Standing Up to Ahmadinejad
Brave dissident Iranians were the stars of Monday's rally instead of U.S. politicians. (Also, Phyllis Chesler on Why the Rally Didn't Roar and Dear Mahmoud by Michael Ledeen)
The most haunting image I came across at the anti-Ahmadinejad rally at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza on Monday was also the most encouraging. A series of photographs depicted a young Iranian man being hanged by a regime that prefers to strangulate its victims with slow-rising construction cranes rather than allow the gravity of the gallows to break their necks quickly. In one still, the man has been fitted with the noose and he is smiling. The adjacent caption explains that this was the expression he chose to wear for his mother, present in the crowd of onlookers, moments before his own death.
Nothing terrifies Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his clerical masters more than such outward displays of defiance and bravery by those trying to escape from under the jackboot of fascism. I quit the scene in midtown Manhattan this afternoon thinking that no amount of street theater can ever rival what the man on the street in Tehran has accomplished, and what the 120,000 men, women and children who have been executed since 1979 have symbolized for their totalitarian murderers. “The clock is ticking,” said Rabbi Charles Klein to the 2,000 assembled souls of all denominations and none. He was referring to the regime’s imminent nuclear capability, but the metaphor might have just as easily applied to the mullahs’ own mutually assured destruction.
The rally was coordinated by the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, an umbrella group consisting mainly of Jewish organizations and supporters of Israel. Black hats and yarmulkes abounded, but I was pleased to see that tribalism was nowhere on the agenda. National self-interest fused with selfless internationalism in a manner not usually seen at these types of assemblies. (To counterbalance the cliché picture of a burning U.S. flag should be the one I glimpsed of the Israeli flag intertwined with an Iranian one in a show of solidarity. Put that on Al-Jazeera.)
The organizers may have invited ridicule for their inability to decide which of the two women candidates for high office they’d rather see in attendance but they were wise and decent to turn the mic over to those worried about Shiite fundamentalism not as a regional menace but as a domestic one.
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Michael Weiss is a senior editor of Tablet Magazine and a culture blogger for The New Criterion. He also writes occasionally for Slate, The Weekly Standard, City Journal, The New York Daily News and Standpoint.
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6 Comments
1. SAF:Another meaningless rally. Sanctions have been a failure, appeasement has been a failure. If I were Ahmadinejad I would look at the event and mark it as another success for my position. If there was ever a signal that the world and especially the US is not unified on what to do about Iran this is it.
Sep 23, 2008 - 3:22 am 2. Lawrence Kohn:The pursuit of Khatami was a wasted enterprise. As Minister of Cultural Guidance he organized a meeting in 1984 that established a strike force under Revolutionary Guard aegis to supplement the existing terrorists inn Lebanon. As President he spoke exactly a decade ago at the UN condemning “racism and Zionism”. (see Hydra of Carnage Uri Ra’anan editor and my article in April 1999 Midstream The “New” Russia and Iranian “Moderates). Sharansky’s presence at the rally is not only a reminder of the rallies for Soviet Jewry but also Russia’s key role in Iran’s ambition. For in addition to KGB help in the 79 revolution the Mullahs have been actively supported by every Russian regime: Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin without interruption and Russia has served to block efforts to thwart Iran in the UN while supplying missile technology, a nuclear reactor, parts of the East German navy and major conventional weaponry. We face not only a jihadist empire in the making but the Cold War Russian superpower revived supported by three new nuclear ICBMs: a land based under Yeltsin and a mobile land and a sea based missile under Putin. A nuclear Iran would not threaten its Russian patron but would geometrically tip the balance against the U.S. Israel and western democracies.
Sep 23, 2008 - 4:52 am 3. David Thomson:“Black hats and yarmulkes abounded, but I was pleased to see that tribalism was nowhere on the agenda.”
Nonsense. “Tribalism” was on full display because the organizers caved in to the Democratic Party establishment. They truly disgraced themselves and weakened the impact of the protest. At the end of the day, they essentially proved their willingness to abandon the cause just to suck up to the radical Democrats.
Sep 23, 2008 - 5:46 am 4. Rotten Gods:As long as world community and specially the US policy makers are not united on Iran’s issue, we will see rise of “former interrogators and executioners from the notorious Evin prison” to run iran and aggressivly bash history, people and countries that they don’t favor.
Sep 23, 2008 - 7:05 am 5. Rotten Gods:by thw way check this one out:
Israel attack map produced by Iran
Sep 23, 2008 - 9:00 am 6. Donnie Mac Leod:http://www.rottengods.com/2008/09/following-map-was-produced-in-iran-and.html
Dag Hammarskjöld: One of the Greatest Secretary Generals, the United Nations ever had as it’s lead. A very wise man for sure and he certainly gave us a reason to protest such hate mongering liars & mad men as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad .
Dag stated many years ago:::
“The mad man shouted in the market place,
no one stopped to answer him. Thus, it was confirmed
that his thesis was incontrovertible.”
-Dag Hammarshkjold
Secretary General of the United Nations
And a very wise Canadian also addressed the way to handle such madmen.
Roy McMurtry :::
“It is important to answer the mad man.
It is important because, left unanswered,
his lies and his malice can poison the climate.
They can do worse. They can make other men mad. Left
unanswered for long enough, they can nourish everything in
men and women that is hateful and destructive and murderous.
Our end is to ensure that every time the madman
shouts in the market place, he is answered.”
-Roy McMurtry, Attorney General of Ontario
Sep 24, 2008 - 4:30 pm