Iran report of Holocaust-style badges questioned

by **AlicetheCurious** » Sun May 21, 2006 3:35 am

That National Post article is a disgrace; the inflammatory headline and opening paragraphs (on the rag's first page!!!) are contradicted by a couple of ass-covering sentences buried at the end of the piece. First, it was Iraqi soldiers grabbing newborn babies out of incubators and throwing them on the floor, now it's the Iranian "Fourth Reich". Disgusting. Speaking of which, Sepka, notwithstanding your pretentions of being a rational, skeptical "debunker", when it comes to the most outrageous libels against Arabs and Muslims, based on the flimsiest of evidence, you betray the gullibility of a young child...

by **havanagilla** » Sun May 21, 2006 4:01 am

<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/717935.html">www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/717935.html</a> Digg It! new Canada's National Post retracts report that Iranian Jews w ill be forced to wear yellow patches By Yossi Melman For a few hours on Friday, many around the world were ready to believe a report in the media that Iran had decided that Jews living there would be forced to wear a yellow strip of material on their clothing to denote their religion. Leaders of international Jewish organizations were quick to respond, and likened the decision to the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany. Advertisement Yesterday, after it emerged that the report had been false, the affair of "the yellow patch that wasn't" left us with one lesson: The world is ready to believe anything when it comes to a country ruled by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The affair was sparked by a report Friday in Canada's National Post daily. According to the report, exiled Iranians had said that Jews in Iran (some 25,000 individuals) would be required to wear a yellow strip of material or yellow star on their clothing. Members of other faiths, the report said, would also require color identification - red badges for Christians and blue strips of cloth for Zoroastrians. As expected, the report was met with rage among human rights groups, and Jewish organizations in particular. Canadian Jewish Congress chairman Bernie Farber saying he was "stunned" by the report on the Iranian law. "We thought this had gone the way of the dodo bird, but clearly in Iran everything old and bad is new again," Farber said. "It's state-sponsored religious discrimination." Rabbi Marvin Hier, the executive president of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, was also quick to respond, and called on the UN secretary general to exert pressure to get the law abolished. For his part, Diaspora Museum chairman Leonid Nevzlin went as far as calling on Jews all around the world to don yellow patches in solidarity with the Jews of Iran. The report and the reactions spread like wildfire, and was quick to hit Web sites in Israel too. Serious news publications such as The New York Times, on the other hand, chose to ignore the affair pending further examination. The report emerged as false on Friday evening. Yes, the parliament in Tehran recently passed a law setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments" but it has never passed a decision to mark the country's Jewish citizens. According to Iran expert Meir Javedanfar, Tehran has yet to fix the dress code for Muslims in the country, let alone for minority ethnic groups. Several hours following its publication, the National Post retracted the article, and laid the blame for the story in the lap of veteran journalist and Iran analyst Amir Taheri. In the retraction, the National Post quoted the spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa, who said of the original report, "These kinds of slanderous accusations are part of a smear campaign against Iran by vested interests that need to be denounced at every step." The representative of the Jewish community in Iran's parliament also rejected the report. "[The Iranian president] has aroused a tense mood of hostility toward himself and toward Iran," Iran expert Javedanfar said.  "The Western world's readiness to accept without question this false accusation is an attempt to settle accounts with Ahmadinejad. It is as if the Western world was saying to him: Just as you are willing to be inaccurate when it comes to historical facts about the Holocaust, so we can pay you back in kind," Javedanfar continued. Bookmark to del.icio.us

by **havanagilla** » Sun May 21, 2006 4:07 am

this storm elicited some of the funniest backtalks in israel shame i can't translate. --- An aside - commentary this morning on Ulmert's visit to DC - the assessment is that Ulmert will be accepted politely but with a big NO to ALL his requests. Explanation - Bush administration is going under, and justly blames Israel for providing false intel on WMD-Iraq, and getting this administration to look bad and lose the war in Iraq, which was unnecessary to start with. As a result, the US will take NO actions against Iran in the foreseeable future. The US will not approve the Ulmert unilateral plan to withdraw, and will not agree to let Israel remain un-supervise as a nuclear superpower for long. end of the "good times." and to think I was born, raised and expoited, to unwittingly partake in such a bad war...makes you wonder if you want to live at all...

by **AlicetheCurious** » Sun May 21, 2006 5:33 am

Starroute, thanks for the list. I was not at all surprised by some of the names, although I did feel sad at Saadeddin Ibrahim's. I used to really admire the man's courage and outspokenness back when he was being persecuted by the Egyptian government. He was an outspoken human rights advocate, and a courageous exposer of corruption. I even made a point, when I ran into him, of shaking his hand and telling him how much I hoped and prayed he would be vindicated, that he was a hero. My respect turned to utter contempt when he became a media star after his release, and used his visibility to defend the US invasion of Iraq and to promote a highly hostile and distorted image of events in Egypt and the Middle East. The man has sacrificed the credibility and enormous respect he had among many here, to become a sock-puppet for the neocons. I don't know how he can stand himself. The name that did shock me was that of Ayman Nour, the charismatic, young candidate who challenged President Mubarak in the 2006 presidential elections and last week was sentenced to 7 years in prison, on what many say are trumped up charges of counterfeiting signatures to establish his party. Poor man. But if Saad eddin Ibrahim's experience is anything to go by, Nour will be released soon, to become a leading spokesman for the invasion of Iran (?)

by **havanagilla** » Sun May 21, 2006 6:06 am

AliceTC, its interesting to see your impressions from the Egyptian side, quite similar to the ISraeli and recently to that Somali immigrant who ended up as a Dutch MP, and now is moving to the USA to join a high profile NeoCOn (AEP) group. The left is in outrage and blames her for "selling out" to the "enemy". BUt really, what is the lesson we are ALL avoiding here, for too long ? To stand up to the villains is VERY costly, sometimes, its your life you give up or freedom, or any meaningful kind of living. However, the "left" (ahm ahm) is very good in writing blogs and writing the obituaries of the heros (casolero etc.). But what are the Left DOING for those who stand up and are persecuted, let me break the news to you NOTHING, more so, usually they are very picky and choosi and as DE puts it, "poking holes" at the credibility of the dissident who is human, god forbid. In worse cases, they just sell those people to the highest bidder, calling it - a savvy counterintel, and a "dirty war" to ward off the CIA in its own methods. -- Surely, what do you expect of those dissidents ? to commit a suicide so that RI has some topics for the next blog ? The lady in Holland raised a real hate storm here in Israel among the "oh so hypocrit" radical left. How is she doing it ? she is going to be the next condi rice, she is joining the bashers of HER people, but wait, if she stays in Holland, what awaits her? not only threats from Moslem fundies, but the dear left is very busy checking whether she meets the "party line" in every utterance she says. -- Same with Yossi Ulmert I was referring to here. He did what he could and was on the verge of going to PRISON or spending the rest of his life like ME, in destitude, miserable life, which is not better than death. On the other hand, he only has to sell out just a bit, and get THE WORLD. Do not judge, but you can only reflect on the failures of the left to stand up to its own people and to solidarity. -- Since I tasted that much in Canada, by the impotents called "radical left/human rights" groups, who were all too hapy to throw the potato when it was too hot to handle, If every asked for advice, tell ANY person in his right mind to join the Neo Con from day one. Because at least they deliver and and stick by in hard times to their people. Solidarity can save even a pack of pirates, in the eyes of God. (this is a Jewish instruction, that solidarity will cleanse piracy). -- So, until the people who preach solidarity demostrate some of what they preach, the bitching is pathetic.

by **4911** » Sun May 21, 2006 7:10 am

Blame yourselves. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=4911>4911</A> at: 5/21/06 5:53 am

by **AlicetheCurious** » Sun May 21, 2006 8:49 am

Hava, 4911, you are so right. But in all fairness, we have to look at WHY heroes are usually left alone to face the shitstorm... Because ideology and politics are not the kind of bonds that make people stand up -- and even die, if necessary, for each other. As you've said, Hava, they (and we) are human. And the kind of things that bring humans together to form a powerful movement are based on interpersonal connections, not ideas. Think of this: until quite recently, most people lived among those who have known each other since birth, in a close-knit community, where if you're sick people come to visit you, where if you're bereaved they know how to support you with the time-tested traditions and rituals, where it's easy for you to find someone you trust to care for your kids, where you have shared memories and the security of a history together, etc., etc. These are all things that have been taken for granted throughout most of human history, but that are becoming increasingly rare. I don't romanticize the "old ways", but those things that were good, also promoted a sense of solidarity. Now, we're down to the bare-bones nuclear family. Actually, in more "advanced" societies, many people live by themselves and for themselves only. Even friendships are disposable, with people moving from place to place in search of a living. Now, with all the pressures to survive, to protect and raise one's children, increasingly among strangers, it's usually too much to ask the average joe to stick his neck out for someone he barely knows. Perhaps even so, many would take the plunge, but what would happen to their children? What would happen to their elderly parents, etc.? (BTW, this reminds me of a special that was aired on a satellite tv show for International Women's Day, where four elderly women, lifelong friends and lifelong activists/militants, were profiled. One was a Copt/communist, one was an activist for peasant rights/widow of a guerilla who had fought against the Israelis in 1948 [no offence, Hava], one was an aristocratic liberal democrat, and one was a Muslim fundamentalist. These women have been friends for more than 50 years, all have been arrested repeatedly and all have served time in prison. But when they were questioned on the basis for their friendship despite their ideological and personality differences, the answers were very interesting. "I feel more connected to them than with many people I agree with politically," one said. "They make me laugh," said another; "When I was in prison, I was never in doubt that, for example, my children were being very well cared for, we have each other's back," was another, and "They visited my mother every day and kept her spirits up". All the answers were like this, nothing about the rightness of the Cause, nor about the injustice with which they were persecuted. It was all about trust, and love and interdependence.) At to this, that most of the time, the sacrifice is in vain, as over and over again we've all watched anonymous demonstrators beaten, or dragged off to be tortured, or even just ridiculed and put on Someone's "list". So, to sum up, solidarity emerges from interpersonal relationships, trust and affection, precisely those ties that are most endangered in our globalized, corporate world. Very insidious, and very effective. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd think that was part of the Plan all along...

by **havanagilla** » Sun May 21, 2006 1:54 pm

Alice TC - First just to clear that from the table. People fighting against israel in 48 onwards are no offense to me. First of all, I wasn't born until much later. And also, there is a WAR here, I am aware of it by now. Nothing of it is personal. I could be easily mistaken by an arab as an "enemy" and vice versae. Although i'll say it again, I am continuously amazed at the sophistication of the palestinians in discriminating pretty well, who is who in Israel, and seeing through situations to penetrate the heart of the people involved. However, they too make mistakes such as this board often does. For example, in the early stages of the Vanunu case, the Palestinian leadership interpreted him as a mossad agent. Now, they don't and they are the ones giving him refuge. There were some interesting article about it here, including by the palestinian intellectuals. Same goes for the Somali lady, same happened ot me in Canada...people become mistrustful and shoot their own foot (figuratively) trying to be so "cool" and sophisticated. Part of having Community is to practice trust, and even at the cost of erring to give too much credit, otherwise you lose before you start. And this is where I resent the "witchhunt" of the "gate keepers". Part of the gatekeeping is intentional and wise. It is in order to keep a semblance of normalcy and trust in the face of vicious attacks on social fabrics, by creating mistrust. this is what KGB did to destroy the USSR, this is the oldest trick in the basket. Make them suspect the neighbor, make them "tell on" their neighbor, make them spy on each other. The rest will happen by itself. -- I totally agree with you on the analysis. But the alienation and the end of community is not "directed" I believe. It is very much the result of many developments, some are political but most are tecnological. dealing with the loss of community is indeed a priority. frankly, the only thing that remained out of my "ideologies" is socialism in the old fashioned way, starting with "social" etc. But times like ours happened in the "good ol romantic times" before internet and corporates. any history book about rotten regimes will tell you that, in ancient china, rome, etc. -- We can't throw it all on "them", because how we run our community is ALSO within our responsibility (I am not ignoring the deterministic sway of money and corporates). The people we mentioned here are not "out there". The leftists here are here, israel at least is fairly small. The guys you mentioned from Egypt are from Egypt, and still the dynamics was such that their protest was not met with popular support. We are also responsible in our region for going along with "divide and conquer", namely, the Israeli/Arab conflict. etc. - If I take this board as a virtual community, it exposes the real dynamics. We have the "lords" of the world, from North America, some interesting interplay with the old dominators from Europe, mainly the UK (Do not forget that before the mighty neocons the UK was running the show in our region, so the so called "critical" position of the Guardian and friends these days, should be taken with a grain of salt.). And then you and I are mock reps of the region, because we are both "americanized" in a way, and you are not Moslem and I am not precisely the average jewish jane do. -- BUt this represents what it is. and the level of solidarity on this board is so heartwarming... If I were CIA/Mossad/Neocon assessment team, readnig this blog, I'd feel very secure in my command.

by **AlicetheCurious** » Sun May 21, 2006 7:10 pm

This discussion board isn't a community at all, virtual or otherwise, at least according to my definition. It's a great tool for bouncing your ideas, pooling information and honing your arguments among a loose pool of anonymous individuals who generally share your interests and fall within a certain intellectual range. It's definitely a potential asset, but only if enough people take the greater awareness and use it to effect real change in the real world. The very idea that this board is a community is a dangerous one. Because it's easy to be seduced into the illusion that one is part of an instant and convenient "family" here, spending more and more time alone at the keyboard, time that is not invested in building the kind of interrelationships that provide an individual with security, evolved social skills and a solid sense of identity. (Haven't you ever seen "The Net" with Sandra Bullock?) Real relationships take time and some sacrifice, they're sometimes risky, often complicated and always challenging. Because they're built up through all kinds of communications between people, not only typewritten words on a screen, a "culture" emerges when people interact with each other. Whether between a group of friends, or a married couple, or a couple of neighbours who interact, or even a nation, this culture is eventually created out of the shared experiences and 'memories', spoken and unspoken symbols and rules, and allows members to distinguish between themselves and 'outsiders'. Most importantly, to get back to the idea of a community, I think the single most important motivator for the creation of a community is the perception of interdependence, or vital mutual interest. The community is not only a social or intellectual creation, it is, in my opinion, a primarily defensive one. The idea being that when you hit a member of a community, you've made an enemy of that community. Depending on the community's ability to mobilize appropriately defensive resources, you can make potential enemies think long and hard before antagonizing the community. A strong community attracts individuals willing to invest their emotions, money and work, thereby investing in their own greater security, making it stronger still. In some cases, individuals' sense of identity and purpose become so submerged in the community's, that they are paradoxically willing to sacrifice their own lives and even their family's security to defend and protect the community. You're right that we must take responsibility for our passivity, not throw it all on "Them". But that's not to say that we and our children are not constantly bombarded with messages designed to alienate us from each other, nor that the corporate world we live in hasn't made it much harder to have normal human interactions in our daily lives. Anyway, I have to go now. Here I am, losing sleep and diminishing my ability to function tomorrow, because I'm drawn to this electronic dialogue we've got going here. I should listen to my own advice...

by **dugoboy** » Sun May 21, 2006 8:03 pm

a dailykos diary on this very topic: link:<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/21/7496/03568" target="top">PsyOps: Walking Back the Cat</a> excerpt: "Walk back the cat" is spy slang for retracing the train of evidence and assumptions until the double agent, the false source or the analytic error is identified. The false "Iran Eyes Badges for Jews" story headlined boldly in Friday's National Post (no longer available) echoed within minutes through media all over the world. Iran would require Jews to wear identifying badges, claimed unidentified "human rights groups". Within hours the story was debunked as false by by a Jewish member of Iran's parliament. There were no "human rights groups" after all. The sole source for the pile of crap was Amir Taheri, an Iranian-born journalist with ties to warmongering neo-cons, who wrote a companion piece to the main story. This story was so clearly a Psy Ops plant that it made me want to "walk back the cat". Familiar names aplenty: Michael (yellowcake from Niger) Ledeen, Richard Perle and David Frum. My fellow Kossacks, we need to start walking back the cat on all the false stories, because it's always the same crowd creating hysteria in the run up to war.  ___________________________________________ "BUSHCO aren't incompetent...they are COMPLICIT."

by **havanagilla** » Mon May 22, 2006 1:54 am

AliceTC, yes, "real people" ...hard to find.

by **4911** » Mon May 22, 2006 5:15 am

...hard to find, cuz they only exist in our imagination. (Just like everything else) ;o

by **AlicetheCurious** » Mon May 22, 2006 5:26 am

Dugoboy, it was gratifying to see how quickly the story was discredited. But the sobering fact is that the story was proven false, not because we the people are so hard to fool, but because the story itself was so utterly weak, almost laughably transparent. (Even so, we have self-styled hardheaded, coolly-rational skeptics, even on this board, who lapped it up with embarassing -- and rather disturbing -- eagerness). This particular lie's weakness was that it was a simple, factual allegation. It didn't rely on amorphous "witnesses" or "intelligence sources", neither was it so complicated that only the diehard skeptics would tackle it. It was a simple True or False, easily investigated. Unlike so many of the neocons' other Big Lies. Hava, you remind me a bit of that old joke, about the guy who's looking for his contact lens under a street lamp. His friend asks him, "where did you drop it?", so the first guy points to a dark place, under a tree. "So, if you dropped it there, why are you looking here?" the friend asks. The guys answers, "Because the light's better here." "Real people" may be hard to find in "real life", but they are NOT to be found in anonymous message boards. Think of a community as a survival and defensive mechanism, a strategic alliance between individuals whose strengths are potentiated and whose weaknesses are minimized through membership in the group. In "advanced" societies, where individuals can usually meet their needs by depending on the System, friendships based solely on affection and entertainment value, are easily discarded. In so-called "developing" societies, like mine, your network of friends and connections is an important survival mechanism, because there is no system. You need a doctor? You'd better know the doctor personally, or have a doctor relative or close friend who will go with you and protect your rights. You need to know someone in the police, in the government, you need to personally know who you're buying a house or apartment from, or have a connection who does, and so on at every level, even to finding a plumber. There's no Yellow Pages, no multi-lingual government pamphlets explaining your rights (you don't have any), no accountability, nothing at all, except Who You Know. So, in such societies, a lot of your time and energy is invested in the creation and maintenance of friendships and alliances. It's generally frowned upon to contact someone just when you want something from them, so favours and services have to constantly be exchanged, and social contact needs to be kept up. It's not easy, but it's necessary. The emotional benefits may not be the prime motivator (I'm such a cynic), but they are real, and eventually just as vital to the relationships as the more pragmatic ones. In fact, most Egyptians would recoil at my cold analysis -- they see themselves as by nature warm and loving and sociable, which is true, but it's a chicken or the egg question; I simply view the cause and effect relationship differently. My point is that, based on my own experience, the emotional bonds that grow out of mutually-empowering strategic alliances eventually become much stronger and more enduring than those between individuals who are tied exclusively by their mutual affection or even "love". It's counterintuitive, but when you are able to assess not only your needs, but what advantages or strategic assets you have to offer in exchange, it becomes easier to target and form the kind of alliances that will provide the maximum mutual benefit. Such alliances, in turn, provide the strongest foundation for true, lasting affection and loyalty. But those that don't, can still provide important benefits, even if only in terms of experience and expanding your circle of acquaintances and your database of "real world" experience and knowledge. It's not nearly as easy as turning on your computer, but as the saying goes, "As you sow, so shall you reap."

by **Sepka** » Mon May 22, 2006 6:31 am

<blockquote>Quote:<hr>it was gratifying to see how quickly the story was discredited<hr></blockquote> It's interesting to me that the revelations about the Iranian preparations for a new Holocaust were simply suppressed, not withdrawn or shown to be wrong. IMHO, it was likely to inflame public opinion, and so conflicted with the Bush and Blair's efforts to settle the Iranian matter through under the table deals rather than addressing the actual problem. Like Chamberlain in the 30s, he's trading an immediate war that could be easily and bloodlessly won for a future war that will threaten civilization itself. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>As you sew, so shall you reap.<hr></blockquote> You'd think the Palestinians would have picked up on that by now. "None so blind as those who do not wish to see", though. -Sepka the Space Weasel

by **havanagilla** » Mon May 22, 2006 9:08 am

Well, I didn't yet form a final opinion about the internet as social tool. it varies. A board like this one is clearly anonymous, "cold" and international (too remote to form contacts, but there was an attempt, i think, to put up a meeting in TO, for the locals). -- In the context of a local community, it is just another form of "The green", or where the people meet on a non initimate basis, whatever comes up, idepends on the context. This is not much different than the places the local youth here meet, with are huge Clubs (in huge hangars, with loud music and flashing lights). I think the body presence there is not crucial, except for the casual, nameless, senselss sex they have in the WC area, with the help of the drugs. I remember ten years ago the "video dating" craze in Israel. everyone had a subscription for a video "match", you recorded your own little movie and watched suitable guys...that could also work, for matching. anything can. --

Iran report of Holocaust-style badges questioned

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