by Brad Stroud
Mondoweiss has provided an excellent forum for an exploration of the questions of the Holocaust, Holocaust denial, Zionism and the denial of Zionist racism. It centers around Ahmadinejad’s speech at the (just completed) UN Racism conference.
Bruce Wolman wrote Who is the bigger obstacle to peace, Netanyahu or Ahmadinejad?. Philip Weiss, however, included a response to this piece: “a vigorous defense of Ahmadinejad by Mohammad of Vancouver, our Iranian-Canadian correspondent.” What I’m increasingly admiring about Philip Weiss is his unrelenting openness. Noting that, “as a Jew” he had taken comfort in Wolman’s piece, he added “but this site is not about comfort. We aim to be a place where dialogue occurs across national, ethnic and religious lines in a new world.”
My view is that the key to understanding what is going on whenever Ahmadinejad speaks and the “west” reports on it is that there are both deliberate and accidental misinterpretations of what he actually states. Aside from the more obvious problems of media distortion of such speeches, there is the problem of meaning and of understanding the objectives that inform the choice of rhetoric. Delving into such matters requires that us “westerners” recognize that we have more than a few shibboleths and that among them are “the Holocaust” and “Zionism”.
What some readers may encounter for the first time in reading these two pieces is the idea that “Holocaust” has been and is put to use to accomplish various objectives and that these uses are, in fact, distinct from the fact of the extermination of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis. “Zionism” is also put to use in manners to achieve particular objectives. For example, it is used by some to ward off all criticisms of Israeli territorial occupation and expansion as being antisemitic (that is, racist). This use can be rather effective in obviating the fact that expansionist Zionism is itself a racist program entailing the complete eradication of a Palestinian homeland.
This is clearly illustrated by reading Wolman’s piece, followed by the response of Mohammad of Vancouver.
