Re: OT: Jews Must Wear Yellow

Splicer said:

<<<The law you mention that predates WWII was a law enacted under the
father
of the last Shah of Iran (the former being enamoured with Hitler and
whisked away by the British when the war broke out).

The law I mention was modelled on Islamic law going back to 800
at least, when nonbelievers in Muslim states were required to wear
identifying clothing to make them easily identifiable by believers.

<<<The question isn't
whether the laws are still on the books or not but how Jews are being
treated under the current government. Are they treated better or worse
or
the same as other ethnic and religious minorities in Iran (Kurds in the

NW, Armenians, Zoroastrians in the south)?

The law as misreported in the NY Post did NOT treat Jews either
better or worse than it treated other religious minorities. And, for
that matter, Hitler's regime did not treat Jews worse than it treated
homosexuals.

This isn't the question at all. The question is what Iran is
likely to do if it gets a nuclear bomb and the capacity to deliver it.

<<<Properly translating cross cultural references and idioms is
difficult at
best and should not be dismissed lightly

I wasn't treating it lightly. I was pointing out that saying
that Israel should cease to exist as a nation means THE SAME THING as
"should be wiped off the map."

<><<Declaring that the most
bellicose translation is "good enough" might be fine for the people who

have the most to gain by beating the drums of war but shouldn't be
taken
as gospel truth especially when emanating from that quarter.

I don't agree that what was chosen was "the most bellicose
translation." I see no substantive difference at all between saying
"Israel should cease to exist" and "Israel should be wiped off the
map." The two phrases mean exactly the same thing.

<<<Finally, I want someone to tell me why any country would commit
suicide by
using a nuclear device in the way that some claim that Iran would

You assume that they think they would be committing suicide. I
don't think they think that's what would happen at all.

Rather, they have thirty years of experience in dealing with the
West, in which, with two exceptions (the Guld war and the US response
to 9/11), the SOP for Western nations has been Ian's--negotiate, and
when negotiations fail, wring your hands and just put up with it. Even
the Gulf war was an ambiguous event in the long run. The UN went in,
forced Saddam back, got a peace treaty--and then did absolutely nothing
when Saddam broke that treaty flagrantly by throwing out the inspectors
and thumbing his nose at the world.

They've got every reason to expect that if they lob an atom bomb
at Israel, the world will fret but do nothing. And they KNOW that
Israel will get no support from Western Europe.

<<< Iranians are educated and
proud people

And Germans are bellicose, Anglo-Saxons like sport more than
education, and blacks sure got rhythm.

Individuals are educated and proud, nations, ethnic groups and
races are not. As for the level of education in Iran today, the
mullahs have been in power for close to three decades. In that time,
women have been systematically barred from education (see Reading
Lolita in Iran, a very interesting take on both the education and
sophistication of Iranian society under the mullahs--its writer is here
now, because of course she couldn't stay in Iran and stay alive). So at
least half of Iranian society today is not educated.

As for the education of the other half--this is a country that
controls communications and access to sources outside its control. It
has reformulated university education to concentrate on Islamic
theology and social and political thought. Getting access to outside
sources is difficult to impossible. Being caught with an Internet
connection can get you executed.

Whatever Iran may have been when Persia was an empire,. it is now
an Islamicist society under the full weight of Shari'a law, with
everything that entails in narrowness of scope and purpose.

<<<from a heritage and culture reaching back to a time when most
of the ancestors of the neocon crowd were rooting around in their own
feces.

A neocon is technically a Jewish liberal who moved right in
reaction to the New Left and to the Sixties abandonment of liberal
anti-Communism.

When Persia was an empire, I think the Jews were writing the Old
Testament.

<<<You mean they would suddenly wake up and chuck the whole thing
because they hate Israel?

Chuck what?

Whatever Persia may have been three millenia ago, what Iran is
today is a third world country that happens to have oil. Without that
oil, they would be no more significant on the world scene than Haiti,
if that. If the West ever invents an engine that runs on something
else, their per capital income will sink to the level of Haiti, too.

On every measure of cultural success--art and literature, science
and technology, economics, scholarship, and yes, even education--Iran,
along with most (not all, mind you, most) Islamicist (note the form of
that word) countries, is a backwater. They produce no new inventions,
no breakthroughs in medicine.

And to add to the cultural shame of this--the nagging sense that
they SHOULD be on top because, well, they were Persia, they were
great--they adhere to a religion, and to a FORM of that religion, that
puts great stress on the invincibility of Allah's believers. When
Islamicist forces are defeated, it calls into question the very
validity of that religion, and that religion is both their identity and
their consolation.

I don't think it's any accident that terrorists are, by and
large, draw not from young people living in Islamicist states but those
who have emigrated out of them, who are then confronted on a daily
basis with the superiority of cultures that not only deny the "truth"
of the Koran but openly flout the laws of God.

No, I don't think that Iran would lob a nuclear bomb at Tel Aviv
(or Paris) because they "hate Israel."

For one thing, they don't hate Israel--they hate Jews, which is
a different thing.

And for another, the issue would be proving the truth of Islam by
proving the invinicibility of Allah's forces.

I've always thought basing a religion on belief was a dangerous
thing--it puts you in the position of having to wipe out whatever makes
you doubt. And the West makes a certain kind of Muslim doubt.

My guess is that India is about ten years away from doing the
same thing.

Jane Haddam
http://www.janehaddam.com

.

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