Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been on quite a roll lately, continuing to enrich uranium for possible use in nuclear weaponry, and launching a battalion of political and cultural missiles. He told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the WW II Holocaust - in which six million Jews died at the hands of German Nazi captors - may have actually been a made-up excuse to keep the Germans feeling guilty and to propel formation of a Middle Eastern homeland for Jews. That would be Israel, of course, the nation Ahmadinejad has said is a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped from the face of the earth." Currently Iran is hosting a cartoon exhibition on the Holocaust, redolent with anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic themes. In a recent visit to Tehran, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, in accordance with concerns raised by the American Jewish Committee, objected to the Holocaust cartoon exhibition. But to no end. Fair enough. Let the works be judged on their merits, and the thoughtfulness of the responses - as was the case with the Danish cartoons prompting months-delayed, stage-managed outrage from Islamicist zealots.

Ahmadinejad is also hoping to his regime will hold a conference in Iran on the Holocaust, including revisionist takes that it is all a myth, or at least "greatly exaggerated." And what campaign of autocratic lunacy is complete without dark mutterings of an academic purge? Ahmadinejad is urging Iranian students to mount a campaign for removal of secular and liberal university professors, who of course would not subscribe to his blatant anti-Semitism and hatred for Israel.

The proper laissez-faire response to the cartoons should also guide the broader reaction to Ahmadinejad's mounting public relations offensive against Jews, secular academics in Iran, the state of Israel and the reality of the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad's Jew-baiting is best ignored.

In a New York Times op-ed (free reg. req.), Poet and memoirist Roya Hakakian writes that growing up Jewish in Iran (formely known as Persia), she learned that:

...one could, by wit or by wisdom, overcome every bigot. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric about the Holocaust may terrify people who don’t know Iran. But those who do, find it, above all, tragic. By resuscitating symbols like the swastika and other Nazi-era relics, he is contaminating the Iranian social realm, where such concepts have scarcely existed. No doubt Jews have been mistreated in Iran throughout their long history, but to a degree incomparable to that suffered by Russian and European Jews.

...Water fountains and toilets at my high school were segregated, some marked with signs that read “For Muslims Only.” But by and large, Iranians were not receptive to such bigotry. We crisscrossed among the stalls until the signs became meaningless. The post-revolutionary regime has had the misfortune of ruling a people reluctant to embrace its radical message. That is why Iran remains home to the second-largest community of Jews in the Middle East — second only to Israel.

Ahmadinejad's domestic agenda also seems suffused with unreality - it includes interest-free government loans to newlyweds for apartment security deposts; forced minimum wage hikes that have driven small manufacturers out of business; and envisioned privatization of state industries with proceeds supposedly to be distributed to the populace. Quite the failing socialist welfare state; it would appear - and the natives are restless, as the Indian Express reports.

Ahmadinejad's nuttery may give ideological succor to jihadists doing Iran's bidding in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, but they've pretty much bought the package already. Methinks 'ol Mahmoud just wants the ink. One wonders to what extent Ahmadinejad's bid to develop nuclear weaponry is also a cry for attention, and status. If and when he develops an itchy trigger finger, he should remember this: you don't f*** with Israel.

In one Seattle Times op-ed earlier this year, Iranian native and Seattle-area writer Faye Farhang buttresses Hakakian's argument in the NYT that most Iranians don't share the anti-Semitism of (what Farhangs terms) the nation's "self-elected leaders." In another Seattle Times op-ed a month later, Farhang suggests Ahmadinejad can categorically not be trusted to honor any negotiated pledges to use nuclear technology for purely non-military purposes. Farhang urges a bottom-up swell within Iran for democracy, nimbly assisted by the U.S. and Western allies. Much, much easier said than done at this point - true. But if Ahmadinejad and the Mad Mullahs who pull his puppet strings keep playing true to form, the effort could launch sooner rather than later.

TECHNORATI TAGS: IRAN, AHMADINEJAD, HOLOCAUST, CONFERENCE, JEWS, ISRAEL, CARTOONS, ANTI-SEMITISM, IRANIAN JEWS, ROYA HAKAKIAN, FACULTY, NUCLEAR WEAPONS, NEGOTIATIONS, DEMOCRACY, FAYE FARHANG

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 5, 2006 11:28 AM