Zionists storm al-Aqsa mosque

by Kevin Barrett

 
In a move that has drawn criticism in Iran and around the world, Iran’s reformist-dominated Foreign Ministry has canceled the 2013 New Horizon Conference in Tehran scheduled for December 1st – 6th. The conference, previously  programmed for September 1st – 6th, had already been postponed once due to the transition in administrations.
The New Horizon Conference is an annual event that features leading dissident voices from around the world – including anti-Zionist voices that are systematically suppressed and persecuted in the West.
The Rouhani Administration’s decision to cancel this year’s conference was seen in Iran as an attempt to mollify Iran’s Western negotiating partners in hopes of easing a deal that would end anti-Iran sanctions. But critics say that all of Iran’s conciliatory gestures in the past have simply hardened the intransigence of the Zionists and their captive Western nations. Critics also complained that cutting off peaceful international dialogue, thereby helping the Zionists silence their Western intellectual opposition, was the wrong concession to make, if concessions were in fact required.
Zionists celebrated the cancelation in their media – then stormed the al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. Was the al-Aqsa provocation designed to send a message?  Are the Zionists proclaiming to the world that Iran’s attempt to pacify the West by joining in the West’s censorship of principled critics of Israel will simply harden Zionist extremism and intransigence?
Zionist-dominated Western media mendaciously attempted to link the New Horizon Conference with the alleged “extremism” of former President Ahmadinejad. They falsely linked the New Horizons conference, which began in 2012, to the Holocaust Conference of 2006. In fact, the two conferences are completely unrelated. They implied that the event would bring “hordes of notorious extremists…like David Duke” to Iran. In fact, David Duke has never attended a New Horizons conference.
The Western media lies continued with the intentionally misleading assertion that Ahmadinejad “called the Holocaust a myth.” In fact, the Holocaust IS a myth by the standard academic definition of that term: A sacred story. Ahmadinejad simply noted that the Holocaust story has become sacred to the West, and argued that it should be critiqued as history, not worshiped as sacred myth.
That lie was followed by another: The claim that Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” In fact, he said no such thing. Instead, he simply cited a quote by the Ayatollah Khomeini that the “regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the arena of time.” It was a call for regime change, not a violent threat.
It isn’t just former President Ahmadinejad who is looking forward to the day that the apartheid occupation state vanishes. The dominant view at the New Horizon Conference – that the Zionist entity occupying Palestine obviously has no “right to exist” – is the virtually unanimous view of the entire population of the Middle East. This view has been marginalized and silenced in the West, where anyone who expresses it (like Helen Thomas) gets crucified. But in the Middle East, it is the most mainstream position imaginable.
The alternative to peaceful intellectual dialogue is war. The alternative to a peaceful intellectual challenge to Zionism is a military liberation struggle. The alternative to pro-Palestine forces’ use of reasoned dialogue and intellectual challenges is “hard power” and bloody asymetrical warfare.
President Rouhani, a supporter of soft power alternatives to militarism, ought to be the biggest supporter of the New Horizons Conference and other efforts to challenge Zionism intellectually, not militarily. And his Western negotiating partners should see such intellectual challenges as a welcome alternative to military challenges.
The Zionist-dominated West loves to quote Winston Churchill: “Jaw-jaw is better than war-war.” Yet it was undoubtedly the Zionists – not President Rouhani – who desperately wanted the New Horizons Conference canceled. That is obvious from their wild celebrations. Why?
Apparently the Zionists prefer war-war to jaw-jaw. They think they have a military edge – especially if they can sucker the US into fighting their wars for them – but they know their opponents have the intellectual edge. If they have to struggle using words and ideas, they will lose – despite their dominant position in the Western media.
Zionism’s utter intellectual bankruptcy is its Achilles heel. If their opponents are allowed to speak, the Zionists will always lose the argument.
So they do everything possible to silence their critics…
…Including leaning on the government of Iran to cancel conferences featuring anti-Zionist intellectuals.
The right to peacefully argue and present ones point of view is – so the West says – a basic human right. Yet when Russia Today produces a 9/11 truth video, Western intelligence services jam the internet to make sure it cannot reach a mass audience. When Iran attempts to present its perspective (which happens to be the majority perspective of the people of the Middle East) on satellite television, the West takes it off the air. And when Iran sponsors a conference featuring persecuted Western intellectuals, the West increases the persecution level by pushing Iran to cancel the conference and suppress the dialogue.
The ongoing Zionist attempt to crush free speech and dissent around the world – even in Iran!! – is an outrage. It is time for supporters of free speech to crush Zionism…preferably using words and ideas, not bombs and guns.
 
 
 
 

Kevin Barrett

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.

He is the host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard driving weekly radio show funded by listener donations at Patreon.com and FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN); an audio-video show produced by Tony Hall, Allan Reese, and Kevin himself. FFWN is funded through FundRazr.

He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS, and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.

Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.

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