What did we expect?
So now we hear yet another story about a Tweet from Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei questioning the existence of the Holocaust.
Then we get an almost instant reply from the ADL’s Abraham Foxman and from the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations condemning Iran’s Supreme Leader.
That brings to mind a bit of wisdom from Mel Brooks’ 1974 film, “Blazing Saddles.”
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When Cleavon Little’s character, Sheriff Bart, who is black, is discouraged by the cold reception with which the white people of Rockridge have greeted him, he leans on Gene Wilder’s shoulder. Wilder – playing the Waco Kid – says, “What did you expect? ‘Welcome, sonny? Make yourself at home? Marry my daughter?’
“You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West.
“You know…morons.”
We know that Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, and its foreign minister, Javad Zarif, drew much attention last year for acknowledging the Holocaust, though Rouhani since has toned down his recognition.
But did we honestly expect that Rouhani would give up his revisionist twisting of historical facts? Did we expect him to invite Jews to his house for a mock seder? Or did we expect him to host a Yom HaShoah commemoration?
Did we expect that just because Rouhani started out by blowing kisses to the West, he’s still not part of a regime that wants to destroy Israel?
Perhaps Prime Minister Netanyahu’s warning to the Obama administration is true. Maybe it right that all these gestures of faux friendship are a way to buy time for Iran to further enrich its military grade uranium.
So, to borrow the question from “Blazing Saddles,” what did we expect? These are people who want Israel to disappear. These are people who held American diplomats as prisoners for 444 days. This is a government trying to ship weapons to arm Gazans and terrorize Israeli communities. And it is a government working to prop up Syria’s war criminal Bashar Al-Assad.
The common clay. You know…
terrorists.
-PJ
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