Agreeing with Kissinger: A bridge to hard-headed two-way dialogue

Last week, the Boston Globe printed an opinion piece by Jeff Jacoby, "A US welcome mat for Ahmadinejad," which condemned the September 24-25 meetings held between the Iranian President and members of the U.S. peace and religious communities. Joseph Gerson, a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the director of programs at the Boston-based New England office of the American Friends Service Committee, wrote the following response. The Globe would not agree to print Gerson’s Letter to the Editor due to its length, and also decided to not print a vastly-cut 400-word version submitted by Gerson, also due to it exceeding its word limit. We offer the original version here:

September 30, 2008
Letters to the Editor
Boston Globe

Dear Editor,

How appropriate that Jeff Jacoby’s article about President Ahmadinejad’s time in New York appeared under the heading “OPINION.” With the disastrous consequences of Bush Doctrine wars to achieve geopolitical advantage rather than to achieve security for the U.S. and other peoples now all too visible, and with five former U.S. Secretaries of State now urging negotiations with Iran, the radical right is once again reduced to rhetoric and distortions.
As a participant in the Interfaith Dialogue in New York that involved President Ahmadinejad, Globe readers might be interested in a clearer picture of what transpired there, focusing on the highlights:
In her opening comments, Mennonite Central Committee Executive Director Arli Klassen stressed the need for four areas of dialog with the Iranian leader: 1) the Palestine-Israel situation including the reality of what Jews suffered in the Holocaust, 2) his rhetoric about Israel’s continued survival and the need for non-military approaches to resolve the legacy of six decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 3) the right of all people to choose the religion they choose to follow, and 4) the need for nonviolent conflict resolution, including the need for transparency in all nuclear matters and the imperative of abolishing ALL nuclear weapons.
In his words, I found hope in the fact that Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann has risen to the role of President of the U.N. General Assembly. Speaking from his heart and religious beliefs he decried the reality that humanity permits one half of its members to suffer inexcusable poverty and hunger. Quoting Tolstoy’s he diagnosed the cause of now suicidal “insane selfishness” (something we’ve heard a lot about in the last week.)  He urged and asked others to pray for the use of reason as we address conflicts and the need to relieve human suffering.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb chanted from Leviticus that religion can solve the world’s problems through dialog and reconciliation and the imperative of not being passive in the presence of violence. Quoting the Torah, she urged all (Americans as well as Ahmadinejad) not to spread hate which can lead to hate actions. She noted with its broadcast of a documentary about the Holocaust on national television, Iran has recognized its reality. She also explained that the meaning of the Hebrew word “Israel” is much the same as the word “Jihad”: to be true to a life of righteousness.
Nihad Awad, a Palestinian Muslim stressed that Islam teaches the importance of justice – even in response to enemies, and that terror must always be condemned and rejected.
Norway’s former Prime Minister, Rev. Kjell-Mage Bondevik preceded his blunt naming of the issues that need to be at the center of dialog with Iran, by explaining that, from his perspective, religion provides the foundation for human rights, the centrality of God’s commandment of love, and profound concern about the long tradition of religion being misused to stir conflicts and war. The issues? Leaders in all nations must be held accountable for the human rights violations in their countries. Defiant stands are dangerous in U.S.-Iranian relations. The need to defend Israel’s right to exist at the same time that Palestinians’ right to a state is finally implemented. And that dialog, not war, is the only way forward.
And what did President Ahmadinejad, who is not Iran’s Supreme Leader, have to say in response? He went on for a very long time about his religious beliefs, including the costs society as people and nations fall away from religion. While not holding a mirror to the ills of Iran under both secular and religious governments, he condemned racism and the “humiliation of nations”, reminding me that as with China there are long-term costs of colonialism and neo-colonialism. He decried the hypocrisy of nations which have as many as 10,000 nuclear weapons while half of humanity is poor and lack medical care, and he asked rhetorically who is building and stockpiling nuclear weapons while insisting that other nations cannot have them. He pointed to the deaths caused by the Iraq war and the sixty years of Palestinian suffering, with people being forced from their homes which are being demolished to this day.
Ahmadinejad made the accurate distinction between Jews – people who follow a religion, and Zionists whose identity lies with Israel and its state. Ahmadinejad didn’t deny the Holocaust; instead he said that it and the killing of 60 million people during World War II was caused by Europeans who now uphold liberalism and human rights. Palestinians, he was clear, should not be paying the price for what Nazis and other Europeans inflicted on Jews.
His closing words pointed to what I believe can be a bridge for future hard-headed two way dialog. He urged people to seek freedom, which at the very least concern both many in Iran and here in the U.S. where more than two million people are in prison and we are free to lose our homes to foreclosures and our pensions to casino capitalism. He reminded his audience that 200,000 Iranians were killed in Saddam Hussein’s eight year war – supported by the U.S.– against Iran, and that “with all options on the table”, Iran is being “tormented by those who used nuclear weapons.”
As we have learned these past eight years, it takes a certain moral blindness to prefer hateful rhetoric and war to dialog. I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with Henry Kissinger. It is, indeed, time and past time to begin a serious dialog with Iran. We could begin by following through on the proposal to send a U.S. diplomat to staff the U.S. interests section in Teheran and by making a non-aggression pledge to sweeten the negotiations that have been begun by our European partners.

Sincerely,

Joseph Gerson
Director of Programs
American Friends Service Committee

Ed. Note: Gerson will be one of the keynote speakers on Saturday, October 18th at a conference titled "How to Prevent War on Iran AND on the U.S. Constitution." The all-day program will be held in Pittsford, Massachusetts. To get more information, visit FOR’s online Peace and Justice Calendar or contact the organizer directly: George Desnoyers by phone (413-443-4298) or e-mail (click here).