Sitting with mullahs at a table legitimizes their barbaric domestic and uncivilized foreign policies.
By NASRIN AMIRSEDGHIAhmadinejad UN 224.88(photo credit: AP)
Father Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, the 75-year-old Nicaraguan Catholic priest, winner of the International Lenin Peace Prize and newly elected president since September 16 of the UN General Assembly for the current session, is not just a "fan of plain words," he is also a fan of heroic deeds. On September 23, we were witnesses to a 21st-century chamber of horrors at the 63rd session of the UN General Assembly, when he said: "On behalf of the General Assembly, I wish to thank his excellency the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran and request the representatives to remain seated while I greet the president."
Brockmann, who personally thanked "his excellency," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for his "excellent" speech, which was dripping with anti-Zionism and hate, interrupted the session and rushed down the stairs to warmly, even enthusiastically, hug and kiss Ahmadinejad. Everyone in the hall clapped and cheered - and here in Europe and everywhere there is dead silence about it.
The Rheinische Post reported on it, days later, on September 27: "Steinmeier chastizes Iran," according to which the German foreign minister accused the Iranian president of "pure anti-Semitism" because of his speech. But not a word was uttered about the behavior of the "wannabe humanist," the president of the UN General Assembly on September 23.
Once you look more closely into the personal background of Brockmann, you aren't at all surprised at such heroism. As the "son of a wealthy career diplomat who served during the Somoza dictatorship," he is a Nicaraguan socialist with US citizenship. He wandered since his birth in Los Angeles back and forth "between luxury and revolution," and "as one of the few remaining companions he is still a close friend, political consultant and father confessor to [Sandinista leader Daniel] Ortega."
So he developed an enormous need for altruism and charity, which he demonstrated on September 23, 2008 in New York. That is why he is also working to reform the UN Security Council. Brockmann is pushing for a "democratization" of the organization, a kind of "Durban 2," the conference that will meet in Geneva on April 4, 2009 to install another 21st-century chamber of horrors.
THE THINGS that Ahmadinejad is proclaiming in front of the UN General Assembly are certainly nothing new. Even before the mullahs assumed power in Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was calling on the world's Islamic communities for a "holy jihad" against Israel back in 1973. At the time he could only dream of Iran becoming a nuclear power. Now his wish for nuclear weapons is being fulfilled. This is the goal and strategy of the mullahs: Bomb! Bomb! Atomic bombs!
Sure, the mullahs are claiming that their nuclear program is "peaceful," but whoever wants to believe that is blind and naive. Why else do they write "Death to Israel" on their missiles and drive them around the streets of Teheran? They are still in the middle of their nuclear buildup, but every day they are shouting "Death to Zionism" in the mosques and streets, are holding international symposiums such as "A World Without Zionism" and anti-Zionistic caricature competitions, are denying the Holocaust or telling everyone about their intentions to wipe Israel off the map or from the pages of history. What will they be capable of once they have nuclear weapons?
Possession of nuclear weapons is not just a strategy for Iran, but rather a first-rate weapon against democratic countries, against modernity, against people with different beliefs, against universal human rights in general and against Israel in particular. Fighting against all of them is the task of an extremely "moral" belief. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is heading down that path, hand in hand with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his whole crowd.
The belief that the Jews had to disappear was not just empty words by Heinrich Himmler in his notorious speech to a select group of SS officers at a troop leadership conference in Posen in October 1943, but rather the announcement of the most terrible crimes committed in modern day history that resulted in millions of Jews as the victims.
And today Ahmadinejad is shouting about very similar things, just with a different bent: "Israel must be wiped off the map." In 1943 Germany did not yet have nuclear weapons, but Iran is moving toward them. They are doing what they are saying. They did what they said they were going to do. Back then the world reacted very late, and today it isn't saying anything.
"WE HAD the moral right, we had the duty to our own people, to kill this people who wanted to kill us... In general, however, we can say that we have carried out this most difficult task out of love for our own people. And we have suffered no harm to our inner self, our soul, our character in so doing" - Heinrich Himmler 1943 in Posen.
And Ahmadinejad, the representative of his regime, justifies his hate for Israel with a similar moral diffusion, but in the name of "mahdi" to save the Muslim "umma." The former is a thing of the past with all its terrible consequences; the other is the future with the impending dangers for the future.
For a while now, Europeans have kissed and cuddled with their allies, undemocratic countries such as Russia and China and the mullahs, have bought and sold billions and billions of goods and, in the meantime, they share the hope for patience and reason from both sides. Everyone pleads for "direct diplomacy," "talks on equal footing" and much much more.
According to the European way of thinking, this is good and has proven itself, but the questions remain: Can someone who doesn't understand the core alphabet of democracy and diplomacy, someone who apart from a ghastly fantasy that is rooted in Shi'ite piety such as the one-time belief in the "return of the mahdi," someone who literally makes his own people's lives a living hell, dips his arm up to his shoulder in blood and who scorns the principles of human rights be a valued partner?
DIDN'T NEVILLE Chamberlain try that back in 1938? He returned to England full of hope and with a signed agreement, convinced that Hitler wasn't crazy, just "erratic and emotional," and then millions of Jews ended up in the gas chambers. Today people call his actions the low point of the "appeasement" policy and view it as a warning not to underestimate dictators. And the Europeans are adhering to the same policy with Iran as Chamberlain did with Germany.
Sitting with Iranian mullahs at a table legitimizes their barbaric domestic policies and their uncivilized foreign policies. The main responsibility for the future lies in the hands of Europe, and particularly the German government. Germany and the Jews were finally liberated from Hitler's barbaric tyranny with the help of the Allies. Today it is Germany's duty to take this threat seriously and take action. It needs to look for "democratic allies" (the United States, Great Britain, France, Israel, etc., not Russia and China) and with their help finally free the world and the Iranian people from the mullahs' barbaric tyranny. Anyone who does not recognize this danger should not be surprised when Iranian atom bombs are flying everywhere.
Today more than ever we need the iron-clad determination of the world community to do everything it can to stop Iran's progress in building nuclear weapons. Ninety percent of the Iranian people hate their regime and long for democracy and human rights; their most elemental political and cultural wishes are free elections, freedom of the press, equal rights for men and women and those with different beliefs, and a lot more that make up the democratic standards. What is currently on the agenda in Iran is pure barbarism of the Shi'ite mullahs under the reigning president. It's like Shimon Peres said on September 25, Ahmadinejad is a "disgrace to Islam" and "Iran stands at the center of world's violence and fanaticism."
Ms. Amirsedghi is a publicist and orientalist who fled the Islamic Republic of Iran and lives in Mainz, Germany. She spoke this past May at the Mideast Freedom Forum Berlin Conference, Business as Usual! The Iranian Regime - The Holy War Against Israel and the West and the German Reaction.
