We have a nation of 70 million people being incited daily to a holy war against America, but to refer to their leaders as "evil" gets nothing but smirks from the oh-so-sophisticated intelligentsia who patronizingly say that the world is much more complicated for simple concepts like "good" and "evil."
It is disturbing when the entire leadership of one nation, along with hundreds of thousands of its citizens, comes out with celebrations and parades every year that call for the annihilation of another country.It is more twisted that no world leaders or international bodies, including the United Nations, have denounced the activities surrounding Quds Day, an Iranian holiday introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini that is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan.
Isfahan University's Mechanical Energy College took first place in a Quds Day competition for its design of a pilotless plane that can be used for "suicide attacks." The director of the Iranian Broadcasting Organization of Music Production, Mohammad Mirzamani, composed a symphony dedicated to "the victory over the Zionist regime," and the country's religious Web logs were told to report on all the festivities.Iranian press outlets featured hundreds of photographs from the celebrations in Tehran. Among the notable scenes captured were children in Condoleezza Rice costumes; effigies of President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert, and Prime Minister Blair being lit on fire and dragged through the streets; the burning of American and Israeli flags; and hundreds of posters of Sheik Hassan Nasrallah featuring the caption "I swear to Allah that Israel is weaker than [a] spider house." The posters called for a boycott of such "Israeli" goods as McDonald's, Kit Kat bars, Intel, L'Oreal, Nestlé, Disney, and Marlboro.
Mr. Ahmadinejad delivered his Quds Day speech under a banner that read, "Israel must be wiped off the face of the world." He described the holiday as "a day for confrontation between the Islamic faith with the global arrogance."
The words "the Zionist regime is a cancerous gland that needs to be uprooted" were written in a communiqué from the Iranian Foreign Ministry in honor of the holiday. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki held a meeting for other Islamic countries' ambassadors to Iran and told them that Israel's existence would be shattered and that death bells were tolling for the Zionists. At the meeting, the Palestinian Arab ambassador to Tehran, Salah Zawawi, said, "The day for the liberation of Quds Day is close at hand."
A who's who of the Iranian leadership marched in the main Quds Day parade before crowds chanting "death to Israel" and "death to America." The marchers included a former Iranian president, Mohammed Khatemi, and a spokesman for the parliament presidency board, Mohsen Kouhkan, who predicted a quick "final and total defeat of America and the Zionist regime."
The chief of the judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, praised "the fasting people taking part in the rally [who] are chanting slogans such as ‘death to America' and ‘death to Israel.'"
"The world arrogance and Zionism today are shivering from Muslim vigilance and are on the threshold of annihilation," he added.
Information Minister Hholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei explained that the holiday "is a proper occasion for people to declare their hatred of America and Israel," while a representative of the Islamic Consulate Assembly, Ahmad Pish-bin, promised that the "final defeat for world arrogance" is coming. ["World arrogance" is the consistent keyword for the United States. -EoZ]
A couple of weeks ago, on Bill Maher's program, Danielle Pletka mentioned that Iran has threatened America. Maher said she was wrong, and that it only threatened Israel, and when she reiterated it he said "I missed that one," while Ben Affleck kept on getting crazed looks in his eyes as he whined that the world is "complicated". The audience was equally clueless - because the media completely ignores things like these massive rallies in Iran, or spins them as being only anti-Israel.
Of course, these same supposed sophisticates are targets as well. But they prefer to read the NYTimes over the NYSun, and any news that doesn't make it in the Times is not fit to print.