The credulous cohen, the more moderate mahmoud and the technical threat

Nichaols Kristof and Roger Cohen are the two most extreme anti-Israel columnists for the New York Times. For the past couple of weeks, Cohen has been distinguishing himself by writing propaganda for the murderous Iranian regime. Today he takes his pro-regime advertising to a new low with What Iran’s Jews say.

That may be because I’m a Jew and have seldom been treated with such consistent warmth as in Iran. Or perhaps I was impressed that the fury over Gaza, trumpeted on posters and Iranian TV, never spilled over into insults or violence toward Jews. Or perhaps it’s because I’m convinced the “Mad Mullah” caricature of Iran and likening of any compromise with it to Munich 1938 — a position popular in some American Jewish circles — is misleading and dangerous.

I know, if many Jews left Iran, it was for a reason. Hostility exists. The trumped-up charges of spying for Israel against a group of Shiraz Jews in 1999 showed the regime at its worst. Jews elect one representative to Parliament, but can vote for a Muslim if they prefer. A Muslim, however, cannot vote for a Jew.

When you are allowed a single token, that is proof positive of discrimination.

Among minorities, the Bahai — seven of whom were arrested recently on charges of spying for Israel — have suffered brutally harsh treatment.

So the Bahai suffer worse? That doesn’t mean that the Jews aren’t persecuted too. (And of course the suffering of the Bahai is much worse than Cohen acknowledges, That would contradict his assumptions of Iranian “civility” and “sophistication.”)

And one point he left out was that Iranian scientist was convicted and executed last year for spying for Israel. Given the opacity of Iran’s legal system, we have no idea if these charges were accurate or trumped up. That is the same charge the Bahai were arrested for. It’s unconscionable for Cohen to neglect this.

And his assertion elsewhere that Iranian Jews haven’t suffered as much Arab Jews, has to do with the relative openness towards Jews when the Shah was in power. Since the Iranian revolution, the position of Jews in Iran has become more precarious. I don’t know what the numbers are (and if he does, he doesn’t give a full picture) but those who could escape did, even though it meant trusting smugglers to take them across the borders into uncertain circumstances. One doesn’t do that if one isn’t threatened.

I don’t doubt that Iranian Jews now have some level of comfort there due to familiarity. But I hardly think that they are free and not persecuted.

In order to prove his point about Iranian tolerance, he interviews a few Jews. Here’s the first.

I’d visited the bright-eyed Sedighpoor, 61, the previous day at his dusty little shop. He’d sold me, with some reluctance, a bracelet of mother-of-pearl adorned with Persian miniatures. “The father buys, the son sells,” he muttered, before inviting me to the service.

Accepting, I inquired how he felt about the chants of “Death to Israel” — “Marg bar Esraeel” — that punctuate life in Iran.

“Let them say ‘Death to Israel,’ ” he said. “I’ve been in this store 43 years and never had a problem. I’ve visited my relatives in Israel, but when I see something like the attack on Gaza, I demonstrate, too, as an Iranian.”

No doubt if he interviewed a Palestinian shop owner in the Galilee he’d hear how terrible Israelis treat him. And no doubt that he’d cite that as proof by contrast that Israel is even worse than Iran. But I ask you, what would Mr. Sedighpoor’s fate be if he said, “While the Iranians make a show of tolerating us, we must all watch our steps. We mustn’t say what we really feel or we could find ourselves in jail?”

Does Cohen really believe that the Persian Jews to whom he talked were free to speak their minds? He is not only vile, he is credulous when it suits his needs.

The hypothetical Palestinian would be free to speak out because he has nothing truly to fear. The Iranian Jew who speaks to an American flack for his government, has to be circumspect.

In another op-ed today at the Times tells us that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is actually a moderate whom the Obama administration ought to reach out to.

Mr. Obama has expressed interest in engaging in dialogue with Iran, and there is no time to waste. Over the next few months he should initiate negotiations without preconditions and establish formal diplomatic ties with Iran. Mr. Ahmadinejad, for all his faults, has taken unprecedented steps to reach out to the United States. Iran’s next leader may not be able to do the same. Mr. Obama must seize the opportunity to shake the Iranian president’s outstretched hand.

As Charles Krauthammer noted the other day, President Obama’s outreach was rebuffed when Iran denied the U.S. women’s badminton team visas to travel to Tehran.

The author of the op-ed is described:

Ali Reza Eshraghi, a former newspaper editor in Iran, is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Journalism.

I wonder how much journalism he actually practiced and how much he was merely acting as the official voice of the government or one of Iran’s permitted parties.

Finally, yesterday, there was a clear-eyed view of Tehran that explained why Iran’s satellite launch was a reason for concern. Uzi Rubin wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

To argue that the Safir is too puny to be used as an ICBM is to miss the big picture. It is the technology and talent behind the Safir that is cause for trepidation. Taken in context, the Safir demonstrates scientific and engineering proficiency coupled with global-range missile technology in the hands of a radical regime and a nuclear wannabe. Iran’s disclosed road map to space includes more capable, heavier and higher orbiting satellites. This will require heftier space launchers, the construction of which would enrich Iran’s rocket-team experience and whose building blocks could easily be used for ICBMs in due time.

Trivializing Iran’s first space launch as “largely symbolic” demonstrates a lack of appreciation of what it really symbolizes: That Iran is now poised to project power globally. If alarm bells aren’t yet ringing for the Obama administration, they should be.

So even as the NIE is disproved, the “mad mullahs” confirmed and the Iranian march towards a nuclear weapon proceeding apace, we have an American newspaper doing the regime’s work and telling us to look the other way. Ignore the tyranny. Ignore the threat.

Walter Duranty lives!

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.