If you try to get blood out of a stone, what you'll get
instead is a substance that will be as toxic as the chemicals of which the
stone is made. The same goes for the word Holocaust, a noun that the Jews have
turned into a proper name to make the event proper to themselves, thus be able
to exploit it exclusively.
Despite the toxicity, the Jewish leaders who benefit from
the exploitation of the Holocaust believe that they get out of the exercise
more than enough to offset what they lose in the process – and what they lose
is twofold. They lose because they trivialize the event that caused the Jews
who preceded them to suffer. And they lose because each time they pull the stunt;
they need to involve their friends who get diminished in the process. This
causes the friends to rethink the relationship they have had with all Jews.
The way to exploit a word is to raise an artificial fuss
about its meaning or the way it was used or the way it was translated from
another language. Someone bent on exploiting a word brings the subject up, and
complains he was injured by the improper use of a word or the failure to
translate it correctly. When asked how exactly he would have used or translated
the word, he does not give a definitive answer because if he does, he may or
may not score a win. And so, he strives to quickly end this discussion, but
because he wishes to see the charade continue forever, he avoids ending the
exercise altogether; something he does by obfuscating.
And obfuscate is what the editors of the Wall Street Journal
have done with the piece they wrote under the title: “Holocaust Denial in
Translation” and the subtitle: “What Iran 's president really told CNN
about Nazis and the Jews.” It was published in the Journal on September 26,
2013.
When you see “Holocaust denial” in the title, and see “What
Iran's president really told CNN,” you want to see the editors make a solid
case showing beyond any doubt that the president of Iran has denied the Holocaust the
way they define the word, or the way it was defined by whomever they choose to
quote. But instead of doing this, the Journal editors began their argument by
telling the readers that the Iranian news agency Fars
translated Mr. Rouhani's remarks differently from CNN.
What seems to upset them most boils down to this: “Nor,
contrary to the CNN version, did he utter the word 'Holocaust.' Instead, he
spoke about 'historical events.' Our independent translation confirms that Fars got it right.” Yes indeed, Fars
got it right. I do not speak Farsi but the Iranians use the Arabic alphabet
which I read, and many of their words have Arabic roots. The part in dispute
sounds like this: “Ab'aad hawadeth tarikhi.” Except for a grammatical
requirement that would make the last word “tarikhi-yah,” this is entirely
Arabic. And what it says is “dimensions of historical events.”
And so, the conclusion must be that Mr. Rouhani did not
utter the word “holocaust” or “Holocaust” because he was not speaking English.
I do not have an English-Farsi dictionary but have several English-Arabic and
Arabic-English dictionaries. So I looked up the word holocaust to see what word
someone who speaks Arabic might have used.
I found the following: “mahraqa” which translates into
incinerator; “zabihah” which translates into throat-cutting; “magzarah
bashari-yah” which translates into human butchery; “dahmiah” which translates
into felling. So I ask myself and I ask you, dear reader, how do you think the
editors of the Wall Street Journal would have reacted to someone using any of
these words?
This tells me and should tell you, that under the
circumstances, the best thing a reasonable person can do is speak of historical
events. This is what Mr. Rouhani did, and if the characters at the Wall Street
Journal see a reason here to bellyache about another denial of the Holocaust, I
say let them bellyache. And maybe they will want to sit with Marie Antoinette
after that and eat cake too because they will not squeeze blood out of a stone.