was truly shocking.

But I thought part of this gambit had great value, the part where he says, "You want Israel to exist, why not create it in Europe?"

I think he's saying, "Why did you Europeans figure you had the right to carve up Arab lands, and give them away to whoever you choose? Why didn't you carve up your own land?"

Now -- it's not very practical considering that -- unless I'm off in understanding things --the Jewish state really wants to possess certain holy sites for their religion, and those sites are on formerly Arab territory (Palestine, to be specific).

I think the problem arises that the state of Israel, as presented, again, if I get the issues correctly, does NOT want to share these holy sites with persons of other religions who also revere the same sites.

There's not a compassion or generalization, "If we want access to these holy sites, and others do too, why, we're the same, so let's not deprive anyone else in the same way we'd not want to be deprived."

I spent 2-3 years reading Israeli papers in English, and really in a ton of pain about the situation there. Yeah, atrocities. Stealing land, uprooting entire producing orchards of trees, buying land and holding it for one race/religion, away from another race/religion.  Helicopters gunning down people in cities. Stuff like that. Little details of daily governance.

Now, I don't care what the names of the religions involved are. Could be any of hte world's ethnic groups, or major religions oppressing another group in the name of (fill in blank) [g-d] [God] [Allah] [the purity of my race] [more water for me] [more gold for my people] [kicking the crap outta you so we feel better] [you guys look wierd] [you guys eat differently] .

I'm just saying it tears my heart out, and it offends my sense of fairness, and hopes for justice for all mankind, to read raw news stories about the treatment by the power-up group in Israel, of the power-down group.

I will say this, it looks like insanity to me, from my distance in the USA. Would you want to live there as one of the power-down group? In your ghetto? Watching your great-grandfather's orchards ripped up? Watching your house torn down? Kids can't go to school? Have you read the reports of the Refusniks who detail what happened in the Territories when they served there?

Would you want Israel's behaviors towards their power-down group in a neighbor country? What about that treatment is not insane?

I'm not saying this Iranian isn't a nut-case, but I will say this.

First: EVERY time anyone in the USA says anything vaguely disapproving of Israel, or hinting that their treatment of their power-down group might be nutty, wrong, or worse, we  presume we're going to be jumped on by one and all. So I presume I'll be jumped on. Fine. Go for it. It's already said above.

Second: In each of his paragraphs above, I find information to ponder, not to dismiss out of hand.

First graf:
Personally, I believe the numbers quoted for the killing of Jews and others by Hitler are accurate, so I  only learn from his first graf. Huh -- he really believes that? Wow.

Second graf:
Well, at least he's willing to consider that he's wrong. A point for him. Now he asks, roughly, "Is Europe's guilt over Hitler's treatment of Jews that which causes them to turn a blind eye to what Israel does in the name of their state to relatively helpless millions now?"

What's invalid about that question? If it were Hutus and Tsutsis (spelling probably wrong), would we answer in the same way -- as if it's Israel and their power-down millions? Would we? Would you?

If not -- why not?

Do you have a pretty 3D picture of what life for the average Palestinian living in the Terrotories is like? And how that's changed in the last decade? And in the last 30-50 years? What privileges they have and don't have? Compared to the privileges a mile or 500 feet away?

If you do, do you think that is a sane situation?

Third graf:
If Europeans wanted Jews to have a separate state, why not give them land in Europe? Africa? Asia? United States? (Which turned away at least one entire boatload of Jews in the midst of WWII, because of prejudice, not wanting them to land on USA soil.)

I think he has a darned good question --WHY didn't any of these other continents open up territory for a Jewish state? Prejudice? Selfishness? Any chance they regarded the Arabs as sub-human, so why not just carve up their territory to suit the Westerners' ideas du jour?

Why Arab lands?

Fourth graf:
Why DO the Anglo races run about imposing their wills on other countries? Sure seems to be quite a bit of it going around today.

I mean, Iran is in the meatgrinder with the US rattling sabers, microphones, and who knows what all else -- to the end of invading Iran, to the end of bending it to the USA's will, and likely stealing its resources.

Not to mention, Israel is threatening to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran, and the USA likewise... Nuclear bombs are a gift that keeps on taking for thousands of years. And the USA is camped out on one of Iran's borders.

Is there even the remotest reason for this guy to have said what he did?

He's a dangerous crank, undoubtedly.

I just wonder: What if he had acknowledged the historical reality of the holocaust, and condemned it for what it was, before going on to his remarks about Europe?

This would be a troublesome frame for a lot of reasons. Under this reading, Israel becomes the final indignity of the colonial powers collectively, who dumped their moral obligations on Palestine instead of cleaning up their own mess.

To the extent that Europe exerts any kind of a stabilizing influence on the region, this frame would have a destabilizing tendency by undermining Europe's moral authority.

I'm not sure whether Ahmadinejad would be more or less dangerous if he acknowledged the holocaust.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

I couldn't agree more.....

The guy has, in his short period as Iranian president, revealed a lesser understanding of other countries and people than few other world leaders of today. His defiance and lack of understanding, doesn't add much credibility to the Iranian claim of only wanting to use  nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.  


Bitsofnews.com Giving you the latest bits.

"What's wrong with our world? Why are so many countries now led by crazies or criminals?"

Are there really MORE now then at any time before?  I doubt it.  

i have my own opinion about ahmadinejad. the short version is that i think that, more than dangerous he is a puppet, the errand boy for people who work against the best interests of the iranians and who want war.

the shock of his words stems mostly from the fact that any, ANY, discussion of israels crimes has been made socially unacceptable in the west. off-topic here, i think that this whole topic should be brought back from the status of anathema ASAP, in the best interest of everybody.

ad holocaust - since school, age 12 or so, i've asked everybody at hand why rather draconian laws are at all necessary to uphold truth. i've never gotten a straight answer to that one simple question. what i got most of times was hateful sneers, unwarranted insults, blank stares. because of this personal experience i tend to think that there is far more to the holocaust than lots of dead people. i'll leave it at that.

ad israel - immigrant jews have been meting out violence and general havoc against palestinians since about 1880 (the relations between the local arabs and jews was cordial and marked by mutual respect). the creation of israel has nothing to do with WW2, but lots with WW1. palestine used to belong to the turkish empire back then. the jews, or rather, the zionist movement, asked the brits to give them palestine in return for screwing over the germans, who were winning the war. the brits signed over the place which decidedly did not belong to them in the same way as today irak does not belong to the americans but they are still signing the place over to corporations. and nobody ever asked the palestinians for their opinion (terrae nullius). may god heap disgrace and ruin on all descendants of lord balfour until the 40th generation.

ad palestinians - i think that they still have many fans in the west, but most of those fans are not to be found among the political classes. and the political classes of the west have never been more alienated from the people since perhaps the times of the borgia papacies.

ad ahmadinejad - as said above. i doubt the statement is idle provocation or bumbling idiocy. his proposition to take the jews of israel back is appealing at face value, but it is a milchmädchenrechnung, the equivalent of a spreadsheet in the world of politics.

zionism, the political movement which lead to the creation of israel, is a misguided answer to the marginalisation the (eastern) european jews suffered much before the advent of nazism, in the 19th century. they wanted out of europe because they knew what was in the tea leaves, and the other europeans were all too happy to get ridden of a people despised by many of them. this stance has IMHO not changed substantially in europe.

even apart from political considerations i doubt israeli jews would have much better chances here in europe if they decided to return en masse today. the well-educated, technologically adept class is a minority in israel, as it is everywhere else. AFAIK their educational system produces far more functional analphabetes than the average european, so here we'd just have one more group of immigrants competing with the local proletariat and other immigrant groups. second, their society is anything but tolerant. they are as racist and classist as can be found. white european askenazis at the top, eritrean falashas at the bottom; their religious and political leaders are mostly "israel über alles" extremists, intractable kooks ripe for the rubber cell by european standards (google "moshe levinger" to see an example). last but not least, how is any european country supposed to absorb the 20% or of the israeli (jewish) population which lives at or below poverty w/o provoking upheavals ? i doubt many of them would be accepted with open arms by the general populace.

i'm sorry, but ahmadinejad didn't do his homework. he's outed himself as a primitive populist, driven by and appealing to base instincts.

(corrections please ?)

When a thread referring to someone questioning the right of Israel to exist you always get a bunch of seemingly reasonable people treating the question as if it weren't utterly  ridiculous.  They bring up Israel's systematic violation of human rights in the West Bank and Gaza, the mention the anti-Arab racism prevalent in Israeli society, the large number of religious and nationalist extremists - as if this were relevant in even the slightest degree. Think of Iran - human rights violations, check; racism and bigotry, check; extremism, check. And - so what?  Does that mean that Iran has no right to exist?. Same goes for any number of nations around the world.

The other argument is that Israel's existence was predicated on the ethnic cleansing of Arabs in 1948. True. That Zionism was a colonialist ideology that assumed that non-Europeans had fewer rights than Europeans (or none at all) - yup, the original Zionists shared the prejudices of their time and place. Shocking truth. I'd like to ask the commenter from Seattle who sees this as a persuasive argument what right she thinks she has to live in North America (unless of course she is Native American). Any Turks online? - In case you don't know a century ago northeastern Turkey was predominantly Armenian while the Aegean littoral was majority Greek - should those lands be 'returned' to the descendants of those who lived there?  Any Poles care to try this argument - I sure hope you don't live anywhere in Western or Northern Poland. Any Aussies, Spaniards, Argentines? The list goes on.

What sort of insanity does it take to believe that there is any moral sense in suggesting that Germans should be ethnically cleansed to atone for the crimes of their grandparents, in order to give land to their grandparents' victims who in turn are to be ethnically cleansed to atone for the (far lesser) crimes of their grandparents?

The one useful aspect of the Iranian president's modest proposal is that it highlights the absurdity of not acknowledging that there has to be some sort of statute of limitations in these sorts of situations.

I try to avoid hardline positions, but this man is a nutjob and should be ignored in all areas but WMD.  He's either simply playing to his hardline supporters or suicidal.  The last time a Muslim country tried to "wipe Israel from the map," the Israelis left it lying in a pool of its own blood in the middle of the desert.

Muslim countries have fought Israel in the past decades, and, each time, they seem to get crushed.  Egypt learned its lesson.  Hopefully, the Iranian people won't have to.

I think it's a political game.  Iran doesn't want any part of a war with Israel, and certainly not one that involves Europe and America.  I refuse to believe that he, as the leader of a country, is that stupid.  These radical leaders like to play dress-up as "future martyrs," but, in the end, they get sane fairly quickly when faced with actually going to war, as Saddam did when he agreed to let the inspectors back in.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

(and IIRC there is one, a ceremonial office) should declare that the Israelis will pull up stakes and leave the Middle East just as soon as the Iranians convert en masse to Zorastoranism and re-establish this faith as their state religion.

"[W]hispering Fame/Knowledge and proof doth to the Jealous give/Who, then to fail, would their own thought believe." - Ben Jonson, Sejanus