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Western Leaders’ Shameful Sycophancy toward Iran

Since the conclusion of the nuclear deal last year, a number of Western leaders have visited Tehran, often taking the opportunity to utter hypocritical praise of the Islamic Republic while displaying utter callousness toward its oppression of its subjects. Amir Taheri writes:

The Austrian president, Heinz Fischer, whose term has since ended, put flowers at Ayatollah Khomeini’s mausoleum and praised the despot who had presided over the execution of more than 120,000 Iranians as “a man of peace and spirituality.”

Christine Defraigne, president of the Belgian senate . . . went around telling the mullahs and their minions that the West had “a lot to learn from Islam” to “improve the status of women.” She ignored the fact that, while she was flattering the mullahs, hundreds of Iranian women were arrested and insulted by Islamic vigilantes who claimed their hijabs were “inadequate.” . . .

[Only] two officials behaved with dignity. One was the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, who dressed normally and wore a white, thin, headpiece, and said not a word in praise of the mullahcracy. Another was Croatia’s president, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic. . . .

However, the main prize for dignified behavior must go to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. She simply refused to visit the Islamic Republic because she would not wear the hijab and dress up for what amounts to a farce endorsing tragedy.

Read more at New York Post

More about: Angela Merkel, Austria, Europe, Iran, Politics & Current Affairs

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic