There are very few certainties in international politics, but if there are two to be counted on, the first is that South Korea's left-wing government can always be counted on to blame America or Japan for anything which goes wrong in the Korean peninsula, and the second is that governments in Muslim countries can always be relied on to blame "the Jews" for any b.s. which happens under their watch - even if there are hardly any Jews within their borders.
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The speaker of parliament Thursday accused “Jews” of financing acts of violence in Iraq in order to discredit Islamists who control the parliament and government so they can install their “agents” in power.
Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani hinted that the Americans and Israelis did not want to see officials of Sunni and Shiite parties running Iraq because “this is not their agenda.”Why didn't anybody tell me all this time that al-Qaeda was a Jewish organization?[...]
“Some people say, 'We saw you beheading, kidnappings and killing. In the end we even started kidnapping women who are our honor,'” al-Mashhadani said. “These acts are not the work of Iraqis. I am sure that he who does this is a Jew and the son of a Jew.”
“I can tell you about these Jewish, Israelis and Zionists who are using Iraqi money and oil to frustrate the Islamic movement in Iraq and come with the agent and cheap project.”
Seriously though, the problem here isn't that some nut politician is out blaming the usual scapegoats for the violence of his fellow believers, but that this is the sort of person thought worthy of being appointed speaker of parliament, and the certainty that his idiotic remarks will meet with absolutely no criticism within either Iraq or the Muslim world at large, so taken for granted is it that any reversals and embarassments which befall Muslims must be instigated by "the Jews": anyone inclined to doubt this should just consider the reaction to Mahathir's notorious speech a few years back about Jews "inventing" democracy and human rights "so that persecuting them would appear [sic] to be wrong" ...
[Via Foreign Policy.]
You're right, of course, but it's really old news. Sam Clemens beat you to it by about a hundred years ("Stirring Times in Baghdad," f'rinstance).
MT ridiculed Cooper over an Indian who tried to jump into a boat after another Indian had missed because the boat was already too far away. But he did almost the same thing when he opined that if the Jews would just get into politics, their problems would go away.
My guess is that they'll never get any peace until they get a country of their own so they won't be an annoyance to the others among whom they live. Just thinkin'.
Posted by: gene berman | July 15, 2006 at 12:41 PM