(To those who don't understand Hebrew: It is a quote from Genesis 6:11. In English it is translated as "and the earth was filled with violence." The Hebrew word for violence in this verse is "Hamas.")

By Mas'ood Cajee, January 27, 2006
Six decades on since the slaughter of World War II and the Nazi holocaust, we hear extremist voices alternately exploiting or denying the Holocaust for political gain. By warping our memory of the Shoah (the Hebrew word for the Holocaust), both exploiters and deniers miss the stark, vital message of the Holocaust and its heroes - those who displayed uncommon moral courage in the face of evil.
Holocaust exploiters
A growing chorus of voices which exploits the Holocaust for political gain has been trying to smear Muslims - and Arabs in particular - with grand accusations of complicity in the Holocaust and support for the Nazis. These voices serve hawkish interests in Israel and the United States who wish to justify and legitimize continued war, violence, and yes - even genocide - against Muslims and Arabs. Identifying Muslims with and as Nazis eases the task of selling continued bloodshed to war-weary publics. Reading the books and op-eds of the smearers, one could almost conclude absurdly that the Nazi holocaust was an Arab Muslim and not a European Christian project. As evidence, the smearers usually trot out the pro-German Mufti of Jerusalem Amin Al-Husayni and the Bosnian Muslim SS "Handschar" division.
What these smearing Islamophobes don't like to tell you: the "Mufti" was actually an appointee of the Jewish administrator of British Palestine who completed one measly year at Al-Azhar and betrayed the Ottoman Sultan to join the British. The much-vaunted "Hanschar" SS division - disbanded after a few months due to mass desertions - was the only SS division ever to mutiny. Because they are allied to the power establishments in Israel & the United States, the Holocaust exploiters generally keep mum about American, Jewish, and Zionist complicity in the Holocaust. They aren't currently touting the cruel, forced 1939 return from Miami of the Jewish refugee ship SS St. Louis to Nazi Europe. Or that elites in the Anglo-American sphere widely admired Adolf Hitler throughout the 1930s - George Bush's hero Winston Churchill first condemned Hitler only five years after he came to power. Or that elements of the Jewish and Zionist leadership collaborated with the Nazis - as documented by Hannah Arendt and other Jewish historians (who called their actions "the darkest chapter of the whole dark story"). Or that today, Israel ironically dangles the specter of Holocaust - in its Nuclear avatar - over the mostly Muslim peoples of the Middle East.
Holocaust deniers
On the other side, too many Muslim and Arab intellectuals and leaders continue to fail in adequately addressing the Nazi holocaust and its implications for today in meaningful, humanitarian terms. Two recent examples include the Muslim Council of Britain's daft refusal to participate in Britain's annual Holocaust Memorial Day and the public indulgence in Holocaust revisionism and labeling of the Nazi holocaust as "myth" by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood chief Muhammad Akef. Deep-seated, knee-jerk anti-Zionism and the continuing occupation of Palestine have unfortunately blinded many Arabs and Muslims to the historical reality and legacy of the Nazi holocaust.
An intelligent and compassionate regard for the victims of the Nazi holocaust - Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, the disabled, and others - on the part of contemporary Muslims is critical for preserving ethical and communal integrity, for a just resolution of the Palestinian question and for the future - if there is to be one - of Western Muslims. Instead, the Holocaust remains a historical blindspot in Arab and Muslim discourse, and as a result it has become a potent political weapon to be exploited at will by those who view Palestinians and Muslims as enemies.
Holocaust heroes
In their perversion of memory, Holocaust deniers and exploiters share another moral ugliness. Both insult the memory of the countless Muslims who risked or gave their lives to rescue Jews threatened with extermination by the Nazis. The stories of the Muslim rescuers of Jews are largely unknown and unpublicized. Only in the past fifteen years have Holocaust researchers brought a few to the public's attention.
Several Muslims (whose stories of heroism and courage we know) have since been honored by Yad Vashem and other Holocaust memorial groups as Righteous Gentiles. They include: the Bosnian Dervis Korkut, who harbored a young Jewish woman resistance fighter named Mira Papo and saved the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the most valuable Hebrew manuscripts in the world; the Turk Selahattin Ulkumen, whose rescue of several dozen Jews from certain death at Auschwitz led to the death of his wife Mihrinissa soon after she gave birth their son Mehmet when the Nazis retaliated for his heroism; the Albanian Refik Vesili who - as a 16-year-old - saved eight Jews by hiding them in his family's mountain home.
Most Holocaust historians would agree that Muslim Europe - Albania, Bosnia, and Turkey - responded courageously and righteously, especially in comparison to Christian Europe. While there were Muslims who collaborated with the Nazis, they were the exception and certainly not the rule. In addition, in North Africa the Sultan of Morocco, the Bey of Tunis, and the Ulema of Algeria all lent support to their beleaguered Jewish countrymen.
Continental Europe's only independent Muslim country - Albania - was also the only European country to have a larger Jewish population at the end of the war than at the beginning, according to Miles Lerman, a former director of the US National Holocaust Museum. Harvey Sarner, a Jewish American in awe of the Albanian Muslim response, penned the telling book "Rescue in Albania: One Hundred Percent of Jews in Albania Rescued from the Holocaust".
There were many Bosnian Muslims, especially in Sarajevo, who saved the lives of their Jewish compatriots. Indeed, the Jewish community in Sarajevo owed its very existence historically to the centuries-old Ottoman Muslim policy of providing sanctuary to Jews fleeing European Christian persecution.
Republican Turkey thankfully followed that same Ottoman tradition of rescue and sanctuary. Due to its neutrality during most of World War II, and its unique geographical proximity to both Europe and the Middle East, Turkey and Turkish diplomats living abroad played an important role for European Jews in danger during World War II and the Holocaust, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Muslim-majority Turkey rescued over 15,000 Turkish Jews and over 100,000 European Jews.
Like their Christian counterparts, the Muslim men and women who rescued Jews during the Holocaust are among history's true heroes, whose stories we should be telling our children and grandchildren. They represent the best of the Abrahamic and Islamic tradition and spirit. May He grant us true moral courage like them in the face of hardship and adversity. May God - the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful - free us of denying or exploiting the suffering of others.
Contrary to initial responses, Hamas’s projected victory in the Palestinian parliamentary elections is a positive development. Not, as its apologists claim, because the proximity of power will favor a process of cooptation into parliamentary politics, and therefore strengthen the pragmatic wing of Hamas. There is no pragmatic wing in Hamas, and all differences within the movement — the armed wing and the political wing, Palestine Hamas and Hamas in Syria — are arguably tactical differences. No, the reason is, as Vladimir Ilich Lenin would put it, "worse is better."Read the whole thing.
Hamas’s favored outcome was not victory, but a strong showing that would leave Hamas with the best of both worlds: It would remain in opposition (or would be invited to join a coalition as a junior partner) but would impose severe limitations on the Fatah-led government on how to manage its relations with Israel. Hamas could thus claim to reject Oslo, decline to recognize the Palestinian Authority and its commitments under the Oslo accords and the roadmap, and continue to use its rising political clout and its military strength to sabotage any effort to revive the moribund peace process.
What victory does to Hamas is to put the movement into an impossible position. As preliminary reports emerge, Hamas has already asked Fatah to form a coalition and got a negative response. Prime Minister Abu Ala has resigned with his cabinet, and president Abu Mazen will now appoint Hamas to form the next government. From the shadows of ambiguity, where Hamas could afford — thanks to the moral and intellectual hypocrisy of those in the Western world who dismissed its incendiary rhetoric as tactics — to have the cake and eat it too. Now, no more. Had they won 30-35 percent of the seats, they could have stayed out of power but put enormous limits on the Palestinian Authority’s room to maneuver. By winning, they have to govern, which means they have to tell the world, very soon, a number of things.
They will have to show their true face now: No more masks, no more veils, no more double-speak. If the cooptation theory — favored by the International Crisis Group and by the former British MI-6 turned talking head, Alistair Crooke — were true, this is the time for Hamas to show what hides behind its veil.
As the government of the Palestinian Authority, now they will have to say whether they accept the roadmap.
They will have to take control over security and decide whether they use it to uphold the roadmap or to wage war.
There will be no excuses or ambiguities when Hamas fires rockets on Israel and launches suicide attacks against civilian targets. Until Tuesday, the PA could hide behind the excuse that they were not directly responsible and they could not rein in the "militants." Now the "militants" are the militia of the ruling party. They are one and the same with the Palestinian Authority. If they bomb Israel from Gaza — not under occupation anymore, and is therefore, technically, part of the Palestinian state the PLO proclaimed in Algiers in 1988, but never bothered to take responsibility for — that is an act of war, which can be responded to in kind, under the full cover of the internationally recognized right of self-defense. No more excuses that the Palestinians live under occupation, that the PA is too weak to disarm Hamas, that violence is not the policy of the PA. Hamas and the PA will be the same: What Hamas does is what the PA will stand for.
Continuing to pursue a violent path will automatically switch off all international aid. Perhaps Hamas intends to offset the resulting loss of revenue by hosting Holocaust-denial conferences in Gaza and terrorist training camps in Rafah, but it will still have to explain to the Palestinian public why it’s better to renounce public aid to wage war.
Organizers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, are working on a new conference booklet after the initial draft containing an article blasting Israel caused uproar.The apology is nice, but this is hardly the first time such things happened at this "prestigious" event:
The head of the Forum publicly condemned the incident and apologized on behalf of organizers.
Yasser Arafat himself, at the 2001 world economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, shocked his distinguished audience by insisting in front of Israeli Foreign Minister, Peres, that Israel was using depleted uranium and nerve gas against Palestinian civilians.And here is a lovely example of liberal tolerance from the 2003 conference:
Boycott IsraelMazin Qumsiyeh
Global civil society ought to boycott Israel until it ends its apartheid-like treatment of Palestinians, says Mazin Qumsiyeh
Millions of activists have come to see an organic link between the occupation and colonization of Palestine and diverse and pressing global issues ranging from the war on Iraq to global poverty.
Those who advocate political Zionism cannot defend it on its own merits, so they focus instead on diverting attention and distorting reality. The best example of this is ignoring the cause of the disease and focusing attention on one of its many symptoms – violence of the natives against the colonial settlers, but not the vastly more deadly violence of the colonizers on native people. The idea is that if we vilify the natives and make them look subhuman, we will not be criticized for killing them and taking their lands.This is an old strategy to justify the pillaging. It was used by the French in Algeria, by European colonizers in the Americas, by apartheid South Africa, by the Americans in Vietnam and in hundreds of other places where western economic and colonial interests came into conflict with the rights of indigenous people.
Israeli apartheid
Zionism not only supposes that Jewish people, including converts, enjoy ethnic, national or historical rights to Palestine, but also that these rights are superior to the rights of the native population. Unlike in South Africa, where black labour was needed, Zionism wanted the natives out. Simply put, the goal of Zionism was to create a state by, for and of “the Jewish people everywhere” to the exclusion of most of the native people and then to ensure that the minority that remained at all odds is not treated equally.
Zionism represented a colonial British venture later taken up as one of many possible responses to discrimination in Europe. Other responses to discrimination such as socialism and humanism were available and had at least equal strength.
Zionism can be seen as the 19th century-style chauvinistic, ethnocentric – mostly Ashkenazi (central European Jewish) – nationalistic response to prevalent European chauvinistic ethnocentric nationalisms. It is in that sense an attempt at assimilation by some Jews following a now outdated European colonial model.
It is not, therefore, surprising that the Zionist lobby has been pushing America into a neo-colonial perpetuation of these outmoded forms of human relations. In a society that values equality and separation of church and state, a concerted media campaign justifies “pre-emptive” invasion of other countries, religious apartheid, sectarianism, ethnic cleansing and putting walls around ghettoized “undesired” people. Zionist apologists support equality in America and Europe, but tolerate discrimination and exclusion of Palestinian refugees in Palestine/Israel for being not Jewish. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent by groups ranging from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to “think-tanks” in our nation’s capital to promote such bankrupt ideas.
The relentless efforts of many to defend apartheid and separation can only be described as symptoms of cognitive dissonance at best and racism at worst. In their Orwellian world, occupation becomes “security”, a relentless war of colonization and occupation becomes “advancing democracy”, an apartheid wall becomes a “security fence”, being anti- or post-Zionist is morphed into being anti-Jewish, and “moderation” becomes a code word for shredding international law and basic human rights.Our demands
In July 2005, more than 170 Palestinian civil society organizations issued a historic document. It articulated Israel’s persistent violations of international and humanitarian laws and conventions and called upon “international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era”.
The call stated that “these non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194” (which the Arabs never accepted - EoZ)
We propose that global civil society take this call seriously and build a coalition open to all people for a global Movement Against Zionism or a global Movement Against Israeli Apartheid. This would bring peace with justice to all people regardless of their religion or ethnicity. It would also contribute to exposing American government-led programmes of domination and hegemony in the Middle East, most aptly revealed by its support of Zionism.CV Mazin Qumsiyeh
Mazin Qumsiyeh has served on the faculties of Duke and Yale universities. His latest book is Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle. He is involved in many campaigns supporting Palestinian rights.
A senior Iranian official threatened that Tehran may forcibly prevent oil export via the Straits of Hormuz if the UN imposed economic sanctions due to Iran's nuclear program, an Iranian news Web site said on Monday.I hope it happens.
This is the first time an Iranian official makes military threats in a public statement on Tehran's recent disagreements with the West.
ElderofZiyon's header is okay, though I don't like the fade all the way to white. I also am not a fan of pure white backgrounds, though it actually looks decent on his blog. Fonts and font colors are good, links are well organized. The message board is a nice addition, though appearance-wise it's kind of ugly.In response, I realized that my tagboard colors were indeed ugly and changed them to match the blog colors.
This is a site I do check out from time to time. It’s a good site, and I’m a fan. As far as design goes, this is another “simplistic” look. The white content color is always a good choice. This enables people to read the actual posts without any squinting or eyes glare afterwards. I’m sorry, but if you have a blog with a black color content background, I don’t usally read your blog at your site. If it’s a blog that I like, I read it through blogines. The white on black just kills my eyes.I appreciate the thoroughness of the review!
I like the header, good choice of image, but I can’t tell if you left some of those blogger html DIV headers there because you wanted to or because your not sure how to delete them. If it’s the latter contact me, I’ll help you, since my own blog is a reworked version of that blogger template.
I like the sidebar, it has a very good source of information and all the links are divided up into through categories. I’m not a fan of the embedded chat. It slows down loading time, and honestly who really uses them that often. The other thing I don’t like is the block quote box/form used. For a blog that quotes often from other articles etc, it should have a less noticeable background. It sticks out at you too much, it’s the first thing you notice when you load the page. Overall, I like the design, it pulls off simple but neat at the same time.
The Elder has clearly done as much as can be done with a blogspot blog. The side links are good an chock full o’ links. The color scheme seems to be meant to reflect the color of the Kotel in the header while still maintaining that whole “this blog contains many serious and important ideas” look. Love the name too but how far can one really push a blogspot template?Good question! I never thought of this blog as pushing the limits of Blogspot, and perhaps this review is an overanalysis, but it sure makes me feel "serious and important" to have people spend so much effort reviewing this.
It's a shame that Elder of Ziyon didn't get more support in other categories. He undertakes the important task of making sure that his readers learn from history. Much of what is happening now, has happened before. Still I've always loved the design of his blog.Which makes me feel guiltyfor not having done any Palestine Post-ings for a while.
It's impossible to combat obsessive historical revisionism using arguments and even the most basic logic. It is quite simply absurd to, on the one hand thank Hitler's Germany for the Holocaust -- which unfortunately does happen -- and then in the next breath say that the murder of six million Jews never took place. It's hard to understand how a state, which accepts aspects of modern life, is able to make obvious lunacy official national policy.An interesting analysis of Iran's goals, mostly in line with mine and with some points I disagree with.
Iran's Israel policy is a sub-set of its US policy, not the other way around. Given the current war of words between Iran and Israel, this is an important distinction seemingly missed by many of the media and pro-Israel lawmakers in Washington...
Mahmoud Zahar, a top Hamas leader, struck back in the campaign's final days, playing to Hamas's political base in the destitute Gaza neighborhoods and refugee camps that have supplied many Hamas suicide attackers and that revere them as martyrs. Before crowds of thousands, he and other candidates went out of their way to deny they would ever give up their insistence on the destruction of Israel and the right to armed struggle.
Zahar hammered home a fiery stump speech at several campaign stops, including one extravaganza that featured masked and camouflaged Hamas performers leaping through flaming hoops and rappelling down buildings into an enraptured crowd.
Hamas's armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, will never be dismantled, as Israel and the US-backed road map peace plan demand, he said.
''They will remain, they will grow, they will be armed more and more until the complete liberation of all Palestine," he said, stressing that Palestine includes not just the West Bank and Gaza Strip that Israel occupied in 1967, but all of Israel as well.
He vowed to send the brigades to take up positions along Gaza's borders -- a step Israeli officials would surely view as a provocation -- to prevent Israel from sending its army back into the strip it vacated last summer, as Israeli officials have threatened to do if they deem it necessary for security.
A senior State Department official said the United States would not deal directly with members of Hamas in a new government.
"Our position is simple, in order to be an effective partner for peace, the Palestinians have to accept the idea of the state of Israel and renounce violence. That is currently the position of the Palestinian government."
"We will not accept terror on any basis," he added.
Asked directly whether the U.S. would recognize a new Palestinian government that contained large numbers of Hamas members, he said: "Let's see what happens first."
"It is very difficult for us to be in the position of negotiating or talking to Hamas unless there’s a very clear renunciation of terrorism," said Mr Blair at his monthly press conference today.The answer is that, as always, wishful thinking will replace real facts. Hamas will use the PLO playbook and start floating possible less-terroristic scenarios to the West while continuing to support full Jihad against all Jews in the Middle East in Arabic. The West (including Israel) will want to believe that Hamas has turned over a new leaf so much that it will all ignore the inconvenient calls for genocide and jump on every word or omitted words that could be construed as being more moderate.
When I asked them what Iran would do if the U.S. was serious in attacking Iranian nuclear sites, Hussein said, "Then they open hell's gates towards themselves," and smiled. When I asked him to elaborate more, he continued, "In the papers there is always talk about air attacks on Iranian installations by Israel or the U.S. This type of psychological warfare is used to divert our attention. We know for a fact that no two Western wars are similar and we are sure that the Israelis would not risk an air attack. We know there are at least three possible scenarios of attacking these sites, including using their submarines in the Persian Gulf, commandos from the sea, or Mojahedin Khalgh trained in Israel and Azerbaijan to destroy the Bushehr nuclear power plant from the inside, but these are only plans. We have even more plans for how to confront them as well. This is a game of chess and we have practiced many different scenarios." Ali, another revolutionary guard, smiled and responded, "We have indicated directly and indirectly that with the first bullet shot at Iran, the map of the Middle East will be changed forever. Many American puppet regimes and dictators will fall and there will never be a government like what is now in Israel. The Apartheid system in Israel will be dismantled and a democratic government which embraces Jews, Christians, and Moslems equally will come to power. Millions of Palestinians will return home and millions of European and American migrants will return back from Palestine to their countries."
When I mentioned the immense firepower of the U.S. and the chemical, biological, and nuclear arsenal of Israel Hussein smiled and said, "We are ready, bring them on." Then after chuckling he said, "We have our sensors in place in the U.S., Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and most Arab countries. We know ahead of the time when they are coming, and since Mr. Bush has given American democracy along with the preemptive strike as the right of everybody in the world, we are going to use it and use it effectively. We are present in most of the military briefings of the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. As soon as we see that it is imminent we hit them and hit them hard. If U.S. commanders used a sledgehammer to break a walnut in Iraq, we will use two sledgehammers for a hazelnut everywhere in the Middle East! Whether the U.S. or Israel attacks us, we will consider it as Israeli attack since we know how much power they have over the U.S. political and decision-making system." When I asked why they would hold Israel responsible if the U.S. attacked unilaterally, he responded that the American policy in Middle East is designed and dictated by Jewish organizations such as the AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) which in turn gets its agenda and policy from Israel. "Don't you remember the role of three Jewish Musketeer's in Iraq invasion?" He meant Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Michael Ledeen. Ali added, "The U.S. political system is under heavy pressure from Zionist organizations. Look at the articles published in U.S. papers about Iran. Most of the authors are Zionists strongly affiliated with AIPAC. Most of these guys dream of an Israel which extends from the Nile to the Euphrates. This is dangerous ideology. We must stop this at some stage and this is the best time. Many Western immigrants in Israel are thinking and working toward it. Look at the Mayflower ship which brought a handful of Europeans to America, the American natives lost their identity and culture, and the rest is the history. We do not want this to happen to the Middle Eastern countries."
Jamshid said, "Since her inception by the Europeans, Israel has had four wars with her neighbors and in three of those wars she obtained more land. That is until 1979, the year the Islamic Republic was born in Iran, and since then she has not started any wars, since she knew she cannot, because Iran would definitely intervene. They want more land for all these Russian and other immigrants and that is why they put pressure on the U.S. to attack Iran."
I asked Jamshid what the possible response could be, he said very calmly, "If our peaceful nuclear installations are attacked, no doubt we will take out that chocolate factory in Dimona, and not only that one, but all other shops which sell that kind of chocolate in Israel!" He was referring to Israeli nuclear sites, and then continued, "We will make a big mess in Israel and leave it to the Europeans and the Americans to clean this mess up. Both the U.S. and Israel know that, and for that matter, if they are serious about their intention, they have to bomb not only the nuclear research centers, but all the Shahab-3 silos and to be safe many other military sites as well- and that means an all out war. We are ready for that. That is a hard job for them since finding and destroying these sites quickly is very hard," and laughed.
I asked them how they saw the war scenario. Ali said, "The possible war would be outside of Iranian borders. We have many theaters of operations including Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf and some Arab countries where U.S has troops there. We can increase the U.S. fatalities to a few dozen a day easily. In the case of Israel we are going to cause the immigration of 2-3 million European and Americans." When I asked for further explanation, he said, "Well if Iran is attacked we know who is responsible and that is when we decide that they should not live in our neighborhood." When I mentioned the Arrow anti-missiles Israelis have, he smiled. "Arrow anti-missiles are not accurate, and we know that for fact. They are working hard to improve it, but have not been successful so far. It is mainly a propaganda tool for the USraelis," stressing the last word with smile, before adding, "The Shahab-3 can easily take care of them. Their accuracy has been improved greatly. We have enough of them to spend more per target to increase the chance of hitting a target accurately, also do not forget we have satellite which looks at our target there and gives us real time information."
Javid, an Iran-Iraq war veteran calmly said, "There are many obstacles to the invasion of Iran. Iran is four times bigger than Iraq, so the number of soldiers has to be more accordingly. The U.S. does not have that many troops, even it were to bring in NATO and can double or triple the size of troops of what is has now in Iraq, there are still a lot of shortfalls. Iranian people have a very distinct culture and history which make them stand out as a solid nation. Two main elements which play important role in the defense of the country are nationalism and Shi'ism. These two are our real nuclear weapon. Both played an important role in the Iraq-Iran war. During the chaos of the revolution where there was no formal army to stand in front of hundreds of Iraqi tanks, ordinary people took up arms and stood in front of the Iraqis heavy army and stopped them for months. Young citizens took up grenades and threw themselves under the tanks and stopped Iraqi tanks. Saddam thought the war would take a few weeks, and although he was backed by Russia, Europe, U.S. and the Arab world, it took eight years and at the end he did not gain a meter of Iranian soil."
When I mentioned the superiority of U.S. military hardware, software, as well as their tactics he said, "Even if they could bring few thousand more soldiers and the best hardware they can not get to Tehran- conquering Iran is wishful thinking a corn-grower from Kansas might believe. First of all, in Iran people always fought against invaders and the army helped them. The U.S. can defeat the Iranian army, but not the Iranian people. There has never been any army in the world that could defeat a nation. Vietnam is the recent history lesson. On the basis of a military evaluation done by some western analysts and institutions, in any invasion of Iran 200,000 to 500,000 troops will be lost. Which country or countries are going to handle that amount of loss just for a problem which there is a diplomatic solution?" When I raised my eyebrow at his figures he got agitated and said, "Well, look, Saddam Hussein penetrated into Iran about 20-60 kilometers and lost about half a million men. Since the Americans have a better army and equipments, then they will have fewer casualties than Saddam. However, anybody who wants to get to Tehran which is a long way from the Iraqi border must pay more". Then he laughed and said, "Otherwise if they want to pay a friendly visit to us, then they are welcome!" He continued on, "Most Iranian cities are near a mountain or in a valley, and it is very easy for a few fighters to go to those mountains that overlook the cities and make hell for the invaders. That is why as a nation we had only two major defeats in the last 2,500 years: one by Greeks and one by Arab Moslem armies. Suppose that an imaginary army comes to Iran; to be successful that army has to get control of at least 10-12 major cities which have more than a million in population, since if any of these cities are ignored, then their mission is not accomplished and that city would quickly become the main point of resistance. Iraq had two cities and quickly was overcome by the invaders. Basra was mainly Shiite and Baghdad was partly Shiite and you know that the Shiite hate Saddam. The reason was that Saddam was a dictator, who did not have popular support, and many disliked him. Iraq had gone through two terrible wars and exhausted its resources physically and mentally. The government of Iran is not like Saddam's, it still has many supporters and even the opposition groups want to correct its shortcomings and not topple the regime. In case of such an invasion, it will inevitably back up the government. Iran came out of the war with Iraq quickly and now it produces his own armaments including airplanes, rockets, missiles, tanks, and heavy armor."
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