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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Ahmadinejad's anti-semitism and the MSM

Yesterday's speech by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the UN was the most anti-semitic speech given there since the infamous 1975 UN resolution that equated Zionism (with a small z) to racism.

While most of the mainstream media reported (as in this AP example)
Ahmadinejad accused “a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists ... (of) dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the U.S.”
very, very few took the small step to mention that this is a classic anti-semitic belief. The three that I found, outside of Jewish and Israeli media, were:

The New York Daily News:
From there, Ahmadinejad called up classic anti-Semitic canards and - without ever mentioning Israel or Jews by name - he attacked "acquisitive and invasive people" who dominate "financial and monetary centers."
The New York Sun:
On Israel he used Europe's oldest anti-Semitic language to blame "a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists" for "dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers."
And, most surprisingly, the Times of London:
In a rambling speech punctuated by anti-Semitic bluster, an emboldened Mr Ahmadinejad vowed not to bow to “illegal demands” to halt Iran’s nuclear activities which he defended as the peaceful pursuit of civilian energy.

...A rambling religious treatise gave way to a series of startling attacks on Israel and Jews in general, blaming them for all the world’s ills. “The dignity, integrity and rights of American and European people are played with by a deceitful group of people called Zionists,” he said.

The global financial crisis was the fault of “a small number of acquisitive and evasive people” who had taken control of the whole world order, he said, but predicted that this would soon change.

A few more media did quote various others denouncing the speech as anti-semitic (including Barack Obama,) but a huge majority is so cowed by the idea that anti-Zionism has nothing to do with anti-semitism - even when they are presented in historically identical ways - that they will dispassionately report the fact that the leader of a large nation, on the verge of nuclear capability, is single-mindedly obsessed with ending the rights of Jews to national self-determination.

Kudos to the few exceptions, and shame to the MSM for not drawing the very short line between Ahmadinejad's speech and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.