[All notes below by Tom Gross]

This dispatch concerns Iran and is a follow-up to Iran prepares Salman Rushdie’s coffin, as Hillary Clinton cancels appearance at NY rally against Ahmadinejad.

 

AHMADINEJAD: ZIONISTS RESPONSIBLE FOR GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered an anti-Semitic tirade before world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week – and received applause from many.

“The American and European nations are being manipulated by a small but cunning group of people called Zionists who control the important centers of the economy,” he said, in a speech to which many other heads of state, diplomats and dignitaries applauded.

His also warned of “Zionist murderers” and said that not just Israel, but also America would disappear as was Allah’s will. Iran is now seeking a seat on the UN Security Council.

 

PERES AT UN: AHMADINEJAD IS A “DISGRACE TO ISLAM”

Following Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic tirade, Israeli President Shimon Peres (filling in for outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert) said Iran presents “a danger to the entire world” and Ahmadinejad was a “disgrace to Islam.”

In a press conference, Peres also criticized the UN for allowing itself to be used as “a platform for anti-Semitism.” He said: “This is the first time in the history of the United Nations that the head of a state is appearing openly and publicly with the ugly and dark accusations of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’.”

Peres was referring to the anti-Semitic hoax concocted in tsarist Russia which later paved the way for the Holocaust.

Addressing the General Assembly, Peres, 85, refrained from criticizing the UN itself, but at the end of his address, he paused and took a simple black skullcap out of his pocket and placed it on his head, making clear that he was standing not just as a president of Israel but also as a Jew.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Gabriela Shalev said the move had been unrehearsed and had come as a surprise to her as she sat watching from Israel’s seat.

“Tehran combines long-range missiles and short-range minds. The situation is pregnant with tragedies,” Peres said in his address, which was made a day after Russia effectively torpedoed chances of the UN reaching agreement on a new round of sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program.

 

MCCAIN, OBAMA SPEAK OUT; OTHER POLITICIANS SILENT

American Jewish leaders expressed disappointment that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon refrained from repudiating Ahmadinejad’s statements.

“The repugnant ideas and prejudiced sentiment asserted by President Ahmadinejad must not go unanswered,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a letter to Ban. “We ask you to speak out against his vile words and denounce his outrageous claims and abuse of the UN platform.”

Senior American politicians, including John McCain and Barack Obama, swiftly denounced Ahmadinejad’s tirade against Jews and denial of the Holocaust. Politicians from other countries were largely silent.

The Iranian website Asr-e Iran claimed that Obama’s condemnation of the Iranian president was being directed by a small Zionist group who control the media and only proves the truth of the Iranian president’s warnings. (In Persian here.)

 

LIVNI: AHMADINEJAD’S SPEECH MAKES MOCKERY OF UN VOW OF “NEVER AGAIN”

Israeli Foreign Minister (and Prime Minister designate) Tzipi Livni blasted the United Nations for granting Iran’s president a platform to deliver an anti-Semitic address that contradicted its vow to prevent another Holocaust.

“Ahmadinejad’s speech at the UN demonstrates the absurd state of affairs of the organization whose founding motto was ‘Never Again.’ But, that is not even the worst of it. Iran is now asking to be included as a member of the UN Security Council. This is like allowing a criminal to be his own judge and jury,” she said.

 

NETANYAHU: “THE YEAR IS 1938 AND EUROPE IS SLEEPING, UNFORTUNATELY NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME”

Israel’s Likud party opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu said the Iranian leader’s statements heighten the urge for Western action against Tehran’s nuclear activities. “The president of Iran unites all of Israel given the threat. There is no difference between myself and [Kadima party leader] Tzipi Livni and [Labor party leader] Ehud Barak on this matter. The West still does not spot the danger and even if it does spot it, it is still not acting. Israel needs to do what is needed so that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon,” he said

“The year is 1938 and Iran is analogous to Germany. Europe is sleeping, it’s napping, unfortunately not for the first time but Israel must not absorb the negative consequences of that.”

 

IRAN’S PRESIDENT TAKES MESSAGE TO GULLIBLE U.S. MEDIA

Meanwhile, during his stay in New York this week, Ahmadinejad was allowed to further his aims by being invited to give interviews to the “useful idiots” of the American media, including National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition”, and CNN’s Larry King show.

He toned down his remarks for Larry King in a masterful propaganda effort to make him seem respectable.

But in various interviews to other American media, Ahmadinejad continued to express his view that Israel has no future, describing the Jewish state as “an airplane that has lost its engine.”

***

In Israel, the media took rather a different line. The headline of Israel Hayom was “Ahmadinejad At UN: The Most Anti-Semitic Speech”; and Ma’ariv’s headline was “The Ahmadinejad Horror Show.”

***

Please also read the article below from The New York Sun titled “Ahmadinejad gets a warm reception” about how 400 American students and professors flew to New York’s Hyatt hotel from all over America – in many cases their transport paid for by their colleges – to listen to and lap up Ahmadinejad’s ugly propaganda. Professors from Harvard, Columbia and MIT attended.

 

“ISRAEL CAUSING PALESTINIAN HOLOCAUST”

In a separate speech given to reporters at a press conference prior to his UN address, Ahmadinejad said Israel was “perpetrating a holocaust on the Palestinian people.”

He also again said that the Holocaust by Nazi Germany was a “fake” and “an invention.”

He added that the Jewish state wouldn’t survive “in any form.”

He also downplayed the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran. “The Zionists are in a weak position to launch attacks against any other country,” he was quoted by Iran’s Press TV as saying.

Meanwhile, Iranian Vice President Mashayee said in Iran this week that “Israel is a dead corpse whose burial has been delayed.” (In Persian here.)

And in an open letter to Supreme Leader Khamenei immediately after the Supreme Leader’s Friday prayer sermon in Tehran, Vice President Mashayee wrote: “I am convinced about the annihilation of world Zionism and find it within our reach.”

 

JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS CAVE IN TO BULLYING FROM OBAMA CAMP

This item of mine was published early last Friday on the website of the National Review. Might this be a foretaste to the way an Obama-Biden administration might pressure Israel if elected?

Jewish organizations cave in to bullying from Obama camp
By Tom Gross
National Review Online
September 19, 2008, 04:29 AM

Yesterday I noted that Senator Hillary Clinton canceled an appearance at a major New York rally next week because Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was also due to speak. The rally will be held outside UN headquarters on Monday to protest against Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The UN General Assembly opens that day, and the Iranian dictator (repressor of women, children, Christians, homosexuals, Kurds and Bahá’ís, as well as being the biggest anti-Semite on the international stage since Hitler) is scheduled to address the body the following day.

But following what is described as heavy muscle pressure from the Obama-Biden camp, the Jewish groups who are organizing the rally (which is also expected to be attended by Iranian dissidents and other human rights activists) have now disinvited Palin. (Obama and Biden say they won’t accept invitations to attend either.)

So thanks to pressure from Obama and his foolish foreign policy advisors, as well from the far-left George Soros-financed group “J Street,” neither major Democrat nor Republican heavyweights will now attend the rally.

Do Obama and Biden actually want Iran to get a nuclear weapon?

***

UPDATE 1: HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS: WHERE THEN ARE OUR FAMILES?

Monday’s rally was attended by several thousand people, but obviously had Sarah Palin been allowed to attend or had Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden chosen to come, the crowd demonstrating against Ahmadinejad, would have been much bigger, and the international media attention much greater.

Many liberal American Jews are apparently more concerned about hounding Sarah Palin than stopping Iran getting a nuclear arsenal which it may well use to wipe out Israel. Prominent American Jews in the media and Hollywood were also notoriously silent during the (first?) Holocaust, with only a very few exceptions.

Among those attending Monday’s and yesterday’s rallies in New York were elderly survivors of Nazi death camps in Europe, who said they were the living rejoinders to Ahmadinejad’s lies about the Holocaust.

One Holocaust survivor in attendance, named Elaine told an Iranian opposition radio station: “Ahmadinejad said that the Holocaust never happened – that it is invented. So where are my parents? Where is my whole family? I had five sisters and two brothers... Six million Jews were killed and a million and half of them children. So he comes and he says that we invented the Holocaust.”

(Please see the last item on this dispatch for the remarks Sarah Palin would have given at the rally had she been allowed to speak.)

***

UPDATE 2: CATHOLIC LEAGUE CRITICIZES OTHER CHURCHES

The Catholic League sent a mass email to its membership, saying in part: “Catholics need to stand with their Jewish brothers and sisters in protesting... Ahmadinejad is a menace to freedom-loving people the world over, and the sight of religious groups embracing him is nauseating. The Catholic League is proud to take part in this rally and we encourage people of all religious groups to have a contingent represent them on Thursday evening.”

Among the religious groups honoring Ahmadinejad at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City were the Americans Friends Service Committee, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quaker United Nations Office, Religions for Peace, and the World Council of Churches.

***

UPDATE 3: EVANGELICALS: INDICT AHMADINEJAD

A prominent evangelical organization, angered by the decision of other Christian organizations to meet and honor Ahmadinejad in New York (see last week’s dispatch for details) has said it would deliver a petition to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon signed by 55,000 Christians from 128 countries demanding that Ahmadinejad be indicted for incitement to genocide against Israel.

Malcolm Hedding, the organization’s executive director (and who is also a subscriber to this email list), said: “The silence of most Christian clergy in the face of Germany’s horrific bid to annihilate European Jewry left a deep stain on the churches. Yet from it has arisen a sense among multitudes of Christians today that we have an inescapable moral duty to earnestly speak out whenever another genocidal campaign threatens the Jewish people.”

 

AMERICAN PRESS WAKES UP TO THE NUCLEAR THREAT

In America, the press this week ran a series of editorials warning of the dangers of a nuclear Iran.

In a lead editorial in The Washington Post on Tuesday titled “Iran Slips Away,” the paper said “Even as its nuclear program accelerates, the impetus to stop it loses steam.”

“As Iran races toward accumulating enough uranium for a bomb, the sense of urgency about the threat it poses is lower here and in Europe than it was six months or a year ago... There seems to be little prospect that the Security Council will agree anytime soon on a fourth round of UN sanctions.”

In The Wall Street Journal, Democrats and Republicans came together to co-author a piece titled “Everyone needs to worry about Iran.”

The four authors were Richard Holbrooke (a former U.S. ambassador to the UN), R. James Woolsey (a former director of the CIA), Dennis Ross (the Middle East envoy for President Clinton) and Mark Wallace (a representative of the U.S. to the UN for management and reform). Woolsey and Ross are both subscribers to this email list.

And in an editorial in The New York Times titled “Remember Iran?” The New York Times remembered Iran but drew precisely the wrong conclusions, essentially calling for the appeasement of Iran’s regime by America.

After Hitler, the policy of appeasing dictators – famously referred to by Winston Churchill as “feeding a crocodile, hoping it will eat one last” – appeared to be permanently discredited. But apparently not by The New York Times.

 

THE GUARDIAN: BUSH “TURNED DOWN ISRAELI REQUEST TO BOMB IRAN”

According to an “exclusive” published today in London in The Guardian (and reprinted courtesy of Reuters and other news agencies elsewhere) “Israel’s then prime minister Ehud Olmert reportedly spoke to President George W. Bush about the possibility of a strike on Iran during the American leader’s visit to the Jewish state in May.”

The revelations were sourced to European diplomats.

The author of The Guardian’s article, Jonathan Steele, is a notorious polemicist against America and the West.

Mark Regev, Olmert’s spokesman, reacted to The Guardian’s story saying: “The need to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is raised at every meeting between the prime minister and foreign leaders. Israel prefers a diplomatic solution to this issue but all options must remain on the table. Your unnamed European source attributed words to the prime minister that were not spoken in any working meeting with foreign guests.”

Tom Gross adds: During Saddam Hussein’s rule in 1981, Israeli aircraft successfully destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak shortly before it was due to start operating. At the time the entire world, including President Reagan, attacked Israel, and newspapers like The New York Times were scathing in their criticism of the government of Menachem Begin. Since then, many politicians and journalists in the West and Arab world have acknowledged that Begin’s action was necessary and correct.

 

ISRAELI MILITARY INTELLIGENCE: IRAN HALFWAY TO NUCLEAR BOMB

Iran is halfway to a nuclear bomb, and Hizbullah, Hamas and Syria are using this period of relative calm to significantly rearm, Brig.-Gen. Yossi Baidatz, the Military Intelligence’s head of research, told the Israeli cabinet on Sunday during a particularly gloomy briefing on the threats facing Israel.

Baidatz warned there was a growing gap between Iran’s progress on the nuclear front and the West’s determination to stop it. “Iran is concentrating on uranium enrichment, and is making progress,” he said, noting that they have improved the function of their 4,000 uranium centrifuges.

According to Baidatz, the Iranian centrifuges have so far produced between one-third to one-half of the enriched material needed to build a nuclear bomb.

“The Iranians are pleased that the gap is widening,” Baidatz said. “Their confidence is growing with the thought that the international community is not strong enough to stop them,” he added.

Baidatz said the Iranians were playing for time, and that time was working in their favor since the longer the process dragged on, the wider the rifts appearing among the countries in the West become. “Iran is in control of the technology and is moving with determination toward a nuclear bomb,” he said.

 

FORMER IDF HEAD: MILITARY STRIKE AGAINST IRAN MAY BE INEVITABLE

General Moshe Ya’alon, the former head of the Israeli army, has said that Iran threatens the West in the same way Hitler once did and that if economic and political sanctions failed, a military conflict will be inevitable. “Today, we in the West are facing the same situation, the same lack of decisiveness towards a threat that is no less severe than that which Hitler posed in 1939,” Ya’alon said. “We can still stop Iran using political and economic measures but if we do not, then a military confrontation is inevitable.” Ya’alon served as chief of staff of the IDF from 2002 to 2005.

 

RUSSIA, CHINA THWART IRAN SANCTIONS

Russia and China (both of whom are permanent members of the UN Security Council) are blocking U.S. and European efforts to slap new sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program, reports the Associated Press.

Writing in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz yesterday, Yossi Melman said:

“The UN’s sanctions on Iran have collapsed. That is the only conclusion one can draw from Russia’s announcement earlier this week that it is no longer willing to support the Security Council’s permanent members’ proposal for a new set of sanctions, the fourth of its kind, against Iran.

“Though no funeral has been held or death certificate issued, Moscow has rendered clinically dead the joint international efforts to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

“The sanctions imposed two years ago were not strong, as they were the result of a compromise between the U.S., EU, Russia and China. But they expressed a moral stand by the international community that it would not come to terms with a nuclear Iran.

“Russia, which will complete constructing a nuclear power plant in the Iranian city of Bushehr this year, was never enthused by the idea of sanctions. It did everything it could to stall and weaken them. Eventually, it always agreed on watered-down versions while exploiting U.S. weaknesses such as its involvement in Iraq, the presidential elections and its severe economic crisis. Thus, Russia is strengthening the Iranian regime and signaling to it that the basic, though superficial, international consensus against it has ceased to exist.

“... Now, thanks to support from Moscow, the Iranian president and his patron, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, can feel more relaxed and claim that the international sanctions will soon be lifted, deflecting criticism against them... Iran is only months away from crossing the technological threshold of building an atomic bomb.”

***

Here are some photos of this week’s military parade in Iran:
www.tabnak.ir/pages/?cid=18934
www.jahannews.com/fa/pages/?cid=33395

“Iran’s latest domestically-manufactured military arms, naval weapons and air force equipment, including the Shahab-3 missile with the ability to hit targets within a range of 2,000 km, as well as the 300 km range Shahab-1, the 500 km range Shahab-2, and the upgraded 2,000 km range Gadr-1 ballistic missiles were also displayed,” Iran’s Press TV said.

Meanwhile, Russia is negotiating the delivery of more air defense systems to Iran, said the General Director of Russian arms exporter, Rosoboronexport.

 

STILL NO WORD ON MISSING AMERICAN IN IRAN

Christine Levinson, the wife of former FBI agent Robert Levinson who disappeared in Iran l8 months ago, says Iranian officials are refusing to give her any information about her husband. “I know nothing about his welfare, or his whereabouts. He is 60 years old and has diabetes and high blood pressure, so that makes me extremely concerned.”

The Iranian delegation visiting New York for the UN General Assembly refused to meet with Mrs. Levinson.

* More in Persian here
* Background in English here.

 

IRANIAN GENERAL KILLED IN CLASHES WITH REBELS

Iran’s government-controlled Fars News Agency reports that four members of the Iranian security forces, including a general, have been killed in clashes with rebels in Sistan-Baluchestan province, in southeastern Iran.

“The general was killed during mopping up operations in the Nosratabad area northwest of the provincial capital Zahedan... Several rebels were also killed,” reports Fars.

Sistan-Baluchestan has seen a surge in attacks by the Jundullah (Soldiers of God) group in recent years. Over three thousand Iranian police and security forces have been killed in clashes with militia in southeastern Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

 

MEDIA GROUP CRITICIZES JAILING BY IRAN OF ETHNIC MINORITY JOURNALISTS

This website has long urged international human rights organizations to speak up for persecuted Iranians.

On September 24, 2008, the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders finally called on Iran to stop what it called Tehran’s “all-out repression” of ethnic-minority journalists.

The Paris-based group criticized the holding without charge of four ethnic-Azeri journalists – Alireza Sarafi, Said Mohamadi, Hassain Rashedi, and Akabar Azad – and the sentencing of another, Shahnaz Gholami, on September 20 to six months in prison for her online articles.

Reporters Without Borders said it was “disturbing” that 11 out of 12 journalists detained in Iran last week were from the Kurdish, Azeri, or Arab minorities.

It said the journalists were being held in prison for criticizing social inequality and demanding equal treatment for non-Persian minorities.

 

“NUCLEAR PYONGYANG IS HELPING IRAN”

The leading French daily, Le Figaro, reported on September 23, 2008 that “North Korean experts are involved in developing nuclear missiles for the Iranian regime on a site that was previously not identified, according to the exiled opposition group, the National Council of Resistance Iran (NCRI).”

According to NCRI, these experts have been working “for at least two years” on a secret military site in the Hemmat Khojar region, south-east of Tehran, where they are involved in the adaptation of ballistic missile medium-range Shahab-3 with nuclear warheads.

The NCRI said their information is based on sources “within the regime.”

 

HALF OF MIDDLE-EAST INTERNET USERS LIVE IN IRAN

Iran has the second highest percentage of its population online in the Middle East. Over 23 million Iranians use the Internet, representing 34.9 % of the population. Only Israel has a higher proportion of users; just over half the Israeli population has Internet access.

According to the Internet World Stats, Iranians comprise nearly 54% of total Internet users in the Middle East. There are thousands of anti-government blogs illegally operating in Iran

Selected statistics from “Internet World Stats”.

Iran: 23,000,000 users as of March 08, 34.9% penetration.
Israel: 3,700,000 users as of July 06, 52.0% penetration.
Palestine (West Bank and Gaza): 355,500 users as of March 08, 13.6 % penetration.
Syria: 2,132,000 users as of March 08, 10.8% penetration.