Informed Bullshit
Juan Cole is an intelligent man. He knows far more about Iran than do I. But the poor guy is so consumed by his hatred for the Bush administration that he is blinding himself to realities that stare him right in the face. You can be anti-Bush, anti-war in Iraq, without having to make excuses for thugs and butchers.
Iranian President Ahmadinejad gave a speech on Sunday in which he stated that Iran poses no threat to any nation, not even to Israel. Isn’t it true that last year Ahmadinejad threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”? Juan Cole says that it’s not. I’ve appended an extract of Cole’s comment. You can read the entire post yourself here. The bolding at the end is mine.
Ahmadinejad: We are Not a Threat to Any Country, Including Israel
Believe it, don't believe it, that's up to you. But at least we should know what exactly he said, which is not something our US newspapers will tell us about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech on Saturday:Kayhan reports that [Pers.] Ahmadinejad said, "Iran is not a threat to any country, and is not in any way a people of intimidation and aggression." He described Iranians as people of peace and civilization. He said that Iran does not even pose a threat to Israel, and wants to deal with the problem there peacefully, through elections:"Weapons research is in no way part of Iran's program. Even with regard to the Zionist regime, our path to a solution is elections."Ahmadinejad seems to be explaining what his calls for the Zionist regime to be effaced actually mean. He says he doesn't want violence against Israel, despite its own acts of enmity against Middle Eastern neighbors. I interpret his statement on Saturday to be an endorsement of the one-state solution, in which a government would be elected that all Palestinians and all Israelis would jointly vote for. The result would be a government about half made up of Israeli ministers and half of Palestinian ones. Whatever one wanted to call such an arrangement, it wouldn't exactly be a "Zionist state," which would thus have been dissolved.The schlock Western pundits, journalists and politicians who keep maintaining that Ahmadinejad threatened "to wipe Israel off the map" when he never said those words will never, ever manage to choke out the words Ahmadinejad spoke on Saturday, much less repeat them as a tag line forever after….
It is true that what Ahmadinejad said in Farsi does not translate literally as “wipe Israel off the map.” But Cole’s argument that “schlock western pundits, journalists and politicians” are the source of this misunderstanding is . . . informed bullshit.
For example, here’s how Aljazeera reported the story back on 26 October 2005. Headline: "Ahmadinejad: Wipe Israel off Map." And the quote: “‘As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map,’ said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayat Allah [sic] Khomeini.”
And what was it that Imam Khomeini had to say about Israel? Well, according to a short hagiographic piece on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting website (the bolding in the quote is in the original): “[Khomeini] was also aware of the danger posed by the illegal Zionist entity called Israel to the Muslim world. He called the Zionist entity ‘a cancerous tumour that should be uprooted from the Middle East.’ He said if the world’s billion-plus Muslims were to unite and pour a bucket of water each, Israel would be drowned. He ruled out any compromise with the Zionists and said only Islam will make the oppressed Palestinian people triumph over Israel.” Hey, he didn’t use the world “wipe.”
You can also find a synopsis of the October 2005 speech by Ahmadinejad at the official website of the Iranian presidency. Here’s the quote from that source: "The president called on the public and the Palestinian combatant groups to be vigilant and added that if they manage to overcome the new conspiracies of the world arrogant powers, the way would be paved for destruction of the Zionist regime and establishment of a national Palestinian government."
Okay, they’re not using the word “wipe.” If you were an Israeli, would you read “destruction” in lieu of “wipe” and feel safer? But I suppose “regime” is, after all, better than “cancerous tumour.”
Does anyone want to make a guess about where the “wipe” part of the wipe Israel from the map line probably originated? Unfortunately, the link has gone dead (how convenient), but I saved the cache. And what is the source? Would you believe the website of the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), dated 26 October 2005? Here’s the key quotation: "He [Ahmadinejad] further expressed his firm belief that the new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away."
Let’s get real, and accurate. It was never just the “schlock Western pundits, journalists and politicians" who spread the “wipe” story, unless you consider Aljazeera, IRNA, and Ahmadinejad’s own website “western.” Nor was the less than literal translation of Ahmadinejad’s remarks of 26 October 2005 a conspiracy hatched by Neocons, dastardly Jews, or the ignorant. It was IRNA that saddled Ahmadinejad with a threat to “wipe Israel away,” and the fact that they didn’t use the word “map” does not change the meaning of the threat. And even if Ahmadinejad had said nothing on 26 October 2005, the fact that Iran for over a quarter-century has continued to refer to the “Zionist entity” is evidence enough that Iran officially wants to see the Israeli state disappear.
I agree with Noam Chomsky that Americans ought to be able to oppose the Bush administration’s handling of the war without their patriotism being called into question, or being labeled “un-American.” But those who do oppose the administration need to remind themselves that just because Bush said it’s so, doesn’t mean that it’s not; or just because Bush has labeled Iran part of the “axis of evil,” doesn’t mean that Iran’s current leadership is not a threat to the world, or to Israel. When scholars lose the ability to make such judgments they risk becoming “useful idiots,” and when they reach that stage, no one listens to them and their breadth of knowledge is lost to the process.
