[Mb-civic] FW: Palestinians Give 'Thumbs Up' to Iranian President's View and more

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 10:58:59 -0500
Subject: Palestinians Give 'Thumbs Up' to Iranian President's View and more

> Palestinians Give 'Thumbs Up' to Iranian President's View
> December 31, 2005
> Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting
> IRNA News
> http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0512315394133955.htm
> <http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0512315394133955.htm>
> 
> Damascus -- Palestinians share Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's view
> that Israel cannot co-exist with other nations in the region, said a senior
> Palestinian official Friday. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's view is
> based on historical realities, the representative of the Popular Front for the
> Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Mahir al-Tahir, added.
> 
> At an international conference held in the Iranian capital Tehran in late
> October, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be "wiped
> off the map." The conference was titled `World without Zionism'.
> 
> The president, who said in his speech that Israel was an illegitimate regime
> and, therefore, had no legal standing, also questioned why Palestinians should
> be the ones punished for alleged atrocities committed against Jews in Europe.
> 
> Adding insult to injury, he argued, "the west continues to ignore the daily
> slaughter of Palestinian people who are totally defenseless."
> 
> He also criticized brokers and supporters of a peace process that is aimed at
> striking a peace deal with Israel, maintaining that any deal struck with
> Israel would be of no value as the brokers want to establish peace at the
> expense of the Palestinians who would have to give up their homeland, rights
> and sovereignty over the holy sites.
> 
> He stressed that the Palestinian nation will never give up their rights by
> giving up their arms.
> 
> Iranian President Ahmadinejad also expressed doubts over the Holocaust (the
> massacre of millions of Jews in Naxi concentration camps in Europe) and urged
> countries which sympathize with alleged Jewish victims to give some of their
> territories to Israel so it can establish a new venue.
> 
> His statements were the focus of a news conference he gave in the Saudi
> Arabian city of Mecca in early December on the sidelines of a conference of
> heads of state of Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
> 
> The president pointed out that "certain European countries would have the
> world go with their stand that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in
> furnaces and have passed laws punishing anyone who says anything to the
> contrary." 
> 
> "Granting without accepting that the Holocaust did occur, our question to the
> Europeans is: `If innocent Jews were indeed butchered by Hitler, why should
> Palestinians be made to pay the cost in order to seek redress for the
> occupiers of Jerusalem?" he said as further quoted in the news conference.
> Germany "Confronts" Ahmadinejad
> December 30, 2005
> Transatlantic Intelligencer
> Matthias Kuntzel
> http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20736
> <http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20736>
> 
> In pondering the behavior of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I cannot help but think of
> the 500,000 plastic keys that Iran imported from Taiwan during the Iran-Iraq
> War of 1980-88. At the time, an Iranian law laid down that children as young
> as 12 could be used to clear mine fields. Before every mission, a plastic key
> would be hung around each of the children’s necks. It was supposed to open for
> them the gates to paradise.
> 
> The “child-martyrs” belonged to the so-called “Basij” movement created by the
> Ayatollah Khomeini. The Basij Mostazafan – the “mobilization of the oppressed”
> – were volunteers of all ages that embraced death with religious enthusiasm.
> They provided the model for the first Hezbollah suicide bombers in Lebanon. To
> this day, they remain a kind of SA of the Islamic revolution. Sometimes they
> serve as a “vice squad”, monitoring public morals; sometimes they rage against
> the opposition – as in 1999, when they were used to break the student
> movement. At all times, they celebrate the cult of self sacrifice.
> 
> Ahmadinejad forms part of the first generation of Basiji militants and still
> today he is often to be seen wearing a Basiji uniform. He would like to bring
> about a renaissance of the Basiji culture of the 1980s – in order, among other
> things, to combat the burgeoning Western-oriented youth movement that has, for
> instance, given rise to some 700,000 weblogs in the last years. Thus
> Ahmadinejad made a personal appeal this year for Iranians to participate in
> the annual “Basiji Week” that took place in late November. According to a
> report in the newspaper Kayan, some 9 million Basiji heeded the call, “forming
> a human chain some 8,700 kilometers long in which President Ahmadinejad also
> took part. In Tehran alone, some 1,250,000 people were mobilized.” (Cited in
> Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, „Bassiji: die revolutionäre Miliz des Iran“, on MEMRI
> Deutschland.) Ahmadinejad used the occasion to praise the “Basij culture and
> the Basij power” with which “ Iran today makes its presence felt on the
> international and diplomatic level”. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Chair of the
> Guardian Council, went so far as to describe the very existence of Iran’s
> nuclear program as “a triumph of the young people who serve the Basij movement
> and possess the Basiji-psyche and Basiji-culture.” He added: “We need an army
> of 20 million Basiji. Such an army must be ready to live for God, to die along
> the way of God, and to conduct Jihad, in order to please God.”
> 
> Is the Iranian population being thus prepared for the announced nuclear war
> against Israel? Three years ago, the then Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani
> explained that a single atom bomb used against Israel “would leave nothing on
> the ground”, whereas the damage done by a possible retaliatory strike would be
> limited (source: MEMRI Special Dispatch, 3 January 2002). Even with a million
> dead, the Islamic world would survive, whereas Israel would be destroyed. Thus
> the logic of Rafsanjani’s argument. It is this murderous calculation – the
> sort of calculation that lies at the base of every suicide attack – that
> distinguishes the atomic ambitions of Iran from the interests of all existing
> nuclear powers. 
> 
> If there is a western nation today that has the means to confront such madness
> with effective sanctions, it is Germany. For the last 25 years, the German
> government has offered its good offices to the anti-Semitic Mullahs in Tehran
> with a shamelessness unrivalled by any other western government. In 1984,
> Hans-Dietrich Genscher was the first western Foreign Minister to pay his
> respects to the Mullah regime. Ten years later, Germany’s federal intelligence
> service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), trained Iranian intelligence
> agents in Munich. (See Arthur Heinrich, “Zur Kritik des ‘kritischen Dialogs’”,
> Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, May 1996.) And whereas since
> 1995 American firms are prohibited from trading with Iran, Germany will, in
> the words of Werner Schoeltzke of the German Near and Middle East Association,
> , “remain the preferred technology partner of Iran also in the years to come”
> (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 5 December 2003).
> 
> Germany is today by far the most important supplier of goods to Iran and its
> exports are increasing at a steady 20% per year. In 2004, German exports to
> Iran were worth some €3.6 billion. At the same time, Germany is the most
> important purchaser of Iranian goods apart from oil and Iran’s most important
> creditor. 
> 
> Since, however, Ahmadinejad provided the world with such a stark reminder of
> the ideological foundations of the Mullah-dictatorship – Holocaust denial,
> anti-Semitism, and the destruction of Israel – Berlin is in a tight spot. On
> the one hand, Berlinwould not like to put in danger Germany’s special
> relationship with Tehran. On the other hand, it does not look particularly
> good when the country from which came the Holocaust practitioners now
> collaborates with the regime of the Holocaust deniers. On 11 December,
> Germany’s new deputy Chancellor, Franz Müntefering of the SPD, indicated the
> way out of this dilemma: “Berlin Demands a ‘Reaction’ to Ahmadinejad” ran the
> headline in the following day’s edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
> (12 December 2005). This sounded surprisingly forceful. But whoever read the
> small type quickly understood the actual meaning of the headline: “ Berlin
> demands a ‘reaction’ to Ahmadinejad from everyone else”. The deputy Chancellor
> was cited as follows: “We cannot do it alone. Rather this has to be frankly
> discussed in the framework of the European Community and it must in the
> clearest possible terms be discussed in the framework of the United Nations”.
> 
> Excuse me? Germany can do nothing on its own? Only the German government can
> abrogate the 2002 investment agreement between German and Iran. Only Berlin
> can terminate the “Hermes” export credit guarantees that offer Iran advantages
> beyond almost any other country. As a consequence of the “Hermes” guarantees,
> the German state takes over all the specific risks connected with exports to
> Iran. Already in 1992, exports to Iran enjoyed the second highest level of
> Hermes guarantees after only Russia, and since then their scope has been
> continually increased. To bring an end to the privileges that the
> Mullah-dictatorship thus enjoys is entirely possible, though evidently
> politically unwanted. Müntefering’s uncompromising rhetoric is just the
> musical accompaniment to “business as usual”. Thus whereas the German
> government speaks impressively at the EU summit of sending “a clear signal of
> the sharpest possible disapproval”, in the Bundestag it speaks sheepishly “of
> avoiding the isolation [of Iran]”.
> 
> And what of Germany’s “Left” opposition? Should we not assume that privileging
> the most elementary human rights over the interests of the big corporations
> would be a special concern of the “Greens” or the “the Left” alliance? Far
> from it. Apart from some few exceptions, the “Left” has not been prepared to
> allow the Holocaust denier from Tehran to deprive it of its conspiracy
> theories and rage against “BuSharon”. “If the Iranian President Ahmadinejad
> did not exist,” writes, for example, the Berlin-based “Green” daily Die
> Tageszeitung (taz), “the USA and Israel would have had to invent him” (15
> December 2005). Ahmadinejad’s words are only to be taken seriously inasmuch as
> they “provide a welcome pretext for the USA and Israel.”
> 
> Thus, on 16 December 2005, all the parties represented in the German Bundestag
> united to pass a resolution – including not a single word about the
> German-Iranian special relationship – applauding the Müntefering line: “The
> German Bundestag welcomes that the German government has stood up to the
> remarks of the Iranian President.” Yes indeed: Bravo and many more such
> successes! Given the obvious solicitude for the requirements of German
> industry, it would not surprise me if Ahmadinejad ordered his next batch of
> plastic keys for his Basiji from Germany. But will 500,000 keys to paradise be
> enough for the war against Israel?
> 
> Translated from the German by Transatlantic Intelligencer
> Administration Outlines 2006 Foreign Policy Goals
> December 31, 2005
> WSTM-TV, 
> wstm.com
> http://www.wstm.com/Global/story.asp?S=4304411&nav=2aKD
> <http://www.wstm.com/Global/story.asp?S=4304411&nav=2aKD>
> 
> The Bush administration will be looking to 2006 for the fulfillment of its
> foreign policy goals. Building on a mission that dominated U-S foreign
> interests this year, the administration hopes Iraq will continue to build an
> adequate security force. The Pentagon says future opportunities to draw down
> American units in Iraq are directly related to the fortification of Iraqi
> security forces and their ability to combat insurgents.
> 
> The new year is also expected to bring new efforts by U-S diplomats to lure
> Israelis and Palestinians back to the table for more peace talks.
> 
> The State Department is also hoping that the nuclear programs of both North
> Korea and Iran can be harnessed through diplomacy.



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