One Response to “Peres & the Arab League”

1. Inkwell says:

   January 29, 2009 at 3:07 pm

   “Sadjapour rightly sees Iranian hatred of Israel, not as a trumped up ploy in a strategic balancing act, but as the most enduring tenet of the Khomeini revolution.” — AG

   Revolutions end. The Reagan revolution did. Flawed ideologies will always fail. Sometimes of their own weight. Sometimes with a push.

   I reject the notion that the people of Iran are hateful.
2. Maine's Michael says:

   January 29, 2009 at 3:12 pm

   Yeah, I guess Israel will just have to wait, and in the meantime, hope that the lunatics actually running Iran don’t decide to follow through on their threats.

   After all, they are reasonable, rational people, right?

   Unfortunately, in nations such as Iran, what ‘the people’ think does not count.
3. SteveMG says:

   January 29, 2009 at 3:25 pm

   I reject the notion that the people of Iran are hateful.

   The people of Iran have little to do with it.

   And since President Obama’s approach is to ignore them when dealing with Tehran, they’ll have even less to do with it.
4. David S. Mazel says:

   January 29, 2009 at 4:41 pm

   The issue is not the people of Iran. The issue is the government and its support for terrorism and its quest for nuclear weapons. Consequently, you don’t see anyone or any government (Israel included) calling for bombing Iran indiscriminately, or starving its population. What civilized countries are calling for is for Iran to stop funding and supporting terrorism and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

   What Israel is calling for (and is seemingly alone in this) is destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

   Note that no one has said that Tehran should be attacked. No one is calling to bomb oil wells. No one is calling to destroy Iran’s economy. No one is calling to destroy Iran’s economy, save for sanctions to pressure Iran to change course. No one is calling to impoverish or decimate Iran’s population.

   Iran, however, is calling for the destruction of Israel. Iran is calling for more world-wide terrorism.

   It is a waste of time for President Obama to make pen pals of Iran’s leaders. That time has passed.
5. Maine's Michael says:

   January 29, 2009 at 5:07 pm

   Someone let President Eyes-Wide-Shut know . . .
6. Derek N says:

   January 29, 2009 at 9:29 pm

   …“used to believe that Iran would be capable of altering its approach towards Israel in the context of a broader US-Iran accommodation.

   “I no longer believe this to be the case.” – I guess some people DO grow up and out of liberalism.
7. Ziggy Zoggy says:

   January 29, 2009 at 10:04 pm

   Stinkwell,

   so much for your left-wing bromide about the Iranian people. You’re a bit of a bromide yourself, aren’t you?
8. BIG PICTURE says:

   January 30, 2009 at 12:14 am

   Ahmadinejad was asked if his expression (‘wipe Israel off the map’) means killing all the Jews in Israel? He explained clearly that he means the same as the Soviet Unions going away and replaced by other states. There will be no genocide. This should be big news but was NOT reported in the western media.

   I find that the Muslim side speaks much more plainly that the Jewish side. Who knows what the Israeli leaders want in terms of fighting Iran. Historically their thoughts are much uglier than their public statements as backed up by events that follow.

   Please don’t accuse me of anti-this or anti-that. I am just stately what I think are true.
9. Dan says:

   January 30, 2009 at 3:55 am

   You see before, when the idea of Tehran going nuke was very much cojecture, a thing of abstraction, speculation, ——————— then it was OK to while away the hours playing the parlour game of affecting a sophisticated view of the inner motives of the regime in Tehran.

   It passed the time; it established one’s bona fides in the multicultural, blame America foreign policy circuit.

   BUT NOW, when the harsh and lurid glow of Tehran’s atomic testing is beginning to softly illuminate our near horizon, and when now the unforgiving scrutiny of future years and generations begins to bear down upon them, NOW second thoughts come to the fore.

   This is like Sam Hoare finally seeing the folly of appeasement on the very verge of war in 1939, but only after being one of the high priests thereof throughout most of the thirties.

   As if we hadn’t seen this act before.

   This is but the expected prelude to the final act, the final act in this farce, which will soon become a tragedy.
10. contra says:

    January 30, 2009 at 3:56 am

    #8, BIG PICTURE:
    Officially approved, regularly repeated, compulsorily chanted
    slogans of the Iranian regime are “Death to America! Death to Israel!”

    These are not just A’jad’s words, but also the Supreme Leader’s, and
    the whole regime. These words are self-explanatory. “Death” means “death”
    - not “policy change”, not “regime change”, but death.
    They want us dead, plain and simple – both us and
    the Israelis. They cannot compromise on that goal, because we
    are the Great Satan, Israel the Little Satan.
    Ruses with us, truces to trick us are to them permissible –
    but not compromising the principle: Satan (that’s us) must die.

    With the USA, this objective may be more remote,
    with Israel it may be closer to becoming achievable. They have patience,
    they take the long view. Whether the way to their goal be short or
    long, they do not want to ever forget the goal – and for that reason they
    keep chanting “Death to America! Death to Israel!”

    As for your observation about the relative candor of
    Muslim radical leaders, qualified observers assert the opposite:
    there’s a chasm between what these people say to outsiders in
    English, and what they say, in their own language, to their own followers.
    No such chasm exists in Western countries, including Israel.
11. LT JAF says:

    January 30, 2009 at 11:48 am

    Nice to know that Achmedinijad is not talking about genocide. Of course, there is that thorny little problem that there are six million Jews living in Israel who are not packing up their bags to flee to Europe anytime soon. So what does that leave for the Iranians?
12. BIG PICTURE says:

    January 30, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    “death to America”, “death to Israel”.

    So what if people chant these ? I remember before the Iraq war, people were chanting “regime change begins at home”. Were they shot for saying that?

    These are slogans used as a tool for the moment.

    The Israeli first people take these slogans, including “drive the Jews into the sea” and “wipe Israel off the map” as deadly threats that are reason enough for Israel to kill thousands in Lebanon and Gaza without regret and to used them to rationalize ANY immoral activity coming from Israel.

    If there is regime change in Israel to a regime that is a true democracy (not a for Jew only democracy), the Jews are allowed to stay, except for those top trouble makers who will be expelled back to E Europe.