Iranians Speak Out About Gaza

I still don't know for sure how Gazans feel about having put Hamas in power, but if this is accurate, I guess we can get an idea about how Iranians feel about their government supporting Hamas.

The following are apparently English translations of what Iranians in Iran are texting to the Prague-based component of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

—-"As long as they [our government] are helping Lebanon and Palestine, we're not going to have a decent living."

—-"We're soldiers from Jebrani and we dont have enough to eat, but the government is airlifting food and medicine top Gaza."

—- "In my opinion, it would be better if our leaders, together with their supporters, would relocate to Palestine. ... This way we would have peace and quiet in Iran and our economic situation would improve."

—"If Gaza is a real Holocaust, Iran is the real Gaza."

—-"Yes, it's true. [I hear] they want to give part of our salaries to Hamas."

—-"Any other country (apart from Israel) would have done the same a long time ago."

—-"Hamas should be destroyed. This cowardly group is taking cover in hospitals and residential areas. The people of Gaza should help Israel."

—"The clerical regime regime is lying. It was not Israel who started this war."

I have read that economically we would benefit from having higher oil prices--and though I got a C in Economics I can appreciate that. However, I have to think that the political and long-range benefits we are getting from the lower price of oil outweigh that.

Meir Javedanfar, the co-author with Yossi Melman of The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran, has a comparable sense of where the Iranian street is at:

...when it comes to Gazans, the Iranian people feel bad for Gazans because they see them as underdogs. One has to remember that Iranians lived through eight years of war started by Saddam Hussein, which led to the devastation of their country. Nobody came to help them and they see the same in Gaza. Does this mean that they want to eliminate Israel? The answer in the majority of cases is negative. This is against the wishes of hardliners in the Iranian government who would love to brainwash the people of Iran, especially the young through the use of TV programs, gory pictures of casualties in Gaza, and in some cases outright lies about what is happening there. But so far, apart from hardcore fundamentalists, they are not succeeding. The only thing which the majority of the people of Iran want eliminated is poverty and unemployment in their own country. Not some country 1,000 kilometers away called Israel. [emphasis added]

Apparently, oil as a weapon is a two-edged sword.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Gaza and Hamas and Operation Cast Lead and Iran.