Hitchens is asked what he would do if he were in [Benyamin] Netenyahu. Hitchens speaks reverently about the US role as the leader in fostering Human Rights in the world, not just because we wrote the treaties, but because we convinced other countries to sign on to them. He specifically mentions the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations and the Convention for Human Rights. Apparently he hasn't noticed that the US has openly scorned those conventions and repeatedly bullied, cheated and undermined the UN for some time now. But apparently he's assuming that you haven't noticed either as he goes on to build his argument. Iran, he says, has signed all kinds of treaties and guarantees that they have no ambitions to build a nuclear weapon. So, if it "turns out" they have done so, then "there is no international law". And, if we find we have allowed this to happen, then "we have watched while [the law] was contemptuously dismantled".

This is an curious basis, and his logic grows more fantastic with every statement. If someone breaks the law, he argues, then there is no law, because if we allow this so far unproven violation to occur, then we are responsible for this fall into lawlessness, and this is important [because . . . . we are the law?] By contrast, another country has placed themselves above the law, refused to sign the salient treaties supporting human rights, rejecting WMD and showing a willingness to work with other nations, built the bombs, persists in a policy of ethnic cleansing and openly declares their right to attack their neighbors with impunity in the name of preemptive 'defense'. But our willing complicity in that project doesn't undermine the law. Moreover, our tolerance for that behavior is not a problem, and going back to the introduction, may not be sufficient to expiate ourselves for the aforementioned 'protean eternal . . .' bias against the population of that country and everyone else who shares their [religion? ethnicity?].

Hitchens goes on to make some rather strong statements about those being menaced and under threat having an "obligation" to "take out" the offending regime. Then he says, "don't look at me like that, don't look at the Jewish people like that". Apparently he isn't aware that his statements are pretty menacing, and represent a serious threat to someone. Furthermore, he contends to speak, not for Christopher Hitchens, not for the State of Israel, but for all of the Jewish People. It is problematic enough to live in a country where you disagree with government policy which is assumed to be 'speaking for you', but the Jewish people aren't safe anywhere from the aggressive little nation that insists on speaking for them. As for Hitchens, he was invited to speak [for Israel], so I guess you can't fault him on doing so. He finishes his thought in a defensive tone, with the statement that if you haven't acted, then you have acted. Inaction is action, culpable action. You deserve what you get. I suppose you could make this argument in a fever pitched crisis, but in the current case, it's a little over the top.

Goldberg now raises the issue that Iran will point out (as I have above) that Israel has developed an arsenal of nuclear weapons outside the international treaties, i.e. outside the law. Hitchens hangs his head, then looks up and responds defiantly, saying that he regrets the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world, BUT, "there is a big difference a country that has a weapon to preserve a certain, what we used to call 'balance of terror', and one that wants one to upend the existing order". He refers to a regime (the Iranian Regime we must assume) that " is a messianic dictatorship that crushes it's own citizens and threatens the territories of it's neighbors". If that isn't the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is! It's true the Iranian theocracy is flawed, and more so recently, since they have been placed more and more on the defensive by those "preserving" the "balance of terror", but a supporter of a country that was founded through ethnic cleansing, and has preemptively attacked it's neighbors repeatedly since it's inception resulting in the occupation of neighboring territories nearly equal to it's allotted area, is hardly in a position to criticize.

The lies about Ahmadinejad are no different than the lies about Saddam Hussein or Hugo Chavez. The US and Israel are trying to create the justification for another war. That's why the media credits Ahmadinejad with saying things that he never really said. He never said that he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map". That's another fiction....

Ahmadinejad poses no threat to Israel or the United States. Like everyone else in the Middle East, he just wants a breather from US and Israeli aggression.....

There are 6 kosher butcher shops, 11 synagogues and numerous Hebrew schools in Tehran. Neither Ahmadinejad nor any other Iranian government official has made any attempt to close any these facilities down. Never. Iranian Jews are free to travel (or move) to Israel if they chose. They are not imprisoned by an occupying army. They are not deprived of food and medicine. Their children do not grow up with mental disorders brought on by the trauma of sporadic violence. Their families are not blown up by gunships lobbing rounds on the beaches. Their supporters are not crushed by bulldozers or shot in the head with rubber bullets. They are not gassed and beaten when they peacefully demonstrate for their civil liberties. Their leaders are not hunted down and killed in targeted assassinations.