Posted by David Traynier on July 21, 2008, 13:34:31, in reply to "Brown lying to Parliament"
Dear PM,
I hope that, on this evening’s programme, you will give ample space to the argument that Gordon Brown today seriously misled the Knesset in at least two respects.
Firstly, Brown stated that “"Iran has a clear choice to make: suspend its nuclear weapons programme and accept our offer of negotiations or face growing isolation and the collective response, not just of one nation, but of all nations round the world."
The recent US National Security Estimate and the IAEA, not to mention the Iranian Government, all state that Iran has no nuclear weapons programme. They have a nuclear energy programme and that is all. Brown is deliberately, one assumes, confusing the two in order to frighten the global public into supporting an attack. It is Iraq all over again and I hope you won’t meekly follow along as you did last time.
Secondly, Brown condemned Ahmadinejad for threatening to ‘wipe Israel off the map’. Yet Ahmadinejad never said any such thing. As the noted Middle East scholar, Juan Cole, has stated, "Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to 'wipe Israel off the map' because no such idiom exists in Persian". Instead, "He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse." This is supported by the Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI), the Guardian columnist Jonathan Steele, and Iran’s foreign minister, who stated on Feb 20 2006 that "Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned."
I hope PM will explore these issues rather than simply relaying Brown’s remarks without challenge. Your listeners deserve no less.
Yours sincerely,
David Traynier
  |
|
Message Thread:
|
