Lobster for Iran by Israel Shamir

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

[INGRID'S COMMENT:  Many of my readers will be unhappy with me that I 
am sending out this essay;  however, I am not in the business of 
censoring people who, on the whole, write beautifully and concisely - 
but with whose stance on this or that I might disagree.  I disagree 
with Shamir on his take on the Julius Rosenberg couple as well as on 
his ideas on the merits of the Stalinist era;  but then, he disagrees 
with me on many things as well.  That does not mean we cannot read 
and learn from each other.  This essay made me laugh! ]



Lobster for Iran

By Israel Shamir

"Iran's biggest threat since Nazis," said Israeli defence minister 
Shaul Mofaz, according to the Guardian; "The world must not wait! 
Since Hitler we Jews have not faced such a threat" as presented by 
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who "further stirred international outrage by 
calling on Israeli Jews to be resettled in Europe" (...thus the 
Guardian).

These guys are hard to please! In the 1930s, Hitler called for the 
Jews to be resettled outside of Europe, and they declared war on him. 
Now Ahmadinejad calls for the resettlement of Jews in Europe, and the 
Jews still respond with a war cry. That is, unless the Guardian 
missed the point in its report, and the outrage actually came from 
the Europeans who preferred the Palestinians to serve as unwilling 
host to these difficult guests.

Anyway I beg to differ: President Ahmadinejad is the biggest threat 
since Gerard de Nerval, a flamboyant French poet, promenaded a 
lobster on a blue ribbon lead, just as one exercises a dog, along the 
Palais Royal gardens in order to épater le bourgeois. A truly poetic 
soul, an enfant terrible if ever there was one, Ahmadinejad aimed to 
wake us up from our over-long after-dinner nap. What can the Iranian 
do if Jews is the only magic word that awakens us from this slumber? 
Sexual innuendos would not bestir even a child fresh from his 
AIDS-awareness lesson. An attack of Christianity would be warmly 
applauded by the undeniable masters of European minds, Messrs 
Sauerkraut and Finkelrot. In this post-modernist age, when the Vagina 
Monologues have entered the matinee repertoire, it is not that easy 
to épater the increasingly blasé bourgeoisie. If Ahmadinejad would 
call for the resettlement of six million European Muslims outside of 
Europe, nobody would raise an eyebrow with the possible exception of 
Oriana Fallaci and M. Le Pen, who might object to his plagiarism. If 
he were to call for the erasure of France from the world map, the 
French would not sit up and pay attention: they think there is 
already a Brussels directive to this effect!

I admire Ahmadinejad. Not as a politician: let the Iranians judge him 
on this merit. Not as a divine: I leave this to the Muslims. But as a 
true poet who unveiled our hypocrisy and slaughtered our last sacred 
cow. This is the only possible explanation of his deeds and words: 
Iranians have really no reason to care about the Jewish holocaust, 
one way or other. Nobody accuses them, not even Mr Yehuda Bauer of 
Jerusalem's Holocaust memorial institute, who is prone to accuse the 
World and its niece for failing to save the Jews. The Persians from 
Cyrus to Hosroes to Mohammad Resa Shah were always good to Jews, and 
even in these mad days there is a large and flourishing Jewish 
community in Iran. Ahmadinejad spoke about the Holocaust like Hillary 
conquered Everest - because it presented a challenge!

The innocent revisionist historians were so excited when he toyed 
with an idea of finally discovering the truth. They prepared their 
well-thumbed books and diagrams of gas consumption and body heat. But 
Ahmadinejad is interested in the hard facts of World War II about as 
much as Nerval was interested in exercising his lobster. Acceptance 
of Holocaust dogma is a sign of submission to the Tel Aviv-New York 
Axis, a sign of the new colonialism. Ahmadinejad refused it just as 
St Paul refused to accept the Noahide laws: not because St Paul 
wanted to partake of pagan sacrifices, but because he did not want to 
take his orders from the Jews.

The European leaders, the docile supporters of patent war criminals, 
of George W. Bush, the murderer of umpteen Iraqis, Afghanis and 
sundry Arabs, of Shaul Mofaz, the murderer of an eight-year-old girl 
(among hundreds of others) he killed last week in besieged Gaza, all 
sat up and expressed their outrage. They did not object when Israel 
strafed and bombed defenceless Gazans. When Israeli politicians 
threatened to turn Iran into "radioactive desert", they did not 
describe it as "a call to genocide". By his challenge, president 
Ahmadinejad saved the honour of human race, as only a poet can do.

I admire Iran, for the fiery crimson of their rose gardens and for 
the azure of its old mosques, for the ravishing beauty of its women, 
whose black eyelashes enhance the whiteness of their skin shining 
through their black chadors. I admire Iran for its marvellous 
painting that overcame the iconoclastic ravages. I admire Iran for 
the spiritual subtlety of its poets, who united their love to women 
with their adoration of God in one undivided chant just as the Song 
of Songs did. Their Rumi and Jami, Sa’adi and Ferdousi, Hafiz and 
Khayyam were of the most daring and sincere poets who ever graced our 
earth. Ahmadinejad is heir to their tradition, a daring mocker of our 
hypocrisy, a boy who saw through the emperor's new clothes. Even if 
the ham-fisted Yank should flatten this daredevil, and burn the rose 
gardens of Shiraz just as he once incinerated the blossoms of 
Nagasaki, we may be proud of Ahmadinejad, our contemporary who dared 
to tread on the tiger's tail.

II

The European and American reaction to Iran's nuclear program was that 
of Uncle Tom's slaveowner, Simon Legree, on learning of an escaped 
slave. How does this dusky dare to touch the white masters' toys? 
Their empty talk of an "Iranian threat" is designed for the ignorant: 
Iran has never, ever attacked a European nation since the wars for 
Anatolia in the 5th century BC; whereas European imperialists have 
repeatedly occupied and controlled Iran, most recently in 1942, or by 
proxy in 1953, when they deposed democratically-elected Mosaddeq and 
returned to dominate this ancient nation.

Yes, the old colonialism is dead. England can't rule over Iraq, nor 
France over Algeria, but the new collective colonialism, that of the 
imperialist Core of highly industrialised Western nations over the 
rest of the world, is hardly any better. The old masters have decided 
to pool their resources and powers to rule their erstwhile slaves 
together. They switched from the Athenian model where a citizen had 
his slave, to the Spartan model, where slaves belong to all Spartans. 
In this new collective imperialist universe, the US is the arm, the 
enforcer of this new colonialism, while the mind, the ideology is 
supplied by a vast syndicate that unites and coordinates the majority 
of newspapers and networks of both left and right from Madrid to 
Moscow and from Texas to Timbuktu, despite their pretensions of 
competition and rivalry.

This syndicate is the real powerbase of what two American professors, 
John Mearsheimer of Chicago, and Stephen Walt of Harvard, (M&W for 
short) politely called "Israel Lobby in the US" though this syndicate 
has other fish to fry beside that of the State of Israel's. While 
fully approving of M&W’s endeavour, we should say: they minimised 
rather than exaggerated the problem, for it is a global, rather than 
a local (the US) phenomenon. The fearsome AIPAC is just the visible 
tip of iceberg below which are miles and miles of solid ice: media 
lords, chief editors, their pundits, Masters of Discourse, in short. 
As if by a magic wand, the Iranian crisis made it visible to the 
naked eye: they have all cried out in one mighty voice like the 
legion of demons in the Capernaum synagogue in response to Christ's 
words.

In his thought-provoking speech Ahmadinejad said: "The vast Zionist 
network has been at the service of the imperialists for decades." 
This is open to an argument whether the Zionist network serves the 
imperialists, or the imperialists serve this network. It's an example 
of Managerial Revolution: Jews were managers for the imperialists, 
until they took over the show, some would say. Oh no, they remained 
docile to their imperialist overlords, argue others. Whatever 
position we take, the Zionists and the Imperialists are surely 
integrated and intermeshed, and if one accepts the idea of the 
Iranian threat to Israel, one subscribes to this demonic network.

The nations that refuse the Masters of Discourse are subjugated by 
force. A nuclear weapon serves as a great equaliser, as did the Smith 
& Wesson gun in the Wild West. In order to prevent too much 
equalisation, the American pioneers kept guns out of native hands. 
The same policy now drives the West in its attempts to keep nuclear 
power out of reach of Iranians.

A few days ago I was invited to a live discussion on Russian TV 
Channel One, where the Moscow BBC bureau chief rhetorically asked why 
a peaceful Iran would need ballistic missiles, and he listed the 
Iranian missile arsenal. He could not answer the question of why a 
peaceful Britain would need ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons! 
Actually, why would anybody need one? But if England, with its long 
and bloody history of subjugating the Third World from Ireland to 
Japan, may have these toys, then it is likewise the duty of any 
important country willing to protect its populace from the Western 
masters' whims.

Yes, Iran is still working on a peaceful program of atomic energy, 
but if and when that country decides to build the bomb, we may 
support this decision, as it would enhance peace. Actually, few 
people did more for the cause of world peace than Julius and Ethel 
Rosenberg and their associates Harry Gold and Klaus Fuchs. These 
wonderful men passed the secrets of American-built nuclear weapons to 
Russia, and thus saved Moscow and St Petersburg from the fate of 
Hiroshima. Without their heroic deed, the colonial masters would have 
turned Russia into a radioactive desert. Joseph Stalin passed the 
know-how to emerging China, and this was a very good deed -- 
otherwise the Americans wouldn't have hesitated to nuke Vietnam as 
they did Japan.

The Russian nuclear shield is the only thing Gorbachev and Yeltsin 
did not break down in their destruction of the Soviet Union, probably 
because they did not expect the patriotic forces to ever return to 
power in Moscow. This shield allows the Russians to disregard the 
nagging of Frau Merkel, and gives them their freedom of choice: to 
sell their oil and gas to Europe or to turn the stream towards China. 
It allows the Belarus people to have the president they elected by 
huge majority: without it, Lukashenka would share the fate of Noriega 
and Milosevic for his steadfast refusal to sell the assets of Belarus 
to George Soros. Let Iranians, too, have this freedom of choice, and 
restore balance in the region.

And to sincere well-wishers of our Israeli well-being I'll say: Iran 
is no danger. The truth is, the Jews could live extremely well in 
Palestine. By making peace with the native inhabitants in 1948, we 
would have kept our common home, Palestine, as the hub of the Middle 
East with Iraqi oil coming to Haifa refineries and trains from 
Baghdad to Cairo flying by Lydda and Jaffa, with Muslim pilgrims 
coming to al Quds on their way to Mecca, with Christians walking in 
the footsteps of Christ from Bethlehem to Nazareth and with Jews 
doing their aliya (this word meant an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem 
like the Hajj, rather than a permanent immigration to Palestine as 
Zionists wont). We would prosper beyond our wildest dreams, as the 
prophets promised, if we were to kick the nasty old habit of 
separateness and dominance.

It is not too late even now, sixty years and many deaths later. For 
this purpose, we may take the advice of Ahmadinejad: let the 
exclusive Jewish state be eliminated from the map of the region to be 
replaced by one state of all citizens of the land, Jews or not. "The 
right to govern belongs to all people of Palestine, be they Muslims, 
Christians, or Jews", said Ahmadinejad, and by golly, only a Jewish 
supremacist may object to his words.

When I said this at the TV discussion in Moscow, I was attacked by 
the Chairman of a Russian Jewish Congress and Director of a Zionist 
Middle East Institute, a greasy and spotty bully of a man with 
hanging belly, a living cartoon from Der Sturmer, with the fitting 
name Satanovsky. "Watch out, - told me Satanovsky after the show, - 
apparently you have never been beaten hard enough. Here in Moscow we 
know of no restraints of democracy, my Jewish lads will tear your 
balls off like they did to many men like you. Israel should remain a 
Jewish state forever". Such Jewish Mafiosi are the real leaders of 
the Jewish Lobby and chief supporters of the Jewish state abroad. 
These sort of people lead the Jewish organisations in Russia, in 
America and elsewhere. They need a Jewish state to escape their lands 
in the hour of wrath, but we, the ordinary citizens of Israel, do not 
need it.

However, the Mafia can't rule forever. I take heart in the words of 
Ahmadinejad: "The young tree of resistance in Palestine is blooming 
and blooms of faith and desire for freedom are flowering. The Zionist 
regime is a decaying and crumbling tree that will fall with a storm. 
(Remember the parable of the barren tree? - ISH) Palestine is the 
meeting point of right and wrong. The destiny of the region will be 
decided in the land of Al-Qods and it will be a great honour to share 
in the victory of Palestine." The victory of Palestine is our victory 
and we shall be happy to share in it.

"Now, will there be a war?," one is often asked. I have no full 
confidence of George Bush, he does not share his plans with me. But 
while the gatekeepers of the Left say that Oil is the reason for the 
war, in my view Oil can be the reason for peace. As the price of oil 
has now crossed the $70 threshold, President Bush must decide whether 
he will survive its hike above $120 -- whether his voters in the red 
states will happily accept the advice of an American Jewish Congress 
pundit and director of their Israel/Middle East Office Eran Lerman 
(previously of Israeli intelligence) to stop driving cars every other 
day. Bush has the power to steer the US away from its perilous 
course, and tell to the Jewish Congress pundits to shove it.

And to my Israeli countrymen: I'll remind you of our age-long 
tradition of friendship with Iran. Two thousand years ago, a picture 
of the Iranian capital city Susa was presented on the Eastern gate of 
the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Mishna (Berakoth 9) called for being 
especially careful towards it: "never show disrespect to the Eastern 
gate!" According to Rambam, this was done so that they would have the 
fear of the king of Persia upon them. This tradition is worth 
remembering and carefully preserving.

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