Iran's Conference
The whole thing reeks of opportunism, at best, with a fair shake of much worse things, and I like a quote at the bottom of the BBC story:
Many Iranians must be wondering why they have the right to deny the Holocaust with impunity, but not to question their own leaders without risking jail, our correspondent says.
In recent months, newspapers have been closed, journalists jailed and students penalised for engaging in any sort of political activity in Iran.
It gives you a pretty good idea about just how much free speech actually means to the Iranian leadership. This is about “firing up the base” as they say, and nothing fires up a base constituency like the hatred of somebody else. The Israelis are basically the gays of the Middle East for the Arab regimes. (The gays themselves being the one thing both sides agree on.)
Anyway, the quote that I found to be quite an interesting one is this:
"Just as the USSR disappeared, soon the Zionist regime will disappear,"
Now I know that sounds bad, but once I got to thinking about it for awhile, I realized this may be an opportunity to solve the whole Arab-Israeli problem. Bear with me as I give you my simple (simplistic?) solution.
Many people have assumed that when Ahmadinejad calls for Israel to be "wiped off the map", he's talking about finishing what the Nazis started. However, when the USSR disappeared, it didn't take the people with it, it just dissolved the ruling government and the various territories under its control went their own ways under older names.
All the Israelis have to do is dissolve their government, leave the West Bank and Gaza to their own devices, and reform a new government and call themselves Judea.
The Palestinians get their own country, the Iranians and Arab leaders get to say Israel is "no more", and the Jewish people keep their homeland and military intact. Everybody gets what they say they want. Happy times all around.
Now I'll just sit back while they work out the details and wait for the Noble committee to give me a call.
