Cohen misses the point—again
Here's my latest beef with Roger Cohen: He ignores the JTA (and thumps Israel again in a column that misses the point on Iran).
In his column Sunday, the veteran New York Times writer cites critical reaction to his Op-Ed last week on Jews in Iran from the Jerusalem Post, the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg and even the American Thinker. But he ignores the JTA (we called him naive on Iran). What are we -- chopped liver?
More importantly, Cohen misses the point -- again -- in a column that focuses on what Iran isn't, rather than what it is, and takes some more gratuitous swipes at Israel.
Cohen devotes nearly his entire missive to arguing that Iran isn't a totalitarian or fascist state, and that equating it with Nazi Germany of 1938 is a mistake. This misses the point. Iran may treat its Jews well (though, as I noted last week, this doesn't mean they don't live in fear of the regime), but it is simultaneously fighting a war against the 6 million Jews that live in the Jewish state -- to say nothing of Jews around the world -- through proxies in Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Gaza (Hamas).
Cohen call for "thinking again" about whether Hamas and Hezbollah should be terrorist groups. He writes:
The equating of Iran with terror today is simplistic. Hamas and Hezbollah have evolved into broad political movements widely seen as resisting an Israel over-ready to use crushing force. It is essential to think again about them, just as it is essential to toss out Iran caricatures.
I return to this subject because behind the Jewish issue in Iran lies a critical one — the U.S. propensity to fixate on and demonize a country through a one-dimensional lens, with a sometimes disastrous chain of results.
It’s worth recalling that hateful, ultranationalist rhetoric is no Iranian preserve. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s race-baiting anti-Arab firebrand, may find a place in a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. He should not.
Nor should racist demagoguery — wherever — prompt facile allusions to the murderous Nazi master of it.
Cohen's argument, it seems, is not that Iran doesn't fund Hamas and Hezbollah, but that their activities do not constitute terrorism. What would Cohen call Hezbollah's intentional targeting of civilians in Israel and in Lebanon? Hezbollah has attempted to cast itself as a Lebanese political party, but its actions in Lebanon (including assassinations, car bombings and the maintenance of a militia that rivals the Lebanese Army) and its refusal to end its aggression against Israel despite Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 belies that notion.
As for Hamas, which has orchestrated suicide bombings on Israeli buses and at Israeli malls but nowadays fires rockets daily at Israeli towns and cities within its reach, what more can Hamas do to demonstrate that it's a terrorist group? What would Hamas have to bomb in your neighborhood, Mr. Cohen? If buses filled with civilians and private homes are not enough, what is? A bookstore? A Starbucks?
Finally, Cohen again finds space in his column on Iran to move the focus back to Israel. Speaking of ultranationalist rhetoric, Cohen writes, don't forget Avigdor Lieberman.
I don't want to be in the uncomfortable position of defending Lieberman, who has called for drowning Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea, among other repugnant measures.
But there's a big difference between a country that has a minority politician like Lieberman who captured about 12 percent of the vote and a country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, rails against the existence of another country. There's a difference between a minority voice who calls for loyalty oaths by the citizens of his country and an Islamic state that requires its Jewish citizens to denounce the Jewish state from time to time and bars them from many public positions. There's a difference between a country that sends its air force to bomb Gaza to end rocket attacks on its civilians (Arab and Jewish alike) and a country that orchestrates attacks on Jewish community centers like the 1994 bombing of the AMIA center in Buenos Aires, Argentina (85 killed).
To suggest otherwise is to be dangerously naive.
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You wrote the following in your post: “I don’t want to be in the uncomfortable position of defending Lieberman, who has called for drowning Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea, among other repugnant measures. “
Please post a link to (or at least cite) the source which published or reported Lieberman’s comment about drowning in the Red Sea.
Thanks.
Excellent, cogent piece which I will forward to friends and family.
Oh, maybe Roger Cohen is right - we shouldn’t categorize Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorists. I think we should call them the Mouseketeers.
As Mr. Hellman alluded to, I’d like to see Cohen’s position after a Katusha rocket slams through his bedroom ceiling splashing his loved ones’ body parts across the room. I think Cohen smoked too much pot in the 60s.
Look what I found in Article 7 of the HAMAS Charter:
Qu’ran Sura 4-56: “And it shall come to pass that every rock and every tree will shout “Muslim, oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come slay him!’”
I hope that Mr. Cohen has sufficient understanding of what that phrase means.
I just want to make one comment, which pertains to the firing of rockets by Hamas into Israel. This could end today if Israel opened the border to Gaza and allowed goods, such as pasta, in at the same level it was three years ago. It is unfortunate that an Egyptian brokered agreement concerning the border and the firing of rockets was just about to be accepted when Israel threw in an issue, though important, is irrelevant to the matter at hand. Tieing the freeing of Gilad Shalit to the situation at hand was misguided. I’m afraid that since it is obvious to all how the rockets fire can end, which is by opening the border, Israel ceases to have my sympathy.
To Michael Several,
You said: “This could end today if Israel opened the border to Gaza and allowed goods, such as pasta, in at the same level it was three years ago.”
Don’t lose your sympathy for Israel yet. Hamas was blowing up buses, pizzerias, and discotheques full of civilians and young kids long before the issue of rockets and border closures appeared. Hamas’ terrorism did not start with the border closures. In fact, it has nothing to do with it. Read their charter. That says it all.
*****
Roger Cohen’s op-ed, “What Iran’s Jews Say”, now appears online in the Tehran Times: http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=189975
At least part of it. It goes without saying what was omitted from the original NYT op-ed in the Iranian newspaper:
“I know, if many Jews left Iran, it was for a reason. Hostility exists. The trumped-up charges of spying for Israel against a group of Shiraz Jews in 1999 showed the regime at its worst. Jews elect one representative to Parliament, but can vote for a Muslim if they prefer. A Muslim, however, cannot vote for a Jew.
Among minorities, the Bahai — seven of whom were arrested recently on charges of spying for Israel — have suffered brutally harsh treatment.”
This hardly comes as a surprise, despite Mr. Cohen’s contention in “Iran, the Jews and Germany” that Iran is not a totalitarian state.
At the bottom of the item, the Tehran Times specifically attributes the article to The New York Times: “(Source: New York Times)”
It would be interesting to know whether The New York Times was paid for publication of this abridged version of Cohen’s op-ed in the Tehran Times.
You assert as fact that Iran “orchestrates attacks on Jewish community centers” and cite the Buenos Aires bombing of 1994. I investigated that case in considerable detail in 2006 and 2007 and found that investigators found no evidence linking Iran or Hezbollah to the bombing from 1994 to 2000, as four U.S. officials, including the FBI agent who headed the team sent to assist the Argentine authorities in the investigation, told me in interviews. Furthermore the Argentine investigation was deeply tainted from the beginning by a corrupt effort at a frame-up Hezbollah and later of police associated with a political rival of the President.
In 2000, the government claimed to have identified the Lebanese Hezbollah bomber. But I explain in detail in my article why that identification was completely unreliable, and was doubted seriously even by the Argentine intelligence official who had been in charge of the case.
The fact that the Argentine government, Israel and the United States have continued to make the accusation in recent years does not make it true.
Although space did not permit to get into the question of who may have been responsible for the bombing, I found abundant evidence to suggest that violently anti-semitic figures from the Argentine security services (militiary, police and intelligence) who had picked out jews for special treatment during the dirty war in Argentina had both the motive and the opportunity to carry out that bombing as well as the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in 1992.
My article on the Buenos Aires bombing and the tainted investigation in Argentina can be found at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080204/porter
Gareth Porter
Independent investigative journalist and historian
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Alex Khazanovich
03/02/09 05:45 PM
There is no similarity between Lieberman and Ahmadinejad. Lieberman, for all his rhetoric, has shown support for for plenty of dovish government measures, confirming that he is interested in the lasting peace, and not in killing arabs. Many of his current campaign statements are attempting to address the issue of security for the citizens of Israel. Personally, I find some of his statements misguided, while others are right on, such as changing the debate from “land for peace” to “peace for peace”. Taking his statements out of the broad context to me illustrates desperation of Israel’s detractors in trying to find something to denigrate Israel with. However, every Israeli politician thus far, no matter how tough in his words, has been willing to work towards peace with its neighbors. Just think of Begin and Sharon. While Lieberman (and Netanyahu) don’t view the world through the rose-colored glasses, they, too, are willing to work for peace.
Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, does not want peace, but rather, he wants to destroy Israel. He has not only been consistent in his anti-Israeli vitriol, and hatred of all Jews, but also he has shown much of that in his actions, by arming Hamas and Hisbollah and instigating them to fight Israel, and by channeling the limited resources of his country into building a nuclear weapon, much to the detriment of his country’s economy. This dogged determination and the constant anti-Israel/anti-Jewish rhetoric consistent with it should make everyone worried, even his fellow Muslims.
To compare him to Lieberman is like comparing the bull raging about the china shop and stomping its customers, along with the delicate displays, to the owner of this shop, aiming at the bull with the tranquilizer gun.