Chavez, too, has been accused by the Right of anti-Semitism, but that's basically bogus, as FAIR explains here: "Editing Chavez to Manufacture a Slur: Some Outlets Spread Spurious Charges of Anti-Semitism," 23 Jan. 2006, <http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2805>.
While Ahmadinejad's remarks on the Holocaust are reprehensible, his actual policy toward Israel is preferable to most governments':
"Our position toward the Palestinian question is clear: we say that a nation has been displaced from its own land. Palestinian people are killed in their own lands, by those who are not original inhabitants, and they have come from far areas of the world and have occupied those homes. Our suggestion is that the 5 million Palestinian refugees come back to their homes, and then the entire people on those lands hold a referendum and choose their own system of government. This is a democratic and popular way. Do you have any other suggestions?" (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, qtd. in Scott MacLeod, "'We Do Not Need Attacks': An Interview with Ahmadinejad," Time 17 September 2006, <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1535777,00.html>).
<blockquote>AHMADINEJAD (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): We oppose killing on such scale. And, you know, we have tried to offer some proposals on Palestine: the referendum that I discussed earlier, with the participation of everyone.
Now, when you speak of referendum, you're thinking of a process, naturally. You're not speaking of anything else. It's within the framework of the United Nations Charter.
We do believe that the Zionist role in creating conflict around the world should be thoroughly examined by the media. It is a responsibility. Let us not forget that they represent a complex group, a complex organizational system, that has been the source of many problems.
Now, we cannot force our will on the vast part of the world because there is a small group that has a certain interest related to wealth and power.
Let's not forget that Zionism is a party that, in fact, it has no religious affiliations. They might say that, "Well, we're Jews," but that's really not true and that's not the fundamental foundation of Zionism.
("President Ahmadinejad's News Conference," CQ Transcripts Wire, Washington Post, 21 September 2006, <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092100829_pf.html>)</blockquote>
> This of course is run-of-the-mill, statecraft-as-usual, and
> neither of these guys, in this instance, are operating any different
> than any other politician anywhere on the planet.
Except that these two are the most likely to compel the rest of the world to move toward a multipolar world, by virtue of the countries of which they are leading (if they were the Presidents of, say, Fiji and Tuvalu, they would be hardly of interest to anyone, even if they had 100% better or worse policies than they do).
Statecraft, of which diplomacy is part, is quite important, unless -- or rather even if -- you have a military like Washington's, but that's something that liberals and leftists in the West do not appear to believe, when it comes to the doings of governments outside the West, which is odd, for many of them say they prefer Democrats to Republicans because the latter is more unilateral than former, uninterested in diplomacy. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>