Harry’s Place

Very sad. :(

Here in the West, Bernard Lewis, who argues there was no Armenian Genocide whatsoever , but a “struggle” between two equally murderous factions (bottom line: the Holocaust was unique), was honored by the Congress of the United States.

I tell you, the world is a place full of genocide denial. Form may differ betwen East and West. Substance does not.

What’s wrong with just saying they oppose Israeli accusations? That would more sense. Why fingers? What next? “The toes of allegation”?

Perhaps it is a common idiom/cliche of which I doubt Arab news is the only producer of.

Also, were you criticizing the news reporters’s spin on what the Iranian crowds were saying? I take it that they were speaking Farsi and it was al-Jazeera that translated them from Farsi to Arabic. When you are dealing with translating material that has already been translated then I think it is not always easy to pick up on exactly what was guarded or rendered into the passive voice originally.

That said, the cartoons are pretty disgusting and don’t require any translation at all.

Following on from last year’s effort, was there a similar counterprotest to Al Quds Day in London? Did any HPer’s go? Didn’t see a report on it if they did…

What’s the story?

A systematically planned genocide in which the perpetrators murdered six million men, women and children.

Add another 5 million of non-Jewish folk too in the wider persecution.

“Milham Raya, and many others like him, betray it.”

No, Dave. You think that Raya, because he is a journalist, he should be just like you, believe what you believe, say it like it is. But he is a product of the Arab educational system, and they impart hate and denial. Raya is not a coward, he is just typical of the Arab world.

Raya probably believes (like millions of Arabs) that the Holocaust is an “issue”.
He is not a coward. He says what he believes. And he lives in the Dark Ages.

Thanks, DaveM for yet another knockout post; I wish your stuff was published in the national press. Sad to see how many of the commenters here want to try to undermine or relativise away what you have to say. Next up: Juan Cole and his mates supply an alternative, true translation which demonstrates that the language was all about contemplating opening up the glove trade with Tel Aviv.

And before someone call me racist. 99% of the Lebanese has a bad opinion of Jews, and the percentages are similarly high in all of the Arab world.
It would be strange if Raya called the Holocaust a crime. It would be really really strange and improbable.

An interesting post. I remember once talking to some young Fatah people in Jerusalem, who were keen to make it clear to me that they were not extremists. This was done not with earnest sincerity, but rather as an attempt to dismiss Israeli and Jewish concerns as irrational paranoia. One of them said to me that he, for example, ‘accepted’ the ‘theory’ of the Holocaust.

I would expect that the less “coward” Arabs would say something like: “yes, but”.
“Yes, the Holocaust was a crime, but why should Arabs pay for it?”

(Do not mention how the Nazis were to be welcomed in Egypt by King Farouk, the friendship of the Mufti with Hitler, the Concentration Camps in Tunis where Arabs were the camp guards, the bystander position of the rest of the Muslims in all of North Africa with the Vichy laws, the collaboration in some other cases with the racist laws against the Jews and the pogroms, the pro-Nazi regime in Iraq, the massacre promised to the Jews by the Arab League, and the final expulsion from their countries and the stealing of all the Jews posessions - why should the Arabs pay for it? Arabs are innocent children)

“Critical philosophical thought hardly exists, and is almost completely forbidden. You are not meant to think, but to memorize and repeat by rote.”

The defining characteristic of totalitarian regimes everywhere.

Orwell’s 1984 was exactly about exploring where half a century of such a regime would take you.

The Arab Baathist dictatorships were huge admirers of the Nazis before WWII and client states of the Soviet Union after it. In the case of Khomeinist Iran, there was bound to be a ready symbiosis between traditional Islamic methods of rote learning and modern totalitarian methods of political indoctrination.

Sad to see how many of the commenters here want to try to undermine or relativise away what you have to say.

Who?

Ignoring the usual pathetic suspects in the Comments thread trying desperately to get some attention (and make the topic about themselves).. another good post.

I recall seeing a Newsnight report on Al Quds day in Tehran a year or two back. It was absolutely terrible journalism. Not even the slightest hint that anti-semitism played any part at all, or that the protesters were protesting the existence of Israel itself.

Matt

Sigh … Benjamin, you really need to learn to read. Hasbara’s post, for example.

Matt, Al BBC doesn’t do journalism; they do editorial comment, always; and always from the same entrenched, dogmatic position where the ME is concerned.

Well that’s one. Any others?

Dave M, I seem to recall you saying that you lived in Syria for about a year and that you learnt Arabic while you were there. During that time did you not meet any Syrians who said that the Holocaust was a terrible crime?

Couple of points:

1. Most of our American and European reporters also use the “Some observers”, “many commentators” “analysts are beginning to think” “many people here think” kind of dodge when wishing to get a viewpoint across. I don’t think it’s unique to the Arab world,although many reporters in country with heavily policed media in the Middle East feel they have to be circumspect.

2. Tehran’s attempt to create a symmetry between its genocide cartoons and the Mo cartoons has failed pathetically. No one has threatened a single Iranian life because of the pro-genocide cartoons (whereas thousands of people have been threatened by Muslims) and while all the pro-genocide cartoons are offensive hardly any of the Mo cartoons could be considered offensive as such (unless drawing Mohammed is in itself considered to be offensive). Which leaves their real purpose exposed: sincerely to celebrate the genocide of the Jews Part 1. Mad Ahmadinejad would like to supply Part 2.

Drawing Muhammed himself is considered offensive. I always thought that teh fuss about the Mo cartoon was not that it suggested that Muslims were violent (after all they revel in that) but that it depicted a likeness of Mo himself. I remember when I was at univesity about 30 years ago, a film came out called ‘The Messenger’, financed with Arab money, about Mohammed. They were not allowed to show Mohammed’s face, the whole thing was filmed from his perspective (ie as if the camera was behind his eyes.).

Sue R, the opposition to the Motoons was stirred up by agents provocateurs who faked more provocative images in order to produce a reaction. Mohammed has traditionally been depicted in images in Shia Iran.

“I remember when I was at univesity about 30 years ago, a film came out called ‘The Messenger’, financed with Arab money, about Mohammed. They were not allowed to show Mohammed’s face, the whole thing was filmed from his perspective (ie as if the camera was behind his eyes.).”

I have the DVD of “Once Upon a Time…Man” (”Erase una vez… el Hombre” in Spanish) where in episode ¿8? about Islam, Mohammad is always depicted showing the back to the camera. Never once is his face shown. It was a French product, very Enlightened, very ecological… and very coward.

jr: It may be permissible to show his face in Shia Iran, but as I understand it not in Sunni Arabia. Apparently, it relates to debates within the Byzantium Church in the 5th century, where there were arguments around icons and graven images. Mohammed (or whoever wrote the Koran) adopted that policy and figurative art is forbidden. Persia was a much more sophisticated society when Islam was imposed on it and art could not be eradicated. It just goes to show the wonderful diversity with the Islamic world.

My point was that the claim by Iran that the cartoons are offensive because they depict prophets is bogus.

Sue R
Although there were debates about images in Byzantine Christianity, it is more likely that Mo got his views on images from Jews. Fits well with the 1st qibla thing too (praying to Jerusalem)

Judy
“The Arab Baathist dictatorships were huge admirers of the Nazis before WWII and client states of the Soviet Union after it.”

An interesting statement, since the founding congress of the Ba’ath PArty was in 1948, and the party didn’t take power in any Arab country until the 1960s.

This kind of thing will only come back to hurt them in the end, stifling free speech and even freedom of thought has destroyed the potential that many Middle Eastern countries had when they finally gained independence from their colonial masters.

Israel is really the lesser victim here when compared with the populations of Middle Eastern contries who refuse to educate their own populace.

jr: Are there any existing pictures in Iranian or Shia art of Mohammed?

Are people here refering to Iran as part of the Arab World? There are Arabs there (in some cases facing huge discrimination), but Iran mainly is Persian.

And for the record: fuck the Iranian regime.

Sue R, a documentary made about the cartoon story showed pictures of mohammed being sold in a market in Teheran.

Sue R, the documentary is Bloody Cartoons. Wikipedia on mohammed pictures in islam here.

(Do not mention how the Nazis were to be welcomed in Egypt by King Farouk, the friendship of the Mufti with Hitler, the Concentration Camps in Tunis where Arabs were the camp guards, the bystander position of the rest of the Muslims in all of North Africa with the Vichy laws, the collaboration in some other cases with the racist laws against the Jews and the pogroms, the pro-Nazi regime in Iraq, the massacre promised to the Jews by the Arab League, and the final expulsion from their countries and the stealing of all the Jews posessions - why should the Arabs pay for it? Arabs are innocent children)

Fabian, as among Europeans, there were some Arabs who helped Jews during the Holocaust, some who collaborated with the Nazis and a majority who did nothing.

I recommend Satloff’s book.

jr: In truth you must admit that depictions of Mohammed are not unproblematic. Wikipedia itself has been subject to a campaign to have pictures of Mohammed taken from old books taken down. As ever with Islam though, it’s all in the interpretation and what you want to believe.

Wonder what the doubters here make of this story in Ha’aretz

“Hamas: ‘Jewish Lobby’ in U.S. to blame for global financial crisis

By News Agencies and Haaretz Service

Tags: Israel news, financial crisis

The Palestinian militant group Hamas on Tuesday accused a “Jewish Lobby” in the United States of fomenting the global financial crisis.

The crisis was the result of “bad administrative and financial management and a bad banking system put into place and controlled by the Jewish lobby,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement. ”

…….or maybe he just meant “Zionists”? Yeah, sure!

Gene, I have read Satloff’s book.
Do you have anything against what I said in the paragraph you quoted? I did not generalize there.

But maybe the Arabs of Lebanon are also not to blame for the problem in our northern border since only 99% of them have a bad image of Jews. That 1% really makes it impossible to generalize.

And the Germans! Everybody knows it was just Hitler and Goebbels.

BTW, I have missed the ceremony in Algeria ¿or was it in Tunez? where the Arab who saved Jewish families was publicly honored.
Do you know what happened with all that?

Elliptical language is commonly used by people trying to express themselves and avoid censorship in repressive conditions. Good examples being the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Compicated, difficult to understand, but so often interpreted as endorsing the current policies of the Democratic Left of Italy, and the Italian Communist Party before it.

It is one thing to find elliptical language in a piece that alarms you; quite another to allege that is general in a language spoken by tens of millions of people in a couple of dozen very different countries.

Benjamin: “Add another 5 million of non-Jewish folk too in the wider persecution.”

Benjamin, this is not a reference to the Holocaust, which of course did include the systematic murder of millions of non-Jews. “davem” is writing about Holocaust denial, which is specifically to do with denying the genocide of European Jewry. It is clear from the article that this is the context.

Whilst it’s important to remember the non-Jewish victims of the Nazis too, often your kind of comment is made to imply that Jews somehow monopolise the Holocaust.

This is the kind of reflexive response that I was talking about in this thread. I think you just see the word ‘antisemitism’ and move into sneer mode. I can’t think of any purpose for your glib remark other than as a predictably hostile and automatic response because this article is critical of antisemitism.

What is your motivation, Benjamin? Do you gain pleasure from sneering at people for no reason other than they are critical of antisemitism? You seem to have some kind of pathological issue regarding the subject of antisemitism.

It is one thing to find elliptical language in a piece that alarms you; quite another to allege that is general in a language spoken by tens of millions of people in a couple of dozen very different countries

It’s not so much an allegation as it is truth. From things that I have heard from students who go to the Middle East to work on their Arabic, there is certainly a cultural propensity toward indirect speeh, coupled with euphemisms, Koranic references and little white lies.

Personally, I would trace this cultural quirk to the totalitarian nature of Islam, specifically the stories of Mohammed ordering the death of satirists and free-thinkers who dared mock him. When the religion stifles free thought, free thought can only be expressed through euphemism and dissimulation.

Sue R: Idolatry is an issue in all the Abrahamic faiths to a greater or lesser extent. In the case of motoons, the people who chose to leverage them to get some protest going found people in the ME were initially not interested; they had to sex up the dossier to get the riots going, by including fake images that weren’t about Islam at all. In Iran, there has not been a prohibition on images in the same way as in the Sunni world.

The connection between antisemitic pictures desecrating the memory of people who were victims of the worst crime in human history on the one hand, and images supposedly in contravention of a religious taboo on the other hand, makes no sense to me, and I think that this story is about a clash of cultures. I can only understand the existence of an Ahmedinajad as a head of state as a very successful care in the community programme. He appears to be a man with major sexual problems and a deep level of homosexual anxiety that he has sublimated into a passion for violent hatred. Iranian politics is as incomprehensible to me as aspects of British/US/Israeli culture are no doubt to many Iranians, and I don’t think this will change in a hurry.

When the religion stifles free thought, free thought can only be expressed through euphemism and dissimulation.

Ethan you and the other posters are getting it backwards. What is being described here is not masked “free thought,” but it’s polar opposite, religiously promoted hate speech which is masked in order to avoid pricking the conscience.

What’s going on here is that allowed and officially correct speech is SO harmful, promoting hatred, genocide, war that it can not be expressed clearly without creating some backlash.

No one has threatened a single Iranian life because of the pro-genocide cartoons

Of course, because Iranians who live in the West are anti-Ahmadinejad.

But Rabbi Ahron Cohen of Birmingham, who attended the Holocaust denial conference, had over 1,000 eggs thrown against his house, his windows were broken, his tyres were slashed and obscenities were scribbled on his car.

And Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, a member of the Israeli humanitarian group ZAKA, brutally attacked Moishe Arye Friedman, who had hugged Ahmadinejad. See it here.

So that in the Muslim world they attack you for drawing Muhammad’s face. In the West, meanwhile, they attack you for attending conferences and hugging people.

It’s an irrational world we’re living in.

And do I need to recall the Jewish Defense League’s repeated threats against a vast array of Holocaust deniers?

In Spanish we have a saying about glass houses and stone-throwing — does it exist in English too?

Hasara is a monster who deliberately confuses a case individual violence with officially sanctioned oppression. Let us Never engage that fucking troll. He’s trying to avoid moral responsibility, and that matches what davem was talking about, as I just said. This IS an example of using speech to hide one’s humanity and promote the monsterous.

As I said, we need to keep in mind that this is the case where it is the officially sanctioned, religiously sanctioned speech that is elliptical, because it is SO hateful that even people who have been indoctrinated are in danger of feeling how wrong it is.

officially sanctioned oppression

In the West, the State has a lot of responsibility too. See:

1) While a black kid who commits three offenses spends the rest of his life in prison, Irving Rubin, of the Jewish Defense League, went in and out of prison through the revolving door, after physically attacking, verbally abusing and death-threating Holocaust deniers tens of times.

2) None of the numerous arson attacks on Holocaust deniers’ houses or headquarters has ever been resolved.

3) Denier Robert Faurisson has been beaten to a pulp several times. Never has any of his assaulters been caught, much less tried, much less convicted.

I.e., it’s not that the West will officially declare open season on Holocaust deniers, any more than Czarist Russia officially called for pogroms to be started. What the West will do is refrain from taking action to stop attacks on deniers.

LOL Q.E.D.

Excellent fisking, thank you. Few here are surprised at such groupthink and institutional distortion, but a detailed analysis such as this is always welcome. Would DaveM like to apply his critical faculties to the BBC, and the Today Programme in particular?

jr: Mohammed has traditionally been depicted in images in Shia Iran.

Nope. Never. You do see Ali, and occasionally Hossein. But Mohammad the child molester mass murderer (oops forgot the mandatory PBUH, before they come after me) is never depicted. The picture you have seen is that of Ali.

Sue: It just goes to show the wonderful diversity with the Islamic world.

There is no diversity in the foundation of the idiotic doctrine of Islam (the unity of god, last prophet, mohammad the child molester, judgement day, other superstitious junk etc.).

The diversity you refer to is just in the irrelevent trivialities. Very uninteresting and boring. First order matters trumps 3rd order cultural “diversities”, anytime.

Hamid, is this incorrect then?

Hasbara, I suggest you go to Tehran and Gaza and criticize Prophet Mohammad and you will see the backlash first hand from the STATE and its goons and also from the average illiterate in the street. You will not come back alive if you persist on doing that. Not only in Tehran, but almost anywhere in the Islamic world.

Comparing systematic and state elimination of a dissident to that of some emotional fellow who attacks a guy who hugs the mini-Hitler, is stupid, immoral, and demonstrates a lack of a critical thinking faculty common to the reactionary post-lefties.

Now start packing deyâllâ olâq-e nafahm-e mâdar gahbeh

Heh jr - you are producing miniatures from the Turkistan region probably dating back to the 14th century or so.

You are way off.

In contemporary Shiism, there is no depiction of the assassin mohammad. When talking about the motoons, nobody cares about the state of Islam 10 centuries ago. Don’t change the context.

Pls. produce link to a contemporary Shiite depiction of pedophile mohammad that dates to the past century, lets say.

Hamid, I recall that Karsten Kjaer purchased a picture of Mohammed in Tehran in the film “bloody cartoons”. I can’t find a clip online however. According to the Mohammed Image Archive the Iranian artistOranous has painted Mohammed and “an expert in Iranian Shi’ite customs writes in to say that this particular painting is not forbidden because it depicts a young Mohammed before he was visited by the Angel Gabriel and started receiving his visions, which means that at this stage in his life he is not yet the Prophet.”

Anyway it is clear that the Shiite custom differs from the hardline Sunni view than no image can be made of any prophet - which for instance puts Christian iconography beyond the pale. A similar variety of opinions is found in orthodox Judaism, where on the one hand some consider that any realistic representation of a person could be used for idol worship, while on the other hand some Lubavitchers stick pictures of their messiah candidate all over the place, including on publications that are placed in synagogues, which seems really weird.

Regarding your description of Mohammed as a paedophile mass murderer, I am sure that a lot of biblical characters could be described in a similar way. I think that the secular world needs to build a dialogue with the religious moving forward and although I am personally unaffected by comments that are offensive to religious people I am of the opinion that they are unconstructive.

jr - I grew up in Iran. There are no pictures of that assassin Mohammad available in Iran. Never saw one, except maybe occasionally in a few ancient miniature reproductions.

Sorry to shoot down your “diversity” thesis and how Shiism is different from Sunnism. It is not so different, and the fundamentals are generally the same. Typical of the cultural types, you are getting too bogged down in the branches and leaves, unable to see the forest for what it is. Unfortunately it is the complex of trees that governs the habitat, and not the fluff branches or the leaves so much.

Mohammad was a low-life in Arabia - and a very brutal one at that. He had the mentality of a 6 year old barbarian, with an insatiable sexual apetite. Raping his girl-slaves, behind the backs of his 15 wives - killing anyone who did not submit to him or who criticized him. These are historical facts. Now you go again with your biblical character thing as if there are no consequences to Islamic brutality in Iran or the middle east.

I find your description of social-religio-situational iconography very boring and trivial. There are much more interesting and significant things to put one’s time into, such as philosophy or science. What a waste.

Mohammad is empirically a pedophile mass murderer. Nothing to do with biblical characters and stop the relativist apology. Mohammad stands on his own. To the woman getting stoned in Mashhad, does it matter that biblical characters were unsavory? Get real and see the elephant (Islam) in the room.

“secular world needs to build a dialogue …” Again we see that weasel word dialogue rearing its depraved head.

We have had centuries of dialogue with religion — and the end result is that the memes of religion are getting stronger as it intermixes with postcolonialism and certain political ideologies. No thanks to the dialogue, because the other side is simply incapable of reasoning and empathy to engage in one.

Religion (and not the religious) must be attacked head on. This we need for the sake of the future generations. The more the left flirts with religion through dialogue, the more corrupted society will get through the influence of religion. You can only dialogue with those who share the rules of discourse with you, who can accept criticism, and who are not out there to get you for questioning their self-righteous sanctities and boundaries.

You can’t fight an idealism (religion) with another idealism. You need to inform it of its idiocies and contradictions - mockery, and making fun of it.

The problem with dialogue lefties is that they have never lived under the rules of a terror outfit or a theocracy, where dialogue is a sign of surrender -if it is alowed in the first place. Just like you may be thinking that the portrait of the liar hypocrite mohammad is hanging in the street corners of Tehran.

Thank you Hamid, your comment deserves to be its own article.

I wish the people you are addressing were capable of imagining the society you came from, capable of facing the horror of the situation. But I detect a note of petulance, as if the left is now rebelling against reality instead of rebelling against authority. As if truth were the ultimate oppressor whose power must be broken.

first they say ‘gas chambers never existed’

then they say ‘ jews build gas chambers for arabs’

either existed or not?

Religion (and not the religious) must be attacked head on.

The problem with your thesis, Hamid, is that you make a distinction between these. The execrable human beings who justify their crimes by citing religion are to be defeated by the mass of decent people who do not adhere to their extremist ideologies, whether they are religious or not. You rail against a long dead “paedophile” “murderer” who, like David Hamelekh, conformed to the profile of a leader in his time. Why bother? What does it achieve?

Hasbara, I suggest you go to Tehran and Gaza and criticize Prophet Mohammad

Well, you know, things are extremely messy where there’s no economic development. Is Robert Mugabe a Muslim? Or Laurent Kabila?

But even in the advanced world things can get messy. Have you ever tried to burn a flag in Louisiana? You might end up in jail. See:

In Louisiana, flag ‘desecration’ is a crime which covers any ‘flag, shield, standard, color or ensign of the United States, the State of Louisiana, or the Confederate States of America.’ It outlaws putting ‘any word, mark, design or advertisement of any nature upon any flag’ makes it a crime for anyone to ‘publicly mutilate, defile, or by word or act cast contempt upon any flag.’ In both cases, it must be done ‘intentionally’ and ‘for exhibition or display.’

http://atheism.about.com/od/flagburningstatelaws/State_Laws_Flag_Burning_Desecration_Commercial_Use_of_American_Flag.htm

But the most outrageous form of superstitious limitations on people is, of course, the genocide denial laws. The French state can jail an 80 year old citizen because he said in Teheran that there was no Holocaust. What was his crime? Lying. Some 5,000 kilometers away.

Holocaust deniers are jailed because they break one of the Ten Commandments. Isn’t that depriving someone of his liberty because he doesn’t conform to our religious beliefs?

Hasbara Masturbator, some countries in Europe have strong laws design to prevent a resurgence of Nazism. They may seem imperfect or draconian but the intention is rooted in the fear of the utter depravity that the continent descended into within living memory. Of course if you yourself are a holocaust denying piece of filth, which is the impression that you give, then this won’t mean very much to you.

Now can you answer the question I had about your Lebanon “facts” (4th time of asking)?

Here’s more evidence from a Western country — Israel.

The Yad L’Achim organization is devoted to prevent Arab-Jewish marriages in Israel. Here’s how they introduce one of their pages:

Shifra, a social worker from Yad L’Achim, offers parents advice on how they can keep their daughters from making the mistake of entering into relationships with Arab men.

What happens if a Jewish woman, despite Yad L’Achim efforts, marries an Arab and has children?

Yad L’Achim (remember: not a government organization) goes with M-16s, blindfolds and handcuffs the Arab, leaves him in an orchard and kidnaps the children.

What does the State then do, in face of this illegitimate deprivation of the Palestinian’s liberty?

It forbids the Arab man from approaching his children!

See the full story here:

http://www.yadlachimusa.org.il/Index.asp?ArticleID=547&CategoryID=193&Page=1

So tell me, which is worse, a State calling for the end of the Zionist entity, or a state throwing its full support behind an organization whose aim is to prevent Jewish women from “making the mistake of entering into relationships with Arab men”?

A friend of mine used to say, “all of us are Nazis; we only don’t have enough information.”

A friend of mine used to say, “all of us are Nazis; we only don’t have enough information.”

I prefer Mel Brooks’ version “Don’t be dumb, be a smarty, come and join the Nazi party!”