{"id":4357,"date":"2008-06-07T14:34:12","date_gmt":"2008-06-07T21:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=4357"},"modified":"2008-06-07T14:34:52","modified_gmt":"2008-06-07T21:34:52","slug":"ledeen-it%e2%80%99s-1938-1941-ledeen-it%e2%80%99s-1938-1941-hitler-is-hezbollah-al-qaeda-khomeinists-wahabis-etc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/07\/ledeen-it%e2%80%99s-1938-1941-ledeen-it%e2%80%99s-1938-1941-hitler-is-hezbollah-al-qaeda-khomeinists-wahabis-etc\/","title":{"rendered":"Ledeen: It’s 1938-1941, Hitler is Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Khomeinists, Wahabis, Etc."},"content":{"rendered":"

Murdoch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wall Street Journal<\/em> editorial page is as hard-line as ever, today featuring a lengthy and by now familiar meditation by AEI \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Freedom Scholar\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and perennial intrigue entrepreneur Michael Ledeen on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran and the Problem of Evil<\/a>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Actually, the headline is a bit of a distortion because, in typical neo-conservative fashion, Ledeen compares the conflated threats emanating from the Arab world and Iran \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or, as Ledeen puts it, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153from Hezbollah and al Qaeda to the Iranians Khomeinists and the Saudi Wahabis\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to those posed by Mussolini\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fascism, Hitler\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Germany, and Stalin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Russia. To his credit, Ledeen decided to forgo the use of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Islamofascism,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a decision which no doubt will get him in trouble with David Horowitz, Frank Gaffney, and James Woolsey, among others of his hard-line fellow-neo-cons. But, of course, by putting \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the other assorted threats in the same context, he really doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to use the word itself. In any event, the lesson \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and I guess here is where the headline that features \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u009d alone \u00e2\u20ac\u201d is clear enough: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153As it did in the 20th century, it means war.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Ledeen often describes himself as a historian, and, as such, I would expect Ledeen to be scrupulously careful of his facts, but one assertion about anti-Semitism in Iran in his essay really stuck out at me; namely, that The Protocol of the Elders of Zion<\/em> is now circulating in a Farsi edition. I did a quick Nexis search for the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Protocol\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Protocols\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Farsi\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and could find only two articles that appeared to corroborate Ledeen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s statement. One was a 2005 article in the Likudist New York Sun<\/em> by Benny Avni, who asserted that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the classic anti-Semitic fraud, is a best seller in Iran\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d No further evidence to support that assertion was offered. A second article, which appeared in the November 2006 edition of Playboy<\/em>, by frequent New Republic<\/em> contributor Joseph Braude, also asserted that the notorious forgery had been translated into Farsi with the financial help of the Islamic Republic. Again, however, he offered no supporting evidence. <\/p>\n

I also checked with the State Department\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nearly 100-page \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Global Anti-Semitism Report<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d published less than three months ago and could find no mention of a Farsi edition of the Protocols, although it did note that new editions had appeared in English, Ukrainian, Indonesian, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Russian, and Serbian since 2003. The report also noted that the Protocols had recently become \u00e2\u20ac\u0153best sellers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Turkey (a strong ally of Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and hence, presumably, irrelevant to Ledeen thesis on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153evil\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and Syria.<\/p>\n

Now, it is true that the Iranian delegation to the 2005 Frankfurt International Book Fair displayed an English-language edition of the Protocols among its wares, but I doubt that it would have become a \u00e2\u20ac\u009dbest seller\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Iran in that form, as the Sun<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Avni had asserted. <\/p>\n

Ledeen also wrote that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153calls for the destruction of Jews appear regularly on Iranian \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.television,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and, while Ahmadinejad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s periodic calls for the elimination of Israel (from the pages of time, from history, from the map \u00e2\u20ac\u201d depending on the translation), not to mention the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Death to Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sloganeering that has been staple of government rallies in Iran since the Revolution, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have enough knowledge or research time to assess the truthfulness of this assertion. I would note, however, that Iran continues to boast by far the largest Jewish community in the region outside Israel; that Jews are an officially recognized minority free to worship as they wish; that the vast majority have shunned substantial financial inducements<\/a> to emigrate to Israel; and that, despite Ahmadinejad\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s well-publicized Holocaust scepticism, the government television station has broadcast a popular series about the Holocaust based on a true story about an Iranian diplomat in Paris who helped Jews escape Nazi-occupied France. That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean anti-Semitism in Iran does not exist; on the contrary, most experts believe it is indeed on the rise there, spurred in considerable part by regional tensions and the crescendo of threats and counter-threats between the Israel and Iran. But lumping Iran in with more clearly anti-Semitic movements and governments \u00e2\u20ac\u201d not to mention his blithe assertions about the popularity of the Protocols\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Farsi edition \u00e2\u20ac\u201d does not enhance Ledeen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or the Journal<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s op-ed fact-checkers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \u00e2\u20ac\u201d credibility.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Visit Lobelog.com<\/a> for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Murdoch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Wall Street Journal editorial page is as hard-line as ever, today featuring a lengthy and by now familiar meditation by AEI \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Freedom Scholar\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and perennial intrigue entrepreneur Michael Ledeen on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Iran and the Problem of Evil.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Actually, the headline is a bit of a distortion because, in typical neo-conservative fashion, Ledeen compares the conflated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4357"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}