Ahmadinejad: Crazy Or Just Wrong?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not making anyone's life easier this week. Those of us who have spent the past year trying to counter the U.S. and Israeli propaganda campaign against the Iranian president as a crazed Hitleresque figure who must necessarily be bombed into submission before he attempts to physically push the Israelis into the Mediterranean, who have been repeating again and again that a) the president of Iran doesn't control it's armed forces, and b) when Ahmadinejad says that Iran has a right to peaceful nucelar technology, he's right and c) he hasn't actually called for Israelis to be massacred en masse, got rewarded for all our good deeds when Ahmadinejad went ahead and hosted David Duke and dozens of other Holocaust deniars at a conference in Tehran. But now, perhaps even more than before, it's important to separate the reality from the hype as best as we can.

Not that I'm trying to excuse Holocaust denial. Not that I think that Ahmadinejad isn't at least a slightly crazy religious zealot possessing messianic tendencies--but then again, so are many American, British and Israeli politicians. Not that I don't think that the Iranian regime, well before Ahmadinejad (in the "good old days" of "reformist" President Mohammed Khatami), didn't routinely brutally torture and kill its opponents, targetting university students and ethnic minorities.

But so do our allies in the Middle East, like Egypt, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Jordan et al. And if inviting David Duke to speak at a conference is so reprehensible, let's not forget that when the man ran for governor of Louisiana in 1991 he won 39% of the vote, including 55% of the white vote. Again, I'm not trying to suggest that one needs to be morally pure before one criticizes others, but it's worthwhile to put accusations of atrocities in relative context.

John Bolton, for example, in his last act out as our ambassador to the United Nations, has called for Ahmadinejad to be legally indicted for "inciting genocide." Bolton, and the Israeli government, have together been building up Ahmadinejad as Hitler because it provides them a moral argument for military action and for refusing Iran's legal rights to nuclear technology.

But what did Ahmadinejad actually say that equates to "inciting genocide?" According to the BBC:

Just as the USSR disappeared, soon the Zionist regime will disappear ... The trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want. Whether the Holocaust occurred or did not or whether it had vast dimensions or not, it has become a pretext to create a base for aggression and threats for the countries of the region.

I'd just point out that the USSR wasn't conquered militarily by the United States, nor were the Russians pushed into the sea. Rather, the regime collapsed through the democratic will of its citizens. And the existence of the Zionist regime is not the same thing as the existence of Israel. Many of us Jews, including many Israelis, would like to see Israel renounce the ideology of Jewish supremacy and see Israel become a non-religious state that grants equal rights to all living within its borders.

Jonathan Steele has written an extensive debunking of the poor translations and misquoting used by Bolton and others to claim that Ahmadinejad actively advocates for open warfare against Israel. He quotes Professor Juan Cole, a fluent Farsi-speaker and frequent commentator on Iranian politics:

"I am entirely aware that Ahmadinejad is hostile to Israel. The question is whether his intentions and capabilities would lead to a military attack, and whether therefore pre-emptive warfare is prescribed. I am saying no, and the boring philology is part of the reason for the no."

Like I said, none of this means that Ahmadinejad is a good person, should be trusted or that Holocaust deniers do anything other than hurt the legitimate cause of opposition to militant Zionism. As Palestinian activist Mahmoud al-Safadi, a man who spent 18 years in Israeli prisons for throwing Molotov cocktails during the first Intifada, said in an open letter to Ahmadinejad, his stance is:

 ...a great disservice to popular struggles the world over.

Perhaps you see Holocaust denial as an expression of support for the Palestinians. Here, too, you are wrong. We struggle for our existence and our rights, and against the historic injustice that was dealt us in 1948.

Our success and our independence will not be gained by denying the genocide perpetrated against the Jewish people, even if parts of this people are the very forces that occupy and dispossess us to this day.

Another Palestinian, lawyer Khaled Kasab Mahameed, who runs a Holocaust museum in Nazareth, was denied an entry visa to Iran to attend the conference. "I’m bitterly disappointed,” Mahameed told The Times of London . He was seeking a personal audience with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, to tell him that denials or questioning of “such huge, monstrous horror” harmed the Palestinian cause.

Many other Iranians recognize these facts and have denounced their leader for his bizarre behavior.

In short: don't believe the hype. We should rightly deride and laugh at Ahmadinejad's claims that "Iran is ... the home of all freedom seekers of the world. Here you can express your views and exchange opinions in a friendly, brotherly and free atmosphere." But let's not turn this rightly despised conference into an excuse to start supporting covert terrorist actions against Iran or building up a false case about weapons of mass destruction that don't exist.