Israel On Sidelines As World Rushes To Embrace Iran's Rouhani

[Purveyor]

A day after newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani gave a speech at the United Nations acknowledging the Holocaust and declaring Iran had no intention of building a nuclear bomb, an Israeli cartoon featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu trudging to the United Nations asking himself, “Where is Mahmoud [Ahmadinejad] when I need him?”

After all, it wasn’t too hard to convince other world powers – particularly the US – that the guy who denied the Holocaust and talked about Israel being wiped off the map might not be someone whose finger you’d want on the trigger of a nuclear-armed country.

But Mr. Rouhani is much more measured and sophisticated, and his arrival on the world stage has been greeted with optimism, so Mr. Netanyahu’s usual rhetoric isn’t selling as well in the West this time.

But he has still resisted falling in line with world powers.

“Iran thinks that soothing words and token actions will enable it to continue on its path to the bomb,” Netanyahu said in a statement after Rouhani’s speech Tuesday, declaring that Israel would welcome a “genuine” diplomatic solution. “But we will not be fooled by half-measures that merely provide a smokescreen for Iran's continual pursuit of nuclear weapons. And the world should not be fooled either."

MORE...

http://news.yahoo.com/israel-sidelines-world-rushes-embrace-irans-rouhani-203000323.html

[ForgoTheConsequence]

1. I'm not sure anyone is rushing.

I think it's more cautious optimism, and rightfully so. Israel is acting like a child however, no doubt about it.


I'm hoping 10 years from now we look back on this as a major turning point and possibly the most important breakthrough of Obama's tenure as POTUS.


That is only if the right-wing neo-cons who run Israel and still have a great deal of power in the United States don't sabotage things.

[WCGreen]

15. Bibi the Baby...

[jessie04]

2. Funny ...

1. no one is rushing... words sound lovely but mean NOTHING.

2. After being told multiple times " a world without Israel" from Iran , I guess they are very suspicious.

3. Recently Rouhani said he didn't know if there was a holocaust. so nice.


I will believe it when he opens up ALL the nuclear sites to the IAEA...no execeptions .

Otherwise he is a lying pos .

[Scootaloo]

3. Too bad your opinion doesn't count for much

Wrong on Egypt, wrong on Syria, going to be wrong on Iran.

You're not very good at the Middle East, are you?

[Gravitycollapse]

5. The poster can't even do a simple google search on Rouhani and his views on the Holocaust.

What else could we expect?

[Gravitycollapse]

4. What utter BS - "Iran's Rouhani on Holocaust: 'A massacre that cannot be denied'"

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/25/20693723-irans-rouhani-on-holocaust-a-massacre-that-cannot-be-denied?lite


Claiming that Iranians deny the holocaust has become trendy among neo-liberal circles. It's all bullshit aimed at marginalizing Iran by default. Get your facts straight before you put out such garbage.

[jessie04]

7. That was today.

2 days ago he said what I said.

[Gravitycollapse]

10. Source? Do you have a source for that claim? Or are you just making it up?

[PCIntern]

11. Oh, you're right..

Let us just carve this guy onto Mt. Rushmore and be done with it.

[Gravitycollapse]

12. Yes, because not lying about the man means I hero worship him. Excellent argument.

[PCIntern]

13. You actually do...

this is the answer to all the prayers that someone would come along and not do what they always do for which all of you make excuses anyway. But it is a fake left cut right feint, and as usual, it is just a big lie. Think what thou wilt.

[Gravitycollapse]

16. Adorable. Not lying about an accused holocaust denier means I worship holocaust deniers.

Beautifully circular reasoning on your part. Really advanced stuff.

[PCIntern]

17. why, how sweet...

no one actually cares what you do and don't do. What I for one DO care about is how all kinds of BS and lies fly around here but when it comes to Israel, every word is carefully parsed and researched, and it is just amazing how the proofreaders come out of the woodwork.

To answer your terse posts, I am just certain that this guy sits around praising Chaim Weitzman and Levi Eshkol over a seltzer which he bought for 'two cents plain'. He is just a regular guy who wants peace. Never a thought to the destruction of the "Zionist entity". That is how he rose to the top.

Bigtime...as someone infamously once said.

[Gravitycollapse]

18. So, in essence, your entire position is based on the inability to consider...

that a new leader may have views different from the former. Although even Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitic sentiments were grossly exaggerated and Olmert and Netanyahu's anti-Arab sentiments grossly downplayed.

I'm going to just call what you suffer from being "politically locked-in." Which is the tendency to mistake political discontinuity with continuity.

[PCIntern]

20. Oh please...

you just heard words you wanted to hear and he knew that you and thousands more like you are out there.

You are being played as usual. I do find it rather amusing. It reminds me of when western journos would say "Today, Saddam Hussein said blah blah blah" as though it meant something significant.

I am going to call you politically naive and give you the benefit of the doubt that you just do not understand one iota of what has transpired over there.

[Gravitycollapse]

21. And I'll just assume you're a neo-conservative shill. Square?

[jessie04]

25. Ding,ding,ding

13. You dismiss facts that don't fit your worldview, and personally attack people who provide them

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023707888


ultimate failure

[Gravitycollapse]

27. Oh spare me. I provided documentation against the counterfactual points made.

And was called naive and a lover of anti-Semites. That kind of response springs from the realm of neo-conservatives.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

28. If no one cares what the other poster does, explain this subthread please.

You've used a lot of ink caring about what the other poster says. And of course that's fine, but it does tend to invalidate the opening sentence inches post I'm replying to.

[LittleBlue]

26. That's clearly not what GravityCollapse said. nt

[jessie04]

19. ho-hum

"Unlike his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani struck a moderate tone on many issues, but he deflected a question from NBC News' Ann Curry about whether he believed that the Holocaust was "a myth."


"I'm not a historian. I'm a politician," he replied. "What is important for us is that the countries of the region and the people grow closer to each other, and that they are able to prevent aggression and injustice."

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/19/20573897-exclusive-iran-president-blames-israel-for-instability-calls-for-peace?lite



Notice he didn't say no....He couldn't even say the word... he just avoided the question.

What a load.

[Gravitycollapse]

23. Odds are pretty high he's tired of Western reports always trying to peg Iranian leaders...

As anti-Semitic. And he's trying to divert attention away from that consistent accusation of Holocaust denial onto more pertinent contemporary issues.

After a bunch of people flipped their shit, he was forced to make the following statement 6 days later"

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/25/20693723-irans-rouhani-on-holocaust-a-massacre-that-cannot-be-denied?lite

Iran's Rouhani on Holocaust: 'A massacre that cannot be denied'

[former9thward]

44. He is still denying it.

Rouhani: I’ve said before that I am not a historian and that when it comes to speaking of the dimensions of the Holocaust, it is the historians that should reflect on it. But in general I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime that Nazis committed towards the Jews as well as non-Jews is reprehensible and condemnable. Whatever criminality they committed against the Jews, we condemn, the taking of human life is contemptible, it makes no difference whether that life is Jewish life, Christian or Muslim, for us it is the same, but taking the human life is something our religion rejects but this doesn’t mean that on the other hand you can say Nazis committed crime against a group now therefore, they must usurp the land of another group and occupy it. This too is an act that should be condemned. There should be an even-handed discussion.



This is not Holocaust acknowledgment. It is Holocaust denial. The Holocaust is a specific set of historically verifiable—indeed, historically verified—events. It involved the Nazi murder of somewhere between 5.5 million and 6 million Jews, because they were Jews, as part of an effort whose eventual goal was to exterminate all of Europe’s Jews. Much of it took place in camps organized explicitly to kill people on an industrial scale; at the extreme end, Auschwitz could incinerate almost 5,000 corpses per day. To say that it remains a question for historians is dishonest. To speak of it as continuous with the “crime” the Nazis committed toward non-Jews is disingenuous, and suggests a desire to rob the Holocaust of its central feature, which was its mission, increasingly accepted and then finally codified in January 1942, to kill all of Europe’s Jews.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114855/iranian-president-rouhani-still-holocaust-denier

[Gravitycollapse]

46. The New Republic is a shill for neoconservative sentiment. Not to mention...

The Holocaust is recognized as a targeting not just of Jews but of all undesirables under the Third Reich. Even though Jews were the primary target, and anti-Semitism was heavily entrenched long before Hitler even came to power, so was disdain towards many other groups of people like the Polish (fomented by the chaotic events of WWI) and homosexuals. Jews don't hold a monopoly over the horror of the Holocaust. That's just not how it works.

Although, as I've already stated, I'm not at all surprised The New Republic makes such ridiculous statements.

http://prospect.org/article/my-marty-peretz-problem-and-ours

[sabrina 1]

29. Thanks, it is a good thing that people want peace instead of eternal war. I hope the world responds

positively to his overtures. I believe they will, people are sick of these wars.

[Gravitycollapse]

31. The issue is being anti-Iranian is hopelessly trendy among Americans...

So much so that we don't really care what it means to be Iranian or from Iran. We don't care what Iranians actually believe. All we want is any shred of manipulative evidence affirming that Iranians hate Jews.

[sabrina 1]

32. How do you feel about the US and Israel, and every other nation, doing the same thing? Why should

one country do what others refuse to do, a country that has not used nukes btw. The world is getting sick of this one-sided argument and I'm all for ALL countries with Nukes open up ALL their Nuclear sites to the IAEA, no exceptions.

Otherwise they are all 'lying pos' as you so nicely put it.

[KoKo]

36. When will Israel open up all it's sites to the IAEA. I've heard they

have Nukes. Why not refute those who say they do by opening their country up?

Seems fair to me. I also wonder why UN doesn't send in inspectors to see how USA is doing in disarming our Nukes. Are we on target? Where are our sites? Who is cataloging the progress?

So far No. Korea has Nukes...and they wave it in our faces. But, I haven't heard that we have planned to have them open their sites for inspection?

Bits of hypocrisy flying around all over the place these days.

[Gravitycollapse]

41. It's been demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel possesses nuclear weapons...

Mordechai Vanunu put any doubt to bed almost 30 years ago.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

37. "..opens all the nuclear sites to the the IAEA." Like Israel has?

[NuclearDem]

38. Free Republic is that way, Jessie.

[PCIntern]

6. Another comedic thread!

This place is lots o'fun these days.

The New Hero of the Left is the leader of Iran? WTF?

Now we are going to have post after post decrying the only stable democracy of any type in the Mid-East in favor of the country where, for example, 'adulterous' women may be stoned to death, hands get chopped off, and worse? Really?

And Israel is just supposed to dance with glee and proclaim peace now and forever just because this guy gave a speech?

What world are people living in here?

Perhaps a new group entitled: Pan-Arabism Underground. Yeah...that's the ticket.

P.S. I have been here since 2004, so don't start with the Freeper troll crap, please.

[jessie04]

8. You got guts.

Unless you praise Rouhani , there is something wrong with you.

[PCIntern]

9. Yeah...don't I?

I have been fighting this battle since I was in fifth grade. This is all rank-amateur stuff AFAIC.

[1000words]

14. You are spot on.

This thread *is* quite comedic. Thanks.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

22. Pan-Arabism Underground?

I get that you were trying to make a joke, but Iran isn't an Arab country.


Even then Pan-Arabism is a secular, left wing ideology. I'm not sure you have any clue as to what the hell you're talking about.


But like most Americans you want to get your two cents in, facts be damned. After all, they're all brown and all Muslims right? HEEHAW! GIT R' DUN!!

[NuclearDem]

30. You know how I know you don't know the first thing about the ME?

You called Iranians Arabs.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

34. It's called willful ignorance.

I'm sure he was taught the difference at one point, but chose to ignore it.

I see it all the time with racists and xenophobes. You really see it a lot with Asians; "hey they all look Chinese to me, durrrr"


You just don't expect to see it on a progressive website. Then again if you post here enough and have a star by your name you can say all the ignorant bigoted shit you want.

[KoKo]

39. Don't think Bombing Countries makes them treat their Women

any differently, though. Do YOU? Have you seen any evidence of this?

[seveneyes]

40. You will know there is a problem brewing when

Women are required to have a male family member present when reading or posting on the web.

I'll believe Iran is serious when all their humans have the same rights.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

42. That would be nice.

I assume you feel the same way about Saudia Arabia?

Were you against the Obama administration allowing the sale of 600 million worth of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia?

[JI7]

43. Iran is not an Arab Country, it's not about Iran leader being a hero as much as hope for

improved relations .

[KoKo]

45. Exactly...balance of power is better than more Iraq, Libya, Yemen..

just saying...

[sabrina 1]

24. All I remember about Netanyahu is what he had to say after 9/11. That finished him with me.

I am truly glad to see that the world really wants peace and is rejecting those who do not.

[KoKo]

33. The Wiley Cat waiting to see if the Mouse's Strategy gets a little too "Uppity"...

Is my guess on this.

[seveneyes]

35. When Rouhani eliminates the religious leadership, Iran will be well on its way

Then we will know he is serious.