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Response to ericson00 (Reply #8)
There is no moral equivalency.
Our values on this subject also seem to be aligned. I'm not often bothered by what "faceless" posters post, but I would also like to see no violence or threats due to cartoons. Thanks for explaining your thoughts on this to me.
I can't even tell you how much this pisses me off. They do it and expect to get away with it. We do it and we can expect terrorist attacks and death threats. 
Last edited Thu Jan 14, 2016, 12:37 PM - Edit history (1)
so instead check out mine!
www.deadheadcomicks.com
"SAVAK (Sazeman-i Ettelaat va Amniyat-i Keshvar) was the National Organization for Intelligence and Security. Formed under the guidance of United States and Israeli intelligence officers in 1957, SAVAK developed into an effective secret agency. Bakhtiar was appointed its first director, only to be dismissed in 1961, allegedly for organizing a coup; he was assassinated in 1970 under mysterious circumstances, probably on the shah's direct order. His successor, General Hosain Pakravan, was dismissed in 1966, allegedly for having failed to crush the clerical opposition in the early 1960s. The shah turned to his childhood friend and classmate, General Nematollah Nassiri, to rebuild SAVAK and properly "serve" the monarch. Mansur Rafizadeh, the SAVAK director in the United States throughout the 1970s, claimed that General Nassiri's telephone was tapped by SAVAK agents reporting directly to the shah, an example of the level of mistrust pervading the government on the eve of the Revolution.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/iran/savak.htm
"Under a CIA operation called “Operation Ajax,” Schwarzkopf Sr. had been sent to Iran to encourage the Shah to return to power and, most crucially, helped him in the quest by forming and training security forces that would be loyal to the Shah. These security agents would eventually metamorphose into the dreaded and feared SAVAK secret police, one of the most brutal foundations of the Shah’s power.
Israel’s Mossad spy agency also assisted in training SAVAK agents in the arts of interrogation, surveillance and torture."
http://www.ibtimes.com/irans-feared-savak-norman-schwarzkopfs-father-had-greater-impact-middle-east-affairs-976502
And this: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/central-intelligence-agency-cia-in-persia
Now, I'm sure you won't believe those either, but I've never met anyone that knows the history of the region very well that didn't believe this. And I've met more than a few. It's also discussed in several books I've read. Like Devil's Game by Robert Dreyfuss, which last I checked is not considered to be fiction.
Now.
Has Iran funded groups the US considers to be terrorists? Absolutely. Has the US funded, do they still fund groups other people consider to be terrorists? Absolutely.
Did Israelis used terrorism during the formative years of their state? Absolutely.
On balance the US has done a LOT more bad than Iran could ever dream of, including to Iran.
I also find it relativity humorous that you say, "both the US and Israel were friendly with Iran at that time". The US was friendly with the dictator they installed, yes. As you might expect. Pretty sly way of ignoring that reality. The dictator that they installed was LESS friendly to his population, turning SAVAK loose, and killing many thousands of civilians. That is - the US and UK installed dictator - with the support of the US, the US and Israel, killed many Iranians.
Read that a few times and get your head around it, then talk to me about Hezbollah.
EDIT:
I just went and checked page 276, about which you said "I am not seeing anything on page 276 that relates to Israel or SAVAK."
It's clear now to me that you're just lying... god knows why, so never mind with any response. I shoulda guessed that someone that tried to manipulate the story like yourself was actually just lying to push some agenda.
And this is the second year it's been held.
Three other cartoonists will also receive cash prizes of 12,000, 8,000 and 5,000 dollars respectively, the secretary of the biennial, Masud Shojai-Tabatabai, told the Persian service of MNA.
He added that the competition will be held in June 2016 in Mashhad with cartoonists participating from 50 countries.
“We do not mean to approve or deny the Holocaust, however, the main question is that why is there no permission to talk about the Holocaust despite their (the West) belief in freedom of speech.
“Moreover, why should the oppressed people of Palestine pay the price for the Holocaust? We are also worried about the contemporary holocausts in which a great number of women and children are being killed in Iraq, Yemen and Syria,” he added.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=251584
You're right that most English-language links to the story seem to be involve ynet. I'm not clear whether it's the municipal authority that's really organizing it - 2015's was staged by a newspaper, Hamshahri.
As you suggest, if reports elsewhere are to be believed, it's justified as tit for tat for the Prophet cartoons:
Last year's winner didn't directly depict the Holocaust or deny it:
To claim that the ONLY thing condemned by Muslim-haters are the random and isolated acts of violence by people claiming to be motivated by provocative cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is utterly hilarious.
I am not saying that you should "meekly agree" with ANYONE'S "ridiculous taboos" or even refrain from criticizing them. All I am saying is that you can't, on one hand, yell "free speech" to defend offensive "Mock the Prophet" contests (even though they are INTENTIONALLY designed to promote violence just so Muslim haters can say, "see, I told you about those Muslims"
and then whine about silencing "un-American crap" when Muslims hold offensive "Mock the Holocaust" contests.
The Death Camps (and that is what they were NOT concentration camps) were very efficiently run, the victims arrived by train and in the early years, 1942 and 1943, were taken by truck to where they had to disrobe to go to the "Showers"
In laet 1943 through 1944 a train siding was built so trucks were no longer needed). The"Showers" was were they were gassed. After being gassed the bodies where either burned or buried, the whole operation took less then six hours from the time the victims left the train till their bodes were disposed of (and that included gathering various items from the victims including any gold teeth they had).
People concentrate on the Death Camps, for that is where most of the killing occurred. The problem is that was just the end of a long process, and that process started with gathering the Jews up and putting them into Ghettos. Ghettos is an old term, originally meant the Jewish quarter of a city with a substantial Jewish population. Treatment of the Jews in those Jewish Ghettos varied over time and place. Some times the Ghettos were destroyed, but in most cases the Ghettos survived, even after the movement in the 1800s to permit Jews to live anywhere in European Cities.
Hitler and the Nazis brought back the Ghetto AND added additional characteristics, First the Nazis walled them off. Older Ghettos did have walls, but more a demarcation line then a wall to prevent movement (i.e. In time and place where Jews were NOT to be outside the Ghetto, those older walls defined where a Jew could be, in less restrictive time periods, where a Jew should be).
Compared this to a Nazi Jewish Ghetto. There is the famous photo and movie showing Jews walking up a Staircase in the Warsaw Ghetto and then down the other side so the Jews living in the Ghetto did not cross the main street below them. The old Warsaw Ghetto had that main street right through the old Jewish Ghetto, for the Ghetto was where Jews should live, but Jews were permitted to go in and out of the Ghetto, thus having the main street go through the Jewish Ghetto was NOT a problem for the Poles and even the Russians when they ruled Poland. That the Main Street went through the Jewish Ghetto was a HARD problem for the Nazis, and thus the Steps up and down so that the Jews did not come in contact with the rest of the people using that street.
The Nazis used force, threats and other means to get the Jews of Warsaw into that Warsaw Ghetto, The Nzis used similar tactics elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe (Western Europe had long broke up their Jewish Ghettos, so in those countries the Nazis gathered up the jews and moved them East to Eastern and Central European Ghettos, to holding camps to be sent to the Death Camps, or directly to the Death Camps). Please note, most Western Nations had in the Renaissance and later strict laws on Jews, forbidding them in most Western European Countries, thus no Jews no Jewish Ghettos. Until Oliver Cromwell permitted Jews into England, it was illegal to be a Jew in England from the 1300s till the mid 1600s (When Cromwell permitted the Jews back into England), thus no Jewish Ghettos in Western Europe, for they were almost no Jews till the 1800s).
In the WWI era Nazi Ghettos, Jews barely survived, that is where they were beaten by Nazis, if a Nazis wanted to beat up a Jew, Starved, worked to death etc. You had stories of such actions in the Death Camps, but to the Jews and others that the Nazis had selected to help them run the Death Camps. The number of people reserved to run the Death Camps were a small percentage of the people sent to those camps, unlike the Ghettos where starvation, beatings and being worked to death was the norm for ANYONE in the Ghetto.
Without the Ghettos, the Death Camps were impossible for the Death Camps needed a constant supply of new victims and most of those victims came from the Ghettos, with Western European Jews coming in when collected. Since the Majority of Jews in Europe lived in Poland, the Ghettos of Poland ended up as a rich source of victims (AND Hitler in the 1930s expelled a lot of German Jews to Poland on the grounds they families originally came from Poland and thus they were Polish not German).
You can actually make the case that the Death Camps were Humane, people who were being starved and worked to death were taken to a place where they were quickly put out of their "Misery" I personally reject that comparison, but compared to the conditions in the Ghettos and how bad there were, that argument can be made (Is it more humane to quickly kill someone off, or starved him or her to death, the better answer is feed the person and stop working them so hard, but the Nazis refused to even considered that option).
Once you understand the Holocaust and the role the Ghettos played in it, then the Cartoons really hits home. The Nazis knew no one would accept them killing the Jews, but if the Jews died of natural causes, the Nazis could claim all they did was isolate the Jews, it was the fault of the Jews themselves if their starved or worked themselves to death. This was the purpose of the Ghettos, to isolate the Jews and slowly kill them off, out of sight and technically NOT by the hands of nay German. This is what the Cartoons are comparing how Israel is treating the Arabs of the West Bank, like the Jews in the Jewish Ghettos under the Nazis. Those Ghettos were bad and almost everything you hear of the Israelis doing on the West Bank the Nazis did in the Jewish Ghettos (Raids, killings, destroying homes etc). The wall being built around the West Bank to keep the Arabs out, is similar to the walls built around the Jewish Ghettos. That is what the Cartoons are comparing Israel to, and anyone who has truly studied the Holocaust learns the Death Camps were a minor part of the Nazis attack on the Jews of Europe, the main attack was done by getting the Jews into the Ghettos and then treating them badly. The Rail Lines to Austerlitz were the end of the Holocaust not the beginning, the beginning was the Ghettos.
As to the Death Camps themselves, the Death Camps ONLY came about do to the Nazis being at war with the whole world and thus what the World thought of the Nazis for killing the Jews no longer mattered (the Nazis could then speed up the process). Israel has NEVER been in a position where it could do a death camp situation, it needs US support and a mass oververt killing of Arabs would not be accepted by the US. Now, if the US ends up unable to even protest a Israeli killing of Arabs, then, like the Nazis after 1941, all checks would have been removed and given the politics of Israel, something like the Holocaust will occur (Through shipping all of the Arabs to Jordan would be Israel's first choice, just like Hitler's first choice was to ship the Jews to Israel, till WWII and the British blockade ended that option).
Thus it is comparing the Palestinians to the Jews in the Ghettos that makes these Cartoons effective. If you study the Holocaust the Death Camps are the result of the total isolation of Germany after December 1941. With that isolation, all checks were off and the Death Camps occur, but only because the Nazis had already set up the Ghettos that could be used to feed those death camps. Furthermore the Ghettos themselves were set up to kill off the Jews without actually killing them. The Nazis set up the Ghettos not only to isolate the Jews of Europe but also to have them slowly die out. No direct killing, authorized by law was done, but it was perfectly OK for anyone to kill a Jew in or out of the Ghetto (and in the Ghetto it was hard to show that the Jew did NOT cause the fight, which was the defense most killers of jews prior to 1941 used and was accepted by the Police). The same is being seen in the West Bank with Settlers being permitted to commit murder and unless the victim has overwhelming evidence that they were the victims, the Police/ Israeli Army takes the side of the Settlers.
Thus if you want to isolate the Holocaust to the Death Camps, these Cartoons minimize that part of the Holocaust, for the MAJOR part of the Holocaust was gathering the Jews and sending them into the Ghettos. To most of the victims of the Holocaust, the Death Camps took up less then a day in their lives. The Ghetto took up years of their lives and set them up to be sent to the Death Camps. The Cartoon is comparing what Israel is doing to the Arabs of the West Bank to what the Nazis did to the Jews by setting up and forcing the Jews into the Jewish Ghettos. The Ghettos is where the Holocaust was set up and drew its life blood from and these Cartoons are clearly make that Comparison.
