Iran rigs vote, Observer newspaper slams Israel!
You couldn’t make it up. Today’s Observer — the Guardian’s sister paper which appears on Sundays — is running an editorial about the Iranian elections which devotes the bulk of its critical energy to denouncing Israel. In other words, it uses the Iranian elections as a news peg in order to vent its fury at the Jewish state. There is no mention of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. No mention of its anti-Semitism. No mention of its declared ambition of destroying Israel. There is only the mildest and most neutral reference to the reality that the elections were rigged.
Instead, the Iranian elections provide the occasion for the following headline: “Israel should heed the clamour for peace”. The editorial team at the Observer thus looked at the unfolding tragedy in Iran and saw in it an opportunity to slam Israel. The article itself is one of the most twisted and deluded pieces of writing on the Middle East for quite some time.
Among other gems in the piece, Israel is denounced as “another intransigent regional power”: an obnoxious false equivalence with Iran, but one which is made as a segue into the real business the paper wants to discuss. Yes, you’ve guessed it: Israel’s policy on settlements and Binyamin Netanyahu’s attitude to a future Palestinian state. So that’s what the Iranian elections were all about then.
Having lectured Israel on those two matters the Observer proceeds to say sternly that Israel should acknowledge “the wisdom of Mr Obama’s moderate stance towards Iran and the Arab world.” And, it adds immediately afterwards, “In Iran’s election campaign, if not in the result, there were hints that the US strategy of intelligent diplomacy can work.”
The mind boggles. The point the paper wants to make is that Obama’s conciliatory approach had energised young and moderate Iranians to go out and vote in large numbers. It is an implausible argument, but that is not the point. The point is that even if that were true, it would only matter if it had yielded genuine change. The fact is that Iran has gone backwards not forwards with these elections since the electoral principle itself has been abrogated by a fanatical regime which will not change course.
That is the issue that serious people should now be discussing. The Observer is clearly not up to the task.
To read the full editorial click here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/14/editorial-middle-eastern-politics-iran
