What’s up with Iran’s fascination with rodents?
Ynet news presents yet another chapter in Iran’s disturbing fascination with rodents, a story of squirrels caught spying in Iran by the authorities:
Iranian intelligence operatives recently detained over a dozen squirrels found within the nation’s borders, claiming the rodents were serving as spies for Western powers determined to undermine the Islamic Republic. “In recent weeks, intelligence operatives have arrested 14 squirrels within Iran’s borders,” state-sponsored news agency IRNA reported. “The squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services.” Iranian police commander Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqadam confirmed the report, saying that a number of squirrels had been caught bearing foreign spy gear within Iran’s borders. “I heard of this but I have no specific knowledge on the subject,” he said. He refused to give further details.
This is hardly the only strange story of Iranians and rodents. A year ago, Iranian TV aired a lecture by University Professor and advisor to the Ministry of Education, Dr. Hasan Bolkhari.
Dr. Hasan Bolkhari is a serious looking fellow and an accomplished academic. He has a PhD in Islamic Philosophy. He has written many papers and appears to be the author of ten books. His courses at uinversity include, “The Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics,” and “Art and Islamic Civilization,” among others. He is a board member of at least a dozen government and arts organizations in Iran. Notably, he is a board member of a censorship organization for the Iranian TV network, the “Approval Group TV Films and Serials of IRIB.” Hasan Bolkhari, Professor, PhD and cultural censor, would appear to be a pretty heavy hitter in the Iranian academic and media world.
Thus a televised lecture by Professor Bolkhari is no joke or spoof or send-up on the day before vacation. It is serious business from a professor of philosophy and the arts and is meant to be taken as literal history. You can watch the lecture here if you like. Here is an excerpt:
There is a cartoon that children like…Tom and Jerry. Some say that this creation by Walt Disney will be remembered forever. The Jewish Walt Disney Company gained international fame with this cartoon…
Some say that the main reason for making this very appealing cartoon was to erase a certain derogatory term that was prevalent in Europe. If you study European history, you will see who was the main power to hoard money and wealth in the 19th century. In most cases, it was the Jews. Perhaps that was one of the reasons which caused Hitler to begin the anti-Semitic trend, and then the extensive propaganda about the crematoria began…
The Jews were degraded and termed “dirty mice.” Tom and Jerry was made in order to change the Europeans’ perception of mice…It should be noted that mice are very cunning…and dirty.
No ethnic group or people operate in such a clandestine manner as the Jews. Read the history of the Jews in Europe. This ultimately led to Hitler’s hatred and resentment…Tom and Jerry was made in order to display the exact opposite image…
The mouse is very clever and smart. Everything he does is so cute. He kicks the poor cat’s ass. Yet this cruelty does not make you despise the mouse. He looks so nice and he is so clever…That is exactly why some say it was meant to erase this image of mice from the minds of European children, and to show that the mouse is not dirty…
Everything about this is disturbing.
– (1) the history is just plain wrong. The Tom and Jerry cartoon series, which debuted in 1940, was created by Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera while they were working at MGM, not at Disney.
– (2) and somewhat amusingly, Walt Disney was a Congregationalist who was himself accused of anti-Semitism, as opposed to Bolkhari’s looney tunes version of history.
– (3) looking for hidden Jewish messages in the cartoons of Hanna and Barbera — a guy from Little Italy and his Boy Scout / Barbershop Quartet partner — is a kind of insanity all by itself.
– (4) the principal audience for Tom and Jerry was in US movie theaters as a short subject before the main attraction; the cartoon series had nothing to do with Europe.
– (5) it is most depressing to watch the attentive, male students in the TV lecture looking serious and taking copious notes from this global conspiratorial fantasy.
Sixth, consider this: Professor Hasan Bolkhari believes what he is saying. He apparently believes that Tom and Jerry was produced by the Jewish Walt Disney to erase the idea in Europe that Jews were “dirty mice.” That this is nuts is beside the point. Its ubiquity is the point. Bolkhari would appear to inhabit the same mental universe of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who says 2000 Zionists rule the world. (You will recall that Ahmadinejad believed that his interviewers last year from Der Spiegel were acting under duress when they failed to repudiate the idea of the Holocaust.) In this Iranian view, people in the West are either blind to reality, or are being oppressed so they can not speak openly of the reality the Ahmadinehjads and the Bolkharis know to be true.
Good luck to all those who think it would be fruitful to “engage” the Iranian establishment in various ways. In our view, such negotiations are nothing more than a cat and mouse game.