Iran = Hitler + Nukes, Hamas = Wall
Elder statesman Shimon Peres’ quick nuisance assessment. J Post:
Recent language from Teheran is “unacceptable” and, contrary to its repeated denials, Iran is developing a nuclear bomb and wishes to rule the Mideast, President Shimon Peres told a meeting of the Foreign Press Association yesterday.
The main purpose of the meeting was to outline details of the convention that Peres will be hosting in Jerusalem on May 13-15, but reporters were more interested in Peres’s views on other issues - specifically Iran and Hamas.
Peres said Iran trained and financed terrorism, but while the situation with Iran was more complicated than with the Nazis, because “Hitler didn’t have nuclear weapons,” he did not advocate military action as a preventive measure. He was still convinced that united action on the part of the world community could be just as persuasive.
In The AP ’s version, he notes that Iran is developing long-range missiles, and opines that those are basically just for putting nukes on. Sounds about right, though I’m not getting how talking to Iran works any better than talking to Hitler did.
OK. It sounds like there is a little more clarity when a reporter asks what he thinks about talks with Hamas. J Post again:
On the subject of Hamas, Peres said talks with the group “would be like talking to a wall.
“I can speak to the wall, but the wall will not reply.”
The AP has it slightly differently:
Peres’ secret talks with Yasser Arafat’s PLO movement in the 1990s led to the so-called Oslo accords, which won him the Nobel Peace Prize along with Arafat and then-Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin.
Asked on Monday if he could be a pioneer for similarly audacious talks with Hamas, he replied, “It would be like asking if I will be a pioneer in having a dialogue with the wall.”
If artless, unsubtle Hamas is like a wall, then maybe Iran is more like one of those Tom and Jerry walls with a door painted on it. The mouse gets through but the stupid cat gets flattened and slides to the floor with birds chirping around his head.
Topics: Iran, Israel, Palestinians
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:58 pm on Monday, May 5, 2008
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