Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently completed another triumphant jaunt to New York. This time the Middle East’s most notorious soon-to-be nuclear bully, who previously called for wiping “the stinking corpse” of Israel off the map and denied the Nazi Holocaust, turned his sights on world Jewry.
Speaking from the rostrum of the United Nations in a time of unprecedented world economic meltdown, he invoked anti-Jewish imagery not heard in the halls of power since the Nazi era. He labeled Jews “a small but cunning group of people . . . who control the important centers of the economy and the decision making.” He decried that American and Europeans have been “forced to give into the demands and whims of a small group of materialistic and invasive people.”
Ahmadinejad’s descent into pure Jew hatred came 70 years, almost to the day, after his 1930s role model walked away from the Munich Conference with the prize of democratic Czechoslovakia. Neville Chamberlain returned to England, triumphantly claiming “peace in our time.”
It didn’t quite work out as planned. Two months later, Goebbels orchestrated Kristalluacht, the state-sponsored nationwide program that declared open season on Jews. The following year, Hitler invaded Poland, and before it was over, 72 million people would perish in the fury he unleashed.
How could Europeans have been so wrong? People were not dumber back then — just tired of war, after the unprecedented horrors of World War I. Back then, no one could imagine committing the resources of a nation to mechanize annihilation of 6 million innocents. Seventy years ago, reasonable people could still believe that a dialogue and negotiation could appease conflicting nations.
Today, despite evidence from Auschwitz to Rwanda and Darfur, lots of good people still cling to that belief. It seems that for too many, staring down the face of evil is tougher than the naked eye looking at a solar eclipse. We find it much easier to convince ourselves that others cannot really be so bad.
Perhaps that accounts for the warm applause to Ahmadinejad’s creed by United Nations diplomats and an inexplicably gentle interview by a CNN media icon.
Dialogue uber alles? Dialogue has been tried before, not only 70 years ago with Hitler, but in recent years, with Ahmadinejad himself. His winning strategy: keep talking, step up the hatred and repression, and move ever closer to nuclear prize.
What happens when the world humanizes tyrants who preside over executions of children, persecution of minorities, oppression of women, stonings, punitive limb amputations, and other niceties?
Someone pays.
Seventy years ago, it was the Czechs, followed by the rest of the world. In Iran today, the victims include the Christians and Baha’i. Christians, forced to worship surreptitiously, are now under increased threat from a law Ahmadinejad wants amended to execute Muslim converts to Christianity for apostasy.
When will we learn from Ahmadinejad that “dialogue” has its limits? Instead of appeasing him, those devoted to human rights should hold his feet to the fire and demand relief for oppressed minorities.
Our leaders should also take note that public coddling of tyrants by diplomats and ovations to the U.N. do not facilitate our national interests or world peace. Let’s get it right. During the bitter and dangerous years of the Cold War, photo-ops with Kremlin leaders were few and far between. From Carter to Reagan, meetings were carefully negotiated to serve our national interests and the cause of human rights in the Soviet bloc. Our next president should develop a robust policy to deal with Iran, to connect via satellite TV, radio and the Internet with her pro-American populace, and to link any possible face-to-face meetings to verifiable changes in the regime’s behavior.
Memo to our next administration, NATO and the European Union: “Yes” to the Iranian people; “no” to Ahmadinejad!
Abraham Cooper is the Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Rabbi Yitzchock Adlerstein is Director for the Interfaith Relations at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
