How the Guardian Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Iranian Bomb

This is a guest post by AKUS
Mark Gardner’s excellent article, Does Ahmadinejad read the Guardian?, revealed once again the Guardian’s deliberate blindness to anti-Semitism, this time exhibited in its response to Ahmadinejad’s UN speech.
It takes a definite agenda for the Guardian to be possibly the only Western newspaper not to “get” what Ahmadinejad was hinting at with his talk of a conspiracy and a small group controlling the world.
The following comment, the worst perhaps of numerous similar ones by various commentators on threads dealing with the Iranian threat, was deleted, but the person writing it, notorious on CiF for her anti-Semitic comments, has never been banned, possibly never even been “pre-moderated” – the fates reserved for those Israel supporters who can be accused of even slightly infringing CiF’s so-called “community standards”:

ShamelessHussy

26 Sep 09, 12:20pm

Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson.
Are you guys Jewish by any chance? Pro-Israeli or even Israeli perhaps?
Your article is really funny.
I hope Iran builds the bomb and points it at Israel.
Israel should always have the threat of massive and disproportionate retaliation for any aggressive action it takes. This means the carpets bombing of Israeli cities and the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Israelis. Maybe Iran can even take pre-emptive strike to forestall Israeli terrorism.
Then your article will be really, really funny.
Israel is a terrorist state and needs to be treated in this way. No more moddlycoddling by westerners with a guilty conscience. If the West is unprepared to tackle to error it made in 1948 then I’ll gladly support the efforts of Iran, Hamas, Hizbollah, AlQaeda or whoever, to rectify this error.
And if you don’t like it then I’m sure the Americans and the Germans will welcome Israelis with open arms. Maybe even set aside a portion of their country for the chosen people to settle in. I’m sure ordinary Americans and Germans will love that prospect, don’t you? You know how wonderful the Germans were towards your own people compared to the likes of Iran and Palestinians, don’t you?
If you go to someone’s back yard and shit in it, prepared to have your backsides kicked and your nose rubbed in your own shit.

Those who have followed the increasing frenzy of Israel bashing on CiF will well recall the constant refrain by Guardian contributors and those commenting on the various threads that it has never been proven that Iran is planning to build nuclear weapons, despite all the obvious evidence to the contrary. Comparisons between Ahmadinejad and Hitler were called “unfair”, or worse. Claims pointing out that Ahmadinejad called for the destruction of Israel were dismissed as mistranslation for propaganda purposes, and still are dismissed in that way:

dissidentstockbroker 25 Sep 09, 8:01pm
…. Now find us the bit that says that Iran threatens to wipe Israel off the map.
The veil has fallen from some, but not all eyes. The traditional Israel bashers, who will support anyone attacking Israel, such as orwellwasright and berchmans, are still playing the same game.

Berchmans 25 Sep 09, 7:41pm
##Iran continues to pose a real security challenge##
Only in Bizzarro world. Could someone please explain how this country surrounded by enemies who are armed to the feckin teeth with thousands of nuclear arms should not defend herself ?
B

It seems necessary to remind Berchmans that Iran has actually, through its proxies Hamas and Hizbollah, attacked Israel for a period now spanning over a decade.
So now, in the face of evidence that shows their denials of Iran’s nuclear ambitions are useless, the Guardian and its readers are moving the goal posts yet again. Since absolute denial of Iran’s nuclear ambitions fail, they fall back to two other positions.
Why shouldn’t Iran have nuclear weapons?
When that fails to impress, they are being reduced to “what aboutery” – “what about Israel?” “What about the UK?” “What about the US?”
Suddenly Guardian regular Simon Tisdall, roped in, no doubt, to support the Guardian’s position finds he is unable to do so and instead writes “Iran has been caught red-handed“. Someone called Heather Hurlburt writes about “Iran’s Nuclear Blunder“. But nothing stops the Guardian – they rope in Scott Ritter to explain why things are not what they seem, in an article incongruously titled “Keeping Iran Honest” – a case where the title is worth more than all the rest of his article.
The thrust of Ritter’s article is that an “additional protocol” has not been ratified by the Iranian parliament, and as such is not legally binding. Therefore, it cannot be accused of “breaking the rules”. Like a criminal who never signed an agreement not to commit crime, and therefore cannot be accused of criminal activity.
No matter how the Guardianistas twist and turn, the latest revelations, and the treatment of the Iranians protesting the last election have finally made it clear who the world has to deal with. Sarkozy said it best this week at the UN: “Talks with the Iranians gave us three things – More centrifuges, more enriched uranium, and a threat to wipe a UN member nation off the map.”
There is something nauseatingly familiar about the Guardian’s initial willingness to allow articles critical of Ahmadinejad to appear followed by bringing in “objective contributors” to show that he’s not such a bad chap after all. It reminds me of the loony left’s historical propensity to trim its sails to whatever line seems most propitious at any time, as it did at first when the USSR signed the Ribbentrop-Molotov agreement to dismember Poland. Then they discovered that Hitler was “objectively” a friend of the proletariat. It is probably only a matter of time until the deliberate obtuse, irrational and fundamentally anti-Semitic hatred of Israel puts the Guardian’s editors and some CiF commentators back in bed with Ahmadinejad.

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