Opinion & Commentary:
Old tactics, new victims for Ahmadinejad

By Seth Mandel
The Jewish State

Like a jet flying under the radar or seeds planted carefully in otherwise undisturbed earth, often the most dangerous and effective actions are those showing no overt sign or trace that they are being undertaken.

Such was the sin perpetrated against the will but under the consciousness of many of the thousands gathered Sept. 24 at Columbia University to challenge and be challenged by the Islamist president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad's religious ranting was lost on the crowd; he was essentially told to stand in the corner facing the wall by university President Lee Bollinger; he was called out on his doublespeak by moderator John Coatsworth, the dean of the university's School of International and Public Affairs; and he had more than one moment of unintentional comedy ("In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country.").

All of this should have pacified the protesters and concerned alumni, right? After all, Ahmadinejad didn't look tough and he didn't sound tough.

But if that was how the public -- and especially Columbia students -- felt after the program, Ahmadinejad came away with a larger victory than he could have hoped. Bollinger warned Ahmadinejad that his silence on certain issues and questions would be telling enough; yet, the silence of the crowd after some of Ahmadinejad's statements was just as telling.

The issue of Ahmadinejad's invitation to speak at the university was complicated. Many stood foursquare against it because of his incitement to genocide, calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. Others opposed his visit because of his Holocaust denial. Still others fumed at the hypocrisy of the university inviting a man with one of the worst human rights records in history in the name of free speech, but turning away conservative speakers and ROTC groups.

There was more to be upset about: Ahmadinejad is developing nuclear weapons, arming and supplying insurgents in Iraq who are killing American soldiers, funding terrorist groups like Hezbollah to fight proxy wars against Israel, executing homosexuals, imprisoning academics, and the list goes on.

But as I walked through the gates at 116^th and Broadway, I was stunned to find that it was as if I had stepped through a portal to another world. I made my way through the sea of protesters, police officers, and campus security personnel to find quite a receptive audience for the Iranian leader.

"People don't think what he's doing is right, but they should let him say what he's going to say," Columbia freshman Alex McCurdy told me. "Everyone here can make up their own minds."

McCurdy was wearing a T-shirt that read "Stop Ahmadinejad's evil".

Columbia senior Adrienne Stillman told me that the event brought out the best of the university student body's debating spirit.

"I'm really interested to hear what he has to say," she said. "I don't have a problem with the university inviting him."

Stillman did admit that Ahmadinejad can be "incendiary" and a bit of a spotlight hound.

"Ahmadinejad loves attention," she said. "He's such a showman -- he's eating it up."

Leehe Shuler, a SIPA grad student and an Israeli, told me that Ahmadinejad will never directly address her country, and this was her only opportunity for such direct communication with the Iranian leader.

Afterward, the reactions were much the same. Students were either lighthearted or nonplussed by Ahmadinejad's speech, as freshman Kofi Edzie was.

"I don't know how sincere he actually was... maybe I'm just being too cynical, but in that sense, no, he didn't really change my mind about him," Edzie told me. "He said pretty much what I expected him to say."

Essentially, people didn't think much of Ahmadinejad beforehand, and remained unimpressed. But there was a more sinister effect: people came away unaffected.

The problem is that Ahmadinejad's speech was a case study in subtle but powerful anti-Semitism, sometimes because of what he didn't say more than what he said, and other times by insinuating Israel's guilt by association with the United States.

Ahmadinejad was asked by Coatsworth if he or his government seeks the destruction of the state of Israel as a Jewish state. Ahmadinejad's response was that Palestinians should have the privilege of deciding their own fate.

"We must allow Jewish Palestinians, Muslim Palestinians, and Christian Palestinians to determine their own fate themselves through a free referendum," Ahmadinejad said.

The implication of his statement was quite clear: there is no "Israel" -- everyone there is a Palestinian, be they Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. The land is Palestine, and is home to people of all faiths, who should live together in peace and harmony.

This is a one-state solution, yet no one in the crowd so much as raised an eyebrow. In that one, unchallenged statement, Ahmadinejad established -- or worse, confirmed -- in the minds of the audience members the cruel canard that the whole of Israel is occupied territory until the Palestinians living abroad, in the West Bank, and in Gaza, can vote on the leader of a single government there.

Yet the smug headlines following the speech were "Ahmadinejad humbled", "Columbia University president slams Ahmadinejad", "Ahmadinejad speech speaks for itself", and "Ahmadinejad, at Columbia, parries and puzzles".

That's because locked into the brains at this institute of higher learning, Ahmadinejad's rhetoric waltzed in the front entranceway of their mindful attention, while his intentions, underhanded as they were, snuck in the back, leaving no trace, but also not leaving.

Though Ahmadinejad never mentions Israel by name, he usually uses his pulpit to attack the "Zionist regime" early and often.

In his Columbia speech, however, Ahmadinejad used that phrase only once, and its placement was nothing short of a sheer linguistic surgical maneuver.

Ahmadinejad was asked by a student, via Coatsworth, if Iran is prepared for open discussion with the United States, and how the points of conflict between the two nations could be resolved.

Ahmadinejad responded that after the 1979 revolution in Iran, during which freedom and democracy were rescued from a "pro-Western dictatorship" and returned to the Iranian people, the government made clear its devotion to meaningful dialogue, with a couple notable exceptions.

"We announced our readiness that besides two countries, we are ready to have friendly relations and talks with all countries of the world," the dictator said. "One of those two was the apartheid regime of South Africa, which has been eliminated. And the second is the Zionist regime."

The placement of the phrases "apartheid regime of South Africa" and "Zionist regime" together was no coincidence. It was to imply something that has become almost conventional wisdom among many communities -- universities chiefly among them -- that Israel is an apartheid state. It was also to imply alleged cooperation between the South African and Israeli governments during the apartheid era.

Obviously, it doesn't take much education to know that Israel society -- with Arab landowners, Arab representatives in government, Arab newspapers, the Arabs' freedom to organize speeches calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, and Arab shared control of Judaism's holiest site, the Temple Mount -- is devoid of almost any and every parallel to apartheid South Africa.

But Ahmadinejad wasn't there to educate. He was there to imply that the outrageous anti-Jewish blood libels that university settings often foster are accepted as fact in the Middle East. Don't worry, Ahmadinejad was telling his audience without telling his audience, outside the confines of your hijacked media, the rest of the world agrees with you.

That was certainly the tone, albeit slightly more noticeable, of his response to a question about his attempt to visit Ground Zero.

"If the root causes of 9/11 are examined properly, why it happened, what caused it, what were the conditions that led to it, who truly was involved, who was really involved, and put it all together, to understand how to prevent the crisis in Iraq, fix the problem in Afghanistan and Iraq combined," Ahmadinejad said.

The "9/11 truth movement" has about as many members as it has conspiracy theories about what really happened on that fateful day, which is quite a lot. Ahmadinejad knew his audience, though it didn't take much -- there were fliers with President George W. Bush's face imposed on a nuclear mushroom cloud all over campus.

The conspiracy theories often include Zionist plots to assist or even carry out the destruction of the towers on Sept. 11, 2001. Either way, the theory goes, Bush and the Zionists celebrated that attack because it gave the happy couple a chance to go to war against Arabs.

And while we're at it, Ahmadinejad went on, we might as well, in the name of research and historical accuracy, look into the Holocaust as well.

Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conference is famous, as are his statements questioning the validity of what Bollinger called "the most documented event in human history."

Indeed, Bollinger sought to head Ahmadinejad off at the pass by letting him know just what the university thinks of the tyrant's Holocaust denial.

"For the illiterate and ignorant, this is dangerous propaganda," Bollinger scolded. "When you come to a place like this, this makes you, quite simply, ridiculous. You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."

For this, Bollinger received a rousing and proud ovation from the Columbia students. But Ahmadinejad got plenty of cheers as well for his response, which came later during the question and answer session.

Given that the Holocaust is a "present reality of our time," Ahmadinejad said, "why is there not sufficient research that can approach the topic from different perspectives?"

Ahmadinejad asked if we believe in absolutes in physics, or in the end of necessity of analysis in mathematics. If this is an institute of higher learning, Ahmadinejad surmised, shouldn't there be an equal and serious pursuit of knowledge in every area of study?

Then, to a wave of applause from the crowd, Ahmadinejad went to his go-to move, the crowd-pleasing anti-Semitic slam dunk.

"If, given this historical event is a reality, we still need to question whether the Palestinian people should be paying for it or not," Ahmadinejad said. "After all, it happened in Europe -- the Palestinian people had no role to play in it. So why is it the Palestinian people are paying the price of an event they had nothing to do with?"

In one fell swoop Ahmadinejad did what his fans love: question the validity of the Holocaust and Israel together.

"The Palestinian people didn't commit any crime," he continued, sensing he had the crowd where he wanted them. "They had no role to play in the World War II. They were living with the Jewish communities and the Christian communities in peace at the time. They didn't have any problems."

Of course, Arab support in and around pre-state Israel for the Nazi plans to exterminate the Jews is well documented, as was the anti-Jewish violence and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist seeds of Jewish destruction around that time.

And yet, Meir Brooks, writing in the Jerusalem Post, said: "Overall, the negative impact on Israel of the event was minimal."

Maybe he's right. Maybe when Ahmadinejad called leaders of nuclear countries "retarded" he wasn't intentionally de-legitimizing Israel's and America's governments.

But most likely, he was. As Jacob Kriegel, president of Columbia's pro-Israel political affairs committee, LionPAC, put it: even if his words are retranslated and watered down for his audience, "Ahmadinejad's intentions are no secret."

After I left the pre-program rally -- at which some spoke against Ahmadinejad, some railed against possible war with Iran and against the coming of the "fear wolf," others satirized Bollinger's rule that questions would be pre-selected from index cards, and others read the names of Iranian children on death row because of Ahmadinejad's oppressive and murderous policies -- I heard something that made me turn around and come right back to the square in front of the Columbia library.

"Yavoh shalom aleinu, od yavoh shalom aleinu, yavoh shalom aleinu, v'al kulam." It was the familiar Jewish peace song, and I wandered over to see a group of Jewish men and women protesters with their arms around each other dancing and singing in a circle, as they got to the chorus: "Salaam, aleinu v'al kol ha'olam, salaam, salaam" -- "Peace upon us and the whole world, peace, peace."

Soon all the T.V. cameras were on them, and others joined in the song. Those who didn't know the song couldn't help but watch, many of them smiling for the first time that afternoon. A man in the middle of the circle held up a sign that asked: who is the man who loves life? "One who turns away from evil, seeks peace, and pursues it."

It was from the book of Psalms, and at least for those few minutes, everyone was on the same page.