Archive for the 'Iran' Category

Goldwasser vs. Ahmadinejad

From YNet:  Goldwasser recounts confrontation with Ahmadinejad

Goldwasser managed to enter Ahmadinejad’s press conference at the United Nations building in New York on Tuesday, and told Ynet that the she was surprised by the treatment the Iranian leader received upon his arrival.”He came in and started to smile at everyone. The reporters gave him great respect… As he walked by me he said hi to me, because he still didn’t know who I was. He thought I was one of the supporting journalists, and that he was walking into a place where everyone loved him. He seemed very pleased,” Goldwasser recounted.

Goldwasser said she was not afraid to present the president with her question, and asked him, “Hello, my name is Karnit, the wife of Ehud Goldwasser, the soldier who has been held captive for over a year. Since you are the man that is behind the kidnapping due to the aid you grant Hizbullah, why don’t you allow the Red Cross to visit the two soldiers?” she asked.

The president ignored the question.

Goldwasser being escorted out of press conference (photo: Shachar Ezran)

“Now he knows that the kidnapped soldier’s wife can reach him too,” Goldwasser told Ynet, “he knows that he does not scare us.”

Good for her.  The way Karnit Goldwasser has led the fight to keep her husband and his fellow soldiers (who were kidnapped by Hizbollah and Hamas) in the attention of the media and international leaders is the definition of true loyalty and love.

I’m also a big fan of how she used this opportunity to stick it to both the media and Ahmadinejad.

As a side note, this is what my American Foreign Policy professor had to say about Bollinger’s introduction to Ahmadinejad’s speech on Tuesday:

“It was not very academic of him.  I would have started out by saying, ‘We have someone like you in our country too.  I think he’s wrong, and I think you’re wrong.’  That way we’re on the middle ground.”

The someone Prof. Katzenstein was referring to, of course, is President Bush.  Smooth?  I thought so.

Israel in the News - Ahmadinejad, SSS, Obama and a Bonus!

After being in Colorado for a few days for my dad’s checkup, I have a ton of news and blogs to catch up on! I actually couldn’t decide what to blog about between the following headlines from Ynet, so I’m putting them all here. :)

Sometimes, I wonder if good ole’ Ahmadinejad can really get any more dense. Then he pulls a move like this.

“The arrogant superpowers and the Zionist regime invested all their efforts during the 33-day war, but after 60 years, their pride has been trampled and the countdown to the destruction of this regime has been started by Hizbullah fighters…”

Honestly, how many times does he think he can spout his annihilative babblings without a military reaction from Israel?

I am really not sure what to think of this story as a whole. I have had personal experience with Super Special Screening (and more detail!), so I completely understand feeling humiliated and completely awkward, because the puffer isn’t exactly the most comfort-friendly machine. It is also a known fact that TSA agents can be blunt and rather rude — although in my limited experience with Israelis, that shouldn’t be too shocking! However, because of the background of this Israeli doctor, I can understand why she would find it harder to laugh at this situation than I did.

I guess the only questionable part of the story to me is whether or not they chose her for screening specifically because she was Israeli. It is incredibly frustrating to be standing there as men in turbans go through the line when I am a rather unsuspicious-looking college student (imho), but it doesn’t seem unreasonable that foreigners should often get special screening, regardless of their specific nationality. Furthermore, as an Israeli, shouldn’t she recognize the security measures necessary to prevent terrorism? Boo. Boo to SSS, boo to possible discrimination, and boo to freaking terrorism.

1. Yes, Bush did neglect the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a certain extent. However, I prefer neglect to overzealous capitulation, ala Clinton.

2. I can’t decide if this is linkage (meaning all problems in the Middle East somehow relate back to Israel) or ignorance (believing that Israel would be safer with either Saddam Hussein still in power or America leaving and letting the terrorists take over Iraq).

In an essay addressing the foreign policy he plans to pursue as president, published in the Foreign Affair journal, Obama explained that “the morass in Iraq has made it immeasurably harder to confront and work through the many other problems in the region – and it has made many of those problems considerably more dangerous.

“Changing the dynamic in Iraq will allow us to focus our attention and influence on resolving the festering conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians – a task that the Bush administration neglected for years,” he added.

Either way, both are equally dangerous and unacceptable positions for a presidential candidate - regardless of his party affiliation. I’m not sure the last time Obama talked to Olmert (the current leader of Israel, as unpopular as he may be), but practically all mainstream Israeli leaders are in favor of a continued American presence in Iraq until freedom and democracy have won and terrorism has failed. At least, that’s what Olmert said when he spoke via satellite to the AIPAC Policy Conference I attended. :) That’s a pretty common sense position, if you ask me.

Ahmadinejad Fever

I read this article last week and thought it was pretty funny as well as insightful.

It might be tempting to write Ahmadinejad off as a religious man on an acid trip, but there’s more he said that should scare the living Shi’ite out of us all.

Then tonight, in a fit of procrastination - seriously, who writes an essay worth 25% of their grade prior to the night before it’s due? - I ran across Thomas Sowell’s column from last week which had a message surprisingly similar to Birnbaum’s.

Since Iran is not letting the idle chatter at the U.N. delay their rush to get nuclear weapons, they are more dangerous than the Nazis were — while we remain as gullible as those in the west who blundered into World War II and almost lost it.

Coincidence? I think not. I guess it is easy to be distracted by our national politics and not worry about crazy dictators abroad - especially as we approach the midterm elections. But as fun as it is to just blow Ahmadinejad off as all talk… is it really a risk we should be willing to take?

Either way, I am fairly confident that Israel is all over this… That is the main difference between WWII and today. I mean, of all the nations in the world, I am pretty sure Israel is the most capable of defending itself. After all, as if having your entire population trained to be in your army isn’t enough, they do have God on their side. Hopefully, if the time comes, they will have America on their side as well.

p.s. I’m not exactly sure why this tried to put the date as October 2. Hopefully it’s fixed now.