No, it doesn’t; it puts the cart before the horse. Those speeches were propaganda speeches and based on distorted “facts.” They were based on Israel being the enemy and not that Israel’s actions caused this animosity.
It sure does put the cart before the horse if we’re not willing to take what the Iranian government says at face value; I can’t argue that. But if we selectively decide that we will take what some governments say is the cause of their complaints at face value and not others, then we’re just trading opinions, not answering factual questions on official policy.
Incidentally, Iran’s complaints about certain Israeli policies aren’t that different from most of Europe’s. The US is decidely in the minority of Israeli-backing states, and asking what Iran’s problem (specifically Iran, to the exclusion of all of the other countries who make very similar complaints) with Israel is here probably seems a bit strange outside of the US.
If the majority isn’t allowed to run for the minority seats, this hardly seems discriminitory in context. In fact, there’s a legit argument to be made that that’s rather democratic. Consider that in first-past-the-post purely geographical districting scheme like we have in the US, there are minority groups in who number in the millions (Libertarians, Greens, Muslims, atheists, etc.) who are unlikely to ever get seats in Congress.
And let’s not forget that any (even semi-) authoritarian government wanting to keep power always finds it very useful to have an outside enemy to rally the people against. “Yes, why you have no freedom and are poor is a very good question. The answer is simple: It’s Israel’s fault.” or whatever the Persian translation is of “In these times of conflict, we all need to support our leaders, and avoid unpatriotic and unGodly opposition to their policies.”
I’m fairly ignorant of the details of the region’s politics, but I suspect after using Iraq as the designated enemy for many years, Iran’s leaders are more interested in an enemy a little farther away that won’t start a war that cuts off their oil exports. And Israel, being different, is easier to demonize.
Not to mention that Israel makes it kind of easy to hate them when they bulldoze houses with women and children still inside, and kill peaceful protesters by driving over them.
I don’t want to get into GD, but you’ve fallen victim to Arab propaganda, such as the Jenin massacre and protestors being driven over. It turns out that “protestor,” who was a member of a Palestinian solidarity outfit, was not driven over, as the photos so kindly submitted by the PA suggested. Israel did bulldoze houses which were residences of known terrorists. It was deemed necessary to do so to prevent families from housing them, but it changed its course when it found that for the few incidents that might’ve prevented, it wasn’t worth it. But Israel always gave notice and time for the residents to leave.
For the bulldozer incident, see http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/Bulldozer_Accident.asp and http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/Rachel_Corrie3_Continued.asp
For the Jenin “massacre” see http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/UN_Report_on_Jenin.asp; http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/BBCs_Blunder_of_the_Week.asp and http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/UN_Report_on_Jenin.asp
For the killing of innocent civilians see http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/Media_Rubble_in_Gaza.asp
And I can link you to many other sites showing the media bias against Israel due to the fact that the media gets most of its info from Arab sources.
Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.
These Iranian postage stamps kind of say a lot.
One
Two
The message is obvious. Jews control the sacred land on which the Al-Aqsa Mosque sits. This must be changed.
Since these are images made by the Iranian government with the idea that they would be mass produced and widely disseminated, I think it’s fair to say this represents the way the IRI wants to be seen by the world. Iran has made a shit-load more stamps with the same theme, but I think you get the idea.
Notice also these stamps were made during the Iran-Iraq war. Even during the war, the U.S. and Israel were considered the main enemies by the Iranian government.
In the Iranian media it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. The “zionist regime” is often described as a puppet of the US, while the US is often said to be under control of zionists.
Then there is this. This is supposed to be a commemoration of World Children’s Day.
Now that’s something I’d certainly like to see! Which media are we talking about here? This sounds an awful lot like the ol’ “Jews control the media” line.
A bit of irony perhaps? I mean, suggesting that Arabs (and for the umpteenth time Iranians aren’t Arabs…) are secretly manipulating the media behind the scenes to sinister purpose is… let’s see, there’s a word for this… um… Arabs are Semites, and, therefore, uh… golly, it’s anti-Semetic!
Apparently the IDF has been handing out candy and flowers in occupied towns, and we’ve all been hoodwinked.
Of course any government can label anyone from a non-governmental armed group who resists them “terrorists,” which is less a description of what they do (is anyone better at terrorizing than an organized army?) than a descripton of their stateless status. Regardless, pretty much the rest of the world outside of the US feels a sense of outrage at a policy of bulldozing a neighborhood to punish individuals who may live there. especially when the people being evicted are still basically stateless, likely unemployed, have been relocated in many cases many times previously and are poor. Some places like Iran are more vocal and militant about their opposition, and are in a position to not be intimidated so easily. That doesn’t make their position on the issue outside of world opinion, but I imagine that does make them stand out as threats to some Americans.
If we took out a city block in poor neighborhoods every time someone was suspected of being a drug dealer (which spreads harm and death in our society), I think the rest of the world - I hope the rest of the world - would take a dim view of us for it. Collective punishment along ethnic lines of this sort was supposed to have been passe decades ago, and ironically I believe Israel was created in hopes of saving one group of people from exactly that sort of thing.
A poor analogy.
Punishing drug dealers is a police action, carried out against one own’s citizens. It’s an internal problem. Israel, on the other hand, is at war with the Palestinians. They are an extarnal problem, and are thus the prvence of the military, who do not have legal enforcement powers. We have no interest in punishing the Palestinians, we mean to protect ourselves from them, which is not the same thing. Destroying entire neighbourhoods (and how many times has Israel destroyed an entire neighbourhood, I ask you? Cite please) in times of war is very common - the U.S. has done it several times over the last few years. Whether or not someone has a government or a state is not relevant to the fact that we can still declare war on them. Wars are between nations, and nations are groups of people. No land is neccessary.
You want to hear something else? All war is collective punishment. You bomb a city, you blockade a port, you blow up a bridge, that’s collective punishment. It’s not fair, but that’s how it works.
And one more thing - ethnic conflicts, unfortunately, are not a thing of the past. They’re more common today than they’ve ever been. In fact, I’d call them the wave of the future.
During the Iran-Iraq war, I recall reading about some limited backdoor cooperation between Israel and Iran, based on the principle of TEOMEIMF.
Anyone else remember anything like this?
Israel was tangled up in the whole Iran-Contra affair and among other things helped funnel Hawk anti-aircraft and TOW anti-tank missles to Iran.
- Tamerlane
Splitter!
General Questions is for questions with factual answers.
Politics rarely has factual answers.
I’ll move this to Great Debates.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
The same reason Israel hates Iran, Palestine hates Israel, Israel hates Palestine, bla bla bla bla. It’s religious and idealistic differences. Wars over religion and “rights” to certain pieces of land have gone through the ages and involve almost every religion I can think of in some form or another. This is just another conflict like that.
Including atheism. The whole Marxist struggle is based on it.
I would mention it only for the sake of rejecting it. No good ever comes of whole countries holding grudges. There are too many historical scores to settle. From the Iranians’ POV, they still owe America for orchestrating the 1953 coup that removed the elected Prime Minister Mossadegh and restored the Shah to absolute power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax All we can do is hope that, someday, somehow, they’ll forget about it.
Cite? I mean, what proof is there that Iran wants to be a regional hegemon?
So Israel (acting in concert with the U.S., or at least with the Reagan Administration) has helped Iran arm itself. Strange bedfellows indeed! I wonder if those weapons are still in service – and might be used on Israeli bombers or American troops in the near future.
Well, the Hawk/Improved Hawk batteries are still listed in their inventory and supposedly one of the places they are defending is Bushehr ( site of Iran’s best known nuclear facility ), so it would not be out of the realm of possibility. However the last shipment of those missles was reportedly in 1986, so barring black market supplies of parts ( which is possible ) they may be getting a bit elderly at this point.
- Tamerlane
If we accept war-as-collective-punishment and you accept Israel as being at war with Palestinians, I should think the next logical step would be to consider suicide bombing as a fairly well acceptable means of carrying out that war, not an act of terrorism outside of normal boundaries of behavior that requires taking out the house of the family of the perpetrator. And I wouldn’t expect people to start thinking of war as being completely lawless and without bounds, which is why we have the Geneva Conventions, the World Court etc.
The claim that Palestinians aren’t citizens making mine a poor analogy is resting on some shaky ground, in that the Israeli military is occupying and to large extents controlling the Palestinian population with the intnet of a least some of its citzens to annex parts of that territory, but likely without granting citizenship to certain of the people living there based upon their religious/ethnic identity. That the Israeli government is loathe to make these people citizens is hardly an argument that the military and government aren’t responsible for what they do with them.
This is quite a good example of how people in legal limbo that the Isreali government wants control over without extending citizenship to can get their houses taken out while in a Kafkaesque official situation.
Yes, the US itself has frequently used excessive force to take out whole neighborhoods of innocents under the banner of war (Panama City being an excellent example). I’m against that as well, more so in fact because as a US citizen I’m responsible for that. To a lesser extent I’m also responsible for Israeli actions because of the military, financial and diplomatic assistance we give the country.
As far as taking out entire neighborhoods:
There are photos there not only of what appear to be quite large areas of rubble, but also captioning indicating that some houses are being cleared to make way for the Berlin-style retaining wall under construction.
In case we discount this out of hand because it’s the website of an Arab, you may want to take a look at the extensive website of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, which documents the razing of houses, neighborhoods and even crops and farmland, orchards (I believe uprooting trees is even specifically banned in Jewish law during wartime, is it not?) and so on.
How anyone thinks that making people who were all under a lot of stress to begin with homeless will lessen terror attacks is beyond me.