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December 23, 2004
Amazing What Some People will Believe
A quick perusal of the MEMRI website this morning brings forth this delightful story
Iran's Sahar 1 TV station is currently airing a weekly series titled "For You, Palestine," or "Zahra's Blue Eyes." The series premiered on December 13, and is set in Israel and the West Bank. It broadcasts every Monday, and was filmed in Persian but subsequently dubbed into Arabic.
The story follows an Israeli candidate for Prime Minister, Yitzhak Cohen, who is also the military commander of the West Bank. The opening sequence of the show contains graphic scenes of surgery, and images of a Palestinian girl in a hospital whose eyes have been removed, with bandages covering the sockets.
In Episode 1, Yitzhak Cohen lectures at a medical conference on the advances being made by Israeli medicine regarding organ transplants. Later in the episode, Israelis disguised as UN workers visit a Palestinian school, ostensibly to examine the children's eyes for diseases, but in reality to select which children's eyes to steal to be used for transplants.
In Episode 2, the audience learns that the Israeli president is being kept alive by organs stolen from Palestinian children, and an Israeli military commander is seen kidnapping UN employees and Palestinians.
Unbelieveable. Unfortunately such stories are all too common. It has been widely reported that Mein Kampf and The Protocols to the Learned Elders of Zion are best-sellers in much of that part of the world.
One of the things we did not anticipate was how different the thinking can be in other parts of the world. Steven Vincent has a series of excerpts from his new book In the Red Zone on the National Review website that touches on this subject. Here's one
She was a Sunni Muslim, an attractive, thirty-something writer, one of the few women I met who eschewed a scarf in public. And she was overjoyed at the demise of Saddam. "I am so happy! Freedom at last! The world is open to me now!" she exclaimed during a small social function at an art gallery in Karada. "Can you recommend some American magazines I might send my writing to?"This is so illogical to us that it is hard to believe that people actually think this way. But we should not be surprised, for we hear this from our own left. I've often read some liberal/leftist say something like "well, how would you like it if someone invaded your country?" The obvious response is "If I were ruled by a murderous dictator and a democracy invaded, I'd love it!"I promised I'd draw up a list of suitable periodicals, then added — carelessly, for this was my first trip to Iraq — "You must not mind seeing American soldiers on the streets."
The woman's smile vanished. Her brow darkened and she shook her head. "Oh, no. I hate the soldiers. I hate them so much I fantasize about taking a gun and shooting one dead."
Stunned by her vehemence, "But American soldiers are responsible for your freedom!" I replied.
"I know," the woman snarled. "And you can't imagine how humiliated that makes me feel."
He was a short, intense, bespectacled lawyer from Baquba, who claimed he had connections with anti-Coalition forces in the Sunni Triangle. As we drove through the desert into Baghdad, "I hate your country," he informed me. "Every time I see a U.S. tank I feel like it is crushing my skull."
Less startled by this expression — for this was my second trip to Iraq — I asked the attorney the cause of his feelings. As if explaining the most self-evident thing in the world, he replied, "America is occupying my country — as a patriot, of course I must resist." He fixed his wire-rimmed gaze on me. "Imagine if a foreign power was occupying America — wouldn't you resist?"
Perhaps we're just so used to the leftists saying this that we can't imagine that people in other parts of the world believe it too. I'm not sure.
Recently the Iraqi brothers who write the pro-democracy Iraq the Model blog visited the United States. Catherine Seipp writes about how the American Left views them
<>Some leftists are convinced that they are backed by the CIA. Amazing what people will believe.You might assume that a pro-America, pro-democracy Baghdad blog would be considered a good thing across the political spectrum here in the U.S., but unfortunately you would be wrong. Lefty bloggers complain that most Iraqis are not as pro-America as the Fadhil brothers, which might be true (although Omar and Mohammad — who, like Saddam and his crew, are Sunni — argue vehemently to the contrary). But so what?
Should we have refused to support the French Resistance in World War II because so many of their countrymen sympathized with the Vichy government? Or — a better analogy — if some Americans had tried to discredit anti-Nazi, pro-U.S. Germans after the war (because after all, Hitler had the support of the masses) should they have expected anyone here other than the American Nazi party to take them seriously?
Posted by Tom at December 23, 2004 9:07 AM
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