wots a little semantics anyways

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ugust 28, 2006

 

Is Iran's President Really a Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying

Islamo-fascist who has threatened to " wipe Israel off the map " ?

Putting Words in Ahmadinejad's Mouth

By VIRGINIA TILLEY

 

Johannesburg, South Africa

 

In this frightening mess in the Middle East, let's get one thing

straight. Iran is not threatening Israel with destruction. Iran's

president has not threatened any action against Israel. Over and over,

we hear that Iran is clearly " committed to annihilating Israel " because

the " mad " or " reckless " or " hard-line " President Ahmadinejad

has

repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel But every supposed quote, every

supposed instance of his doing so, is wrong.

 

The most infamous quote, " Israel must be wiped off the map " , is the

most glaringly wrong. In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never

used the word " map " or the term " wiped off " . According to

Farsi-language experts like Juan Cole and even right-wing services like

MEMRI, what he actually said was " this regime that is occupying

Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. "

 

What did he mean? In this speech to an annual anti-Zionist conference,

Mr. Ahmadinejad was being prophetic, not threatening. He was citing

Imam Khomeini, who said this line in the 1980s (a period when Israel

was actually selling arms to Iran, so apparently it was not viewed as

so ghastly then). Mr. Ahmadinejad had just reminded his audience that

the Shah's regime, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein had all seemed

enormously powerful and immovable, yet the first two had vanished

almost beyond recall and the third now languished in prison. So, too,

the " occupying regime " in Jerusalem would someday be gone. His message

was, in essence, " This too shall pass. "

 

But what about his other " threats " against Israel? The blathersphere

made great hay from his supposed comment later in the same speech,

" There is no doubt: the new wave of assaults in Palestine will erase

the stigma in [the] countenance of the Islamic world. " " Stigma " was

interpreted as " Israel " and " wave of assaults " was ominous.

But what he

actually said was, " I have no doubt that the new movement taking place

in our dear Palestine is a wave of morality which is spanning the

entire Islamic world and which will soon remove this stain of disgrace

from the Islamic world. " " Wave of morality " is not " wave of

assaults. "

The preceding sentence had made clear that the " stain of disgrace " was

the Muslim world's failure to eliminate the " occupying regime " .

 

For months, scholars like Cole and journalists like the London

Guardian's Jonathan Steele have been pointing out these mistranslations

while more and more appear: for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments at

the Organization of Islamic Countries meeting on August 3, 2006. Radio

Free Europe reported that he said " that the 'main cure' for crisis

in

the Middle East is the elimination of Israel. " " Elimination of Israel "

implies physical destruction: bombs, strafing, terror, throwing Jews

into the sea. Tony Blair denounced the translated statement as " " quite

shocking " . But Mr. Ahmadinejad never said this. According to

al-Jazeera, what he actually said was " The real cure for the conflict

is the elimination of the Zionist regime, but there should be an

immediate ceasefire first. "

 

Nefarious agendas are evident in consistently translating " eliminating

the occupation regime " as " destruction of Israel " . " Regime "

refers to

governance, not populations or cities. " Zionist regime " is the

government of Israel and its system of laws, which have annexed

Palestinian land and hold millions of Palestinians under military

occupation. Many mainstream human rights activists believe that

Israel's " regime " must indeed be transformed, although they disagree

how. Some hope that Israel can be redeemed by a change of philosophy

and government (regime) that would allow a two-state solution. Others

believe that Jewish statehood itself is inherently unjust, as it embeds

racist principles into state governance, and call for its

transformation into a secular democracy (change of regime). None of

these ideas about regime change signifies the expulsion of Jews into

the sea or the ravaging of their towns and cities. All signify profound

political change, necessary to creating a just peace.

 

Mr. Ahmadinejad made other statements at the Organization of Islamic

Countries that clearly indicated his understanding that Israel must be

treated within the framework of international law. For instance, he

recognized the reality of present borders when he said that " any

aggressor should go back to the Lebanese international border " . He

recognized the authority of Israel and the role of diplomacy in

observing, " The circumstances should be prepared for the return of the

refugees and displaced people, and prisoners should be exchanged. " He

also called for a boycott: " We also propose that the Islamic nations

immediately cut all their overt and covert political and economic

relations with the Zionist regime. " A double bushel of major Jewish

peace groups, US church groups, and hordes of human rights

organizations have said the same things.

 

A final word is due about Mr. Ahmadinejad's " Holocaust denial " .

Holocaust denial is a very sensitive issue in the West, where it

notoriously serves anti-Semitism. Elsewhere in the world, however,

fogginess about the Holocaust traces more to a sheer lack of

information. One might think there is plenty of information about the

Holocaust worldwide, but this is a mistake. (Lest we be snooty,

Americans show the same startling insularity from general knowledge

when, for example, they live to late adulthood still not grasping that

US forces killed at least two million Vietnamese and believing that

anyone who says so is anti-American. Most French people have not yet

accepted that their army slaughtered a million Arabs in Algeria.)

 

Skepticism about the Holocaust narrative has started to take hold in

the Middle East not because people hate Jews but because that narrative

is deployed to argue that Israel has a right to " defend itself " by

attacking every country in its vicinity. Middle East publics are so

used to western canards legitimizing colonial or imperial takeovers

that some wonder if the six-million-dead argument is just another myth

or exaggerated tale. It is dismal that Mr. Ahmadinejad seems to belong

to this ill-educated sector, but he has never been known for his higher

education.

 

Still, Mr. Ahmadinejad did not say what the US Subcommittee on

Intelligence Policy reported that he said: " They have invented a myth

that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the

prophets. " He actually said, " In the name of the Holocaust they have

created a myth and regard it to be worthier than God, religion and the

prophets. " This language targets the myth of the Holocaust, not the

Holocaust itself - i.e., " myth " as " mystique " , or what has been

done

with the Holocaust. Other writers, including important Jewish

theologians, have criticized the " cult " or " ghost " of the Holocaust

without denying that it happened. In any case, Mr. Ahmadinejad's main

message has been that, if the Holocaust happened as Europe says it did,

then Europe, and not the Muslim world, is responsible for it.

 

Why is Mr. Ahmadinejad being so systematically misquoted and demonized?

Need we ask? If the world believes that Iran is preparing to attack

Israel, then the US or Israel can claim justification in attacking Iran

first. On that agenda, the disinformation campaign about Mr.

Ahmadinejad's statements has been bonded at the hip to a second set of

lies: promoting Iran's (nonexistent) nuclear weapon programme.

 

The current fuss about Iran's nuclear enrichment program is playing out

so identically to US canards about Iraq's WMD that we must wonder why

it is not meeting only roaring international derision. With multiple

agendas regarding Iran -- oil, US hegemony, Israel, neocon fantasies of

a " new Middle East " -- the Bush administration has raised a great

international scare about Iran's nuclear enrichment program. (See Ray

Close, Why Bush Will Choose War Against Iran.) But, plowing through

Iran's facilities and records, International Atomic Energy Agency

inspectors have found no evidence of a weapons program. The US

intelligence community hasn't found anything, either.

 

All experts concur that, even if Iran has such a program, it is five to

ten years away from having the enriched uranium necessary for an actual

weapon, so pre-emptive military action now is hardly necessary. Even

the recent report by the Republican-dominated Subcommittee on

Intelligence Policy, which pointed out that the US government lacks the

intelligence on Iran's weapons program necessary to thwart it,

effectively confirms that the supposed " intelligence " is patchy and

inadequate.

 

The Bush administration's casual neglect of North Korea's nuclear

program indicates that nuclear weapons are not, in fact, the issue

here. The neocons are intent on changing the regime in Iran and so have

deployed their propagandists to promote the " nuclear weapons " scare

just they promoted the Iraqi WMD scare. Republican rhetoric and

right-wing news commentators have fallen into line, obediently

repeating baseless assertions that Iran has a " nuclear weapons

program, " is threatening the world and especially Israel with its

" nuclear weapons program, " and must not be allowed to complete its

" nuclear weapons program. " Those who nervously point out that hard

evidence is actually lacking about any Iranian " nuclear weapons

program " are derided as naïve and spineless patsies.

 

Worse, the Bush administration has brought this snow-job to the UN,

wrangling the Security Council into passing a resolution (SC 1696)

demanding that Iran cease nuclear enrichment by August 31 and warning

of sanctions if it doesn't. Combined with its abysmal performance

regarding Israel's assault on Lebanon, the Security Council has

crumbled into humiliating obsequious incompetence on this one.

 

Like all phantasms, the nuclear-weapons charge is hard to defeat

because it cannot be entirely disproved. Maybe some Iranian scientists,

in some remote underground facility, are working on nuclear weapons

technology. Maybe feelers to North Korea have explored the

possibilities of getting extra components. Maybe an alien spaceship

once crashed in the Nevada desert. Normally, just because something

can't be disproved does not make it true. But in the neocon world,

possibilities are realities, and a craven press is there to click its

heels and trumpet the scaremongering headlines. It doesn't take much,

through endless repetition of the term " possible nuclear weapons

program, " for the word " possible " to drop quietly away.

 

Evidence is, in any case, a mere detail to the Bush administration, for

which the desire for nuclear weapons is sufficient cause for a

pre-emptive attack. In US debates prior to invading Iraq, people

sometimes insisted that any real evidence of WMD was sorely lacking.

The White House would then insist that, because Saddam Hussein " wanted "

such weapons, he was likely to have them sometime in the future. Hence

thought crimes, even imaginary thought crimes, are now punishable by

military invasion.

 

Will the US really attack Iran? US generals are rightly alarmed that

bombing Iran's nuclear facilities would unleash unprecedented attacks

on US occupation forces in Iraq, as well as US bases in the Gulf. Iran

could even block the Straits of Hormuz, which carries 40 percent of the

world's oil. Spin-off terrorist militancy would skyrocket. The

potential damage to international security and the world economy would

be unfathomably dangerous. The Bush administration's necons seems

capable of any insanity, so none of this may matter to them. But even

the neocons must be taking pause since Israel failed to knock out

Hizbullah using the same onslaught from the air planned for Iran.

 

But Israel can attack Iran, and this may be the plan. Teaming up, the

two countries could compensate for each other's strategic limitations.

The US has been contributing its superpower clout in the Security

Council, setting the stage for sanctions, knowing Iran will not yield

on its enrichment program. Having cultivated a (mistaken) international

belief that Iran is threatening a direct attack on Israel, the Israeli

government could then claim the right of self-defense in taking

unilateral pre-emptive action to destroy the nuclear capacity of a

state declared in breach of UN directives. Direct retaliation by Iran

against Israel is impossible because Israel is a nuclear power (and

Iran is not) and because the US security umbrella would protect Israel.

Regional reaction against US targets might be curtailed by the (scant)

confusion about indirect US complicity.

 

In that case, what we are seeing now is the US creating the

international security context for Israel's unilateral strike and

preparing to cover Israel's back in the aftermath.

 

Is this really the plan? Some evidence suggests that it is on the

table. In recent years, Israel has purchased new " bunker-busting "

missiles, a fleet of F-16 jets, and three latest-technology German

Dolphin submarines (and ordered two more)- i.e., the appropriate

weaponry for striking Iran's nuclear installations. In March 2005, the

Times of London reported that Israel had constructed a mock-up of

Iran's Natanz facility in the desert and was conducting practice

bombing runs. In recent months, Israeli officials have openly stated

that if the UN fails to take action, Israel will bomb Iran.

 

But Hizbullah, Iran's ally, still threatens Israel's flank. Hence

attacking Hizbullah was more than a " demo " for attacking Iran, as

Seymour Hersh reported; it was necessary to attacking Iran. Israel

failed to crush Hizbullah, but the outcome may be better for Israel now

that Security Council Resolution 1701 has made the entire international

community responsible for disarming Hizbullah. If the US-sponsored 1701

effort succeeds, the attack on Iran is a go.

 

As Israel and the US try to make that deeply flawed plan work, we will

doubtless continue to read in every forum that Iran's president - a

hostile, irrational, Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying Islamo-fascist who

has threatened to " wipe Israel off the map " -- is demonstrably

irrational enough to commit national suicide by launching a

(nonexistent) nuclear weapon against Israel's mighty nuclear arsenal.

The message is being hammered home: against this media-created myth,

Israel must truly " defend itself. "

 

Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, a US citizen

working in South Africa, and author of The One-State Solution: A

Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock (University

of Michigan Press and Manchester University Press, 2005). She can be

reached at tilley.

 

If George Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headline would read, " Views

Differ on Shape of the Earth "