Home
 
 
  Home

GPN's "Are the Iranians Rational" is Offensive - and a Reply by GPN
Letter to the Editor by Helen Hintjens

Issue 10, Spring 2012
Dear GPN,

Since I am very much concerned that there should be no war between the US and Iran, I am not willing to send any paper to GPN whilst the offensive material on Iran 'Are the Iranians Rational?' is on your website.   This, to my understanding, is not what GPN should be about.  The danger is not of an unprovoked attack from Iran to wipe out all Israelis. The danger is that Israeli warmongers will kick and scream so loud about Iran that eventually the US will listen, and like the blunderbuss it is, will bomb Iran.  Whether or not it is genocide, what your messages may be hastening is killing on a massive scale, and to no good purpose.  Iranians are rational people, of this you can be sure.

I wish you well with GPN's future.  

Best wishes,

Helen Hintjens


Dear Helen Hintjens,

THANK YOU for your forthright statement.  I mean that fully even as I disagree with just about everything you say – with the exception that we are both deeply committed to peace where at all possible.  But Hitlers do have to be fought,and not as a great American pacifist, to whose organization I once belonged who said Hitler should be approached with a kiss!

Israel deserves many criticisms and gets them galore from me all my life, but it is not warmongering to be frightened by a regime that IS ACTIVELY engaged in violence against Israel for years (Hezbollah and Hamas and terror attacks in several cities around the world – e.g., the Israel Embassy in far-away Argentina -I am friends with the family of one Israeli diplomat who was killed); that commits state authority and resources to vivid denials of the Holocaust; that calls for and predicts the demise of accursed Israel; and that pursues by strongarm and subterfuge nuclear military power.  You have to be a nai"ve innocent not to see a serious aggressor on the move, against Israel, and against others as well.

Should Iran be attacked outright?   GPN has never taken that position. Our position is that Iran must be stopped.

Ah, re rational. Two physicians wrote recently a piece where they said Iran is rational BUT pursuing highly irrational purposes (DESTRUCTION OF OTHERS).

Oh a joke on Israel TV for you: Netanyahu and Barak convince Obama to attack Iran, and when he yields and agrees, they turn to one another in consternation: “Who are going to blame now for threatening another Holocaust against us?”  It’s nice when people can laugh at themselves in their major public media, isn’t it?  I know some countries where this won’t ever happen.

 
Best wishes


Israel W. Charny for GPN

  |  
 
 
 
Executive Director: Prof. Israel W. Charny, Ph.D.
Director of Holocaust and Genocide Review: Marc I Sherman, M.L.S.
 
This project was made possible in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The contents of this website are the responsibility of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem.