Belated Thank You Notes
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo thinks the people complaining about Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s desire to visit “Ground Zero” and lay a wreath when he comes to New York for the UN meeting should just Grow Up.
Josh doesn’t understand the problem – no one remembered to send Iran a thank you for all of the assistance they provided in pushing the Taliban out of Afghanistan and rounding up al Qaeda and Taliban people who tried to escape through Iran. I mean you could sort of ignore the condemnation of the attack by all levels of the Iranian government including the Supreme Leader, because most of the world did that, but Iran provided real material assistance to out our allies, the Northern Alliance, and actually captured terrorists, so a note really was called for.
I think there is going to have to be a small ceremony with the mayor, and someone from the State Department, as well as some sort of tchotchke.
The people who keep talking about Israel should find someone who actually reads Farsi to see what Ahmadinejad has said, and read a little area history to understand why they don’t believe anything coming from the West. I may not agree with their conclusions, but I understand how they arrived at them, and the process is very logical from their point of view.
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From their point of view, the European Jews who swept into Palestine in 1948 and conquered the country from the Sephardic Jews and Arabs who lived there are no different from the Crusaders who swept into Palestine in 1099 and conquered the place — just a bunch of barbarian outsiders conquering some place they shouldn’t be. Or as one Arab told me, “we don’t have any problem with the Jews who’ve always lived there, but the outsiders [the European Jews] need to go back home.”
So they’re predisposed to think the worst, and the European Jews who run Israel (non-European Jews or “sephardim” as they are referred to in Israel are looked down upon by the European Jews and not allowed significant political power) haven’t given them any reason to think differently.
Then Dear Leader comes in and uses the “C” word (Crusade) to refer to his Glorious War For Whatever In Iraq, and, uhm, what exactly are the Iranians supposed to think? Hmm…
And yes, everybody in that part of the world knows what happened in 1099. Not *every* nation has a dysfunctional educational system where a host of “The View” doesn’t even know whether the world is flat or not, after all…
Let’s add in 1492 when Isabella the Catholic threw all of the Muslims and Jews out of Spain and they were welcomed in North Africa and the Middle East. The Jews of many communities in the Middle East, and especially Turkey, still speak Ladino, a dialect of Spanish.
Jews have lived in Iran/Persia for centuries and still live there. They aren’t persecuted for their religion, although the Bahai are.
I have heard it expressed that many in the Middle East do consider the Holocaust a European hoax to justify stealing more land. They think that Israel should be in Germany as that is where most of those killed were from, and that was the country responsible, therefore the Germans should have been forced to make room for a Jewish state, not the Palestinians.
There are too many lies for too many years for the West to really be trusted by anyone in the Middle East.