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Thursday September 27, 2007

Best advice: Ignore McJihad and his testy road show

by Mitchell Bard

Jews around the world have been having fits over the antics of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and it occurs to me that he is acting like an older sibling who knows just how to push the buttons of his siblings, and continues to do it because he knows he can get a reaction.

And like most younger siblings, we just keep falling for it. It’s like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick, and pulling it away at the last second every time.

Ahmadinejad, who I think I’ll just start calling McJihad, knows that the ultimate button to push with Jews is the Holocaust and he just keeps on pressing it with gusto and, sure enough, we respond.

The latest example of our big brother tweaking us was his Holocaust denial conference in Tehran. It made the Jews nuts, which just got McJihad more publicity and reinforced his feeling that he can drive us crazy whenever he wants.

I go through this almost every night with my kids at the dinner table, with the older one making some nasty remark to his younger brother who immediately says, “Shut up,” which inspires the big kid to say something else, and you all know how it goes.

McJihad says the Holocaust didn’t happen, he sponsors a cartoon contest, he holds a conference and each time, we shout, “Shut up!” Next month, he’ll probably put on a Holocaust parade or produce his own version of “Springtime for Hitler.”

Lots of folks are offering dire warnings of the impact of McJihad’s desecration of the memory of the victims. But his campaign to de-legitimize the Holocaust is unlikely to have any impact (no one went to his cartoon exhibition) and only reinforces the sense that he is a moron.

Like I tell my little one, ignore your brother and he’ll stop.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that we should ignore McJihad’s broader agenda. I am quite aware that most big brothers don’t have the other kind of button to press, the one that launches nuclear weapons.

The good news is that McJihad’s behavior is so outrageous that he has attracted the attention of the whole world, which shudders at the thought that he might one day have access to plutonium.

He has even managed to awaken the Europeans from their knee-jerk desire for appeasement. If a genial, diplomatic sort led Iran, it likely could quietly build nuclear weapons without anyone outside Israel and its supporters saying a word. So in that sense we should be thankful to have such an annoying big brother.

Contrary to the absurd suggestions of the Baker group, which recommended negotiating with Iran, the last thing we should be contemplating is negotiating with our big brother. His intentions toward us are by no means loving: They’re malevolent, and aimed at undermining our economic, political, religious and cultural values.

Still, stomping our feet every time he calls us names only emboldens him and reinforces his view that we are weak. We need to focus our responses on the actions he is engaged in that really matter: the spread of Islamic radicalism, the support of terror and the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Mitchell Bard is the author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Middle East Conflict.”

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