On talking back to madmen
Among the excellent commentary exploring the meaning of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's genocidal reflections over the past week are two column that should be noted in addition to the items we posted over the week. The first is Victor Davis Hanson's NRO column on the vicious antipathy to Israel manifested by Ahmadinejad and others. VDH writes:
This week Iran hosted an international conference on Holocaust denial. The gathering was as bizarre as a bar out of Star Wars, a collection of every crackpot anti-Semite the world over, all there for a scripted, tightly controlled hatefest advertised as a “free” exchange of ideas unknown in Europe.Compare VDH's description of the Holocaust Denial Jamboree with Time's sickening verbal appeasement of Ahmadinejad in the interview below. And that is only VDH's opening paragraph. He has much more on Jimmy Carter, the Iraq Study Group and the Arab antipathy to Israel.
Caroline Glick's Jerusalem Post column also meditates on Ahmadinejad's Holocaust Denial Jamboree and explores some new avenues in understanding what Ahmadinejad is up to. She then concludes with thoughts on the joint press conference held by Angela Merkel and Ehud Olmert in Germany last week:
Now, after three years of disastrous negotiations with the mullahs, Germany has finally come around to supporting the European draft sanctions resolution against Iran being debated in the UN Security Council. The problem is that the proposed sanctions are so weak that they will have no impact on Iran's ability to move on with its nuclear bomb program.The obvious fact that the sanctions will have no impact on Iran has not made a dent in Merkel's refusal to support military action against Iran under any circumstances - a refusal she reiterated while standing next to Israel's prime minister on Tuesday.
Olmert was apparently too busy admitting that Israel has nuclear weapons only to take back his admission hours later, absurdly praising Russian President Vladimir Putin for his opposition to the "nuclearization of Iran" which Putin is actively promoting, and promising to give Judea and Samaria to Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas to take issue with Merkel's statement. And that is a pity, because by taking issue with it, he would have gone far towards destroying the effectiveness of Iran's Holocaust denial strategy.
Were Israel to base its diplomatic, military, informational and economic policies on a single-minded commitment to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities, it would succeed. Unfortunately, under the Olmert government Israel is doing nothing of the kind on any level.
On the public diplomacy level, were Israel to take concerted action against Iran's Holocaust denial program, it could destroy the program and so enact a positive change in the public discourse on Iran. Merkel's stated refusal to support military action against Iran's nuclear facilities was an ideal opportunity to launch such action. If Olmert had reacted in disgust to Merkel's statement and announced that it was unacceptable, he would have stood the Iranians' propaganda on its head.
Imagine what the impact would have been if Olmert had rejoined, "Excuse me, but it is quite possible that at the end of the day a military strike against Iran will be the only way to prevent Iran from acquiring atomic bombs and so committing another Holocaust. Given this, your blanket opposition to the notion of military strikes constitutes Germany's effective acceptance of another Holocaust. Shame on you, Angie. Shame on Germany."
Such a statement would have changed the entire dynamic of the international discourse on Iran.
