Of course, Ahmadinejad should be speaking to the oppressed, in the Middle East first of all but also in the rest of the world, and he knows this. In his letter, Ahmadinejad talked about Africa and Latin America, spoke sympathetically about US troops put into "harm's way," and presented himself as a man in solidarity with global struggles against oppression. That's the correct gesture to make. Bush doesn't care, but the rest of the world do. According to Michael Slackman* of the New York Times, the President of Iran is a popular man among common people in the Middle East (though the Arab power elite are weary of him): "Now, with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bashing the United States and Europe, calling for Israel to be wiped off the map and claiming that the Holocaust is a myth, many people from taxi drivers in Morocco to street sweepers in Cairo are saying that they like the man and his vision" ("Iran the Great Unifier? The Arab World Is Wary," New York Times, 5 February 2006, <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/weekinreview/05slackman.html?ei=5088&en=d8a675842d74a588&ex=1296795600&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print>); and "Citing the war in Iraq and reports of secret prisons around Europe, Mr. Ahmadinejad argued that the United States had failed to live up to its own stated values, an argument that resonates in the streets of the Middle East" ("Iranian Letter: Using Religion to Lecture Bush," 10 May 2006, <http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/world/middleeast/10iran.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>).
Iran has the largest Jewish community outside Israel in the Near East: "Iran, although it may be the most stridently anti-Israeli country in the Middle East, is home to the largest Jewish population by far of any other Muslim country" (Michael Theodoulou, "Uneasy Times for Iran's Jews," Christian Science Monitor," 26 October 1999, <http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/durable/1999/10/26/p6s1.htm>).
If Ahmadinejad can try to build a good relation with Iranian Jews and reach out to Jewish leftists in the diaspora, it will be even better. That will strengthen his support for Palestinians and flummox Washington. But, so far, his flirtations with Holocaust revisionism have done the opposite and given ammunition to imperialists: "The head of Iran's Jewish community, Haroun Yashayaei, has sent a letter complaining to President Mahmud Ahmadinejad over his Holocaust denial comments" (Golnaz Esfandiari, "Iran: Jewish Leader Criticizes President for Holocaust Denial," Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 13 February 2006, <http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/02/fb25e81f-bce9-4291-acdb-cf2c5c69fe92.html>).
* The contrast between Michael Slackman's relatively fair reporting on Iran and Juan Forero's prejudiced reporting on Venezuela is very striking. Right-wingers hate Slackman: " NYT's Michael Slackman Weak On Mideast Extremists" (Ken Reich, Take Back the Times, 21 December 2005, <http://takebackthetimes.blogspot.com/2005/12/nyts-michael-slackman-weak-on-mideast.html>).
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>