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Articles : "War on Terror"Smartest Man in the Room
Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University has been getting an incredible amount of attention in the media, political and activist circles around the country. As someone who was born in Iran and lived in Tehran for 17 years, I want to give you my assessment of how I believe Ahmadinejad’s visit will be viewed elsewhere in the world with the main conclusion that as he said his goodbyes to the audience in the university’s hostile environment, one thing became clear: regardless of what you may think of his values (or lack thereof), he proved to be the savviest person in the room.
Let’s begin with the massive protests. It was no surprise that there were thousands of people in the streets of New York protesting unconditional freedom of speech and his right to speak his mind. He knew that the city was home to over two million Jews, and that he would face massive protests. But that is precisely the martyr-like image that he was intending to create. Standing on that stage after a hostile introduction by the Columbia University president and in the face of thousands of protesters may have made him look lonely and illegitimate in the West. But to the eyes of many around the world, he looked like a hero and someone who was speaking what they are likely to consider “the truth” in the face of a bully. On August 31, this blogger wrote that one of the main reasons why the United States has not effectively addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and vetoed 47 UN Security Council Resolutions against Israel (14 under Bush II, 7 under Clinton, 7 under Bush I, and 19 under Reagan) is the strength of Jewish lobby in America and “the willingness of millions of Jews in America, including many liberal ones who normally support sensible foreign policies, to roll over, make an exception, keep silent and even vocally cheerlead America’s support for the Israeli occupation.” Massive protests in New York very much reinforced that assertion as almost all of the signs related to Iran’s nuclear program and none relating to its actual human rights violations.
I would have had a lot more admiration for the protesters if they focused more on Iran’s primary crimes on women, youth, homosexuals, Baha’is and political dissenters instead of a predicted imaginary military attack against Israel that has not happened. Iranians will watch the protests and see that the main concern of the American people is not the oppression of Iranians, but Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
The president of Columbia’s criticisms of Ahmadinejad’s crimes before his speech was very constructive. But Bollinger did the cause of free speech and America’s image in the Middle East a great deal of disservice when he went on for almost 19 minutes name-calling Ahmadinejad before allowing him to speak and not really thanking him for accepting Columbia’s invitation to speak. Ahmadinejad scored a second point when he criticized the Columbia president for giving the audience what he called a “vaccination” before Ahmadinejad had a chance to speak. He said that in Iran, they allow students and professors to freely exchange ideas without instructing them how they should feel about things. That, of course, cannot have been farther from the truth. Nonetheless, many in the room related to his argument, promoting the students to applaud, hence ridiculing those who introduced him. It is understandable why Columbia would be inclined to give such an introduction to defuse some of the pressure that was asserted on the university due to massive criticisms of the institution for allowing Ahmadinejad to speak. But he went too far, which gave Ahmadinejad the opportunity to successfully attack back and score some sympathy.
But the most tragic part of the event was the Q and A segment. The Iranian regime is as vulnerable with regards to its domestic policies as America is with regards to its foreign policy and war in Iraq. It is true that Iran has occasionally funded various groups that have been hostile to U.S. interests. But the United States has done the very same thing to Iran and much more. An example which Ahmadinejad pointed out to was Reagan’s sales of weapons to Saddam, which he used against in Iran for eight years. I can still vividly remember the sound of sirens, duct taped living room windows and American-funded air strikes.
And yet, most of Bollinger’s questions focused on Iran’s foreign policies. By keeping the focus on international issues, Columbia gave him an easy way to turn the conversation around time and again and criticize American policy. One question was why Iran was enriching uranium, which Bollinger naively ended with “would you stop?” And why should they stop? There is no evidence that they are building a bomb, they are a member of the NPT, which gives them the right to enrich uranium, and their two main open enemies — Israel and America — both possess nuclear weapons, with the former not being a member of NPT and the latter breaking its rules by not moving toward the treaty’s ultimate goal: elimination of all nuclear weapons.
Many Iranians hoped that Columbia would take this opportunity to keep the focus of questions on Iran’s brutal domestic policies. And yet, of the five or six questions that were asked, astonishingly, only one related to human rights, with women and homosexuals put together in one question as if they didn’t deserve their own individual questions. But for the most part, the questions that were asked of him were significantly superficial. This is not because questions with regards to anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric aren’t important. But rather, they are nothing new! Iran has been issuing such empty rhetoric since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Yet that’s what they have been: empty rhetoric for domestic consumption, not an official policy declaration. But human rights crimes, stoning of women for infidelity, arresting unmarried people for dating or holding hands in public and killing homosexuals for being have been going on for almost three decades. As someone who was arrested in Tehran at age 16 for the crime of being on a date, I can attest to that fact.
Here are some questions Bollinger should have asked: Will you allow women to have the right to initiate divorce from their husbands or obtain a passport without the consent of their husbands? Will you allow boys and girls to date or go to school together? Do you promise that the people in Iran can be safe in publicly criticizing you or the Supreme Leader Khomeini? Will you guarantee people’s rights to wear whatsoever clothing they choose in public? Will you allow people to convert away from Islam to other religions? Would you support a free UN-administered referendum for your people to vote on whether they want an Islamic republic or a secular democratic republic? If yes, will you respect its outcome?
Without asking these significant questions or any meaningful understanding of more than 2,500 years of Iranian history, Columbia provided an environment for Ahmadinejad to criticize American policy, divert every viewer’s attention from the country’s brutalities and oppression and play to the audience’s idealist beliefs that scored him more applauses than any meaningful challenge to his stance and record on issues that mattered the most.
Sam Sedaei was born in 1982 in Iran. He lived in Tehran until 1999 before immigrating to the U.S. at age sixteen. Sam revisited Iran during a five-week trip that expanded from two weeks before the 2005 Persian presidential elections until three weeks after the event to do a clandestine research on social issues that related to the growth of the Persian Democracy Movement. He recently moved to Washington DC to begin working as a Legislative Dispatcher for a bipartisan lobbying firm. His web site is: SamSedaei.com.
This article is republished with his permission. It originally appeared on the Huffington Post, where he is a regular blogger.
Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc,...
Editor’s note: I went back and forth with Sam about the use of the term “Jewish lobby” to refer to the AIPAC crowd’s agenda. I suggested “pro-Israel” or “right wing Jewish lobby.” He insisted on keeping it as is. I thought the first-hand insight in the piece outweighed not running it. So I keep it in. But for the record, I think simply referring to the right-wing, pro-Israel lobby in Washington as “Jewish” is a gross simplification of the facts and leads to misunderstandings about the relationship between religion and the state of Israel. Do we call right-wing evangelicals simply “Christians?” No, we call them the Christian right. There are Quakers, for instance, who I know who chain themselves to fences on nuclear missile bases and spend most of their lives trying to end the American war machine. Same could be said of peacenik Jews who don’t support the continuing occupation of the Palestinian people and are actively working to find solutions. And of course, there are orthodox Jews who don’t believe in the secular state of Israel and see Zionism, the founding philosophy of the state of Israel, as an affront to their God. Calling the rightist, pro-Israel no-matter-what lobby simply “Jewish” is no different than referring to Muslim jihadists as simply Muslims, without making a distinction between their murderous ways and the rest of the Muslim world.
Would you support a free UN-administered referendum for your people to vote on whether they want an Islamic republic or a secular democratic republic?
Where is this coming from? He should know that the UN has no mandate to go in and influence the domestic political systems of member states. Sedaie doesn’t seem too keen on the Iranians actually changing things for themselves…
Aside from that, an interesting take.
The Jewish lobby is certainly a misnomer. For a start some of the most passionate zionists are right-wing Christians, or at least they say they are. Then there are the Murdochs of this world. IPS carried some polls last year which were quite interesting on the actual state of public opinion amongst American jews.
Etc…
Gross simplification? I think not.
In case anyone missed it: “Jewish Lobby” representative Clinton issued a recent Statement, classifying holocaust denial as hate speech.
Anyway, good deal on the clarification. There is the double-drive to move away from anti-Semitic rhetoric, and as you said, the fact that there are just too vast a number of Jews or really any other ethnicity to characterize them as all being part of one movement just because they are part of one religion.
This is Sam Sedaei, the author of this article. As you read the editor’s note, I used “Jewish Lobby” because of the lack of a better alternative. Here is why.
I know the term “pro-Israel” term is the term that is commonly used. But I think it is misleading, because it implies that if you are not in their support, that makes you anti-Israel. It’s like the term “pro-life” which implies that if you are not it, you are anti-life.
Secondly, the members of AIPAC and other Jewish lobbying groups are exclusively Jewish, and the very creation of Israel occurred by following what Israelis claim were the true teachings of Judaism. So by blindly supporting Israel’s policies, they are really lobbying for what they consider underlying teachings of Judaism with regards to “the land,” etc. Furthermore, it is the only lobby in Washington that is exclusively Jewish.
I am not criticizing just the “right wing” Jewish lobby. The whole point is that the pro-whatever-Israel-does bias is not just a conservative thing. Liberals Jews in America are for the most part equally guilty, in my humble opinion. Besides in American mainstream politics, it is well understood that “Christian Lobby” refers to activists who lobby the American government in support of Christian values. I think it is appropriate to call AIPAC “Jewish Lobby” because Jewish Lobby, for the most part, lobby values that have stemmed from Judaism – yes, including the creation and protection of the state of Israel. If it wasn’t for Judaism, there would be no state of Israel. I don’t think even they are arguing that.
Read the comments people have written in response to my blog on the Huff Post. No one to my knowledge has taken an issue with me calling it “Jewish Lobby” because when reading it in context, they know I am not criticizing Judaism as a religion.
so you’re saying that Banphony is the only one to take issue with the term? Gee I wonder what the significance of that is?
Personally I prefer ‘Zionist Lobby’ as it covers all of ‘em without reference to religion They can use your reference to religion as a smokescreen in order to weasel-out of having to answer to the specific charge
i.e. if you’re Jewish but not a zionist then ‘Zionist Lobby’ doesn’t include you, if you’re Christian and a Zionist, it does
this is a great article, and perfectly articulates pretty much everything i felt
It was no surprise that there were thousands of people in the streets of New York protesting unconditional freedom of speech and his right to speak his mind.
exactly.
thanks for writing this, Sam.
Agreed. This is a great piece.
But Sam, to clarify: No one uses the term the “Christian lobby” in the U.S. Ask Jim Wallis why. What you are referring to is most commonly, and correctly, called the “Christian right” or the “Evangelical Christian movement.” As for Jews and Israel. As I noted, the most hardcore Jews, the orthodox, don’t even believe in the state of Israel as it exists today. It’s a secular state. Also, as it’s been pointed out, it’s incorrect to say that the pro-Israel lobbying groups are exclusively Jewish (AIPAC might be – I tired to check, but couldn’t find an answer – but it only represents one org. in a large constellation of groups). Right-wing Christians have raised millions of dollars in support of Israel and are some of Israel’s biggest political supporters. See: Zion’s Christian Soldiers and God’s Warriors.
Addendum: for instance, if you put “Christian lobby” into Google, you get links to Australia’s “Christian lobby.”
Does calling someone “anti-Semite” lobby for Jews or Israel?
Clearly, Ahmadinejad has been distinguished by the media and U.S. reps as anti-Semite.
haaaaahaaaaaaaaaahaaaa ROFLMAO – A, you’re sooo transparent
See, Sam now he’s got ya talking about religion rather than what you want to talk about which is the undue influence of Zionists (Many, but not all, of whom are Jewish) on U.S, foreign policy. I told ya he would
I hoped that Anthony hadn’t written that note and allowed people to draw their own conclusion or that he had said something else too about the article other than the “Jewish Lobby” term. By not talking about anything else, I think he distracted people from discussing the main ideas behind the piece.
I hope that you can begin discussing my more important points that I am making and not focus on trivial issue. Ironically, that was also what Bollinger did at the event with Ahmadinejad, which is the main point in this writer’s article.
And you think he wasn’t aware of that before he did it?
EXCLUSIVE-Money trail to Hamas begins with Israeli banks
i hate to requote, but i feel like this…
It was no surprise that there were thousands of people in the streets of New York protesting unconditional freedom of speech and his right to speak his mind.
...is about the most important point from the article.
i mentioned it in another thread, but i really feel like Ahmadinejad played America like a fiddle.
and Banphony’s trying to fiddle Sam, it seems
Zionist is a more accurate term.
And agreed, there are more important issues to discuss here. I apologize if I got people off track. Discuss important stuff away…
Like what Anthony? What else did you get out of the article? Talk to your readers a bit about those ideas.
For one, I think you did a great job of focusing attention on Iran’s troublesome domestic issues, which no one seems to want to talk about on the left, because they are too busy lauding MA for standing up to the U.S.
excellent insight Sam. Aside from the semantics of the lobby’s name, we are aware that a rose by any other name smells as sweet.
In terms of what happenned at Columbia, i think that Ahm. did a fine job playing to his strengths. The mainstream media picked up on his “racy” remarks about homosexuality and lauded the University’s pres. for his speech calling him a dictator, which he is not. I also think it funny, that the protests were all over mainstream media, as well as the insinuation that having the Iranian president at all was somehow un-American.
One important thing to remember, is that the US gov. BushCo. and all the crony elitists who are pro-war and want a shot at Iran, have not mentioned the domestic record at all in the run up to conflict with Iran. France has now said war is inevitable, and the US is taking a strong stance against any enrichment, with the threat that Iran can produce “dirty” bombs, like those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki near end of WW2, at 50% enrichment, which is alot closer than 10 years off, which was the benchmark at the beginning of this.
There is no desire to actually change the way things are working in Iran, it is all fear mongerring allowing the US gov. and military, or MIC, to propagate war in the middle east and further destabilize a region that bears golden fruit that we just can’t seem to live without.
Sam i think you pointed out how this could have been positive, but wasnt in the least, and that should be looked at for future dealings with Iran. To play into their hands reaps strong benefits when they return, and with re-elections coming round cross the board (although i dont think Putin is going anywhere, Ahm. might be, and certainly Bush is) it is important to realize that the US has become so simple in its politics that it has become a target for such ruses as these by foreign diplomats.
Here are some questions Bollinger should have asked: Will you allow women to have the right to initiate divorce from their husbands or obtain a passport without the consent of their husbands? Will you allow boys and girls to date or go to school together? Do you promise that the people in Iran can be safe in publicly criticizing you or the Supreme Leader Khomeini? Will you guarantee people’s rights to wear whatsoever clothing they choose in public? Will you allow people to convert away from Islam to other religions? Would you support a free UN-administered referendum for your people to vote on whether they want an Islamic republic or a secular democratic republic? If yes, will you respect its outcome?
I like those questions, I too would have liked to read Ahmadinejad’s answers to them. However:
I should not have been the first person in this thread to point out that Khomeini is dead, and the current Supreme Leader’s name is Khamenei. I understand the two names are spelled similarly in Roman letters, but I swear they’re two different people…
That said, I thought this was an insightful article. I had a vague feeling, but could not precisely articulate, that Ahmadinejad’s visit could not possibly have been handled any worse by anybody involved in it. Here we have an account of what fearful crowds and moron institutions should not do when faced with the opposition in diplomacy and debate.
Calling the rightist, pro-Israel no-matter-what lobby simply “Jewish” is no different than referring to Muslim jihadists as simply Muslims, without making a distinction between their murderous ways and the rest of the Muslim world.
Word. I don’t have numbers but a significant fraction of funding for the Israel lobby in the U.S. comes from Christians who believe the end of the world, word-for-word as laid down in Revelation, will happen in their lifetimes, and as such are quite willing to push the Israeli state to be even more forceful and assertive than some of its own native partisans would recommend.
True. But people still aren’t allowed to say anything bad about Khomeini even after his death.
This article seems right on the mark about what Ahmadinejad wanted and also makes me wonder about the Iranian agenda in this current situation.
First – the conservative clerics who supposedly really control Iran might not be too worried about a U.S. bombing campaign, as the US would never be able to invade and throw them out of power – but it would allow them to tighten their own grip on power, and continue their crackdown on domestic dissidents.
Second – if the U.S. has been sponsoring terrorist attacks inside Iraq, or arming the Kurds in the north, that also gives the Iranians another good reason to crackdown on dissidents. The clerics and their politicians don’t want to give up power any more than the Shah did.
Third – on the Jewish issue, the Zionists also work hard to convince the global Jewish population that their band of Judaism is the only acceptable one, and that Israel is the true center of Judaism. I’ve been following the story of the reopening of Rykestrasse Synagogue in Germany, and it’s very notable that Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Shimon Stein, was absent from this event. I’m not at all surprised. Israel still beats the Holocaust drum on a daily basis to justify the persecution of Palestinians, and here you have (mostly Russian) Jews in Germany reopening a synagogue and making the Israelis look like a bunch of fearful cowards (which is what they are, mostly).
Fourth – all the repressive regimes (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Syria, for example) in the Middle East love to use Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians as a means to draw the attention of their own repressed populations away from internal regime change. It’s the old Orwellian trick of “hate the enemy” – GW Bush uses it here in the United States to justify his oil grab in Iraq: “If we don’t get those terrorists there, they’ll come here!”.
(Please note that the Saudi Lobby in the US is just as powerful as the Israeli lobby, although neither one exerts anywhere as much influence as the Pharmaceutical, Finance, and Defense Contractor lobbies – the Saudi and Israelis are US client states, and they know it – so enough of this nonsense about “Israel controlling US foreign policy” – they’re just along for the ride, and so are the Saudis)
What all this really reminds me of is feudal Britain, when a noble lord whose peasants were in revolt against his cruel rule would ask one of his noble cousins on an adjacent holding to attack the peasants, so that he and his knights could come galloping to the rescue and make a show of driving off the ‘invaders’.
The only thing the U.S. cares about in the region is the oil, the natural gas, and the establishment of permanent military bases in order to control global access to those assets. Lord forbid that global oil trading should stop flowing through London and New York exchanges, and human rights for Mideastern citizens? No powermonger in Russia, China, India, the U.S., Britain or France gives a damn about that.
Deleted comment, because whats the point when orientalism cannot be countered on the internet. Keep on rockin Anthony!