Jew Hear About Ahmadinejad?

Perhaps the world’s biggest Holocaust denying, Jew hating, Israel threatening douchebag has Jewish roots. No, not Mel Gibson, it’s Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I don’t usually believe in Jewish conspiracies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was indeed the work of Israeli propagandists. It’s so damn funny that Mel Brooks would be proud.

Now first off, I have some reservations with the claim that “Jewish” is an ethnicity. Hitler argued the same thing, and as we all know: anything Hitler did is wrong (stop breathing...). Even the Jewish community’s attempt to spread the idea that being Jewish is a cultural identity isn’t logical.

First off, Jewish people try to claim it’s about culture, not religion, but I posit that ethnicities are named after languages because language is the primary barrier which divides people sufficiently enough to allow racial insulation and therefore differentiation of culture and race. The French speak French, the Germans speak German (or those from Deutschland speak Deutsch), the Italians speak Italian, Greeks speak Greek, etc. The name of the language is also inevitably the name of their culture.

In this way, I would consider those of “Jewish heritage” Hebrew. I wouldn’t consider myself ethnically or even culturally Catholic, even though that was the religion of my family and upbringing. Although I do love fish on Fridays…

There is a complication in all of this, because even the distinction “Jewish” comes from the term “Judaism,” which is the name of the religion… which is named after the region of Judea. So really, the religion is named after the land where the people who practiced it were from. To complicate things even more, the people themselves have gone by many different names, including the people of Moses, the people of Jacob, the Children of Israel and God’s chosen people (none of which will ever catch on).

So what the hell does any of this have to do with our recently outed Jewish/Hebrew/athletically-challenged President of Iran?

I’m not sure if it’s possible, but I’m pretty sure Jews have a dominant self-loathing gene. Hitler definitely had it, and Ahmadinejad clearly has it. Considering how brutal lapsed Jews can be to practicing Jews, I can almost understand the aggressive measures taken to keep them in the fold.

Then again, it’s probably the case that Mahmoud is compensating for his Jewish roots by being especially harsh on Isael and Jews living in Iran. Scapegoating doesn’t work if the leader is discovered to be a scapegoat himself, so he throws off the scent by being overly critical of Jews. Think of wealthy Right Wing businessmen attempting to demonize Democrats as elitist, or Larry Craig and his crusade against gay people while he’s simultaneously cruising bathrooms across America.

Which got me thinking… didn’t Mahmoud also say during a speech at Columbia University in New York there are no gay people in Iran? Maybe that’s because the only one he knew about was out of the country at that moment...