Twisting Words to Demonize Our Friends

Now that the so-called threats issued by President Ahmadinejad of Iran have been exposed as a hoax, we need to look a little closer at the words of Hezbollah leaders.

If you recall, Ahmadinejad has been falsely accused by the Bush-controlled media of wanting Israel to be “wiped off the map”. However, linguistic experts, such as my colleague Professor Juan Cole, have demolished such accusations as being complete nonsense. In fact, Professor Cole has irrefutably proven that Ahmadinejad is a man of peace:

Ahmadinejad, however, has condemned mass killing of any sort and was not threatening military action (he is in any case not in command of the Iranian military). He compares his hope for an end to any Zionist regime in geographical Palestine to Khomeini's prediction that the Soviet Union would one day vanish. It wasn't a hope to kill Soviet citizens, but a desire for regime change.

Now let’s look at Hezbollah.

Their former leader, Hussein Massawi, has said:

“We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you”

For some unfathomable reason, this comment has been widely interpreted as a “threat”. What is threatening about this? The man has explicitly stated that he does not want anyone to offer him anything. If only we had a vice-president that would say something like that to cronies offering him petrodollars!

We are , in fact, listening to a benevolent spirit who says, in effect, “I do not need the material wealth of your depraved capitalist societies; I instead have spiritual bliss.”

And the present leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as pointed out that

“If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them world wide.”

If I didn’t know better, I would say that this man is a Zionist – for isn’t he stating the main self-stated goal of Zionism? To bring the Jews to Israel? That he is willing to travel the globe to bring them to Israel is a serious expression of his desire to see Zionism remain dominant.

But, of course, he is not a Zionist, and instead desires the proximity of Jews for some other purpose. I think it’s to sell them discount cellphone contracts. But even if I’m wrong (just a joke there, about me being “wrong”), isn’t it refreshing to see how his sun-person warmth expresses itself in his desire to be near others? Even when the objects of his warmth are trying to kill him?

My guess is that the next piece of Islamophobic hysteria will be in reaction to today's quote by Lebanon's parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri:

"We need massive amounts of humanitarian aid to come to Lebanon," he said. "The suffering is huge. What we need is not a half solution, what we need here is not a quarter solution. What we need is a final solution, for this not to happen again.”

I can’t even begin to guess how that innocent quote will be mangled, but you can bet that the Zionists will somehow demonize the man.