Sunday, March 11, 2012

Iran's real position on Israel


Supporters of Israel will not agree with Iran's position, but we'll remember Daniel Davies' observation that "good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance."

The idea that Iran intends or has threatened to attack Israel with nuclear weapons is just a lie. Netanyahu deliberately tells this lie because without these lies, his position, support for Zionism against the wishes of the people of the region, is incompatible with Western values.

But here are Khamenei's words. I highly recommend reading the speech in full.
The solution of the Islamic Republic to the issue of Palestine and this old wound is a clear and logical proposal that is based on political wisdom accepted by global public opinion and it has been presented in detail previously. We neither propose a classic war by the armies of Islamic countries, nor do we propose throwing Jewish immigrants into the sea or arbitration of the United Nations and other international organizations. We propose a referendum among the Palestinian people.

Just like any other nation, the Palestinian nation has the right to determine its own destiny and to elect its own government. All the original people of Palestine - including Muslims, Christians and Jews and not foreign immigrants - should take part in a general and orderly referendum and determine the future government of Palestine whether they live inside Palestine or in camps or in any other place.
White South Africans accepted majority Black rule because the long term trend turned against them. Long before Black people were able to effectively impose their will on White South Africans by force, that being a potential eventuality led White South Africans to reach an accommodation that ended their enforced political majority.

If the people of the Middle East, in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, UAE, Egypt and other current governments ruled effectively as colonies by pro-US dictators gain the accountability over their governments' policies, then Jewish people in Israel will accept non-Jewish rule for the same reasons.

The people of Palestine, if negotiations for a transition begin when the threat is still potential as they did in South Africa, would be flexible as Black South Africans were about the rights of what Khamenei calls "foreign immigrants".

The alternative is colonialism. When Barack Obama says the United States "will do what it takes to preserve Israel's qualitative military edge because Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat", he is saying he will do all he can to ensure that the 400 million non-Jews of Israel's region remain either under sanction, foreign-supported civil war or direct pro-US dictatorial rule indefinitely for the sake of fewer than six million Jewish people in that territory. A Black-skinned Cecil Rhodes and a true embarrassment to the human race.

5 comments:

Dermot Moloney said...

Arnold you are projecting your faults onto obama, it is you and the likes of lidia who is for certain oppressive rulers to be in power due to their position on israel.

So please spare us your false sympathy for these people which you do not care about.

I should also add that this entire thesis of yours was easily debunked ( as clearly shown by the way you were unable to defend it) 

N. Friedman said...

Jews will not, and with good historical reason, submit to being a minority group in an Arab polity - never. This is not South Africa and the Jews, who suffered under Christian and Muslim rule for centuries - never once being treated as equals in any Arab country - will not give in to the demand that it cease to be as a national entity. They would take down the entire Arab world first.

At least you might have the honor, in your obsession with Israel, to understand that the legitimate national rights of the Jewish people, something you dismiss with your phoney anti-colonialist nonsense.

Sineva said...

The big problem with this argument which I`m sure you know very well but just don`t give a shit about is that the "legitimate national rights of the Jewish people" as you call them come at the expense of not just the legitimate national rights of the palestinian  people,that would be bad enough, but at their most basic human rights.If
Israel can only exist by denying others the most basic of rights,indeed
the same rights that Israelis take for granted,then it does not deserve to exist and I would go further and say it does not have any right to exist in this day in age

N. Friedman said...

 Sineva writes: "The big problem with this argument which I`m sure you know very well but just don`t give a shit about is that the "legitimate national rights of the Jewish people" as you call them come at the expense of not just the legitimate national rights of the palestinian  people,that would be bad enough, but at their most basic human rights."

That, to me, is a confused statement. Jews returned to their ancestral homeland and had as much right to be in the country as any other group and to act politically as well, favoring their own, just as Arab groups favored their own. We have the same fight in the US, with people taking the view that Hispanics are not in the US legitimately - the same argument made by Arabs during the period before Israel came to be.

No group came to what is now Israel wholly innocently although, as is well known - see, e.g. Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows - Jews bought most, if not all, of the land they lived on until the time of the 1948 war. The leaders of the Palestinian Arabs took the position, early on, that only Arabs have such rights. They also issued decrees calling for the death of those Arabs who sold land to Jews - thus suggesting that Arab sentiment regarding the presence of Jews being in the country legitimately could not have been wholly negative.

The negative position held by the Arab leadership was foolish and, in the end, to the demise of Arab dominance in the country.  They attacked Jews, as in the Hebron massacre in 1929 - killing Jews with families in the country from before the original Arab invasion. Until that point, Jews were largely willing to make common cause with Arabs. After that, things became more difficult.

Common cause that recognizes the legitimate presence of Jews in the ancestral home of the Jewish people might be, someday, a solution. However, we have nonsense spouted by some that only Arabs are legitimately in the country, as if only plants with long roots have rights.

As I see the matter, it is the Arab side which has refused its own best interests by making overblown demands. That goes all the way back to al-Husayni himself who did all he could to prevent a compromise, as he thought Jews were, as humans, inferior - a common view among Arabs.

steve70638 said...

"
White South Africans accepted majority Black rule because the long term trend turned against them. "

Not exactly.  White South Africans accepted Black rule once they became assured by Mandela that their rights would respected.  Now, in South Africa, whites and blacks can live side by side in peace, just as Jews and Muslims can live side by side in peace in the west and in Israel (yeah, that is right).  The ANC didn't make crazy demands for return of homelands from the whites.  The ANC gave a general amnesty for past transgressions because they knew that would be unproductive.  When the Palestinians show that they can live in peace with Israel and actually have Jews and Christians living within their nation in peace, they too will have sovereignty.  Not before.