Letters to the Editor
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Blah blah blah
Quoth the revisionist:
"If it did not occur, then the Jews have to go back to where they came from"
A lot of them "came from" Saudi Arabia, and their property (which they weren't allowed to sell) has long since been sold.
This is just a veiled way of calling for another attempt at extermination. Most Arab countries were in league with the Nazis, a fact which few mention these days.
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Reality check on Aisle 7
What President Ahmadinejad is saying is incoherent -- we shouldn't be stuck bearing guilt from the past because the guilt belongs to the past, but we can't deal with today's issues as they are today because we have to get to the roots? This makes no sense and ignores both the roots of the problem and its current situation.
Why did it make sense to relocate that Israelis to Israel in the first place? Because anti-semitism was built upon by facism, but remained even after the facism was militarily defeated. (Think racism in the US ended when the North won the civil war?) So all of the nations that wanted a way to be anti-semetic while looking wonderful and sympathetic could vote in favor of Israel's existence and encourage their jewish populations to ship out to the oil-free scrap of worthless desert they were so keen on -- which plays right along with the Zionists in favor of a jewish homeland. Funny bit of world-building that.
So now, 60 years later, does it make sense to move the Israelis back from whence they came? Not really because most of them "came" from Israel. Born there. Raised there. Had kids and grandkids there. They're Israel and they have no other home. (Though on this point I find it odd that we're still financially supporting Israel to the tune of $2B per year.)
If Iran were serious about foreign policy, they'd have an open-door policy to relocate jews who, according to them, shouldn't be settled in Israel -- because it's clear that those hypocrite westerners aren't going to do it. If they even wanted to be seen as slightly credible about foreign policy, they could offer homesteading to those poor Palestinians who have been homeless for 60 years. If Iran is really that great, then let's see a bit of leadership on this front.
But what would Mr. Ahmadinejad have to say about that? Not much it would seem.
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moral intelligence
I got to say- Stefan Aust, Gerhard Spörl and Dieter Bednarz- the questions were good even if Ahmadinejad deflected them. And they presented their country, their culture well.
There is a difference between guilt and shame. You are responsible for your guilt and should by only guilty of things you have (or should have had) responsibility for. Shame is public embarrassment and has nothing to do with responsibility, although one can have both shame and guilt for the sins they committed. I think this is common sense…common ethics. Even people from cultures which emphasize shame over guilt (Japan and China for instance), tend to understand the difference.
The German people of today are truly noble for nurturing the shame of the holocaust. Americans’ feel shame about black slavery, but I do not think American’s feel this as acutely as Germans feel shame over the holocaust. For this- in my opinion as an American Jew- I feel that Germans may be in some areas higher up on their path to collective cultural enlightenment.
The Spiegel interviewers clearly see the difference between shame and guilt. They clearly see that a strong, confident people understands the difference and can embrace the shame of the sins of their ancestors, and use that shame to make them stronger.
President Ahmadinejad clearly comes off here as a neo-Nazi. It does not matter whether he really believes that BS he spews about questioning the holocaust or not. But what is disturbing here is that he seems to lack a very basic common sense understanding about the nature of guilt and shame. He repeatedly says the Germans are held hostage to this shame. His attitude shows that he is either a sociopath who does not feel guilt and shame, or he is someone who really lacks common moral intelligence.
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Scary
There were so many incredibly disturbing things coming out of Ahmedinejad's mouth it is frightening. To add though to what cardshark was saying -- the majority of Israel's population prior to the Russian immigration in the early 1990s, came from Arab countries -- Iran, Iraq, Morrocco, Lybia, Yemen, and Egypt (not so much Saudi Arabia, actually). Following the creation of Israel in 1948, the Arab governments appropriated Jewish property, kicked the Jews out and they came to Israel. So it is more than a bit hypocritical of Ahmedinejad to say that his country had nothing to do w/the "displacement" of the Arab populations living in Israel at the time or that Europe bears the sole responsibility for it.
Moreover, Ahmedinejad ignores the thousands of Jews who were living in the land of Israel prior to the founding of the state (who came to Israel beginning in the 1800s) as well as the continuous (since Biblical times) Jewish populations in the Gallilee and Jerusalem and its environs. In fact, Jerusalem has always had (and still does have) a majority Jewish population. Contrary to many people's beliefs (and to many commentators who write for Salon), Israel simply is not a country that was "colonized" by Holocaust survivors.
In any event, Ahmedinejad is a follower of the "Third Imam" strain of Islam and is hellbent on bringing about an apocalypse so that this Third Imam can arise. He has publicly admitted his religious beliefs and I think the world needs to take very seriously his desire to acquire nuclear weapons and how he might use such weapons to fufill his religious fantasies.
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Thank You President Ahmadinejad
With this interview you have single handedly built for the international community a full proof case for why you should NEVER, EVER have access to a pop gun let alone weapons grade plutonium.
I would also like to thank the journalists at Der Spiegel. If our journalists we're half as intelligent and gutsy as these guys we might not be in the mess we're in now.