Chavez and Ahmadinejad United—Against Israel

Chavez and Ahmadinejad United—against Israel
By George Jochnowitz

About the Author
George Jochnowitz is a professor emeritus of linguistics whose specialty is Jewish languages, in particular the dialects of the Jews of Italy and southern France. He taught for many years at the College of Staten Island, CUNY, and was an exchange professor at Hebei University in Baoding, China, during the spring semesters of 1984 and 1989. His interests range far and wide, and include politics, music, the Bible, and humanity itself.
see his website: www.jochnowitz.net


On April 22 and 23, 2007, a conference was held at Queens College in New York City entitled “Is It 1938 Again?” The question asked in the title of the conference referred to Israel’s safety in a world where Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is amassing nuclear capability and has called for the destruction of Israel.
President Ahmadinejad’s greatest ally, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, is not being mentioned at this time. Nevertheless, we should remember that Chavez, the world’s most active Marxist dictator, is actively pursuing a policy of friendship with Iran, as Marxists always have. The June 8, 2007, issue of the Forward included a news story under the headline “Palestinian Artists Find Venezuelan Ally.” Artists are not the problem, however. The article informs us that “Venezuela was among the first to engage with Hamas leaders, and recently it has strengthened ties with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad..” Some months earlier, on February 9, 2007, the Associated Press ran a story under the headline “Iran, Venezuela to begin direct flights.” In the article we read, “Relations between the two countries have tightened under Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who are united in their antagonism to the U.S. government.”
They are united in more ways than one. Hugo Chavez, like all Marxists leaders, has allied himself with radical Islam. Chavez, who called President Bush “el Diablo,” has always been in total agreement with Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, who refers to America as the Great Satan. Iran, in turn, has officially recognized Chavez as an ally. The August 1, 2006, issue of the official English-language newspaper China Daily printed a news story entitled “Chavez receives Iran’s highest award.” We learn from this news item that “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presented Chavez with the Iranian Republic Medal in a ceremony at Teheran University.” The medal was awarded to show gratitude to Chavez for his “support for Iran’s stance on the international scene, especially its opposition to a resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency.” The resolution in question was a decision to report Iran to the Security Council over its nuclear program.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez talks about helping the poor, but what he really wants to do is to end freedom and bring about a Marxist society. That is why the National Assembly of Venezuela has granted him free rein to rule by presidential decree for 18 months. The purpose is ostensibly to accelerate changes in society. Chavez doesn’t need free rein. The National Assembly supports him. He has asked for free rein in order to end democracy and civil society. He is doing what Marx advocated.
Marx was opposed to the idea of civil society. In his essay “On the Jewish Question,” he said, “Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society, and is revealed as such in its pure form as soon as civil society has fully engendered the political state. The god of practical need and self-interest is money” [emphasis in original]. But these words did not sufficiently express Marx’s disgust with the idea. In the same essay, he went on to say, “It is from its own entrails that civil society ceaselessly engenders the Jew.”
The Marxist vision of the future implies the realization of a society without disagreement and therefore the end of history. That is why thought reform is a considered a desirable and realizable goal. Those societies that have attempted to reshape human nature have been noted for their ruthlessness. All of the cruelty of Communist states, all of the evils committed by Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot, are implicit in the Marxist idea of the withering away of the state.
Lenin, in Chapter 5 of The State and Revolution, says that “The State will be able to wither away completely . . . when people have become accustomed to observe the fundamental rules of social life, and their labor is so productive, that they voluntarily work according to their ability. . . . Until the 'higher' phase of Communism arrives, the Socialists demand the strictest control, by society and by the State, of the quantity of labour and the quantity of consumption” [emphasis in original]. Lenin (who used the word “Socialism” to mean “Communism”) sounds hypocritical and contradictory: strictest control seems a peculiar way to arrive at a stage where there is no control. Unfortunately, there is no contradiction. The “strictest control” called for by Lenin is needed because human nature would have to be altered in order to produce the society he envisions, otherwise people might not “voluntarily work according to their ability.” Indeed, such a stateless world would be unchanging and without strife, or else government would have to reappear.
Thought reform was an explicit goal in the days of Mao Zedong and remains so today, although the words themselves [sixiang gaizao in Chinese] have fallen out of favor. Chairman Mao claimed that all power came from the barrel of a gun, but he ruled not only through force but through something akin to divine right: he was revered not only as an individual but as the symbol of the inevitable triumph of Communism.
The extreme form of Islam espoused by Ahmadinejad is like the world envisioned by Marx,
a world where everyone thinks alike. It is a world that fears freedom and diversity. Chavez is on the road to making his country another North Korea—a place where everyone will obey the dear leader of the country. China and Russia have embraced capitalism but have not renounced Marxism. They too are friends of Ahmadinejad. The Marxist-Islamic alliance is alive and well.
Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, Israelis captured by Nasrallah in July 2006, and Gilad Shalit, taken by Hamas in June of that year, are still in custody as of this writing. The world doesn’t care about them. If Israel makes a deal to release them, it will be viewed by the world as a victory for Islam. It will be viewed by the Marxist-Islamic alliance as a sign of weakness and therefore yet another reason to hate Israel. The story of these captured Israelis is getting little if any coverage in the press. Perhaps that is evidence that it really is 1938 again after all.