Ahmadinejad Quotes against Israel
"The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land. As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map."
Text of Ahmadinejad's Speech, makes good reading!
________________________________________________
Diebert writes:
"Does it really need defending that there always have been small factions playing with the beliefs of the masses during all of our history to further their own hidden and not so hidden goals and visions?"
I understand what you are getting at of course, and we are certainly in a state of history where 'we the people' get to ask all the really
JUICY questions and get to mull over the answers.
"Ahmadinejad is incredibly ignorant here to summarize this by the term 'Zionists'."
It is really far more than 'ignorance', I honestly think. It has to do with specifically tempting anti-Semitic narratives, and I will say it again: people on this list, I won't name names, are directly playing in those existing and very destructive narratives. I am actually trying to help any one who can listen to begin the work of taking them apart. I don't as you may guess have a great deal of hope at this point, it is like coming up against an impenetrable
WALL. This forum has a kind of
Jew-obsession and it is fascinating for me to experience it, to be right in the thick of it! I have learned
so much...
I assume it is all part of some Divine Plan....
In a more general sense it has to do with the way that certain kinds of narratives are taken up, and the way they are employed. It might have been
Gandhi who could have expressed a large part of what he wrote in his speech, you know. But, doesn't it seem to be that at the end of the day what really stands out is that stubborn Will-to-Power? I wouldn't for one second trust the rhetorical machine that, expressed through an Islamic Totalitarianism, came up with that discourse. I'd say, Run for the hills, brother!
Here, at least, as I understand it, the goals of American hegemony are pretty openly expressed, and it has been set up as a joint-project in which a whole group of players gets to participate. You could if you wanted condemn utterly the post-war division, this cutting up of the world into sectors and also the setting up of a plan for ruling each of those spheres of interest that is the core of Chomsky's analysis (so delightfully Machiavellian and so clear-seeing in many ways), and you could make it all look like something hatched from the mind of Mephistopheles, but there is another option: looking at it for all the tremendously positive things it has 'brought to the world', and yet always (and it may always be like this) with some sort of price paid by someone. In my case, as I have meditated on things (the post-war world order) I am now unashamedly happy and even proud that it has been an American century, one that America shared and co-created with Europe and the Asian powers. It always has to end up in some one's hands, and I guess I am rather glad that it ended up in 'our' hands.
And, I am also by and large proud and admiring of the Jewish contribution to the 'world system'---and that contribution has been very real, very tangible. Fact is, Jews are still actively participating in the creation and the imposition of a world model, but this is a participatory undertaking, as has been the construction of the present world system. I feel, or rather I know, that Jews (if one can generalize in this way) have brought to the table many worthy gifts as far as the will to create an equitable and functioning world model, and I don't think anyone has to deny 'their' role in the world. It is a positive and creative role by and large. The Jewish will, as I understand it, is productive, far-seeing, open, tolerant, enlightened, and of course always concerned for the upper domains of knowledge. I could certainly go on and it wouldn't be vain braggery. I have faith in my own country, up to a point, and I have faith in the Western accomplishment, and I have faith in myself and in 'my own people' (though it is dangerous to speak of Jews as one block).
You wouldn't know, Diebert (from the look of it) what it is really like to rub shoulders with people who are really in the dark about how to organize the living of life, and how to go about setting up productive, efficient, relatively equitable models. I see this every day here in Colombia, and it makes me feel confident that, with reservations, I am a product of a genuinely productive system, one that has achieved great things. What these assholes have achieved, following their own stupid models, produces by and large misery and pain. I know that there are defects in 'my' system, and I know too that it has power-mongering elements, but I take this all as part and parcel of the human game.
Sometimes you really have to take a stand and be willing to impose your own will, but I doubt you could even
THINK such a thought, as a soft, womanly European. It's all '
eek!' and '
eew!', but what the fuck do you know about
handling power? Power is something that is handled, employed, wielded...
And a great part of what it means to be a man has to do with this whole question. I don't think you learn such things picking your lunch out of Australian garbage cans BTW...(You at leat have a job).
With that said, I would sum it up by saying that we have a great deal to be proud of (I mean you and me), a great deal to defend as our positive and valuable creation, and just as well a great deal to be wary of, both in ourselves and in others who may not, in truth, share what I think we could genuinely and honestly call Western high-mindedness. In that, I think it is quite wise to be extremely wary of Islamic intentions, and I also think 'we' need to make very careful and also very difficult decisions about how 'they' will be or can be incorporated into an emerging world system. As some have wisely stated, a greater percentage of the world's population has no background in those visions and institutions that have informed us (China for example and the Muslim world), and they would not, it seems, create the sorts of systems, though they may be defective in part, that we have created.
You are quite free to fiddle around with those narratives that, if the truth were to be honestly told, would 'wipe Israel off the map' and so much more too, but I am just as free to send up
counter-narratives or
antidotes.
One of the most important things I ever got from reading Nietzsche was his idea of an
'undivided will'. That we need to mold for ourselves, from our existing moralities I suppose, an ethic and a morality that is really human or fully human, that takes into account
our will to power, which of course has predatorial aspects even as it may have other, more lofty aspects. We cannot be divided against ourselves, but all of ourselves must move in concert toward the realization of our will.
I guess at the end of the day I have more faith in
our will than I do in any other player I see out there. Iran? Russia? China? So, I know of what I am composed, I know what makes me me, and I know what I have to defend, and why. I am on my side, and I am on our side. I am not on their side.
So, I would tear to shreds the narratives that Ahmadinejad weaves with honeyed speech, which is not so very hard to do at all.