IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to America this week to address the United Nations and found himself the center of an American media storm.
The Iranian president is routinely demonized in the United States for allegedly “denying the Holocaust” and calling for the “destruction of Israel.” Ahmadinejad has also been criticized for oppressing Iranian citizens, persecuting women and dissidents including members of the Bahai’ faith and homosexuals.
President Bush has used Ahmadinejad and Iran as a distraction to redirect American anger from the lies he used to justify invading Iraq and the increasing American casualties.
Columbia University and its president, Lee Bollinger, came under extreme criticism for inviting the Iranian president to address the faculty and students.
Disgraced former House Republican Majority Leader Newt Gingrich and other American politicians urged the university be punished by being denied federal and private funding.
Somewhere in all the frenzied American hyperbole, rhetoric and emotion is the brutal truth, truth brutalized by all forms of political opportunists who have distorted facts in order to promote their own agendas.
Ahmadinejad scored many points in his speech at Columbia on Monday, rebutting the charges and wondering aloud why American politicians are not held to the same standard when it comes to involvement in international war crimes, terrorism, oppression and the denial of free speech.
Though not a great speaker, Ahmadinejad clearly established himself as an Islamist, spending most of his initial remarks ruminating about religion and Islamic philosophy.
He did a poor job of responding to the harshest charges, but he did respond none-the-less and the accusations against him are not as clear-cut as his critics might have you believe.
Ahmadinejad unequivocally denied “denying the Holocaust” adding fuel to the charges that the accusation is less the result of his own words and more the result of media manipulation in the United States. Everyone knows the American mainstream news media is biased, unprofessional and one-sided.
The Iranian president acknowledged “five million” (rather than the six million) Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. But he said his main contention is the Holocaust is exploited to silence critics of Israel.
He did not name the list of victims, such as Norman Finklestein, who was forced from his job at DePaul University recently when he became the target of a hateful campaign of lies and distortion by Alan Dershowitz. Finklestein, the son of Holocaust survivors, criticized Israel’s defenders who silence criticism of Israel by hiding behind the Holocaust as an excuse.
Ahmadinejad was asked point-blank if he or his nation called for the “destruction of Israel.” He responded the way many Arabs and Muslims respond to Israel, arguing that although it was 60 years ago, an injustice was committed when Israel was created as a Jewish state at the expense of Christian and Muslim Palestinians who lost their homes, properties and rights.
Supporters of Israel have rejected these claims as being “anti-Semitic,” effectively denying Palestinians any rights to their pre-1948 lands and homes.
I understand Ahmadinejad’s position, although I do not agree with it. Palestinians must accept reality and negotiate on the basis of a compromise that accepts Israel’s existence in exchange for a Palestinian state in the lands occupied in 1967.
But extremist supporters of Israel, like Dershowitz, have rejected reasoned arguments, casting aspersions on anyone who argues Israel’s creation in 1948 caused a great injustice to all Palestinians.
What is the truth behind all these issues? Well, the truth is that this battle is not really about the rights of women in Iran, or the rights of the Bahai’s or even homosexuals in Iran. It’s not about the Holocaust or Israel destruction. It’s all about politics. On both sides.
Americans argue Iran has executed scores of Iranian civilians, but Ahmadinejad pointed out the United States leads the world in executions. He even argued there is no distinction between the method of executing the guilty — lethal injection, electrocution and hanging versus beheading.
In response to charges that Iran supports terrorism, Ahmadinejad rightly noted that the United States supported terrorism in Iran, backing the regime of former dictator Shah Reza Pahlavi. The Shah tortured and executed thousands of innocent civilians while the United States sat back and said nothing.
At the end of the controversial visit, Columbia University looked far worse than Ahmadinejad. Bollinger was unprofessional and even spiteful in his hypocritical attacks against Ahmadinejad. Bollinger used the controversy to bolster his own failing popularity.
In the end, the facts mean nothing. What really matters is the extent to which people will go to lie in order to advance their causes and deflect criticism from their own crimes.
Ahmadinejad may not be a champion of human freedom, but he sure makes a good point when he questions American hypocrisy.
American culture is driven by racism against people of color, and especially against Arabs and Muslims. They would believe the lies they have never heard but only read in the biased, one-sided mainstream American media, rather than accept the truth of words said to their faces.
Ahmadinejad stood up to his biased American detractors, although clearly, he was not the most talented person to speak out on the issue of exposing hypocrisies.
Each side is guilty of hypocrisies in their own different ways.
— Ray Hanania is an award winning columnist and author, and can be reached at www.hanania.com
