Archive for April 15th, 2008

Wer schwamm wohl 1979 gegen den (amerikanischen) Strom und hat eine “treffsichere” Analyse des iranischen Mullahregimes für die New York Times verfasst, die sich folgendermaßen zusammenfassen lässt?

My second observation concerns an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times on 16 February 1979. I have it in front of me. The title is “Trusting Khomeini”. It is a credit to the sub-editors of the NYT that they managed to encapsulate in just two words what his article is about, though perhaps a better participle would have been “lauding”. He complains: “President Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski have until very recently associated [Khomeini] with religious fanaticism. The news media have defamed him in many ways, associating him with efforts to turn the clock back 1,300 years, with virulent anti-Semitism, and with a new political disorder, ‘theocratic fascism,’ about to be set loose on the world.”

Well, fancy that. He knows better, however, insisting that “the depiction of [Khomeini] as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false”. On the contrary: “Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately-needed model of humane governance for a third-world country.”

Ok, 1979 ist lange her. Aber der Autor hat offensichtlich nicht aus seinen Fehlern gelernt – sonst würde er mit Sicherheit nicht folgende Sätze über die Hamas schreiben:

In fact, the behavior and outlook of Hamas is quite different. From the outset of its political Hamas was ready to work with other Palestinian groups, especially Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas, to establish a ‘unity’ government. More than this, their leadership revealed a willingness to move toward an acceptance of Israel’s existence if Israel would in turn agree to move back to its 1967 borders, implementing finally unanimous Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.

Even more dramatically, Hamas proposed a ten-year truce with Israel, and went so far as to put in place a unilateral ceasefire that lasted for eighteen months, and was broken only to engage in rather pathetic strikes mainly taking place in response to Israeli violent provocations in Gaza.

Was Hänschen nicht lernt, lernt Hans nimmermehr. Und, nein, es handelt sich nicht um Noam Chomsky. Die Antwort findet sich hier.