Over the past week, a lie has traveled from Israel to the U.S. pro-Israel media and spread around the world. The claim, originating with a news report by Israel’s Channel 2, claimed that in a recent speech Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “gloated” over Iran’s success in murdering five Israelis in Burgas.
Now, take a step back and think rationally whether it’s remotely likely that the leader of any country except perhaps North Korea would gloat over his country’s success in killing citizens of another country. Even if Iran had authored the attack is it even remotely possible he would open his country to the savage reprisals from Israel that would follow such an admission? So if you were a journalist who read Channel 2’s account you’d exercise some caution in accepting this as fact, right? Maybe you’d ask a Farsi speaker to translate it for you to confirm the accuracy of the translation…especially considering the powder keg that is Israeli-Iranian relations.
Not so for the neocon-funded Times of Israel or Commentary, which went to town on Ahmadinejad’s alleged boasting. They featured it on their respective front pages and did their own version of gloating over the Iranian leader’s supposed carnivorous ravings. Each of them wants and expects Israel to attack Iran and this story was offered up on a silver platter.
Except that it wasn’t true. Ahmadinejad did make a speech and it did talk about Iranian responses to western attacks against it. But it never mentioned Burgas, never mentioned any Iranian act of terror or violence against Iran’s enemies. In fact, native Farsi speakers describe the speech as a rather typical, pedestrian one in which the Iranian was railing against western sanctions and saying that for every blow they strike against our economic interests, we will counter with one of our own.
This isn’t the first time the new Times of Israel has made a journalistic fool of itself. A few weeks ago it allowed hasbara hack Lenny Ben David to call Yasser Arafat a “sexual deviant,” thereby reinforcing the false claim that Arafat died of AIDS. The op-ed editor’s defense was that he doesn’t censor his bloggers (even when they make idiots of themselves and his paper).
Robert Wright, a journalist whose head and heart is in the right place on many issues of war and peace concerning the Middle East, but who nevertheless maintains a tad too much credulity concerning Israeli government intentions, picked up on this story. He disagreed with Iranian-American blogger Nima Shirazi, who first reported the story and claimed the mistranslations were “propaganda.” Instead, Wright labelled this an instance of “confirmation bias,” which can best be summarized by Paul Simon’s lyric from “The Boxer:”
“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
For some reason, it’s important to Wright to give the benefit of the doubt to the pro-Israel media by claiming they didn’t deliberately lie about the content of the speech, but rather read what they expected into the speech. The outcome remains the same whether the error was deliberate and a lie or inadvertent. It takes us that much closer to war against Iran.
War isn’t just a decision arrived at through deliberations of generals and politicians in a war room. It’s a thousand news reports shaping a nation’s view of the enemy. Even if the generals want war, they need the approval of the populace. This is why Israel has devoted such an extraordinary amount of effort to its perception management campaign in this country that lays the groundwork for such an attack against Iran.
The willfull distortion of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s words has become a cottage industry for these same hawkish media outlets, which ginned up the fraudulent claim that he called for “wiping Israel off the map.” That too is based on a mistranslation of a decades-old speech by Ayatollah Khomeini. Ahmadinejad has never called for the elimination of Israel or for an Iranian attack on Israel. Yet that hasn’t stopped tens of thousands of those who want war or expect war from spreading the fictional version of this speech.
Ahmadinejad has been quoted many times calling for Israel to be destroyed. If that his not his view, why has he never denied it?
People have accused me of the most unspeakable things possible, all of which are lies. Do I have to deny them all?
John, that is inaccurate. He has explained himself on countless occasions very specifically pointing out that he believes in Palestinian self-determination. His position is that there should be free elections including all Jews and all Palestinians to decide the future of the territory.
If you want specifics, look up video’s of his interview with Larry King where he lays all this out in no uncertain terms. There is NO part of his rhetoric that calls for the extermination of the Jews, or the destruction of Israel by war.
As for the claim of Ahmedinejad gloating, it’s another play on people’s stupidity since the order for such an attack could never have come from him. The Revolutionary Guard is exclusively controlled by Khamenei and the office of the President would not have any role to play in any decision relating to the use of the Quds Force, or directives given to Hezbollah. He wouldn’t even be in the loop.
@ lifelong
The claim that the IRI in general, and Ahmadinejad in particular, advocate a “free and fair referendum” in Israel/Palestine (I/P) confuses what the IRI implies and what is inferred by a Western audience, which are quite distinct interpretations. Nima Shirazi, mentioned in this post, has also made this “Iranians-want-free-and-fair-elections” claim w/o clarifying or understanding the meaning. It’s best to have the Supreme Leader (SL), who sets state policy, explain the meaning.
At his website @ http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1527
Khamenei is quoted from his 2011 International Conference on Palestinian Intifada speech as
“We propose a referendum among the Palestinian people. Just like any other nation, the Palestinian nation has the right to determine its own destiny and to elect its own government. All the original people of Palestine – including Muslims, Christians and Jews and not foreign immigrants – should take part in a general and orderly referendum and determine the future government of Palestine whether they live inside Palestine or in camps or in any other place. The government that is established after the referendum will determine the destiny of non-Palestinian immigrants who migrated to Palestine in the past. This is a fair and logical proposal which global public opinion understands and it can receive support from independent nations and governments.” And with regards to the internationally-mandated 2-state solution, the SL opines, “The two-state idea which has been presented in the self-righteous clothing of “recognizing the Palestinian government as a member of the United Nations” is nothing but giving in to the demands of the Zionists – namely, “recognizing the Zionist government in Palestinian lands”.”
The “original people of Palestine” clearly designates those who are descendants of the inhabitants of Pre-Zionist Palestine. Immigrants and their descendants, who owe their presence there to Zionist settlement of the area, are to be disenfranchised according to this “free and fair referendum,” and their fate, to be expelled or not, is to be determined by the gov’t born out of this election. From IRI’s point of view this restores justice, as the immigrants and their descendants are usurpers of the land and not entitled to share in determining its destiny, whereas from a Western, Israeli or much of the world’s pov this would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing of the vast majority of Israeli Jews from Israel. Khamenei also rules out the 2-state sol’n as stealing part of Palestine.
Ahmadinejad’s statements in the 2008 interview w/ L. King @
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0809/23/lkl.01.html
imply the same as Khamenei’s. What he means by “Palestinian territory” in that interview is not the internationally-recognized ones, namely West Bank & Gaza, but all of I/P. And by “Palestinian people” determining “their own fate” in this “Palestinian territory” he means the same “original people of Palestine” that the SL was referring to.
It should be pointed out, however, that despite this ideological stance on justice in I/P, the IRI has, for years now, consistently voted w/ the majority of the international community on UN resolutions bearing on the conflict. Khamenei may rail against the 2ss as betrayal of Palestinian rights to the whole land between the river and the sea, but in practice his gov’t has voted in favor of it repeatedly.