To end prejudice the revolution begins in people's minds
The Age
Saturday March 5, 2011
THE Islamic regime in Tehran has a fragile grasp on reality at the best of times. But its take on the logo for the 2012 London Olympics surpasses even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's memorable "the Holocaust is a lie", and "in Iran we don't have homosexuals" acid trips.Iran on Monday flagged a possible boycott of the London Olympics, claiming the event's logo which shows the numbers 2012 in four jagged multicoloured figures resembles the word "Zion" and is therefore "racist."As the reports this week helpfully explained, Zion is a term that refers to the city of Jerusalem. It denotes, more generally, the Jews' attachment to Israel a state that, according to Ahmadinejad, ought to be expunged from the atlas.Of all the Western cities that might play host to a covert plan for the dissemination of subliminal Zionist propaganda, I would have thought London the least likely. London is where Israeli leaders fear to tread lest they be arrested for war crimes, where white middle-class kids march with placards reading "We Are All Hezbollah Now," where apologists for Palestinian suicide bombers are as plentiful as the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. But then I guess this merely helps underscore the calculating genius of the international Zionist conspiracy.A London Olympics spokesman expressed "surprise" at the timing of the complaint given the logo was released years ago. I'll put this down to diplomatic-speak because the timing was the only aspect of Iran's conduct that's no surprise at all. It's the standard three-card trick of the despotic regimes, accustomed to milking the Palestinian cause and fomenting anti-Semitism to sustain themselves. "Quick," they urge, Svengali-like, "don't look there look here!"Or was it mere coincidence that Iran's No Logo call came in the same week that protesters, inspired by the uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa, clashed with security forces in Tehran?The logo claim, like others of its genre, perpetuates the kind of enduring anti-Semitic canard that informs The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the fraudulent manuscript first published in the Russian empire in 1903. The text purports to reveal a plot by a cabal of shadowy Jewish leaders in the 19th century to achieve global hegemony by manipulating the media and the global economy, and subverting the moral and political order. Its popularity in Arab media and mass culture over recent decades has been well documented. The protocols are favourably referenced in the Hamas charter. They made an appearance in a drama series run on Egyptian state television in 2003 (despite the peace treaty with Israel, Egyptian authorities still indulged in anti-Semitic incitement) and have been promoted by various Arab leaders, including Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.Of course, when it comes to delusion Gaddafi is in a league of his own. He now claims Libyan protesters have imbibed milk and Nescafe spiked with hallucinogenic drugs.Racist poison, when administered from the top, inevitably infects the body politic. The anti-Gaddafi protesters have also employed anti-Semitic motifs. For all his touting of the Protocols and urging of violent resistance against Israel, images from the revolutionary frontline show some protesters depicting Gaddafi with a Star of David. The symbol of Israel and the Jewish people has become a free-floating signifier of evil that can be attached to anything or anyone. During the Cairo protests, a group of about 200 men bashed and sexually assaulted CBS News correspondent Lara Logan and it was widely reported that they screamed "Jew, Jew, Jew" while doing so. She isn't Jewish. The wider media has been criticised by some commentators for burying the Logan story undercover of privacy concerns because it muddled the feel-good "narrative" of a pro-democracy celebration.There may be some validity to the charge, but even so I'm cautiously hopeful about the bigger story. The real point, perhaps, is not that anti-Jewish sentiment can be detected in the uprisings, but that there isn't more of it. For years, we've been fed vaguely Orientalist theories about the uncompromising passions of the so-called "Arab Street", about its atavistic thirst to avenge Zionist wrongs. I'm not there, I can't be sure, but it seems many on the "Arab Street" are happy to start with jobs, rights and basic dignity.We'll see. In the neutral zone of cyberspace, a spoof YouTube video by an Israeli music blogger showing Gaddafi rapping from his balcony one of his recent Tripoli speeches remixed with rap song Hey Baby has become something of a hit in the Arab world. The blogger, Noy Alooshe, says his video has elicited plenty of death threats and racist abuse, but also lavish praise. He says he's even received a request from young Iranians to put together a revolutionary theme song for them, too. (Alooshe may be best advised to demur on that one: such a scenario would lend a degree of credence to Tehran's inevitable allegation of a Zionist plot to bring down the regime!)I'm not chasing pipedreams such as Middle East peace something none of the parties to the conflict seem willing or capable of making real but just an end to the darkest, most irrational, prejudice. You never know. Revolution begins in the mind.
© 2011 The Age