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dazza 19/03/09 7:27PM

Since when have these Jewish pressure groups had any respect for truth? They have this persecution complex buried deep within their thick skulls, after 60 years of anti-Arab/Palestinian/Iranian propaganda which most of them have come to believe in it themselves, and only death will remove it. It colours their entire contact with the rest of the human race, and is extremely tiresome. Dialogue with anyone seems far beyond their comprehension.
Would it not be wonderful if Obama decided that the USA needed to open some dialogue with the israelis, instead of accepting blindly their commandments.
They have just won a round with Obama, forcing him to lose face and back pedal fast on an appointment to his Government, so they are cock-a-hoop at the moment, and crowing loudly. They have shown again, quite openly and proudly, just who runs America! Dazza.

dereklane 20/03/09 12:20AM

A good article, but one point of contention:

"Khatami is a staunch critic of the incumbent Mahmud Ahmedinejad (who is indeed a holocaust denier)."

I’m not yet totally convinced of that. Ahmadinejad presented controversial gatherings including people who are indeed ‘holocaust deniers’ (though each to their own - who cares, for example, if the majority of Americans maintain the fantasy that they holocausted - my word, not one in general usage in discussion of the subject in the US - 2 large Japanese cities during WWII to ‘stop the war’? The truth is, they are wrong, and the act was one of criminal savagery of the highest order. We know that simply by examining the evidence, and plugging fingers in ears only shows the general ignorance on the subject).

He maintains the ‘myth’ of the holocaust, as a means (I am convinced of this) of explaining exactly what Khatami does - a misappropriation of a tragic and reprehensible event, in which the west (not just Germany) were directly culpable, inc Churchill, to the political gain of the Zionist elite in Israel. A means of quieting public dissent against the continuing genocidal actions of Israel to ensure that this particular genocide (of Jews, in Israel) happens ‘never again’. The use of real and documented history in a religious or national/cultural context is frequently (though less frequently these days in the west) described as mythologising. Myth is not synonymous with ‘fairy tale’ except in colloquial usage.

In that sense, I entirely agree with him. In fact, there have been a few examples of Jews withdrawing their association with Israel precisely because of this misappropriation.

There is no argument that Ahmadinejad is inflammatory in his nature, but far less so than any given western leader in reverse. In fact, in that sense, he is far more diplomatic, thoughtful, intelligent and knowledgeable than any given western leader right now. He thinks *before* he speaks, and doesn’t threaten as a matter of course, and not ever (so far as I am aware) for anything less than a threat directed at Iran. We need only think of the patronising way in which nuclear *weapons* proliferators (the US, UK) talk to Iran about their so-called nuclear programme and how it *must* stop (despite them being fully in their rights, because it is civil nuclear, not weapons nuclear) to understand which leaders are truly inflammatory, and dangerous. It isn’t Ahmadinejad.

His hosting of that silly charade including many prominent holocaust deniers seems to have been designed purely to get a rise out of the west, which it did (how can we be so shocked by the holocaust? We perpetrated the crime then, and since, in many other countries. Genocide is a western hobby, almost). He was probably laughing at the irony/death of that western god of free speech - the same one that maintained the right to show comical pictures of Muhammad, by presenting such a show, and the added bonus that most western media either refused to, or couldn’t see that irony. I’m sure it scored quite a few points in Iran though…

cheers, Derek

denise 20/03/09 3:55PM

If it’s Ok for Iran to be a Muslim state, then why isn’t it alright for Israel to be Jewish state?
That’s the first question I’d like to ask Mohammad Khatami, who seems to be a misunderstood (by the Jewish leaders) stalwart for democracy and justice.
However. I don’t think he could be compared with Avigdor Lieberman who merely wanted an oath of allegiance from all non-Jewish Israeli citizens, the majority of whom happen to be Arabs.
And with religious extremists and/or fundamentalists in power on both sides now, there would appear to be little chance of a two-state solution in the near future.

Rocky 21/03/09 12:01AM

Denise,

It’s not OK for Iran to be an "Islamic state" or Israel to be a "Jewish state", how can a democratic polity be religious?

Whatever Khatami’s real democratic credentials are is irrelevant,we need to communicate,after all, our country welcomes representatives of the Chinese government very cordially. Israel’s enemies are not our enemies.

Iran needs to protect itself from a nuclear armed Israel, nuclear weapons are an option.

Derek,

I have no idea what Ahmadinejad is really up to, however I agree on your interpretation of the "myth of the holocaust", I’m amazed at how many people assume that the Jews were the only, or most numerous victims, of the Nazis. Around 1 million Roma were annihilated and about 25 million Slavs, 50 million(at least) was the original Nazi plan. The fact that most Jews in Israel still see themselves as victims not as oppressors is an indication of the power of modern myth construction. The first, and most destructive myth, was the "right of return" of Jews to Israel, it was, and still is,poisonous propaganda.

dazza 21/03/09 11:59AM

"how can a democratic polity be religious?" Indeed, Rocky. Which is one reason I content that the United States of America is NOT and never has been a Democracy. It was founded by fundamental religionists, and to this day, no person can be elected to office in that country without acknowledging that they count God as their supreme commander. The next demand placed upon them is that they count Zionist israel as the final arbiter of all their Foreign policy in the Middle East, and acknowledge it loudly and publicly.
israel is NOT a democracy, it is a racist religious entity, one that should not exist.
Iran DOES need the option of Nuclear weapons into the future, so long as israel (with US backing) is threatening it’s very existence, and conducting ‘black’ warfare against it as we speak. The Media of the rest of the Western world, so controlled as it is by one or two far-right persons, backed by lots of Jewish money, is also conducting a war of lying words against Iran and against the rest of Arab world, in particular the Palestinains. See the British ‘Media Lens’ web site.
And indeed, Rocky, the Jewish ‘Holocaust’ is NOT the only one that has occurred in recent human history, but it is one that is rammed down out necks on a continuing daily basis, through film and radio and written word, because it still has, after all this time, lots of propaganda value for the Zionist Jews. Here in Australia, it is hard for a week to go by without some reference to it from at least SBS TV. All this has had great value to a religious grouping who survive on the ingrained and daily buttressed collective guilt of Brits, Yanks and Germans, in particular, for real or imagined crimes against Jewry during W2ll, a people who seemingly can not survive without this paranoia of continuing persecution, to the extent that they are able to fully act out the actions of the Fascists in Germany etc. 60 odd years ago against an imprisoned population in Gaza and the West Bank, Lebanon etc. without any thought that they may have to account for their crimes. I see that even with statements made by IDF soldiers who have come out of Gaza, to the effect that they acted as fascists and murderers, totally out of control, on the orders of un-human IDF Officers, killing without compunction at the time, women and children, particularly women of child bearing age and female children, so that the threat of them breeding into the future would be curtailed. As for a two-state ‘solution’, this is NO solution, because by now the israelis have ensured that it can never happen with their land grabs and settlements, but they desperately want to get rid of Arabs/Palestinians within israel (supposedly citizens, but with few rights) because they will eventually breed in numbers so as to outnumber the Jews in israel, and the Jewish State will be no more!
Really, the ONLY solution, for the world, is for one secular state, and it must NOT be Jewish, in any way, shape or form! As I have said before, the Jews who can not adapt to this will have to either leave for places that may accept them, or accept their status as just ordinary citizens in a secular, hopefully democratic, Middle Eastern country.
As things stand, bringing in mass populations of Jews from places like Russia to increase the Jewish population is working against the interests of israel, because so many of these people are fascist religious fundamentalists of the worst kind, or just straight out Russian mafia, who have turned israel into one of the worst criminal places on Earth, with drug running, arms dealing, murder and have totally undermined any aspects of so-called democracy. It is about time that the world outside, and the USA in particular, woke up to the facts of life, and act accordingly. This place is a festering sore on the face of the Earth.
I can quite understand the anxiety of the Iranians, with neighbors like that. Dazza.,

Silver Rebel 23/03/09 2:39PM

Silver Rebel

He is more scary to the Iranian people than the Israelis.

Just ask any of our Iranian refugees.

Cheers, SR

andrewmpotts 23/03/09 2:54PM

Khatami may not be a Holocaust denier but he DOES support the death penalty for homosexuality, large numbers of people were killed by the Iranian judicial system during his rule, and he has continued to justify his country’s immoral persecution of its sexual minorities since leaving office. He did so as recently as 2006 in a talk presented to students at Harvard University.

Unfortunately the Mullahs bar real reform candidates from ever getting on the ballot (let alone into the Iranian Parliament) for not being Islamic enough.

denise 23/03/09 3:10PM

Even if all the Jews in the world wanted to return to live in Israel, they couldn’t, because they wouldn’t all fit in!
And Israel is a democracy, but like all democracies there are limitations to people representation. I do like their proportional system, however, which would have entitled at least one or two Green representatives to be elected last Saturday in Queensland.
They actually have Arab parties, non-Jewish members standing for parliament, something highly unlikely to happen in an Arab state.
God is written into most country’s Constitutions, however religion has very little to do with the way the laws of the land are actually proposed and formed either here or in Israel.
Let’s put it this way - Australia is essentially a Christian nation with a secular government, while Israel is essentially a Jewish nation with a secular government.
And as far as the aholocaust is concerned, I don’t think many Australians have been aware of the huge number of Holocaust survivors living amongst them, especially in the southern states.
And the reason for the Holocaust being made more public and there being constant reminders, is that there is a problem in the mental state of the remaining survivors, many who now have Alzeimer’s and are presenting (in nursing homes) with the associated post traumatic disorders related to their past experiences.

GraemeF 23/03/09 3:25PM

There is at least one Jewish member of the Iranian Parliament.

Rocky 23/03/09 4:23PM

Some Zionists deny the existence of the Palestinians,perhaps we should keep them from entering the country.

Dazza,

you might be interested in this horror story.

http://mcclatchydc.com/227/story/64518.html

Maryj 23/03/09 4:29PM

And Colin Rubenstein joins in today by claiming no-one should be allowed to sponsor Khatami, as if Australia is at war with Iran just because a few jews say we should be. They are like stupid children.

Now to the holocaust and the maundering that goes on about it.

The Holocaust (from the Greek ὁλόκαυστον (holókauston): holos, "completely" and kaustos, "burnt"), also known as haShoah (Hebrew: השואה), Churben (Yiddish: חורבן) is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler.[2]

Other groups were also persecuted and killed, including ethnic Poles, the Romani, Soviet civilians, Soviet prisoners of war, the disabled, homosexual men and political and religious opponents.[3] Most scholars, however, define the Holocaust as a genocide of European Jewry alone,[4] or what the Nazis called the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." The total number of victims of Nazi genocidal policies, including Poles, Romani, Soviet POW, and the handicapped is generally agreed to be between 9 and 11 million"

OK, that is fine but there were not six million jews killed. New books show that fully two thirds escaped before the war and the "jewish" census before the was was just over 11 million and 11 million in 1945. The latest census shows 14 million or so who "claim" to be jewish, whatever that means, with 61% of them living any place but Israel, mostly in the US.

In the last century about 110 million people died in wars, why do we have to held to ransom by the jews who were a tiny minority?

In Vietnam we helped to murder 3 million civilians, we were joined at the hip with Dicky Nixon when he carpet bombed Cambodia and helped the rise of Pol Pot and the murder of three million more.

We were joined at the hip of the US when we bombed and boycotted Iraq for 13 years before invading the joint and about 3 million Iraqis are dead with 5 million homeless.

Historians are also now discovering the "holocaust" we committed (the allies) after WW11 of 3 million German civilians and the ethnic cleansing of about 16 million more from Eastern Europe. Try and get hold of "After the Reich" by Giles MacDonogh.

In fact the Polish, Russian and other eastern block citizens are the exact same as the Poles who wrote the plan to ethnically cleanse Palestine at the same time.

Norman Finkelstein’s mother, who survived Auschwitz, said in the foreword of his book "the Holocaust Industry" - "with so many survivors who did Hitler kill". That was after Germany had paid reparations to over 1 million jews who had "survived". Like the Poles who now run Israel they survived because they simply were not there.

How much in reparations have the jews of Poland and Russia who run Israel paid to the 800,000 Palestinians they drove out of their homes and continue to kill up to this day?

I think Searle did his little rant to distract us from the reality of the latest attack on Gaza and for no other reason.

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/60806

As usual with us, the pretext was security. After all, the Arabs who are naturalized in Israel could be “terrorists”. True, no statistics have ever been published about such cases – if there are any – but since when did a “security” assertion need evidence to prove it?
Behind the security argument there lurks, of course, a demographic demon. The Arabs now constitute about 20% of Israel’s citizens. If the country were to be swamped by a flood of Arab brides and bridegrooms, this percentage might rise to – God forbid! – 22%. How would the “Jewish State” look then?
The matter came before the Supreme Court, The petitioners, Jews and Arabs, argued that this measure contradicts our Basic Laws (our substitute for a nonexistent constitution) which guarantee the equality of all citizens. The answer of the Ministry of Justice lawyers let the cat out of the bag. It asserts, for the first time, in unequivocal language, that:
“The State of Israel is at war with the Palestinian people, people against people, collective against collective.”

ONE SHOULD read this sentence several times to appreciate its full impact. This is not a phrase escaping from the mouth of a campaigning politician and disappearing with his breath, but a sentence written by cautious lawyers carefully weighing every letter.
If we are at war with “the Palestinian people”, this means that every Palestinian, wherever he or she may be, is an enemy. That includes the inhabitants of the occupied territories, the refugees scattered throughout the world as well as the Arab citizens of Israel proper. A mason in Taibeh, Israel, a farmer near Nablus in the West Bank, a policeman of the Palestinian Authority in Jenin, a Hamas fighter in Gaza, a girl in a school in the Mia Mia refugee camp near Sidon, Lebanon, a naturalized American shopkeeper in New York – “collective against collective”.

And presumably you have seen the revolting testimonies in Haaretz and Ma’ariv this week.

When I circulated this article on the weekend Barney Zwartz at the AGE didn’t want to know the truth and decided it was "my" truth.

Paul Reti from one of the zionist groups decided that it was the reason my husband left me.

And that is the way they operate and always have.

Tom Segev shows that with great humour in his book 1967.

And actually if you read the nazi manifesto for jews, then read the Likud and zionist policy for arabs in Palestine there is not a jot of difference.

peter_murphy_au 23/03/09 5:14PM

Contrary to Mr Yusuf’s broad view that Mr Khatami’s presidency was positive on both domestic and foreign policy fronts for Iran, readers should note:
• the bloody suppression of the students democratic movement in Tehran and other cities in 1999, and
• the secret nuclear program which was only exposed in 2002, toward the end of Khatami’s presidency.
Contrary to the view that Khatami represents a path away from confrontation and the danger of war between Iran on the one hand, and Israel and the USA on the other, he is a loyal supporter of the Islamic fundamentalism established by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1980.
Khatami has recently withdrawn his candidacy for the coming presidential elections, a candidature which would have had to be approved by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the Guardian Council.
Khamenei’s regime is a violent dictatorship, exporting terrorism and moving to dominate its neighbours.
One accurate statement made by the former CIA Iran specialist, Mr Baer, is that the President is not a powerful figure in Iran, and that all power rests with the Supreme Leader.
By hosting and giving some democratic credibility to former President Khatami, the Centre for Dialogue is unwittingly helping the Tehran regime to play down its shocking record of human rights abuses, which are so horribly demonstrated in the numerous public executions taking place in these weeks and months, including executions of offenders who were minors at the time of their arrest.
The invitation to Khatami is an affront to the millions of Iranian people who long for democratic change, and to the hundreds of thousands who have been executed, tortured or exiled for the democratic cause over the last 30 years.
Only last Wednesday, March 18, there were about 2,000 young people arrested in and around Tehran during the Fire Festival, for burning images of Khamenei, Khomeini and Ahmadinajad.
An organisation to which I belong, the Australian Supporters of Democracy in Iran, wrote some weeks ago to the Centre for Dialogue asking them to reconsider the invitation, but we had no reply.
It is not only pro-Israeli opinion which is protesting about the Khatami visit, but that is the only view that has been given publicity.

Peter Murphy is a member of the Sydney Peace & Justice Coalition and is active on international democratic issues in southern Africa, Western Asia and South East Asia.

Maryj 23/03/09 5:44PM

Peter Murphy, I think we need to stop living in glass houses and trying to lecture the rest of the world.

WE have illegally invaded and occupied two nations for no reason this century alone.

Who has Iran invaded?

dereklane 23/03/09 6:37PM

"Khamenei’s regime is a violent dictatorship, exporting terrorism and moving to dominate its neighbours."

Prove that - give me some incontrovertible evidence. Now I’ll do it (where you have failed) for the US, the UK, Australia etc, etc, and the evidence I can provide is ten times stronger, and ten times more violent. We all *saw* and can *see* the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions (in most recent history). We *know* that we exported terrorism to these countries, via bombs, and white phosphorus, and automatic machines guns, and families gunned down in their own homes, not in hundreds, but hundreds of thousands, and more. We *know* that we seek to dominate our neighbours (for Australia, think East Timor, Papua, Aboriginal nations of Australia, for the US and the UK, cuba, and the world, etc).

Please, spare the accusatory glances at Iran with the wild speculation of xenophobia when the log is still overwhelmingly in our eyes (unless you simultaneously acknowledge it). Homosexuality is still illegal in certain states of the US, and it only recently became legal in all of Australia (just 10 years ago, and all of a sudden we think we have a right to preach on the backwardness of other states!). The death penalty is higher in the US than it is in China (possibly per capita), I believe, and sits in the top five *with* Iran. If we condemn one, we *must* condemn the other, except the US has a greater record, by far, of violence against other peoples than does Iran. And yet, in all these ‘debates’, I am not seeing that perspective. We *respect* the US, and condemn Iran - very much in line with US foreign policy/PR. I wonder why that might be?

The trouble with Khatami is that he is not a popular leader, like the old leadership in Venezuela, and all of the west, he led the elite, not the poor. He is the leader the US wants to see installed in Iran, and no doubt is agitating for, via the usual channels. Derek

DrGideonPolya 24/03/09 7:21AM

Excellent article. It is high time Australians woke up to the disastrous level of fanatical and extreme Zionist propaganda that utterly distorts Australian public life.

The Age (17/3/2009) reported the false Zionist assertion alluded to in the article that the distinguished former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami was a “holocaust denier” whose country “wanted to wipe Israel off the map”.

The facts are otherwise according to a 2006 Time magazine interview (see: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1533026,00.html ).

Khatami: My opposition to Israel is moral. The peaceful solution to the problem of Palestine is to recognize Palestinian rights. This is the only way there could be sustained peace in the region.

TIME: And a Palestinian state to exist alongside Israel? Khatami: Yes.

TIME: Your successor [as president of Iran; President Ahmadinejad] has said that the Holocaust did not happen. How do you explain that?

Khatami: I personally believe that he really didn’t deny the existence of Holocaust. I believe the Holocaust is the crime of Nazism. But it is possible that the Holocaust, which is an absolute fact, a historical fact, would be misused. The Holocaust should not be, in any way, an excuse for the suppression of Palestinian rights.

The core messages from the Zionist-complicit, Nazi mass murder of Hungarian Jews (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Brand ) are “zero tolerance for racism” and “never again to anyone” – injunctions grossly violated by the racist Zionists running genocidal, race-based Apartheid Israel and their war criminal neo-Bush-ite and Bush-ite supporters in the Western Murdochracies.

Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.

dereklane 24/03/09 7:47AM

Thanks Gideon,

As usual, some relevant and pertinent information, which confuses the generic reporting about Iran’s leaders, hopefully to the point where people will begin to examine them themselves, and make their own judgements, rather than relying on our 2 dimensional press representations of Iran.

Good to see that Khatami appears to support the thinking I had on Ahmadinjed (not at all contentious or new in Iranian circles, in fact).

cheers, Derek

Patman 24/03/09 9:55AM

Hmmm, an interesting article with some intersting comments deposited above, I see, but only one, fleeting mention about the goings-on in East Timor, where Australia’s government of the time was a more than interested observer of Indonesia’s murderous campaign against the natives. Oil and gas..and more than 250,000 people, including Australian journalists, were murdered because of it.

Also, don’t forget about the continuing occupation of the Moluccas and Irian Jaya by Indonesia, and Australia’s hear/see/speak no evil routine. Where, oh, where, are the protests? Sorry, I forgot, Indonesia is a mainly Muslim nation..

I agree that much that goes on Israel is fundamentally wrong, but are the rest of us really any better??

denise 24/03/09 4:23PM

Maryj the Palestinian people have declared war on the Israeli people many times since the UN resolution in 1948 for a two state solution and each and every time they have either LOST more land or LOST more people.
So why do they (Hamas) now pretend that Israel does not even exist?
You can’t go backwards in time - you have to accept the Jewish state, imperfect as it is and start working with it - otherwise the Palestinian cause WILL be a lost cause.
However, I believe the REAL motive of violent Palestinians against Israel is to remove control over Jerusalem from Jewish hands and has therefore become a fundamentally Islamic movement.

revilo 24/03/09 9:43PM

Ah Mustafa you are funny man:
"Hanan Ashrawi is a Christian" Yeah and so was Yasser Ara fat when it suited him too..

If you want anything denied then I deny the antisemites on this site would have a synapsing neuron between the lot.

One would think that an Iranian Persian out here could comment on the ‘liberal democracy " they have back there, where people "disappear" daily for their views or views of their family members overseas.

These post revolution Iranians are just like their duplicitous neighbours in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Palestine. They say one thing in English to the media they have tamed, then another to their people in Arabic, or Arabo-Persian.

Sure Iran has an only Jewish MP spokesperson, in one breath, then he becomes the Jewish "Leaders in Iran…Yeah Irfan, you are very funny man.
I would’nt be that poor bastard for all the oil in the Persian gulf.

Sure they are more fanatic about football…just like the Pakistanis about cricket…was that Mumbai or Goodbye?

Finally mate, let’s just see after the elections in June. if they get a credible opposition, more likely the same debacle as in Pakistan.
Then the West’s control of the Persian gulf oil will be again the real issue. Then it would’nt matter who was president of Iran, or the US for that matter.

yeah Mustafa, do you do stand up comedy too.
I would like to see that?
Oli, aka Tzvi
P.S There were actually some very good posts this time from the non brain-dead elements of the NM readership. Keep it up good people.

dereklane 25/03/09 1:54AM

Hi Patman,

The criticism is always much easier when it doesn’t involve your home country…

In my experience, neither Australia nor the UK ever hold back from the harshest of criticism against countries like China, S America, even when the criticisms jolt in hypocrisy via simple comparisons with our own techniques, but our own reality (particularly viewed from a western perspective, rather than just one or the other country) is often more far-reaching, and dangerous.

cheers, Derek

dereklane 25/03/09 1:57AM

But, for the record, I don’t think that the reason it isn’t mentioned is that it is a muslim country, but that Indonesia is an economically useful partner to Australia (like Saudi is to us, and also the US). Don’t forget - we’re currently killing with impunity muslims in 2 countries, on whom we waged illegal wars of aggression! Derek

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