I refer to Helen Ang's very detailed response - Ahmadinejad honoured in the breach - to a brief paragraph in my letter, Columbia's attack on Ahmadinejad uncalled for .
I'm always grateful for any efforts to make my 'ambiguity' more 'coherent' but Helen has left me more confused. She purports to disabuse Malaysiakini readers of my 'fudging' but then proceeds to agree with two of the 'facts' I mentioned; namely that the Iranian president did not say he wants to "wipe Israel of the map" nor that "the holocaust is a myth." She conveniently ignores the other fact - that Iran does not possess nuclear weapons and has clearly stated (a fatwa no less from the supreme ruler) that it has no intention of doing so.
Helen needs to be careful about substituting 'facts' with her own clairvoyance: "Granted that Ahmadinejad did not say that 'he', personally, 'wants to' wipe Israel off the map'; what he meant was [merely] that Israel should be wiped off the map." Is that really what he meant? Does she have a direct line into 'the Prez's' innermost thoughts?
The 'wiped off the map' translation was indeed propagated by the New York Times, when (in fact) Ahmadinejad was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini's likening of the disappearance of the Soviet regime to that of the eventual disappearance from 'the pages of time' of the Zionist regime. Clearly, the land mass of Soviet Russia did not disappear nor did its people - but the regime did fall. The reference is obviously to regime change and not to thermo-nuclear obliteration - even if they had the capability, which they don't.
It's palpably ridiculous to think that Iran would ever nuke Israel with the deaths of millions of fellow Muslims and the massive retaliation that would follow. Helen is also correct in pointing out that the 'holocaust is a myth' comment refers to myth-making. I'm reliably informed that the word 'myth' in Farsi as used by Ahmadinejad could be translated as 'story' or 'narrative'.
It's unfortunate that Helen should cite her namesake, Helen Boaden of the BBC, as an authoritative source on anything other than the officially-sanctioned version of events. I would refer our Helen to the Medialens.org website where Boaden has consistently been found out (ridiculed, castigated and lampooned) for her valiant efforts on behalf of the establishment to peddle the party line.
Language and its nuances are important. In both of the above examples, one would have to be very charitable indeed to believe anything other than that western politicians and their media mouthpieces are deliberately presenting Iran as a bogeyman and softening us up for a potential attack. This hardly needs pointing out. Hello! Iraq, anybody?
