Monday, December 11, 2006

The Holocaust never happened.

This startling conclusion was the result of a conference that took place in Tehran, Iran, on Monday Dec 11, 2006. The participants were unanimous in their agreement.

All except for the Israeli Arab who journeyed from Israel, but was not allowed to attend the conference once he arrived in Iran. Turned out he didn't agree that the Holocaust never happened. The authorities in Iran denied him permission to attend the conference after all. So much for dissent, but more on that later.

However, six Rabbis of the Natorei Karta anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox group whose main base is in Mea Sharim, Jerusalem surprised the world when they attended. The Jews, from the US, Britain, and Austria, somehow convinced themselves they could participate in this vehemently anti-Zionist event in Tehran and still be proud of their heritage. One of the men, Rabbi Israel David Weiss of the US said, "We came to reveal to the world the use the Zionists make of the Holocaust." Not exactly a denial, but enough to get him an invitation. I doubt if Rabbi Weiss thinks the Holocaust was fiction.

On the other hand, according to the Iranians and most of the others at the conference The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a work of pure documented fact. The Iranians agree that a cabal of Jews who meet secretly and control the world does indeed exist. Take out Israel and you destroy the cabal.

Former Israeli MK, Tommy Lapid, a Holocaust survivor, said that the statements at the Iranian conference on the Holocaust reminded him of Nazi Germany's information minister Goebells' speeches reducing the Jews down to vermin so that they could more easily be murdered. Deny the Holocaust, turn Jews into liars and manipulators, Israelis into a pariah, are all meant to pave the way for the next Holocaust.

President Ahmanejad is like a kid at Christmas waiting expectantly for a new toy, already polishing up the parts of his long-range missiles he can get his hands on, just waiting for his scientists to finish assembling the nuclear warhead so he can put it on and push the button. Then he'll show you what a Holocaust really is.

What is amazing is that the educated and enlightened Western world doesn’t issue a mass condemnation of Iran for these outrageous statements about the Holocaust, which insults the memory of six-million Jews murdered by the previous Nazis; or the never ending stream of threats to wipe Israel off the map that issues from Iranian leaders' mouths.

The statements aren’t new. Former Nazi SS officers who had taken refuge in Syria and Iraq and other Arab countries toutered their students to say these things for years.

The forefather of Hamas and Hezbollah, Sheik Haj Amin Al Husseini, the Muktar of Jerusalem in the 1930’s, was the role model for such talk. He met with Hitler. He was given an apartment in Belin, paid for by the SS, when he was on the run from the British. Haj Amin Al Husseini was a Nazi. Just because he was an Arab doesn’t mean they couldn't be a Nazis. Hitler declared him an Aryan. Even signed a certificate to that effect. Today, Iran, whose population is literally considered Aryan not Arab, is lead by Nazis. Given the chance they will finish what Hitler started. And they are being given the chance.

They say that Israel is an abomination. We’ve heard that before. Just substitute the word "Jew" for "Israel." These vile and dangerous epithets Seem to come up every once in a while in history. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government insists the Iranians are not anti-Semitic. He proudly points out that Jews still live in Iran.

All true. Jews live in Iran. Abominable Anti-Zionist Rabbis are invited to Israel-hating conferences. Agree with Iran about Israel as the devil and you get a seat at the table with Iranian ministers of state. That's what happened with the Israel-hating Rabbis of Natorei Karta. Quislings, more than Rabbis, really.

But Jews also lived in Germany and other Nazi occupied lands, until they didn’t. Until they were ash floating up a chimney. Until the Nazis decided it was time to eliminate the vermin polluting the earth, by whatever means they found at their disposal.

Madmen gone wild with weapons enough to fight a world war. Happens now and again in History.

Monday in Tehran a group of dissenters staged a rare protest against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while he was speaking to a group of students at Amir Kabir Technical University. One man held up a sign reading "Facist president, Polytechnic is not your place." A firecracker was also set off in the audience. The Polytechnic was once the stronghold of the reformist movement, largely shut down while Ahmadinejad was Mayor of Tehran but before he was elected President of Iran. Reportedly, no one was arrested and Ahmadinejad went on with his speech. A few months ago Ahmadinejad closed down a newspaper which had satrizedh him in a cartoon.

This miniscule protest brings up an alternative to military confrontation with Iran: regime change, by whatever methods possible. Had someone actually done that in Germany back in the 1920’s tens of millions of lives would have been spared. The world would be a much different place today.

Who is behind this nascent dissent? Iranians? The CIA? The Israelis? Can they really succeed?

In Gaza on Monday three Arab children were killed, by Arabs sending a message to Senior PA intelligence officer Baha Balousha, one of the men appointed by PA Moderate Mohamed Abbas. The minister’s children were on their way to school when the car was ambushed.

It is unclear if the gunmen were out for Balousha, who is investigating the asassination of another PA minister murdered in Gaza last year.The day before gunmen shot up yet another PA minister’s car but missed their target.Palestinian sources have expressed concern that Gaza may turn into another Iraq with rival factions setting off car bombs on a daily basis.

Dissidents are usually not tolerated among Arab regimes. Some years back the Syrians killed 20,000 people in a move to put down a revolt. Saddam Hussein dropped chemical weapons on 10,000 Kurds. This isn’t the streets of Chicago in the 60’s filled with anti-war protestors roughed up slightly by the police.(W'll leave the Black Panthers out of this for now.)

Today, in Lebanon, if you go up against Syria, as did Pierre Gamayel or Rafik Harriri, to name the most famous, you get blown to smithereens. We'll also leave out the Russians and how they've allegedly been visciously assassinating their dissidents lately with impunity.

But sometimes dissidents are allowed to take to the streets. Especially if they support Syria, or Iran. Look at the hundreds of thousands of Hezbollah supporters who turned out over the last few week on the streets of Beirut; or were brought out, to demand the removal of moderate president Foaud Siniora.

If these massive demonstrations in Beirut are any example of how to implement a regime change, the Siniora government is doomed. Hezbollah will soon rule in Lebanon. UNIFIL will be asked to leave. Hezbollah will let lose their latest Iranian and Syrian Katyushas. The Middle East will once again be on fire.

Or not.Perhaps dialogue is possible.

Hamas leader Haniyeh was in Iran the last few days, and reportedly returned with $250 million of Iranian money for Hamas coffers. Haniyeh also decided to link the release of Gilad Shalit, held by Hamas with Ehud Goldwasser and Regev, the two soldiers captured by Hezbollah. Suddenly Israel has a package deal on two fronts.

Given these moves, there is room for discussion with both Hezbollah and Hamas. They want prisoners released by Israelis. Israelis want prisoners released by Hamas and Hezbollah. At least they’re talking.

That’s more or less what former Sec. Of State James A. Baker wanted. Talk to Iran and Syria. Have a commission that will bring the parties together. And as one columnistMark Styne asked in the Chicago Sun-Times, commenting on the recent Holocaust deniers conference in Teharn, 'who is not invited to the conference? Israel! Which is the only country asked to give anything up? Israel!'

This leads one to ask how can Israel talk to people who don't accept her existence? A minor point overlooked by Mr. Baker. Hamas has said repetedly it will never accept Israel's right to exist. Perhaps Sec. Baker has other forms of communication in mind.

The columnist also pointed out that Mr. Baker had long been under the employ of the Saudi Arabian government, as an advisor and in other functions. Essentially this makes him an advocate and spokesperson for big oil. However, no one is accusing Mr. Baker, a self-avowed friend of Israel, of bias. As has been written before, both Mr. Baker and former President Carter really believe they are Israel’s best friends. By forcing Israel to make difficult choices, and sacrifices, these two patronizing paternalistic neo-Chamberlains honestly think they are ultimately helping Israel. Sure, commentators say, linking the mess in Iraq to Israel and the Palestinian issue was a big help. It would take Stephen Hawkings to figure out how these two issues were related, but that didn't stop the brilliant former Sec. of State.

These two esteemed gentlemen have done everything but make the old trite statement “Some of my best friends are Jews.” Anyway, as Jews would say, “With friends like these who needs enemies?”

The Israeli military, however, is still undecided if Syria will or won’t go to war this summer. Some say yes, some say no. Is this double-speak? Some military analysts say that Syria wants to talk. These are people who favor Jim Baker’s position that the time is ripe to bring Syria back to the negotiating table. All Israel has to do is give up the Golan Heights.

Of course, that offer was made in the past by Israel and never taken off the table. Syria has yet to seriously consider negotiating any other way than looking down the barrel of a gun.

Some say that Hezbollah and Hamas will coordinate their military attacks the next time a war breaks out with Israel. Pundits believe this will won't happen until both of these radical Islamic fundamenatlist groups are better armed, and once Iran is ready to push the button on her nuclear weapon.

Maybe. But all is not lost. If somehow Iran can be disarmed, her leadership replaced, the clock turned back to allow Iran to return to some semblance of a normal Western-oriented regime, the middle east may get through this latest rough spot in history.

Back at the turn of the last century, British oil engineers were in Iran trying to develop the oil fields. One of the engineers was set upon by an angry mob stirred up by the local Imam as being a ‘devil.’ The man was beaten severely, and hospitalized. Then the mob came at him again, in the hospital, and killed him. At one point his body was dragged through the streets.

This was well before Khoumani and the 1979 Moslem revolution. If the pro-reform dissenters today were asked to show up in the streets of Iran, would there be enough to topple the government, or even hold a poker game? Or would the masses really be those same maniacs who killed the British engineer over a hundred years ago?

The problem is still the narrowmindedness, greed and selfishness not of the Arabs, but of the West, who kept coming back, looking for more oil, flooding the market, hindering the development of other forms of energy, or engines that dodn’t run on oil.

Had the West stayed home a hundred years ago, invested in a motor that doesn’t need oil, the world would be a different place today. And remember the basic internal combustion engine hasn’t changed in over 100 years. This in the age of micro-chips and nano technology. There apparently is still enough greed and selfishness to go around that can control the development of a technology that would erase the need for oil. Oil that is the mainsay of finances behind the fanatic Arab dream of world Islamic domination.

Like the Baker boys and the others with stultified ideas, new solutions are needed to the problems of the middle east, solutions that take weapons out of the hands of fanatics and fundamentalists, solutions that bring peace and prosperity and sanity. New ideas that open up new doors, not old ideas which didn’t work the last time they were forced on the world by arrogant politicians with hidden agendas.

Maybe what the world needs is a massive demonstration that says, like that character in Network, a popular political satire from the 1970’s, “We’re mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore.”

Short of that, you better get out your gas mask and Geiger counter.