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.