XPost: soc.culture.iranian, alt.politics.media, alt.activism   
   XPost: soc.culture.israel   
   From: tim.howard@suddenlink.net   
      
   Now if only he could convince his friend Hugo Chavez to stop associating   
   with this fanatic.   
      
      
   Fidel to Ahmadinejad: 'Stop Slandering the Jews'   
      
   Sep 7 2010, 12:06 PM ET   
      
   Part of a three-part interview by the Atlantic's Jeffery Goldberg.   
      
   Castro opened our initial meeting by telling me that he read the recent   
   Atlantic article carefully, and that it confirmed his view that Israel   
   and America were moving precipitously and gratuitously toward   
   confrontation with Iran. This interpretation was not surprising, of   
   course: Castro is the grandfather of global anti-Americanism, and he has   
   been a severe critic of Israel. His message to Benjamin Netanyahu, the   
   Israeli prime minister, he said, was simple: Israel will only have   
   security if it gives up its nuclear arsenal, and the rest of the world's   
   nuclear powers will only have security if they, too, give up their   
   weapons. Global and simultaneous nuclear disarmament is, of course, a   
   worthy goal, but it is not, in the short term, realistic.   
      
   Castro's message to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, was not   
   so abstract, however. Over the course of this first, five-hour   
   discussion, Castro repeatedly returned to his excoriation of   
   anti-Semitism. He criticized Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust and   
   explained why the Iranian government would better serve the cause of   
   peace by acknowledging the "unique" history of anti-Semitism and trying   
   to understand why Israelis fear for their existence.   
      
   He began this discussion by describing his own, first encounters with   
   anti-Semitism, as a small boy. "I remember when I was a boy - a long   
   time ago - when I was five or six years old and I lived in the   
   countryside," he said, "and I remember Good Friday. What was the   
   atmosphere a child breathed? `Be quiet, God is dead.' God died every   
   year between Thursday and Saturday of Holy Week, and it made a profound   
   impression on everyone. What happened? They would say, `The Jews killed   
   God.' They blamed the Jews for killing God! Do you realize this?"   
      
   He went on, "Well, I didn't know what a Jew was. I knew of a bird that   
   was a called a 'Jew,' and so for me the Jews were those birds.  These   
   birds had big noses. I don't even know why they were called that. That's   
   what I remember. This is how ignorant the entire population was."   
      
   He said the Iranian government should understand the consequences of   
   theological anti-Semitism. "This went on for maybe two thousand years,"   
   he said. "I don't think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I   
   would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more   
   than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything.   
   No one blames the Muslims for anything." The Iranian government should   
   understand that the Jews "were expelled from their land, persecuted and   
   mistreated all over the world, as the ones who killed God. In my   
   judgment here's what happened to them: Reverse selection. What's reverse   
   selection? Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution   
   and then to the pogroms. One might have assumed that they would have   
   disappeared; I think their culture and religion kept them together as a   
   nation." He continued: "The Jews have lived an existence that is much   
   harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust." I   
   asked him if he would tell Ahmadinejad what he was telling me. "I am   
   saying this so you can communicate it," he answered.   
      
   Castro went on to analyze the conflict between Israel and Iran. He said   
   he understood Iranian fears of Israeli-American aggression and he added   
   that, in his view, American sanctions and Israeli threats will not   
   dissuade the Iranian leadership from pursuing nuclear weapons. "This   
   problem is not going to get resolved, because the Iranians are not going   
   to back down in the face of threats. That's my opinion," he said. He   
   then noted that, unlike Cuba, Iran is a "profoundly religious country,"   
   and he said that religious leaders are less apt to compromise. He noted   
   that even secular Cuba has resisted various American demands over the   
   past 50 years.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)