[Marxism] Defense of Iran, occupied Iraq and Palestine are the issues in this conflict -- which also shows need for literature about anti-Semitism and holocaust aimed at those oppressed by the "Jewish State"

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Following these comments is the article from today's Times on
Ahmadenijad's supposedly clarification -- an article clearly aimed at
fuelling the US war drive against Iran, with Israel as its
nuclear-tipped spearhead.
 
In this version, Ahmedinijad's position is more obscure even than
before.  Is he saying that the Holocaust is a myth? He might mean that,
or mean something like that, but the sentence does not literally say
that, but seems to suggest an anti-Arab myth based on the fact of the
Holocaust.  Then he says "if you committed this crime" -- why if? His
argument against the Christian West's imposition of Israel on the region
is sharper, not weaker, since the imperialists really were guilty of
this horrible crime, and parlayed it into an excuse for committing
another gigantic crime against the Arabs -- the expulsion of the
Palestinians and the establishment of the "Jewish state."
 
But their should be no doubt that the politics of today aren't modified
at all by what Ahmadenijad is saying, except to the extent that he has
shipped the imperialists some free fuel for the fires of war against
Iran, Iraq, the Palestinians, and others. This whole media campaign is
an example of turning the victim into the criminal -- use their
ignorance or misleadership as a weapon against them.  We have to reject
it completely.
 
The stage is being further set for the possibility of an Israeli attack
-- possibly with US participation and possibly nuclear -- on Iran.  Our
response to this should be unconditional opposition, with no ifs, ands,
or buts about what looks like Ahmadenijad's borrowings from
imperialism's anti-Semitic tradition.
 
At the same time, ignorance never did anyone any good.  The anti-Semitic
mythologies are very widespread in the Middle East today.  The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion is a hot seller in Palestine.  Most people who
have an opinion in the Islamic world seem to think that the Jews
recieved special protection to avoid the carnage at the World Trade
Center. Many believe that Jews are a power arrayed against them along
with imperialism, and even behind and above imperialism.
 
The hatred of Israel and the anti-Semitism in this area has its primary
roots in their oppression by Jews in the form of the Israeli state -- a
settler policeman in the region with a social structure that is in many
ways a simulacrum of an imperialist power, although fundamentally
completely dependent on gigantic subsidies from the outside. But it also
leads to the political victimization of the oppressed Islamic nations,
in part by the historic propaganda of anti-Semitic propaganda rooted in
the Christian, and more fundamentally in the later imperialist European
world.
 
I really think there is a need for works exposing the Protocols and
anti-semitic mythology including racist mythology, written from the
standpoint of people who are actually being oppressed every day by Jews
in the form of the state of Israel.  Explaining where the Holocaust fits
into this and what it was, and how the great crime of the imperialist
West became the jusication for the great crime against the Arab nation.
The people of the Arab and other Islamic semicolonial victims of US
erialism and its Israeli settler police force need to be armed with the
truth.  Because that will help them be more effective in the struggle to
isolate Israel, divide it internally and help bring about its down fall
and that of Israel's imperialist masters, the main source  and main
beneficiaries of anti-Semitic scapegoating, divisionl, and diversion in
the past and today.
Fred Feldman
 
www.nytimes.com
 
December 15, 2005

Iran's President Clarifies His Stand on Holocaust: It's a European Myth 

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

TEHRAN, Dec. 14 (AP) - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stepped up his
anti-Israeli comments on Wednesday, calling the Holocaust a myth used by
Europeans to create a Jewish state in the heart of the Islamic world.

His remarks drew swift condemnations from the White House,
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritorie
s/israel/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Israel, Germany, France and the
European Commission. Germany said the remarks would affect coming
negotiations over
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritorie
s/iran/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> Iran's nuclear program, and the
European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, said that Iranians
"do not have the president, or the regime, they deserve."

Last week Mr. Ahmadinejad questioned whether the Nazi killings of six
million European Jews during World War II occurred and said Israel
should be moved to Europe. He also provoked an international outcry in
October when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

But Wednesday was the first time he publicly denied the Holocaust.
Touring southeastern Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad said that if Europeans
insisted that the Holocaust had happened, then they were responsible and
should pay the price.

"Today they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it
to be above God, religion and the prophets," he said, speaking to an
audience of thousands of people in the southeastern city of Zahedan. "If
you committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian
nation pay the price?"

"This is our proposal: If you committed the crime, then give a part of
your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them so
that the Jews can establish their country," he said, developing the
theme he raised in Saudi Arabia last week.

The White House denounced the comments. "All responsible leaders in the
international community recognize how outrageous" the comments are, said
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, adding that the comments
"only underscore why it is so important that the international community
continue to work together to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons."

Germany's foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, called the remarks
"shocking and unacceptable." 

"I cannot hide the fact that this weighs on bilateral relations and on
the chances for the negotiation process," he said, referring to European
talks with Iran about its nuclear program.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, said: "The repeated
outrageous remarks of the Iranian president show clearly the mind-set of
the ruling clique in Tehran and indicate clearly the extremist policy
goals of the regime.

"The combination of fanatical ideology, a warped sense of reality and
nuclear weapons is a combination that no one in the international
community can accept." 


*        <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>
Copyright 2005 <http://www.nytco.com/> The New York Times Company

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism