Monday, March 16, 2009

Roger Cohen Goes Rogue Thinking - Again

Having already commented on Roger Cohen's poor logic (here and here) I am floored that he continues.

In today's op-ed, Cohen writes:

Another distinctive characteristic of Iran is the presence of the largest Jewish community in the Muslim Middle East in the country of the most vitriolic anti-Israel tirades...Just how repressive life is for Iran’s Jews is impossible to know. Iran is an un-free society. But this much is clear: the hawks’ case against Iran depends on a vision of an apocalyptic regime — with no sense of its limitations — so frenziedly anti-Semitic that it would accept inevitable nuclear annihilation if it could destroy Israel first.

The presence of these Jews undermines that vision. It blunts the hawks’ case; hence the rage.


But does he not grasp that that is just the point.

If the mullahs can fool someone like Cohen into believing that they accept limitations, in the form of allowing 25,000 Jews to exist and flourish, supposedly, - and the truth is they are fleeing - well, they can fool many.

Didn't he ever learn about the exception that confirms the rule?

How dumb does one have to be to write op-eds for the New York Times?


UPDATE


This dumb.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"flourish" is not the word I'd use for the Jewish community in Iran. They numbered some 80,000 when I visited in 1976, and they *were* flourishing" under the Shah's reign.

They're down to some 20-25,000 now, and economically they're now no better off than the average Iranian according to a recent report. Even the Jewish schools are under government restrictions.