Dilbert on Ahmadinejad

Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist, satirizes the American Right's attitude toward the President of Iran:

I was happy to hear that NYC didn't allow Iranian President Ahmadinejad to place a wreath at the WTC site. And I was happy that Columbia University is rescinding the offer to let him speak. If you let a guy like that express his views, before long the entire world will want freedom of speech.

I hate Ahmadinejad for all the same reasons you do. For one thing, he said he wants to "wipe Israel off the map." Scholars tell us the correct translation is more along the lines of wanting a change in Israel's government toward something more democratic, with less gerrymandering. What an ass-muncher!

Ahmadinejad also called the holocaust a "myth." Fuck him! A myth is something a society uses to frame their understanding of their world, and act accordingly. It's not as if the world created a whole new country because of holocaust guilt and gives it a free pass no matter what it does. That's Iranian crazy talk. Ahmadinejad can blow me. ("A Feeling I'm Being Had," The Dilbert Blog, 22 September 2007)

Very smart. Aside from being a good satirical attack on Washington's media war against Iran, it also is another piece of evidence that Israel is beginning to lose American liberals' support. Good for Palestinians, good for Americans, and good for Jews who are fed up with Zionism.¹

1 See, for instance, this new study of young Jewish Americans' opinions about Israel:

Young U.S. non-Orthodox Jews are becoming increasingly lukewarm if not alienated in their support for Israel in a trend that is not likely to be reversed, according to a study released on Thursday.

Blending into U.S. society, including marriage to non-Jews and a tendency to look on Judaism more in religious terms than ethnic ones, is part of what's happening, the study found.

"For our parent's generation, the question that mattered was, how do we regard Israel? For Generation Y (born after 1976) the question is indeed, why should we regard Israel?" said Roger Bennett, a vice president of The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, which sponsored the study.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

But the study found that "feelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation."

The study found only 48 percent of U.S. Jews under age 35 believe that Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy for them, compared to 77 percent of those 65 and older.

In addition, only 54 percent of those under the age of 35 are "comfortable with the idea of a Jewish State" as opposed to 81 percent of those 65 and older. (Michael Conlon, "Study Finds U.S. Jews Distance Selves from Israel," Reuters, 6 September 2007)