(New York Times) Jeffrey Goldberg - Three years ago, while visiting Tehran, I was introduced to a charmless man named Muhammad Ali Samadi, who, I was told, would parse for me the Iranian theocracy's peculiar understanding of Judaism and Zionism. Samadi said that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, held no brief for anti-Semitism. Then, a moment later, he explained the role of Jews in history. "There are always infections and diseases in man," he said. "In the world there is an infection called international Jewry." A great many people, in Iran and beyond, believe that the Jewish state is a cancer, and it is foolish to believe that this is an idea without consequences. As one Islamic Jihad leader told me not long ago, "Everyone knows that the cure for cancer is radiation."
2006-03-15 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive