Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a man seemingly custom-made for the White House in its endless quest for enemies with whom to scare Congress, the American people, and the world, in order to justify the unseemly behavior of the empire.

The Iranian president has declared that he wants to "wipe Israel off the map." He's said that "the Holocaust is a myth." He recently held a conference in Iran for "Holocaust deniers." And his government passed a new law requiring Jews to wear a yellow insignia, à la the Nazis. On top of all that, he's aiming to build nuclear bombs, one of which would surely be aimed at Israel. What right-thinking person would not be scared by such a man?

However, like with all such designer monsters made bigger than life during the Cold War and since by Washington, the truth about Ahmadinejad is a bit more complicated. According to people who know Farsi, the Iranian leader has never said anything about "wiping Israel off the map." In his October 29, 2005, speech, when he reportedly first made the remark, the word "map" does not even appear. According to the translation of Juan Cole, American professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History, Ahmadinejad said that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." His remark, said Cole, "does not imply military action or killing anyone at all," which presumably is what would make the remark threatening. [1] Readers are advised that the next time they come across such an Ahmadinejad citation to note whether a complete sentence is being quoted, and not just "wipe Israel off the map."

At the conference in Teheran ("Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision"), the Iranian president said: "The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom." [2] Obviously, the man is not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union did not occur through force or violence.

As for the Holocaust myth, I have yet to read or hear words from Ahmadinejad's mouth saying simply and clearly and unequivocally that he thinks that the Holocaust never happened. He has commented about the peculiarity of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. And he argues that Israel and the United States have exploited the memory of the Holocaust for their own imperialist purposes. He also wonders about the accuracy of the number of Jews -- 6 million -- killed in the Holocaust, as have many other people of all political stripes, including Holocaust survivors like author Primo Levi. (The much publicized World War One atrocities which turned out to be false made the public very skeptical of the Holocaust claims for a long time.)

The conference gave a platform to various points of view, including six members of Jews United Against Zionism, at least two of whom were rabbis. One was Ahron Cohen, from London, who declared: "There is no doubt whatsoever, that during World War 2 there developed a terrible and catastrophic policy and action of genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against the Jewish People." He also said that "the Zionists make a great issue of the Holocaust in order to further their illegitimate philosophy and aims," indicating as well that the figure of 6 million Jewish victims is debatable. The other rabbi was Moshe David Weiss, who told the delegates: "We don't want to deny the killing of Jews in World War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for how many people were killed. They have used the Holocaust as a device to justify their oppression." His group rejects the creation of Israel on the grounds that it violates Jewish religious law in that a Jewish state can't exist until the coming of the Messiah. [3]

Another speaker was Shiraz Dossa, professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Canada. In an interview after the conference, he described himself as an anti-imperialist and an admirer of Noam Chomsky, and said that he "was invited because of my expertise as a scholar in the German-Jewish area, as well as my studies in the Holocaust. . . . I have nothing to do with Holocaust denial, not at all." His talk was "about the war on terrorism, and how the Holocaust plays into it. Other people [at the conference] have their own points of view, but that [Holocaust denial] is not my point of view. . . . There was no pressure at all to say anything, and people there had different views." [4]

Clearly, the conference -- which the White House called "an affront to the entire civilized world" [5] -- was not set up to be simply a forum for people to deny that the Holocaust, to any significant degree, literally never took place at all.

As to the yellow star story of this past May -- that was a complete fabrication by a prominent Iranian-American neo-conservative, Amir Taheri. There are as well other egregious examples of Ahmadinejad's policies and words being twisted out of shape in the Western media, making him look like a danger to all that's holy and decent. Political science professor Virginia Tilley has written a good account of this. "Why is Mr. Ahmadinejad being so systematically misquoted and demonized?" Tilley asks. "Need we ask? If the world believes that Iran is preparing to attack Israel, then the US or Israel can claim justification in attacking Iran first. On that agenda, the disinformation campaign about Mr. Ahmadinejad's statements has been bonded at the hip to a second set of lies: promoting Iran's (nonexistent) nuclear weapon programme." [6]

Ahmadinejad, however, is partly to blame for this "disinformation." I heard him in an interview, while he was at the UN in September, being asked directly about "the map" and the reality of the Holocaust, and he refused to give explicit answers of "yes" or "no," which I interpret as his prideful refusal to accede to the wishes of what he regarded as a hostile Western interviewer asking hostile questions. In an interview with the German news magazine, Der Spiegel (May 31, 2006), Ahmadinejad states: "We don't want to confirm or deny the Holocaust." The Iranian president is also in the habit of prefacing certain remarks with "Even if the Holocaust happened . . . ," a rhetorical device we all use in argument and discussion, but one which cannot help but reinforce the doubts people have about his views.

It may already be too late. The conventional wisdom about what Ahmadinejad has said and meant may already be set in marble. Ban Ki-moon, at a news conference on December 14, after being sworn in as the new secretary-general of the United Nations, was asked by an Israeli reporter whether the United Nations was going to address the issue of Holocaust deniers. Ban replied, "Denying historical facts, especially on such an important subject as the Holocaust is just not acceptable. Nor is it acceptable to call for the elimination of any state or people." [7] Let's hope that this is not indicative of the independence of mind that we can expect from the new secretary-general. Myths die so hard.

TIME magazine has just foregone its usual selection of "Person of the Year" and instead chosen "You," the Internet user. Managing editor Richard Stengel said that if it came down to one individual it probably would have been Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but, "It just felt to me a little off selecting him." [8] In previous years TIME's "Person of the Year" has included Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

Notes

[1] AlterNet, www.alternet.org/, May 5, 2006
[2] Associated Press, December 12, 2006
[3] nkusa.org/activities/Speeches/2006Iran-ACohen.cfm (Cohen's talk); Telegraph.co.uk, article by Alex Spillius, December 13, 2006; Associated Press, December 12, 2006
[4] Globe and Mail (Toronto), December 13, 2006
[5] Associated Press, December 12, 2006
[6] counterpunch.org/tilley08282006.html
[7] Washington Post, December 15, 2006, p.27
[8] Associated Press, December 16, 2006