Haroon Siddiqui, true to his religion and the anti-Jewish/anti-Israel sentiment with which Islam has always mesmerized the Muslim world, cannot fault the present regime in Iran but, curiously enough, can imagine an overabundance of evil with which to excoriate Israel. He accuses Israel of being in violation of "several council resolutions for decades," as though those successive governments of the State of Israel foolishly imagined their tiny country will ever see the day when they are not the UN Security Council's favourite nation state for throwing mud at. How to placate an implacable enemy? Haroon Siddiqui's recent mud slinging is not something the Jewish people have never heard before.
Mr. Siddiqui accuses the West of demonizing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Apparently Mr. Ahmadinejad is quite a nice guy, except for maybe his Holocaust denial and a burning desire to "wipe Israel off the map." I mean, after all, what the hell are a few million dead Jews, whether way back then, at the hands of the Nazis, or in the here-and-now, as the targets of a nuclear attack precipitated by an Iranian Muslim leader who is presently and undeservedly (if one is to believe Haroon Siddiqui's take on current events) merely the victim of bad press? Heaven forbid Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's anger management problem and the fact that Iran is intent on producing weapon's grade uranium should be cause for alarm for the Jews of the State of Israel.
Natan Sharansky wrote that "cultural relativism spills into regime relativism" and that "governments that trample wholesale on basic rights that people who live in free societies take for granted are held on the same moral plane as democracies." Mr. Siddiqui's defence and aggrandizement of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his androcratic regime is just such an imposture.
Not mentioned in any of Siddiqui's disparagements of Israel's nuclear capabilities is the fact that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime is in dispute with the IAEA over Iran's refusal to declare its nuclear facilities at their "preliminary design stage" before such facilities are made operational. Iran repudiated this 2003 Subsidiary Agreement, as reported in the BBC, saying its parliament had not ratified such an agreement. The IAEA responded that no such repudiation is allowed. The IAEA records that Iran has cooperated with safeguard measures at its Natanz Nuclear Enrichment plant, but Mahmoud ElBaradei(IAEA chief) tells BBC that "On all other issues relevant to Iran's nuclear programme, however, there is stalemate. Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities or its work on heavy water related projects as required by the Security Council, nor has Iran implemented the Additional Protocol. Likewise, Iran has not cooperated with the Agency in connection with the remaining issues, detailed fully and completely in the Agency's reports, which need to be clarified in order to exclude the possibility of there being military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme. The IAEA also reports that Iran is not cooperating with its request for an answer to questions about possible studies on nuclear warheads carried out in the past."
Perhaps the above quotation is a poor example of what Mr. Siddiqui refers to as the "moderating voice" of Mohamed ElBaradei. It seems mighty odd to me that Mr. Siddiqui overlooked ElBaradei's most recent statements when composing his current apologia in deference to the magical kingdom of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran; statements like ElBaradei's illuminating intimation to a BBC reporter as far back as June 17, 2009 when he said, "It is my gut feeling that Iran would like to have the technology to enable it to have nuclear weapons."
But of course, you have to lump in such shameless oversights with Siddiqui's overt boasts that "Iran is not as helpless as Iraq was. Ahmadinejad's bluster, unlike Saddam's, is backed by a strong defence capability." And "Iran's friends Russia and China will only go so far, but no further, in supporting anti-Iran measures." And "The Revolutionary Guards... is also a multi-billion-dollar corporate enterprise operating outside the international economic system. Sanctions would only enhance its economic clout." Such triumphing should leave no doubt in the reader's mind just who and what country Mr. Siddiqui is rooting for. It's definitely not the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
Simply put, Mr. Siddiqui, are you asking the West and the State of Israel to believe that operational nuclear warheads would not strengthen the obduracy of Ahmadinejad's theocratic Iran and their "faith" in Allah for the absolute destruction of the Jewish state? I mean, after all, by your very own admission, Iran is a theocratic state, and theocratic states, most conspicuously the Islamic version (as evidenced in Sudan), have little or no use for Western ideals, never mind our intense aversion to genocide. In this sense there is, yes, definitely, as you put it, "one law for us, another for them."
Michael Devolin,
Director, B'nai Elim Canada
