Home > Ahmadinejad: Lost in translation
Nuclear Wars and conflicts International USA
From Today’s Little Red Email
It was October last year when we came home, flicked on the radio and listened aghast to the news that the Iranian president denied the Holocaust had happened and said the state of Israel should be wiped off the map. ‘Christ,’ we thought, ‘this nut job’s playing into their hands with this kind of rhetoric.’ Since then “the Cuban missile crisis in slow motion” as one US academic has described the Iran/US imbroglio has ratcheted up to high alert with Seymour Hersch of the New Yorker reporting that the White House is all prepared for nuclear strikes. It would take just 12 hours to deploy nuclear weapons for a bunker busting strike that would kill a million Iranians according to conservative estimates commissioned by the Pentagon. Nuclear armed planes are now on constant alert and public opinion has been framed around those mad, mad statements on Israel by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But what if the pronouncements by Ahmadinejad that cast him as this season’s baddie incarnate had been a) mistranslated and b) taken out of context?
When properly translated the Iranian president actually calls for the removal of the regimes that are in power in Israel and in the USA as a goal for the future. Nowhere does he demand the elimination or annihilation of Israel. He called for greater governance for Palestine. The word map does not even feature. And the president makes plain that the Holocaust happened, but, he argues western powers have exploited the memory of the Holocaust for their own imperialistic purposes. What the mainstream ran with is complete deception.
The deception has been aided by the fact that much of the media use an ‘independent’ company called Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri) for translating Middle Eastern languages. Memri just happens to be owned by two right-wing neo-con Israelis: Meyrav Wurmser, the wife of one of Dick Cheney’s aides (and ex-special assistant to ‘Strap-on’ John Bolton), David Wurmser and former(?) Israeli Military Intelligence officer, Colonel Yigal Carmon. Indeed a look at Wikipedia’ s incomplete staff list seems to suggest a heavy Israeli bias in staffing and at least two more ex-Israeli Military Intelligence people. Still the little red email is sure that’s just a coincidence, as is the fact that the Israeli army (presumably military intelligence) has also used this mistranslation tactic in the past.
And once Ahmadinejad had been brushed with the wacko Jew destroyer tag, it was a short hop, skip and ein Sprung before he was alongside Adolf Hitler in the pantheon of baddies. Like Milosevic and Hussein before him, Ahmadinejad’s Hitler comparison is as sure a sign war is imminent.
Unlike Hitler though Ahmadinejad doesn’t rule Iran, nor does he control its foreign or military policy. The man in charge of all that is Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran is a theocracy, and Khamenei is the theocrat-in-chief. To give you an idea of where Ahmadinejad lies in Iran’s political hierarchy, note that no one can even run for the presidency in the first place without the approval of Khamenei and the Guardian Council, a group of six clerics and six conservative jurists that are selected by Khamenei.
Ahmadinejad serves the purpose of being a believable bogeyman. He’ll find his Ph.D. in civil engineering and being a founding member of the Iran Tunnel Society useful if Seymour Hersch’s bunker-busting nuke allegations come true.
Forum posts
9 May 2006, 23:37
I’m sorry, but this time it seems, it wasn’t MEMRIs mistranslation. MEMRI’s translation of Ahmadinedjad’s speech can be found here: http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=countries&Area=iran&ID=SP101305
The sentence in question: "’Imam [Khomeini] said: ’This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history.’ This sentence is very wise. The issue of Palestine is not an issue on which we can compromise."
I don’t know, if this was the translation from the beginning, maybe it has been changed in the meantime or the newsletters that are being send to the mainstream-so-called-journalists quoted it different?
MEMRI usually (not always) provides correct translations, it would be too obvious if they didn’t. What they do is to provide translations out of context and very selective statements ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,773258,00.html ). Furthermore they sell existing hate speech as mainstream-opinion and they do their utmost to create a hostile feeling towards islamic people in general. For Memri see also: juancole.com (google site-search at the bottom of the page). Why they do this, is quite obvious - if Israel one day is fed up with maintaining a "low profile" in suppressing the palestinians and wants to kill more than the usually 3-8 persons on average each day (usually not reported in the western "media"), it would be nice, if the "western world" regards the even more brutal treatment as kind of self-defense, as it does already. The actual Hamas government (in the run-up to the palestinian elections the Bush-admin promoted the participation of Hamas...) already serves the US and EU as a figleaf that allows them to watch while a whole population is put into jail because the Palestinians dared to drop the corrupt Fatah from office. All of this composed with US’s and EU’s phoney song, that Hamas has to renounce violence, while providing the IDF with arms and other material, that is being used to kill Palestinians. The coming war on Iran will be the perfect excuse: Hamas and Ahmadinedjad are being and will be linked in the mainstream-propaganda and when evil-Ahmadinedjad will be nuked, the Palestinians will receive similar effective "treatment", but conventional, because Israel wants their land.
10 May 2006, 21:41
When Iran will not be nuked, will depend on when Iran, stops announcing war with Israel.
11 May 2006, 09:44
Isn’t it the US, that is announcing war with Iran? Do you really think that creating a nuclear war to avoid a nuclear Iran is justified? What do you think of a nuclear-free zone in the whole Middle East? Do you think Israel would be prepared to renounce from threatening all of it’s neighbours, renounce from violence and put an end to the illegal occupation and annexation of palestinian land? Do you think, it is necessary to steal palestinian land for a wall that would serve the security interests of the aggressive state (which is Israel, just to avoid misunderstandings) better than the actual winding thing euphemistically called "fence"? I guess so. I’m sorry, I don’t buy the propaganda, that is hammered into our heads to justify the radioactive contamination of six generations, just because the US and it’s asset in the Middle East, Israel, are not willing to fulfill the NPT (Nonproliferation-Treaty).
Iran as a signee of the NPT has the right to use nuclear power and the other signees are obliged to support the country in doing so as long as no proof exists that the country infringes the contract. Which does not exist. Each of the allegations that are being made now against Iran are as baseless as the allegations in the run-up to the shamefull war against the iraqi people (and don’t bother to repeat stupid excuses such as "the evil dictator had to be removed", "Iraq has/had WMD" and thelike - I’m not stupid). No proof has been presented for the hysterical imputations, that Iran is seeking the bomb (WMD...). It is all the same again and it is an insultation to intelligence to use the same rhetorical speeches that have been prooven to be wrong - or do you still think, the other aggressive state, the USA, will find Saddams WMD? Or democracy will rise as phoenix from the ashes, when phantom Sarkawi will be captured?
Bush and his accomplices should face a trial for their enduring war crimes and their lies and the american people is obliged to avoid that these people kill again for their crazy hallucination of a new world order.
Actually each country, that is on Israels and the US’s list that has no nuclear weapons is defenceless and the whole propaganda that we have to listen to in the mainstream-media is only prooving one thing: Everybody should seek nuclear weapons, because if a country does not have these, it is defenceless against aggressive states like the US and Israel. Good job, Mr. Bush!
11 May 2006, 11:00
If Iran was doing to its neighbors what Israel has done and is doing to its neighbors, then I could understand sanctions.
Where is the U.N. and the rest of the world’s outrage at the genocide and holocaust being committed against the Palestinians? Why hasn’t the world embargoed and shunned the criminal regime and population of Israel?
Was Hitler correct in his accessment of how the Jews infiltrate countries and take over their leadership and their banks and their media, etc??? Take the United States as an example. That is one country that has been taken over by the Jews and the poor citizens there are so brainwashed that they actually think it is a good thing and are willing to be taxed to death to support a criminal country at the expense of having their own country run by foreigners. They are even willing to fight Israel’s wars for them so the Jews don’t have to.
11 May 2006, 14:37
I agree that Israel should be boycotted in the same way South Africa under Apartheid was boycotted. But I would not call Israels policy a holocaust. A very slow-going (if that’s the correct expression in this context) genocide? Yes. The holocaust was a genocide, but not every genocide is a holocaust. The word originally meant "totally burnt", what is mainly the correct description for what the Nazis did with the Jews they could grab whereever they were. But what Israel is doing with the Palestinians is not the same. It is nothing better, don’t get me wrong, but it is not the Nazi way, it is the Israeli way. And that way is: Kill them, but do not kill so much, that the sleeping media eventually wakes up. But this already lasts nearly 60 years, and slowly but surely Israel cannot maintain this policy. What is needed now is an opportunity to get rid of more than the usual number of Palestinians, because it gets more difficult to shut the critics up. More and more people get bored by the hysterical shouts of growing antisemitism and don’t take them serious anymore. The construction of the wall is nothing less than a security measure, it is the attempt, to steal more palestinian land and the settlements, illegal under international (not the very special, colonial israeli law) law, are the same. Ways to steal land and the growing unrest in the face of losing everything in the occupied territories are used to kill those who are being robbed.
To your question, if Hitler was right: No, he wasn’t. That is a horrible question and you should condemn that what Hitler did - and his inhuman supporters (all over the world - the Nazis would have never become so powerful, if they had no international support - for example by Prescott Bush, George W.s grandfather and the one who made the money for the horrible Bush-clan, earned a lot of money by dealing with the Nazis and selling them arms and he infringed the "Trading with the Enemy-Act", what few people want to know today...) in the same way you seem to condemn that what Israel (not "the jews" - Israel does not speak or act in the name of all of the jews worldwide, not even for all jews in Israel!) has been doing for decades to the Palestinians. Neither can be justified and both is wrong. But Israels actual deeds cannot be justified with Hitlers deeds neither.
12 May 2006, 06:39
Oh, I see, Hitler murdering Jews = bad...........Jews murdering Palestanians = a little bad.......what is this a double standard....murder and theft is okay if you’re a Jew?? Or if you’re Bushco?? Think about it, there is really no difference, and what the Jews are doing worldwide is really no different from Hitler, except they are a little more sneaky....well, that’s nice, I guess we can all go back to sleep on that one.
12 May 2006, 13:17
You get me wrong. I didn’t want to say that what Israel is doing to the Palestinians for decades is better or less bad. Read my text again, please. Morally it is exactly the same, but what Hitler made the Germans do has another quality, in my view. Hitlers deeds are not a unique as some want us to think, but the emotionless, industrial killing is the Nazi way. The lamenting, self-defence proclaiming way is the Israeli way. Israel knows that it cannot kill too much Palestinians per day, because that would be a PR-desaster. This is a similar emotionless attitude towards the killing of "unwanted" persons, i.e. the Palestinians, I admit. But I wouldn’t call it Holocaust, it is another type of genocide. The definition of "genocide" according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is:
Article 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Source: http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/convention/ (The UNHCHR-Server is down at the moment).
Israeli policy towards the Palestinians fulfills this definition. To avoid a breakdown in int’l support for Israel is the only reason for the whole demonization of the Palestinian people per se. But all this doesn’t justify Hitler’s deeds, come on! Both is WRONG!
One should support the boycott of israeli goods, one should boycott firms like Caterpillar and you should write to your congressman (if you’re American), but don’t try to "understand" Hitlers sick mind with a Lobby like AIPAC.
12 May 2006, 13:49
The last sentence must be: "but don’t try to "understand" Hitlers sick mind with regard to a Lobby like AIPAC."
Kat.