 |
Esther's mausoleum in Hamedan
(photo by Sanaz Shirshekar, copyright 2009) |
There were many 'false' or 'twisted truth' in M. Netanyahu 's demagogic speech in his address to the US Congress on March 3rd. I would like to point to two of them in particular.
1) Out of respect for the Truth, I spent over an hour on twitter searching to check Bibi's bold statement that ''Ayatollah Khamenei has tweeted in English Israel must be destroyed''. I couldn't find any such statement or similar. That would be a monumental lie by Prime Minister Netanyahu. Or at least a monumental twisting of the Truth, since Khamenei has always attacked 'Zionism' (he even compares Zionism to 'Nazism'), and he is one of the strongest critics of the 'Zionist' policy of occupying Palestinian lands and of suppressing and oppressing Palestinians (he isn't alone as everyone should know). Everyone should appreciate the difference between Israel, a country, and Zionism, a political ideology. But during my search, I also noticed Khamenei tweeted many times, and insisted on, his equal respect for Jews, Christian, and Muslims (Shiite and Sunnite alike). If you find Ayatollah Khamenei has tweeted such thing as alleged by Benjamin Netanyahu, I would be immensely grateful to have you 'copy and paste' here for the sake of the Truth. I wasn't able to find.
Moreover, Khamenei doesn't know much any English, and for me, when I read his tweets, it is easy to notice that someone else might be managing in his name with a poor translation from Persian into a much poorer English than mine, unlike M. Netanyahu who masters the language. Therefore INSISTING, as Bibi did, on the idea that Khamenei writes in English is also a figure of rhetoric reinforcing his above allegation (that I believe to be false), in a speech that can obviously be qualified as a purely, completely, and solely anti-Iranian speech.
2) The second twisting of the truth I chose to talk is when Prime Minister Netanyahu mentions the biblical story of Esther and pretends she saved the Jews from annihilation by Iranians, thus using it to reinforce his anti-Iranian rhetoric. A serious dangerous lie or twist of the truth. He just failed to mention that Esther is not only Jewish but is herself Persian-Iranian, in birth and in death, and, even most importantly, she was the Queen of the Persian-Iranian empire. What she did was to counter a plot by an arrogant and intolerant prime minister. Her mausoleum still stands in the Iranian city of Hamedan (Ecbâtân), still safeguarded by Iranians - god knows for how long, amid widespread anti-Iranianism and growing destructive power of Islamists everywhere.
Although the story of Esther is, after all, nothing but a primitive biblical story written by, and destined to, our primitive ancestors, it can also be summarized more adequately as follow: you need an arrogant warmonger anti-jewish or anti-Iranian prime minister to create trouble.
