Victory
12-12-05, 16:39
A dust storm over the Holocaust
By M K Bhadrakumar
An entire panorama of issues unexpectedly comes into view in the international reaction to recent remarks by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, implying that European powers should have salved their historical sense of guilt, if any, over their persecution of Jews by sanctioning a homeland for them on European soil itself.
What is most striking is that the hue and cry of the "international community" has been mainly restricted to the Christian world (European and Slavic), apart from Israel, of course.
In the Muslim world itself, there was a deafening silence.
Arguably, Ahmadinejad's remarks did not come as a surprise to the Arab street. At any rate, the fact remains that Jews did not suffer persecution at the hands of the Muslim world. In fact, through centuries, Jews often took refuge in the Ottoman Empire while fleeing from the Christian world. But that alone does not explain the reaction - or lack of it - in the Middle East and the Gulf countries to Ahmadinejad's remarks.
Yet Ahmadinejad's primary audience was the Muslim world. Indeed, he hardly cares about what the West thinks about him. Moreover, he spoke in Mecca, on the sidelines of the extraordinary summit meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). He has made an important point - he is in sync with the Muslim opinion that despite the ambivalence of some pro-American Arab regimes, there is a near-insurmountable barrier at present in reconciling with what today's Israel has come to represent.
Nothing graphically reflects this paradigm more than an interview published recently by the prominent Arabic newspaper al-Hayat with Fouad Siniora, the cosmopolitan prime minister of Lebanon: "I, Fouad Siniora, am a Lebanese, Arab patriot. I will not stand with Israel against Syria, or accept seeing Lebanon become a center for weakening Syria."
We are also seeing in Ahmadinejad's remarks a colossal breakdown of the "dialogue of civilizations" - and Iran's own disillusionment with it, though former president Mohammad Khatami had first mooted the idea some years ago with noble intentions. And that has everything to do with American regional policies in the Middle East.
It is tempting to point a finger at Ahmadinejad's alleged impetuosity as having prompted his remarks about Jews and the Holocaust, and to rush into wishful thinking that he was thereby placing himself out on a political limb in Iran's labyrinthine corridors of power. But Tehran lost no time in signalling it wasn't so. Ahmadinejad was hardly winding his way back to Tehran from Mecca when Iran's religious leadership at the highest levels also spoke out about Zionism.
One of Iran's top religious leaders, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, while addressing the weekly Friday prayer congregation at the Tehran University campus, commended Ahmadinejad for "echoing" at the OIC summit the very same concerns that Supreme Leader Ali Khameini had raised at the OIC summit in Tehran five years ago.
He criticized the Western media for its prejudice towards Ahmadinejad. Ayatollah Kashani went on to speak with deliberation some highly appreciative words for Ahmadinejad's government, which he said was "wise enough to run the country". He expressed confidence that Ahmadinejad's leadership would "spare no efforts in meeting the problems of the people and in advancing the country and the society to a higher level".
Even more significantly, Supreme Leader Ali Khameini put his own imprimatur on the manifestly assertive tone in Iranian statements on the Palestine issue. He pointedly received a Tehran-based non-governmental organization (NGO) campaigning against Zionism, and said that the Palestine issue had become "more dynamic" and that the struggle against Zionism had been "stepped up" so much so that it had become a "strong tree" in the Muslim ummah (community), which the Americans could not possibly hope to "uproot". The functionaries of the NGO subsequently announced that an international conference on the Palestine problem would be held in Tehran next March.
Where is it that the apparent mismatch between Western perceptions of Iran and "real Iran" lies? The first point is that nothing seems to have been learnt from the catastrophic error of judgement in Western capitals over the likely outcome of Iran's presidential elections in June. It is a bit like sleep-walking - vaguely aware that there is an unreality about the professed perceptions about Iran but unwilling or incapable (or both) of doing anything about it.
The London-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC) last week put its finger precisely on where the problem lies. An extraordinary statement titled "A Constructive EU-US Approach to the Iran Nuclear Dispute", signed by a galaxy of British and American specialists, scholars, thinkers and political activists, warned: "Stereotyping of Iran and Islamic culture, often latched on to by the Western media - of bearded fanatics, support for suicide bombers and veiled gunmen - is also hindering progress. It is important to offer a truer, broader picture of contemporary life in Iran. Otherwise, similar half-truths and manufactured fears to those that were used to build support against Iraq may be used to demonize Iran."
Equally so, the question here is why Israel is being allowed to set the tone and to raise the ante on the Iran nuclear issue. The mismatch is so striking. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan springs to attention, with his earnestness in taking exception to Ahmadinejad's statement. Yet, neither he or the "international community" had anything to say about the spate of belligerent statements emanating from the Israeli leadership at key levels in recent days and weeks threatening Iran with military attack.
Israeli military chief Dan Halutz volunteered only last week to go "two thousand kilometers" to tackle Iran's nuclear program. Senior Israeli politicians, including former prime ministers, have been straining at the leash, threatening to go beyond barking and take an actual bite at Iran.
And the BBC broke a story over the weekend, by piecing together recently declassified British archival documents, that contrary to what London has maintained up until now, Britain in 1958 facilitated the shipment of 20 tons of heavy water from Norway to Israel, knowing it was critically needed for Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Israel's single biggest worry at the moment happens to be that given the dangerously poised impasse over the Iran nuclear issue, the protagonists may finally be showing signs of moving toward the path of negotiation. More alarming for Israel would be the probability of a "softening" in Washington's stance, in consonance, of course, with the US's own broader regional interests in the Middle East at this time.
Israel would be uneasy that Washington might come to realize that its ability to restrict Iran's nuclear program was limited and that it would be far more realistic to seek controls over Iran's nuclear cycle that were fair and equitable - which in turn could, in certain ways, necessitate factoring in Israel's own nuclear weapon program.
It would be worse still for Israel if Washington were to recognize sooner rather than later, as the BASIC statement put it, that "a limited vision can only feed tensions between Iran and the West"; that the "current nuclear dispute is not the cause, but a symptom, of a failed relationship" - a relationship that must therefore be improved.
There are straws in the wind that surely unnerve Israel and the neo-conservatives in the US. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) , Mohamed ElBaradei, acknowledged during an address at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London last week that most of the issues on the Iran nuclear file have been resolved and "after three years, we need to bring this to a close". He expressed the hope that the IAEA's Iran file could be "concluded by next year".
More important in immediate terms is the statement by Iran's head of the Atomic Energy Agency Organization, Gholam Reza Aquazadeh, on Saturday that Iran did not intend to proceed with any nuclear activity, such as gas injection and enrichment, at Natanz pending the upcoming negotiations with the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) and that Iran was prepared to be "flexible" in discussing the Natanz nuclear facility.
Referring to Iran's proposal on foreign participation in Natanz's enrichment project, Aquazadeh said that it was a "big and time-consuming project", which had also become "politicized". He expressed the confidence on the whole that Iran would proceed with the production of nuclear fuel "some time in the future".
The strategy advocated in neo-conservative circles in the US is predicated on the assumption that by isolating Iran, a regime change can be effected, to Israel's advantage. There is no basis today, and never has been, for making such an assumption. It is a flawed strategy. It is fanciful.
All evidence points toward the religious leadership perceiving clearly enough that the centerpiece of Iran's national agenda at this historic juncture is to restore the moribund connectivity between the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the people, and that with all the inevitable hiccups of early days, Ahmadinejad's presidency remains committed to that task.
Ahmadinejad himself succinctly spelt out the complex equations in Iranian politics during his recent visit to the impoverished region of Ilam as part of his unprecedented campaign to make his cabinet ministers meet common people: "Justice is the main pillar for the establishment of an Islamic society, minus which an Islamic government will be meaningless, and the guarantee for an Islamic system, too, is observance of justice."
Most of the time, clearly, the Holocaust and the Jews are far from Mahmud Ahmadinejad's thoughts.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
Bron: ATimes
By M K Bhadrakumar
An entire panorama of issues unexpectedly comes into view in the international reaction to recent remarks by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, implying that European powers should have salved their historical sense of guilt, if any, over their persecution of Jews by sanctioning a homeland for them on European soil itself.
What is most striking is that the hue and cry of the "international community" has been mainly restricted to the Christian world (European and Slavic), apart from Israel, of course.
In the Muslim world itself, there was a deafening silence.
Arguably, Ahmadinejad's remarks did not come as a surprise to the Arab street. At any rate, the fact remains that Jews did not suffer persecution at the hands of the Muslim world. In fact, through centuries, Jews often took refuge in the Ottoman Empire while fleeing from the Christian world. But that alone does not explain the reaction - or lack of it - in the Middle East and the Gulf countries to Ahmadinejad's remarks.
Yet Ahmadinejad's primary audience was the Muslim world. Indeed, he hardly cares about what the West thinks about him. Moreover, he spoke in Mecca, on the sidelines of the extraordinary summit meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC). He has made an important point - he is in sync with the Muslim opinion that despite the ambivalence of some pro-American Arab regimes, there is a near-insurmountable barrier at present in reconciling with what today's Israel has come to represent.
Nothing graphically reflects this paradigm more than an interview published recently by the prominent Arabic newspaper al-Hayat with Fouad Siniora, the cosmopolitan prime minister of Lebanon: "I, Fouad Siniora, am a Lebanese, Arab patriot. I will not stand with Israel against Syria, or accept seeing Lebanon become a center for weakening Syria."
We are also seeing in Ahmadinejad's remarks a colossal breakdown of the "dialogue of civilizations" - and Iran's own disillusionment with it, though former president Mohammad Khatami had first mooted the idea some years ago with noble intentions. And that has everything to do with American regional policies in the Middle East.
It is tempting to point a finger at Ahmadinejad's alleged impetuosity as having prompted his remarks about Jews and the Holocaust, and to rush into wishful thinking that he was thereby placing himself out on a political limb in Iran's labyrinthine corridors of power. But Tehran lost no time in signalling it wasn't so. Ahmadinejad was hardly winding his way back to Tehran from Mecca when Iran's religious leadership at the highest levels also spoke out about Zionism.
One of Iran's top religious leaders, Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani, while addressing the weekly Friday prayer congregation at the Tehran University campus, commended Ahmadinejad for "echoing" at the OIC summit the very same concerns that Supreme Leader Ali Khameini had raised at the OIC summit in Tehran five years ago.
He criticized the Western media for its prejudice towards Ahmadinejad. Ayatollah Kashani went on to speak with deliberation some highly appreciative words for Ahmadinejad's government, which he said was "wise enough to run the country". He expressed confidence that Ahmadinejad's leadership would "spare no efforts in meeting the problems of the people and in advancing the country and the society to a higher level".
Even more significantly, Supreme Leader Ali Khameini put his own imprimatur on the manifestly assertive tone in Iranian statements on the Palestine issue. He pointedly received a Tehran-based non-governmental organization (NGO) campaigning against Zionism, and said that the Palestine issue had become "more dynamic" and that the struggle against Zionism had been "stepped up" so much so that it had become a "strong tree" in the Muslim ummah (community), which the Americans could not possibly hope to "uproot". The functionaries of the NGO subsequently announced that an international conference on the Palestine problem would be held in Tehran next March.
Where is it that the apparent mismatch between Western perceptions of Iran and "real Iran" lies? The first point is that nothing seems to have been learnt from the catastrophic error of judgement in Western capitals over the likely outcome of Iran's presidential elections in June. It is a bit like sleep-walking - vaguely aware that there is an unreality about the professed perceptions about Iran but unwilling or incapable (or both) of doing anything about it.
The London-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC) last week put its finger precisely on where the problem lies. An extraordinary statement titled "A Constructive EU-US Approach to the Iran Nuclear Dispute", signed by a galaxy of British and American specialists, scholars, thinkers and political activists, warned: "Stereotyping of Iran and Islamic culture, often latched on to by the Western media - of bearded fanatics, support for suicide bombers and veiled gunmen - is also hindering progress. It is important to offer a truer, broader picture of contemporary life in Iran. Otherwise, similar half-truths and manufactured fears to those that were used to build support against Iraq may be used to demonize Iran."
Equally so, the question here is why Israel is being allowed to set the tone and to raise the ante on the Iran nuclear issue. The mismatch is so striking. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan springs to attention, with his earnestness in taking exception to Ahmadinejad's statement. Yet, neither he or the "international community" had anything to say about the spate of belligerent statements emanating from the Israeli leadership at key levels in recent days and weeks threatening Iran with military attack.
Israeli military chief Dan Halutz volunteered only last week to go "two thousand kilometers" to tackle Iran's nuclear program. Senior Israeli politicians, including former prime ministers, have been straining at the leash, threatening to go beyond barking and take an actual bite at Iran.
And the BBC broke a story over the weekend, by piecing together recently declassified British archival documents, that contrary to what London has maintained up until now, Britain in 1958 facilitated the shipment of 20 tons of heavy water from Norway to Israel, knowing it was critically needed for Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program.
Israel's single biggest worry at the moment happens to be that given the dangerously poised impasse over the Iran nuclear issue, the protagonists may finally be showing signs of moving toward the path of negotiation. More alarming for Israel would be the probability of a "softening" in Washington's stance, in consonance, of course, with the US's own broader regional interests in the Middle East at this time.
Israel would be uneasy that Washington might come to realize that its ability to restrict Iran's nuclear program was limited and that it would be far more realistic to seek controls over Iran's nuclear cycle that were fair and equitable - which in turn could, in certain ways, necessitate factoring in Israel's own nuclear weapon program.
It would be worse still for Israel if Washington were to recognize sooner rather than later, as the BASIC statement put it, that "a limited vision can only feed tensions between Iran and the West"; that the "current nuclear dispute is not the cause, but a symptom, of a failed relationship" - a relationship that must therefore be improved.
There are straws in the wind that surely unnerve Israel and the neo-conservatives in the US. The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) , Mohamed ElBaradei, acknowledged during an address at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London last week that most of the issues on the Iran nuclear file have been resolved and "after three years, we need to bring this to a close". He expressed the hope that the IAEA's Iran file could be "concluded by next year".
More important in immediate terms is the statement by Iran's head of the Atomic Energy Agency Organization, Gholam Reza Aquazadeh, on Saturday that Iran did not intend to proceed with any nuclear activity, such as gas injection and enrichment, at Natanz pending the upcoming negotiations with the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) and that Iran was prepared to be "flexible" in discussing the Natanz nuclear facility.
Referring to Iran's proposal on foreign participation in Natanz's enrichment project, Aquazadeh said that it was a "big and time-consuming project", which had also become "politicized". He expressed the confidence on the whole that Iran would proceed with the production of nuclear fuel "some time in the future".
The strategy advocated in neo-conservative circles in the US is predicated on the assumption that by isolating Iran, a regime change can be effected, to Israel's advantage. There is no basis today, and never has been, for making such an assumption. It is a flawed strategy. It is fanciful.
All evidence points toward the religious leadership perceiving clearly enough that the centerpiece of Iran's national agenda at this historic juncture is to restore the moribund connectivity between the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the people, and that with all the inevitable hiccups of early days, Ahmadinejad's presidency remains committed to that task.
Ahmadinejad himself succinctly spelt out the complex equations in Iranian politics during his recent visit to the impoverished region of Ilam as part of his unprecedented campaign to make his cabinet ministers meet common people: "Justice is the main pillar for the establishment of an Islamic society, minus which an Islamic government will be meaningless, and the guarantee for an Islamic system, too, is observance of justice."
Most of the time, clearly, the Holocaust and the Jews are far from Mahmud Ahmadinejad's thoughts.
M K Bhadrakumar served as a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for over 29 years, with postings including India's ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-1998) and to Turkey (1998-2001).
Bron: ATimes