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 mushroom clouds over New York? What image has the terrifying power of that 
 one? Why, genocide of course! The conscious, evil, extermination of a whole 
 people---in this case a people regarded by many American evangelical 
 Christians as God's Chosen People, whose miraculous reestablishment of a 
 state in the twentieth century fulfilled biblical prophecy and whose state 
 indeed augurs the yearned-for Second Coming of Christ. This genocide issue 
 looks like the ideal issue to get the American people on board a massive, 
 likely nuclear, assault on Iran. 
  
 In December, following lots of discussion in Israel on this issue, outgoing 
 U.S. UN Ambassador John Bolton called on the UN International Court of 
 Criminal Justice to charge Ahmadinejad with "inciting genocide." "It's time 
 to take action," Bolton told a Conference of Presidents of Major American 
 Jewish Organizations symposium. "We're being given early warning, 
 unambiguously, on what his intentions are." There was apparently no doubt 
 in Bolton's mind that Iran wants to kill all Israelis. (For the record, 
 Bolton has in the past asserted confidently that Cuba's widely admired 
 pharmaceutical research projects are actually a front for the development 
 of biological weapons. The State Department itself, embarrassed and 
 acknowledging no evidence for this claim, had to shut him up.) 
  
 Also last December, former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Party leader 
 Benjamin Netanyahu summoned seventy foreign diplomats in Israel to a 
 meeting to pressure them to join Israel in efforts to stop Iran's nuclear 
 program. According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the 
 meeting was "the first event in an international public relations campaign. 
 It will include a proposal to file a complaint in the International Court 
 of Justice against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for war crimes, 
 and his plans to commit genocide will be presented." 
  
 "We must cry Gevalt before the entire world," declared Netanyahu. (Gevalt: 
 a Yiddish expression of shock or dismay.) "In 1938, Hitler didn't say he 
 wanted to destroy [the Jews]; Ahmadinejad is saying clearly that this is 
 his intention, and we aren't even shouting. At least call it a crime 
 against humanity. We must make the world see that the issue here is a 
 program for genocide." 
  
 But Netanyahu (like Gen. Tira) is probably much more concerned about 
 American public opinion than that of "the world." He knows that the average 
 American hearing the official Israeli case, ill-equipped to challenge its 
 vilifying assumptions, might actually be inclined to embrace it. Ignorance 
 and fear are excellent allies here, and should be countered with some 
 rational presentation of historical fact, the neocon propagandists' great 
 enemy. 
  
 Most Americans do not suspect, for example, that Hizbollah (which Israel 
 tried in vain to destroy last summer) is a popular political party in 
 Lebanon, where it represents the Shiite population and is respected for the 
 efficient social services it provides. It emerged as a resistance movement 
 among the Shiites in the south after the Israeli invasion of 1982. 
 (Initially, many Shiites had actually welcomed the Israelis, since they 
 were targeting the PLO at a time of considerable conflict between 
 Palestinian refugees and the Lebanese. But the occupying troops were deeply 
 hated, and resistance mounted.) 
  
 Most Americans don't know that in the last parliamentary election Hizbollah 
 and its allies won 27% of the total seats. It had ministers in the Lebanese 
 cabinet before withdrawing them recently in protest of the U.S.-backed 
 prime minister's policies. It has radio and television stations. Hizbollah 
 is widely credited with forcing the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 
 2000, and can attract hundreds of thousands, even a million protesters to 
 demonstrate in a country of 3.8 million. It has forged an alliance with 
 General Michel Aoun, a Christian military leader who once fought against 
 Syrian forces and now heads a mainly Christian political party. Netanyahu 
 knows that few Americans think about these things when they hear him 
 describe Hizbollah as a "terrorist organization." 
  
 Nor do most Americans know much about the Palestinian organizations that 
 Iran supports with office space, funds, or weapons. They've probably heard 
 of Hamas, but have no idea whether it's Shiite-based (and thus connected to 
 Iran religiously), or Sunni and less influenced ideologically by Iran. (It 
 is Sunni.) They may not realize that Hamas grew up in opposition to the 
 Palestinian Liberation Organization (once categorized as a "terrorist" 
 organization by the U.S. but later recognized by Israel---and funded by the 
 U.S. and other countries--- in the form of the "Palestinian Authority") and 
 are widely seen as more honest, capable and pious than the PLO politicians 
 widely associated with corruption, inefficiency and secularism. They may 
 not realize that Hamas handily won the last Palestinian elections, which 
 were fair and fairly reflected the sentiments of the Palestinian people. 
  
 They may not sense a contradiction between President Bush's rhetoric about 
 "democracy in the Middle East" and his government's refusal to accept a 
 democratically elected government in Palestine. They may not know that 
 Hamas called and maintained a ceasefire with Israel for 16 months before 
 June 2006 (when Israeli artillery shells killed seven Palestinians, 
 including three children, at a family picnic on a crowded Gaza beach). And 
 they certainly know little of the histories of other Iran-backed 
 Palestinian organizations. That makes them easy targets for anti-Muslim 
 disinformation campaigns in general. 
  
 Most Americans are sheltered from news reports about Palestinian life under 
 Israeli occupation, or in the vast prison-camp of Gaza. They are 
 conditioned to perceive Arab and Muslim hostility to Israel as a reflection 
 of anti-Semitism and religious animosity and intolerance, rather than 
 understandable reaction to the historical experience of Palestinian 
 displacement and abuse, repeated Israeli attacks on Lebanon, continued 
 construction of illegal Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank, 
 annexation of the Golan Heights, etc. They are inclined to believe that 
 Israel, as a "democracy," is America's natural ally in the Middle East, 
 while many American Christians are convinced that its very existence is in 
 fulfillment of biblical prophesy. Netanyahu understands all this, basking 
 in the glow of the evangelicals' adulation and perhaps marveling at their 
 gullibility. 
  
 The American media has repeated ad infinitum the report that Ahmadinejad 
 has called for Israel to be wiped off the map. This matter-of-fact 
 acceptance of the validity of the quote has been a huge boon to the 
 vilifying warmongers. The Persian-language statement, which has now been 
 analyzed and translated by several western scholars, in fact makes no 
 reference to any map at all. 
 http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/jonathan_steele/2006/06/post_155.html 
  
 What Ahmadinejad said, quoting Ayatollah Khomeini (who died in 1989) was 
 that "the occupation of Jerusalem" will be "erased from the page of time." 
 The statement is a bit vague and in poetic language but makes no reference 
 to a map at all, to say nothing of genocide. Yet Bolton and Netanyahu want 
 us to read it as a clear intention that Ahmadinejad wants to destroy all 
 Jews! Ahmadinejad used the quote in a speech noting that the Soviet 
  
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 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)