An ad by US veteran’s group VoteVets that argues for Congress pushing a clean energy bill to stop the US backing fundamentalist regimes in the Middle East. Putting aside the fact that American troops are largely being attacked in places like Iraq because they’re occupying another people’s land, there is no doubt that the over-reliance on foreign oil is a problem for many nations around the world:
Tag Archive for 'Mahmoud Ahmadinejad'
Avner Cohen wonders in Haaretz why Israel has allowed itself to be supposedly petrified of Iran’s alleged nuclear program (discounting the possibility that it pays to keep a populace petrified of an enemy):
What if Israel had treated Iran’s nuclear project as an exhibitionist, even childish, attempt by a nation mired in a deep identity crisis to exploit the prestige and mystique of nuclear power to create a national ethos of technological progress at home, as well as a diplomatic miracle cure that would enable it to challenge the West and move to the center of the international stage?
…
What would have happened if we had refused to become hysterical and apocalyptic, and had instead remained calm at the existential level, just as the Iranians are calm with regard to us? After all, the Iranians are convinced that we have nuclear weapons – and a lot of them. Yet despite this, while they see us as a military threat to their nuclear program, they do not see us as an existential threat to the Iranian nation. Adopting such a strategic view would not oblige Israel to attack Iran, because Tehran could not pose an existential threat to Israel.
Ultimately, we need to internalize the insight that even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced this week, when he said that all the talk about an Iranian bomb is irrational and meaningless. This is not simply because any Iranian attempt to destroy Israel via a nuclear bomb would kill countless Palestinians, but because it would surely lead to the destruction of Iran itself by Israel and the United States. Therefore, the idiotic claim that Iran could bring about Israel’s destruction does not hold water. While it is true that Ahmadinejad would love Israel to implode of its own accord, a self-confident and strong nation should not take such statements too seriously. And it certainly should not view them as an existential threat.
A very important exchange took place between a top-level official from a Gulf state and the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a recent meeting in Tehran, reported Abdul Rahman al Rashed, a columnist with the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq al Awsat.
“How come you believe that we are intending to build a nuclear bomb? We are not that stupid,” the writer quoted the Iranian president as saying, citing a reliable source. “Were we to strike Israel with a nuclear weapon, more Palestinians than Israelis would likely get killed.”
The American Islamic Congress reports on the key troubles with last week’s anti-government protests in Iran:
CRIME Report sources inside Iran analyzing the events surrounding last Thursday’s protests – the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution – suggest that organizers may have been too crafty. It appears there was a “Trojan Horse” plan to attend the main regime-sponsored rally in Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square. People were supposed to appear inconspicuous in the early stages of the rally to enter the Square without attracting attention from the mass of security officers. During Ahmadinejad’s speech, all the protestors were then supposed to start chanting and turn the square green.
It would have been a major blow to the regime if their plan had worked. But apparently the disguises of the opposition ended up being too good. Protestors had no way to recognize each other as “greens.” “Who would dare to begin chanting anti-regime slogans when you suspect that you’re completely surrounded by the pro-regime crowd?” observes one Iranian. Indeed, many posters on chat forums report seeing many in the crowd stay silent when the regime speakers called for slogans. They suspect these were potential protesters like themselves.
“In any demonstration a few reckless vanguards need to dare to break the silence and trigger the domino of protest,” noted a source. “But when you are too dispersed and suspect you are alone, the cascade doesn’t occur.” So the protestors stayed silent all the way through and became dissolved in the mainstream pro-regime crowd – ironically adding to the crowd’s size! And thus, apparently, the Green Trojan Horse kicked back.
Australian, Jewish Zionist MP Michael Danby loves to talk about human rights in many countries around the world, except of course Palestine. It’s the usual program; issue directives without political risk but support the most reactionary elements of the Israeli political elite.
And bombing Iran. Take his piece in the Wall Street Journal that argues – seriously, does this guy get his talking points from the Israeli Foreign Ministry? Actually, don’t answer – that the bombing of Iran (by Israel?) will be the fault of…China:
President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is determined to build nuclear weapons and has threatened Israel with destruction many times. He may be bluffing, but this is not a risk Israel can afford to take. If the international community cannot restrain Iran, the government of Israel will face great pressure to take pre-emptive steps to protect the country against attack.
Thus, China’s greed for secure oil imports and its willingness to deal with outlaw regimes to get these imports is causing a breakdown in the world’s only system for disciplining countries that endanger peace. If the U.N. sanctions break down in Iran, this opens up a serious danger of war—and China will bear a heavy share of the blame.
It’s such a hackneyed article (though fits the Journal perfectly) that you wonder why he bothers.
If Israel bombs Iran, Israel will be to blame. As will Washington (and probably Canberra). And Israel will pay a very high price for this criminality.
Yet another intellectually bankrupt example of modern Zionism.
Are any prominent Zionists capable of defending anything other than war these days?
The Islamic Republic is determined to crack down on any dissent on the 31st anniversary of the 1979 revolution:
Iran’s telecommunications agency announced what it described as a permanent suspension of Google Inc.’s email services, saying instead that a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out. It wasn’t clear late Wednesday what effect the order had on Google’s email services in Iran.
The Iranian government plans to permanently suspend Google’s email service in the country, it was reported yesterday.
Google said it experienced a sharp drop in email traffic in Iran, and that some users in the country were having trouble accessing Gmail, but said its networks were working properly.
There is currently blood on the streets but we should not assume that the majority of Iranians regard the Ahmadinejad government as illegitimate.
The reality is messy. Bottom line: the worse thing the West can do is bully/bomb/threaten Tehran.
This is a wonderful article (kindly passed along by a reader). Writing in the Guardian, German writer Alan Posener documents the growing voices that are begging the Jewish community to stop “wailing” about the Holocaust, use the catastrophe as a crutch and insulate themselves from criticism of Israel. Time to grow up:
Even today, there is a residual feeling among many Germans, and by no means only on the extreme right, that enough is enough, that too much self-examination and breast-beating somehow damages the German psyche, that it is time for a new self-confidence, that the nation needs to see the Nazi crimes in perspective. The horrors of Stalinism, after all, and the murderous antisemitism of Islamists such as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would seem to indicate that Germany’s place in history is by no means singular.
This kind of revisionism is only to be expected. Debates on the issue sweep the country regularly. This year, however, something new has happened. Jewish authors have joined the fray on the side of the revisionists. In the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, the Berlin-based New Yorker Benjamin Weinthal writes that “Shoah remembrance has come to resemble a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder” in Germany. And in Berlin’s “Tagesspiegel”, Henryk M Broder mounted a vicious attack on “wailing Jews (Jammerjuden), who use every talk show to tell people how many relatives they lost in the Holocaust and how afraid they are of the NPD” (the German Nazi party). Broder’s attack is all the more shocking for Jews in Germany, as he himself has made a career out of attacking what he perceives as Germany’s “eternal” antisemitism, a career that includes, of course, hundreds of talk show appearances.
Connected to these thoughts is a recent talk by British Jew Tony Klug titled, “Are Israeli policies entrenching antisemitism worldwide?”
The Islamic Republic increases its attack on “enemies” and outside forces. A paranoid regime – with, it must be said, some justified reason to fear attempts from the West for regime change – simply convinces its foes that it trusts nobody and fears everybody:
Authorities in Iran intensified their campaign to blame the country’s political turmoil on foreigners today by banning contact with more than 60 international organisations.
The intelligence ministry said the blacklist included thinktanks, universities and broadcasting organisations identified as waging a “soft war” aimed at toppling Iran’s Islamic system.
It forbade Iranians from talking to or receiving aid from the proscribed organisations, including the BBC, which last year launched a Farsi satellite television channel, as well as two US government-funded outlets, Voice of America and Radio Farda, both of which broadcast in Farsi.
Also on the list were Wilton Park, a British group that organises foreign policy conferences, Yale University and leading American thinktanks, including the Brookings Institution and the George Soros Open Society Foundation.
…
Separately, Ahmadinejad’s website was unobtainable today after reportedly being hacked. Those trying to enter saw the message: “Dear God, In 2009 you took my favourite singer Michael Jackson, my favourite actress Farrah Fawcett, my favourite actor Patrick Swayze, my favourite voice Neda. Please don’t forget my favourite politician Ahmadinejad and favourite dictator Khamenei [Iran's supreme leader] in the year 2010. Thank you.”
The (probably) illegitimate President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sits down with Britain’s Channel 4 reporter Jon Snow:
Snow’s description of his interview is interesting:
To make up for our long journey to find him the presidents aides had setup a grandiose setting for our interview. The gorgeous shrine of the great 14th Century Persian poet Hafeez.
A platform was built, flowers were arranged even chocolates and stuffed dates were on hand. There’s always the fear that the stuffed dates are going to get the better of you and lead to a soft soap encounter.
You don’t see Ahmadinejad in the first flash of his arrival at the shine. A phalanx of other men obliterate his presence and then there he is in his open neck shirt and jacket and he’s sitting in front of me.
He admits to some trouble. Dismisses any question of a nuclear deadline or threats of UN sanctions and whatever the trouble has been at home he seems oblivious of the rising discontent.
But he’s probably right in claiming that nothing very dramatic is going to happen at home at least in the immediate future.
The Islamic Republic lashes out at its own citizens and creates more revolutionaries:
Human rights abuses in Iran are now as bad as at any time in the past 20 years, Amnesty International reports tomorrow in a survey marking six months since June’s disputed presidential election.
Amnesty documents “patterns of abuse” by the Basij militia and revolutionary guards involving beatings, rape, death threats, forced confessions, intimidation and official cover-ups. Many detainees have been subjected to show trials and five have been sentenced to death.
“The authorities have resorted to exceptionally high levels of violence and arbitrary measures to stifle protest and dissent,” says the 80-page report. “The courts have not been an instrument of justice to hold police, security forces and other state officials to account … or to protect the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, association and religion.”
According to official figures, 36 people died in violence after the election, but the opposition puts the figure at more than 70. At least 4,000 people were arrested after the poll on 12 June and some 200 remain in jail. This week, 200 people were arrested during protests around university campuses on national students day.
Republican Whip Eric Cantor reminded the 2009 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington this week that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “the man holding the gun with which he vows to kill Israel and the Jews”:
Some Jews always need an enemy.
The Guardian asks Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad what it would take to normalise relations with the US:
Change should happen in practice. Which change has happened? Was Guantánamo Bay shut down? Were the US policies supporting Zionists and the mass murder of Palestinians stopped? Were the US policies in Afghanistan changed? Were the policies in Iraq changed?
Obama should take big decisions and changes. He can’t collect the support of the illegal murderous Zionist regime [Israel] and the countries of the region as well. Earning friendship of the countries in the region is not compatible with the Zionist regime’s friendship. I know that dropping the Zionist regime is a difficult choice and task. [But] he should confront the Zionists and obviously the changes would not take place unless big choices happen.
Parochial Jews love to feel like victims, despite the fact that they’re largely a successful, connected and wealthy community. Being a victim is terribly effective politically, despite its inherent dishonesty.
In that tradition, here’s a recent letter in the Australian Jewish News:
Where would we Australian Jews be without our demons? Without (in no particular order) The Age, the ABC, SBS, Antony Loewenstein, the Australian Jewish Democratic Society, Barack Obama, Justice Richard Goldstone, Louise Adler, Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, the United Nations, Amnesty International, and the Australian Labor Party? Forget the KKK, the British National Party and the Holocaust deniers. They belong to the past.
STEVE BROOK
Elwood, Vic
And a response the week after:
Steve Brook (AJN 23/10) asks “where would we Australian Jews be without our demons?” Among the latter he includes The Age, the ABC, SBS, Antony Loewenstein, the Australian Jewish Democratic Society and Richard Goldstone.
The real demons, however, are those he doesn’t list. They include allegations of deicide; the “blood libel” (still current in some Arab states); forced expulsions; the Chmielnitski massacre in the Ukraine in the 17th century; Babi Yar; the six million who perished in the Shoah; Arab anti-Semitism; the bombing of Argentina’s Jewish centre in 1994; the Park Hotel bombing in Netanya in 2002; Ahmadinejad; threats of nuclear holocaust; and the plot, albeit foiled, to blow up the Riverdale Jewish Centre in New York just a few months ago.
Tragically, this list is not even close to being exhaustive.
DR DAVID WEINTROB
Caulfield, Vic
My following article is published in the Huffington Post:
In a collection of just released work by Acehnese writer Azhari, Nutmeg Woman, we are brought into a world before the devastating 2004 tsunami that killed over 220,000 Indonesians. Civil war wracked the province. Indonesian occupation was brutal and fought against the Free Aceh Movement (GAM). Like the Papuans and East Timorese, the Acehnese wanted to be an independent nation.
Azhari — who wore a t-shirt with the word “iBoobs’ under the Apple logo when I saw him — often writes in riddles, demanding the reader understand the struggles of a people that no colonial power has ever controlled. Outsiders and eccentrics are treated with suspicion. Strong women counter the absence of men, many of whom have disappeared after generations of fighting. Jakarta still refuses to fully investigate this legacy.
During my recent visit to the area — as a guest of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival — I found unconventional attributes of an Islamic state and fierce resistance to orthodox interpretations of the Koran. Aceh is not Saudi Arabia, Iran or Gaza, all places I have witnessed creeping Islamization and brave men and women challenging its implementation.
Aceh remains a traumatized province despite a 2005 peace deal that ended the decades-old, violent conflict. Sharia law is now implemented with homosexuality and adultery punishable by stoning. Poverty is rife — the smell of rubbish is everywhere and dirty water runs across some streets — while women mostly wear headscarves and sit separately from men at public events.
There are no cinemas. Entertainment options are limited. Religion often fills the breach, but I met many young people who thrived on satellite television and the Internet. Facebook was a common thread, an obsession and window to the world. Everybody under the age of 30 asked if I had a Facebook account and if I’d accept their friend request.
Nindy Silvie, Raisa Kamila and Mifta Sugesty, three schoolgirls who were my translators, regularly watch The Simpsons, Family Guy, BBC and CNN. Nindy spoke with an American accent, had a South Park tune as her ring-tone, didn’t wear a veil and read Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Christopher Hitchens. I couldn’t believe my ears. Here I was in Aceh, talking about the “fundamentalist atheism” of Hitchens and his hatred of religion. She thought he went too far, though she was hardly a devout Muslim.
Although Aceh is no longer under occupation, tourism is virtually non-existent. International NGOs invaded after the 2004 tsunami and huge re-development dots the landscape. A new airport, large German-backed hospital and tsunami museum are tangible signs of modernity.
It was surreal seeing Jewish gravestones, in Hebrew, in the Dutch-era cemetery in the shadow of the tsunami museum. Writer Fozan Santa, with black, greasy shoulder-length hair, told me that there was no hatred towards these monuments and generations of Acehnese had protected them. “People here don’t hate Jews”, he said, “they hate the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
I met many young men under 20 who said they had wanted to fight against Israel during its bombardment of Gaza in December and January. “For our fellow Muslims”, one said. Many had never met a Jew before and were amazed that I expressed deep disquiet towards Israeli behaviour in Palestine.
Fozan showed me the bookshop he ran near the heart of Banda Aceh, the capital. Most books were in the local language, including titles about Marx, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the power of the Israel lobby in America.
Politics flowed through the veins of many activists, a leftist perspective on the world. During a public forum, I was asked what I thought about the “real terrorism…the issue of globalization and free trade. How do we overcome that?” I replied, slightly unsure what angle to take, that the post-1945 world order was in desperate need of reform and the Muslim world’s time would surely come. Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim country, is talking about assuming a more powerful position on the global stage, not least towards the Israel/Palestine conflict.
The election of US President Barack Obama was welcomed warmly across the province. People like his rhetoric and his apparent change in attitude towards the Muslim world, but their patience is limited. Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Palestine continue with no signs of closure. The relationship to American power is contradictory. Washington’s influence on their lives is minimal but its ability to bring peace doubtful. The idea of a benevolent America was appealing but images on satellite television from the Arab world dispelled those myths very quickly.
Acehnese identity is intimately related to Indonesia’s wish for integration and historical desires for independence. Many craved true freedom but realized it was impossible at the present time. The cataclysmic tsunami wiped out entire families and communities but brought a desperately needed resolution to civil strife.
History can have a cruel sense of humor.
Founder of Conflicts Forum Alastair Crooke on the real challenge Iran poses to the world order:
It was pure drama: The leaders of the United States, Britain, and France stepped onto the stage at the Pittsburgh Group of 20 meeting recently to unveil Western intelligence that showed that Iran had a second nuclear fuel enrichment facility under construction, which Iran had declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency the preceding Monday.
The Western leaders gathered in Pittsburgh implied that their revelation was just as devastating for Iran as a credible player.
US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates subsequently pronounced Iran to be “boxed in” and “in a very bad spot now.” But anyone who listened to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s interview with Time magazine’s correspondent on the day of the presentation, and to subsequent Iranian statements, can gather that Iran, at least, does not see itself as boxed in.
Far from it. Mr Ahmadinejad exuded confidence and non aggressively counseled President Obama not to go down this route.
It might seem counterintuitive to most Americans and Europeans, but Ahmadinejad’s advice might be worth pondering.
The Pittsburgh dramatics, in a sense, signal the culmination of three pivotal events that took place in the Middle East some 20 years ago. The first was the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1989, the second was the 1991 Gulf War, and the third was Yitzak Rabin’s victory in the 1992 Israeli elections. The consequences from these momentous events are coming to a head for the US only now. Mr Obama’s course of action may determine whether this region is about to enter a new phase of bitter conflict or enter a new era of strategic change.
The first two events hobbled Iran’s traditional foes on its frontiers. Neither the imploded USSR nor Sunni Iraq, at war with a Western coalition led by the US, was in a position any longer to contain an emergent Iran. As a consequence, Iran’s place as a preeminent – if not the pre-eminent power – in the Middle East was guaranteed.
The arrival of a Labor government in Israel was pivotal to Iran becoming “the nuclear threat.” In a dramatic change of policy in 2002, Israel abandoned the Ben Gurion doctrine of allying Israel with the regional periphery (Turkey, Ethiopia, and Iran), an Israeli policy that persisted beyond the Iranian Revolution, and began to engage with its Arab “vicinity.”
To manage such a radical shift of talking peace to the former Arab “enemy,” a U-turn that bitterly split the Israeli electorate and alienated Israel’s supporters in the US, the Labor government in Israel began, from 1993 on, to identify Iran to its supporters in the US as the new existential “threat” – in place of the former threat of the “never-changing Arab inability to reconcile” with Israel. Subsequently the West would absorb the Iranian threat as its own, for very different reasons.
Michael B. Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, issues an absurd argument that simply shows the desperation of Zionists only able to smear any fair critic:
The Goldstone Report [on Gaza] goes further than Ahmadinejad and the Holocaust deniers by stripping the Jews not only of the ability and the need but of the right to defend themselves. If a country can be pummeled by thousands of rockets and still not be justified in protecting its inhabitants, then at issue is not the methods by which that country survives but whether it can survive at all. But more insidiously, the report does not only hamstring Israel; it portrays the Jews as the deliberate murderers of innocents–as Nazis. And a Nazi state not only lacks the need and right to defend itself; it must rather be destroyed.
So Mahmoud Ahmadinejad isn’t Jewish after all.
Gideon Levy in Haaretz reminds us that Israel is very happy to cheapen the memory of the Holocaust when it suits their needs:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cheapened the memory of the Holocaust in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. He did so twice. Once, when he brandished proof of the very existence of the Holocaust, as if it needed any, and again when he compared Hamas to the Nazis.
If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, Netanyahu cheapens it. Is there a need of proof, 60 years later? Or, the world might think, is the denier right?
And it is doubtful that any historian of stature would buy the comparison the prime minister made between Hamas and the Nazis, or between the London Blitz and the Qassam rockets on Sderot. In the Blitz, 400 German bombers and 600 fighter planes killed 43,000 people and destroyed more than one million homes. Hamas’ Qassams, perhaps the most primitive weapon in the world, have killed 18 people in eight years. Yes, they sowed great terror – but a Blitz?
My following article appears in the Asia-Pacific Magazine The Diplomat:
Our writer argues that his young tech-savvy peers, celebrity fixations aside, are increasingly engaged in global issues like this summer’s riots in Tehran.
The violent June uprisings in Iran ricocheted around the world. While young, old, conservative and liberal Iranians protested the stolen election win of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the global online community rushed to support the cause. Although the Western rhetoric of good versus evil was embarrassingly simplistic – most of the protesters weren’t calling for the end of the Islamic Republic, merely reform – it was gratifying to find international interest for the rioting Iranians.
This backing took many forms. Web-savvy youth provided tools for Iranians to avoid government-backed censorship. One man in California published an online guide for geeks to set up proxy servers for Iranian citizens, as a way to get around the blocking of sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. “I felt like it was my responsibility to use my skills to help”, he told the US-based Tehran Bureau website. Many others volunteered their time and energy to allow Iranian youth to maintain an online voice.
Even singers Madonna, U2’s Bono, Jon Bon Jovi and Joan Baez stood alongside the protestors. Joan Baez recorded a version of “We Shall Overcome” – the anthem of the American civil rights movement – with some lyrics translated into Farsi.
When news circulated in June that phone companies Nokia and Siemens had sold Iran a monitoring centre that enabled security forces to tap mobile phones, scramble text-messages and interrupt calls, the worldwide response was immediate. A “Boycott Nokia” campaign sprouted almost overnight, bringing tens of thousands of signatures. According to the Guardian, Iranians themselves started to back an economic boycott as those sympathetic to the protest movement began targeting companies seen to be collaborating with the regime.
By mid-July, however, the story had largely fallen out of the news, not helped by the fact that the vast majority of Western journalists had been kicked out of the country and the authorities had brutally cracked down on local bloggers and dissidents. In the week June 29-July 5, Iran-related stories accounted for only four percent of total news coverage, down from 19 percent one week earlier, according to Pew Research.
For a few weeks, Iran seemed like the biggest story in the world, although the possibility of a full-blown revolution was always very unlikely. Beirut-based think-tank Conflicts Forum wrote in July that, “The events in Iran centred on a dispute about the role of certain powerful clergy as well as an airing of old grievances between several strong personalities. This does not imply a leadership so ‘divided’ that it is about to fall.” This was no Eastern European “colour” revolution, despite the best efforts of the Western media to claim otherwise.
Many young Iranian friends reminded me not to be seduced by the romantic notions of liberty and freedom. The vast majority of support for Iranian “democrats” in the West isn’t so much about the individuals or groups but a way to overthrow or challenge the Islamic Republic. A revolution from within is the only way forward.
Outside interference in Iran is a time-honoured tradition, something that even US President Barack Obama acknowledged in his famous Cairo speech in June. “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government”, he said, in reference to the 1953 coup which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.
The global response to the Iranian uprisings proved that some dissent to authoritarian is more acceptable than others. Video footage was pouring out of Iran and world sympathy was clearly on the side of the protestors. Iran was the good fight, the just battle, and the inspiring struggle for democracy.
The democratic battle for Palestinian rights is framed in a completely different way. During recent travels around Israel, I was constantly told by Israelis that there was “no partner for peace” and checkpoints, walls and barriers had to be erected to prevent Palestinian terrorism.
Young American journalist Max Blumenthal correctly pointed out the inherent hypocrisy in the media’s response to these conflicts, noting “When Palestinians employ direct action tactics to protest Israeli oppression, and when Israeli forces respond with wanton brutality, they are ignored by the US media, even when footage is already available through online sources. It seems they can only generate media when they resort to violence, a dynamic the Israeli government obviously welcomes.” The only rational response is that Palestinians have been demonized so effectively over so many decades that any sympathy for them in the corporate media is automatically equated with anti-Americanism or anti-Semitism.
Despite these geo-political and media realities, the Palestinian cause is growing in strength across the world, especially among the younger generation. I encountered countless Western human rights activists throughout Palestine coming to protect Palestinian farmers from settler attacks or acquaint themselves with the realities of Israeli occupation. It is a cause that can’t be so easily erased by media silence. The Internet has allowed new voices to be heard – anti-Zionists, pro-Palestinian activists and critical perspectives against the Israel lobby – and has posted a fundamental challenge to the decades-old narrative of defenceless Israeli against aggressive Palestinian. Journalists in Gaza said that they were humbled with Western activists and journalists coming to the besieged Strip to hear their stories.
But neither Palestine nor Iran (or even the recent Uighur protests in China’s Xinjiang province) could match the outpouring of global grief over Michael Jackson’s death. It was at once dispiriting yet fleeting. Like Princess Diana, the emotions expressed were both deeply felt and artificial. Jackson’s music was undoubtedly influential but I suspect many simply longed to reclaim his once-cherished innocence and wished he had been able to resurrect his stalled career.
The public passions experienced over Jackson’s demise were a manifestation of celebrity culture run amok. But the global Web community is now so fragmented, offering the ability to support or advocate for countless causes, that enough individuals are still following and supporting the Iranians, Palestinians and Uighurs.
The baby boomers largely protested themselves out in the 1960s and 1970s – and many finally embraced the belief that pure capitalism was the best way to ensure social equity, despite the vast evidence challenging this thesis. In contrast, generation x and y are far less likely to burn out; activism is easy with the click of a mouse button.
As a member of Generation X, I don’t find apathy among my peers, but engagement, dedication and a belief in human rights. Perhaps the majority of the world’s population doesn’t care that Israel continues to illegally occupy the Palestinians or that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime tortures dissidents in jail, but the sheer force of powerful images and words transmitted by bloggers, satellite television and alternative media has created an unruly collection of conflicting messages and talking points. These causes are known because they are right and just. Solely relying on establishment news outlets to get informed is no longer a viable option.
Order is the enemy of progress.
Antony Loewenstein is a Gen X, Sydney journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution
Our writer argues that his young tech-savvy peers, celebrity fixations aside, are increasingly engaged in global issues like this summer’s riots in Tehran.
The violent June uprisings in Iran ricocheted around the world. While young, old, conservative and liberal Iranians protested the stolen election win of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the global online community rushed to support the cause. Although the Western rhetoric of good versus evil was embarrassingly simplistic – most of the protesters weren’t calling for the end of the Islamic Republic, merely reform – it was gratifying to find international interest for the rioting Iranians.
This backing took many forms. Web-savvy youth provided tools for Iranians to avoid government-backed censorship. One man in California published an online guide for geeks to set up proxy servers for Iranian citizens, as a way to get around the blocking of sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. “I felt like it was my responsibility to use my skills to help”, he told the US-based Tehran Bureau website. Many others volunteered their time and energy to allow Iranian youth to maintain an online voice.
Even singers Madonna, U2’s Bono, Jon Bon Jovi and Joan Baez stood alongside the protestors. Joan Baez recorded a version of “We Shall Overcome” – the anthem of the American civil rights movement – with some lyrics translated into Farsi.
When news circulated in June that phone companies Nokia and Siemens had sold Iran a monitoring centre that enabled security forces to tap mobile phones, scramble text-messages and interrupt calls, the worldwide response was immediate. A “Boycott Nokia” campaign sprouted almost overnight, bringing tens of thousands of signatures. According to the Guardian, Iranians themselves started to back an economic boycott as those sympathetic to the protest movement began targeting companies seen to be collaborating with the regime.
By mid-July, however, the story had largely fallen out of the news, not helped by the fact that the vast majority of Western journalists had been kicked out of the country and the authorities had brutally cracked down on local bloggers and dissidents. In the week June 29-July 5, Iran-related stories accounted for only four percent of total news coverage, down from 19 percent one week earlier, according to Pew Research.
For a few weeks, Iran seemed like the biggest story in the world, although the possibility of a full-blown revolution was always very unlikely. Beirut-based think-tank Conflicts Forum wrote in July that, “The events in Iran centred on a dispute about the role of certain powerful clergy as well as an airing of old grievances between several strong personalities. This does not imply a leadership so ‘divided’ that it is about to fall.” This was no Eastern European “colour” revolution, despite the best efforts of the Western media to claim otherwise.
Many young Iranian friends reminded me not to be seduced by the romantic notions of liberty and freedom. The vast majority of support for Iranian “democrats” in the West isn’t so much about the individuals or groups but a way to overthrow or challenge the Islamic Republic. A revolution from within is the only way forward.
Outside interference in Iran is a time-honoured tradition, something that even US President Barack Obama acknowledged in his famous Cairo speech in June. “In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government”, he said, in reference to the 1953 coup which overthrew the government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.
The global response to the Iranian uprisings proved that some dissent to authoritarian is more acceptable than others. Video footage was pouring out of Iran and world sympathy was clearly on the side of the protestors. Iran was the good fight, the just battle, and the inspiring struggle for democracy.
The democratic battle for Palestinian rights is framed in a completely different way. During recent travels around Israel, I was constantly told by Israelis that there was “no partner for peace” and checkpoints, walls and barriers had to be erected to prevent Palestinian terrorism.
Young American journalist Max Blumenthal correctly pointed out the inherent hypocrisy in the media’s response to these conflicts, noting “When Palestinians employ direct action tactics to protest Israeli oppression, and when Israeli forces respond with wanton brutality, they are ignored by the US media, even when footage is already available through online sources. It seems they can only generate media when they resort to violence, a dynamic the Israeli government obviously welcomes.” The only rational response is that Palestinians have been demonized so effectively over so many decades that any sympathy for them in the corporate media is automatically equated with anti-Americanism or anti-Semitism.
Despite these geo-political and media realities, the Palestinian cause is growing in strength across the world, especially among the younger generation. I encountered countless Western human rights activists throughout Palestine coming to protect Palestinian farmers from settler attacks or acquaint themselves with the realities of Israeli occupation. It is a cause that can’t be so easily erased by media silence. The Internet has allowed new voices to be heard – anti-Zionists, pro-Palestinian activists and critical perspectives against the Israel lobby – and has posted a fundamental challenge to the decades-old narrative of defenceless Israeli against aggressive Palestinian. Journalists in Gaza said that they were humbled with Western activists and journalists coming to the besieged Strip to hear their stories.
But neither Palestine nor Iran (or even the recent Uighur protests in China’s Xinjiang province) could match the outpouring of global grief over Michael Jackson’s death. It was at once dispiriting yet fleeting. Like Princess Diana, the emotions expressed were both deeply felt and artificial. Jackson’s music was undoubtedly influential but I suspect many simply longed to reclaim his once-cherished innocence and wished he had been able to resurrect his stalled career.
The public passions experienced over Jackson’s demise were a manifestation of celebrity culture run amok. But the global Web community is now so fragmented, offering the ability to support or advocate for countless causes, that enough individuals are still following and supporting the Iranians, Palestinians and Uighurs.
The baby boomers largely protested themselves out in the 1960s and 1970s – and many finally embraced the belief that pure capitalism was the best way to ensure social equity, despite the vast evidence challenging this thesis. In contrast, generation x and y are far less likely to burn out; activism is easy with the click of a mouse button.
As a member of Generation X, I don’t find apathy among my peers, but engagement, dedication and a belief in human rights. Perhaps the majority of the world’s population doesn’t care that Israel continues to illegally occupy the Palestinians or that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime tortures dissidents in jail, but the sheer force of powerful images and words transmitted by bloggers, satellite television and alternative media has created an unruly collection of conflicting messages and talking points. These causes are known because they are right and just. Solely relying on establishment news outlets to get informed is no longer a viable option.
Order is the enemy of progress.
Antony Loewenstein is a Gen X, Sydney journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution
Following Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent foul speech on “Jerusalem Day” about Jews, Israel and the Holocaust – he’s been welcomed to New York this week with Iranian protests - Juan Cole digs deeper into his words to reveal an even bleaker picture:
For him to suggest, as he does here, that anti-Semitism was justified by Jewish “indecent behavior,” is beyond despicable. He also appears to blame Jews for the Nazi crimes against them, saying that the Zionists spread around anti-Semitic books and films in Europe so as to make Jews hated and so as to cause them to be expelled to Palestine. These allegations go beyond simple anti-Zionism into a weird and creepy world of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Elsewhere he says, “My dear ones, the pretext used to establish the Zionist regime was a lie and a corrupt act. It was a lie based on a fabricated claim that cannot be proven. The occupation of the Palestinian land had no connection with the issue of holocaust. The claim, the pretext, [and the directors [dastandarkaran] and the patrons [hamiyan]] are all fraudulent and corrupt. They are all historical criminals. They are responsible for plundering and colonizing the world for the past 500 years.”
I read the Persian phrase, which the government translators dropped, about dastandarkaran (masters, proprietors) and their protectors and patrons (hamiyan) to be a reference to Zionists and imperialists. He then says “all of them” (hamih-’i ishan) are responsible for colonizing and plundering the world for the past half-millennium. I’ve gone back and forth on this, since Ahmadinejad’s speaking style is syntactically sloppy and his referents are not always clear, but I am leaning to thinking that he sees a Jewish/ imperial partnership as having stretched into the distant past.
In other words, he is saying, all of modern history (possibly from the Portuguese conquest of Goa) and certainly the British conquests during WW I, the Nazi persecution of Jews, and last year’s American presidential race, has been the unfolding of a secret Jewish plot, wherein “Zionists” control everything that happens.
You wonder why he holds out any hope of Palestinians prevailing in the face of such a long-lived and all-powerful conspiracy! It is sort of like The Highlander meets the Protocols of the Elders of Zion!
This man is most certainly not a friend of the Palestinians.