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Friday November 24, 2006

Ramping up the anti-Iran rhetoric may hurt the cause

by james d. besser

It’s an age of rhetorical overkill, which may be good for the politicians and the fundraisers who thrive on fear and fury, but bad for those trying to find sensible solutions for today’s complex problems.

Case in point: Iran. Jewish leaders eager for a cause to unite a community divided over Mideast peace have called Iran the biggest threat to Jews since Adolf Hitler. And the Bush administration, its credibility lacerated on the killing fields of Iraq, is raising the rhetorical ante every day.

Those warnings are not without merit, but their tone and stridency can become counterproductive. There is a delicate balance between being sufficiently urgent to rouse people and too strident to have any credibility.

In the case of Iran, it is getting harder and harder to maintain that balance.

Last week former Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the most articulate voices in Israel and also a politician with an agenda, addressed the general assembly of the United Jewish Communities in Los Angeles.

“It’s 1938 — and Iran is Germany,” he chanted to a receptive audience.

Netanyahu’s words reflected a growing rhetorical trend. Iran isn’t just a rogue state, a sponsor of terror and a Mideast mischief maker, but the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler’s Germany.

Jewish leaders have long objected to the routine use of Holocaust analogies, but in the case of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad such comparisons come easily.

He has, after all, threatened to wipe Israel off the map even as he defied the international community by racing to acquire the weapons that would enable him to do the job, and displayed a bizarre and disturbing interest in Holocaust denial.

Jews are acutely aware of one of the most powerful lessons of the 1930s: The world didn’t take Hitler at his word, despite his vows to eradicate the Jews, and the results were catastrophic.

The idea of ignoring until it is too late another threat to slaughter Jews on a mass scale is too agonizing to contemplate, especially in this nuclear age, when annihilation can come in a matter of minutes.

But a broader question is this: Do such emotionally charged words help or hurt the cause of finding practical solutions to the Iran crisis?

U.S. credibility around the world is at an all-time low, thanks largely to administration claims about Iraq that most of the world sees as causing a disastrous, unnecessary and seemingly unending war.

Portraying the Iranians as a kind of resurrected Nazi regime may galvanize administration supporters, but it is unlikely to convince a U.S. electorate tired of the Iraq conflict and wary of new conflicts, or a world community that thinks President Bush’s black-and-white perspective is a dangerous oversimplification,  and it may ultimately do just the opposite.

It is also worth considering one likely motive of those using such comparisons: forestalling new diplomacy with Iran.

Pressure is growing in Washington — from the Democrats who are about to take over Congress, from the special commission on Iraq headed by former Secretary of State James Baker — to start talking to regional pariahs like Syria and Iran.

To an extent, the growing portrayal of Ahmadinejad as the new Hitler may be part of an effort to neutralize that pressure. What politician would advocate talking to Hitler, after all? Who negotiates with absolute evil?

Around the world, many will see such talk as a deliberate effort to eliminate all options except for the military one.

Israel and the Jewish community face agonizing dilemmas as the Iran crisis worsens.

Jews have good reason for concern about what will happen when Iran gets its A-bombs; it is not irrational to worry that Ahmadinejad really means what he says about Israel’s destruction.

But the white-hot rhetoric may also play into Ahmadinejad’s hands by convincing the rest of the world that this is really just about Israel and the Jews, not about the genuine threat a nuclear-equipped Iran poses to the entire Middle East and European nations that could soon find themselves within range of nuclear-tipped Iranian missiles.

A majority of American Jews are opposed to U.S. military action to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But every time Israeli officials or Jewish leaders here take up the Iran-as-Nazi-Germany theme, they provide fresh ammunition to those who say the Jews are pushing the nation toward another war.

The rhetoric also links Israel’s legitimate concerns about Iran to an administration and a president discredited by their own exaggerations in Iraq.  The hyperbolic “axis of evil” perspective may just provide a convenient excuse for nations eager to perpetuate the illusion that Iran doesn’t really threaten them.

Jews can’t afford to act as if Ahmadinejad is just a harmless blusterer.

But the community and officials in Jerusalem also need to consider the impact of rhetoric that may serve to unify Jews around the Iran issue and give politicians a chance to score cheap points, but which may actually make it harder to find a practical international solution to the crisis.

James D. Besser is a Washington correspondent for Jewish newspapers across the country.

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