the world would not know the facts of their own actions. Their talents were wasted and so was their country. All that they had to offer the world was turned to ashes. This is the end product of hatred. It is against everything that we were born with. Laughter, joy, beauty and fulfillment are spirit driven. That which is against all that is good and cherishable, wise and generous is a gift from G-d. All that apposes and suppresses life is abhorrent to G-d. To believe that this man who want women to stay a step above the animals that they do not even respect is a fool who tears at the roots of humanities best driven intentions. He will be consumed in his own fire. You are woman, bearers of children whose laughter heals the world and you side with the monsters of hate? Your ways are not G-d's ways...

Saturday April 25, 2009, 3:25 am
Hatred has always been the foundation of senseless destruction. If he had made the same statement about any other nation but Israel, there would be such a hue and cry and all those who admire him now (because he is talking about Israel - which so many here seem to hate), would condemn him to hell.

Saturday April 25, 2009, 6:56 am
The total land area of Israel is (7,886 square miles) (20,425 square kilometers),
excluding East Jerusalem and the territories occupied in the 1967 war.
The country extends about (290) miles (470 kilometers) from
north to south and only some (85) miles (135 kilometers) from
east to west at its widest point.
(2,800,000 sq mi)
The total land area of the Middle East is 7.3 million sq km (2.8 million sq mi) (7,886 sq mi)

You mean nothing can be worked out?

Saturday April 25, 2009, 8:28 pm
"For some reasons, my account displays my name as Past Member instead of Josh." RALMAO

BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. I still don't see a quote and or citation because.... IT DOESN'T EXIST!