Harry’s Place

Death to Palestine? Sounds about right - Iran will fight Israel until the last drop of Arab blood is spilt - they’ve been doing it for years with Hizbollah.

You shouldnt under estimate the Iranian sense of humour.

Having been forced to chant the same tired chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” for 30 years by the Islamic Republic’s authorities ordinary Iranians are fed up to the back teeth of political Islam and are only looking to get on with their daily lives.

Many within the Islamist regime and even within the security apparatus of the regieme are looking for a change.

It wasnt a mistake - just a prayer leader with a sense of humour poking run at the weary rhetoric of a worn out Revolution.

Gene, the old slogan of Franco’s Spainish Foreign Legion
“Down with Intelligence,
Long Live Death”

has been the defacto slogan of Islamist terrorists for quite a few years.

Rostam,

You may find the quotation below from the lead article in this months Commentary amusing:

In January 2006, the Iranian daily Jomhuriya Eslami carried the text of a speech delivered by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei in Tehran’s main mosque. Attempting to defuse the diplomatic tension occasioned by the call for Israel’s destruction issued by the then-newly elected President Ahmadinejad at the previous month’s “World Without Zionism” conference, Khamenei concluded his uncharacteristically moderate sermon with the following ringing remarks:

We Iranians intend no harm to any nation, nor will we be the first to attack any nation. We do not deny the right of any polity in any place on God’s earth to exist and prosper. We are a peace-loving country whose only wish is to live, and to let live, in peace.

Without missing a beat, or evincing a discernible hint of irony, the reporter who covered the event continued:

The congregation of worshippers, some 7,000 in number, expressed their unanimous support for the Supreme Leader’s words by repeatedly chanting, marg bar Omrika, marg bar Esra’il “Death to America! Death to Israel!”

Iran today sounds a lot like the Soviet Bloc around 1980. People repeat the tired old slogans of the regime but no longer believe in them.

It is odd that the regime should seek to prevent Iranians demonstrating in solidarity with Gaza, both the Mothers of Iran for Peace in Tehran and Arabs in Ahwaz City where the police fired shots over demonstrators’ heads and arrested dozens: http://yalibnan.com/site/archives/2009/01/iran_fires_at_a.php I can only guess that this is control freakery gone mad, crushing independent civil society completely even when it agrees with the government line. As such, that means the repeated and sometimes violent attacks on the British Embassy in Tehran are sanctioned by the regime, since there has been no attempt to arrest these hooligans.

Its called resistance you fools

I know lots of Persians. In the conversations we’ve had about what they call The Israeli/Arab war they have all said it has nothing to do with them and they could really care less either way.

How long before they latch onto the old Fascist slogan from the Spanish Civil War: ¡Viva la muerte!

When half of Spain said “Viva la muerte” (long live death), we all understood they were special circumstances, in which crazy things were said and done (for instance, the erasing of towns like Gernika or Sagunto). We didn’t for one minute think that something was wrong with Spanish culture.

However, when a Gaza leader says “we love death,” it’s the barbaric Arab mindset that rejects man’s most precious asset: life.

Double standards anyone?

You were alive during the Spanish Civil War?

However, when a Gaza leader says “we love death,” it’s the barbaric Arab mindset that rejects man’s most precious asset: life.

Double standards anyone?

Naw. I think it’s pretty clear Hamas is a fascist death-cult, a mental illness posing as a national liberation movement. This is not an indictment of Arab culture in general.

Naw. I think it’s pretty clear Hamas is a fascist death-cult, a mental illness posing as a national liberation movement.

Not anymore than Generalísimo Francisco Franco’s Movimiento Nacional was a death cult.

In fact, after killing all his opponents or scaring them into exile, Franco started to rebuild the national economy. It took him 40 years, but by the time of his death Spain was a prosperous European country.

The moral: just because someone says chilling words doesn’t mean he’s an incurable madman. Many leaders take a pragmatic approach when faced with the responsibilities of power. Even if they were savage murderers before taking power.

So HB is a Franco apologist. Interesting.

Calling Franco a savage murderer is being a Franco apologist?

C’mon Gene - Franco did have St Teresa of Avila’s hand with him most of the time, the guy couldn’t be that creepy could he?

“Viva la muerte” was spoken by General Millán Astray y Terreros in responce to Miguel de Unamuno saying ‘At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right’.

Millan was certainly an ‘eccentric’ outsider within the Francoist conglomerate of various parties and tendencies. But the fact that Spanish society consumed itself during the thirties in brutal violence and mass killings does suggest that at a social and economic level as well as at a cultural and discursive level, something was deeply wrong

“I know lots of Persians. In the conversations we’ve had about what they call The Israeli/Arab war they have all said it has nothing to do with them and they could really care less either way.”

I know lots of Arabs who are sick of the Arab world being defined by this one conflict and think that Palestinian groups are at least partly responsible for the problems of Palestinians - Fatah’s corruption and Hamas’ fundamentalism. But they don’t speak up because as soon as Arabs criticise other Arabs, they are portrayed as traitors - often by non-Arab Islamic radicals. The failure of moderate Arab secularism to overcome the forces Islamic radicalism is one of the problems, I fear, that is sustaining the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

This may also explain why Iran is reluctant to allow its citizens to demonstrate support for Hamas - they fear Hamas will lose the conflict: http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/13/mideast/tehran.php